198. Le Jugement

This was a card that came up yesterday, reversed, in the ninth position on the Celtic cross spread. It reminds me just how steeped the Rider-Waite-Smith deck is in Judeo-Christian mythology.

The imagery evokes the Resurrection before the Last Judgement from 1 Corinthians: “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

In Pamela Coleman Smith’s artwork, the archangel Gabriel awakens the dead with a trumpet blast, who gesture reverently and welcomingly with open arms. The figures below are grey and ashen, while everything above bursts with color.

The banner on the trumpet is likely the Saint George’s Cross, which could be a reference to overcoming the dragon (Revelation 12:8). There’s also a connection in the red and white to the Magician’s clothing. The ocean swelling in the background could be a reference to the sea giving up its dead (Revelation 20:13), but there’s also the connection to the river that seems to flow throughout the Major Arcana cards, starting with the Empress. It mirrors the swelling waves in the foreground of the Fool, the river flowing through Death, and the water in Temperance, The Star, and The Moon. One could say that there’s also a connection to the High Priestess, with her blue robes flowing like water.

Grey is a masculine color in Tarot. The Emperor’s throne, the Hierophant’s church and Justice’s temple; the Chariot, the Hermit, the overcast sky in Death; the Devil’s wings, and the towers in The Tower card and The Moon are all grey (and, dare I say, phallic). The pillars in the High Priestess are black and grey.

The trumpet here has particular meaning for me, as my father is a professional trumpeter.

Some keywords that Waite associated with this card in its upright position are Judgement, Rebirth, Inner Calling, and Absolution. Reversed, it can suggest self-doubt and self-judgement.

Reversed, the Judgement card suggests that you may be indulging yourself in doubt and self-judgement. Your deliberation is causing you to miss the new opportunities that await. A certain amount of momentum has accumulated behind what you have achieved, which could propel you further. If actions are taken now, such momentum will not be lost. Therefore now is not the time for being cautious or introverted, rather it is time to move onwards with confidence and pride.

Additionally, this card suggests that you may be overly hard or critical of yourself and not allowing yourself to truly learn from your mistakes. You may have made some mistakes in the past but see these as learning experiences rather than failures or faults. (BiddyTarot.com)

When I laid out this card, it was in the ninth position in the Celtic cross spread, which indicates any hopes and/or fears of the Querent. One of the major reasons I really haven’t gone out or made any progress with the workshop of my one-act opera is this sea of self-doubt that I’ve been awash in the last couple of weeks. So many things life recently haven’t been working. Job interviews I’ve gone on have proven to be disappointments (the last one didn’t even give a reason: just “applicant was not chosen”); the guys I’ve seen on dates haven’t panned out; my grad school applications… well, that whole thing was rushed and poorly done to begin with.

Tarot scholar Tara Miller writes that “Judgment represents the House of Gabriel, the knowing that Judgment Day can come at any moment; live your life to the fullest, as the trumpet of Gabriel is at hand.” (Wikipedia)

It wasn’t until I renounced my Christian faith that I realized how truly precious and rare life is. As a Christian, I was taught from day one that life is a gift from God. To squander it by pursuing our own wants, desires, and pleasure is arrogance, and a sin. “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36)

What I was most angry about after becoming an atheist was not that I’d been fooled or that I’d believed lies my whole life. It was that I’d lost so much time and experience. Instead of learning about Creationism, I could’ve been discovering the wonders of science and our world. I could’ve been discovering who I am, what I care about, what my values as a human being are. I could’ve been exploring my sexuality as a gay man, making mistakes early in life (when you’re supposed to make them), all on the way to finding a partner—and more importantly, a groundedness in who I am as a person. My parents and teachers were wrong: our rock is not Christ. We have to become our own rocks that can weather the storms and arrows of life.

So if life is so short, why do I keep allowing these petty, negative scripts to dominate mine?

Why do I superimpose an inner monologue on everyone, assuming they’re thinking how unattractive, unoriginal, neurotic, unfit, unsuitable, incomplete, and poorly trained I am?

This is why I often stay at home—because, no matter how irrational I know it is, my lizard brain interprets every stray glance or comment as betraying what people really think of me. And the thoughts cascade into self-doubt, self-hate, and self-judgement.

Of course they rejected your grad school applications. You’re a poor excuse for a competent adult and musician.

Of course no one wants to date you. You’re complicated, selfish, difficult to live with, and you don’t enjoy going out to gay bars.

Why bother going anywhere when you’ll just feel like an outsider? No one understands you. Other people know instinctively how to interact with other humans. You? You’re broken, damaged, and worthless.

And so I shut down, retreat and hide myself away. I let my potential stagnate rather than risk having to confront these messages.

The inherent meaning in the Judgement card is transition, one of awakening from death to “new life.” But I need to face the illumination my subconscious is shining on these issues.

195. Six de Bâtons

The first few of weeks of 2014 have been hit and miss. Aside from a handful of social outings, I’ve been hermited away for the most part. There’ve been several close calls with jobs and a couple of interviews, but no luck so far. Not the best way to start the year, especially when the previous one was so dismal.

I’ve decided to make a change for this year in blogging. Since the inception of this site, most of my posts have had one-word titles. The idea was to draw from Word-of-the-Day sites, like Dictionary.com’s, and use that word as a guide for processing thoughts and experiences.

Lately, I’ve been engaging more with Tarot. I posted about a little this last time, but the more I work with the deck, the meanings of each of the cards in the Major and Minor arcana, and the different spreads used in Tarot readings, the more I’m interested in their potential application, especially from a Jungian perspective. The basis of Jungian psychology is the view that the human unconscious is largely unreachable except through the symbolic world of dream, myth, and folklore—the world of archetypes, “universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct” (Wikipedia).

