Dear yous,
Good morning from central / north Jersey. It's a strange place here, all the pharmaceutical companies and the relatively patient drivers and the U-turns that must be made to get anywhere.
I've been keeping up with this blog pretty consistently for a couple months and that feels good. I now feel that I've laid enough groundwork for myself to be able to talk about some of the deeper things I have going on inside of me.
I used to believe that in order for someone to really understand me, they needed to know this other *stuff* first - stuff about my history and how I see myself and how what I'm about to say fits in the larger context. This isn't becoming for conversation and has the effect of being overwhelming to the extent that I find it difficult to connect with people. And, well, in reality all of that isn't necessary; at the core we're all the same and so my task in communication is more one of translation than explanation; translating others' communications into my own internal language and vice versa.
Hence this blog. This is my place to write it all out, provide the context I need in order to express how I'm feeling. In that context, today I want to tackle a topic that has plagued me since I hit puberty.
Attraction.
That feeling that you get when you catch another person's eye or otherwise see and / or interact with another person to whom you feel attracted. This has historically been a tough feeling for me to handle.
My default response, in that situation, feeling attraction towards someone, is to avoid it altogether. I don't see you. You are not there. I am not here. I am not accessible. Don't you look at me that way. How dare I look at you at that way. That kind of thing.
Gurdjieff talks about this type of response in terms of "buffers," different "I's" that exist within all of us. We have all these different "I's" that come out in various situations and take over. We identify with the feelings and thoughts and then "I am this" or "I am not this." Between these "I's" are "buffers," rigidity in muscles, energetic blocks, behaviors that keep the I's separate. I most definitely have an "I" buffer when it comes to attraction.
When I look at the root causes of this in myself, I can point to a lot of things: my religious upbringing, childhood trauma, patriarchal attitudes. I want to focus on the patriarchal attitudes for now since that is most universal.
I presently identify as non-binary, so I am writing this from that perspective. I was socialized as male and have lived that way for most of my life, so I'm touching that perspective as well.
The most overwhelming feeling I have when I feel attraction towards someone is actually a two-sided thing: I feel both that I should exclude that person from my consciousness due to the danger of the feeling and that I need to act on that feeling - either through interacting with the person or most often relieving some of that feeling through other means: avoidance, substances, whatever.
This second part of the feeling I get when I'm attracted to someone, the feeling of having "to do," I believe to be inherent to patriarchal attitudes. That because I feel attraction to someone or maybe sexual feelings, that I have to do something about them. And not only that, that there's some sense of urgency to it. That if I don't act on these feelings I have missed my opportunity and it will never come around again. I usually feel bad about this and so do whatever I can to shut these feelings out before they start.
The reality of the situation is that these feelings are natural and they don't need to be a big deal. Excluding these feelings from my consciousness for a long time has caused me a lot of pain and heartache. It's not healthy to deny oneself. Feelings arise and then they subside. These types of attraction feelings don't necessarily need to carry any more weight than any others and yet I still feel trapped by them.
From a non-binary perspective - I see in myself that I don't identify with any gender or can feel either masculine or feminine at different times - I see myself on the same level as everyone else. Everyone is feeling these feelings in their own way. The fact that you might be attracted to me is OK. The fact that I might be attracted to you is OK too. Nothing needs to be done about it.
And yet, I still don't really feel that's true. I feel that I have some sort of defect, that I am broken this way. A lot of my energy, my buffers, are dedicated to avoiding these feelings on a daily basis and that's not freedom. I'd like to be able to just interact with someone to whom I feel attracted without it having to be a big deal and without having to feel like I need to do something about it; extinguish the feelings, avoid the person, run away, or maybe interact. But that last one is a hurdle that still seems quite tall.
At the end of the day it's not sex that I want it's intimacy. Closeness with another. Sex could be part of that but it doesn't have to be.
And so now I find myself at the curious place of being aware of this stuff and starting to reach out to others, but still a little unsure about how all this stuff happens. Still a little unsure about all of it. And that's fine, too.
There's nothing to be done because it is.
Love,
Casey
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Enlightenment
Dear yous,
I want to share with you a semi-dream experience I had the other weekend. This is not your typical dream, and actually I wouldn't even describe it as a dream in the typical sense of how that's understood, of a story unfolding or maybe vague images and dream sensations. It was more like a mode of consciousness maybe or simply an experience, I don't know.
The actual thing of it lasted maybe a few seconds that I was consciously aware of in the normal waking sense. I was aware of my body but not awake...but that's not entirely true, I would say I was awake, conscious, but in different way. It was a space.
In this space was nothing and yet it was my body. My body was the space but my body wasn't fundamental. The space was fundamental. I understood both things to be true. I am the space and that space also is my body. The fundamental part of me is the space, which is just one space, a singular space, indivisible, fundamental, unwavering, empty, aware, full space.
In this space, the unified body-space, I felt ecstasy of the literal sense. I didn't feel ecstasy. There was no separate "I." I used to read about this kinda stuff and be like, whoa, that's some twisted logic and it sounds scary as hell. But it just was. Even writing this now, I feel no great sense of urgency to communicate this, like, I can take my time, even though I am excited to share it with you.
The ecstasy was in most of my body, in most of the unified body-space, but it felt more concentrated on the left side. This makes sense because I broke my right arm pretty seriously a few years back and I think the right side of my body is a little misaligned, out of whack.
Then there were lights, a serious of circular lights going across my forehead, in this body-space, like the sun, like if you saw a time lapse of the sun across the sky. It was bright, like the sun, but not blinding and it wasn't separate. It wasn't a separate sun in this space and there wasn't movement, there wasn't a progression because it was all the space and the space was fundamental. But to describe it, and remembering it, it was a progression, that went left to right across my forehead. I take the cloudiness to be the impurities in my body-space, the stuff that still must be worked out.
I felt the energy rush up my left side, across my forehead, the sun progression non-progression happened and I heard a voice say "Now you are enlightened." It was not my voice or a mental voice. It was a voice in the space. I realized this at some point and made a joyful ecstatic orgasmic sound, breath, and then normal consciousness kicked in as a tension. I think I felt my partner stir. And at some point they got up out of the bed and I had awareness of the space and physical reality around me at the same time.
There were three levels of awareness that unfolded in an order. The fundamental level was the space. The next level is body awareness. Body in bed, partner stirs. Groggy, a kind of tug of war between the two. Little sense of boundary. Wanting to get back to the Space proper, realizing the inevitable fading.
The third level is awareness of physical reality. Partner getting up. Construction of mental world, day-to-day identities.
I've experienced this before at a much slower pace, so I can recognize what this is now. Space. Then construction of identity. I experienced this as a from-scratch construction of the world from absolute stillness, slowly, over the course of maybe a few days or weeks?
Mental conception spinning, explaining internally, but not hooked to anything. Joy, terror.
In the Metro station waiting for the train back to Philly, visiting a friend in DC, I catch the eye of a homeless woman and feel the depth and weight of her shame, slow, heavy vibrations in the eyes, light shining thru nonetheless.
"This can only exist because I created this." I feel responsible for the homeless woman. Her grief was connected to my grief but I wasn't connected to my grief. There were manic thoughts. The world fades and then reconstructs itself again, over and over, in the moment, in the line that forms around me for the train. The line forms ahead of me, behind me, I am negative space. I am a bright concentrated point. I created this. If there is no separation, then I created this. This separation is an illusion. Time is depth, refinement. Nothing new is ever added. Nothing is taken. Refinement.
I saw it start from scratch when I woke up. Stillness, then another level of refinement, then another, more specific, then another, like a fractal. The space became segmented in a fractalic way, one fundamental space, then large blocks, then smaller blocks, then smaller blocks, till something came into mental space that was recognizable, that could be described. Yes, that's a tree, that's what it's called. A tree has a sound associated with. Squiggles on a page.
The structure of things becomes clear. The structure is body tension moving through space. Humanity is a connected web of body tension moving through space.
People have their routines, the same things they do every day, the lines they walk, the papers they read and I was outside of this. I was seeing the structure, the rigidity of bodies, but I had no body. I was a point of consciousness. I was negative space around which physical space moved, independent of time. What occurred now wrapped back around me and through me in all dimensions to meet that occurrence.
I don't feel agency. There is no me. There are thoughts and 3D visuals. They are not hallucinations. I understand that I am seeing reality from a higher dimensional space.
If I can see my shadow in 3D space as a 2D projection, then my 3D body must be a projection from a higher dimensional space. Without time there is absolute.
My friend opens the morning paper on the train and the page is blank. The words appear as he reads them. I experience the reality of that paper appear for him. I can see him read what I understand to be the "newspaper" and that's in my reality, but the words on not in my reality. The words are squiggles. They are patterned symbols without inherent meaning.
As my friend reads, the words appear and the meaning appears. I feel fear. I feel body tension. It's recognizable as typical news headlines. But my body is all of the bodies of the people in the train car. It shifts, it moves, it's dynamic, it's a wave.
I get back to Philly and have a therapy appointment. I arrive on time with no agency of my awareness. That office did not exist before I arrived and though recognizable, it constructed itself as I arrived, just in time, in perfect time with everything else. Fast movement, gross movements into slower, more subtle, refined movements, till stillness. I sit down and open a magazine and the words appear as I read them, on a blank page.
