Author: Bob

Posted on

Stupid cows

This “blogging everyday” experiment promises to be interesting–to me anyway. I don’t know what the other two or three readers will think. The thing is, once my work schedule kicks in, there’s not much to report between blog entries other than “I went to work.” Okay, so this is bullshit, I know. Who ever said blogging is about “reporting” anyway? There are always an infinite number of waves swelling, rising and crashing against the wall of my skull. I can jump on my board and ride until the cows come home, and believe me, those fuckers are never coming home. Stupid cows.

So, I came in from work last night and my wife asked, “How was work?” and I said, “Uneventful.” It’s all relative, of course. One of my patients found out yesterday that his father was critically injured in a car accident. The boy had just recently been told this man was, in fact, his biological father, and now he faces losing his Dad to death. So the evening was “uneventful” only from the narrow perspective of me. Of course I felt for the kid and spent time talking with him, doing my best to help him deal with the situation. But I suppose I’ve gotten so used to the horror stories that I only register something as an “event” if it’s outside the usual routine. For those of us who work in psychiatric hospitals, it can be surprising what one considers “routine.” Which reminds me of another horror story…

What’s that? Do I hear mooing?

Posted on

Tears from Heaven

Man, did it ever rain last night. We were under a “tornado watch” until 3am, which terrified my wife. I didn’t worry about it too much. I figured, “If it’s our time, it’s our time.” Of course, we all interpret life through the filter of our beliefs and fears. I’m sure there are people who saw the tornadoes on the news and said to themselves, “It’s End Times.” There’s a maintenance worker at the hospital who talks about End Times all the time. When she points that pistol my way I just nod my head, say “Uh huh,” then get to where I’m going. But I’m thinking to myself, “You crazy bitch!”

The other day one of my patients approached me excitedly with a Bible in her hand. At an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting the night before, a man quoted some scripture to her, so she borrowed the unit’s copy of the Good Book to check it out. She was positively beaming from ear to ear as she pointed out to me the library stamp inside the front cover. It was from her very own home town, hundreds of miles away. She felt like God had placed that book in her hands for a reason. Now, I can relate to this feeling. When I picked up a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn in the laundry room of an apartment complex back in 1996, it seemed like I was meant to read that particular book at that particular time. Indeed, that event altered the course of my life. But back to the Bible. The girl came back to me a few hours later to ask me some questions. She said: “There are a few things I’m confused about, Bob. How could God have created the world in just seven days? And some of the people lived to be so old, like 700 years old. How could that be? And what about dinosaurs? Doesn’t science tell us about dinosaurs? How can God have made all the animals at the same time if dinosaurs were around long before?”

“Oh shit!” I thought to myself. I’ve never been comfortable revealing too much about my philosophy or spirituality to the kids. It’s unethical to push one’s religious beliefs on others in a therapeutic setting, although it’s quite impossible, believe me, to teach kids about addiction and recovery without one’s values creeping in along the way. Anyway, I started to tell the girl that indeed, she was asking some very good questions, and that while I did not really know the answers, I encouraged her to dialogue with people. Before I could finish my response, however, a coworker of mine, who had apparently been eavesdropping on the conversation, piped in with a string of direct answers to the girl’s questions, including some book recommendations. He said, “There’s a theory — and it has some scientific backing — that there was a water canopy surrounding the earth during Biblical times, and it filtered out a lot of the harmful UV rays that cause aging. That’s why people lived so long back then. And that’s where all the water came from during the Great Flood. And don’t forget, Noah’s Ark was really, really big, so I’m sure there was room for dinosaurs…”

My jaw ’bout hit the floor. I just snuck out of the room, wondering to myself how we’re ever going to deal with the problems we face on this planet when even among friends and coworkers we have such utterly divergent views of life and the world. Then I go home and see the trailer to the new documentary Jesus Camp. God help us all, indeed!
3water-canopy-e.jpg
3canopy-shield-x.jpg
These illustrations show just how a water canopy covering the Earth would not only create a globally warm climate but also would shield our planet from harmful radiation. Thus, allowing mankind to reach ages up to 900 plus years and also allowing reptiles to grow to the size of our dinosaur fossils. A global flood that occured roughly 1,500 years after Adam was created would create the coal layers (compressed global vegetation) and the fossilization of the huge behemoths known to us today as the dinosaurs. Remember, in Genesis 1:6-8, God divided the waters from the waters and placed this upper water canopy ABOVE the firmament called “Heaven.”

