Empathy

“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sam Richards: A radical experiment in empathy

TED Talks

Gripe

I hate February.
My dad can't stand January, but, this year at least, February is the worst month by far.


At least Listener came out with a new album. I'm just slightly ashamed that I don't know when exactly it was released, but whatever. I discovered it when I needed it. 

Cultivate a life of your own, little one, and lead me on

What is my voice like to you?
What does this place feel like to you? Is it the same as how it feels to me?

I am so sloppy lately, I don't care to edit or try to edit or try to write well. I don't care. But still I write and some sort of beauty emerges, disfigured and fractured as it is, its voice slack, its posture bent and twisted and stooped.
I wrote a poem Wednesday that was that and more, but a couple of days later, it seemed endearing and maybe just a little bit courageous. It had built a life of its own independent from the lackluster breath i'd blown into it.

I'm feeling like multimedia today, nothing new, but now I've decided to act on it and see what rainbow tapestry of broken strings and hazy figures I can weave with no direction dictated by me consciously. And then maybe I can take that crazy-blanket from the loom and drape it around my shoulders and it will afford me a little comfort and courage.

I'm on a bit of a sentimental bent today, and I still have a streak of disgust for such things. I don't know why. Maybe because I've been such a dramatist and romantic all my life, and I never regarded it as very constructive. It tends to be blinding, sentimentality. I'm terribly sentimental, though, and I don't necessarily want to squash it from my spongy self entirely, but I seek a balance with it and whatever else there is, you know, there's a great many ways to see life. 

I don't like indulging in sentimentality, I guess. Seems very self-serving and not much else. It can have it's place on my shoulder with everything else, but heaven forbid it should ever become my matrix again. 

I imagine I've been reading a bit too much JD Salinger in the past few days, but I fully intend to read a deal more before this week is up. 

All the same, damn his lofty-earthy ideals. I don't want to be integrated into society, I don't want to continue cleaning the kitchen every day, I don't want to see God in every horrible person on the street or over the internet, and I repeat, I don't want to clean the kitchen. I'd like to sit in the clouds, no needs at all, perfectly free to live in my own head or observe the lives of others. But whatever, that's entirely unrealistic, and probably would be boring to boot, I, who would be everyone but myself sometimes. 

Still, I'd rather live in a monastery than whatever it is I think I'm going to have to bring myself to do in the next couple of years, college or career or whatever. Not so much career, though as some sort of way to support myself in between stepping stones in life. 

Shall I try out a new personality now? 

Yes, there is spiritual beauty in the small things in life. Serving others, taking care of oneself, paying homage to small miracles in home, the workplace, and public spaces. 

You want to know of a book that sustained me and my sanity this summer? "How to cook your life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment". 

It spoke of simple service and the beauty in it, and I needed that so bad, especially while taking care of my mother and most of the cooking for a few weeks while she was on bed rest. 

Over time, gradually, I've learned that every act of kindness, every small work is a sort of prayer, a hope that things will get better, and a way to show how much I do care for my family and friends. That is no bad life, not remarkable, but how much do I really want remark-ability? I remember when I decided to cultivate talents and abilities unrecognized by the majority of this society, and half of that choosing was because I figured I wouldn't have anything or anyone else to compete against in my forum of choosing. I'm actually highly competitive, but I'm also highly understanding, and I know that there's always someone or something better if you think in that way, and therefore, can never ever win. So I chose a place in which I figured there was no winning or losing. No better nor worse, just a pathway, a few sages of my choosing, and my own strength and will. (Which isn't much, love.)  

I spoke of mixed-media before. It's something that's growing in attraction to me, and right now I would give almost anything to write in my own handwriting on this thing, or leave my finger prints and doodles in thick paint all over the margins. Maybe that's part of my sloppiness lately, not caring whether or not if the mark I leave is "perfect", but instead looking for the beauty in everything in its wholeness, not just spliced and framed and edited by the ruler in me that was put there and dictated by other people. I'm not really particularly interested in that lately. But to fit under the wings of others, you must pare yourself down to their colors and specifications, and I guess I don't feel like my own wings are strong enough to hold and shelter me on their own. Still, I seem to pare myself down only to my own specifications. 

Hey, did you know that a small part of yourself is revealed only after you've loved another and been loved in return? It is, in a way, fascinating, and of course, remarkable beautiful.  Can you just imagine all the things we miss, though? Can you imagine all of the things all around and within us that we miss from being so frightened and blind? I read a short story today, the last in "Nine Stories", and, honestly, my favorite. Can you believe that crazy book begins and ends with a death, though? Geeze. 

