Do I move apart from others?

As the years move behind me, the people I once knew fade into their fiefdoms. What people may have once meant to me still remains though. 

Breathing deeply means I experience my body more. 

I wonder if I can begin to integrate experiences today... 

Take some time to walk now my brother. 

____

More podcasts. More writing. More short and sharp posts with concepts included. 

What concepts to include? What noun phrases to extend concepts? 

Identity

The benefit of identity

The search for identity

The use of identity to excuse actions 

Identity as a framing metaphor

Cultural influences as a framing metaphor for identity

________

Today I breathe, and I feel tightness and acidic pain. 

________

My visions: 

a) 40k. 

b) Family? 

c) Football? 

d) Music? 

e) Abstraction? Books? 

f) What visions really inspire me? 

_______

Yesterday I felt weak with a poorly stomach and tired eyes. 

Don't do too much

I sit here at the start of the day aware that I want to avoid overloading my plate. Too often I feel obliged to pluck different projects from the buffet of my list and eat them in one sitting. Even nibbling a bit each day is perhaps too much, leaving me with little time to savour each one. 

Each day for four days I have thought about moving along my MA, and yet I choose a different path. So many times have I stepped away from the tedious road of self-study that it has become overgrown again. I need to hack whatever weeds of disaffection away from that path so that I might once again make some progress. 

I struggled to 'lose weight' this holiday because I refused to track the logistics of what I was eating. Whatever small battles I might win through sheer will mean little when I run out of energy in the evening. It is not enough to fight openly with smaller meals and less sugar because small forays of hunger can sabotage my efforts. 

Today I will join again with Mark to talk about all sorts, probably political correctness and how various minority groups fail to walk together towards shared ambitions. To share a coffee and feel another mind sparking with ideas and thoughts invigorates me, creating a flow of energy that powers my heart for the rest of the day. I am blessed to enjoy that kind of connection. 

Above we see small short paragraphs, each with a different metaphorical landscape. 

1) To do list + Food

2) MA + journey

3) Eating habits + battle

4) Mark + connection

The metaphorical landscape creates images that make the reading easier, often providing stimulating signposts for what I write. 

Each of my immediate colleagues is a solitary creature, desiring to nest in a... 

_______

Understanding the world through metaphor

Reading two books on metaphor made me think of the two following ambitions: 

1) Marshall the metaphorical landscapes so that I might experience them, 

2) Frame the world around me using metaphorical landscapes. 

Here are the metaphorical landscapes I know of: 

Conflict

Journey

Food

Body

Animals

Good vs Evil

Growth 

Warmth/Comfort 

Family

____________

Breathing as a metaphorical landscape.

I feel 'shit'. 

Metaphors as individual phrases in sentences have a power, but a metaphorical landscape makes more sense. 

“balance, connection, container, control, journey, resource, and transformation.”

“In Zaltman’s taxonomy, the deep metaphor of:

Balance refers to social and psychological equilibrium, expressed in phrases like “I am centered” and “It feels slightly off.” 

Connection involves the sense of belonging (“a team player” or “a loose cannon”). 

Container describes psychological or emotional states (“in a good mood” or “out of your mind”). 

Control implies mastery of events (“It’s out of my hands” or “We’re on the same page”). 

Journey suggests movement toward or away from a goal (“We’re on course” or “We got waylaid”). 

Resource references basic necessities such as food, family, friends, and finances (“bread and butter issues” and “My job is my lifeline”). 

Transformation encompasses physical or psychological change (“He turned over a new leaf” or “She’s a different person now”).”

_______________

When I was younger, I battled for survival. I retreated from conflict when I did not need to see it, and I was suspicious of control. One friend seems to strive for transformation, to perhaps battle his past, seeking to destroy old demons. 

Now I do not need to fight as much. Instead I can seek balance, embracing the 'centre' of my cuture that lifts me on a firm foundation, providing a platform for perspective. My cultures are not perfect, by far, with racist and sexist overtones in the people who have impacted me.  

