A morning walk in the 'burbs.

Yes, I finally got an iPhone and I'm taking "vintage" pictures just like everyone else.  Everyone does it because it's cool.  So now I'm cool too.
Anyway, let's get on with it.

I took my dog, Napoleon, for a walk this morning and it was cold and the sun was bright and yellow and the air stung as it passed into my lungs and I really enjoyed all of it.  What I enjoy most about taking walks is the solitude and the time to daydream.

This last year I read a book with the goal of developing some coping mechanisms for dealing with life's hard-to-deal-with moments.  The book is called "Quiet Your Mind", written by John Selby and I highly recommend  it for anyone whom, like myself, somehow managed to make it to adulthood without any coping skills.

The book lays down a series of exercises which anyone can do to stop the constant murmur of thoughts and worries from polluting their happiness.  This was a problem I was having, and am still working on.  Now, there's some advice in the book that I was reluctant to accept.  See, when I go for a walk, or when anyone who fancies themselves a writer or a creative person of any sort goes for a walk, bike ride, kayak or whatever, we tend to take advantage of the peace and do some thinking, brainstorming, internal monologuing or what-have-you.  Selby, over there, tells you to turn off any chatty part of your brain while doing any of these activities and just experience the moments as they drift through you and let your physical senses relish in the now without the cumbersome intrusion of conscious thought.  I was against the idea right away because I have some of my best ideas on walks, who doesn't?  Then, this morning I finally understood what Selby was trying to get through to me.

The relinquishment of all thought is not the goal here.  Rather, it is the controlled decision of what thoughts to have and the discernment between beneficial and detrimental thought.  I always find myself, during my walks, pinballing back and forth between Selby's method of physical, open experience and my own brand of neurotic, baseless worry.  This morning was no different but it was a stunningly beautiful morning and so I relinquished all thought as often as I could and had my eyes raised to the point directly ahead of me and focused only on what sound entered my ears and what sights entered my field of vision.  Brain off.

The sun was low over the rooftops ahead, and on the right drew close a roofer's truck blaring "Barbara Ann" from an open door.  Ice crystals flitted across the lone ray of sun rising from the center of my field of view and   "Barbara Ann" decreased in pitch and then rose again as I passed the truck and then faded away behind me.

It was a simple moment but one that filled me with a great positive wonder.  It felt so filmic, so literary, the sort of moment you bask in if it's on screen or in a book but it wasn't, it is life right now.  I knew right away that if I had been enraptured in one of my regular day-dreamy thought cycles I would have missed the moment entirely.  So that's what it took to get me to understand the benefit of Selby's technique and how keeping a clear mind and remaining physically open to your surroundings can lead to more inspiration and more to life than walking around in a critical mode or lost in supposedly creative thinking.

So now that I'm part of the smartphone crowd, I at least have this moment to remind me of what there is to miss if I (heaven forbid) find myself walking, nose down, eyes planted in that glossy little screen, thinking how great life is because I have a neat phone.

Wodans-day

"Pappy, what day is it today?"
"Today is Wednesday."
"Pappy, what does Wensdey mean?"

I love these questions.  I hear most parents speak of dreading the really interesting questions, the really inquisitive ones, the "why is the sky blue", or "where do babies come from" questions that few adults give the proper amount of headspace anymore.  These questions are pure, mysterious and complex and most of the time we avoid thinking about them because they're just to damn difficult (read: fun) to answer.  Sure we "know" where babies come from, but do we?  It's like asking "How does life exist?", we know the physiology of it but that's not what your kid wants to know, you see.  Children have an innate ability to look for the absolute truth in all things. They want to get to the bottom of everything, they want the hard answers even if they don't possess the foundational knowledge to understand them.  The hard answers provoke curiosity and feed the desire to find out more.

Today my 3-year-old son asked me the above question about Wednesday and I couldn't have been more happy.  I explained to him first, about Norwegian mythology, that their god's name is Odin, Wotan, or Wodan and how the Norwegians gave him a day; Wodan's-day, which we now call Wednesday.  This is overly simplified of course, but enough to blow his little mind.  Now, the point is not that he remembers all the details I told him, or even any of them.  The point is that he retains a sense that there are deep answers to any question he may ask, not just simply "because that's the way it is" which is a stab-in-the neck to any burgeoning creative thinker.