As it was, the short story contained a beautiful little scene that sort of goes with what I'm speaking of, missing things that go on without your presence or observation. Also a concept that came up when I was watching the sunrise last Tuesday. Mmmmm. 

"He suddenly thrust his whole head out of the 

porthole, kept it there a few seconds, then brought it in just long enough to report, 

"Someone just dumped a whole garbage can of orange peels out the window."....

Teddy took in most of his head. "They float very nicely," he said without turning 

around. "That's interesting." 

   "Teddy. For the last time. I'm going to count three, and then I'm-" 

   "I don't mean it's interesting that they float," Teddy said. "It's interesting that I know 

about them being there. If I hadn't seen them, then I wouldn't know they were there, 

and if I didn't know they were there, I wouldn't be able to say that they even exist. 

That's a very nice, perfect example of the way--" 

   "Teddy," Mrs. McArdle interrupted, without visibly stirring under her top sheet. "Go 

find Booper for me. Where is she? I don't want her lolling around in that sun again 

today, with that bum." 

   "She's adequately covered. I made her wear her dungarees," Teddy said. "Some of 

them are starting to sink now. In a few minutes, the only place they'll still be floating 

will be inside my mind. That's quite interesting, because if you look at it a certain way, 

that's where they started floating in the first place. If I'd never been standing here at all, or if somebody'd come along and sort of chopped my head off right while I was--" ....

 Teddy lingered for a moment at the door, reflectively experimenting with the door 

handle, turning it slowly left and right. "After I go out this door, I may only exist in the 

minds of all my acquaintances," he said. "I may be an orange peel." "

(From "Teddy" in "Nine Stories" by JD Salinger)

Anyway, the last bit doesn't doesn't relate to what I've been thinking of so much, but that doesn't matter and it's an interesting lead off. 

I'm crazy, sorry. I guess part of the crazy is what's lending such appeal to multi-media. Yeah. Just slapping whatever's in my head and heart all over whatever blank space presents itself at the time. I don't really care though, I explore myself just as thoroughly as anything around me. And I suppose part of that exploration is testing some of whatever's inside on the outside, seeing if any of it can hold its weight and color with so much all around it. 

I think, with this post, I'm trying to see how far I can wander off the beginning course of things without losing anyone everyone who reads it, including myself. I'm still curious as whether or not if I can lead myself back to where I began and sew everything up tight and neatly. 

What do you think? 

What did it all feel like?

Ah, but that is an ending of no substance at all. It floats away, and that can be pretty, but I think it would be better if the ending buried itself deep in the ground rather than drifting off to ether. After all, that is what I'm attempting to do right here, whether I realized it at first or not; I am attempting to ground myself-- tie myself all over to life like a hot air balloon roped and bolted, straining from the ground.

Ben Howard: About Still Waters, what his music is to me

This is actually something I'd planned before that whole Kesang Marstrand

 post from a while ago. But now the two have inspired and collided and spun off from each other. Anyway, I rather enjoy documenting some of my music discoveries on here, lengthy or otherwise, and it creates an interesting sort of stream-of-consciousness commentary, which is something I feel like writing at the moment, but can't really figure out how to begin. 

Ben Howard - Oats in the Water
To begin with the first, found by my best friend, shared between and then adopted, a thing not my own enfolded into my being, by me.
Probably the one many of his fans heard first, for whatever reason, lately as a result of the song playing in a Walking Dead episode.
Absolutely beautiful, my love. Heart aching in a way, and the music has a lovely rhythm to it.
I love Ben's intonation and inflection, it sounds like he's singing it for the first time, with all of the thoughts and emotions fresh in his own mind. Reflective and darkly tranquil.

Ben Howard - Esmerelda
Lordy this video is lovely, black and white, the stormy skies, the waves crashing backwards, like time is rewinding underneath everything being said. It very much evokes a feeling of looking back to something long past and deeply missed.
All of Ben's music makes me just a little sad and rather meditative. It's fun to pray along to as well.
That all probably sounds pretty weird, and it's hard to explain, but that's as close as I'm getting at the present.

Ben Howard - Depth Over Distance
This is one of my very favorites, I first discovered a fantastic layered version on Tumblr, which was haunting and beautifully rainy. I adore both versions, though; this one's warmer, the other very still. Here's a link to the layered version, Layered Depth Over Distance

Ben Howard - Black Flies
Terribly lovely, and it seems like it was serendipitous the day I heard it, though I'm not sure. I think I wrote the October Fly poem the afternoon before I first heard Ben Howard, the first three of which were Oats in the Water, Esmerelda and Black Flies.
I remember walking in the dark, speaking about Ben's music, and having simultaneous thoughts, speaking at the same time, weaving bright threads of gold in the dark of the night, the winter not yet cold enough to draw our breath upon the air.