For example, the twenty-two cards of the Major (or Greater) Arcana. We see The Fool at the beginning of his journey, full of hope, potential, and ready to learn the lessons on his way through the Major Arcana. This seems to correspond to the archetype of The Child, who (according to many Jungians) is present in all humans throughout their life. The Empress represents fertility, beauty, nature, and abundance—corresponding to the “Anima” archetype, “the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female” (according to Joseph Campbell). The Hermit represents soul-searching, introspection, and inner guidance, which corresponds to the “Wise Old Man” archetype.

As I do my own readings, and let others read for me, I use the cards (as I said in my previous post) as more a Rorschach test than for divination. Each card and its position in the spread has a significance. As querent, I listen for anything that resonates on the psychological level.

• The Star reversed, for example, might suggest that I’m dwelling on negative issues and thoughts, to the point of them derailing any progress or healing that I’m making.
• The reversed Ten of Swords might suggest that I’m still carrying around old wounds from past hurts, and that I still haven’t dealt with them.
• The Page of Pentacles could suggest that, contrary to what I might feel or believe, I have the necessary skills and experience to succeed—but need to have clear goals and a plan laid out to put it all into motion.

These are all true things for me right now. But they’re not true because some mystical powers-that-be orchestrated how I shuffled. They’re true because the meaning could always be true. The question is: is the meaning true right now? Sometimes a card is just a card.

So my plan for the next couple of months is to go through the Tarot deck, card by card, and using a randomly drawn card as the basis for self-examination.

This afternoon, I drew the Six of Wands, from the Lesser, “Minor” arcana.

The Six of Wands depicts a man wearing a victory wreath around his head, riding a white horse through a crowd of cheering people. The white horse represents strength, purity, and the success of an adventure, and the crowd of people demonstrates public recognition for the man’s achievements. The wand held by the rider also has a wreath tied to it, further emphasizing success and achievement. He is not afraid to show off to others what he has accomplished in his life so far, and even better, the people around him cheer him along. (Source: BiddyTarot.com)

Wands are typically associated with creativity, with the Pythagorean element of fire, and the Jungian function of intuition. According to one site, “Wands are the creative application of what we experience in the world to make our lives more enjoyable.”

The number six in Tarot typically represents a journey into harmony. There are two parts to this journey. The first is departure. The second is the journey itself. In the process of getting from one place to another, one must leave something behind. In finding my “true” self, I had to leave behind the heterosexual expectations that my family and community had for me, as well as the belief in God that I’d “inherited,” that connected me to my family and everything that was home.

Home no more home to me, whither must I wander?

Much of the significance of each card in the Minor Arcana has to do with what comes before, and that’s where meaning can be found. In the Five of Wands, five men are playing or sparring with their wands (oh, the subtext), each going in a different direction, but with no contact. It typically signifies competition, strife, confusion, or disagreement. In the Six of Wands, that confusion has been overcome through focused work to achieve harmony.

I tend to focus on defeats and obstacles rather than successes and progress. At the present, worries about finances and employment (and getting my fracking landlord to fix the fracking hole in my fracking ceiling) have been sapping my creativity. However, in the past few weeks, I finished revising my one-act opera and orchestrated it. I wrote an article published today about my first Christmas back with my Evangelical family in two years that my editor called “one of the best essays I’ve read in a long time.” And even though my grad school applications were rejected this time, I’m getting back on course to aligning my career with my passions and what I’m truly good at.

The message I see here: Look at what you want, not at where you are, not at what you’ll be.

194. sozzled

I have tried to start this one several times, the first attempt taking place around 11:50 PM on Tuesday. The reason it’s proving so difficult is that there’s a lot to say about 2013, and also not very much.

Good things have happened in the last year. I made a tremendous amount of headway in therapy towards overcoming my past. I made a number of very good friends, two of whom I’m house sitting for this December and the first few weeks of January. For better or worse, I reconnected with my family. We saw enormous gains in marriage equality and LGBT rights in the United States, particularly in my home state of Minnesota. I finally decided to make a change and pursue graduate study in music composition.

A lot pretty bad things have happened too. In March I broke up with my boyfriend of nine months as it had been clear to me for some time that we had vastly divergent goals in life and just weren’t right for each other. I got laid off at the end of June from my temp job where I’d been for fifteen months, and spent the next five months looking for work. Even this last job wrapped up a week and a half early. I applied to three different graduate schools, in the process waking every single demon of self-doubt, self-loathing, and depression that’s plagued me over the years. Then a few weeks ago I got a rejection letter from one of those schools.

Last week, for fun, I decided to do a Tarot reading for myself as an exercise in unconscious self-examination. Mind you, I don’t believe in mysticism. I view Tarot almost as an analytical tool, like an ink blot test, the random layout of cards in certain positions telling the “Seeker” a story that they can draw a message from, like we do with any other media.

Using the “Tree of Life” spread (so called because the position and significance of the cards follows a symbol from the Kabbalah), these are the cards I drew:

1. The High Priestess
2. Five of Swords, reversed
3. Knight of Swords
4. Ten of Cups
5. Seven of Pentacles, reversed
6. Ace of Swords
7. Four of Wands
8. King of Pentacles, reversed
9. The Fool, reversed
10. Strength, reversed

A friend of mine did a quick interpretation and had a few insights. Without going into too much detail, the main thrust of what he had to say was that there’s been quite a bit of misfortune lately, and those dark times aren’t entirely over yet, but that there’s still time to avert disaster. “You’ve suffered enough setbacks that it’s not letting you make the most of your talents,” he said, “a lot of wasted energy and lack of focus.” Basically, I need to change how I’m doing and thinking about a lot of things—in other words, adapt or continue in the same patterns that lead nowhere good.

