Overthinking Things

I had a similar anxiety attack this morning. I had a similar recovery. It was similarly inexplicable. I'm finding it difficult to focus on work I need to do, but it's getting done.

Keith and Melodie have agreed to rent me their extra room in Federal Way for the reminder of August and September. For some reason, this rather large chunk of shelter security (a whole six weeks in one swipe) hasn't quite sunk in for me emotionally. But it's definitely a plus. Thanks, friends.

I wonder if I should stop teasing myself with Burning Man. I know it would be a massive catharsis; an ideal bookend, not only to this particular crisis, but to this entire decade of my life (Why does upheaval seem to come right on the decade marks, anyway?). It would also be the ideal opportunity to say many (though by no means all) of the goodbyes that I never got a chance to. But tossing on more impossible expenses and unknown paths to get there doesn't feel comfortable to me at all right now. Of course, that might not have anything to do with trying to get to the Burn. ANYTHING I do might just feel awful because of how I've been cut off. "I might as well" has been my operating phrase with regards to the sudden desire to go.

I have toyed with the idea of going to Summer Lake the weekend before the burn, just to see who I could. I missed that place my last burn. It's one of my favorites. And maybe, just maybe, some karmic miracle would occur, and an unclaimed ticket would come my way, on the way. My own notion of radical self-reliance equates such behavior with opportunistic hippie flakehood. "Letting the universe help me" always struck me as disrespectful to others. But now that I recognize this attitude as something I've been uncomfortable with, and even afraid of, I wonder if I should just face it down, cast my fate to the wind, in some small, first step, and "cultivate my inner resources" by just asking for judgment, and preparing to accept whatever verdict arrives.

And really, even if I were to be able to buy a ticket at full price, would the opportunity to earn the money be any less of a miracle? Isn't life so precious and fragile that every opportunity to be happy should prompt us to thank our lucky stars?

Wouldn't any ticket, however acquired, be a gift?

At 25, it is important to be yourself.
At 35, it becomes important to become yourself.

I felt as if I had some kind of anxiety or panic attack today. As far as I could tell, I have my ducks in a row; my shit is together; things are being squared away and getting sorted. But when I had the chance to pause and relax, I just started shaking. Tension and anxiety built up. I was nervous.

I'm often able to recognize when the feelings I have are not actually justified by awareness of any kind of actual circumstances. Of course, if anyone has cause for alarm in their general turn of events in their life, it's me. I wonder if what I have believed was a healthy self-awareness that leads to the ability to dissociate rather than blame circumstances could end up turning into a form of denial. One must take special care if one is to recognize the truth inside. Constant second-guessing can be as bad as mistaken certainty.

But I haven't felt like this since the the Canadian welcome mat got pulled out from under me. Even Sunday, when I was crying, and having trouble speaking, was an entirely different experience. That was just shock and grief. This was built up stress. It's only been the last two days that I've had moments where I felt like I was safe enough to relax and take a break; where I didn't feel constantly under pressure to focus on my survival. Perhaps these psychological, bodily moments are what signaled my mind to bring further emotional processing up from pragmatic postponement out of necessity. And here it is, a ton of bricks from a clear blue sky (to mix metaphors).

I breathed through it. Melodie came over and talked to me. That activated my social brain, and that helped. Then I went for a long, hot walk, brought home a backpack full of groceries, and took a short nap. Focused, purposeful exercise was a relief, if difficult.

Now I feel like I //must// go to Burning Man. I have got a LOT of baggage to burn. I don't even know how much, yet.

My mom told me yesterday that some other members of the family were planning an event for October, surrounding my brother's birthday, among other things. She said my Dad had intended to be there. Considering I was planning to go see him for xmas, it would be nice to see him then, too. So because of that, and current budget restraints, I think I will postpone my trip to the Southwest until then. I should be settled somewhere or other by then, I hope.

Things have calmed. I think I actually felt bored yesterday, for a bit.

