Looking for this…

• Psycho-social network of relationships.
- 25 persons who know you and whom you know.
- Is not constrained by geography.
- Relatively homogeneous in values and ideology.
- Can tolerate loss of members and replacement with new members.
- Has healthy, functional, intimate/personal characteristics of:
1. Positive affect (emotion) – Accepted by them; feel like you belong; a sense of being known by them.
2. Intensity of interaction/quality of interaction – talk about deeper things than the weather.
3. Symmetrical reciprocity – Not a one-way relationship.
4. Communicates at least once a week on average.
5. Living within 2-hour drive time.

“You’re U.S.A. word for fanatic, ‘fanatic,’ do they teach you it comes from the Latin for ‘temple?’ It is meaning, literally, ‘worshippers at the temple.’”

“Oh Jesus now here we go again,” Steeply said.

“As, if you will give the permission, does this love you speak of, [his] grand love. It means only attachment. [He] is attached, fanatically. Our attachments are our temple, what we worship, no? What we give ourselves to, what we invest with faith.… Are we not all of us fanatics?… Choose your attachments carefully. Choose your temple of fanaticism with great care.”

—from Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

I DREAMED A DREAM OF TIME GONE BY
Or, Why I Tweet My Dreams…

I woke up this morning with a dream in mind. My custom is to tweet some of the dreams I remember. On occasion they feel too personal to share, and sometimes there is no way to fit them into 140 characters.

I recall a lot of my dreams in vivid detail, and sometimes they feel more significant than others. They seem to give me insight into myself. But also, they just make me—and sometimes my friends—laugh and laugh. Occasionally they articulate a feeling I didn’t know I needed to feel, and my dreams seem to care for my soul in a way my waking state can’t.

But something extra interesting happened this morning, and I can thank my tweeting #dreamjournal practices for delivering a fresh insight.

I woke up with a dream in mind, and I tweeted:

Feb 9, 2013—@MtBarrioz: Group of kids steals my bag. I catch them: “Cops on their way.” They shake my hand, apologize, await their punishment. I cry. #dreamjournal

This dream felt important. I thought about it for a long time. It felt so familiar. Then I remembered another dream and searched for it on my twitter:

Apr 2, 2012—@MtBarrioz: Kids con me, steal my stuff. Catch them. They cry as I call the cops. Smallest one cries in my arms. #dreamjournal

These dreams pair like finding the puzzle piece that was missing. The missing piece had fallen into the couch cushions with pennies and miscellany, and now, ten months later, it returns to complete my 700-piece puzzle.

My dream last night is an inversion of my dream last April. The two dreams mirror one another, even in the form of how I chose to record the dreams. A group of kids are still stealing from me, but now the kids have grown up into teenagers. I catch them, the cops are on their way, and the kids in the old dream cry with regretful fear.

I distinctly remember holding the little boy in the April dream on my lap. He cried, and I loved him and forgave him. I felt like he was my son, and I wanted him to know he could still be with me and could still cry, even if he would still be punished. I held him tight like a father as his tears wet my chest. I still remember it vividly. It still touches my heart.

This time, this dream last night, I called the police, chased the kids, and the group had grown up. They were hooligans in the night, and I chased them barefoot through the streets. When I found them, they didn’t resist. The oldest boy, who was a full foot taller than me, calmly apologized and shook my hand—resignation in his eyes. They faced consequences boldly and stoically. When they didn’t put up a fight, I cried. I didn’t want to punish them. Not without a fight.

There is the description, and here is the interpretation.

All people or objects or scenarios are expressions of ourselves in dreams. I am myself, those kids, the stolen items, and the cops in these dreams.

I have grown like those kids. I am more willing to take consequences for my actions than before. Deeply, unconsciously, my acceptance of discipline seems to be taking root, developing, maturing. Progress is happening.

And yet, somebody still needed to cry. My mature self in the April dream tended to the weeping children. But I was the one weeping in today’s dream. I cried because the lack of fight in the kids gestured to their hopelessness. There was not an optimistic tenderness, but a nihilistic hardness. The kids didn’t cry. I cried for them. I wanted them to want free life enough to put up a fight.

This, too, is like me. I have developed my capacity to confess my wrongs and accept their consequences, but maybe this has come with a sense of hopeless resignation—as if bowing to a mechanistic universe in which what goes around comes around; I get exactly what I deserve; grace is an illusion.