The past couple of months I have been pretty withdrawn, at times almost hermetical. Aside from a few gatherings or going to work, I’ve taken to shutting myself away from the world and from people. Mostly this is because, as an introvert, other human beings exhaust me, especially in large numbers. But there’s also a darker reason. Part of it was being unemployed for so long; of sending in application after application and either hearing nothing or getting rejection notes. Then there’s the mountain of rejections I’ve had with my music, and feeling a total failure in that department. There’s also my love life, which has been a virtual wasteland.

I tend to internalize all of these things, interpreting the underlying proverbial message of the universe into pithy statements such as: You’re A Failure. You’re A Massive Disappointment. Nobody Wants You.

So I tend to shut myself away, terrified that people are going to see through me to the failure underneath. Whenever I do venture out, I interpret glances or lack of interaction as evidence of judgement, that even my friends think I’m not worth their time, that they’re all thinking what a horrible disappointment I am.

On New Years Eve, I see status updates from friends on Facebook and Twitter, going to parties and celebrating the coming year, often with significant others. There were several parties I could have gone to, but I couldn’t bring myself to go out. I didn’t want to be reminded yet again that I’m single, lonely, seemingly incapable of connecting with others. The roads were shitty, it was about eight degrees below zero, and I’d have to shut the dogs I’m looking after up in their room. So I stayed home, watched Spirited Away, wishing that such stories of being whisked away to some other world to discover one’s secret inner strength were possible. But they’re not.

It is this kind of thinking that needs to change in the coming year. It’s difficult when so many of the signs seem to point to what I fear is true being the case, but negative thinking tends to beget negative outcomes. For good or ill, we often write self-fulfilling prophesies.

I also need to be more social in the coming year. I’m always surprised, and even feel a little dubious, whenever someone says that I’ve been missed. “You can’t really miss me,” I think. “What is there to miss?”

Mostly, I just feel like a poor excuse for an adult, and with that comes a deep sense of shame. I spent so much time developing my musical talents that I neglected to develop other abilities, like self-discipline, learning to relate and talk to others, etc. etc. Maybe these expectations are mere fictions and most people feel a similar lacking within themselves.

2013 was one of the saddest and loneliest years that I can remember, and I certainly don’t want a repeat of it. It’s going to take a major change in thinking to make course corrections, but it’s also probably going to require community and the assistance of friends.

192. solstice

My breakfast this morning was two tumblers of whisky (neat), about three fingers each. This after getting up to feed and water the dogs I’m looking after for the month. No sense in them going hungry. I got an email last night from the University of Michigan at 11:10PM, which seems an odd hour to be sending emails. A bit like waiting until you know someone’s gone to leave a voicemail. The email read:

I regret to inform you that your application for admission to the Music Composition MA program at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance has not been approved. We are therefore unable to offer you the opportunity to audition. This decision is based on a careful review by the faculty committee of your pre-screening recording and your application materials. The staff of the Admissions Office and the Composition faculty are not able to provide individual feedback from student auditions because of the volume of candidates to consider. We ask your understanding and thank you in advance. As you continue your college search, I know that you will find another school at which to pursue your studies. We wish you continued success and every good wish for a career that will fully utilize your interests and abilities.

Basically, a “thanks for trying, now fuck off” email. This might not have been such a blow had my temp job not ended yesterday, a week and a half early than what I was planning on. It also might not be such a disappointment were I not single again for the holidays. Last year was the first time in a while that I’ve been employed during the Yule season, and the first time ever that I’ve been dating someone for a major holiday. Now I’m back to where I was in 2011, when I told my parents that I wanted nothing more to do with them for their bigotry, I was still reeling from heartbreak and my loss of faith, and I’d just been laid off from another temp job right after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. As in, thanks a lot. There are still two applications out there that might yield something, but I’m terrified now that the results will be the same there—that my work just isn’t good enough on its own to merit a place as a cohort in graduate school. A friend of mine tells me that it may have nothing to do with the quality of my application or compositions; that it’s more about finding a group of students that coalesce together. If that’s the case, I may never get into grad school as I’m really an oddball when it comes to music. And everything else. What I’m terrified over is the prospect of yet another year of living in purgatory. I’m tired of working these temp jobs that pay far below the skill level required for the work the client needs performed. I’m sick of being expendable. I’m sick of working with the 9-to-5ers, the workaday folk who go home after a long day at the office of doing something they ultimately don’t care about and aren’t invested in; who are planning to working long enough to cash in on their 401K pension and retire somewhere comfortable. This is not the world I belong in. Remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ofKJ6UFv60 Instead of a Shakespearean subtext, my inner voices have quite another Jungian game going on:

• Id: Running back and forth, simultaneously trying to make ends meet and bash my head against a wall to get anything artistic done.
• Ego: Uncertain about whether I’ve made the right career decision or whether my music is even good enough to pursue a career in, even though it’s pretty much the only thing I’m really good at and give a fuck about.
• Superego: Those strident subconscious voices that are difficult to shake, like Christianity:
  • Every single rejection letter or person who has rejected my music, told me that it’s too difficult, or that it’s just not very good.
  • My lack of business sense and self-promotion; of knowing how to strategize, network, who to talk to, how to talk to people, etc.
  • Frustration over my dating life and singleness; over how I haven’t found a guy yet who ultimately doesn’t disappoint me (cf, Fiona Apple); how my current scheme is to find a like-minded guy at grad school; feeling anxiety over nearly being 31 and that I’m at the age where younger guys who are into “older guys” are interested in me but not interested in a relationship.