Posted on

Old Strings

13kbbob92206.jpg

It’s been raining cats and dogs all day and I haven’t accomplished much other than taking Mary Alice to school and playing a few tunes on the guitar. I miss the days when I used to play all the time, recording every little thing that came to my mind. Every impulse felt important, like I was duty-bound to preserve every riff, every harmony idea, so that one day — when I had a year-and-a-half of uninterrupted free time — I could carry it all to fruition. I have carried a few ideas forward, most of which are featured on this site. But seriously, I would actually need at least a year-and-a-half to honor every song idea in those stacks of cassette tapes.

The truth of the matter, however, is that I like most of the recordings as they stand, just the way they are in their nascent form. Sometimes it feels like sacrilege to tamper with something that came to me so freely, like it can when someone snaps a picture of a pure and private moment. Some songs are too special to record, some experiences too precious to be captured.

I’m not sure why I like this one so much, but not too long ago I recorded the following extemporaneous bit as I was testing my microphone’s sound level: Old Strings.mp3. I played it again today to warm up my voice. It made me feel at home in my bones.

Posted on

Carpe ___?

It never ceases to amaze me how good it feels to step out of the three-ring circus of Me, Myself and I for awhile and make someone else’s well-being Priority Number One. I busted my ass at work this week, covering for a coworker on vacation, and while it’s true that I’m very much focused on my patients and their needs during the work-week, once I get a day off it’s “all about me.” This might explain why I’ve not yet had the slightest impulse to be a father. Anyway, today was supposed to Me Day but it turned out to be M.A. Day. M.A. being Mary Alice, my wife. Okay, so I wasn’t a freakin’ saint or anything, but I could see she was stressed out about grad school stuff, so I did a few thoughtful things for her, like dropped her off and picked her up from the university, cleaned up her mess in the kitchen, cooked her dinner. I feel better than expected today, which makes me wonder… Perhaps my whole weekly routine — with the grueling work days of being totally absorbed in the needs of others and the off days of total self-absorbtion — needs some tweaking.

Lately, it seems the basic unit of my life has been “the week.” That’s just how I look at things. Five days on, two days off, then round and round we go. Many of the activities I consider important to me — like exercising, playing guitar, blogging, dates with my wife — I do so many times per week. I remember once thinking, “Wouldn’t it be better to make the day the basic unit of living?”, but I dimissed that as too pie-in-the-sky, too unrealistic. I mean what if on a given day I happen to be at work for eightteen hours or I have a dentist appointment or I’m sick and puking? No one can expect to taste happiness and fulfillment every day. Right?

Well shit, maybe I’ve had it all wrong. I can at least aspire to seize the day. Of course, I know all this, and that it would better yet to be fully present all the time, down to the nanosecond. One step at a time, Bobby. One step at a time.

So I just spent a half-hour trying to find the Latin word for “week,” thinking I’d use it for the title of this blog entry. You know, “Carpe [insert Latin word for week].” Pretty lame, I know, but here’s the thing: There is no Latin word for “week.” Holy shit! The road ahead couldn’t be more clear. I must blog every day.

[Thanks to Georg for planting the seed]

Posted on

The Dana Carvey Show / Giving it away

The Dana Carvey Show was cancelled seven episodes into its first season in 1996. I guess depicting the President of the United States breast-feeding babies and pigs in the opening sketch of the first episode isn’t exactly “playing it safe” for a primetime, major network show. But damn, it was freakin’ hilarious! I watched everything I could find of the show on YouTube, which has become one of my favorite sites. I don’t have cable TV, so there are things I’d never get to see if not for the blatant copyright infringement rampant on the internet. God bless America!

Really though, I don’t understand why people bitch so much about this kind of piracy. It’s free publicity, as far as I’m concerned. My exposure to Dana Carvey via these YouTube broadcasts just makes me hunger for more. If he came to Lexington on a stand-up comedy tour, I’d be first in line. And now I’d love to have the episodes of the show on DVD. It’s on my Christmas list, by golly.

Same goes for music. I’m a firm believer in the “give it away for free” marketing strategy. The folks that aren’t internet savvy will continue to buy CD’s, which is fine. But if some kid gets my songs off the net for nothing, I say “Hot shit!” Whatever it takes to get into their iPods. If they like it, they’ll want more. If I were still in a band, I’d put up a killer website and let folks download select songs for free. Then I’d offer tiers of paid subscription, each offering graded levels of access to bonus stuff, like podcasts or practice-session videos. Hec, the die-hard fans might even go in for Platinum Membership, featuring video conference calls and dibs on my old clothes.

