There will never be a way to prevent ourselves from being hurt by other people. Even if we were able to look inside the hearts and minds of everyone around us, we would probably still fall into predicaments that brought us misery. At the same time, in order to make a toxic person really have the effect they want to upon us, we must dwell on all the ways in which they have hurt us. We must allow them to continue to steal our joy and happiness from us long after the wounds have been inflicted, which means that if we let go and refuse to hold onto the pain, we are the ones who win—not them.

As you know, I am very forthcoming at this blog. I share things that some people might not even reveal to their closest friends. Do I care? Actually, if I can reach even one of you by something I say, I regret none of my personal confessions. But you do have to watch who you open your heart to. Look upon the heart as a beautiful sanctuary within yourself. There are two doors closing this sanctuary off from the rest of the world. You can open them only if you decide to. If you are at a place in your life where you feel that you need the approval of other people to feel okay about yourself—that their acceptance of you is crucial to your happiness and positive opinion about yourself, you are at risk of being deeply hurt. There are what I would call predators of the heart, and they come in many different shapes and wear a variety of masks. They are almost like vampires, in a way. They prey upon your energy and your spirit to satisfy their inner emptiness. However, they are often convinced that their lives are bringing them fulfillment. Rarely will they admit to you that they are seeking something other than that which they’ve already got. To make you feel that you are necessary to them in some way would give some of the power they think they possess away. Now, if push comes to shove, and they are concerned that you may escape the designs they have on your life, they might be capable of saying anything. But they are generally reluctant to admit any signs of personal weakness.  When I think of a character in literature who is a predator of the heart, I cannot help but think of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ classic novel, Great Expectations. She is not content to merely lick her wounds and drown her sorrow by living a reclusive life. Rather, she picks out another person as a vessel for her vendetta. If you haven’t read the book or seen a film adaptation of the book, you will not have a thorough idea of what I am speaking of. However, you can take my word for the fact that Miss Havisham is a true predator of the heart. In a way, she is a tragic and pathetic figure. It is nearly impossible not to feel sorry for all the pain she has experienced. Yet no pain that we experience justifies our preying upon the hearts of others.