That bloodcurdling scream the girl playing Ophelia lets out at the end of that scene? That’s the sound in my head almost all the time these days. “Get thee to a nunnery” indeed. I’ve also grown weary of the Midwest and its seemingly provincial attitude toward sophisticated art and music. I once shared the recording of my senior composition recital with a supervisor of mine, and he called it “long-haired music,” a reference (I suppose) to graduate students of the 60s and 70s being somewhat shaggy in appearance. I’ve sent pieces of mine to ensembles all over the Twin Cities, hoping to get performances, or the very least readings. No bites. If I get feedback at all, it’s usually something to the effect of: It’s really not what we’re looking for. … thanks, now go fuck yourself. It’s difficult not to think that I’m the common denominator here. What’s more probable? That hundreds of people have had the same independent reaction to my music, or that my work just… sucks? The latter is what I’m afraid of. We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks as I wait to see what happens with the Eastman School of Music and with the University of Southern California. I have a little hope, but not a lot. In the meantime, Christmas is in four days and I feel like drinking myself silly to forget that I’m single and miserable, and that my entire family is fundamentalist Christians.

124. weltschmerz

This is not a word of the day, and frankly, I don’t care very much if it is or is not. I’m frankly tired of the self-imposed rules and standards I weigh myself down under.

Here’s my Word Of The Day, and it’s pretty apropos at that:

Weltschmerz, noun: 1. Mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state. 2. A mood of sentimental sadness.

This is the word that sums up my mood.

Last night I watched the independent British film Weekend, with Tom Cullen and Chris New, about two guys who hook up at a bar and then try and decide if what they have is something more serious. It’s a totally non-traditional romantic drama in about every sense of the word; and very raw, in a way that will shock most Americans. There’s a scene towards the end where they make a wry joke about, “Is this our Notting Hill moment?” They both admit that they’ve never seen it, but figure that that particular moment is when someone comes running up in the rain to make a romantic declaration and everything gets wrapped up nicely.

Which it does not.

Which is a bit more like real life.

In real life, women get crushed by bulldozers. Tibetan nuns burn to death protesting brutal Chinese occupation. Children are molested by middle school teachers. There is no third act, no climax, no catastrophe leading to dénouement.

Freytag works great for describing what’s on paper—not so great off. Life is a bit too unpredictable, and most of the bits in between the exciting bits very boring.

How is a raven like a writing desk? They produce very few notes, and all of them flat.

Raised in American culture, in a media saturated with happy stories, we have these presupposed ideas about how life is supposed to go; and romantic dramas/comedies all start just before the big relationship of the protagonist’s life is about to begin. And we all seem to live in that place for whatever reason, our life stories written for us by the big Hollywood studios that bring us (and our dollars) back to the multiplexes and the Netflix instant queues again and again, like addicts looking for a fix of comfort and security of the hope that maybe—just maybe—life doesn’t suck as much as we secretly think it might.

There’s a bit from an Okkervil River song (“Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe”) that goes:

No fade in: film begins on a kid in the big city. And no cut to a costly parade (that’s for him only!). No dissolve to a sliver of grey (that’s his new lady!) where she glows just like grain on the flickering pane of some great movie.

In life, we don’t matter. We are all the protagonists of our own stories, but no one else is watching. We are the lone author and audience. Everyone else is just extras, with a few people getting speaking parts and supporting roles. And we are the extras and supporting players in other protagonists’ stories.

For me, a gay man, I don’t have stories playing for me up on the alluring cinema screen. Those are stories for the straights, for the people whose lives have been written out for them if they choose to pick up that volume. I spent most of my formative years pretending that I wasn’t attracted to the other boys. This isn’t my era. The young people of my era are coming out now when they’re seven or eight. They’ll flirt with other young boys when you’re supposed to be learning how to flirt. Some of them will get hell, but in this changing climate most of them probably won’t.

I’ll never learn how to flirt, how not to not pretend that I’m attracted to a guy; to openly stare across a room at someone.

A few moments ago this guy who lives about a mile away asked me if I wanted to come over and cuddle. I don’t know if he meant any more or just that. As nice as that would be, to have someone, I don’t want just someone. Right now, I want to cuddle with a guy who knows me, who knows just by looking that I’m feeling bad and insecure and crazy. I’m so tired of being crazy and lonely because I’m crazy and can’t carry on a normal relationship with another human being because I’m broken because (cliché cliché) my parents fucked me as a child. (Not literally. Figuratively.)

But life doesn’t sort itself out into three neat little acts: exposition, introduction, dramatic premise, situation, inciting incident; conflict, obstacle, antagonist, low point; climax, falling action, equilibrium, resolution. Doesn’t work that way.

I need to be found. Not by some god, which is what they always told me I needed. I’m tired of other people telling me what I need, even though I don’t even know what it is I need.

I need to be found by someone.

But that probably won’t happen.

And don’t tell me that I just have to wait and be patient. The people who sell you that line are the people who got lucky, who didn’t have to wait, or who are on the other side. The other side always looks rosier once you’ve made it past the thorns, which seems to be the whole tenor of my life. The promise of roses, the potential for roses, but just thistles.

It’d be great if my life were a movie, but it doesn’t work like that.

In real life, the guy gets on the train and leaves for two years, and we never know if he comes back. No earnest, soggy, moor-top confessions of love. No last-minute interventions from a benevolent, sentimental author. No hero overcoming all obstacles in spite of impossible odds for sake of paramour. No convenient character arcs.

