In Pursuit of Mysteries

Friday Night Coffee

I was going to bail from work early with it being a three day weekend and all but I started talkign to Dianthus in e-mail at work. She just started working on campus again this last week. In any case, it seemed like a good excuse to get coffee since we haven’t chatted much in the last few months outside of my BBQ the other week.

She jetted over while I whacked on the demo Xbox unit in the lobby. We have these stand-up Xbox and monitor units that they use at malls there. We then piled into my car and hauled ass down to….the mall!! Ah. Brings back the memories of days of yore except she and I would probably have just gone to the Denny’s nearby in those times.

We hung out, chatted about this or that, especially her fascination for Henry Kissinger and the nasty porn story she wrote featuring him (therapy time for you!!!) and then we were required to hit the Half Price Books looking for deals. She got a book on Curse Tablets and some fiction. I got Shadow of the Hegemon since I hadn’t read it yet. Then we wandered the mall for a bit and got Russian food.

My exciting Friday night! ;-)

Betrayal of Youthful Dreams

Shouldn't there be a German word for the betrayal of the dreams of youth by the reality of adulthood? They have a word for most everything else that sucks in life. I say all of this with a smile on my face as I'm in a good mood but I was pondering this all the other day (the betrayal of dreams, not German words).

I assume that my generation isn't that different than all of those that came before. I was born in '71 and grew up, effectively, in the 80s and 90s. Every now and then I feel a rage that isn't exactly a rage. It isn't anger. It isn't grief. It's something else. It's the feeling about all of the dreams that my parents and others planted in my head as a child that were and are lies. Did they mean to lie to me? No, I doubt it. I'm sure I'll get the same kind of thing from my own daughter someday. I think my parents didn't know any better and I'm not sure that I do. I bet everyone deals with this or at least people in every generation.

When I was a child, I was given the myth that many or most Americans are given. The world is a fair place. America is just. You can be anything that you want to be. The problems of the past are gone. Just the general feeling that things are right with the world and that potential is endless. You knew nothing of the horrors, of genocide, or even of being fucked over by a manager or a girlfriend or boyfriend.

This is in comparison to the reality that we find somewhere around adolesence but only really understand intimately over time and through examination. The way of the world is a wound that stretches through our souls. It aches and bleeds and never really heals. I'm not even sure it scars and scabs over to abuse the metaphor This feeling is a large part of what drove me to magic and spirituality and is what keeps me there. The world is not what is seems and I'm not satisfied with the seeming world around me.

Is the world Joy? I think you can find Joy and learn to be free enough and aware enough to see the inherent Joy in the world but, given our normal consciousness, culture and day to day activities, the world really is full of tears for most. It doesn't have to be that way but it is…

The sense of betrayal comes from this rude awakening that happens at some point. The dissonance between the reality of what we see on our doorsteps, the pain, the suffering, even the madness of many many people compared with the dreams that our heads are filled with as children. Is it simply innocence that we see the world that way? Should we prepare children better for this or would that just rob them of their childhood?

The shock of seeing the world as it is, at least as a physical place that we go to work, sleep, fuck, whatever in, can be too much for many people. How many teenage alcoholics, drug addicts, suicides did you know? How many people that you knew in college or right after it are lost? Every insane, shambling figure you duck away from on the streets at night was someone's child at some point and probably was somewhat normal then.

I guess this is part of why I'm drawn to Buddhism so much of the time. Existance is Pure Joy as has been said but the human condition doesn't necessarily partake of that.

None of this deals with the nameless rage that I feel about the world and my place in it at times…

Work Dinner

Last night I had a mandatory after-work work dinner. My boss wanted to talk with those of us who will be reporting to him in our new organization so he scheduled a two hour meeting post-work. The only plus is that we went to a fairly nice restaurant and work picked up the tab. I had a nice steak.

I generally don't care for things that cause my work to spill into my personal time. In many ways, it's bad enough that I have to work full time for “the Man” as it is without it also getting in the way of doing things like going to Brandy's sex magick class or the like.

Luckily, my boss generally does understand these things. He's been working 12 to 14 hours a day for the last month or so because of all of the shit going down and the upcoming reorg. It's hard to bitch too much about a work dinner when you know your boss and others at the table were at meetings on Saturday and he was home working on our performance reviews on Sunday. It's just not the life that I want though.

I've worked for him for two years now. Every now and then, he asks me when I'm going to become a test manager or what we need to do towards that end. I've explained to him that if being a test manager means working 12 or more hours a day, six days a week, why the hell would I do it? I know the pay wouldn't go up that dramatically at all.

Other than that, I'm pondering whether I want to do the two years MA in Buddhist Studies with Naropa or not. It isn't completely ideal (I'd prefer to do a History MA locally but they have no evening program) but I could do it while working if I wanted to do so. I'd probably still take a student loan out for a chunk of it because it's probably about $8K - $10K a year for the program. As long as I keep working, I should be able to pay it off if I do it.

I'm also getting to the point with a lot of the Tibetan Buddhist stuff that I think six or eight weeks of a Tibetan class so I could at least read the alphabet and know basic pronunciation rules would be helpful.