As a diva who tends to speak whatever is on her mind, I want to share with all of you something that happened to me yesterday. I was betrayed by someone who had pretended to be my friend. Has this happened to me before? Yes, of course. It’s probably happened to most of you, too. I think that one reason this happens is because our society preaches a “me first/you second” philosophy. This means that, even if a person betrays someone close to them, if it’s in that person’s best interest at the time they do it, they somehow manage to excuse their conduct. Now, many cases of betrayal are connected to revenge. Rather than letting go of resentment and anger, a certain type of person holds it in until, at last, it boils over and they do something that hurts someone else in a way that can be devastating. Unfortunately, when bitterness, resentment, and/or anger begin to cloud someone’s vision, there is a strong chance that they will begin to perceive that they are being deceived or wronged in some way, even if they’re not.  In other words, they may at some point be incapable of thinking logically. Predators of the heart are often paranoid, too. They see those who do not allow them into their inner sanctuary as being against them. They may even have grandiose ideas about their relationship with someone whom they are trying to prey upon. They may see that person as belonging to them, even if the person doesn’t. The person who betrayed me felt he had the right to interject himself in many different aspects of my life. He was also jealous of anyone else whom I have in my life, including my mother. You see, he felt that anyone who was giving me advice or input aside from him might prevent him from having the all-powerful influence in my life that he felt he needed. When he finally saw that I was determined to remain in charge of my life and was willing to fight him for control of it, he betrayed me. He made sure I was aware of his betrayal, too. I think he concluded that only in my knowing about his betrayal would he receive any sort of personal gratification. How many of you believe, now that I am introducing you to the concept of predators of the heart, that you might have crossed paths with one of these persons? Might there even be one in your life right now? “Maybe so,” you say, “but how can I tell?” Notice how you feel when you spend time around someone whom you suspect is a predator of the heart. Do they find ways to make you feel that you are weak? Do they play up your faults in a way that is subtle? For example, might they say something like, “Well, you know, you have loads of flaws, but I love you anyway.” Does this sound familiar? You do see what they’re doing, don’t you? They’re wanting you to feel that you can’t really handle the big, bad problems in your life on your own. So. . .they are there to help you. All you have to do is wrap up your heart and hand it over to them first. Then they’ll take care of everything.  Pretty soon, of course, you’ll be wondering why the decisions you’re making don’t really match up with the decisions you want to make. You may also find yourself tolerating things that you never thought you would put up with. But, you see, your pet predator of the heart has convinced you that you will never find another friend or lover like them. So, you’d better let them drain all your own thoughts and opinions from you. If they want to start controlling your mind, you’d better let them do that, too. I mean, they’re probably smarter than you anyway. . .or at least wiser, right? They seem to know so much. They seem to have all the answers figured out, and, even though it seems like they are trying to take control of your life, surely all they’re really trying to do is help you. Right??? Wrong. Predators of the heart have no more compassion or empathy than the living dead. Never deceive yourself. A predator of the heart is never thinking of his prey as anything more than an object to nourish his or her desire to control. Your feelings and needs don’t count. Dracula never did seem to care much about the needs of his victims, did he? No, he cared only for satisfying his lust for blood. And he was very seductive, too, wasn’t he? He never told his victims, “Hello there, I’m a vampire. May I bite your neck and drink your blood?” If he had done that, how believable would it have been? Well, like a vampire who beguiles his victims, preying upon the hearts of others begins with seduction. For you to be willing to open up your heart, you must first be under the predator’s “spell”. For me to say that a predator of the heart has a standard method of worming his or her way in to your life would be giving you the false idea that you might be able to pick out a predator of the heart readily. You will rarely be able to do that. What you must do, though, is immediately pay attention to any feelings you have of wanting to distance yourself from the person. If you ignore them when you feel them, they may go away as the predator starts to know you better and begins using better and more cunning tactics. Pay attention to the behavior the possible predator exhibits early on in your communication with him or her. Does he or she argue with some of your beliefs and opinions? Does he or she make you feel that you are ignorant or ill-informed for standing by the convictions you have? Later, if the predator perceives that arguing with your beliefs isn’t the way to win you over, he or she will use different methods of doing so. This is why you must analyze all of your initial contact with the person.  To be honest, the predator of the heart who has just exited my life showed plenty of sides of himself that were objectionable to me early on in our friendship. I found him abrasive and argumentative. I even wondered why he wanted to be friends with me since it was evident to me that he and I were different in a number of ways. Yet after awhile, he seemed to have somehow made himself a fixture in my life. I didn’t even realize it had happened, until it already had. Although this man had seemed perfectly content with his life when I first met him, as time went on, he began to infer that I was fulfilling some kind of deep personal need he had. By making me believe this, he succeeded in brainwashing me into thinking that I had to put up with him, no matter how unkindly or harshly he treated me. When he would instigate debates, I would be drawn into them like a fly being drawn into the web of a spider. Before I knew it, he had actually managed to create a certain amount of alienation between me and my mother because she recognized him for what he was, and he sensed that. I suddenly became a victimized princess locked in a tower with a mother who was, to use his terminology, “an ogre”. He tried to make himself the center of my world—indeed, the only person who really had my best interest at heart. At one point, he sent me ten and twelve e-mails a day. When I tried to tell him I couldn’t respond to all of them, he attempted to make me feel guiltyand even accused me of trying to end our friendship. Predators of the heart are very good at making you feel as if you are blame when you try to fight them. For them, you see, only their desires exist. And your mission in life, in their mind, is to gratify these desires.

