Runyon therapy.

Well, tomorrow morning I go in for my ultrasound to determine whether or not I might have cancer. Either the lump I found will be a harmless cyst, thanks for coming in and have a nice life, or a solid mass which would require a biopsy to find out if it's cancerous or not. O, the joys of life!

Ever since my disasterous attempt to re-connect with an old girlfriend I have been obsessed with hiking Runyon Canyon. I'll tune my IPod to this fantastic mix that I made, dubbed "A Wistful Lullaby in Melancholy," and go for a two hour hike in the early afternoon and then for an hour-ish hike at sunset. Hiking those trails has been the best therapy I've ever allowed myself to have, because my hikes are no longer about excercise, they're about being in the moment, moving through space and time, listening to my music and just existing. Cancer-smancer, I'm livin' baby!! At least I'm trying to.

Here's a new one, I have a problem looking people in the eye. I'm not sure where this one originated, but it's a definite problem. Whenever I look someone in the eye that I don't know or I'm revealing something about myself to someone I do know, it takes a supreme amount of will to maintain eye contact. Now imagine having this problem and then trying to add a smile to that eye contact. Well, for me that's a near impossiblity. All I know is that there is this fear that wells up whenever I get too close to someone, and for strangers too close means eye contact. The buck doesn't stop there though. I also have this problem with asserting myself. I've always gravitated towards the "go with the flow" position in realtionships of all kinds, whether that be family, friends, work, authority figures, or romantic relationships. It's almost like I've trained myself not to rock the boat unless I really have a problem with the direction that the boat is taking, which isn't that often. Anyway, that's another thing I'm trying to work on.

As far as the eye contact thing goes, I've been working on that during my Runyon hikes. There are a lot of people up there and I am actively trying to make eye contact and smile to every person I see. I'm working on letting it be okay if they don't smile back and trying to realize that's their deal and has nothing to do with me. Suprisingly, especially over the last few days, it's actually been working. All of a sudden it's starting to not be the end of the world if someone doesn't want to smile back. Although, it definitely did kick ass when Kirsten Dunst smiled back at me; that was a nice ego boost for the day(= Another thing that has changed in the last few days is that I've started to find it not only easier, but more enjoyable to stand up straight, even when hiking up the slopes of Runyon. Not so suprisingly, this has also increased the number of smile backs I've been getting.

So here's to standing up straight, a little eye contact, a few smiles, and what wiil hopefully be, come tomorrow, a cancer free life. Cheers!

To be or not to be.

After actually beginning to confront and write down some of the basic truths of who I am and the way I feel, I think I might understand why I have been drawn to Hamlet in such a deep way and in particular to his most famous speech. I feel his pain, I understand his need for sleep, and when I feel love for someone; it is often my sins that I remember. He speaks to the core of me and now that I see, perhaps that knowledge will act as a light by which I can find a path that will lead me out of this dark valley, once and for all.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Searching...

We blame others for not fulfilling our expectations. When we love, we don't have expectations; we do it because we want to, and if other people do it or not, it's because they want to or not and it's nothing personal. When we don't expect something to happen, if nothing happens, it's not important. We don't feel hurt, because whatever happens is okay. That is why hardly anything hurts us when we are in love; we aren't expecting that our lover will do something, and we have no obligations.

from "The Mastery of Love"
by Don Miguel Ruiz


I've been re-reading this book and this passage really hit home with me because of what happened with both of those girls during my 11 days. Both were the same situation and I was cast as my own opposite in each; with one girl I was wanting more than just a friendship while she wanted just that, and with the other girl I wanted a friendship and was getting a very strong impression that she wanted more.

In the former case I was pursuing(god I hate that word, it sounds so predatory) a romantic relationship with her and since she wasn't saying no to it I kept moving forward, then she disappeared on me for a week and a half before sending me an email that she just wanted a friendship with me. Once I knew what she wanted and realized that I would be happy with that, everything worked out fine, because both of our wants came into line.

Now, in the later case, I won't get into any details, but it did not end up well, at all. Hurtful things were said on both sides. On my part, I said two things that were taken very personally, when they were just meant to explain me and were not put out as a malicious attack, which is how I believe they were received. My problem is that I often say the right thing the wrong way. I feel that it is my fault we are not friends. I blame myself and I take responsibility for the emotional well-being of everyone I care about. So, even if words were said that did not intend harm, they still caused harm. How can I not be responsible for that when the words came from me?