Our life is not a movie. No ‘maybe’ about it.

117. excogitate

excogitate, verb: 1) To think out; devise; invent; 2) To study intently and carefully in order to grasp or comprehend fully.

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Now is not the time for verbal swordplay, for unlikely flights of imagination and wildly shifting perspectives, for metaphysical conceit, for wit.

And nothing would be worse than a scholarly analysis. Erudition. Interpretation. Complication. Now is a time for simplicity. Now is a time for, dare I say it, kindness.

I thought being extremely smart would take care of it. But I see that I have been found out.

— Margaret Edson, Wit

I’ve always been a solitary sort of person. Just ask my roommates. Like the stereotypical scholar, I can hole away in my room for a day or two, seemingly without the need for human company. The west end of my bedroom is lined with books up to the ceiling, and my headboard is currently filled with volumes that are in the process of being read. I often emerge having forgotten how to actually talk to people, or converse with them in a way that isn’t on paper or screen. Such is the peril of the writer.

When I was about twelve years old, I distinctly recall driving to church with my family. I don’t remember specifically why, but on this occasion I can remember being angry with my father. That isn’t particularly notable since I was often angry with my father. Aside from the occasional connection over music, we’ve never really gotten on well. That in itself is also probably not particularly notable. It’s the age old theme, isn’t it? Father against son? Son against father? The Jungians were fascinated by “father hunger” and the pang felt for an absent parent, physically or otherwise.

My own father was physically present in the home as much as he could be. When we were younger he literally worked across the street at the Christian community college he taught at in rural Kansas. My two younger sisters and I were homeschooled during our entire stay there (1986-1993), so we’d see him when he came home for lunch some days. But he was largely absent emotionally. He and I rarely spent any time together, and if we did it often ended in a fight and me getting sent to my room. I don’t know if I even knew what was going on, if I knew to ask for his attention, or if he even knew how to reach out. Likely he did not. His own father was distant, from what I can hear, and physically abusive towards his own children.

So that afternoon, driving to church, sitting behind my dad with my sisters in the backseat of his blue Saturn, I suddenly decided then and there that I was going to have nothing more to do with love of any kind. (Yes, I know, very Ring des Nibelungen. And yes—das Rheingold is a gimmick.) It was messy, nonsensical, human, and left the lover open to getting taken advantage of and hurt. The best course of action was to shut myself off from the world; to be hard and untouchable; and all that sort of thing.

But the sad thing is that it rather worked. Now, this is around the time that I started to enter puberty, and was also starting to get an inkling that I might not be heterosexual, despite all the indoctrination and against the expectations of my family, so this may have been an unconscious tactic to guard against them finding out.

Part of it was too that I was tired of not being accepted by my family. Shortly after this my parents started attending parenting seminars and began to see all of the mistakes that they’d made, but it was rather too late for all of that. The damage had been done. And to keep myself safe, I shut my family out. I refused to let any of them love me, because for so much of my early years “love” meant getting hurt. Sadly, this also meant that attempts on my parents’ part to make amends for that glanced off, and were met instead with violent resentment from my child-self.

Even now, I still resent my parents for what they didn’t do then; but there’s no going back to change anything. They’ve apologized, but I doubt it will ever be enough.

Yes, other people have had much worse from their parents—years of physical (and even sexual) abuse, neglect, abandonment, etc. But it feels as though they left me half-formed as an adult. Most people miss out on those things from their parents, but find it in friends or other parental figures. My younger sister and I were homeschooled up until the 9th grade; but aside from some friends from church and a few kids in the neighborhood, I didn’t have many friends. My younger sister had many friends from dance, and my youngest sister had friends from band. For me, I threw myself into the only thing I was decent at: piano. I practiced a lot, sometimes up to four hours a day.

For me, love, self-worth and acceptance are tied up in what I do, and how good I am at those things. Any failure (perceived or real) is viewed as a personal defect that downgrades my personal worth. The only way that I felt I could get my parents’ approval was to be really good at piano. And for a while I was. Then I was good at composition. And then I wasn’t getting commissions, and getting rejection letters from competitions and contests and artists.

And the sick thing is that I know intellectually what’s happening. I’m writing about it in an almost auto-narrative fashion! But I can’t seem to do anything about it.

As desperately as I want to be in a relationship, there’s no way I could be in one right now without unconsciously sabotaging it. I can’t believe that anyone loves me because I don’t truly love myself.

So much for being smart.

106. review

What’s a year, really? 12 months? 52 weeks? 525,600 minutes (or, when I asked Google, 525,948.766 minutes)? Does the earth wake up as it’s hurtling around the sun at a dizzying 67,000 miles per hour (that’s 107,000 kilometers per hour for my metric friends) and think, “I say! This looks awfully familiar. Haven’t I been here before?” After all, it doesn’t have much else to think about. It’s cleared its orbital zone, except for the occasional stray asteroid or comet that waltzes into its path that occasionally crashes into it.

This is nothing compared to how fast we’re hurtling around our home galaxy. The sun (and therefore the earth as well and all that’s on it) is moving at an incredible 483,000 miles per hour (792,000 km/hr). We orbit once every 225 million years.

225 million years ago (Mya), the earth was in the beginning stages of the Mesozoic Era, in the middle of the Triassic Period known as the Carnian stage; with the continents having just formed into one massive supercontinent known as Pangea. There were no ice caps as the continental mass was centered around the equator, and earth was hot and dry. Tiny dinosaurs called archosaurs were beginning to evolve, along with the ancestors of the first mammals—tiny shrew-like creatures called adelobasileus that appeared about 225 Mya.