“But what do I do?” you ask, almost in despair. See, I knew you would ask this. . .and, truth be told, I am still finding new and better ways in regard to how to deal with predators of the heart with each passing day. What I advise is that you stop looking at the conduct you see and start looking at the intentions behind the conduct. If your would-be predator-of-the-heart tells you that he/she loves you even though he/she told you a few weeks before that he didn’t believe in love, pay attention. If he or she says that he is a loyal and true friend to you, even though he/she told you at another time that he/she had a “big mouth” and was always talking about his/her friends behind their  backs, do not ignore it. If he/she confesses to you that he/she is usually the one who walks out of a relationship, do not assume that you will be treated any differently. Although there are many people who will never tell you the truth about themselves, there are also many people who will sometimes make revealing declarations or remarks in an unguarded moment. And the moments in which a predator of the heart lets down his/her guard are the moments that matter. If you have already been the victim of a predator of the heart, the worst thing you can do is to continue victimizing yourself by dwelling on the situation and/or associating it with the person you are right now. The only reason you should even remember what happened is to know how you can prevent it from ever happening again. For if we do not look towards the past to teach us lessons, then it serves no purpose. Indeed, should we not allow the past to instruct us in how to live better and more wisely, the past is, as the poet Carl Sandburg said, no more than “a bucket of ashes.”

This diva didn’t think she would manage a new blog post today. For one thing, physical exhaustion is something I’ve been battling since I awakened yesterday. This being the case, it wasn’t a good time to be betrayed. But, you know, things like betrayal don’t come at the times that are most convenient for us! *wink* In fact, I would say that they are more likely to come at inopportune moments. However, I have a bit of encouraging news: sometimes we’re dealt our hardest blows in life just before everything takes  a turn-around for the better. So, the next time somebody who pretended to be your friend turns out to be an enemy instead, just know that the void they create in your world by no longer being in it will leave room for somebody or something wonderful.

Make each moment matter. . .make each day count. And live with passion and enthusiasm!

Until soon,

Your Success Diva

This page and all written material at The Success Diva pages is written by Alexis Wingate. All rights are reserved. (C) Copyright by Alexis Wingate. The Success Diva

I have a drawing of a dandelion on my wall that never gets destroyed. It never gets ripped from the ground and it never gets blown away in a million pieces. Nor does it get worn by the weather, or trodden on by ungrateful passers by. I look at it in the morning, to remind me, to be happy. And when my light is off, and the blinds are shut, a beam of sunshine hits it on my wall. Beneath it, it reads:

To Georgia, the dandelion child. I brought you your dandelions. -Ana.

Who knew such a small thing could make me happy. Thanks Ana. Today when I came home from work, just by the gate where a small patch of sunlight spilt, there was an in tact dandelion, standing strong. I wish they lasted.

My great aunty was diagnosed with cancer a couple of days ago, and I  found out today. I wish alot of things lasted.

Lately, I have not been able to get to sleep straight away. I lay there, listening to the house breathe. Some cars go by on the main road and I think about getting to sleep. I think about thinking about going to sleep, and how it wastes so much time. Speaking of time, the clock on my wall ticks so loudly when you are trying to concentrate on sleeping. I wonder about how we don’t recall the few seconds before we actually hit sleep. I think about writing a blog about not sleeping. And I feel empty. I read in a magazine that when you can’t sleep you’re supposed to get up and walk around. I wonder if it helps.

Also, I thought the other day, that it would be nice to have freckles. I don’t know why. The thought crossed my mind while I was taking the dog on one of our many long walks/runs that we disappear on. I’ve gotta say, there are some really nice houses in New Lambton. Take Ana’s, her house has an awesome staircase that is fit for the running up and down on, and steep sloped ceilings in the bedrooms! What more could you want in a house. 

This is it for today, toodle-oo.