Today, I'm at Keith and Melodie's. Emotionally adjusting to these new circumstances has taken a few days. I can't say that I'm done, but things seemed to have calmed down and stretched out quite a bit.

I've been spending my attention trying to push out my habitation horizon from days to weeks. Somewhere, I have to switch from finding couches to surf to finding a place to rent. In the meantime, the thought of spending weeks away from home, without much return for my mental efforts, while waiting for people to get back to me about prospects, or waiting for sources of income to bear fruit makes me weary.

I wonder if trying to go to Burning Man will interfere with what otherwise might be a swift transition to a new home. Even if it is, there's also the that I can't commit to anything else until I know whether or not I'll be accepted to the co-op.

Speaking of which, my hearty thanks go out to Bill Ratcliffe and the residents at the Apex housing co-op in Seattle. They were all great strangers to weather a crisis with. Kind, generous, friendly, and always plying me with beer.

Alli has also stepped up very graciously and is taking care of Smoke while all this has been going on. Smoke knows her, and while she's still mostly hiding under the bed, she's slowly coming around, and will be coming out to say hello soon enough. That makes me feel much better. Thanks, Beans.

I've got places to be around Washington state until the 15th. After that, I might head for AZ to meet my niece and then New Mexico to visit , if I can finance it. I'm feeling out volunteer opportunities at Burning Man. If they've got Devil's Work, I've got idle hands. Let me know of any opportunities you're aware of; especially anything involving early entry. I have most of the equipment I need already, it's just that otherwise, I'll just be homeless and surfing couches anyway; I might as well make myself useful.

It's hard to justify peace in a nation that was born from violence.

My brain keeps working on getting me to Burning Man. More than a good time, I see it as another week I'm allowed to be somewhere while not paying rent. I'm sniffing out work-related solutions, because rumors there are ways to get in early if you build the event. Jupiter knows I owe Burning Man a lot. Busting my ass to make it go wouldn't bother me; I have already done this for our regionals. And nobody, but nobody knows how to appreciate volunteers like burners.

My brain thinks it's going back, though I don't know how.

Well, my little border misadventure means that I will not be playing in Tayo's game sessions anymore. I may still make something out of Knowing Jack, as he was looking quite interesting, after a little fretting and work. I will certainly have the artistic license I need now that I don't have any external storylines to follow.

In the meantime, I think it wouldn't hurt to expect that thread to be wrapped up, if abruptly.

I am at Bill's place, a neat and funky housing co-op in downtown Seattle. I have secured a roof over my head in various places for probably the next week, at least. I'm safe. I have money to eat. I have Internet access.

*sigh* where do I begin? And where do I begin... again?

I have to start with thanks. I've been swarmed by love and support and aid from a far-off place: home. My friends have been so wonderful to me in the past few days, that it makes being cut off from them hurt that much more. Thank you to Carolyn, and Bill, and Keith, and Melodie, for putting me up, and to Frankie, Stephanie, and Sarah, and everyone else who's putting the word out for me. Some I know, some I don't and some I've just met. Thank you to Flora, Angel, Thorn, Lara, and Yas for the moral support. Thanks to Ashes and Crystal for helping me with errands, and little details, and for starting to think in the longer term while I've been pre-occupied with where I'm going to to sleep tomorrow. Thanks to my landlord Mike, for understanding and being cool. Thanks to Zobeewa, for bearing with me through the core of this crisis.

I'm crying in spurts. My thoughts are constantly drifting back to things, places, and people I know and love in BC, followed hard upon by the realization that I won't be around them for a long time. It hurts, over and over again. I'm afraid that as time goes on, I will reach a point where these memories will wear thin, becoming wispy ghosts, until I begin to question, however briefly, whether they even ever existed at all. No need to get carried away, however - it is only a year, after all. Things are dramatic enough.

But, as I heard once at a peer support workshop a few weeks ago, it's not just how you feel, but how you feel about how you feel. And I'm good for this. I only felt like I wanted to die for a few of the most intense minutes yesterday. But then, as always, that got boring. They left me breathing. I'm not done, even if I'm not done somewhere far from where I wanted to be. I'll live through this.