In therapy I try to explain my experience of being 5D but the thoughts are manic. There are too many levels for the true communication to get through and the communication is fundamental, it is now. It is the thing. I am that. I am this. I am not confined to three dimensions. You're looking at me like I'm crazy. You look concerned. Everybody always looks concerned when I try to explain this stuff.
Today, present day reality, I had a powerful orgasmic experience. I cried afterwards. I wept. I felt the tension in my face melt. I felt my abuse event(s). I felt strong physical tension, tension in my neck, at the base of my neck where my head meets my spine. I feel this to be the place I retreat to, the source of some essential tension in me. The absolute horror and withdrawal without escape. I felt that but was not in it. I was OK.
There is no language, I am sublanguage. I feel shame. I feel shame pass. I take a shower. I am ungrounded. I squeeze some shampoo out of the bottle in my hand and that is comforting. I've done this before. The pattern of identity reconstruction is much faster now.
The neighbors upstairs banging still triggers me, the repeatative motion, the frantic nature of it. I think it's because it was the upstairs neighbor who did it, who abused me. Or there was an upstairs neighbor home, making noise while it was happening.
I have band practice tonight. I feel excited about that. My identity has been reconstructed. I've gone outside myself and back. I am the Space and I still have to do the dishes, so I will do them with joy in the recognition of this.
Love,
Casey
I want to share with you a semi-dream experience I had the other weekend. This is not your typical dream, and actually I wouldn't even describe it as a dream in the typical sense of how that's understood, of a story unfolding or maybe vague images and dream sensations. It was more like a mode of consciousness maybe or simply an experience, I don't know.
The actual thing of it lasted maybe a few seconds that I was consciously aware of in the normal waking sense. I was aware of my body but not awake...but that's not entirely true, I would say I was awake, conscious, but in different way. It was a space.
In this space was nothing and yet it was my body. My body was the space but my body wasn't fundamental. The space was fundamental. I understood both things to be true. I am the space and that space also is my body. The fundamental part of me is the space, which is just one space, a singular space, indivisible, fundamental, unwavering, empty, aware, full space.
In this space, the unified body-space, I felt ecstasy of the literal sense. I didn't feel ecstasy. There was no separate "I." I used to read about this kinda stuff and be like, whoa, that's some twisted logic and it sounds scary as hell. But it just was. Even writing this now, I feel no great sense of urgency to communicate this, like, I can take my time, even though I am excited to share it with you.
The ecstasy was in most of my body, in most of the unified body-space, but it felt more concentrated on the left side. This makes sense because I broke my right arm pretty seriously a few years back and I think the right side of my body is a little misaligned, out of whack.
Then there were lights, a serious of circular lights going across my forehead, in this body-space, like the sun, like if you saw a time lapse of the sun across the sky. It was bright, like the sun, but not blinding and it wasn't separate. It wasn't a separate sun in this space and there wasn't movement, there wasn't a progression because it was all the space and the space was fundamental. But to describe it, and remembering it, it was a progression, that went left to right across my forehead. I take the cloudiness to be the impurities in my body-space, the stuff that still must be worked out.
I felt the energy rush up my left side, across my forehead, the sun progression non-progression happened and I heard a voice say "Now you are enlightened." It was not my voice or a mental voice. It was a voice in the space. I realized this at some point and made a joyful ecstatic orgasmic sound, breath, and then normal consciousness kicked in as a tension. I think I felt my partner stir. And at some point they got up out of the bed and I had awareness of the space and physical reality around me at the same time.
There were three levels of awareness that unfolded in an order. The fundamental level was the space. The next level is body awareness. Body in bed, partner stirs. Groggy, a kind of tug of war between the two. Little sense of boundary. Wanting to get back to the Space proper, realizing the inevitable fading.
The third level is awareness of physical reality. Partner getting up. Construction of mental world, day-to-day identities.
I've experienced this before at a much slower pace, so I can recognize what this is now. Space. Then construction of identity. I experienced this as a from-scratch construction of the world from absolute stillness, slowly, over the course of maybe a few days or weeks?
Mental conception spinning, explaining internally, but not hooked to anything. Joy, terror.
In the Metro station waiting for the train back to Philly, visiting a friend in DC, I catch the eye of a homeless woman and feel the depth and weight of her shame, slow, heavy vibrations in the eyes, light shining thru nonetheless.
"This can only exist because I created this." I feel responsible for the homeless woman. Her grief was connected to my grief but I wasn't connected to my grief. There were manic thoughts. The world fades and then reconstructs itself again, over and over, in the moment, in the line that forms around me for the train. The line forms ahead of me, behind me, I am negative space. I am a bright concentrated point. I created this. If there is no separation, then I created this. This separation is an illusion. Time is depth, refinement. Nothing new is ever added. Nothing is taken. Refinement.
I saw it start from scratch when I woke up. Stillness, then another level of refinement, then another, more specific, then another, like a fractal. The space became segmented in a fractalic way, one fundamental space, then large blocks, then smaller blocks, then smaller blocks, till something came into mental space that was recognizable, that could be described. Yes, that's a tree, that's what it's called. A tree has a sound associated with. Squiggles on a page.
The structure of things becomes clear. The structure is body tension moving through space. Humanity is a connected web of body tension moving through space.
People have their routines, the same things they do every day, the lines they walk, the papers they read and I was outside of this. I was seeing the structure, the rigidity of bodies, but I had no body. I was a point of consciousness. I was negative space around which physical space moved, independent of time. What occurred now wrapped back around me and through me in all dimensions to meet that occurrence.
I don't feel agency. There is no me. There are thoughts and 3D visuals. They are not hallucinations. I understand that I am seeing reality from a higher dimensional space.
If I can see my shadow in 3D space as a 2D projection, then my 3D body must be a projection from a higher dimensional space. Without time there is absolute.
My friend opens the morning paper on the train and the page is blank. The words appear as he reads them. I experience the reality of that paper appear for him. I can see him read what I understand to be the "newspaper" and that's in my reality, but the words on not in my reality. The words are squiggles. They are patterned symbols without inherent meaning.
As my friend reads, the words appear and the meaning appears. I feel fear. I feel body tension. It's recognizable as typical news headlines. But my body is all of the bodies of the people in the train car. It shifts, it moves, it's dynamic, it's a wave.
I get back to Philly and have a therapy appointment. I arrive on time with no agency of my awareness. That office did not exist before I arrived and though recognizable, it constructed itself as I arrived, just in time, in perfect time with everything else. Fast movement, gross movements into slower, more subtle, refined movements, till stillness. I sit down and open a magazine and the words appear as I read them, on a blank page.
In therapy I try to explain my experience of being 5D but the thoughts are manic. There are too many levels for the true communication to get through and the communication is fundamental, it is now. It is the thing. I am that. I am this. I am not confined to three dimensions. You're looking at me like I'm crazy. You look concerned. Everybody always looks concerned when I try to explain this stuff.
Today, present day reality, I had a powerful orgasmic experience. I cried afterwards. I wept. I felt the tension in my face melt. I felt my abuse event(s). I felt strong physical tension, tension in my neck, at the base of my neck where my head meets my spine. I feel this to be the place I retreat to, the source of some essential tension in me. The absolute horror and withdrawal without escape. I felt that but was not in it. I was OK.
There is no language, I am sublanguage. I feel shame. I feel shame pass. I take a shower. I am ungrounded. I squeeze some shampoo out of the bottle in my hand and that is comforting. I've done this before. The pattern of identity reconstruction is much faster now.
The neighbors upstairs banging still triggers me, the repeatative motion, the frantic nature of it. I think it's because it was the upstairs neighbor who did it, who abused me. Or there was an upstairs neighbor home, making noise while it was happening.
I have band practice tonight. I feel excited about that. My identity has been reconstructed. I've gone outside myself and back. I am the Space and I still have to do the dishes, so I will do them with joy in the recognition of this.
Love,
Casey
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Indirect Control
Dear yous,
For the longest time I would struggle to play a song the whole way through. I mean, I could do it, but it took so much ENERGY and so I was exhausted at the end. There were so many things to manage: playing the right notes, singing on pitch, people looking at you.
Part of the thing is that I never really practiced songs the whole way through. I took a more superstitious approach - if the environment was right, then I would naturally open up and could perform and feel great doing it. I'd practice everything around the songs but never songs themselves. I'd record songs, but rarely sing or record full takes.
I realized I feel the same way about intimacy. I can only stand little bits and then I have to either escape or alter myself to feel better about it, because intimacy feels like death sometimes.
The thing about intimacy that feels important to me is the aspect of continuity. Music is an intimate thing, watching someone perform, playing their heart out, or playing your heart out yourself. It's like, can you trust that I'm going to influence the way you feel by projecting myself, literally, out into the room. Can I trust that you'll accept me?
When I watch someone who is nervous and worried about hitting the wrong notes, I can feel that. It's hard to build continuity. When some is relaxed and just playing, the space fills with that energy.