Like I learned from my earlier dream about the necessity of love with discipline, now I feel another urge to embody the reality of accepting consequences alongside hoping for grace. We’ll see what my corresponding dream in ten months has to say about this.

For my friends who’d like an upper after my deep ramblings, here’s a dose:

Apr 10, 2012—@MtBarrioz: Taking a postapocalyptic last stand against massive, mutant pastries. Rip off head of cannoli without being bitten—kill & eat. #dreamjournal

Aug 31, 2012—@MtBarrioz: In a group we list favorite places: Berlin, Chicago, Hong Kong. Last person says, Scottie Pippen’s house. #dreamjournal I woke up LOLing

Dec 1, 2012—@MtBarrioz: Little girl wants to write a play about a little girl whose mom is a republican and who has a pet squirrel that’s a democrat. #dreamjournal

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.

—Ecclesiastes 7:2-3

1. It is a given that there are some bad things about me.
2. It is a given that I am not conscious of some of these things.
3. It is a given that I am self-deceived to believe some of these truly bad things about me should be considered good things.
4. It is a given that there are some good things about me.
5. It is a given that I am not conscious of some of these things.
6. It is a given that I am self-deceived to believe some of these truly good things about me should be considered bad things.
   
   

Just want to remember all angles, including the angles I don’t remember.

I have changed so much in this past year, and it is the sweetest kind of disorientation. Here’s a collection of 10 lessons learned by living my fullest life yet for my fullest year yet.

1. If I put myself in a completely unfamiliar place—like my five weeks in Spain last summer—stripping away my comforts, I find out who I essentially am rather than who I habitually am.

2. To truly love, I must engage and care for people and circumstances because of their differences, not in spite of them.

3. Wrath, before it manifests externally, just feels like being deeply bugged in my heart.

4. I can’t be afraid to let go—like leaving a job, living situation, and potential future career with no idea what will take its place—and let myself drift on that choppy sea of unknowing.

5. One expression of prayer is asking help from God’s people, like when I asked for a place to live when I had nothing and a dear couple gave me a room, food, and even a job.

6. The deepest pride is thinking pride is only other people’s problem.

7. If I hold life and death in each hand, seeing them both constantly in tension helps me appropriately fear death and appropriately cherish life—my own life, my students’ lives, and even those ducklings we saved that were stuck in the pool with no way out.

8. Knowing objectively is good, and knowing subjectively is better. I wrestle with the truth instead of simply reciting it.

9. Listen to others with a posture of humble curiosity: they know what I do not, and they know things in a way I do not.

10. See wisdom in all things; e.g., the dog who simultaneously wants to play with me and fears me is like the person who seeks love without risk.

SIGHT OR FLIGHT, A TRUE STORY
 
 
Haggard, disheveled, tie tucked into his pants, the part in his hair mussed by static, Herald walks into the Santa Ana office right on time. His supervisor asks him if he’s all right.

“I’m fine. I just flew into work today. Trying to get over my fear of flying.”

“It’s Wednesday and you were at work yesterday. Did you fly somewhere after work yesterday?”

“No. I woke up extra early this morning and drove to LAX and flew down to John Wayne where I got a rental car and drove into work today.”

Herald’s supervisor Adam stares with a slight tilt to his head, mildly furrowed eyebrows. The cup of tea steams from his mug while he does his best impression of perplexity.

“By the way,” Herald adds. “I’ll have to leave the office at 10:00 today. I have a meeting with a client at Costa Mesa Country Club at 1:00, but I left my clubs in my trunk at LAX. I’ll have to fly up and get them.”

Sipping from his tea, Adam hesitates to quietly blurt: “What?”

“I couldn’t take my golf clubs on the plane. It would take forever if I checked them. I’d be late to work.”

“But why do you have to fly up to get them? No…why do you have to fly at all?”

“It takes 30 days to form a new habit. I’m going to fly in and out of work the next 30 days. Sometimes that might be a bit of a hiccup for the office, but I promise that it’s for everyone’s good if I straighten out my fear of flying. I really need your support on this one, Adam. Personal and professional development stuff, you know? I can take it to HR to write off on it.”

Knowing it’s worth fighting about as much as a war on drugs, Adam pauses and offers his help. “Okay, fine. This can fly for today, but we’ll be reevaluating your plan for beating your phobia, because I foresee it being more than a ‘hiccup’ for the office if you continue departing two hours after you arrive.”