That should give us some perspective on what has happened in the past galactic year.

The primates (our direct ancestors) appeared about 65 Mya. The genus Homo didn’t appear until around 2.5 Mya, and even then, Homo sapiens (modern humans) didn’t evolve until about 200,000 years ago. Putting that in terms of mean solar time, if we were to set a timer for 60 minutes…

• 5 minutes after we hit “start” (when the earth began its galactic “year”), the first mammals begin to appear;
• 15 and a half minutes later, North America separates from Africa;
• 42 minutes later a meteor crashes into Chicxulub, in the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, resulting in the mass extinction of 80-90% of marine life and 85% of land species, including the dinosaurs;
• 43 minutes later, primates appear;
• With a minute to go, at 58 seconds, upright walking hominins appear;
• At 59.81 seconds, Human and Neanderthal lineages start to diverge genetically;
• At 59.85 seconds, Heidelberg Man develops speech;
• Modern man appears just milliseconds before the timer goes off.

We’ve barely been on this earth. We can trace our first modern male ancestor back to about 60,000 years ago, but in terms of the galactic “year,” all of recorded history is but a fraction of a millisecond.

If that though doesn’t fill you with awe, wonder and amazement — nothing will.

Then there’s an illustration on Wikipedia of the Earth’s location in the known universe, which is equally awe-inspiring. As Douglas Adams wrote, describing the horrific torture device known as the Total Perspective Vortex,

When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.”

All that is to say that 2011 was a pretty awful year for many of us, and we weren’t sorry to see it go.

I did have hopes going into 2011:

• By now I’d have at least gotten more established in musical theatre;
• That I’d have found a day job that was enjoyable and would be more financially stable;
• That I’d be in a serious relationship by now;
• That come early summer I’d have a home church in SafeHouse, and possibly even a relationship with Seth;
• That I’d have achieved more success with my compositions.

Looking back on it now, none of those hope and dreams came anywhere close to being met:

• I started a temp job in February that I ended up loving; that seemed like it might lead to a career until it abruptly ended at the end of November;
• I had a horrific experience music directing Sound of Music where I had little support from theater staff or production crew (including the director); was constantly undermined by a number of key auxiliary cast members (my principles and orchestra rocked though); and subsequently never wanted to direct another musical again;
• I had my heart broken by Seth in the worst possible way on my birthday, which led to becoming an atheist and losing that community I was looking forward to being a part of in SafeHouse, along with my faith (although in a way, my coming out as an atheist was as inevitable as my coming out a gay man—that is to say, both should’ve happened much sooner);
• I had a string of unsuccessful and very disappointing dates, flings and relationships, all of which left me feeling less desirable, more defective and unlovable, and less hopeful of ever finding a guy who wants to commit to me as much as I do to him;
• My trumpet sonata was premiered in Tacoma in June, but sadly that performance hasn’t led to more opportunities like I thought it might. I’d sort of hoped that trumpet players might hear it and want to pick it up to learn it, and maybe even commission new works for trumpet from me, which would lead to more visibility, more musicians knowing my name and my work, and commissioning more and more work. But no.

Add to that that at the end of this year (on Christmas Day, to be precise), I gave my dad the last $225 dollars that I owed him for my car, whereupon he gave me the title to said car; and I told him and my mom and that I wanted nothing more to do with them again— at least so long as they hold their fundamentalist beliefs about homosexuality.

• So, to close out 2011, I divorced the family that I’ve had for twenty-eight years.

That’s heavy stuff.

I feel even less sure of myself going into 2012 than I did going into 2011. That beginning was similar to this year’s: with not knowing what my job prospects are; waiting to hear from the temp agency about job possibilities while sending out resumes in the chance of striking gold; and generally feeling miserable, lonely and depressed.

Pathetic.

I’ve said this before, but I feel as though I seriously fucked up in college. Majoring in music composition seemed like the perfect idea, and the future seemed so certain. Everyone thought that I showed great potential and talent as a composer. I’d be a working composer by, well, twenty-eight.

What I didn’t factor was that I had no business sense or training. That I’d had my head in the clouds during high school and college, focusing so narrowly on the Arts, on music and writing. That I’d failed to develop any Real World skills. And the economy drying up.

Then I’d graduated with said degree in music composition and…

… now what was I going to do?

Most of the people I know who are successful figured out fairly early what they were good at and wanted to do, and started doing it. They got the education they needed or cultivated the skills and the experience. And I feel as though I realized too late that I started down the wrong career path, and it’s a dead end. I’m not even good enough at what I am trained at. I’ve worked a variety of office jobs. I do okay, but always seem to find myself in situations where opportunities to impress my supervisors arise, and I try, but quickly find myself in way over my head.

And I crash.

So I don’t know what to do. A few hundred years ago I could’ve found gainful employ with the Church directing a choir, or with the nobility as a court musician, or even as a writer. And I’m apparently barely passable as any of those. Today you have to be extremely good and extremely clever (or lucky) to make it like that. I’m detail oriented, yes; but I lack the organizational and strategic-thinking skills that are needed to be truly successful.

This is normally where a manager comes in: someone who recognizes that an individual possesses talent—but not necessarily savviness. Often that means just being in the right place at the right time. And I’ve no clue how to make that sort of thing happen. Ira Glass randomly discovered David Sedaris reading his diary in a Chicago club in the early ’90s—a discovery that led to the publication of the SantaLand Diaries, his account of working as a seasonal elf in Macy’s SantaLand during Christmastime in New York City.

He got lucky.

