A Humility Thing

Saturday, October 04, 2008           

A Humility Thing

Current mood: Humble

So I've been working on this humility thing. It seems to me that true humility is a quality of greatness, but the act of humility is an easy one to create. It's like once a human being figures out the rule that humility is a very attractive quality, and it is very well received socially, and it can open a lot of doors, they work it to their advantage. I pretty much prefer to be up front with who I am and what I believe in (even though I've found a trapdoor in that), and I do Appreciate that quality in others when I encounter it, although it's a rarity. I say pretty much, because I've found that sometimes there's a need to be roundabout, but with an understanding that roundabout is the only straightforward route available at the time. Sure there may be some places that I find difficult to explore, like when someone feels bad about themselves right in front of me, well, I feel bad about myself sometimes too, so I'll sit in awkward non-acknowledgement until the moment passes or I'll find something else to talk about to subvert that feeling of inconsistency in the moment, which could be construed as a graciousness in not pinpointing an embarrassment, but that doesn't seem to be a true grace. A true grace from my perspective would be to acknowledge that sensation/feeling in some gentle way (sometimes I'm not so gentle I know. Is that my lack of humility?), so as to help another out of a perpetuation of their ego. A perpetuation that really doesn't need to be there for the situation to unfold, but acts as a domineering father figure shouting from the inside out to cripple our ability to gain the necessary momentum to be ourselves at all times (although I guess to see it that way is another perpetuation).

Is it my place to do this? I don't know. I would love it if (and do love it when) someone were to acknowledge when they see a place in me that I'm not acknowledging; that place where I'm not coming across as true unbeknownst to me. It'd be like they were freeing from the confines of my own…bullshit? Maybe bullshit is too harsh a word. What would be a good euphemism for bullshit…oh, euphemism, that's perfect! So it'd be like they were freeing me from the confines of my own euphemism, which, to me, would be the true grace, because there are those who would seek to elicit those places in others in order to gain some strategic upper hand – oh they're not entirely sure what they can get out of this person, but why clue them in on something they don't know is inhibiting them?

Some people, out there in the world, actually hold the keys to some prison cells we've built for ourselves, for the very reason that they were an inmate too at one point. Apparently the act of doing this is an imposition, from a social perspective, and it's an arrogance (i.e. lack of humility) to presume, which, to me, to think that the assumption of presumption is "this or that" smacks the toad ridiculous. I mean, how else are we going to know when we're falling on our faces, or when our perspective isn't coming from true places? It's got to get brought in the first place to be explored. But instead we seem to hide that piece of ourselves behind the façade (myself included) of euphemistic social graces, which, don't get me wrong, really do help when the situation is brand new, but only because that's the way the dance steps are programmed.

So there is a dance going on, and the music plays only on the inside, the steps only with the perfect dance partner, and round and round we dance, like circling the rusty drain of thirty-four year old bathtub haphazardly adorned with chips and crust rings. The question that arises for me is what happens when we hit the center? Are we sucked into a dark oblivion never to be found again? Or is it that the way looks dark and fraught with terror because we don't know? Mayhap on that side is rainbows and flowers, or some delightful vision from the Wonka Factory. We don't know though, maybe a few do, and they tells us, "Go there."

Go there?! Are you nuts? That's the spirally drain of a thirty-four year old bathtub! The lord only knows what's down there. True, but maybe amidst the soapsud encrusted hairballs and urine caked pipe walls, there really is something to behold. I mean, we already know what's up here, a painful dance of tension and release, self gratification and torment. And if you're saying, "man Bernie, what a bleak outlook." Don't give me that euphemism, because we all go through the ringer at some point in time (the crazy thing to me is it's a ringer created by habitual mind), it's seems to be the way we live life, and looking away from it seems to elicit a clichéd moment of awkward non-acknowledgement, for those who would rather look to see it, and maybe change it. For those who would agree not to see it, well, I guess they would dance away for a new release created by the tension of that moment. Yearning for the clock to strike a certain time, the month to toll a certain chime of week, away from whatever slavery in which they're confined that day. But, we all do this to some degree otherwise we wouldn't need that "ah-ha!" moment to bring us to, so we're all the same in that way, all of us superficial, tokenistical, superfantastical, sometimes submersible, ultra lovable human beings, so we can give each other a break instead of pressing the white hot iron to the sensitive spots we see, because if we're all the same, then the things that we do that might be construed as sinister, malicious, or just down right not cool, are completely forgivable by way that we all do it too!! "Ah-Ha!!".