I'm good for this. It's sad. It hurts. But the peace, discipline, focus, and contentedness that I have developed will carry me. These are the inner resources spoken of by the burner principle of Radical Self-Reliance.

I haven't had time, until now, to really grieve the loss, or to realize it. I've been so preoccupied with surviving that I'm sure that this is going to hurt me in ways I haven't even realized, yet. I think I will be ready, however. I'm still in shock. But I have some time now, some relief, courtesy of warm strangers.

But what's really carrying me, at the same time it's killing me, is the help of love, and the love of help, that is washing over me from all the friends I've been cut off from so suddenly.

I don't know what I'm going to do yet. The future is shiny and new, uncertain, undecided, and yawning wide open. This is its own blessing.

But I love you. I miss you dearly. And I thank you, for having so much heart.

Let's see, here...

I have a place in Seattle to sleep for a couple of days, courtesy of the gracious hosting talents of a burner friend of a burner friend, Bill. I have more leads after that. I am in Bellingham train station, booked on the next Greyhound downtown. People are talking to me; wheels are turning; plans are being plotted.

Life is going on.

If any of you know of anyone in Washington state (or even Portland) that can handle a burner couch surfing for a few days while he sorts out his life, or of an immediately available sublet, please hook me up. As long as I have Internet, I have some income, so I'm not totally destitute, but emergency outlays (moving, storage, etc.) might preclude a respectable rent during the month of August.

My mobile number is 250 884 7859 please call or text any time, even if it's 2am, and you don't know me.

While trying to cross the border into Canada this evening, Canadian Customs and Immigration has determined that I've been living illegally in Canada, and have issued a one year exclusion order against me. I will not be able to enter Canada at all for a period of one year.

As you can imagine, this is devastating.

Devastating, like a flood, that cleanses the heart clear of sorrow, the mind clear of distraction, and the soul clear of attachments.

Because, as my friend Thorn likes to say: a man with nothing to lose... has nothing to lose.

I need help from my friends like at no other time in my life. I need a place to stay here in Washington, I need Internet, and I'm sure I need money. But most of all, I need to say goodbye.

Holy hell, am I going to miss you.

I'm leaving for Critical Massive tomorrow. I've spent the weekend maintaining ties with many good friends. I even met a new one for the first time.

Boy, I really feel like I know what the hell I'm doing. I'm happy. There have been a handful of moments that have quietly spread throughout my heart and broke across my skin like waves, affirming a profound satisfaction and gratitude.

But it's a dynamic satisfaction, not with a state, but with a flow. I am not so much a living thing, as an entire life. I am moving. I am changing. Lather, rinse, repeat until dead. We must imagine Sisyphus happy. I am swept along in an inner tube, at times submitting to the current, at times steering my path. At times I am wise, and at times, merely lucky. I am a tower of victory.

Everything is redeemed.

Thank you, friends. I want for so precious little.

Ways to become a leader, #14:

Get out in front of a stampede, and RUN LIKE HELL.

[for Anne]

If you died today
would you have any regret?
Because you did, you know.
Yeah, you bet.

We all die a little bit
every little day.
And which of those will be our last
we have so little say.

So mind, today, how you do your dying,
the dying we all do in a day.
Because mindful dying is just mindful living.
So live a little
every day.

I suddenly realized why I'm not into cryonic suspension: I'm risk-averse.

Sometimes being risk-averse means relinquishing mere chances of things you want. There are few things more certain in the human condition than death within 120 years of birth. That's a guarantee that, from a certain perspective, you can actually take comfort in.

Life has been satisfying.

A paycheck has relieved worrying, for a few weeks. The puzzle of the translation of the map of anxiety to the territory of poverty remains.

I have become attached to my place. It's a cave in here, and blissfully cool in the recent heatwave. Attachment, however, isn't always good. I have been mildly embarrassed to voice that I intend to fight tooth and nail to keep it. It's so much of what I want. I have complete control of the space; the lighting, the sound, the shape, the smell. I love it.