Ben Howard - Old Pine
He makes want so dearly to learn to really, truly play guitar.
All of his songs sound so different, and have such different subjects, but still they have a blue thread wound through, a life all their own shared throughout.

Ben Howard - To Be Alone
It sounds like he puts a lot into everything he writes and sings. Seriously, the emotion of it all, every one of his songs sounds like it's being made up as he sings it, every feeling felt in the deepest way. Reflective, Introspective... Do you suppose every artist, musician, public figure is a mirror whether they mean to be or not?
I act like I'm a mirror, though I'm not entirely sure I actually am. Or maybe I am too much a mirror.
Watching "Rise of the Guardians" last night, you wouldn't expect it to, I didn't expect it to, but it raised some rather deep questions within me. What is my core? I don't think I really know, and that's why I'm kinda lost. But I guess I also don't really want to look.

Ben Howard - Promise
"I think," he said, "that it's a good thing to get out of your usual, you know, surroundings. Because you did things out about yourself that you didn't know, or you forgot. And then you go back to your regular life and you're changed, you're a little bit different because you take those new things with you. Like a Hindu, except all in one life: you sort of get reincarnated depending on what happened and what you figure out. And any one place can make you go forward, or backward, or neither, but gradually you find all your pieces, your important pieces, and they stay with you, so that you're your whole self no matter where you go. Your Buddha self. That's my theory, anyway." 
-From "Criss Cross" by Lynne Rae Perkins 

Ben Howard - Keep Your Head Up
That looks like so much fun, can you imagine doing that? The grandeur of building and then using that magnificent slide? Can you imagine thinking of that and then actually sharing that dream with others and acting on it? :D It's absolutely beautiful, and yeah, it's a music video, so it's terribly idealistic and it's taken for granted that it was edited and a little contrived, but that's still cool, and from watching the behind the scenes video, it looks like it was a ton of fun. 


What does his music mean to you? How does it make you feel? What does it make you remember?

Kesang Marstrand: clear-sighted giddiness awoken within me

I think this is one of the days I've been waiting for to come to pass.
I've made a choice, and I've rediscovered something that once struck me as so beautiful, but I didn't investigate further, maybe because it just wasn't time. I took note, however, and that has enabled me to find it again.


Kesang Marstrand - The Spell I'm Under
I don't actually remember hearing this the first time, but I wrote
Kesang Marstrand 
"The spell I'm under" 
(Incredible voice, that one...) 
on a piece of paper taped to the side of my dresser. Today I glanced at it and thought it might be interesting to look the song up and listen to it again, and so began my plunge into a world I didn't know I already knew so well.
(The man in the video? The one with the baggy eyes? There is a lot of beauty in him, he just is.)

Kesang Marstrand - Colorless Farewell
Oh love, this video, this song, this may sound silly, but this is almost exactly what I would film and sing, maybe that's a little presumptive, but I feel this whole thing so deeply in my heart.
This is the music I've been looking for, the girl I thought I'd never find outside of myself.

Kesang Marstrand - Grow a Garden
This song makes me smile, this video looks so much like how I see the world, I understand it so much, I think, though that may be presumptive too, I don't care anymore, though, all that is beautiful in her I see in me, so I will try to stop being so critical of my own heart.
Everything is so profoundly beautiful lately, I thought I'd lost that, but it's been with me all along, I've just grown accustomed to everything being so beautiful, and my heart's already broken, so it doesn't break all the time every time anymore. Everything is beautiful, always.

Kesang Marstrand - Endless Skies
Different sound from a lot of her other songs. This one I don't really know how to say a lot of what it means to me. I guess I feel like hiding today, I feel like living in prayer and meditation and quiet today. Endless skies inside, you know. Reflection and introspection. Ohm.
It feels like she so freely writes the things I hold myself back from. Why?
I'm still so self-conscious of myself, of the things I like and want and discover and want to share.
You see this? What I'm doing right now? Maybe it looks uninhibited in a way, but also it's not. I choose to stop being so self-critical all the time, but I've chosen it before, and that voice is getting weaker, but it's still hanging around my neck, guarding my heart.
Today is supernova, though, a quieter sort of supernova, but supernova all the same, my heart burning pretty clear and bright. Can you see it?
My heart as the sun, dark spots here and there, but less than the light and shrinking as I see them and light them on fire again.

Kesang Marstrand - Bodega Rose
The second of her videos I watched today, right after The Spell I'm Under.

It is funny, this feeling like I know a person so well even though there's no way that's possible. Kinda naive and silly, but hey, interesante. Something to think about.
I wonder who she has loved? She sounds so earnest.
I may be supernova, but I am also eclipse and must remember to relax over and over again so the curtain may fall away.