He awoke
to the noon sun
blazing through his window.
The sunlight,
searing eyes long deprived of sleep
and a mind so weary
begging to succumb.
He stood, pulled the curtain
cos he couldn’t bear the thought
of another day passing this way.
There are pages on the floor, looseleaf
scribbles in ink
He remembers the writing, but
not what he wrote.
Way past midnight,
the pen scratching along
till he passed out, and it slipped from his hand.
As his head slowly reaches
the wakefulness his body proclaimed moments ago
memories flood through his brain
No longer dulled by alcohol and apathy,
he remembers a voice.
Her voice. Singing
that endless lament, writ by Fate
and arranged as a duet for two.
He fell to his knees, grasping
for something
Scattering papers and inks
With a reluctant sob, matched
by a single crystalline tear
his fingers traced the worn photograph
as he
Remembered the music that
coursed through his veins like quicksilver flame
as their voices rose, burning
into the night.
He searched within himself for the
wings he thought he’d lost
for the feeling of living that he hadn’t felt
Since he stood in the darkness, a face in the crowd
as she sang there onstage
With a voice that would burn out the sun;
or at least that’s how it was to him.
Like there was nobody else ever there.
A cool midsummer breeze
sweept in through his open window,
further scattering the pages
of his life,
writ larger and more daringly
than he ever lived it.
Compensation, perhaps,
for everything he never said
became everything he ever wrote.
The breeze brought him back to the here and now.
Alone, hungover,
lacking direction
With half-written, half-remembered memories surrounding him.
That feeling
that desperation, that loss
that emptiness
gave him the resolve
- just like all the other times.
So he threw back the curtains,
even though the sunlight made him squint at first.
And, picking up his pen from where it’d fallen…

He began to write.

7 Months of my life,

Wasted for you.

A black spot

in my soul

that will never be removed.

Pimp. Drug Addict. Drug Pusher.

Whore.

I’ve been robbed

but now its over.

Liar. Thief. Fake.

Murderer.

In you

there is no good.

I looked to the Devil

and found no soul.

I looked to the Devil

& I sought to comfort.

Instead,

I came out a whore.

There is no more of this.

I wont let you

take me

down to hell

anymore.

This drop
You were here
You were here
You were here
Bye Bye
So Tired
Body numb
Placed in Society
Solid spin
The Fan above Me speaks
The obsession you didn’t have
That’s why you left
That’s why you left
That’s why you left
It was the Fan
The numb
The spin
The fan
The no fun
Sigh
I do
The numb fan, so much louder
Consistent
Solid and Reliable
They come with a warranty
Society does not

This drop
took away the pain
the knowledge
the vision
the sight
the balance
this wine
took away the words
the grasp
the block
the light
and left me
with the guilt

This blood bath
Ingest
This light
Close it
This feeling
This feeling
This feeling
My Heart Beats
Stop it

The floor
Swallow my blood
Blend me
I have no more love
No more pain
No life
The numb is all

The floor
The “no”
Refusing for me
An answer, “no”
A word, “no”
A syllable, “no”
A breath, “no”
A voice says, “no”
It is no voice

A Question
For You a Question for You
Why did you murder me
Your beloved
Your accursed
Your muse
Your abused
Your light
Your light
I am your dead
I am your beloved Corpse
Amuse me, and I will play dead
tickle me, I will play dead
play with me, I will play dead

My breath is stale
A floating angel
A remissing possession
A perspiring hate
An interrupting calm
An unconditioning condition
The moon wind
Purified garbage
My words mean something
My breath speaks alone
With lines
For you to perceive

There is no more me
Reality is a stale air
a comforting nothingness
a dear blank
a sincere stare
an earthly lesson
i am cut off
Like a stream
With conscious being
Let me fall
Into a pond

6-19-09 I’m feeling out of sorts today. This is one of those days where there’s missed connections, where everything feels slightly off. It’s a day where I feel the craving to be filled a bit more sharply. A day where nothing I do really satisfies and underlying everything is a feeling of loss. I hate those days. They don’t happen often, but when they do occur, no matter what I do that day, it feels like nothing got done. Sad though, measuring the day by what got done or didn’t…yet I do it all the time. There can be benefits for doing it, but is that really the only way I find worth?