I have thought about how my time here will end, however. I could be evicted; and be forced to pile everything into a storage locker, or a clunker van, or to nowhere at all, in desperate circumstances. I could be deported in some miscarriage of justice. I could fall in love, and commit to sharing a home again with someone for a time. Life is long.

The prospect of being in love again persists in my mind. Half asleep one afternoon, I found a startlingly strong impulse to just look into another set of eyes. And this, buried in months - no, years - of not being unable to even understand the value of companionship. But I guess human love isn't reasonable. It's not a justified, or contingent motivation; it's a terminal one. It's not something we've learned to do; it's something we're made to do. Something our species (I hesitate, now, to say "we") has adapted to do.

So I still can't find it anything but wise to leave the door open to myself to do the very thing we're all made to do. But it seems also true that I have chosen a path away; that I am doing almost everything one could imagine, incidentally, to insure my solitude. I live in a few contradictions. I ask myself: if I deliberately didn't want to fall in love - could I really resist? How much leeway do I need to give myself? Should I let the distant possibility of a deeper relationship deter more radical plans I might have for my lifestyle? Should I really abandon civilization for that shack in the bush, or on other continents? Can I seriously expect to be hit through the heart like a bolt from the blue - or do I really need to do something - at least, more than the trifle I am - to make myself more visible "on the market"?

First, I learned to be me.
Then, I learned to be someone else.
Then, I learned to be happy.
Next, I will learn to be anything.

[session 4, 2010-07-08]

We are shopping out our ill-gotten credits. I buy a frame pack and survival gear.

Tweak suddenly tells us he received a call, and has to bug out. He fails to explain, and shoves off with his truck.

With our purchases complete, we have to get to the airport; Drex has chartered us a plane to our target in Scandanavia. Tzak and Razia have motorbikes, but they're saddled with gear.

On a hunch, and bolstered by my pick-pocketing success earlier today, I head out by myself to try something new. Earlier today, I was pilfering wallets with my hands, enhanced with a bit of diviner's precognition. But, of course, I'm also a telekinetic.

Waiting at a nearby bus stop, I pick out a few marks, and try to pick their pockets //from down the block//. By the time the second one noticed, his wallet had been inexplicably tossed into a nearby hedge. While he was fumbling around through it, I was able to lift it, unseen, over the roof of the nearby shop. A simple trip around the block, and it floated discreetly into my hands. A little Shoal inspiration, and Harvey Dixon was a handsome purple-headed tattoed freak.

Pie.

Cab drivers in this town demand payment up front. This is a good thing for a thief, because it was only a matter of minutes before Harvey reported it missing. We were off to the airport with the furries in tow.

-

Drex did not inspire confidence when we found him in the cockpit skimming a flight training manual. But the flight was quiet. Everyone needed the sleep, myself included. I started chatting up Razia, but these translator things... don't. Especially when you're trying to talk sorcery shop with a catgirl from an entirely different dominion and school of training.

[insert dream #1]

We arrived in the vicinity only to discover there is, in fact, no trace of civilization on the long western fjordlands of what was once Norway. It didn't get much in the way of nuclear love in the War, but no one really tried to keep living there, either. It isn't exactly barren blasted waste, like home was outside the city shield. There are thick growths of green things everywhere. All the roads were broken up and overgrown. Plants of every size and description ran ramshackle over everything. It was like an enormous public park, but without groundskeepers, trails, sprinklers, or cops to kick out squatters. It was unnatural.

And deserted.

Luckily we had a float plane, so we landed at the closest safe place - an inlet nearest our prospective Quiddity gate. It was still a bit of a hike inland, though.

No birds, no bees, no varmints. Just thickets, grasses, and trees. We made our way via an overgrown paved road toward a river that lead to our target, in a nearby valley.

We stop for a break. Tzak and Drex go scouting and find some caves. Tzak, the necromancer wants to find some local bones to talk to. A man's got to have friends, I guess. Razia and I make a campfire and coffee.