“Many of the metaphors we use every day are synesthetic, describing one sensory experience with vocabulary that belongs to another. Silence is sweet; facial expressions are sour. Sexually attractive people are hot; sexually unattractive people leave us cold. A salesman’s patter is smooth; a day at the office is rough. Sneezes are bright; coughs are dark. Along with pattern recognition, synesthesia may be one of the neurological building blocks of metaphor.

No one is quite sure how synesthesia works. Some researchers suggest that we are all born synesthetes, that synesthesia is the original way we experience the world. Newborn infants have an abundance of neural connections among the various sensory centers in the brain, connections that are gradually pruned back over time. According to this theory, synesthesia is the natural result of crosstalk among these massively interconnected neurons. Only after the age of about four months, when the cortex has sufficiently matured and the excess neural connections start to snap, does this innate synesthesia fade.”

Excerpt From: James Geary. “I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World.” Apple Books. 

Breathing

The past four days I have enjoyed a better energy thanks to my ambitions with my breathing. 

My nose accepts oxygen, masses of it to open my chest, to push my guts aside. 

Move now. 

Today I moved, 15k steps. I watched, I browsed, and I read. 

_____

The day after I travelled to the jungle. 

+++++

This day I woke early. I dreamt about teaching a class with various annoying boys who spoke over me and my boss. The atmosphere of the classroom was terrible because it centred on the lazy actions of a few, their irritating words said with laughtr, distracting others and destroying the thread of the lesson. I suffered it as a student; I witnessed it as a teacher. 

I do not have the time in a life to understand my experiences in Scarborough. Instead I can hope to integrate some of my experiences. 

Fearing parents and what they might say...
Remembering the violence and aggression of some male students... 
My fear of exam results... 

I cannot think of much else I want to integrate from my experiences, save that I want to mark exams, and avoid teaching in these violent state schools again. 

When I think of: 

a) who is voting for the government;

b) or what will 'happen to society' when tens of millions are forced to move for entry-level jobs;

c) or how the aggressive and foolish boys I once taught see their lives; 

I forget how I am educated. 

My education does not overcome entirely the handicaps of my family and father. But I do not esteem it as perhaps I should. 

My sensibility is competitively developed. 

Today I walk, read, music and MA... 

Imagination? Gaming? Endeavour?

Over the past few days a few homely annoyance rose to interrupt me: 

1) My RFID ran out thanks to errors by those who look after me. 

2) My internet bill was charged, and no email was sent to inform me. 

These events are enough to seize my mind continually. However, I was able to breathe into these events, feeling the attention they demanded, integrating their childlike responses before letting the adult respond. 

I intend to walk today and to see my tutor for my MA. My MA bores me, but that boredom should not be unduly challenging. 

Gaming. I find myself wondering what games to play. If I am honest, the list of games I have played over the past however-many-years are increasingly small. Too many games require too much investment, of time and emotion. 

Casual games should really be more my thing now. Something I can experience in a few hours. Some RPG games give this; other games demand more. 

I am tempted to uninstall Steam. In fact, I will do so now. 

When I log back on, I will consider the games that I will play. It was fun to download the hardcore military simulations. I wonder if I can read and walk and breathe and talk. 

With breath in my body

Yesterday's experiences with Joanna: 

a) When finished, I walked High Street and Forbes Town, holding my belly and seeing people sitting in their spaces. What might have triggered me instead washed into me, to see people focused and being. 

b) My breathing deep into my body, feeling my diaphram move, flooding my brain with oxygen: this is a practice I am picking up thanks to my walking. 

c) Ready to move? Ready to be... 

d) Nurture relationships with the voices inside your head. See the occasional malformed folks that reside whom culture has formed. The bald angry and aggressive man who seeks to destroy; the greasy and rounded deviant with terrible hair;   

e) Malformed states of self, malformed in that they are stuck in a child-liked developmental state, do not realise that they are child-like. I imagine them embodied as adult men, but they operate and exist as children, limited and unable. 

f) The Adult Part of me does not need to operate only within a spectrum of good vs evil, but rather as a way to negotiate a complex and fragmented world. 

g) The malformed states operate in their way: they cannot be destroyed, and formed by cultural influences, shaping the rocker, the writer, the lover, the writer.