6-22-09 Envy is one of the shadows of desire. Feeling envy is like feeling pointy, sharp knives being stabbed into you…Each stab is a fresh reminder of the pain you feel. Just one of those nights.

6-27-09 I’m alone this weekend. My wife is off with her boyfriend and I have our home to myself. In someways, though, I’ve felt fairly alone lately, because the emptiness working is intensifying and I’ve also been letting go of a lot of my cravings when it comes to wanting other relationships…letting go, but also feeling.

It is the act of feeling which allows for the letting go. I’ve never realized as much as I do now how much I sometimes have found value in myself through the relationships I have with others. I think some of that can be healthy, but can get unhealthy if the value is only because of those relationships.

I want to be involved with someone new…be dating someone…and I acknowledge that. But I also accept that if and when it happens, it will occur because it’s the right moment…which doesn’t mean I’m not looking…just means I’m less frantic about it.

And more appreciative of the relationships I do have with wife, family, and friends. It’s wonderful to have people hwo genuinely care about you and love you and want you in their lives. I appreciate that more than ever because having those relationships is what’s helping me get through this emptiness working.

6-29-09 As I’ve continued doing this emptiness working, something which has come into my consciousness more has been an awareness of other peoples’ emptiness. It’s consequently made me more aware of what I am comfortable dealing with and what I’m not comfortable dealing with. I think every person has some degree of emptiness in them and I think it’s not unhealthy to have it, but how it’s expressed can be unhealthy. When I’m around someone and that person wants something from me, in a way that tries to fill that person up, I know it’s a case of trying to fill up the emptiness. In some ways, it’s a kind of psychic vampirism. And until people get comfortable with their emptiness, and understand how they are reacting to it, it will cause them to act out in ways that involve trying to fill themselves up. I know this, because it’s been that way with me, most of my life. Only recently have I come to a place where I’m not acting out that emptiness…but because I’m aware of that emptiness in myself, I can also feel it in others, and see it in the behaviors they exhibit.

7-01-09 Sometimes an event will occur, which triggers issues for me from the past. Frex I give someone a gift and that person doesn’t exhibit as much enthusiasm or interest in said gift as I hoped (expected) s/he would. On the one hand, Lupa’s pointed out that I tend to build up some expectations as to how someone will act when I give that person something. And there’s some truth to her observation. I do sometimes build up an expectation on how I think someone will act or react to something I do and that can lead to disappointment and isn’t fair to the person either.

But in thinking about it, the root of this issue is in feelings of neglect. My honest feeling wasn’t so much disappointment, as a feeling of neglect, of not being noticeable enough, worth enough to be shown consideration to. And yes that issue can lead to high expectations, but when I trace it back to myp ast, I trace it to my childhood, where I was essentially an indentured servant. I was expected to do a lot of chores, and was rarely, if at all thanked for what I did. In fact, I was usually only acknowledged when I did something bad. Everything good I did wasn’t worth noticing or paying attention to. And sometimes…I still feel that way. Now, that isn’t the fault of anyone I know. It’s my issue to deal wih, my issue to own, but part of owning it is acknowledging it, being honest about it, and recognizing what triggers it. And also recognizing what I need to do, to decondition that trigger.

7-3-09 I recently added a new business to my entrepreneurial gig and in the midst of doing that got some real gems for my emptiness work: Humility is believing in yourself and in abundance. It’s believing you have everything in the world to offer and also believing that everyone else does too.” It’s an interesting definition of humility, and one I find compelling. And what does it have to with emptiness…Simply recognizing that everyone does have something to offer. It’s a shift in thinking that focuses on recognizing the value that each person has. And for me, this is a shift which has been occurring for a while, since the advent of my entreprenurial focus. And when I’ve come to this view, it’s changed some of my feelings about emptiness, because I recognize more and more what it has to offer to me as well.