Why should I care about anybody, including myself, when all it ever brings is pain? The answer is that love is worth the pain. Love will always be worth the pain. I have never and will never feel anything but love for this girl and yet she hated me for a year and a half. Hated. Hate. The world is like a boot heel against my chest and this voice keeps screaming, "You don't belong here, so get the fuck out!"

Wake Me Up When September Ends

I went on a hike at Runyon and this song hit my IPod. It felt like me.

GREEN DAY
"Wake Me Up When September Ends"

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends

like my fathers come to pass
seven years has gone so fast
wake me up when september ends

here comes the rain again
falling from the stars
drenched in my pain again
becoming who we are

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when september ends

summer has come and passed
the innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends

ring out the bells again
like we did when spring began
wake me up when september ends

here comes the rain again
falling from the stars
drenched in my pain again
becoming who we are

as my memory rests
but never forgets what I lost
wake me up when september ends

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends

like my father's come to pass
twenty years has gone so fast
wake me up when september ends
wake me up when september ends
wake me up when september ends

Life can be such a fucker sometimes.

It often feels like it gives you just enough rope to allow yourself to start feeling good and then says, "okay that's enough of that," and gives that rope a big fucking yank back. That'll teach you to start feeling good. I spent January recovering from my indentured servitude at Maggiano's, which led into a February that what was actually quite fantastic.

There was one night in February in which I was the happiest and most confident I'd been in some time. I nailed a scene in my acting class in which I put my own stamp on a classic Bill Murray role and I knew it even before I was critiqued. Afterwards I went out to Firefly with a bunch of people from class and had the most amazing time because for the first time in a while I felt really good about myself and in my life that is a rare thing. I didn't want the night to end because everyone around me was treating me differently due to my own internal joy and it was fantastic and I felt so good. It is in rare moments like this that I feel truely myself and actually enjoy being me. Then the next morning I woke up and actually looked forward to the day. It was a delicious feeling. It never ceases to amaze me how much more savory an experience is when you haven't had it in a long time. Of course, this faded over the next few days leaving me back in the emptiness that is my world, a world in which every morning that I wake up I have to deal with the fact that I wish I never had to wake up again, that I could just remain in my dream world forever.

Then came April and my 11 days, which I had hoped had been all of the turmoil life would throw at me for this month, but I was wrong, and despite the fact that I am trying to be more open and honest, I haven't told anyone about this yet. I made an attempt but it didn't work out. Anyway, last week I discovered a small lump on my left testicle. So, today I went to the doctor to get it checked out. He said that it was most likely a cyst, but in order to be certain I have to go next week and get an ultrasound. It will probably be nothing but there still is a chance that it's the big C. I'm scared, I'm resigned, I don't give a fuck. Part of me just so freakin tired and just wants to take a nap. However, another part of me is really fucking stubborn and I have a lot of shit I want to accomplish, so that part of me is saying, "Fuck that shit!" Ever since my Father's death, from cancer by the way, those two have been doing battle with one another and the stubborn side has been holding his ground, but L.A. has been beating my stubborn side up a bit and the 'give up' side has been gaining a lot of ground.

I'm reminded of this scene from the O.C. I know, I know, the O.C. is not exactly television at it's finest, but it does have its rare moments. In this one, Marissa has been dealing with all the shit that happened to her in the first season, and her mom comes up to her and asks Marissa to tell her what's going on with her. Marissa asks her if she really wants to know and her mom says yes. So, Marissa just screams at the top of her lungs this gutteral cry because there are no words to express how much she is really hurting. I feel kind of like that, except that I don't know if I remember the combination to the chains that keep that monster locked away.

"AAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

How sucky is that, being in pain and not being able to scream. Sure, many people consider that to be 'taking it like a man.' Hell, that's what I thought I was supposed to do when I was 10 years old and my mother told me that my dad had just died. I felt the emotion begin to well up and I slammed a cage of iron chains around that sucker so fast that it barely had the time to register it even existed, and I told myself that I was going to be strong for my mom, because I had to be the 'man of the house' and men don't cry. Now I say, "FUCK THAT SHIT!" Only problem is that in the 23 years since I locked myself down, I forgot how to unlock those chains. My emotions do come out with the right triggers, but I am unable to call them up on my own. Perhaps I have been trying to hard to access my emotions of events that happened 23 years ago. Perhaps, I should start by giving myself permission to feel emotions now and maybe by doing that I'll be able to work my way backwards to heal my original wound. It is a lot of work though and I am so tired.