Posted on

Farewell Fishers

I just finished the final season of Six Feet Under, and it broke my heart. I know it’s “just a TV show,” but I guess I was pretty attached to it, and I especially identified with Nate. The whole experience was strange for me, as for some reason I believed there was six seasons of the show instead of five. The whole time I was watching the final season, I assumed I was watching the second-to-last season, so when I went to the library yesterday to rent the Season Five finale, I assumed that my wife and I had another twelve episodes to enjoy down the road. I looked at the back of the DVD case when I got home, and was bewildered to see a “series retrospective” listed as a bonus feature. Well, a few seconds on-line confirmed my suspicion, that indeed we were about to watch the final episode, the end, no more show, my favorite show, done, gone. I was hesitant. I told my wife that I wasn’t sure I was ready to watch it. I felt so blind-sided by the whole thing, just as many are by death itself, I suppose.

Needless to say, I wept like a grieving widow throughout the last episode, as I did through much of the series. I started watching the show just after my younger brother passed away, in early 2005. As the cast and crew were filming the final season, I was renting the first season DVD’s at the library a few times per month. The show cracked me wide open during the very first episode, and it became the primary means by which I processed both my feelings of grief and my fears around death in general.

The show really meant a lot to me. My heavy heart can attest to that. Like Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring, Six Feet Under came into my life at exactly the right time, and it stands as one of the truly important works of art I have been fortunate enough to encounter. Someday, I will watch the entire series again, just as I return to Miller every so often for sustenance and reassurance. But it will never be the same. It never is. And that, right now, makes me sad. Goodbye Nate, David, Ruth, and Claire. And thanks to Alan Ball, the cast, crew and everyone involved in bringing the show to life. It was more than a show about death. It left me more alive and openhearted.

Posted on

Dust

JeffD.jpg

My former band, My Dear Ella, just played its last show with original drummer and soul brother Jeff D. I remember my last show with the band a few years ago, all the emotion pent up, the terrible sense of sorrow and nostalgia, the swell of love for my friends, the ache of feeling like I was letting go of our dreams. Eric–the originator and creative force behind MDE–is now the only original member left rocking the Chapel Hill, NC music scene. Eric and Jeff were both at my wedding in May, and the bond between us is still strong. And although I continue to create music inspired by our shared vision and experiences together, I can’t help but feel that sorrow and heart-breaking nostalgia once again, as the final echoes of Jeff’s booming drum beats fade into the ether.

Tonight I drank some beers and played an old tune, one that I had once hoped would make the official My Dear Ella set list someday. I didn’t stick around long enough to play my songs onstage with the boys, but I remember Jeff saying he liked this one when he heard the demo. Tonight it was just me on the acoustic guitar, a little out of sorts and a little out of tune, but I felt you with me brother.

Dust.mp3
I tried to sleep
and my soul to keep
but I let it slip away
Now I want
and I need
and I beg you please
don’t leave me on my knees
I’ll try again
if you just say when
This time I’ll get it right
You’re right
You win
so lock me in
and throw away the key
You better suck it down
You better take it in
You better play the game
You’re never gonna win
You better give it up
Get down upon your knees
and take it like a man
Take everything you see
and turn it upside down
tear it inside out
light it up in flames
and burn it to the ground
Turn it into dust
and blow it all away
You better write this down
Do everything I say

bobjeff11kb.jpg

Posted on

Brain Rape

My wife has returned from Mexico (at long last!) and I have been looking for any excuse to hang out with her. I even chauffeured her around town all day yesterday as she ran errands. While waiting for her in the Anthropology Department lounge, I picked up an old issue of Mother Jones magazine and read a fascinating article about the placebo effect and the science of depression.

Is is Prozac? Or Placebo?, by Gary Greenberg

Now, I’ll say up front that I am strongly biased against the completely false, flat out wrong notion that so-called “mental illnesses” are the result of chemical imbalances in the brain. So, of course, an article exposing the lunacy that reigns throughout the world of psychiatry and Big Pharma would appeal to my sensibilities. I have ranted about this before [Anxiety and Elephants], and I won’t tire my fingers further except to explore how this controversy relates to the broader issue of how our beliefs and our actions based on these beliefs are continually formed, propped up and maintained by simple ignorance. If ideas were merely private delusions or harmless little daydreams, I might not be so worried, but because they are used to justify such things as murder and brain-rape, it would be nice if we all came to deeper understanding of just how we “came to believe” the things we believe.