In interacting with others this weekend, I felt a sense of continuity on all levels. Interactions felt continuous rather than discrete. What I mean by that is my interactions with others usually feel tense and "incomplete" as if there's something more to do or say. When I feel continuous like I did this weekend, my actions and interactions feel complete. Each breath is a breath. Each word is a word. And I'm at a lever deeper than those things, connected to the environment and free to interact.
It's a process of opening and closing, preferably with intent, preferably with defenses appropriate to the situation, which may be none at all. Lately, I've really been feeling this. I've opened up but it's hard for me to maintain. It's too bright. I feel too powerful. That feels burdensome. If the environment notices me, I have to deal with it.
So, like learning to play a new song, you play it crappy for a while and mess up the words. Play it 100 times and you don't have to think about it anymore.
I feel like that with intimacy at the moment. I can kinda play the notes but I feel like a little scratchy violin student. Open up, withdraw, open up. I guess I don't need to be so extreme about it, but I still am realizing my power in this aspect. I'm still acting out of the superstition.
If I can control the environment, then I will be OK. I think that's a pretty universal way people handle things.
With love,
Casey
For the longest time I would struggle to play a song the whole way through. I mean, I could do it, but it took so much ENERGY and so I was exhausted at the end. There were so many things to manage: playing the right notes, singing on pitch, people looking at you.
Part of the thing is that I never really practiced songs the whole way through. I took a more superstitious approach - if the environment was right, then I would naturally open up and could perform and feel great doing it. I'd practice everything around the songs but never songs themselves. I'd record songs, but rarely sing or record full takes.
I realized I feel the same way about intimacy. I can only stand little bits and then I have to either escape or alter myself to feel better about it, because intimacy feels like death sometimes.
The thing about intimacy that feels important to me is the aspect of continuity. Music is an intimate thing, watching someone perform, playing their heart out, or playing your heart out yourself. It's like, can you trust that I'm going to influence the way you feel by projecting myself, literally, out into the room. Can I trust that you'll accept me?
When I watch someone who is nervous and worried about hitting the wrong notes, I can feel that. It's hard to build continuity. When some is relaxed and just playing, the space fills with that energy.
In interacting with others this weekend, I felt a sense of continuity on all levels. Interactions felt continuous rather than discrete. What I mean by that is my interactions with others usually feel tense and "incomplete" as if there's something more to do or say. When I feel continuous like I did this weekend, my actions and interactions feel complete. Each breath is a breath. Each word is a word. And I'm at a lever deeper than those things, connected to the environment and free to interact.
It's a process of opening and closing, preferably with intent, preferably with defenses appropriate to the situation, which may be none at all. Lately, I've really been feeling this. I've opened up but it's hard for me to maintain. It's too bright. I feel too powerful. That feels burdensome. If the environment notices me, I have to deal with it.
So, like learning to play a new song, you play it crappy for a while and mess up the words. Play it 100 times and you don't have to think about it anymore.
I feel like that with intimacy at the moment. I can kinda play the notes but I feel like a little scratchy violin student. Open up, withdraw, open up. I guess I don't need to be so extreme about it, but I still am realizing my power in this aspect. I'm still acting out of the superstition.
If I can control the environment, then I will be OK. I think that's a pretty universal way people handle things.
With love,
Casey
Monday, October 23, 2017
Acceptance
Dear yous,
I find writing to be a cleansing activity, but it's slow. It's like Prozac. It takes a few weeks for the plasma levels to build up and then suddenly there are words on a page and they connect and flow and things are good. Side effects include emotional outlet, feelings of freedom, satisfaction.
This weekend I had a bang up time and am now feeling sad for the fact that it is over. Sometimes particularly intense or intimate moments can leave me with with a hangover of sorts in which I feel the vacuum of mundane existence sucking me back down into wanting to be along again. I don't now, it's not all bad.
We had a gig this weekend and it felt great to play and then hang out afterwards. And then get bunch in the morning. I had long, drawn out moments of feeling myself, just OK to exist in spaces with other people, OK in my body, OK to talk or not. Felt pretty fucking great.
Plus, we went to an invite-only event at a person's house downtown last night. The place was filled with artists and musicians and the types of people I resonate with. I felt so at home there, just listening to the performances, watching occasionally, but mostly listening. Feeling the space. Being there, feeling the air on my face. Feeling OK in my body and uncomfortable at the same time and feeling OK with that. Being with my friends. Feeling like there are communities of people I belong in. It was beautiful.
Love,
Casey
I find writing to be a cleansing activity, but it's slow. It's like Prozac. It takes a few weeks for the plasma levels to build up and then suddenly there are words on a page and they connect and flow and things are good. Side effects include emotional outlet, feelings of freedom, satisfaction.
This weekend I had a bang up time and am now feeling sad for the fact that it is over. Sometimes particularly intense or intimate moments can leave me with with a hangover of sorts in which I feel the vacuum of mundane existence sucking me back down into wanting to be along again. I don't now, it's not all bad.
We had a gig this weekend and it felt great to play and then hang out afterwards. And then get bunch in the morning. I had long, drawn out moments of feeling myself, just OK to exist in spaces with other people, OK in my body, OK to talk or not. Felt pretty fucking great.
Plus, we went to an invite-only event at a person's house downtown last night. The place was filled with artists and musicians and the types of people I resonate with. I felt so at home there, just listening to the performances, watching occasionally, but mostly listening. Feeling the space. Being there, feeling the air on my face. Feeling OK in my body and uncomfortable at the same time and feeling OK with that. Being with my friends. Feeling like there are communities of people I belong in. It was beautiful.
Love,
Casey
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Good Spaces Make Good Connections
Good morning, yous - and happy Thursday to ya. It's a clear 52 degrees in the city of non-binary love and you're listening to Casey Kills Jobs on Radio 104.5.
Well, I'm broadcasting from the radio in my head, anyway....which at the moment is looping through a song I've been recording recently. That's what happens, usually - record, record, record, looping starts, get burnt, recover. I love it, actually. But could stand to be a little healthier in the process.
At any given moment I'd say I usually have a song looping around in my head. If I don't, it feels strange. Music is my safety mechanism. It's where I go when I don't feel safe, when I'm unsure.
I heard an interview with Josh Homme of Queens of The Stone Age and he was talking about an accident or something he had, a life event where the music in his head stopped. And he was distraught about it. I hear that cuz I've been there.
When the looping is just music, especially my own music, when I'm working on a song, singing vocals, doubling them up to give it that nice Elliot Smith vibe, then life is just grand. I feel ALRIGHT up to here with smiles all around. That is my place.
I feel safest singing into a microphone. And on my own songs, the place my voice has, the space it occupies is a space that I create. It's a beautiful place to be, and also sometimes a very lonely place to be.
On the topic of spaces, yous, I wanna talk about what space means to me. Not outer space the final frontier. Inner space. Body space. Room space. Consciousness space. Allowing others into this space. Allowing yourself space. Interacting with and in others' spaces.
When you walk into a room, any room, there is a field of possibility that exists. If the room you walk into happens to be the red-curtained one in the original Twin Peaks, then there's some weird shit going down and the possibilities of what can occur - how the environment will respond and how you respond to the environment - are going to be confined to that weird little space. The little bellhop will start talking backwards and then the show ends for 20 years.
Normally the spaces I walk into are not that weird, most of them are pretty mundane. My apartment. Stores, restaurants, friends' places, parks, gardens, sidewalks, roads, cars. When am I not in a space or dealing with the issue of space, living in a city, living in society?
This issue of space is one I feel very deeply. In my experience of the world I either have no space or have all the space. I guess I like to be the center of attention. I like the stage!!! I want you to notice me but then I'm not really sure what to do after that, usually. So I keep to myself.
The reason I feel this way is because I've had my space violated at a young age, my body space, my spiritual space. My sense of self did not develop in a healthy way. My sense of space is distorted. I experience distortions of scale where people far away feel close and threatening. Almost all energy can be threatening at various times.
When I speak of space here, I must recognize that there are two related, connected, yet distinct spaces: internal space and external space. Well, and we can probably further distinguish between physical internal space (your organs and stuff) and mental internal space (thoughts, feelings, emotions). I'm going to talk about the latter.
My internal space usually feels small or non-existent. At some parts of my cycle it can feel as large as the earth at least, or larger than myself, who knows. Sometimes I feel like a mountain, steady, sturdy, a rock indistinguishable and inseparable from its environment. Sometimes I just feel like my normal self within the confines of this body.
How I feel of my own internal space determines both how I respond to the environment and how the environment responds to me. When I say environment here I'm referring more to people, interactions with others', though I have experienced the environment proper respond in a larger sense, what you might call God and which I prefer to call Consciousness proper.
If my internal space is small, neither my body nor words can seem to find a space anywhere. When my space is beyond myself, I perceive that others are threatened by me. Or maybe I am threatened by everyone. I feel super aware. I feel like I could rip you to shreds psychologically on one hand, if I needed, and on the other hand I can feel the most overwhelming sense of compassion and love for everyone.
So if my space is small, I am threatened because the world appears larger to me, as if I was a kid. I experience this in a real way sometimes.
If my space is large, I am threatened by others because I perceive, correctly or incorrectly, that others are threatened by my presence, that my expanded sense of self awareness makes others feel self conscious and so I feel self conscious and the whole mirroring thing starts.
