Thursday, Dec. 25, 2003 - 5:51 a.m.

It’s the hap-happiest season of all.

I’ve been writing this diary for a year now, and I’ve topped 100 entries.

Anarchy Man visited for a few days a few weeks ago. I was thrilled to have good company and a break from my loneliness. I also had the pleasure of meeting Abbe Normal for the first time. He has so much in common with me, I’m astounded. Not only does he have anarchist leanings and teaches Nonviolent Communication, but he’s also a member of the Mars Society.

Then after a brief visit with the brother and sister of The Jester, I flew to A Sunnier Place to spend a week with my sister and father. Past Christmas visits like this we spent watching as many videos as possible. It’s hard for to think of other activities that both the Dad and the kids can mutually enjoy. This time we varied it a bit by reading aloud from Non Campus Mentis when we weren’t watching movies or eating.

Flying back, I got rerouted through Texas. I’d never been to Texas before, but I can’t say my half hour in the Dallas airport gave me much of a feel of the place. I did see one man wearing a large black cowboy hat, however. My only association with Dallas is Ozzy’s video for “The Ultimate Sin”. I digress. When I’m in any kind of high-speed vehicle, I ruminate about the possibility of death, and when I’m in an airplane, I also get perspective on just how fucking huge this world is. On the ground, when I see a few cars and a little pavement, it’s hard to imagine how that could cause global warming and ecocide, but from up there, I can see the illuminated cities, the highways like rivers of cars, and the endless agriculture (to sell cheap food to Mexico and run their local farmers out of business.) From up there, I can begin to fathom the sheer scale of the vast American empire. It hurts my head to think on such a large scale. Part of me wishes I could conveniently condemn the whole shebang, but I’m so dwarfed by the immensity of the megamachine, and I depend on its grace to get me safely there and back again, and I feel strangely at home in airports. The Chicago O’Hare airport struck me as beautiful.

Flying far above the fractal landscape of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains at sunset made me feel very small (and called to mind the movie Alive.)

In the plane, I was reading The Power of Now, a book I was seriously frustrated and disappointed with in some respects (which I’ll harp on about in another post). For the purposes of this post, suffice it to say the message of the book is to “be here now”. The in-flight movie was The Santa Clause 2. I didn’t feel like buying headphones, but I glanced up from time to time. I started wondering why they show movies on planes. Are people in this culture so resistant to the present moment that they require constant distraction? Even so, are they so jaded that the view from 30,000 feet isn’t utterly fascinating? Does no one read books? Maybe I’m weird this way, but I’d have no problem getting lost in my thoughts for 8 or 12 hours. Are my contemporaries in the industrialized first world so afraid to be alone with themselves that they need to have the collective dreams of Hollywood pumped into their skulls to distract them from the emptiness of their existence? When I landed in Portland, Greyhound didn’t have a bus running to Eugene for 5 hours, so I opted for Amtrak instead. The train was only 5 bucks more than the bus. From now on, I’m always going to take the train if I’m going between Eugene and Portland. I think of Greyhound as a program to torture the poor while charging them handsomely for the privilege. This Amtrak experience was like a updated gentlemen’s train of yore. The brand new train cars on this line emulate the comfort and amenities of air travel, albeit with a considerably bumpier ride. They too had a movie to show, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, and the conductor came through selling headsets.

Since I returned, I have at times felt despise-ed and reject-ed, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. I think it was the jarring transition. After spending a week passively watching movies and passively having my body rolled along roads and hurtled through the sky, when I got home it was hard to do anything at all of my own initiative. After seeing how large my sister’s apartment was, I realized that my living space is no larger than my sister’s bedroom alone. And she pays only $65/month more than I do. And my bathroom is in a separate, unheated building. Am I a fool for living in this shed? (the location is ideal though.) Worse, I had to wonder, why was I leaving my family and flying to the opposite side of the continent to go live in a little shed in the wilderness? Okay, I live in a city, but it might as well be the wilderness for all the people I interact with. If My Very Busy Friend or Desperately Seeking Humor were in town, it would be a different story. As it is, since I’ve been back, aside from one splendid Fractal Friday at Euglea Edu., and 15 minutes talking with Abbe Normal, I haven’t had anyone to talk to in person for over a week (I do appreciate the recent phone conversations I’ve had. I don’t know where I’d be without that technology.) It’s not like I’ve called everyone I know in town; I’m just reluctant to ring up acquaintances and struggle to convince them to hang out with me. I’m afraid I couldn’t disguise the desperation in my voice.

