inherently different

I think everyone has moments of extreme clarity. You could be walking down the street and realize, albeit to late, that you just hurt someone’s feelings and the relationship will never recover. Or you can be in a meeting with your boss and your bosses’ boss and offer a clever answer that not only makes you look bad, but makes your boss look like a complete tool for hiring you. Clarity after something like that is good, but remorse is ill spent.

I’ve had an unknown number of such moments and for the most part, I tend to accept the consequences without complaint. I know what I am and I know what my words have done to people. My problem isn’t with keeping my mouth shut, although some might suspect that is the source of a majority of the problems I have with people.

I chalk it, my problems with people, up to a complete lack of emotions. Or maybe its is better explained as a lack of peaks and valleys on the emotional scale of human interaction. I don’t often feel angry, hurt, sad, lonely, confused, happy, joyous, bitter, solemn, or overwhelmed. Most of the time I just feel empty… a void that accepts readily whatever is willing to take up space.

Emotions, for the most part, are a complete waste of energy for me. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a meltdown of any kind and hope I never do. It might also be said that I don’t readily accept being mistreated when someone has a meltdown. I’ve been on the receiving end of those emotional outbursts and have really said and done some truly horrific things in response. I’m not writing that with pride or remorse, just making sure it all gets down so there isn’t ever any misunderstanding.

I can’t fake empathy or compassion for my fellow man. It comes across as insincere and lets face it, when it comes to those two things, it is. Really empathy and compassion arise not out of remorse for what has been said and done TO another, but out of fear that they will lose something for it. Is that sincerity? If this is true, and I believe it is, then apologies are really the ultimate form of selfishness because they are only beneficial to the apologist since the damage has already been done.

I think I’d rather say and do whatever it is I feel like saying and doing. It might cause problems for me and others, but at least there is an honesty not often displayed in human interaction. I won’t lie to make you feel good, but I won’t tell you the truth to hurt you. There is a balance in all things and I try to walk along the edge of the precipice that borders ego. A fragile country to be sure, but one that I have a long history of exploring.

Just came back from watching The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and need to digest what I’ve just seen to really offer anything remotely resembling a review. Was it good? Was it bad? Was it somewhere in between? You’ll just have to wait and find out.

Living in San Francisco for 12 years did introduce me to something you may not have come in contact with where you live. The “healer.” Not much better than the sanctimonious televangelists that populate sunday morning TV, healers (anyone who consideres themselves one) are everywhere in the Bay area.

Well here on Maui, you can’t turn over a rock without some yahoo calling him or herself a healer. I have a few friends here who are massage therapists and they call themselves “healers.” Trained in the art of massage therapy in an area here on Maui called “up country” that is essentially the Haight/Ashbury of the Pacific Rim. I put healer in quotes because, lets face it… all of them are full of shit.

All that metaphysical hooha is really disturbing to me… not because there are people who look to profit from the gullibility of others, but because there are people dumb enough to actually believe that horseshit. Crystals? Crapstals. Feng Shui? Feng Shit. New Age? Outrage.

There are things you can believe in because they have been proven by the scientific community to be worthwhile. And even then, modern medicine is still pretty much a black art practiced by men and women with god complexes. When someone is troubled physically, emotionally, or mentally, seeking the help of a healer is pretty damn ignorant. There are no such things as miracle cures despite what that turban wearing goofball is telling you. He/she can’t possibly cure your back problems with a few crystals and a constant chant. Your pancreatic cancer isn’t going away if only you’d align your chakra with your oprah. Your life will not improve if you just rearrange your furniture. Its all horseshit and if you believe in any of it, you’re a dumbass.

Now, the red queen would tell me to lighten up and let people believe whatever they want to believe in if it helps them get from point A to point B. And she’s right. But whenever I’m feeling down, I can just look up from the black hole and see one of these fucktards stealing money from a hapless tourist and it makes whatever seems to be bothering me evaporate. I look at these foundering souls looking for the easy way out and say, “There but for the grace of god and an IQ above 48 go I.”

Remember the massage therapists? Well, one of them is one of the most unstable, ridiculously angry, bitter women I have ever met in all my years on this godforsaken rock. Yet. She calls herself a healer. She rambles on about helping people find their center, healing them, because, well… she’s a healer. Only, she can’t even find her own center and her anger gets in the way all the time. Yet. People trust her to help them feel better. Its a sham that is equal to the white man buying Manhattan for $16 in shiny beads. In fact, all “healers” are the same in this respect. They are usually the most fucked up beings within a given environment, yet they are the ones who pretend to have all the answers.

Maybe I should become a healer. I can cure you of rickets, the plague, depression, or any of thousands of other imaginative maladies. Operators are standing by.

Top Ten Films I Want To See

10. the adventures of shark boy and lava girl in 3D 09. kicking and screaming 08. mindhunters 07. unleashed 06. rize 05. dust to glory 04. cronicas 03. mr. & mrs. smith 02. lords of dogtown and the number one film I want to see is… 01. batman begins

An honorable mention goes to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, but I have to preface that with the fact that I have very high expectations that must be met for this film to be considered worthwhile. Another honorable mention should go out to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which could also go horribly wrong.

I tend to get burned out on occasion. This last week being one of those times. It isn’t that I didn’t have things to write about: a broken finger, a run-in with a friend with whom I no longer speak, the new pope, tree-huggers writing me about my previous post.

A few weeks ago, I took on another writing project for a client and it left me wondering whether or not I’m wasting my time as a writer. Now, I’m not asking for a pity party. My thoughts lean toward exploring what I’m writing rather than if I should be writing.

I read so many blogs now that I know that there are few that offer something entertaining everyday. It isn’t easy to come up with something worthwhile everyday. Even daily columnists such as Dave Barry, Erma Bombeck (when she wasn’t fertilizing the grass greener over her cemetary plot), and Herb Caen, all had periods that they ran off and let the syndicate rerun previous colunms.

Who knows what they did to recharge their batteries or find the groove they were in before the empty page stared up at them mockingly. What I do is avoid acting like a jackass. Yes, I’ll admit that most days I wake up with the sole purpose of making someone uncomfortable. I like making people doubt the things they believe. Somedays though I wake up and apply that very practice to myself.

Afterall, Descartes once said, “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”

Over the last few days I have doubted my chosen path as a writer. After a bit of examination, I realize that I may never write the great Mexican-American novel, and that is ok. The truth of the matter is I never really did. The future holds many possibilities, both literary and literally. I just need to find which one fits me best.