7-03-09 There are times where I still find myself struggling with being completely open and upfront. I want to be open…but there’s also that part, which doesn’t want to be open. That part is the part that learned early on that being open was a bad idea, that it would be used against me.  And rationally I know I’m not in that place anymore…I’m not that child anymore, but emotionally my issues with the authority that someone could have with my life is one that makes me feel uneasy. That uneasiness brings its own contributions to how I handle situations where I want something, but might have to get someone else’s approval to get it. Sometimes I really have to muster up my courage to bring something up, because of that uneasiness. It’s gotten easier to deal with over the last year, but its still something I have trouble with occasionally.

7-06-09 This month so far has been quieter than all the other months. Sure some stuff has come up, and there is still an awareness of emptiness, but at the same time there’s also a quietness, a kind of calmness…and not the calmness before a storm, but more like a calm centeredness of knowing myself and knowing emptiness and feeling collected and grounded with both.

7-10-09 Sometimes I will catch myself in a stream of thought that is focused around desire and in that moment acknowledge just how much that desire occupies my thoughts. It’s useful for recognizing just how much I want something, as well as asking whether that focus is really helping or not. It’s showing me as well the place desire has in my internal landscape, and now I’m learning how to sit with that comfortably. It’s not always easy, because sometimes I feel overwhelmed by how much my thoughts can sometimes go toward desire, but learning to sit with it is teaching me a lot about how I feel when I feel desire and can’t act on it. I’m seeing what underlies desire, which sometimes is a feeling of emptiness and fear, and sometimes is a desire to connect.

Some further realizations. Some of my desires deal with taboo, the desire to do something forbidden. When I thought about that and traced it back, I found the root, of course, in my past. Because I lived in a very disciplined household, one of the things I did to get power in those situations was to go behind my parents back and to lie to them. If I could get away with something, I took it as a triumph. And I see that same behavior in my life, over and over again through my twenties, and to a lesser degree my early thirties. Never mind that the root situation is gone…there’s still this desire to do something forbidden, and the pleasure of getting away with it. I’m not acting on that desire now, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have fantasies about it. Today when I had such a fantasy, I spent a lot of time thinking about it, sitting with it, and figuring out where the desire originated from. And having done that, I can say that it makes a lot of sense to me, but it’s no longer needed. I’m not in a situation where I’m dealing with some authority over me restricting me from enjoying what I like. I’m in a situation where I have that authority and ultimately responsibility for what I do. Needless to say, that gives me a lot of incentive to continue working on this stuff, instead of acting out on it.

7-12-09 I’ve been re-reading Epstein’s works on Buddhism and psychotherapy. Seemed appropriate for the emptiness working. In one of the books, Epstein talks about realizing that the pain, anger etc., isn’t something you can remove, that instead you’ve got to sit with it and work through it. The same is true of desire. You can’t remove it, and you do need to work through it. It’s something which needs to be experienced, but in a manner that allows you to know that you are truly at peace with how it makes you feel. You can’t eliminate the emptiness, the desire, the anger, because it’s something which is part of you. We treat it as the other, because we don’t want to deal with it. But it’s only in sitting with those feelings, that we can find peace with them.

7-13-09 I am simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable with my desires. I am comfortable in the moments I express them, but uncomfortable with having them…and it’s fairly easy for me to figure out the root and where it all came from…but sitting with it and being present with is something else I’m still learning to do.

7-17-09 Sitting with my desires today, I realized just how important it is sit with them and be silent in that sitting. And by silence, I don’t mean not talking, so much as I mean really listening. I still don’t feel any more comfortable with it, but I do feel like I’m finally ready to listen as opposed to frenetically acting.

Sorry everyone in advance for what will be a very short post this Friday (as prophesied on Wednesday), because as it turns out, I am really busy today. I spent the majority of my morning and afternoon in downtown Chicago wrestling the great Bull of Heaven (the Circuit Court) in the arena of the Gods (Daley Plaza). The reasons for this are MYSTERIOUS and FRIGHTENING, and sadly I cannot disclose them to you at this time. Try me September 14th.