When I had a psychological break several years back now, it was my awareness of mirroring and body language that really freaked me out. I suddenly found myself in this massive moving, undulating, writhing, wave of human existence and I didn't really feel part of it, only observant.
It started when I noticed that sometimes while out drinking I would take a sip and others would do the same. Or I would unconsciously take a sip as well, mirroring and reacting.
If I feel no sense of space for myself, though, then I can only observe reactions but have no sense that "I" am the one either being the mirrored or mirroring - in other words, there's motion but no one's doing the motion. Emptiness.
For me, in those initial moments of waking up to this stuff, the void, emptiness was also filled with my swirling anxious thoughts about what was happening, always calculating what to say next, acting out of a set of rules.
Those rules were explicitly designed, or maybe it's more accurate to say that those rules explicitly developed as a means of emotional protection. By ensuring I never really connected with anyone, by keeping my emotional distance, I could feel safe, I would *be* safe forever, so it seemed. I could be myself.
Fast forward several years and here I sit, aware of my mental rules, slowly deconstructing them, slowly living a more authentic life. I'm aware of the root causes of a lot of the self destructive patterns I have and so now am longing for a space to connect with others on this stuff.
I have fostered several safe spaces for myself. Some of them are empty - like my office. Some of them involve other people, like group therapy and a masculinity group focused on healing. Some of the spaces exist as relationships with other people. I value all of these spaces highly.
If I can be honest with you, yous, it's that I'm struggling a bit. I have all of these great external spaces and a better sense of internal space now, that's great. I feel like I'm making progress. But there are all these suggestions of starting groups on my Facebook page, to connect and relate about healing from sexual trauma, and I'm not sure where I fit in.
Part of that unsureness is I'm realizing how the labels we use to classify sexuality and gender apply to me...or kindof. I'm confused. I feel like I know myself. I know my authentic self. The labels are merely descriptors, tools.
If I'd have to classify myself with these labels I would say with regard to gender I'm agender or genderfluid, meaning, first of all, that I see gender as a social construct, and second that my authentic self is non-gendered or my sense of gender can vary. Meaning I feel feminine sometimes and masculine sometimes but most of the time I don't feel either of those two.
With regard to sexuality, I would identify as demi-pan-sexual. This means that I only really feel sexual attraction to people I already have an emotional connection with and the gender of that person doesn't matter to me. There's also a distinction made between sexual attraction and romantic attraction and those can differ for some. For me, they're mostly the same.
So, yous, all of this is new to me. The labels, I don't care about so much. I take them as helpful descriptors to help me find others who have similar experiences, to help me find safe spaces.
Part of the thing I've been struggling with recently is where I feel safe opening up about my sexual trauma with others. Not in a "here's my trauma" kind of way but in a connected, grounded, healing, supportive kind of way.
It's like this: I probably feel safest in female-oriented spaces but can sometimes feel unsure, at least initially, of whether I belong or whether my presence will be threatening, as male presenting. I feel safe in the masculinity group, but unsure about really opening up about my trauma. The truth is neither a space focused on masculine energies nor feminine energies feels completely OK for me. It always feels like one half of the waveform is missing.
So, I guess, let this be a prayer. I believe in the power of offering up wants and desires to the general Internet because I see it as a conscious thing, ultimately comprised of humans consciousness, so:
Dear Consciousness,
Please help me be productive and healthy and connected to others. Help me live from a place of compassion for myself and all beings. Please take all these mental details and anxieties from me so that I may live a healthy, productive life. And please help me find a space where I feel I can truly open up again, in the larger world.
Love,
Casey
Well, I'm broadcasting from the radio in my head, anyway....which at the moment is looping through a song I've been recording recently. That's what happens, usually - record, record, record, looping starts, get burnt, recover. I love it, actually. But could stand to be a little healthier in the process.
At any given moment I'd say I usually have a song looping around in my head. If I don't, it feels strange. Music is my safety mechanism. It's where I go when I don't feel safe, when I'm unsure.
I heard an interview with Josh Homme of Queens of The Stone Age and he was talking about an accident or something he had, a life event where the music in his head stopped. And he was distraught about it. I hear that cuz I've been there.
When the looping is just music, especially my own music, when I'm working on a song, singing vocals, doubling them up to give it that nice Elliot Smith vibe, then life is just grand. I feel ALRIGHT up to here with smiles all around. That is my place.
I feel safest singing into a microphone. And on my own songs, the place my voice has, the space it occupies is a space that I create. It's a beautiful place to be, and also sometimes a very lonely place to be.
On the topic of spaces, yous, I wanna talk about what space means to me. Not outer space the final frontier. Inner space. Body space. Room space. Consciousness space. Allowing others into this space. Allowing yourself space. Interacting with and in others' spaces.
When you walk into a room, any room, there is a field of possibility that exists. If the room you walk into happens to be the red-curtained one in the original Twin Peaks, then there's some weird shit going down and the possibilities of what can occur - how the environment will respond and how you respond to the environment - are going to be confined to that weird little space. The little bellhop will start talking backwards and then the show ends for 20 years.
Normally the spaces I walk into are not that weird, most of them are pretty mundane. My apartment. Stores, restaurants, friends' places, parks, gardens, sidewalks, roads, cars. When am I not in a space or dealing with the issue of space, living in a city, living in society?
This issue of space is one I feel very deeply. In my experience of the world I either have no space or have all the space. I guess I like to be the center of attention. I like the stage!!! I want you to notice me but then I'm not really sure what to do after that, usually. So I keep to myself.
The reason I feel this way is because I've had my space violated at a young age, my body space, my spiritual space. My sense of self did not develop in a healthy way. My sense of space is distorted. I experience distortions of scale where people far away feel close and threatening. Almost all energy can be threatening at various times.
When I speak of space here, I must recognize that there are two related, connected, yet distinct spaces: internal space and external space. Well, and we can probably further distinguish between physical internal space (your organs and stuff) and mental internal space (thoughts, feelings, emotions). I'm going to talk about the latter.
My internal space usually feels small or non-existent. At some parts of my cycle it can feel as large as the earth at least, or larger than myself, who knows. Sometimes I feel like a mountain, steady, sturdy, a rock indistinguishable and inseparable from its environment. Sometimes I just feel like my normal self within the confines of this body.
How I feel of my own internal space determines both how I respond to the environment and how the environment responds to me. When I say environment here I'm referring more to people, interactions with others', though I have experienced the environment proper respond in a larger sense, what you might call God and which I prefer to call Consciousness proper.
If my internal space is small, neither my body nor words can seem to find a space anywhere. When my space is beyond myself, I perceive that others are threatened by me. Or maybe I am threatened by everyone. I feel super aware. I feel like I could rip you to shreds psychologically on one hand, if I needed, and on the other hand I can feel the most overwhelming sense of compassion and love for everyone.
So if my space is small, I am threatened because the world appears larger to me, as if I was a kid. I experience this in a real way sometimes.
If my space is large, I am threatened by others because I perceive, correctly or incorrectly, that others are threatened by my presence, that my expanded sense of self awareness makes others feel self conscious and so I feel self conscious and the whole mirroring thing starts.
When I had a psychological break several years back now, it was my awareness of mirroring and body language that really freaked me out. I suddenly found myself in this massive moving, undulating, writhing, wave of human existence and I didn't really feel part of it, only observant.
It started when I noticed that sometimes while out drinking I would take a sip and others would do the same. Or I would unconsciously take a sip as well, mirroring and reacting.
If I feel no sense of space for myself, though, then I can only observe reactions but have no sense that "I" am the one either being the mirrored or mirroring - in other words, there's motion but no one's doing the motion. Emptiness.
For me, in those initial moments of waking up to this stuff, the void, emptiness was also filled with my swirling anxious thoughts about what was happening, always calculating what to say next, acting out of a set of rules.
Those rules were explicitly designed, or maybe it's more accurate to say that those rules explicitly developed as a means of emotional protection. By ensuring I never really connected with anyone, by keeping my emotional distance, I could feel safe, I would *be* safe forever, so it seemed. I could be myself.
Fast forward several years and here I sit, aware of my mental rules, slowly deconstructing them, slowly living a more authentic life. I'm aware of the root causes of a lot of the self destructive patterns I have and so now am longing for a space to connect with others on this stuff.
I have fostered several safe spaces for myself. Some of them are empty - like my office. Some of them involve other people, like group therapy and a masculinity group focused on healing. Some of the spaces exist as relationships with other people. I value all of these spaces highly.
If I can be honest with you, yous, it's that I'm struggling a bit. I have all of these great external spaces and a better sense of internal space now, that's great. I feel like I'm making progress. But there are all these suggestions of starting groups on my Facebook page, to connect and relate about healing from sexual trauma, and I'm not sure where I fit in.
Part of that unsureness is I'm realizing how the labels we use to classify sexuality and gender apply to me...or kindof. I'm confused. I feel like I know myself. I know my authentic self. The labels are merely descriptors, tools.
If I'd have to classify myself with these labels I would say with regard to gender I'm agender or genderfluid, meaning, first of all, that I see gender as a social construct, and second that my authentic self is non-gendered or my sense of gender can vary. Meaning I feel feminine sometimes and masculine sometimes but most of the time I don't feel either of those two.