Artists have a somewhat symbiotic, commensalist relationship with society. We don’t really contribute anything tangible to society, aside from making it more aesthetically pleasing perhaps. Kind of like remora fish and sharks. We provide “valuable services,” but the shark could get by just fine without us.

So while hurtling through the universe at 483,000 miles per hour, circling a nuclear fireball at 67,000 miles per hour, at the bottom of a deep gravity well, I’m looking hard at myself and must conclude:

I feel like a failure.

91. yen

Brief update this evening.

Spent most of the day in bed with a fever. Started feeling not-so-great yesterday afternoon and by the time I got home all I really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep.

Which is precisely what I did.

All I wanted (besides to not feel like the second coming of Hades, who, by the way, is a character in my novel – and no, HE DOESN’T SPEAK IN SMALL CAPS) was for someone to bring me potato soup and maybe read to me or something.

But, alas, that was not to be. I wasn’t even hungry, so all I could do was curl up in bed in the fetal position.

And, naturally, that set off a whole chain of depressing thoughts that led to feeling more and more depressed, augmented by the fact that I was feeling like the second coming of Hades. Thoughts that I’m almost twenty-nine and still single, and this is likely what the whole rest of my life is going to look like: Lying in bed in the fetal position, feeling dreadfull (sic), and wishing that some cute guy would bring me soup.

The holidays are also fast approaching, and this will be the first year ever that I do not celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family. It’ll also be the first year that I observe both as an atheist. That part isn’t so bad since I never really believed in any of it anyway; but it’s losing my family, and not having another family to be a part of, that’s the hard part. I’ve always more or less been on the periphery when it comes to holidays as the non-plus 1 – always the single guy at the table. Now I don’t even have a table, or a family. Or a God. It’s a lot to take in at once.

Most of today looked very much the same, aside from checking work email occasionally (and got an email back from a co-worker saying, “What are you doing!? Stop checking your email and worrying about what’s going on here! Get better!!”) and then going through some old keyboard music and realising how full of shit I used to be. Some of the organ music was cool but so pedantic. Oh god, enough with the twelve-tone! I kept thinking. It was 2001-2003, and it seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.

Makes me wonder now how I’m going to look back on the work that I’m doing now. That’s the beauty of being in the business of creating, is that you’re always a work-in-progress. Unfortunately, that means producing a lot of shit in the process. But there is always some good that comes of it. It’s like mental alchemy – with the gold comes a lot of dross.

In the meantime, is it too much to ask for a great, cute guy to come and bring me soup, and maybe read to me from the New York Times?

Perhaps.

76. necessities

Apologies about the lack of posting the last few days. The last article took a lot out of me, work has been crazy busy, and to top it all off I was home sick today and feeling like death. The sad thing is that even though I was home today and had time, I didn’t want to do any writing. Lying in bed and trying to sleep was about all I felt capable of, and even that wasn’t fun. It wasn’t until later tonight that I even ventured out to get drugs, and then I forgot to pick up tissues as well. Toilet paper just isn’t a substitute when you’re trying to stop up the faucet that your face becomes during a cold.

While out at Target tonight, I did a little people watching as usual. When I’m not feeling particularly well I can be a tad cantankerous, and on this particular drug run I was both cantankerous and depressed. Maybe it’s just that I’m looking for it, but every time I turned around some man/woman couple were walking around the store holding hands. This is nothing new, obviously, but it’s been irking me as of late.

Look at them and at the picture above, instead of seeing a symbol of love and hope I see the image of something that I will likely never have. It’s the middle of September already, which means that the year’s almost over, I’m four months and eighteen days from turning twenty-nine (and we’ll see if I even feel like celebrating my birthday ever again, considering how last year’s celebration went), and so far I’ve met only one guy who was anything like the kind of man I’d like for a partner. That ended in disaster and me losing both a friend and my faith, and feeling even more hopeless and alone.

Maybe it’s just that I feel like shit right now, all achy and gross and possibly feverish. And perhaps I’m expecting too much, too soon. It just seems like it’s so easy for everyone else to find someone who they’re compatible with, both straight and gay. True, I know plenty of guys (and girls) who are in my situation, unhappily single. Maybe this is just reality for guys my age. Or gay guys my age. Or gay guys in general.

And it’s not like I’m not trying either. Nothing has really clicked, and I don’t want to settle for just somebody. I want somebody. (The wisdom of Stephen Sondheim again.)

Tonight I saw an advert for one of those adjustable beds. And tonight all that’s waiting for me upstairs is a bed with some pillows. And the quilt my great-grandmother made for me. I don’t need fireworks and champagne. I just want to decide on a bed with a guy. Sort the recycling. Make popcorn and watch one of our TV shows. Drive to the North Shore. Hold hands while shopping for paper towels.

There it is. 500 words this time.

57. invidiousness part i

… and why I hate Valentine’s Day so much.

Truth be told, it’s because I’ve never been able to take part in it. Or rather, had a positive experience that would refute the notion that it’s anything more than a tawdry, vulgar pseudo-holiday dreamed up by the Marquis de Sade to torment those who are miserably single [he said with a permanent scowl etched into his craggy, careworn face].

It’s a day when happy, coupled people blissfully buy into the spurious notion that there’s one day in the year when we should all be extra attracted to each other, and men go out and make grand, sweeping gestures to their girlfriends (or boyfriends) to make up for the fact of how neglectful they are towards their significant other the rest of the year.

Or maybe that’s just me and that damned speck of mirror-glass in my eye.