I guess what I'm really missing is some kind of refection in others that what I'm doing here matters in some way, that my existence has some meaning to other people. It would be nice if there were people in town right now who knew if I were alive or not.

But crisis could be an opportunity. My isolation and leisure gives me an opportunity to reach enlightenment without distraction. I’ve been depressed on and off, I’ve been having the beginning of panic attacks, and feeling an urge to smash things. As soon as I focus my attention on my feelings (instead of thinking up more reasons to feel bad) I feel unspeakable delight. The mindfulness gag works like a charm every time. I just need to remember to do it. There’s the rub. Anyway, I have unmet needs, and for now I have no intention of doing anything to meet them, so that leaves trying to accept having them remain unmet.

I also wonder if my living situation is really working for me. I enjoy spending time alone, and the isolation affords me the peace to do my work free of distraction (when I can muster the discipline and concentration), but when I want some human contact, I’ve gotta call someone, and hope they have some time for me. I keep making new friends, but they keep leaving. Was I a fool to get an apartment by myself? I remind myself that the same thing happened when I lived at Twin Oaks Community, that I frequently felt lonely there when there wasn’t spontaneous socializing. Still, there I was only isolated hours at a time, not weeks at a time. Maybe I just need to get into more group activities outside my home.

I’m way into Dimmu Borgir right now. I downloaded their new hit song, “Progenies of the Great Apocalypse”, and I gotta say it’s the best track I’ve downloaded since “God is God” by Laibach. It’s in the black metal genre, but with a real orchestra accompaniment. I have no interest in their Goth imagery; for me it’s all about the music. Raised on classical music, I love to see it blended with some especially vicious metal. I think metal often has more in common with classical than it does with the blues. I can’t think of a better use for the Prague Philharmonic.

Wanting to sing along with Dimmu Borgir’s lead growler, I looked up the lyrics. I was dismayed to read what appears to be a blatantly fascist message. I’m just unclear whether the master race they’re talking about is Aryans or vampires.

I’m not one for video games, but I had to try Police Bike because it’s based on a protest I was in (against the Republican party convention in 2000 that nominated Bush.) House Hunting is good too, and it lets you shoot out car windows and tires just for fun. Well, tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you.

I’ve been listening to the all-Christmas carol radio station, partly to celebrate the holiday, and partly to test myself to see if I can resist breaking down in tears. I’ve gotten a lot of utility out of the maxim that that which is self-evident is seldom mentioned, while lies, fabrications, and constructs require frequent repetition to bolster their illusory existence. There’s a lot of hype around Christmas because Christmas is nothing but hype; without it, December 25th would be just another ordinary day. Hence all the songs.

A lot of these songs seem to be written to tug as hard as possible on the listener’s heartstrings, even to the point of very sad songs with ostensibly happy lyrics. “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” and “The Christmas Song” are among the worst in this regard. When times are good, I guess they’re tender, and when your Christmas doesn’t match the one in the song, it’s like salt in your wounds. I’ve been singing those, plus “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” with the original lyrics. But the ultimate wrist-slitter Christmas carol of all time has to be Vince Guaraldi's jazzy “Christmas Time is Here” from the Charlie Brown special. I just tried singing it. My eyes got hot with tears. I stopped singing and returned attention to my breath. I’m not even actually sad. It’s just some Pavlovian bullshit.

The other day I was walking down the street and saw a Christmas tree in a window, and I was captured by its beauty. I stared at it for several minutes, remembering Christmas trees from my childhood, remembering the delight they brought me, remembering that I was going to be utterly alone this Christmas. Sentimental longing and anguish began to take me over. I stopped and wondered why I keep putting myself through this. I guess because I want to explore how this phenomenon works, and I want to prove to myself that I’m stronger than sentimentalism and my conditioning by the mass media.

Next year all our troubles will be miles away.

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