With regard to sexuality, I would identify as demi-pan-sexual. This means that I only really feel sexual attraction to people I already have an emotional connection with and the gender of that person doesn't matter to me. There's also a distinction made between sexual attraction and romantic attraction and those can differ for some. For me, they're mostly the same.
So, yous, all of this is new to me. The labels, I don't care about so much. I take them as helpful descriptors to help me find others who have similar experiences, to help me find safe spaces.
Part of the thing I've been struggling with recently is where I feel safe opening up about my sexual trauma with others. Not in a "here's my trauma" kind of way but in a connected, grounded, healing, supportive kind of way.
It's like this: I probably feel safest in female-oriented spaces but can sometimes feel unsure, at least initially, of whether I belong or whether my presence will be threatening, as male presenting. I feel safe in the masculinity group, but unsure about really opening up about my trauma. The truth is neither a space focused on masculine energies nor feminine energies feels completely OK for me. It always feels like one half of the waveform is missing.
So, I guess, let this be a prayer. I believe in the power of offering up wants and desires to the general Internet because I see it as a conscious thing, ultimately comprised of humans consciousness, so:
Dear Consciousness,
Please help me be productive and healthy and connected to others. Help me live from a place of compassion for myself and all beings. Please take all these mental details and anxieties from me so that I may live a healthy, productive life. And please help me find a space where I feel I can truly open up again, in the larger world.
Love,
Casey
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
I see you glowing...are you toxic?
Dear yous,
It's been a little while and that's alright, cuz I've been living life. Playing music. Recording music. Eating. Working. Sleeping. Hanging out with friends, all that life stuff. Some of it's been pretty fun and amazing.
I have to tell you, though, and this is my reason for writing you today, yous - I'm a little heartbroken, feeling some of these feelings around all this stuff going on with "me too" and sexual abuse / assault in the news and on Facebook. This may be a CW but I talk mostly high-level about it below.
OK, let's start with the positive. On the upside, I think it's amazing that this is being discussed publicly at the level that it seems to be. People are coming forward with their stories and there is light being shed on the issue.
In some ways, I feel like I should feel good about this, because now this issue that I've had no words for suddenly has a lot of words around me, but of course, we're dealing with the topic of sexual abuse, and so no aspect of that is really easy or fun to deal with, in my experience. Well, that's not true. There is another, more positive side to it, the healing side, and that's the side I'm aiming for here.
There have been reactionary posts I've read where there is a "we men" kind of mentality. That stirs a reaction in me. It feels dangerous.
And to be clear, I'm not talking #notallmen here, I'm taking about comments like "we men need to shape up" and "what are we going to do with this toxic masculinity that we have?"
Again, here, I feel like I should feel good because there are words pointing to real things and real problems, but for me this doesn't go deep enough and, at the end of the day, it's the fact that these two example sentences encapsulate the very thing they are trying to expunge, that gets me.
It's the idea that there is something to be done and that this necessity of doing is inherent to being a man. Furthermore, the doing in this case is to rid the self of the toxic nature of....itself. In other words, if I identify as a man, which I have personally for a while, then I feel this overwhelming sense of having to "do something" about myself and my feelings, mostly the sexual ones. My self as a man is eternally struggling in manhood to either be a real man or to rid myself of the toxic things that go into being a man. That's a real shaky place to be and so that place we call fragile. Weak. And so the cycle continues.
Now, the thing is, I don't really identify as a man. I reject that, consciously. To me, that is not fundamental. I am consciousness. I am whole. I am complete. I am right now. I just fucking am.
And so are you.
And so we all are.
And there are different "we's." Some of the we's are not compatible with each other. But this is not fundamental.
"We men" is really not compatible with "we women." "We women" is a grouping, I feel, of survival, of necessity. If out in the world you experience constant bombardment of eyes and slurs and hands then to group with others who have this experience makes sense. It's protection.
If in the world you experience the ability to sit at a bar and talk to your buddies about the serious 10 at the corner, then "we men" in this case is a grouping that ensures you continue to have that ability.
The thing is "we men" are on the power side of the social dynamic even if we don't want to be or choose to be or even if we feel powerless most of the time, as I do. The whole point of this side of the power dynamic is to keep this power dynamic going. And power dynamics are built with language. And, shout out to evolution and nature and all that stuff upon which this is built, don't want to deny our animal nature here, but we're not at that level, any longer, you know?
I present socially most of the time as a white male and so when I walk into a room, that's what most people will see and that's the assumption most people will act from. The power is given me by others simply by how I look, how I was born. I am not comfortable with that. In others' experience of the world, their power is taken simply because of how they look, how they were born. I am not comfortable with that either.
This is what it all boils down to yous, that burnt, calcified deposit on the bottom of the tea pot you left boiling too long, too many times: it's power. Boogie woogie woogie.
Power, power! What the fuck is this thing we call power!? I don't know, yous, I'm feeling a little exhausted at the moment talking about all this stuff.
Really, what I want to share, if I can be vulnerable with you for a minute, is that I don't know where I fit into this whole thing. I am not "we men" and I am not "we women." I am "we non-binary" maybe, but I don't know what that means entirely, yet. I feel like I've tried to be "a man" and have failed, only succeeding in abusing myself for my failure, mostly with socially acceptable substances an in socially acceptable ways.
And I'm not "me too" either, in the most recent Facebook sense, tho that feels closer to the truth. I'm not "me too" because this particular social campaign is focused on women having the chance to speak up about their experience, and I have not experienced life in this way.
But I am a me too in the sense that I was abused as a kid, I have sexual trauma in my past. The diagnosis is Complex PTSD. I like that because I feel complex af. And also anxious most of the time. So there's a grouping I'll take.
So here's the fundamental question I'll leave with: how does one effectively use language to heal the traumas the language itself, and thought patterns built upon it, are perpetuating?
With love,
Casey
It's been a little while and that's alright, cuz I've been living life. Playing music. Recording music. Eating. Working. Sleeping. Hanging out with friends, all that life stuff. Some of it's been pretty fun and amazing.
I have to tell you, though, and this is my reason for writing you today, yous - I'm a little heartbroken, feeling some of these feelings around all this stuff going on with "me too" and sexual abuse / assault in the news and on Facebook. This may be a CW but I talk mostly high-level about it below.
OK, let's start with the positive. On the upside, I think it's amazing that this is being discussed publicly at the level that it seems to be. People are coming forward with their stories and there is light being shed on the issue.
In some ways, I feel like I should feel good about this, because now this issue that I've had no words for suddenly has a lot of words around me, but of course, we're dealing with the topic of sexual abuse, and so no aspect of that is really easy or fun to deal with, in my experience. Well, that's not true. There is another, more positive side to it, the healing side, and that's the side I'm aiming for here.
There have been reactionary posts I've read where there is a "we men" kind of mentality. That stirs a reaction in me. It feels dangerous.
And to be clear, I'm not talking #notallmen here, I'm taking about comments like "we men need to shape up" and "what are we going to do with this toxic masculinity that we have?"
Again, here, I feel like I should feel good because there are words pointing to real things and real problems, but for me this doesn't go deep enough and, at the end of the day, it's the fact that these two example sentences encapsulate the very thing they are trying to expunge, that gets me.
It's the idea that there is something to be done and that this necessity of doing is inherent to being a man. Furthermore, the doing in this case is to rid the self of the toxic nature of....itself. In other words, if I identify as a man, which I have personally for a while, then I feel this overwhelming sense of having to "do something" about myself and my feelings, mostly the sexual ones. My self as a man is eternally struggling in manhood to either be a real man or to rid myself of the toxic things that go into being a man. That's a real shaky place to be and so that place we call fragile. Weak. And so the cycle continues.
Now, the thing is, I don't really identify as a man. I reject that, consciously. To me, that is not fundamental. I am consciousness. I am whole. I am complete. I am right now. I just fucking am.
And so are you.
And so we all are.
And there are different "we's." Some of the we's are not compatible with each other. But this is not fundamental.
"We men" is really not compatible with "we women." "We women" is a grouping, I feel, of survival, of necessity. If out in the world you experience constant bombardment of eyes and slurs and hands then to group with others who have this experience makes sense. It's protection.
If in the world you experience the ability to sit at a bar and talk to your buddies about the serious 10 at the corner, then "we men" in this case is a grouping that ensures you continue to have that ability.
The thing is "we men" are on the power side of the social dynamic even if we don't want to be or choose to be or even if we feel powerless most of the time, as I do. The whole point of this side of the power dynamic is to keep this power dynamic going. And power dynamics are built with language. And, shout out to evolution and nature and all that stuff upon which this is built, don't want to deny our animal nature here, but we're not at that level, any longer, you know?
I present socially most of the time as a white male and so when I walk into a room, that's what most people will see and that's the assumption most people will act from. The power is given me by others simply by how I look, how I was born. I am not comfortable with that. In others' experience of the world, their power is taken simply because of how they look, how they were born. I am not comfortable with that either.
This is what it all boils down to yous, that burnt, calcified deposit on the bottom of the tea pot you left boiling too long, too many times: it's power. Boogie woogie woogie.