 

If, then

If... then... 

Let's play a game: I predict scenarios, some extreme, and I commit to what I would rather do. My motivation for playing this game is the suspicion of my 'relative response'. By that term I mean I do not really trust the 'why' of what I am doing, and feel that I am too easily led. 

I read some moral situations. What about my specific situations? 

If I do not get housing, what will I do? 

I am living responsively, not responsibly. 

________________

It has been a week of living. I attempted to drop sugar and alcohol. But this was a huge struggle.

The problem with games is that I become reliant on the outside world for entertainment. 

I lack focus. I have many games, yes, but I do not seem to play many. 

I am physically bored. 

_________________

My responses when I am bored are: 

a) Drinking Mentality. 

b) Mental Promiscuity. 

c) Doom Scrolling.

These are obviously unhealthy. In an attempt to be better, I focus on work. However, my work is perculiar: I am invested emotionally, and cannot rely upon my colleagues to be the same. To hear 'let's do less marking' and 'we do this already' irritates me unduly. 

_________________

I read of several women who are angry at transrights activists. Where feminists fail is when they concern themselves with the fights of middleclass white women, deciding that their experience is the 'feminist experience'. I will not engage or respond because I wonder how to integrate my anger and frustration at that. 

What perhaps I need to integrate are some of my negative actions, accepting them and the negative elements of me. It makes me tired. 

Do less

I was going to name this post 'do less to do more', but just doing less is enough. Rather than tire my body where like Boxer's corpse it is taken to the knacker's yard, I want to make it leaner. 

Combine these concepts: 

1) Appreciation of time

2) Appreciation of life and death 

3) An aesthetic appreciation of life

4) Being healthier: stronger, healthier, leaner

5) The need for an altered state of consciousness. 

6) The ability to absorb damage

7) The ability to accept suffering

And you will have the thread of this post. 

Feeling various voices + tiredness with Catholic Guilt

To watch England play I stayed up all night, wrecking my sleep, severing my connection to the earthly energies under my feet. 

I was barely able to leave the house the next day. Instead, my mind sank into what I call 'Catholic Guilt' unable to focus and leaving me nervous and disembodied all day. Usually I feel that drinking causes this, and no doubt it does contribute, but it is the lack of sleep, of quality rest that replenishes me with vital energy, that reduces me. 

I am listening more to my body these days. These are some things that are motivating strong feelings: 

i) The IB results. 

ii) England's football. 

iii) WWII reading. 

iv) The MA. 

Am I happy that this is where my gut is stimulated? That this is where my essence is processed? To where does my mind wander in those moments by myself? 

Reforming a relationship with the voices in my head

The 'voices in my head' are 'part of me', but they are not 'fundamentally me'. 

Each of these terms operates like a swirling mist, occasionally solidifying into a bridge or house, something physical and functional whose purpose is clearly known. Yet too often those feels feel vague, slipping in meaning and purpose.  

1) Voices in my head = consciousness, construction of a narrative for my actions, speaking to myself, lambasting myself, praising myself, the definition of my emotions, labelling of my actions, considering of how others might consider me  

2) Part of me = Not entirely me, not authentically me, not a major element, still significant

3) Fundamentally me = The base of me, the most important element, the base upon which all else is built. 

______________

The voices in my head are influenced by things over which I have no choice: gender, race, people I have worked with, family, etc. I do not know how factors form those voices. Those voices consider me and my actions, crowding for attention, eager to pass judgement, and keen to pursue the agenda of others. 

Those voices also create sanity, guiding me to interpret the world the way others might. Their voice, or what I think their voice might be, becomes part of the voices that whisper to me in the night. 

_______________

I am stimulated in various parts of my body. The stimulation of my guts and chest has for too long been dismissed. When I feel strong emotions in those places, I am unable to stay with them. 

Being able to stay with those parts of my body is my ambition now. Listening to the voices in my head, usually the unpleasant ones, and more consciously forming a relationship with them seems useful now. 