We start with an obvious truth, i.e. that any change in behavior and experience correlates to some change in physiology. If it were possible to completely and accurately record my neurotransmitter activity, heart rate, hormone levels, muscular tension, etc., one could have easily observed some dramatic changes in me when my wife arrived from Mexico. However, only a moron would suggest that my sense of joy was caused by a shift in chemical balance, when obviously that shift had a lot to do my wife’s return, and how much I missed her, and a million other things. No happy pill could have mimicked the effect of my wife’s presence, although I’m sure some drug company is hard at work on one. Add to this the fact that some problems in behavior and experience are primarily the result of structural damage, and you can easily befuddle the mind of someone who doesn’t know any better, if it suits your agenda to do so. A brain tumor is diagnosed by seeing it on a scan, then it’s removed if possible, then a person’s behavior is observed sans tumor. To my knowledge, no one has EVER been diagnosed with depression based on a brain scan or a sample of brain tissue or a measure of neurotransmitter levels. And yet it is standard practice to intervene chemically.

Which is fine, as long as the person understands the implications of this decision. Fear happens in response to a situation, as does anger and sadness and lust and boredom and anxiety and pain. The clear perception of these feelings will lead to the appropriate, healthful response, just like the burn of a hot stove will lead to the quick removal of one’s hand from it. But since our social conditioning and/or economic status can render us unwilling or unable to respond appropriately to complex emotional situations, we might choose to take a pill because changing our relationship to the situation might not be feasible (although sometimes it is feasible, just difficult). So, prozac is fine, and can help people feel better, just like alcohol or marijuana can, but let’s not tell lies about what’s really going on, and about the risks involved. Sure, my chemistry might be unbalanced and my stress hormones elevated as a result of working long hours at a crappy job, so I can choose to get loaded after work sometimes, or if I can afford healthcare, maybe I can get a prescription for some Xanax. But wouldn’t it be better and more appropriate to find a more meaningful job, or to find a better way to cope with my difficult situation?

Drug companies and doctors are taking advantage of the fact that people want to believe they have chemical imbalances that can be taken care of with pills. This false belief robs people of potential personal growth. Just as religious fundamentalism robs people of potential spiritual realization. Of course, I acknowledge that many people credit psychiatric medications for saving their lives and for giving them the opportunity to grow personally. Again, meds can and do help people. But this does not justify the marketing and propaganda that clouds people’s understanding as to what is really involved in personal problems. The fact that a person is helped by a chemical does not mean that a chemical intervention was necessary or that the problem was primarily a chemical one. You can also buy a new computer every time the battery runs out, and new dishes after every meal. You might get a functioning computer and clean dishes that way, but you’ve completely bypassed the problem and paid too high a price.

If I went to the ER with a spider locked on to my hand, biting me repeatedly, and the doctor told me that my pain was caused by firing pain receptors in my brain, and then wrote me a script for some pain killers, I would think him insane and ask him to help me get the fucking spider off of my hand.

So, you can start with a common sense truth about physiology, color it with the depressed person’s willingness to believe anything that might bring relief, mix it with the drug companies’ desire to make as much money as possible, and you get a really fucked-up formula for disaster. In terms of religious fundamentalism, you start with a person’s anxiety in the face of suffering and uncertainty, couple that with other people’s desire for power and control, and throw in a heap of ignorance and shake well.

It’s amazing that any of us can communicate with each other and come to any degree of mutual understanding, given the way our thinking is subject to the forces of collective ignorance, neuroses and a lack of awareness run amok. It’s times like these I can deeply relate to Ken Wilber’s passionate conviction that a new way of looking at things is necessary if we are to make any progress in addressing the endless difficulties in our world today. Some days I’m content to gently express my convictions through my daily living, leaving others to be as they choose to be. But today I say “Fuck that shit!” People are being brain-raped in the name of science, and killed in the name of God. And I know it’s wrong.

Posted on

Meditation on meditation

This morning I sat on my little bench and “meditated” for the first time in many weeks. No big deal, just attended to my breathing and the other thoughts and sensations passing through. Presently, I’m enjoying a cup of coffee and playing on the computer, and a few minutes ago I took a peek at Matthew Dallman’s latest blog entry On Wilber’s advocacy of meditation. Dallman links to an essay by Jim Andrews, who questions the validity of Wilber’s general assertion that meditation is the Royal Road to Enlightenment.

I wasn’t as impressed by the essay as Dallman seems to be, but it still raises a few interesting questions in my mind, questions I have grappled with many times before. The first is: What exactly is meditation anyway? If it is, in fact, the Royal Road, then we can expect to benefit greatly from a thorough understanding of the process by which such an “activity” facilitates personal transformation. And if I’m to be quite honest here, I’d have to say that understanding the basic principles of transformation–in experiential terms–is the only part of the “integral” agenda that I find truly compelling these days. In this regard, I am not satisfied with Wilber’s theory, and so I will have to get off my duff and inquire for myself.