Power, power! What the fuck is this thing we call power!? I don't know, yous, I'm feeling a little exhausted at the moment talking about all this stuff.
Really, what I want to share, if I can be vulnerable with you for a minute, is that I don't know where I fit into this whole thing. I am not "we men" and I am not "we women." I am "we non-binary" maybe, but I don't know what that means entirely, yet. I feel like I've tried to be "a man" and have failed, only succeeding in abusing myself for my failure, mostly with socially acceptable substances an in socially acceptable ways.
And I'm not "me too" either, in the most recent Facebook sense, tho that feels closer to the truth. I'm not "me too" because this particular social campaign is focused on women having the chance to speak up about their experience, and I have not experienced life in this way.
But I am a me too in the sense that I was abused as a kid, I have sexual trauma in my past. The diagnosis is Complex PTSD. I like that because I feel complex af. And also anxious most of the time. So there's a grouping I'll take.
So here's the fundamental question I'll leave with: how does one effectively use language to heal the traumas the language itself, and thought patterns built upon it, are perpetuating?
With love,
Casey
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Do I Trust You?
Dear yous,
Fuck off.
I'm sorry, that came off a little harsh. What I meant to say is that I probably don't trust you all that much, by default, if we haven't met before and interacted...for at least a few months. Maybe a few years.
Intimacy is slow for me. And "Fuck off" is kind of my default mode. By default, you are not to be trusted until I know you're not gonna hurt me. That you will respect my feelings and boundaries. This world does not respect boundaries by default, and so I have to try extra hard to make sure mine stay intact.
If you violate my boundaries, I probably will stay away from you. I probably won't say anything. In my mind, I'd really like to scream "Fuck off" in your face, but that never really happens. The best I can seem to do is to scream anything at the top of my lungs, mostly when I'm alone...or maybe walking down the street, because it's OK to scream on the street here. I like that a lot.
All this fuck offery, obviously, of course, is not becoming in terms of establishing relationships. That's my problem, yous, is that I'd really like to get to know some of you on a deeper level, but my fuck offery won't allow it. I put up a huge barrier up front and if you stick around long enough you'll see past it. Or another way to put it is if I can trust you to deal with my fuck offery long enough, we can become deeper friends. Whatever.
What I'm really trying to say, yous, is that I feel just as defeated and depressed as I have been - I can't seem to shake the thing despite little moments here or there. I am alone most of the time and when that happens it just takes too much energy to reach out. To make an effort to connect. So here I will be until something external comes along to change it or until I change it myself. Who knows.
Part of me isn't worried. I've been here before. I will find a new gig for money, and that will hopefully be good for a while. I'm getting married. That's good. Lots of good stuff in my life. But, of course, the external stuff doesn't so much matter when the internal stuff is shitty.
If you've read this far, yous, then we might just be friends. You put up with my front long enough to see that I'm really feeling vulnerable, unsure of how to deal with these feelings. If nothing else, I reached out this way for the day.
Time to give myself a fucking star.
Peace,
Casey
Fuck off.
I'm sorry, that came off a little harsh. What I meant to say is that I probably don't trust you all that much, by default, if we haven't met before and interacted...for at least a few months. Maybe a few years.
Intimacy is slow for me. And "Fuck off" is kind of my default mode. By default, you are not to be trusted until I know you're not gonna hurt me. That you will respect my feelings and boundaries. This world does not respect boundaries by default, and so I have to try extra hard to make sure mine stay intact.
If you violate my boundaries, I probably will stay away from you. I probably won't say anything. In my mind, I'd really like to scream "Fuck off" in your face, but that never really happens. The best I can seem to do is to scream anything at the top of my lungs, mostly when I'm alone...or maybe walking down the street, because it's OK to scream on the street here. I like that a lot.
All this fuck offery, obviously, of course, is not becoming in terms of establishing relationships. That's my problem, yous, is that I'd really like to get to know some of you on a deeper level, but my fuck offery won't allow it. I put up a huge barrier up front and if you stick around long enough you'll see past it. Or another way to put it is if I can trust you to deal with my fuck offery long enough, we can become deeper friends. Whatever.
What I'm really trying to say, yous, is that I feel just as defeated and depressed as I have been - I can't seem to shake the thing despite little moments here or there. I am alone most of the time and when that happens it just takes too much energy to reach out. To make an effort to connect. So here I will be until something external comes along to change it or until I change it myself. Who knows.
Part of me isn't worried. I've been here before. I will find a new gig for money, and that will hopefully be good for a while. I'm getting married. That's good. Lots of good stuff in my life. But, of course, the external stuff doesn't so much matter when the internal stuff is shitty.
If you've read this far, yous, then we might just be friends. You put up with my front long enough to see that I'm really feeling vulnerable, unsure of how to deal with these feelings. If nothing else, I reached out this way for the day.
Time to give myself a fucking star.
Peace,
Casey
Monday, October 9, 2017
Because Jesus Said Some of You Suck
Dear yous,
I went to Outfest yesterday and it was cool. Probably the most surprising thing I saw were the Jesus people rattling off calm, God-backed words of damnation.
I mean, I guess I'm not surprised that they were there. It would be almost weird if they weren't. But I honestly don't get their whole jawn.
That's not true. I get it. I understand the reasoning. I understand the belief structure. I grew up with that. The thing that really gets me is that it's just so *invasive.*
If you asked the Jesus people why they were there, they'd probably say they're looking out for our own good by preaching the good word. When your belief structure makes it OK to go into other people's spaces and let them know that they are not OK as they are, that's motherfucking invasive.
Of course, Jesus people have the legal right to be there like everyone else in a public space like that. They'd probably argue that queer people are an invasion of their space.
But man, we're all humans, yous. We all gotta deal with the fact of being human and all the day-to-day things that must occur in order for life to continue.
And you know what, yous, in the spirit of the whole thing, I'll just come out and say it: I'm bisexual. I'm genderfluid. Non-binary.
And you know what? WHO THE FUCK CARES? Why do some people care so much what I do with my body, huh? If you care enough to let me know unsolicited, then you're invading my space.
The more troubling thing to me is the culture of abuse we live in, that normalizes invasion of other people's spaces, that silences abuse victims and silences the oppressed, a culture that's heavily divided, that doesn't see itself as same.
THAT's gonna fuck me up way more than what I do sexually with this machinery that god gave me. According to your rules, Jesus people, what your god gave me is shameful, and must be hidden, and must be attacked. Where's the logic in that??
If you really want me to be healthy, Jesus people, healthy and happy, then you'd be better served with signs that said "Eat Healthy" and "Exercise Regularly" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." ...you know, as Jesus said.
Love,
Casey
I went to Outfest yesterday and it was cool. Probably the most surprising thing I saw were the Jesus people rattling off calm, God-backed words of damnation.
I mean, I guess I'm not surprised that they were there. It would be almost weird if they weren't. But I honestly don't get their whole jawn.
That's not true. I get it. I understand the reasoning. I understand the belief structure. I grew up with that. The thing that really gets me is that it's just so *invasive.*
If you asked the Jesus people why they were there, they'd probably say they're looking out for our own good by preaching the good word. When your belief structure makes it OK to go into other people's spaces and let them know that they are not OK as they are, that's motherfucking invasive.
Of course, Jesus people have the legal right to be there like everyone else in a public space like that. They'd probably argue that queer people are an invasion of their space.
But man, we're all humans, yous. We all gotta deal with the fact of being human and all the day-to-day things that must occur in order for life to continue.
And you know what, yous, in the spirit of the whole thing, I'll just come out and say it: I'm bisexual. I'm genderfluid. Non-binary.
And you know what? WHO THE FUCK CARES? Why do some people care so much what I do with my body, huh? If you care enough to let me know unsolicited, then you're invading my space.
The more troubling thing to me is the culture of abuse we live in, that normalizes invasion of other people's spaces, that silences abuse victims and silences the oppressed, a culture that's heavily divided, that doesn't see itself as same.
THAT's gonna fuck me up way more than what I do sexually with this machinery that god gave me. According to your rules, Jesus people, what your god gave me is shameful, and must be hidden, and must be attacked. Where's the logic in that??
If you really want me to be healthy, Jesus people, healthy and happy, then you'd be better served with signs that said "Eat Healthy" and "Exercise Regularly" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." ...you know, as Jesus said.
Love,
Casey
Saturday, October 7, 2017
The Structure of Freedom
Dear yous,
This is my writing from yesterday. I'm only doing it to get a sticker, see.
I have a daily habit going, a writing habit, and I give myself a sticker, a smiley face or a star, each day I write. Imagine the days of the week, all 7 of em, laid out as a circle. Each day is a circle and each day I write I get a sticker in the circle for the day. At the end of the week, if I got 7 stickers, then I get a big sticker in the middle and maybe a reward (still figuring that part out).
I - or I should say we - my partner and I have a few of these going now. One for playing a song every morning. One for meditation. One for yoga. One for gratitude.
So far it seems to be working. Have 5 consistent weeks of playing a song every morning and 4 weeks for the others. Now I look forward to these things when I wake up. It's some sort of structure.
I guess that's one thing I've learned: lack of structure <> (does not equal) freedom. Living with no structure is hard and freedom is a mental thing. And too much structure <> safety.