Musings on Love

Have you ever wondered to yoursef, "what is love?" Is love an intellectual ideal? Is it a state of mind? Is love the way you live? Does it reside in your actions? Perhaps, it is merely a thought. Yes, love can be a thought, it can be seen in your actions and the way you live, and it is both a state of mind and an ideal. However, though it be all these things, love is above all and emotion. Love is something that is felt and experienced; it is something that happens to you. Never fool yourself into thinking that you happen to love, it would be the equivilancy of you, as an individual, thinking you have an effect on the workings of the Universe, and yet, if you allow the force of Love to work through you, it is possible to alter the course of the Universe. If you doubt me in this then allow me to present my case in the names of Martin Luthor King Jr., Ghandi, Rosa Parks, John F Kennedy Jr., and Jesus the Christ, just to name a few. All of these souls, caught in the currents of Time and thrust down the River of History, with love in their hearts found the strength to stand up and like a rock, alter the course of Time and History, for the betterment of mankind. So, I ask you again, "What is love?"

Have you ever felt that thing in the center of your chest when you connect with another person? Remember the first time you fell in love? Take a moment to remember it. Do you remember how it felt? Do you remember that feeling that welled up in the center of your being and you felt so much joy that you thought your heart would burst? I've felt that and I believe that feeling to be the physical manifestation of Love. If you were to live your life in such a way that everything you did was in an effort to evoke that feeling, is there any way your life could be worse? Does it not stand to reason that whenever that feeling is present, you can do no wrong? How would it be possible to do someone harm when you are experiencing the joy of love?

Have you ever done harm to another person, either physically or emotionally? Take a moment to remember a time when you intentionally did another person harm. Do you remember how it felt? Do you remember that feeling of blackness welling up in the center of your being, almost like a dark and heavy cloud that saturates your being and begins to pull anything good down into its depths, leaving you feeling nothing but pain and anger. I have felt that and I believe that feeling to be the physical manifestation of Hate. Do you remember how much easier it is to hurt another person when under the spell of that emotion, wielding that dark magic? Do you remember how much energy it took to cconvert that feeling back to love? It's not an easy thing to do.

Good and Evil, the age old enemies of every myth, legend, and religion ever created. Call them Zeus and Hades, Odin and Loki, God and Lucifer, Love and Hate, or simply Creation and Destruction; it does not matter what you name them, for they are but symbols of the two forces that do battle within in us on a daily basis. They are represented in our emotions that sing to great heights when we are doing Right and fall to great depths when we are doing Wrong. These emotions are at their most powerful when they are at their peaks and lows, it is here that they are capable of taking hold of us and propelling us to acts of great Good or Evil; again I present you with Jesus the Christ and now Adolf Hitler, two souls on two very different paths, one possessed by Love and Creation and the other by Hate and Destruction. Both of these men had a profound effect on humanity and the course of human history. What was it about these men that they captivated the hearts and minds of so many. Jesus the Christ inspired people to the possibility of a better world and a personal connection to God through the example of his life. He was put to death on a cross by people who feared his message. He is still known nearly 2000 years later and worshipped by roughly a third of the world's population. Adolf Hitler, a failed artist who found success in public speaking, and used his charisma to enthrall a downtrodden nation with dreams of being a master race that would destroy the Jewish nation to the last man and rule the world. When faced with his imminent defeat he chose to commit suicide by taking cyanide and shooting himself in the head. Do you think that Hitler will be known 2000 years from now in the magnitude that Jesus is known today? I think not. Jesus was the day to Hitler's night. They were the polar opposites of each other, as far removed from each other as Creation and Destruction.

My Father loved to make model airplanes. He would sit for hours at a time; painstakingly painting all of the pieces and gluing them together to create these beautiful replicas of airplanes. Then, he would hang the finished planes from my bedroom ceiling. I think I had about 12 different sirplanes hanging from my ceiling by the time I was about 7 years old. I loved those planes. When I would have trouble falling to sleep at night I would take my flashlight and slowly move the beam of light from plane to plane and revel in their beauty and intricacy until my eyelids grew heavy and I would fall asleep. Then one day, possessed by boredom and mischievousness, I thought it would be fun to make believe that I was being attacked by all of those planes and to defend myself against them I gathered a variety of small, hard objects to act as projectile weapons. I stood upon my bed and defended myself against those planes until every last one lay broken and in pieces upon my bedroom floor. I remember thinking and feeling that this was wrong but I was having so much fun watching the planes twist on their strings as they were bombarded by my projectiles and ultimately thrilling in the moments when the planes would loosen from the ceiling and fall crashing to the floor. Besides, I figured that since my Father had created these planes it would be an easy thing for him to fix them, ah the ignorance of childhood. So it was that what took my Father, off and on, 7 years to create, I managed to destroy in under 20 minutes. I'll never forget my Father's face when he entered my room and was confronted by the ruin that littered my battlefield. He said something to me that I no longer remember, but the pain and hurt that lived on his face and in his voice at that moment is forever burned into my mind. He never made another model airplane after that day and died 3 years later. I deeply regret the hurt I caused him that day and I would say to him through the void, "I am sorry for destroying your planes, but am deeply sorry for hurting you. Please forgive me."