Kesang Marstrand - Stand By Me
I think it's really cool that it looks like she just sat down and recorded this in her home one day, maybe with a phone or some sort of low-grade camera.
I guess I hold myself back in some things because I have this wish to share, but I don't think anybody wants to hear all that's in my head. Kinda the problem with my poetry lately, I write stuff and I don't like it and I figure it's not worth anything anyway. But it's still something close to my heart, things that mean a lot to me. How can one disregard and devalue the things one cares about? I guess I don't really take myself seriously, and I've noticed that in some strange, small way, I'm afraid that others will take me seriously.


I'm not sad today, I've acknowledged sadness in myself, and I've chosen to stop dwelling on that so very much, because it seems like I've become slightly bitter, and I don't want to be that. I'm still kinda snarky about myself, but hey, if I can write all of this on here, with a clear voice and steady eyes, I think I'll be ok.
Namaste

Mindy Gledhill - Anchor

Came across this song on a random blog the other day. I heard it/watched the video ages ago when I found a newspaper article about Mindy.
The first time I watched it, I was terribly inspired to go around wearing dress-up wings all the time, but that never happened, *snerk* I did once, though; I found a pair of old wings I made for a Halloween costume then handed down to my little sister and just wore them one day. Can't remember whether that was before or after I saw this music video though...

You know how kids will go around wearing the funniest things in public, like tiaras, spiderman costumes, fairy wings and capes? I think that'd be kinda fun, just whenever you feel like it, pretending to be someone else, or perhaps, becoming a truer self. Why be so boring and normal all of the time? 

Listener

Happiness.
I finally bought Listener's Woodenheart album. No longer shall I depend upon YouTube and an internet connection to listen to the heartfelt poetry of Dan Smith and his band members amazing music...
Their website

The song and video that started it all...

Stream of Consciousness: A response to personal knots untangled and Amanda Palmer's "The Art of Asking"

I am closed, but all the people I admire are open.
In my happiest, greatest dreams, I am open.

I am masked and cloaked and closely guarded.
I keep then all out, so why do I so badly want them in, why do I hope they'll let me in?

The things I want most to be, I keep in myself, away from others.
My heart is giving, my soul is tender, but I keep them draped in watchful distrust, not the blackest or heaviest of shrouds, but very interfering in the filtering of light from within and without.
I want to give, but to protect myself from potential harshness from others, I beat them to the punch and make myself feel bad first, even though they had no such intent themselves. I was not raised to be anything but my most authentic, honest self, I was never told that anything about me was anything but beautiful or multifaceted, and none of my friends have really stuck around long enough or been the kind of person to tell me anything of the sort. And yet, here it all is; the shroud, cloak and mask, the stinging barbs of "What you are you should not be" and "Nobody should/could/will ever like or love you".

But it is all lies, the voice that said I need all of this, the need for all of this, this in and of itself.
The Art Of Asking: it's okay to ask, it's okay to be open.
By asking, you are at your most vulnerable, your most earnest and authentic; your most open.
It is great, overflowing, boundless joy, and people respond to that on a very deep level, I respond to that on a very deep level.

Something will probably always be there (though I'm not going to over look the possibility that it won't), the worm-tongue whispering to the light of my being, "Hide. That is the only way to safety. Stay closed." But that voice is wrong; we get from others what we give, and I want the world to be as bright as I sometimes feel always.

Some Happy Thoughts from the Happy Box

Subject: A roller coaster for Amoniel.
Listening to and watching an incredible piano video on YouTube, my heart soaring, doing the [emotional] yoyo all through the video. Better than any roller coaster I've ever been on.
8/7/12

I am just happy right now; I got everything I need to done, my dresser's clean, Princess is all ready for bed and tomorrow's Independence day! We have one thing we're definitely going to do and a few others we might.
7/3/12
*Hey, full moon tonight.*

Subject: Camping at the lodge.
Last night, hiking in the dark with the big kids and J. and B., camping out in the open. Watching the stars and seeing a comet!
7/23/12

Tell me, what are you thankful for?

Well, Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and lately I've been thinking about what I'm grateful for in light of recent events, in the personal and global spectrum. So, without further ado, here's a list of the ten things I'm most thankful for as the hours tick off to Thanksgiving:
# Youtube
# Free internet
# Family
# Raven, B., J., and Kathryn
# My entire family
# The Tao Te Ching
# Lloyd Alexander
# Orson Scott Card
# Innovation
# Free thinkers

Whoever reads this, I'd very much like it if you would post a list of the ten or more things you're thankful for, I'm looking forward to reading your lists :)

Good times...