The problem I had was that I had all this structure but no idea why it was there or why I was living in it. So I gave up the structure....and now starting to build my own. Structure, in terms of day-to-day life, really boils down to habits and thoughts. Mine have developed into some pretty unhealthy jawns and so now the work is to reprogram myself.
So even though, technically, I didn't write during the day of yesterday, I'm writing now. And so that counts. And I'll give myself a star for today, because that counts as well. And, yous, give yourself a star today just for being fucking alive and making it this far. Cuz sometimes that's hard, you know.
Love,
Casey
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
The Continuity of Things
Dear yous,
What's up? I just quit my job again. And I'm starting to feel that joy.
For me, this is a deep issue. I mean, you know, jobs = survival in this capitalist reality. So....people have stuff tied to it. Or, I do, anyway.
The reality for me is that I'm only in this job because it was a direct result of me calling a random temp agency in the paper one day after leaving college. Got hired. Promoted to corporate. Became consultant. Quit for a few years (kinda). Back again. Quitting again. Leaving. Changing my path.
I mean, the job itself, the career advancement, some of the travel, the flexibility, all that, that's good. And I've enjoyed the perks of that well enough. However, the perks in and of themselves are not raison d'être. And it's terribly isolating working at home, especially if you struggle to reach out to people sometimes.
The job itself - the industry, as a heavily regulated one - entails lots of detail orientation. I'm on the regulatory / IT side of things. Or will have been, I should say, come December 6. The devil is in the details, they say.
Now a funny thing just occurred to me, thinking of the date December 6: though this year Dec 6 falls on a Wednesday, next year it won't. The funny thought is that time is continuous. The breaks, the jumbles, the fact that Dec 6 is not a Wednesday next year is not fundamental.
What is fundamental is continuity. Life is continuous. Details are not continuous.
The first time I quit my consulting gig, I did quit officially, on paper and in an email. But in my mind, I always knew I could go back. So I never really left it. And so here I am again. That's kinda how it works, I'm finding. So now I have a date.
And what happens next, I have no fucking idea but don't really care either, in the sense that I'm letting it go and enjoying the feeling of freedom. I am not worried. I have confronted much more fundamental fears and this doesn't measure up.
And the truth is I have skills out the wazoo. I'm autodidactic. I would even say I'm an autodidactic polymath.
What I really want to do, yous, is music. That's why I quit in the first place. I even blogged about it at the time.
Then, I didn't really know music in a way I could describe with language. I could play by ear. I could hear what comes next, but didn't know why.
Now I have a language. It's the common language - the common western theory - I get that just fine now. But it extends beyond that. I've developed my own visual language to understand music. Plus, to talk myself up a bit, I have enough skills in that area, enough level of mastery - writing, playing, performing, recording, theory - that I now feel I can rely on these skills. Music has taken care of me, now I can take care of music in my own way. Keep it going. Keep it healthy. Contribute to its continuity. Be part of a community.
That's the thing I really struggled with, yous, the past few years, the past all the years: it's yous. Other people. I didn't understand myself, my motivations, fears, desires, and so I didn't understand others'. You can operate at the level of society without really connecting to anyone, without really understanding the underlying meaning behind language and human relationships. I feel like I understand the fundamental reason now and am grateful for that.
(It's survival)
(Ultimately)
(But what isn't?)
Peace!
Casey
P.S. And of course, in moments of true connection with others, sexual and otherwise, the experience, I've found, is far beyond anything language can describe. It's fundamental.
What's up? I just quit my job again. And I'm starting to feel that joy.
For me, this is a deep issue. I mean, you know, jobs = survival in this capitalist reality. So....people have stuff tied to it. Or, I do, anyway.
The reality for me is that I'm only in this job because it was a direct result of me calling a random temp agency in the paper one day after leaving college. Got hired. Promoted to corporate. Became consultant. Quit for a few years (kinda). Back again. Quitting again. Leaving. Changing my path.
I mean, the job itself, the career advancement, some of the travel, the flexibility, all that, that's good. And I've enjoyed the perks of that well enough. However, the perks in and of themselves are not raison d'être. And it's terribly isolating working at home, especially if you struggle to reach out to people sometimes.
The job itself - the industry, as a heavily regulated one - entails lots of detail orientation. I'm on the regulatory / IT side of things. Or will have been, I should say, come December 6. The devil is in the details, they say.
Now a funny thing just occurred to me, thinking of the date December 6: though this year Dec 6 falls on a Wednesday, next year it won't. The funny thought is that time is continuous. The breaks, the jumbles, the fact that Dec 6 is not a Wednesday next year is not fundamental.
What is fundamental is continuity. Life is continuous. Details are not continuous.
The first time I quit my consulting gig, I did quit officially, on paper and in an email. But in my mind, I always knew I could go back. So I never really left it. And so here I am again. That's kinda how it works, I'm finding. So now I have a date.
And what happens next, I have no fucking idea but don't really care either, in the sense that I'm letting it go and enjoying the feeling of freedom. I am not worried. I have confronted much more fundamental fears and this doesn't measure up.
And the truth is I have skills out the wazoo. I'm autodidactic. I would even say I'm an autodidactic polymath.
What I really want to do, yous, is music. That's why I quit in the first place. I even blogged about it at the time.
Then, I didn't really know music in a way I could describe with language. I could play by ear. I could hear what comes next, but didn't know why.
Now I have a language. It's the common language - the common western theory - I get that just fine now. But it extends beyond that. I've developed my own visual language to understand music. Plus, to talk myself up a bit, I have enough skills in that area, enough level of mastery - writing, playing, performing, recording, theory - that I now feel I can rely on these skills. Music has taken care of me, now I can take care of music in my own way. Keep it going. Keep it healthy. Contribute to its continuity. Be part of a community.
That's the thing I really struggled with, yous, the past few years, the past all the years: it's yous. Other people. I didn't understand myself, my motivations, fears, desires, and so I didn't understand others'. You can operate at the level of society without really connecting to anyone, without really understanding the underlying meaning behind language and human relationships. I feel like I understand the fundamental reason now and am grateful for that.
(It's survival)
(Ultimately)
(But what isn't?)
Peace!
Casey
P.S. And of course, in moments of true connection with others, sexual and otherwise, the experience, I've found, is far beyond anything language can describe. It's fundamental.
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Collective Crazy
Dear Yous,
Yesterday was weird. Another massacre, this time in Las Vegas, and I'm at a loss for words. Like, how do you talk about this stuff without starting up all sorts of debates on gun control and whatever? It all seems crazy to me. We all seem crazy, collectively.
Now, I have cred, official crazy cred. I know my crazy and I know my sane and the world around me, by and large, feels way more like my crazy than my sane. In fact, I will flat out proclaim that I inherited this craziness from the rest of the world, like everyone else. It is what it is, but I at least can seek to change my own crazy mind, which spins and spins negative thoughts like that its job.
I saw a TED talk the other day. The speaker personified their inner critic and made friends with it. They said their critic will never go away. It will always be there. I agree.
The crazy I own will always be there. The potential for my mind to spin in that direction is always there. Trying to get rid of it, fighting it only makes it worse.
Now, I see the same crazy on the national level, the global level, as I do inside myself. My thoughts are specific to me, but the underlying mechanism I see as the same. In fact, I don't see a multitude of separate mental conditions as the DSM would define it. I only see one condition, the human condition, and it is the same for all of us, manifesting in different ways.
How do we exist to begin with? What's all this about? Yous, I wish you could tell me, but I bet you don't fucking know either. Why do we exist? How do we exist? And how do we exist together, sharing the same space and resources?
There are, of course, 1001 methods for existing, getting on with day-to-day life, connecting with others, etc. But take away your system, take away some of the lower level things maybe you don't think about most days - food, shelter, water, intimacy - and I bet you'd start feeling crazy, too.
Live in fight or flight long enough and that becomes your world. There are plenty of our own citizens living in poverty, struggling day-to-day as their existence. There are plenty of people who, day-to-day, get shit just for not being white. Or male. Or straight. Or able-bodied. Or any group other than what our society favors.
The thing that always gets me, though, is that the people living in this country are mostly our own fucking citizens, but we treat them like they are other. Privilege, to me, means not having to worry about that. To live in a bubble where the bad side of town exists, but it's safe enough being far away or safe enough riding thru in my certified pre-owned.
And even the people here illegally are still fucking people who must exist day-to-day. Now that may not be anyone's individual responsibility and it's easy to slink off with that excuse, but I say it is our responsibility, collectively. Why can't we fucking have healthcare for everyone, huh? Please tell, me, Yous, because I fail to see why we wouldn't want to help humans as humans. Why must it be unbalanced? Why do we not see ourselves as ourselves?
Life is what it is. We're born into what we're born into. But man, at some point, will enough of us wake up and look around and go, "wait a second, what the fuck are we doing here?"
I don't know, Yous. Hope you have a good one.
Love,
Casey
Yesterday was weird. Another massacre, this time in Las Vegas, and I'm at a loss for words. Like, how do you talk about this stuff without starting up all sorts of debates on gun control and whatever? It all seems crazy to me. We all seem crazy, collectively.