BOX OFFICE PREDICTIONS!

1. Harry Potter and the Chestnut of Doom
2. Bruno
3. Ice Age III
4. Transformers Part 2
5. Public Enemies

Seems simple enough, and I’m pretty sure this is a safe bet. I woulda put “500 Days of Summer” on there, but it’s only in limited release for now.

OKAY see you guys Monday. See? Told you it’d be a short post. Oh, and a picture.

This kid (specifically) and all his bretheren are sure to be in line with me tomorrow. Yikes.

When I was a young child, I was precocious, and wanted responsibility.

So I did what any other little kid would: ask.

I asked to stay home alone. I asked to get an allowance raise to $20 a month (God what I would do to get that back). I asked to be allowed to cook. I wanted to make my own decisions regarding church attendance, bed-time, and the amount and content of television I watched. And I was, of course, rejected for most of it. But I got emotional responsibility.

The bulk of it happened at age 10, when my parents divorced and I had choose a parent. But even before that, I had it, and never realized exactly how much disclosure I received in my early years – until now, that is.

My parents, like most others these days, had relationships before they met each other. My mom was married four times before she ever met my father, and both had two kids to bring into the equation, before I was born.

My dad was raised Catholic, and sometime in his 20s or 30s, he met a nice Jewish woman, whose name has escaped me to this day. They married, had two children, and subsequently divorced (My dad has done some rather nasty things in his life; what he did is easy to guess, but leads to much ranting if I state it).

In 1996, I was in first grade, and I was given an assignment. The objective was to teach us the word “sibling.” The result was a harsh truth suddenly surfacing.

“What did you learn at school today?”

“That I have two siblings.”

My mom paused at that point. Perhaps to figure out what word I was mispronouncing, or perhaps because she knew what was about to happen.

“You have four siblings, honey.”

I paused at this point, because Mom was apparently an idiot.

“No! Laura and Tricia! One and one! Two!”

She sighed. It was time.

“Laura and Tricia are your half-sisters. They’re my children, but not your dad’s. Your dad has two other children, too, but they’re not mine.”

“So the others are half-sisters too?”

“One half-brother, one half-sister.”

“So I still have two siblings, because they’re all halves.”

My mother giggled, which officially ended the conversation. For then.

In an unknown month of fall, in an unknown year, we flew to Massachusetts. We were at a baseball game, I think, and my parents had a conversation with some guy named Jason. I was reading a Goosebumps book for most of that day. Later, I learned That One Guy was my older brother.

We have not spoken since. I don’t even remember what he looks like.

As for my half-sister, I’ve never spoken to or met her. I’m not even sure where she lives.

I’ve tried many times over the last few years to make contact. I’ve tried countless people search websites. I’ve found – and called – a few phone numbers. My most recent endeavor in this has been calling phone numbers in Arlington, Virginia. One was an assisted living facility. One was for a block captain, who said she had never heard of my sister, and even looked through a directory to no avail.

My dad sent me a picture of her and her boyfriend (at the time?). She’s one of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen, and I’m personally jealous she got the good features, while I’m stuck with Dad’s nose. He said he would give me her phone number, if she says it’s okay next time he talks to her, which I’m guessing will be around 2015, if he calls her as frequently as he calls me. It’s been a year and a half, now, so I’m tired of waiting.

In March 2008, I attempted to connect with her through LinkedIn. Between then and today, she accepted, which gave me an email address with IBM.

I sent an email tonight, about three hours ago. It wasn’t returned by a daemon, which gives me hope, though I’ve attempted to send messages through websites and old or guessed email accounts in vain in the past.