What about the affirmational voices in my head? 

________________

I am a manifestation of essence with some dim consciousness. I can manipulate what I think about things to a degree but controlling that manipulation is difficult. 

I should read things and see how they make me feel. By feel, I mean the moral, aesthetic and intellectual reactions, so I really mean react. How do they make me react? Can I begin to engage directly with the various voices? 

It should take me a while to really consider what I think. To realise that there is an orchestra of voices in my head, some remarkably quiet. 

Let's try that today. 

My energy today - IB Results

Hi folks, 

Today some IB results came through, that neon email flashing a potential future. Some numbers shocked me, of what seems two cheating defeats, but the overall message was ideal. As usual, my heart flies to the two kids who dropped grades rather than the dozens of kids who achieved or scored more than expected. At least I notice that feeling, and come to expect that gut feeling like an old friend. It is rare my gut feels moved by something.   

I also think of my own MA, that dusty journey to an uncertain X on a map. The time I spent on it seems arduous, but if I see how many pomodoros I spent... 90 hours in a year perhaps? That is like Pillars of Eternity, an experience that felt easy in comparison. My first draft is in and I wait on feedback. Then that endeavour will be complete. 

Yesterday I spoke at length to a colleague. Some thoughts: 

a) He dismissed any conversation about Buddhism despite wanting to seek enlightenment. To shut down those avenues might keep us focused on his ideal destination, but how do we know what roads we have passed? 

b) If a story did not affect him personally, he struggled to listen through it. Speaking about the Miami Condo collapse, he did not feel empathy for the tenants or the landlord. 

c) He did not feel he could tell his subordinates what to do in terms of pedagogy, thinking repeatedly that I was referring to transfers or interpretations. 

d) He actually seemed to listen at one point, which felt strange. It was for a few minutes. In that dark space I found that whatever I said would not sit in my mind.  

I spoke about my desire to be more like two colleagues who mark and focus on grades. There is little in the way of conversation outside that, and the vindication they will feel about their marks might reveal itself in the coming months. Their approach is everything. 

For now my plan is clear: converge with my department and take on some external marking responsibility. From that marking, perhaps be firmer in what my students need to get to get their marks. 

I should realise that I was not always so firmly committed to school and schooling. I am suspicious of education because of the schooling component and have a difficult relationship with schooling.  

______________________________

One thing my colleague questioned was the need to find vindication for our actions from someone else. Is it ideal to seek justification from others for what we do, first and foremost. I see a spectrum: 

a) Being the sole arbiter of meaning and worth in your life. 

b) Relying on others for meaning and worth in your life. 

I have found myself on both sides of the spectrum. Post-university, I found others confusing and speaking around me or over me. I dismissed what they thought about my worth, or otherwise. In Dubai, I found myself almost towards the opposite, feeling unduly affected by what others might think of me and my lifestyle. 

The thing about being the arbiter of my own meaning and worth is that I understand myself through the eyes of others, the culture that forms my head and meaning. I cannot escape my eyes, my gender, my age, my race. Instead, I might see what relationship I could form with those feelings: to listen to where the stimulation occurs in my body. 

The Everchild and the Parent can take more control. They speak through my broken voice, that human and nasally whisper, so they are not entirely heard. But one voice is playful, and the other is cynical. Together they can protect and drive me, integrating the more painful feelings that I might suffer, not fleeing them but instead find their rightful place in that fantastical city of my mind.

 

A trickster

I felt 

Negative capability

I perhaps have enough money to not worry about money anymore. It is highly unlikely I will build a dynasty or raise children easily. But I can live comfortably, or at least as I do now. 

Last night talking to Joanna I felt for the first time the kind of energy I want to nurture: neutral good energy. Like a Trickster, I act long-term on what I sense might be a balance either side of the middle line. I see myself as the voice of my culture, and the aggressive voice of progress as a bit of a con. 

Denigrating myself for humour seems attractive. My culture does not seem to benefit me as it might have done. 

Perhaps it is time to embrace the potential energy of negative capability.