By the time the boys come back, they're running. Something's following them, and growling in tones one normally only encounters in nightclub subwoofers.

Having heard it, I attempt to do a seeking and read it. It's big. Like MAC truck big. We can hear trees being felled from here. It's also ugly, but none too smart. At first, this is really exciting to me. Large animals have lots of wounds to steal, and they typically don't have the kind of magical resistance needed to ward off my particular brand of essence-draining. After popping that car dealer like a ripe pimple yesterday, large wild animals ought to be easy pickings... and juicy. But this... thing was different. Its resistance to mystical intrusion was massive. It was here for a reason.

We decided to make a run for it. We had a good headstart. Razia attempted to cover our tracks, and scents, but after an hour down the valley, it became apparent that we were not shaking it. Tzak decided to risk his Zombeast - the bone-built beast of burden from our first trip - in an attempt to decoy and distract it. On the fly, we each changed out of our smelliest clothes (we'd been sweating while hiking at a good clip for hours), and threw our old clothes on it for good measure.

Meanwhile, I went divining for a place to hide. There were more caves up one mountainside, one of which was too small for our tail to fit in. At least it was a place to hide and think.

The cave entrance was impressive, and the width of it tapered steadily as it plunged into the mountain, sloping down at the whim of a rivulet of water spattered downwards from the entrance. we moved our gear in just in time. The beast had shaken the Zombeast. Tzak could still control it, but this giant creature hadn't been fooled. We were too deep inthe cave to see it, but we heard it scratching at the entrance, trying to get at us.

Tzak brought Zombeast back up behind it, and commanded it to make an attack. That got it's attention. "Run!" he said, and this time, it took the bait. Luckily, Zombeast was faster than it was.

The Art gives a practitioner a special kinship with matter - especially with earth and rock. We weren't going to beat this thing with our own brute force, but perhaps the mountains themselves could be brought to bear, if we could lure our target into its crosshairs. I just didn't want to have to do this while we, too, were in the cave.

A seeking brought to my attention another cave about 150 yards upslope. This one was a little bit bigger, meaning the beast would fit into it - mostly. I prompted Tzak to lead it into that cave. Furious, and determined to get at its quarry, the creature indeed lodged itself into the upper cave. That was my chance. I had to get closer to the rock to crack it, so as soon as the beast crawled in, I leapt out of our hiding place and sprinted for it, chaining divinations as I went in preparation for a rock breaking.

The mountain shook. boulders cracked and crushed in just the right spots, and in moments, the cave had collapsed firmly down upon the thing. Its rear limbs were still flailing out behind it, but it could not even breathe.

Handy, that.

I was about to dig into its remaining life essence when Tzak suggested we keep it alive. "A creature that big around a QUiddity gate might be its immortal guardian. If we kill it, it'll destroy the gate."

"So? You saw the power we got from the last one. Would it be so bad if it happened again?"

"Well, I'd hate to close it before we got a chance to capture and interrogate the guy who supposedly wants to destroy these himself."

I relented. Besides, I'd also love to use the gates to get into Quiddity, myself. I wanted to know where I came from.

So we cleared enough of the rocks to allow it to breath. It was still pinned, but at least it wouldn't suffocate.

The gate was at the bottom of the lake at the center of the valley. Just a stone slab really. the place hadn't seen sentients in centuries. We were it. Just us, a lonely beast, and an enormous magical beacon plopped in the muck at the bottom of a placid, moonlit lake.

We were all drained. There was nothing to do now except wait for our so-called sorceror villain to show up and try to kill the Guardian I damn near just crushed singlehandedly.

Tzak took the first watch over the beast, as I slipped into a dream.

[insert dream #2]

Hunch was waiting for me, with a new, vivid lesson.

A long one...

2010-07-08

"So what you're saying is I better watch it, or else I'll incur the wrath of a bunch of furries, who are into all kinds of weird animal sex?"

"Oh, no - they're into perfectly normal animal sex."