It's funny amazing how a toddler can wrench an adult out of his or her daily thinking patterns and place them on a much more open and creative track.  After explaining the Wednesday thing I got to thinking about the whole ritual of our weekly days and the role that ritual still plays in our lives as humans of the future.

Isn't it true that we, now, are more immersed in daily ritual than ever before?  Sure, I think most people would agree to that.  But would they also agree that our current rituals are of a negative charge, leading us blindly onto the back of a meat-truck? I don't know.  Start thinking about the role ritual played in creating mankind's culture, society and communities.  Think about the fact that ritual used to be a thing which brought people together, allowed them to interact, share, and develop a culture whilst promoting longevity, learning and togetherness.  Our days of the week are named after events which were times of celebration, of communal sharing of the hunt, harvest, sacrament or feast.  Ritual was a grand thing and it was sacred, saved for the times when bonding was most needed, for survival.

Today our lives are overrun with ritualistic behaviour and we don't pay any attention to it.  What's worse, our modern rituals don't serve to bing people together, not in any meaningful sense.  Our rituals are creating and cementing a culture of individualism and rift.  How many societies do you think could survive on a diet of isolation and fear?  I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Let's take the example of the Tim Horton's or Starbucks morning ritual that seems to be so popular with folks these days.  It's pure ritualistic behaviour because firstly, it makes no sense from a logistical standpoint.  Anyone could make coffee just as well or better from their homes and for much less money.  So then it must be the need for ritualized social interaction right?  well this is odd to because people don't interact in any positive way in the coffee line-up.  Is that snake-like caravan of vehicles in the Timmie's drive-through a positive morning experience?  Face it, you'd be much happier if you walked in to your caffeine-fix-joint of choice and found you where the only one in line.  Wouldn't you?  So if the social part of the ritual is forced, unwanted, then what does that mean?

I'm trailing-off a bit here, so I'll leave with a final thought.
We need to be aware of all the things we do in a day.  We have to take our consciousness back and refuse to   be individualized to the point of impotence.  Take the recent revolutions in Egypt and Yemen, or the consistent million-plus demonstrations in South America, could we stand together like that here?  In out current state of social separation and distrust of our peers?  I think not.  Do our rituals hold us together or do they serve to inflate the value our own, individual lives?  If we continue to value the one over the whole we can be manipulated into oblivion because each one of us believes we are too important to die for our culture, our society, our future.  It is certain that we will die.  The future of our children however, is what hangs in the balance.

meh . . .

 . . . that's what day 3 was.  Total meh.  Low energy, didn't feel like doing anything, had to stay in the house, (well, chose to stay in the hose due to the thick smoke enveloping our entire city).  They say day three can be the worst and if that's true then bring on the next seven days baby!  Really, it wasn't that bad, though I did come closer than ever to quitting this thing. 

It seems that the evenings are the hardest to get through.  It could be because I'm so used to sitting at home at night, snacking and drinking, or it could e because I'm not doing enough with my time at home.  I sort of look forward to going back to work just so I'll have something to do during the most tempting hours. 

So far, day 4 seems much better and I'm happy with myself for not throwing in the towel yesterday.  My energy is back.  I'd even say that I have more energy than I do when eating solid food.  I read that this happens but it's really hard to believe until it happens to you. 

Soon the workweek will be over and that means the sultry-intoxicating smell of BBQs wafting through the air.  I think the weekend may be tough, though I haven't yet craved a beer.  This is out of character for me as I normally crave beer continuously throughout the day.  I'm quite happy with this development as one of my goals in completing this cleanse is to rid myself of the last vestiges of the young-adulthood alcoholism that most Canadians seem to share.

Day 2

So I'm supposed to keep track of my energy level throughout this whole thing as a record of how my body responds.  I'd have to say that my energy on day one was about a 8.5 or 9 out of 10.  Day two was almost as surprising and I would rate my energy at around 7.5 or 8 for the low-points of the day.  It's really shocking that I feel as good as I do considering I haven't eaten anything in two days.

Ugh, sorry for the boring prose here but I don't really feel like writing right now and I'm forcing myself . . . but hey, this is all about making positive changes and to be quite honest, I think it's gonna take more strength and will power to add to this blog for ten days than it's going to be to not consume any solid food.  Mmm, solid food. 

