* footnote
With regards to ‘setting your intentions’ and the power this process has for resolving any dissonance between the various parts of your mind, these intentions only live in the ‘now’.
They have no power over the future.
Which is to say that the proper process of ‘setting your intentions’ is also accompanied by a process of letting go of attempting to control the future.
[So I have a problem. This blog is my way of collecting and organising my thoughts but the elf reads it from time to time. I have no privacy so to speak. So my solution is simple – go back and amend a really old blog entry. The elf will never find that. You may wonder why I need to publish it at all – without that final act of pushing the publish button, it don’t mean nowt to me, my thoughts. I need to underline it by publishing it – making it the current final and complete set of thoughts on the matter. Which is absurd because this blog is designed so that no one ever finds it by mistake or even on purpose. Come on, if I am OK with my dissonance cut me some slack. Nothing risked, nothing gained I say. X]
Over the last few months I’ve felt like there’s a pack of black dogs out there nipping away at my good humour.
I’m not running, nor hiding. I’m just ignoring the cunts. You can’t give them air or they become real.
But it does beg the question, where did they originate?
I suspect that I’ve spent my whole life constructing an amusement parlour known as my life, and that’s kept me in the black, or red, or whatever you use to measure the positive side of the mood ledger.
More lately, as a freaking demented experiment in curiosity, I’ve stepped away from that amusement parlour. Not surprisingly, life’s vision then got these weird science fictiony blurring at the edges. And the dogs.
Now I’m effectively policing myself to ensure I don’t do anything stupid. That unfortunately makes me a little serious and less easy to be with.
What stupid you ask? Clear telltales are inappropriate sexual thoughts or actions, too much negativity in my blog, getting cross with the elf just for being herself, not wishing to be productive, hiding from social contact, too much drinking or smoking, getting worried that the elf might be fucking around, and not sharing my inner with the elf (the irony is noted).
You don’t increase your own security by decreasing the security of yourself. Or something like that. I’m not an island so being a cunt just makes my situation that much worse.
What’s my plan? Well, to bore my id into submission.
If that doesn’t work? By then hopefully death will sort it out for good.
Arguably I’m busy dialling the amusement parlour right back up as we speak. But my heart’s not in it. I know this to be true. I’m just going through the motions.
In the past, I’ve decorated the amusement parlour with affairs. But I physically can’t do that now; the elf is simply too lovely. I’m recalling the dissonance now – they’re looking for a get out of jail card, and I’m just decorating the jail. Lol, but still some bad karma to excise.
Why not deal with the root cause you say? I suspect that’s not possible, it’s way too late for that shit. Imagine a tree, old and tall, it looks fine from the outside. And it is, despite the fact the core died years ago, and the termites removed all traces that could have been used by the forensic psychologists. That’s me.
Worth noting that I’m by myself here. The wonderful elf that I live with doesn’t understand shadows, they just annoy her. And hilariously, she’s studying psychology. I think it’s a form of compensation to address her known lack of interest in the black dogs of others.
In any case, there’s no way in the known universe that I’ll bother her with this subject. She’s critical to my good intentions, and I like her just as she is. Her own view of life is quite binary, either good or bad. Once she’s decided I’m on the black side of switch, then I’m a goner. She’ll put up with a little shit, from kids maybe, but from me, fucking near zero tolerance.
But, really, it’s not about the elf. It’s unfair to bring her into the core of this. None of its her doing. Not one bit. The whole contraption predates adulthood in fact. No surprises there.
Actually I have no idea really, apart from some shitty Freudian cliches gleaned from movies and books. These I don’t trust because although they pass the Occam’s razor test, they fail the Maxwell’s razor test; if the hypothesis sounds suspiciously simple then so is the proponent.
That so called pre-dating might even go back to my DNA for all I know. I really don’t think it’s worth going all Agatha on your head, despite popular belief to the contrary. I smell self-serving rats.
There was a time where I thought that guiding my own kids through the same quagmire might be therapeutic for me. Turns out it feels good but doesn’t have any medicinal impact. Shame.
Where to now? I’ve got no idea. But putting this together actually helped. I think it’s an exercise in corralling the dogs and it worked, for today.
I’ll return to it later when needed.
It does beg the question. What’s the goal in life? I suspect that unless you wake up like the elf, with joy for the world, then you’re like the majority. Wondering why your life doesn’t match the advertisements. Or not, if you’re a fuckwit.
Possibly it’s a a case of wondering if the zebra is black with white stripes, or white with black stripes. The elf thinks it’s white with black stripes even as the stripes get really fat and there’s hardly any white to see. That is, usefully deluded.
Me, I can’t delude a single molecule in this collection of atoms that I’m inhabiting. That’s a side effect of using the onboard computer to effectively resolve so many problems over the decades.
You know what I’m doing right? Staying busy, amusing myself, policing my own stupidity, and just hoping that the underlying pile of shit magically disappears all by itself. Even I know that is so unlikely as to be absurd.
All I can whisper is those meme-ish words ascribed to the little bloke in the sheet; be the change that you want to see in the world. Or in my case, be the change that you want to see in yourself. Or more accurately, by repetitive practise, weed out the shit that you don’t want.
It works for kids and pianos after all.
All I’ve got to do is get in tune and bash out something pleasant to the ear that drowns out those fucking dogs.
Unlike Dave I think I can do it. Because I’ve been doing it my whole life.
I can hardly think of a single minute of peace. Those few that I’ve had, I recall the feeling but not the occasion. Eyes in the storms, briefly marvelled at.
[oddly, the image from this old blog works. An abandoned Bondi Beach in winter with a wickedly cold onshore southerly blowing the fuck out the place. Now you see where the title of this blog came from – the Offshore Westerly being the polar opposite – the happy warm summery thing that never lasts.]
offshore westerly 