Now, I have cred, official crazy cred. I know my crazy and I know my sane and the world around me, by and large, feels way more like my crazy than my sane. In fact, I will flat out proclaim that I inherited this craziness from the rest of the world, like everyone else. It is what it is, but I at least can seek to change my own crazy mind, which spins and spins negative thoughts like that its job.
I saw a TED talk the other day. The speaker personified their inner critic and made friends with it. They said their critic will never go away. It will always be there. I agree.
The crazy I own will always be there. The potential for my mind to spin in that direction is always there. Trying to get rid of it, fighting it only makes it worse.
Now, I see the same crazy on the national level, the global level, as I do inside myself. My thoughts are specific to me, but the underlying mechanism I see as the same. In fact, I don't see a multitude of separate mental conditions as the DSM would define it. I only see one condition, the human condition, and it is the same for all of us, manifesting in different ways.
How do we exist to begin with? What's all this about? Yous, I wish you could tell me, but I bet you don't fucking know either. Why do we exist? How do we exist? And how do we exist together, sharing the same space and resources?
There are, of course, 1001 methods for existing, getting on with day-to-day life, connecting with others, etc. But take away your system, take away some of the lower level things maybe you don't think about most days - food, shelter, water, intimacy - and I bet you'd start feeling crazy, too.
Live in fight or flight long enough and that becomes your world. There are plenty of our own citizens living in poverty, struggling day-to-day as their existence. There are plenty of people who, day-to-day, get shit just for not being white. Or male. Or straight. Or able-bodied. Or any group other than what our society favors.
The thing that always gets me, though, is that the people living in this country are mostly our own fucking citizens, but we treat them like they are other. Privilege, to me, means not having to worry about that. To live in a bubble where the bad side of town exists, but it's safe enough being far away or safe enough riding thru in my certified pre-owned.
And even the people here illegally are still fucking people who must exist day-to-day. Now that may not be anyone's individual responsibility and it's easy to slink off with that excuse, but I say it is our responsibility, collectively. Why can't we fucking have healthcare for everyone, huh? Please tell, me, Yous, because I fail to see why we wouldn't want to help humans as humans. Why must it be unbalanced? Why do we not see ourselves as ourselves?
Life is what it is. We're born into what we're born into. But man, at some point, will enough of us wake up and look around and go, "wait a second, what the fuck are we doing here?"
I don't know, Yous. Hope you have a good one.
Love,
Casey
Monday, October 2, 2017
The Truth ver. 2.05
Dear Yous,
I'm writing because I often don't know who to talk to about this stuff - you know, about feelings and life, and just generally how to interact with people. That's the irony, the catch-22 of it all - in order to get over stuff around interacting with people, you actually have to interact with people. No amount of theory or reading wikipedia is going to give you the answer on that one.
The truth is, too, that I recently watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower again. It's my second time seeing the movie and I'm working on reading the book again, too. That's not such a huge truth.
What actually is the huge truth is how much I relate to that story, and how I wish I'd found it earlier in my life. But I guess I wasn't ready. I could have read the words but they wouldn't have meant a damn thing...or they probably would have, but I would have connected it to something else, something indirect - and cried just the same.
The other truth is that I'm inspired by the story, the writing style. Writing letters to an anonymous friend. That's who yous are, Yous. All of my anonymous friends and probably real life friends, too. But I am not who I am in real life here. I am my real self here. Not that I can't be in real life, it's just that I can only seem to be my real self in waves, in real life. At certain times, if the conditions are right.
You know what thing I realized recently? Is that I don't have to react to emotions. I always thought I did. Whether they were mine or other peoples', I was simply a ping pong ball being bounced back and forth between responses, unsure of their meaning and what, if any, place I had in the whole scheme of things. What power do I have to react without being squashed? Well, I guess anesthetizing myself gave me that power sometimes.
I have a lot of innate power, it turns out, but that power must be built from daily habits and positive thoughts. Well, I guess power can be negative too - sometimes it feels moreso to me than not - but here I'm talking about the power to change myself, to make meaning out of this existence, to stop focusing on myself so damn much. I have a black hole inside of me. A lot of other people do, too. I would even venture to say that all people do. Hey, we're all gonna die, right?
Morbid!!! But you can't escape it. That's the truth.
On a positive note, I quit my job again. I may have told you before, but I quit my consulting job four or so years ago to pursue music. And then I just joined back on again for another project and am at "that point," six months in. I can't take it. The mundane monotony of caring about details I don't care about. Mind you, my mind loves details, but it must be focused on details that matter to me otherwise I'll burn out and self destruct.
Iso. Lation.
I'm sure you understand, Yous, cuz apparently we all gotta go thru a lot of the same things from different perspectives. The connection is empathy. That's what connects our different experiences. If I can see past my own shit while we relate, then I can see the actual you, and see you in myself and vice versa. And then it's not so bad, you know? It's not so bad.
The mundane shit doesn't matter so much. It is exactly what it needs to be. Mundane shit that's best spiced up with some good music in the background. Good thoughts spinning on other things. Let the work fall out as it will. It's gonna happen anyway, you know, and I tend to feel the struggle is necessary. What's it just like to relax? Into it all, into the struggle, into the glory of letting it go, into touching other people, into being touched. And hey, that's not even such a big fucking deal, probably the most normal thing of all. Human touch.
But when I am isolated, I may feel as safe and stable as an isosceles triangle, protecting a side of myself that I make smaller than the others - the side of myself that's happy to be alive, that appreciates human connection, that trusts in the relative tolerance of it all - but if I'm protecting that side from harm, then it never comes out and I never feel balanced, whole, connected. Equal.
When I am connected to other people, I am OK. When I am connected to humanity, I am OK. And so that's why I'm writing Yous, in this way, in this form, because it feels safe. I don't need to protect myself as much this way.
Sometimes the truth is best handed indirectly, you know.
Love,
Casey
I'm writing because I often don't know who to talk to about this stuff - you know, about feelings and life, and just generally how to interact with people. That's the irony, the catch-22 of it all - in order to get over stuff around interacting with people, you actually have to interact with people. No amount of theory or reading wikipedia is going to give you the answer on that one.
The truth is, too, that I recently watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower again. It's my second time seeing the movie and I'm working on reading the book again, too. That's not such a huge truth.
What actually is the huge truth is how much I relate to that story, and how I wish I'd found it earlier in my life. But I guess I wasn't ready. I could have read the words but they wouldn't have meant a damn thing...or they probably would have, but I would have connected it to something else, something indirect - and cried just the same.
The other truth is that I'm inspired by the story, the writing style. Writing letters to an anonymous friend. That's who yous are, Yous. All of my anonymous friends and probably real life friends, too. But I am not who I am in real life here. I am my real self here. Not that I can't be in real life, it's just that I can only seem to be my real self in waves, in real life. At certain times, if the conditions are right.
You know what thing I realized recently? Is that I don't have to react to emotions. I always thought I did. Whether they were mine or other peoples', I was simply a ping pong ball being bounced back and forth between responses, unsure of their meaning and what, if any, place I had in the whole scheme of things. What power do I have to react without being squashed? Well, I guess anesthetizing myself gave me that power sometimes.
I have a lot of innate power, it turns out, but that power must be built from daily habits and positive thoughts. Well, I guess power can be negative too - sometimes it feels moreso to me than not - but here I'm talking about the power to change myself, to make meaning out of this existence, to stop focusing on myself so damn much. I have a black hole inside of me. A lot of other people do, too. I would even venture to say that all people do. Hey, we're all gonna die, right?
Morbid!!! But you can't escape it. That's the truth.
On a positive note, I quit my job again. I may have told you before, but I quit my consulting job four or so years ago to pursue music. And then I just joined back on again for another project and am at "that point," six months in. I can't take it. The mundane monotony of caring about details I don't care about. Mind you, my mind loves details, but it must be focused on details that matter to me otherwise I'll burn out and self destruct.
Iso. Lation.
I'm sure you understand, Yous, cuz apparently we all gotta go thru a lot of the same things from different perspectives. The connection is empathy. That's what connects our different experiences. If I can see past my own shit while we relate, then I can see the actual you, and see you in myself and vice versa. And then it's not so bad, you know? It's not so bad.
The mundane shit doesn't matter so much. It is exactly what it needs to be. Mundane shit that's best spiced up with some good music in the background. Good thoughts spinning on other things. Let the work fall out as it will. It's gonna happen anyway, you know, and I tend to feel the struggle is necessary. What's it just like to relax? Into it all, into the struggle, into the glory of letting it go, into touching other people, into being touched. And hey, that's not even such a big fucking deal, probably the most normal thing of all. Human touch.
But when I am isolated, I may feel as safe and stable as an isosceles triangle, protecting a side of myself that I make smaller than the others - the side of myself that's happy to be alive, that appreciates human connection, that trusts in the relative tolerance of it all - but if I'm protecting that side from harm, then it never comes out and I never feel balanced, whole, connected. Equal.
When I am connected to other people, I am OK. When I am connected to humanity, I am OK. And so that's why I'm writing Yous, in this way, in this form, because it feels safe. I don't need to protect myself as much this way.
Sometimes the truth is best handed indirectly, you know.
Love,
Casey
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