Superunknown...

For some of you, that title harkens back to the good ‘ol days of grunge music and the pivotal band Soundgarden. Others will no doubt race to a dictionary to see if ‘superunknown’ is a real word. Let me save you the trouble: it’s not.

I’m not comfortable with the unknown but then again, who is? Besides, what real guarantees are there anyway? Few. I have mentioned in the past that I used to be more comfortable with the unknown; was more willing to fly by the seat of my pants and make things up as I went along but those days are gone, my friend. Somewhere along the way maturity and responsibility came home to roost and I have become less willing to press my bets on the craps table of life. No biggie, it happens.

I have always been taught that a good map will always get me where I want to go and having laid out a map for my life and started to follow it, I feel I have arrived at some of my original destinations only to be disappointed by them, kind of like a trip to Los Angeles, and therefore needed a new heading to which I align my compass. That, of course, explains the existence of this blog, no?

The longer I dance with the job/calling beast, the more comfortable I become with its uncertainty, however the stakes feel heightened as a result of my recent break up. An ever-present feeling of having been dropped, and therefore needing to scramble, permeates my days and nights and most often manifests as sleep deprivation (check out the time stamp at the end of this post). Compound that with the unknown of my future plans (Jamaica? Chicago? Stay? Go?) and a sincerely paralyzing effect begins to set in; the paralysis of the superunknown.

This dance is not for the faint of heart, folks. And the fact that every now and then I feel a searing pain in my chest right around where my heart is supposed to be has me wondering if I backed the wrong horse and am in for some unpleasant truth when this race is done. If you are just joining us, you’ve picked a good time to do it. Things are about to get interesting.

And for as good as it feels to get this out there, I feel like I'm forcing this one. Of course, it is 3 AM so you really can't blame me.

Break Up Pop Makes So Much More Sense Now…

I have said in the past that I’m not treading on new ground with respect to self-discovery, reflection and all of the accelerated learning I’ve gained since having started this experiment of mine. And I stand by that statement. This is simply a forum which serves to help integrate the learning into my own cells and to possibly offer a parallel for anyone who has had an inkling of something along the way but ignored it because of a misplaced fear of being alone in that feeling and thereby wrongly labeled ‘weird.”

Sometimes these inklings of which I speak are wonderful “a-ha” moments and they usually arrive on the scene when it is least expected and timing could not possibly be worse. I feel the greater powers usually throw those moments at me at the most inappropriate time just to see how much I will do to savor them. And if life has taught me little else, it is to run with moments like these in order to take in the experience as fully as possible and to stop short only of being arrested. Stay with me, this gets better.

Physical exercise is one of the best methods I have for getting ‘stuff’ out of my system. I use this hallowed time as an opportunity to exorcise demons and work through conflicting and life-altering topics and it is not uncommon for me to space out at times as the wheels grind in my head.

During my most recent workout I had such a moment and as my brain churned over the question, “Is there any silver lining to this emotional shellacking of a break up? I mean, seriously, things could not get any worse.” (Turns out I am dead wrong about that last part but that is for another time.) As my reflection continued I discovered my body had found the rhythm of the music blaring over the pervading sound system and as the song came to its refrain, I instinctively began to sing along:

“Since you’ve been gone….”

Oh God. I was singing along to that wretched song by American Idol pioneer Kelly Clarkson. It was humiliating. And I wasn’t singing in any kind of whisper-like voice, mind you. There were distinct notes coming out of my mouth, friends. And like a freight train without brakes, I went right into the next line:

“I can breathe for the first time…”

I snapped out of my trance and nervously scanned the room full of Big Ten poster boys to see if any of them had heard me. A few of them had. One was even staring right at me with a look that said, “Dude, I can’t believe you know the words to this.” I can’t believe it either, but somehow I do know the refrain to that song and that fact began to make me physically ill. I hate that song, not to mention its not-so-distant cousins which are played ad nausea these days. But I scrounged for whatever pieces of my dignity that remained, I began to have one of the aforementioned “a-ha” moments:

These songs, which I have previously cast off as utter garbage, might actually have a bit of merit to them. Bear with me here.

For any child of the 80’s, the sad power ballad is a foundational piece of music vocabulary. Anyone between the ages of 27 and 35 knows the ease with which memories of love-gone-awry are evoked when they hear that first acoustic strum of, “Every Rose Has It’s Thorn.” It’s in our DNA - unfortunately. Those songs made sense at the time (even if only preliminary) and with two decades of space between then and now, they make just a bit more sense and these pop monstrosities are simply the modern equivalent.

Where the hell am I going with this? Nowhere of substance, I’ll wager. This is all probably just leftover shock of having been caught singing at the gym and an attempt to find a shred of justification. But as I said before, anything short of being arrested only helps drive these epiphanic moments home. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not extolling these ditties as insightful, wise or providing any semblance of a mantra as I press forward through this crap. At most they are good for an ounce of healing during the grieving process. Laughter is, after all, the best medicine and if I find I need higher doses of this high comedy, I can run to iTunes and download them all three times over.

For now this simply means I won’t be so quick to change the station while driving. I might even sing along a little.

Pick A Card, Any Card...

I love introspection, almost to a fault. I’ll look at just about anything as a possible metaphor for life or as a way to glean learning in some form. Yes, sometimes I’m trying too hard and I catch myself before going too Forrest Gump on people. “No,” I tell myself, “eating an ice cream cone is not like life.” Unless, of course, it’s Neapolitan ice cream. You see where I could go with this.

And it is with this seeker’s desire, and a grain of salt, that I had a tarot card reading around the question of meaning for this twisted, painful, uncomfortable and currently-nonsensical path on which I currently find myself. Having taken the fateful leap which started this epic journey, I keep finding myself with choices, paradoxes and polarities in front of me. I feel I am a lot closer to finding that which I am seeking. Simultaneously I feel I have an even larger and blanker canvass in front of me in the wake of my break up with Brighid. There exists the great possibility of working here in Chicago with MKP. At the same time lies the potential of putting life here on hold and going to Jamaica for the next 4 to 5 months to work with the poor.

Many possibilities.
Lots of wonder.
A ton of hope.
A mountain of pain, fear and discomfort.
Zero understanding of it all.

I like to think that it cannot get any crazier than it is right now but there are fewer and fewer sure bets these days. With that in mind, and with the feeling that I am in no position to naysay anything, I turned to the cards and this is what they had for me:

My state right now is one of creativity and I should remain open to what can be expressed through me. My resistance is in letting go, free falling and trusting my heart, which will start pounding as soon as the fall begins, will lead me. My response to this fear of letting go is to leap from the cage, spread my wings and learn to fly and thereby gain understanding. My intuition at this time will be to compromise, to do enough without necessarily going all out and thereby short changing myself in an underhanded way. The support I need to get past that is to examine my past tendencies, choices and patterns because change will come from seeing what I’ve done that has not worked and choosing differently. The opportunity for that comes from getting quiet and embracing silence. The final result of all of this will be the realization of a hard won truth, a fuller understanding of myself and living according to my own true nature.

It was so much easier when I was focused on that ice cream cone.