Imagining a possible solution, Adam takes Herald into his office to show his odd yet endearing subordinate his golf clubs. Herald rummages through the pockets of the golf bag, admiring the wedges and drivers with two gentle hands.

“How about if you borrow my clubs for the afternoon? That way you won’t have to fly back to LAX until after normal work hours.”

“You know I can’t borrow things, Adam. You know this. I can’t borrow. People lend me things, and they never get them back. Please, don’t make me.”

Adam remembers his wife’s party tray, his fountain pen, and he knows lending the golf clubs is a bad idea. He also wonders about the missing doormat that once welcomed clients to the office, the receptionist’s candy bowl that was relocated to Herald’s cubicle, but mostly he wonders why his daughter married this jackass.

This jackass who tries so hard to become a better man.

Adam dismisses Herald for his five-minute drive to John Wayne in his rented Mustang convertible.

Herald keeps the top up on the convertible, intentional about not getting used to extra luxuries. But he eyes the maps in the glove compartment, slipping them into his bag before returning the keys to the rental center.

_____________

Herald takes his seat in the airplane next to a mature woman that looks like his mother-in-law and fastens his seat belt.

Is that what my wife will look like in thirty years?

Pushing the thought out of his mind, he opens his bag—looking for anything at all to keep his mind off of take-off—his bag where the same maps that caught his eye earlier catch his eye again.

“Dammmmmmit.” He exhales as he turns his head and gaze upward, sending an elongated curse into the air. “Why do I do this?”

The woman next to him continues examining the photographs in the in-flight magazine. She debates lifting her eyes to him in a consoling glance, but her gaze remains glued to a photo of a new restaurant that opened in Philadelphia last month. They serve gourmet breakfast burritos exclusively for lunch.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees this man remove something from his bag—and she feels afraid.

Herald self-talks: I can’t keep these maps.

Across the aisle by the window a dad wearing a Disneyland t-shirt sits next to his daughter, and his wife and younger daughter sit in the row directly behind him. His fatherly instinct keeps an eye on this potentially crazy man across the aisle who just cursed in front of his seven year-old.

He is surprised to be addressed by this character.

“Excuse me, sir,” interjected Herald with fear-sweat dripping down the side of his temples. “I see you are wearing a Disneyland shirt. Did you just have a vacation there? Because, you see, I have these maps, and I want to give them away as, um, souvenirs to your daughters…if that’s okay with you.”

The eyes of Disney-dad’s elder daughter jet across the cabin to this mystery man and back at her dad’s face. In a moment the father sees the formulation of tears in his daughter’s eyelids. They are on reserve if he makes the wrong decision.

“Sure.”

As soon as Herald extends the maps to the daughter, she snatches them away with a rapid grunt sounding like “thank you.”

“We are now beginning our descent,” the airplane alerts its inhabitants.

“To the grave,” Herald mutters holding tight to his seat belt like a bull rider.

_____________

In the early evening, Adam—about to leave work—receives a picture text message from his son-in-law.

Three golf balls sit in a line on well-kept green.

Someone has drawn frowning faces on each.

“Sorry. I took them. I promise to bring them back. See you tomorrow. Might be late if flight is delayed.”

Adam knows he won’t get his golf balls back, but he’s happy he got an apology. An apology wouldn’t have happened three months ago.

Reply.

“See you tomorrow, son.”

This is a story I wrote because I woke up laughing the other morning. I had dreamed up a character in my half-sleep. He’d be an eccentric kleptomaniac who is highly intentional about becoming a better person. His name would probably be Herald. I dreamed of Herald wanting to conquer his fear of flying.

My church reads wonderful poems like this during the service. I LOVE it.

THE QUIET WORLD

In an effort to get people to look
into each other’s eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond,
I know she’s used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

—Jeffrey McDaniel

Here’s a full demo of Transcontinental that my friend Ben and I recorded. He’s training to be a recording engineer, and this was for one of his projects. I’m kind of psyched about it and even more psyched about the fuller and more legit version we’ll eventually get to make. Hope you like it.

the-absolute-best-posts:

ohthenightsky:

“Lily is a Great Dane that has been blind since a bizarre medical condition required that she have both eyes removed. For the last 5 years, Maddison, another Great Dane, has been her sight. The two are, of course, inseparable.”

(via madebycows)