Okay, okay, the "ah-ha" moment aside, to bring things back into scope, it may be bleak to see things as the ever-present-tensions-in-need-of-release kind of way, because it sounds like we haven't the ability to do what we really choose, because our choices have been predetermined, in part, by and large, by what those before us have (i.e. seek a release of built up tension) and you'd be right (get over it, huh? Just because I released that tension? Jeeez. I know. I like being right too…more release? Yowza, it doesn't seem to stop), but it seems to me that only when things become their bleakest is when we ever want to look any further than our own noses, even though the noses is the closest we come when juxtaposes to the superimposes of structures we lay down on our world (i.e. a marriage and it's resultant biohazards, an empire that aspires with it's giant footprint leaving behind a trail of mangled paychecks, a followed dream for which we fought our way upstream only to find that the world still ignores what we think we are because it's that world that wants to be free in that way too, etcetera and such…), and right under the hair that seeks it's breath of fresh air on the rim of a nostril, I'm told, is this moment in full flair. It's a world outside of the ideas and philosophies we ream and shape into the dream, but only when we find, as we stare out at the grand picture, that our dream is empty and devoid of anything real do we think, "What the hell happened? I thought this was supposed to be the bees pivot points… Why do I feel like smoking down a joint every single time I find this place?" Because, I feel, we think we're the dream, but just as we can't be the piece of sculptured stone, or the pretty painted bone, we can't become, are not the results of, the happenings of things, because we already are those things in full happenings, and it seems to me that the only thing that makes it empty is that piece of us that stakes a claim on what it would call "territory", and will fight for it to the death if need be. When you write the song, you let it go, just like the note that's sung, it's not like you can cram it into an exposed armpit. Why would you want to?

I look inside of myself as deeply as I can nowadays, and I see all this turmoil, this turbulence, conflict, division, derision for the dichotomy, which splits me more ways from Anydays, and in all of these fragmented pieces that have staked their claim for a piece of the pie of a life unseen, each one of those slivers is not really me, they're more programming than anything else. Taught and programmed how and what to feel and why and when to feel it and who or where to feel it about, it's almost as if each one of those fragments is in some way, not really "me", but a short iteration of "me" into a longer perpetuation of the "me" I think of as "me" but isn't really me, an instance, so to speak, that arises into each situation for which it was designed, let's go with: "I like spinach," I don't like lima beans or vegetables in general," "I'll have a piece of that steak because I like it," but only because my Mom or Dad liked it, because if they had said "ewww" to it every time I went to have a bite, just like they did when they were changing my diaper, I bet there would be an instance of me that says, "Yuck, how can anyone eat steak," which leads to, "I can't believe that person eats steak," unfolding into, "There's just something about that person I don't like, maybe it's because they eat steak and I don't," which iterates v. 3.1 in the form of, "I don't really like anyone who eats steak," and then, "Let's kill anyone who eats steak, because they kill cows and the cows need justice for the easily and readily countable years of insult to species," then we can allow the cows to flourish and grow out of control and eat all the green grass and Funyuns, and then I guess there won't be any greener grass on the other side of any fence, but maybe that's a good thing, for me and for everybody so maybe that's the way it should be, and maybe I should begin to work at convincing everybody/anybody who will listen (ad infinitum, ad nauseum, domo arigato mister roboto…).

It's a humbling thing when I find myself in cozy silent solitude. A time when there's no one else around upon whom I can exert my influence; the realization strikes me that the only influence I exert is on me, and any attempts exercised on the "outside" are cursory, illusory, because it's really still only me who is influenced by my own projection (for a decent portrait of projection of ego, see exhibit A: the last paragraph, and see exhibit B: this entire diatribe). I've found that, if I'm willing to listen, I can tune in to those little programs and I can "hear" them, pointing me in the programmed direction. "Eat a snack", "Play your guitar", "What's she doing now", "Never mind, she's doing this or that", "I did well in Improv the other day", "I'm really good at making funny voices" and so on and so forth. The interesting thing to me is there's a feeling that accompanies each one of these little instructions or depicted scenarios, and it's like I'm in the grips of a drug, some bring about bad trips, some bring about good trips. The projection of me and my habitual thought patterns, patterns that seem to recur whenever the familiar scuttles from the underbrush and takes flight. I, being the predator that rains its influence on what it considers to be "outer" (if only to take a break from influencing myself in whatever way) take off in hot pursuit, the taste of coercion dripping from my incisors already sighing the breath orgasmic with a lusty satisfaction smeared on my jowls, like a toddler in his high chair under improper care, or inattentive supervision. But I can't damage by way of exertion anymore – fuck me do I try though, not out of malice, more out of a repetitive retaliation; an automated response to behavior that's inconsistent with my own house of cards – and every time I do it's like I end up the remains of a once pristine 8 ½ x 11, crumpled up and tossed into the garbage can that contours itself into the shape of mind (what shape is that again…?). But being squashed up into the creases of my forehead, and not comfortably, was never my idea of a good time, even then it seems like my idea of a good time puts me there too. Why does that happen? I have no idea; maybe it's a humility thing, or the lack thereof. So by way of intelligent response I shift into the forms of the martial art of moment (a deep and treasured, honored tradition that's spans the space between my DNA), an art that seems to determine it's masters by their depth of humility, and the dance continues, until somehow I realize that the music that's playing is played by "me", and the steps I dance trace the outlines of "me", and the partner I seem to dip and sway is the dipping and swaying of "me". "Me", huh, now the concept of that smacks the toad ridiculous...