I don't have any cravings for meat just yet.  I don't want a burger, steak or pizza at all, though I find myself cooking with more passion. (I cook for my wife daily, it's something I love doing)  I'm cooking relatively healthy stuff like locally-grown organic produce and fresh-water fish so these dishes really start me salivating.  I think what I want most right now is a big skillet of sauteed beans and mushrooms.

Not that I'm craving too hard though. 

So these two days have been great.  I feel awesome and I have ample energy, even more so than usual.  But I hear day 3 can be rough . . .

Time to purge, baby.

In an effort to become a super-human being and live forever, I've started "The Master Cleanse" today.

Ok, well I don't really want to live forever, nor do I believe this cleanse will result in my becoming a super-human but I haven't written for quite some time and I have a predilection towards the fantastic whenever I start pounding away on a keyboard.  Alright, so this is day one, the beginning of day one and the first of what will hopefully be ten straight, uninhibited, strong and willful days of this apparently amazing cleanse laid-out in succinct form by Tom Woloshyn in his fabulous book, pictured above.

At this point I'm like . . . three-and-a-half hours in so really, anything could happen but I'm quite positive that I can make it to the end of this thing. If this is the same body which propelled me thought all the decidedly less-honourable marathons of drugs, alcohol and forced wakefulness I put myself through during those wasteful university years, then, (barring the discovery of any supreme damage I may have done myself) I know this body can take it and will rise up at the end rejuvenated. 

My mind however, is another tale indeed.  By far the weakest of my organs is the one that apparently lounges like a  dazed garden slug in the scalding beams of direct sunlight in the caverns of my skull.  Most times I curse my feeble mind and its seeming inability to cope with life effortlessly as everyone else seems to manage.  This time though, I only ask that it stay with me and keep focused company of my other parts and most importantly, my loved ones whom have to bear me while I take this latest whim out for a spin.  If I can maintain my sanity throughout, and even learn a thing or two, then this will have been a worthy venture indeed.

Well, I'm thirsty now.  And it's a good thing too because I can't really be hungry.

Out.

Happiness

So I'm gonna start by asking a really stupid question.  This question is going to make me sound like a complete ass but it's a question I've been asking myself this evening because it might help me get to some sort of truth somewhere . . . or it could just be a bunch of bullshit.  Anyway, down to it.

Is happiness an antiquated concept? 

That's my question.  Now, depending on who you talk to, a person can get all sorts of heated answers to a question like this but let's hone our emotions for a second and really think about the type of happiness I'm referring to.  I suppose there are many layers to a word or emotion like happiness but lets begin by focussing on happiness in the Buddhist sense.  By that I mean the idea that happiness is a way of living which denotes complete contentment and acceptance of life as it is and being happy just to ba alive . . .  yadda, yadda. 

My immediate and characteristically impulsive reaction to such a definition of happiness is "bollocks!".  Now I should point out to those of you who don't know me personally, (assuming someone is reading this at all) that I'm somathing of a jaded and morose personality.  My view of the world can be exceedingly dark most times and I pull no punches in when voicing my contempt for those who see the human world as a place full of bright, shiny promice and rainbow cupcakes. 

That being said, I do feel conected to many aspects of Buddhist thought and philosophy, though it is an ancient way of thinking that can't completely work in the modern world.  Let's imagine we are a peasant living in the distant past, somewhere in rural India or China.  The known world around you would seem so vast and incomprehensible.  Neighrouring powers might enter your small life at any time and completely fuck with everything you've wrought from the earth with your bare, aching hands.  True, many, many people on this Earth today have that exact experience as their lives, but at this time the world has become comprehensibly small and tangeable.  Her secrets now known to our scientists, her lands charted and conquerable with naught but a plane ticket.  The point is this: now that bullied peasant can conceivably change the world if he possesses the will and the luck to do so.

I now raise the question: could anyone possess the strength of purpose to affect the change this world so dearly needs if they remained happy and content with the life they had been given?  This may seem like a call to arms for all persecuted asian peasants but I'd prefer the western world to take note and ask if all the material possessions and implied freedoms are enough to rationalize the prevailing sense of happiness and contentness we all seem to think we're entitled to. 

It's really ironic, (possibly too much so) that we are living in the one time in history where the most people have the destinct ability to grab hold of the world and shape it into something truly great, just, fair and good and we're all to busy clinging to our X-Boxes, BMWs, split-level homes and ancient happiness cults to realize that feeling content is exactly what's putting our planet in the shitter.