drama mama.

“Insecurity is love dressed in a child's clothing.” Gaelic Proverb

I have played on both sides of the fence when it comes to interpreting the distinction between the world before social media and the one we live in now. Surely I've been one to say that people act differently, or how my preference leans one way or the other. It seems so easy to plague the current generation's major communication form for abbreviated and harsh fashions of dealing with one another, but I'm actually thinking more and more that all it does is intensify what already exists.

I know someone with extreme esteem issues will likely spend every third day updating their Facebook status to its full character length with a long, meandering, rambling statement. It will be something welcoming pity and craving attention, and may often literally state these are not what are being sought. The begging and pleading for note and presumed advisement will be a lost cause by day's end, since the quick fix of interaction will not have had much effect at all and some variation on the same theme will show up periodically for time immemorial.

I believe it's a human imperative to go through awkwardness and discomfort about the flesh we wear. Without something to fight against, we often have no room for growth. But full grown adults should know better than to zip about the world dropping grenades along their tracks like breadcrumbs to etch out a trail of where they've been. Our problems are ours alone.

There's a concept that I realized without a phrase early on in my life, but discovered words for it about fifteen years ago. The world is populated by what spins in the new-aged pop psychology under the term energy vampire (also emotional vampire or psychic vampire). Whether or not your belief system allows for the concept of real world vampires, you can likely think of people with whom time spent is extremely taxing and after which you feel completely drained.

These folks do tend to bring a lot of drama and, in many cases, passive-aggressive tendencies. Over time I have disengaged myself more and more from these sort of people, using the block feature on my Facebook and literal distance in my real world approach to them. Unfortunately one can not always take a legal standing against such folks.

For one thing, I have a full time job with one such person. Recently our workplace was expecting the big-big boss to show up, to assess, criticize, and drop some whoop-ass. Despite my full support for the venture, this procrastinator had the audacity to drop some last minute panic in my lap in a text that culminated with: I am so totally screwed. Oh, well.

OH, WELL. There are few better bombs dropped on the English language than this phrase. What a brilliant way to give in and shoot up the place in a barrage of blame all in the same breath. It has taken me a long time, but I have found better ways to navigate my interactions with people like this. One thing of import is the ability to ignore the distracting bullshit conversations with them tend to get riddled with, and to instead focus only on what might be accurate.

I tell you, If anyone hates to be ignored, it's those blessed with this terrible disposition. They are quick to dive into the murky pools of resentment and insecurity. If you let it bug you, it's ugly, it's distracting, and it's all encompassing. These people become the conversation if you're not careful. They splatter their poison on you, even when they're many miles away. They want a reaction. Their air of self-importance and entitlement absolutely demand it.

Of course yesterday evening would close with an email containing these cherished words from my pop:

There are only two people on earth who have known you longer than you've known yourself. Your Mom and I. No news is very mystifying, if not downright scary. Please communicate.

As the writings in this blog can attest, as can those who know me best, I have never been particularly or consistently close with my parents. We have often done a dance of curiosity in an attempt to balance our extreme differences and our surprising sprinkling of similarities. I have spoken with them sometime within the last four or five weeks. Given history that's pretty damned current.




Ah, well.

muscle flex

There are a few distinct tribes of people with whom I have relationships.

The most obvious to me are the ones to which I feel the most commonality, and who have been explored the most consistently during the course of this blog, so it should come as little surprise when I reference them. They come with very little introduction, and often very little cash. They are the ARTY TYPES.

The second group of people sound a bit like some carnival of artists' side project experiment. These subjects are given high likelihood to wrecking havoc, having it drenched upon them, or seek out the worst possible response to a difficulty in order to create future episodes of misery they can weep about in overwrought prose on social media. These are the DRAMATICS.

Then there's the third. It's the place either of these types go when they're done with all of their playing around. They leave behind all of their lofty hopes and dreams, and all of their sleeping around and fucking things up royally for a life of the expected basics, and little hope for the future but the vicarious thrills that come from their crazy friends and so-dubbed precocious spawn as they wax poetic about the old days. These are the SELL-OUTS.

Yeah, I know. This is a brash generalization, but even still, you have been quickly able to pick someone you know who'd fit in one or the other category. What about yourself, though? Why is it that we often know others better than we know ourselves?