It is a law of the Universe that it is far easier to destroy than to create. In this same vein it is far easier to hate than to love. There is little resistance to hate because the process of hate involves closing yourself off and pushing away. Your internal self becomes falsely safer when hating. Love, on the other hand, requires you to open your internal self up to another person, which leaves you open and vulnerable to being hurt, thus love takes far more effort and risk than hate. I would add to this a question, "If faced with the decision of being punched and kicked a number of times or having your heart broken, which would you choose?" My thoughts are that anyone who has had their heart broken before would choose the beating over the broken heart. Why? Because even a severe beating, minus broken bones, will most likely heal within a month while a broken heart, depending on its severity, may never heal. Emotional pain is and has always been far more damaging than physical pain.

Again, I take you back to Hitler, he wasn't born evil, yet by the time of his death he had become one of the most evil men in history. What happened to him that took him from an artist to the orchestrator of genocide? I would theorize that it is most likely that he was beaten down emotionally both personally by his peers and by the state that Germany was in following Word War I. Then when he was introduced to a radical political movement, in which he found his personal power, he used that to inflict his emotional pain on the rest of the world. Now, what would have happened had he found the strength and courage to work through his pain and learned to love? What if he had used his charisma and penchant for public speaking to uplift the German people and urge them toward positive change? Why did he choose one path over the other? I believe that he chose the path of Destruction because it was easy and open to him, it allowed him to blame others for his own pain and exact revenge upon them, whereas the path of Creation was frought with personal pain and struggle and he could not find the inner strength and courage to walk it.

I would walk the path of Love and Creation, for the path of Hate and Destruction is one that is incomprehensible to me. Given that I have choice of remaining stagnant or working towards something better. I find it a very scary prospect to open myself for the world to see and judge. However, I am beginning to not only learn, but understand, that those judgements are nothing but reflections of the people that make them and have nothing to do with me. It is a difficult lesson, but I am progressing and the further I progress the closer I come to the eradication of my fear and, ultimately, to the real me. It is toward that goal that I began this blog. May I find the courage to maintain the path and adhere to my journey.

I am very happy to report that my mom has come through her surgery with flying colors!! She is at this moment recovering in ICU and she is on course with a full and speedy recovery. I am so thankful!

In the last 11 days I have wanted to scream in fury, sing in joy, hide in fear, reach out in love, strike out in anger, self deficate, never wake up, live, die, hope, dream, begin, end, heal, and hurt. The thing that makes these 11 days different than any other 11 days is that I did do all of those things, except never wake up and die.

My 11 days began when a girl totally flaked on me. We had plans and she bailed without a phone call or even a text message. She just dropped off the face of the earth and would not return my calls or emails.

Then an ex-girlfriend popped back into my life with an about face of the hatred she had felt for me over the last 2 years. We met at a fantastic coffee shop known as the Bourgeois Pig, she shared her chamomile tea with me and we talked for hours before moving our conversation three doors down to a scrumptious sushi place, whose name eludes me, where we spent more hours talking. By the time we parted company, we had talked for six and a half wonderful hours and I left feeling very content and happy. I thought I had regained a dear friend, but in the course of the days between then and now, misunderstandings grew into anger and hostility on both our parts and now we have popped back to the place we were in before, or possibly even worse. It sucks and it makes me sad.

Then, yesterday, the girl who flaked, emailed to tell me that she wasn't attracted to me and didn't want anything more than just a friendship, but that she really valued that friendship and that she had flaked because she wasn't certain of what I wanted from her and didn't know how to deal with it. She is the type of person that will run and hide when things get to convoluted, but she is working on that. How could I fault her for this when I have often done the same thing. She is working on being open, direct, honest, and considerate. These are exactly the characteristics that I am seeking to improve in myself. So, I forgave her for flaking, told her I understood, that I didn't want anything that she didn't want, and that I would love to be her friend. I felt really good about that because the bottom line is that I like her and enjoy her company. I wish that things had turned out the same way with my ex-girlfriend.