Now, this is an important issue, not just because it’s my thing, but because it speaks to the heart of Wilber’s core message which, in the early days at least, was essentially: “MEDITATE!” Quite recently, in fact, Wilber concluded: “the single greatest thing that the world can do to stop starvation is to meditate…Nothing else has been demonstrated to move people stages.” How has this been demonstrated? By Alexander’s TM study? Is that it? There’s obviously more to Wilber’s claim, and I think it’s the fact that he attributes HIS OWN transformation to his years of meditation. I’m fine with that logic, as long as one is honest about it.

In order to be considered properly scientific, I would assume researchers have to define meditation in terms of a particular form that all research subjects must follow. In the Alexander study, it was TM. But who’s to say what’s really going on within an individual’s consciousness while they practice a particular form of meditation? For one person, the first five years of zazen practice might be a striving to achieve some sort of special, spiritual experience, preparing one for some big moment of realization down the line that there’s no “I” to achieve anything. For another, sitting in meditation is simply an expression of an already-apprehended realization of peace and contentment. I know from my own experience that there is a particular attitude or mode of awareness that accompanies and is strengthened by a number of practices I consider “spiritual” and “transformative.” For me, there something going on during the creative process (while playing and writing music) which feels the same as what’s going on while I do sensory awareness stuff on my floor, which feels the same as what’s going on while I make love, which feels the same as what’s going on when I sit zazen… In other words, there are principles of transformation that go way beyond any particular form of practice, so that propping up one’s own favorite forms (like sitting meditation and weight-lifting) with references to “studies” feels too biased, like it’s partially an unconscious attempt to justify one’s own choices. I’m not saying we should ignore research, I’m just suggesting that what we consider significant or insignificant can often be more a matter of personal bias than anything else. We all do this to a certain extent, I think. We unconsciously employ selective attention to highlight those “studies” and arguments and ideas that justify and maintain our current “status quo.”

Okay, out of intellectual laziness I just cut and pasted the above paragraph from a blog I wrote a few months ago, but my issues are still the same I guess. Even if you give people the same instructions, there’s no way to tell what a person is really doing or experiencing while they sit on a cushion and breathe. Some people are able to turn everyday activities into spiritual practice. Others go through the motions with a technique or practice for years without ever really “getting” it. So, I believe it’s mindfulness in the broad sense that inspires or fuels the transformative process, and that this mindfulness has to do with a quality of attention one can bring to any activity. So, the current research, which does not account for this, has demonstrated DIDDLY SQUAT! And yet, I believe my hypothesis to be true anyway, simply because it fits with my experience and my intuition of other’s descriptions. Upper Right quadrant research is great, but it doesn’t tell us much if we don’t even understand what it is we’re looking at. I think we have to get a much clearer phenomenological account of the meditative process, and distinguish it (if it can be) from other “transformative” processes (mindfulness, creative expression, flow) before we can set up a UR research study that can even begin to support Wilber’s bold claims.

Posted on

The Many Faces of Narcissism

Maybe it’s because my wife has been in Mexico for the past several weeks, and there’s nobody else around but me. Or it could be I’m having a little too much fun with the camera and recording software on my new computer. Whatever the reason, I seem to be getting way too into myself these days. I’ve listened to my new song (The City) at least a hundred times since posting it on this blog last week. Come to think of it, my family always jokes about how I spent half of my childhood in front of the mirror. By my recollection, the first half was spent making silly faces, the second picking at zits.

In any event, I got to thinking about all this today after reading a couple of blog entries. The first was the latest entry on Ken Wilber’s website, passing along the news that Jennifer Aniston loves Ken’s book Grace and Grit, that she and Brad Pitt used to read it to each other when they were together, and that Jen wants to play the role of Ken’s deceased wife Treya if the book gets made into a movie.

The other was a piece written by integral blogger “Colmar,” who ripped Wilber a new one over Ken’s recounting of his big night hobnobbing around with Hollywood elites at the premier of “V for Vendetta” a few weeks ago.

Now, this wasn’t Colmar’s point, but I couldn’t help wonder why there’s so much name-dropping going on these days at Integral Institute. On the one hand, it could all be a marketing ploy to sell more subscriptions to their websites. But I smell a little too much self-love, and an ego inflating ever nearer to the breaking point.

But what do I know. If everyone constantly told me that I was the bomb, I’d probably blow up too. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about that right now. It’s just me and me for another three weeks.

32kbobnarcissus072006.jpg