Now that I've ferreted my way out of the seventy-five hour work weeks, running a retail mart for a company to whom I have a hate-hate involvement, I can set back to some good ol' soul searching. Getting caught up living someone else's life, even if it's one determined at distance via channels of policy and overly measured purpose overtakes so many parts of your sense of self. At least that's the threat.

Let the type of person you are, and the type of person you want to be act as a gauge for what muscles you work out.

dark passenger.

Emotions can't be prescribed, prepackaged, manufactured, or otherwise dictated, so why does our culture persist in essentially napalming Valentine's Day all across billboards, advertisements, shopping aisles, and mindsets? Mass marketing and dispassionate displays of repetitive catch phrases, gaudy trinkets, and farm raised bouquets strike up the question of whether we are all supposedly seriously that alike.

I can't think of the last time I took a serious second glance at the card section, heart-shaped candy area, or the cellophane wrapped grab bag of candles, lotions, and other such chick get-up. Even Fresh Market, that small grocery chain who always seems to create an authentic atmosphere for it's passionate relationship with food, sold out to the duplicate gift giving idea. My wife and I tend to venture there on the occasion to window shop primarily and to pick up a few whims mostly. We found ourselves there yesterday afternoon, and were instantly taken aback at the front entrance which had been overtaken by penis wearing vultures tearing at the chocolate covered strawberry and coronary cookie display.

thirty six

identity crisis.

Who are you? Who? Who? I really wanna know....

Who are any of us? There's ever a plethora of identifiers that signify us from other people, whether a thread of embarassing truth in a dossier, or from skewed perspectives of those people in our sight line. We strive to be seen for who were are, but this is not intended to be a still body of water. The ebb and flow of our own character arc is a palm full enough for us to maintain grip on, much less expect our outer circle to keep tabs upon.

So what do we really know? There's that old time paradox threatening calamitous events should one ever take in their own presence whilst time travelling. But the who we are now is barely the who we were then and both of these folks couldn't hold a candle to who we're going to be. What could be the harm?

Think about it. Are you the same person you were five, ten, or even twenty years ago? Can you be held accountable for the actions, the thoughts, the hopelessness, the naivety of the one who was there instead of the present one who can now look back and say, if I had it to do all over again, dot-dot-dot?

be longing

STATICECLECTICISM is an on-line handle I have been carrying around for some time. I chose it based on the title of this brief bit of free form poetry I wrote to a kindred spirit of mine in November of 1998. I found myself attached to it as a secondary identity, because to me it spoke to a desire to be outside of norms and as a reminder to be ever evolving.

For me, creation sprouts from the culling together of many varied elements, whether dream, experience, memory, experimentation, research, synchronicity, or simply blind luck. Yet to remain static within endless possibilities addresses much larger concepts for me. I find that art without obstacles is rarely created and certainly quickly forgotten.

Boundaries can only be pushed when there is resistance and life is barely lived without challenge.

counter requiem

Lewis Carroll suggested we weave our tale by starting at the beginning. Shifts in narrative taste and the translation of truth into prose offers alternative paths to explore. It is often a better idea to jump into the deep end of the pool rather than talking yourself out of the whole swim knee deep in cold water, still holding onto the railing.

I have not written in here for months. This has hardly been due to a lack of words, which spout from my salivary spigot at a high rate on a daily basis due to necessity of rote oral defecation brought on by maintaining a talking job. Over the years, I have fine tuned my mode of delivery to avoid the robotics of many of my compatriots who have passed on, and those of the nervous newbies who've only recently joined us at the front. But half of what transpires is mindless at best and misleading at worst. The other fifty percent is made up of under-appreciated, under-valued quality information and of course plenty of one liners. My need for psychological exposition has been great. And dammit all, I have been hard pressed for quality creative outlets, or more than the occasional one night stand with the writer in me, because writing the most interesting, eloquent, grammatically correct work-related emails hasn't been cutting it.

My inner photographer hasn't let up, however. My aging companion of a camera travels with me nearly everywhere I go like some ventriloquist's dummy, countering my thoughts and echoing my visions without my needing to say a single word. I have captured thousands of images in a reasonably short time. The barrage of inspiration has been so strong. I have recognized the need and more importantly the ability to never put away the aching artist side of myself. With or without reward or note, it doesn't only have to come out to play on the weekends, but can remain in everything I do.