So, that leads me to the final, and scariest, part of these 11 days. This morning my mom went into the hospital to undergo open heart surgery. She's actually in surgery at this moment and should be finished by around one o'clock. I'm scared. I've been told that her type of heart sugery is fairly routine and not too complicated, but still it's freakin' open heart surgery! My dad died when I was 10 years old, so anything that puts my mom's life at risk really freaks me out. So now I'm in a state of uncertainty and fear that won't be alleviated until I hear that she is in recovery and doing fine. I know she will be fine simply because she has to be.

Break on through to the other side....

A very strange and wonderful thing happened to me today on this most glorious of Easter Sundays. I made the journey home to be with my family for the weekend and ended up going to my old church this morning for Easter service. Now this church was pretty much my life from the age of 15 to 25. It's standard christian dogma was the course by which I set my sail. I followed the teachings of the bible and the church like a proper sheep. I did good things, I spread the word of god and tried to save my friends from eternal suffering in hell, not because I felt this burning desire within me to spread the truth, but because the bible and the church told me that was what I was supposed to do. I always wanted to believe it, but it somehow never felt right to me. The church always had an answer though, they said that salvation is an act of faith and not one of emotion, they said that my base emotions were the devil's tool to lead me away from god and that they must be suppressed, they told me that unless you asked Jesus to forgive your sins and accept him as your personal savior and devote your life to him; you would burn in hell for all eternity. Now, I do not want to paint an entirely bad picture of this church because it was filled with very good people and dear friends who honestly believed in what they were saying and I do not hold anything but love for them. However, the church and its dogma is a completely different story and I hold them dearly and painfully responsible for fucking up my mind by filling it with a lot of fantastical nonsense, because I took everything they had to say quite literally because that's exactly the way they took it. To them, hell is a very real place and satan a very evil devil who is seeking to destroy the world over some age-old spat he had with the way god ran things. Although I do believe that Abraham, Moses, Jesus and all his disciples existed and were real people, I now add to that belief that men are greedy and will distort history for their own purposes and those purposes are rarely altruistic. Does anyone else find it odd that a man who spoke of changing the world never wrote anything himself? Where, pray tell, is the Gospel according to Jesus? Anyway, I digress into bitterness, now back to the story at hand...

I believe I left off with my return to this church that I once held dear. Now, back in the day I was the only one in my family who attended church, and boy was that an issue of guilt, I mean my family was going to burn in hell because they had not "accepted Jesus into their hearts." What a load of crap! The strange thing that occured today was that it was my sister who was now going to church and I was the one tagging along to check it out and witness it from a different perspective. So, I met my sister and her family at the church for the 8am service. I sat in the thrid row on the right hand side and listened as they played all new songs that lacked the joy I remember, listened to prayers that felt empty in their meaning to me, and listened to a sermon delivered by my old pastor as masterfully as I remember, but somehow seemed simple minded. He spoke briefly of the evils of the DaVinci Code and how Satan picked two of his finest to bring the story to the big screen, these two emissaries of evil being, of course, none other than Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. I mean, who else would come to mind when speaking of the emissaries of Satan? He told a story about a man who went down to South America to minister to some of the native tribes living there. This man came across a village that had many sick and the man offered to lead them to a place where they could receive medicine. They would not follow him because he would lead them across the river, which the natives believed contained evil spirits that would do them harm. This belief had existed in this tribe for so long that its origin was no longer known. So, the man did the sensible thing and dove into the river and swam under water until he reached the other side. When the tribe saw that no harm had come to the man, they too dove in and swam across to get the medicine they so desperately needed. Now, when I heard this story, I could not help but think that the river and its evil spirits represented the christian belief in hell and how any not following Jesus would burn in its fires for all eternity and how the man represented some person who would come and, through some action, show these poor misguided people how their fears and beliefs were unfounded and based upon myth and legend.

So, I sat there, listening to my former pastor and wondered how I could have ever allowed this thing to control my life and this is when the wonderful thing happened. I discovered, in the course of his sermon, that the church and its dogma and its beliefs no longer held any power over me. I heard the words and they did not affect me. I felt no guilt. I felt no remorse. I felt nothing but a sense of breathing the air of a free man. Christianity no longer held any power over me. I realized that I was free and it felt good. So, on this day that celebrates Christ rising from the dead, I stepped out of the prison of my own making and felt the rain fall upon my face, breathed the clean air and said goodbye to that prison cell forever. Amen.