Yes, I’m one of those peevish, vituperative, curmudgeonly people who begrudge the fact that others are happy and having a wonderful time today, and wish they would all just collectively go fuck themselves and remember that there are those who aren’t blissfully happy; who (full disclosure) desperately wish that there were someone to brainlessly buy into this farce of a “holiday” with, and maybe for a few, fleeting hours forget how cheap, bloody and cruel life is the other three-hundred and sixty-four days of the year—or, on a more positive note, spend an evening with that “special someone,” maybe have a nice dinner and feel part of the universal experience of romantic love.

And, naturally, fuck each other silly at the end of the night.

Another reason that I begrudge Valentine’s Day so deeply and with such contempt is that a year ago today I woke up with the guy I spent the majority of this past year pining, crying and agonizing over. Let’s call him Seth. (No, really, that’s his name.) He was the first man I have ever been in love with, exacerbated by the fact that I knew he didn’t feel the same way about me. Shortly after our first sexual encounter, he basically told me that flat out, breaking my heart the first time. Before that, I found the idea of unrequited love silly and self-abasing. “Get over it!” you’d hear me say, doling out advice to inconsolable, anguished friends whose predicament I now find myself in. “He/She is not worth the pain you’re putting yourself through!” The funny thing about it though is that you can’t stop caring, or wishing, or hoping. It’s wholly irrational, but you hold out for the slim chance that maybe, just maybe, the veil will be drawn from their eyes and they will suddenly see you for the loving, caring, perfectly compatible person that you are.

And so Seth and I became what is affectionately referred to as fuck buddies. He was more or less using me for sex, apparently under the misguided notion that we were just having fun. Or some shit like that. And every time I hoped that maybe, just maybe, I’d get through to him; that he’d see that we could be more than friends; that, even beyond the whole sexual compatibility element, we got each others jokes, wanted the same things, had a similar approach to life and faith and intellect.

As Bobby Fisher might say, “No dice.”

This Valentine’s story concludes a few weeks ago, on my 28th birthday, with me drunk and sobbing in a friend’s apartment. Everyone had left Seth’s apartment (where the birthday party was being held), and I was too drunk to drive. Two other friends of mine live in the same building, but have a cat, and I am extremely allergic to cats, so normally this would end with us in his bed, having sex and me spending the night. It was not to end thus this time.

Seth had been on a blind date a week previous with another guy, and wasn’t sure how it was going to go, or even if it would go anywhere. My heart sank when he talked about this, but again I held out for the hope that it wouldn’t work, that it would just be another dalliance and that if I hung around long enough that he’d fall for me as I had for him. On that February 2nd though, he said that he was starting to like the guy more, and things were getting more serious between them. I was trying desperately to put a brave face on it and not let it bother me.

Flash back to earlier in the summer. I had just ended a relationship with my second serious boyfriend (let’s call him Nick) and was starting to date a new guy (we’ll call him Jack), and the night that I’d told everyone about Jack, as we were leaving, Seth asked if he could kiss me before things got too serious. And so, still being madly in love with him, we made out in the stairwell of the apartment.

Back to the night of my 28th birthday, eventually it got late and everyone decided it was time to call it an evening. It was obvious I wasn’t going anywhere, and he said I could crash there, but that I would need to sleep on the couch since he was starting a relationship with a new guy. And that’s when it began.

For weeks prior to this, I’d been agonizing over whether to confess my feelings to Seth or not. Some good friends who knew about the whole fuck buddy situation said that there was no way he couldn’t feel the same way, at least on some level, because nobody could do those things and be totally detached. Right? And I was determined not to let him be the biggest regret of my life.

So there in his apartment, drunk and enraged, I spewed everything at him that had been building over the weeks and months—how stupid I’d been to have let him play with my heart that way, how he’s not worthy of me, how I deserve better than some guy who can fuck me whenever it’s convenient for him to get his goddamn rocks off but then toss me to the curb once something “real” comes along, as if I were that cheap and disposable. On top of it all, he’s slated to be the pastor of a fucking GLBT-friendly church. I told him he’d do this again to someone else, that he’d play with some vulnerable guy’s affections who’s desperate to find a good Christian gay man, take advantage of him, and break his heart too. I called him a monster, a user, and a whole host of other awful things. No sense in being a writer if you can’t use them as a scalpel.

That night I also told him I no longer believe in God; that the church is a sham, and that he’s living, walking proof that none of it rings true. He listened quietly, tried to explain himself (which I’d have none of), and then left the room. Upon which I called my friend who lives upstairs, asked if I could crash there, and then spent the next hour sobbing on her couch. I’d hated myself for what I’d done, and hated him at the same time that I loved him.

But I also knew that the friendship, the relationship, was over.

Since the 2nd, I made it my resolution to do away with my old sexual morality, because chances are I’m never going to find a soulmate, and impersonal hookups are about as close as I’m probably going to get to the intimacy that I desperately crave. In the last few weeks I’ve had more sex than I have in my entire life, but it hasn’t filled the void, and I knew going in it wouldn’t satisfy. Maybe I’m just trying to get Seth out of my system.

So you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump on the Valentine’s Day bandwagon and celebrate the triumph of romantic love with the rest of the callow world. Last night, a guy that I’d been seeing and talking to for a few weeks decided to call things off. It was a mutual decision; I’d been sensing that we weren’t any more than just friends, but it still came as a bit of a crushing disappointment, especially considering that, even if it wasn’t going anywhere, that perhaps for once I could temporarily shut my eyes, not be alone on Valentine’s Day and believe that maybe, just maybe, love and romance really are possible. But, as usual, he turned out like all the others. This man too “disappoint me.”

I’m still waiting for someone to prove me wrong.