Sis, if you’re out there, somewhere, reading this, I want you to know I’m trying. I really, really am. I don’t have a lot of hope at this point that I will ever get to meet you. I don’t even think you would want a relationship with me, since you already have a brother, and I’m not exactly the best family member. If that’s true, though, I hope you’ll at least tell me that, so I can stop searching, and have some kind of closure. Maybe the hole will be filled just knowing that you’re happy. But I think truly knowing you and Jason would be a much better fit.

At long last, certain issues in my life are making sense. And like Sting sings about in Message In A Bottle, I’ve always felt alone… stranded… trapped in a meaningless existence. And again, like in the song, I’ve sent my S.O.S. to the world… in the form of blogging for the most part (though I haven’t got that many readers at this stage). And once more, like in the song, I’ve found those hundred million other bottles washed up on the shore… I realized I’m not as alone as I felt.

I never even knew such a thing as the Quarter Life Crisis was even acknowledged. Of course, we’ve all heard about the mid-life crisis… but to see mention of a ‘quarter life crisis’ as well… blew my mind.

Of course, I always had the issues with anxiety and clinical depression… even if they did go undiagnosed through my adolescent years. I know all of my former classmates would have known I was… different. Well I decided at the end of school that I’d stop running from it and embrace my difference… to see what aspects of my difference make me strong, as opposed to being caught up in what makes me weak.

But I figure the reason what I feel can be considered a Quarter Life Crisis is more than just that. Its mostly the fact that life hasn’t turned out anything like I’d planned. All through my early twenties, I found myself adjusting my ‘plans’… my life goals to try and catch up with the more ‘realistic’ outlook. And now, the person I became, the person I am, the person I want to be are nothing like they were in the past.

I changed a lot in these years… some things for the better definitely… I cut the religious crap and opened my mind, I embraced a better sense of humour (even if it is a bit weird). I even lost a fair bit of weight. As for the changes for the worse… well I ended up becoming somewhat more insular… while talking to people (especially girls) was always tough, it only got tougher. I lost much of the motivation I once had… I hardly dream of big things anymore, and most of all I found myself losing my love of certain noble pursuits I once had, for example, studying history in an academic setting.

The quarter life crisis is for the most part a crisis of identity. The person I was… he no longer exists. The person I am… well there are some things I’m sure of… minute details such as my continued love of video games, love of fantasy and sci-fi literature and film, overwhelming concern with the state of the world much as its a huge burden I don’t even need to bear, I burden I shouldn’t be bearing.

Another issue though is just how unaware I am of the entirety of my responsibilities as an adult. My anxiety disorders put me at a considerable disadvantage in developing the skills relating to this. I know that somehow I need to find something I can do to support myself… to contribute. Unfortunately, I wasn’t liking any of the options shoved in my face. I got to a point where I wasn’t even liking what I was already doing.

Finally, there is that anxiety of how I measure up to my peers. I’ve noticed the kinds of lives those I used to know have found, and… well I find that I don’t measure up to the excessively high standard that the school I went to has drilled into my head (it was a grammar school, by the way).

So long story short, I’m having trouble forging my identity, learning my responsibilities in life, coming to grips with my place compared to the place that my peers have found, and most of all getting the motivation to slog through.

I at least know now that I want to be a novelist… though years ago I’d have expected to have published something by now. And I don’t even know if that’s what I want to be in 20 years, or 10 years or even next year. But what else do I have? What other talent can I put to use in a life in which I can live by the values I’ve developed?

Anyway, I feel a little more validated knowing that the quarter life crisis is something many end up going through. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if many (if not all) of my former classmates are going through this right now. Anyone I’ve ever called friend or girlfriend could very well be going through their own quarter life crisis.

My next talk will be at Thammasat University this Saturday. It is on the new translation of the book The Quantum and the Lotus, which has just been completed by Suan Ngern Mee Ma Press. The book is an extended conversation between Matthieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan. The former is a former molecular biologist who turned to become a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and the latter was born in a Buddhist culture and became a well known astrophysicist working in the US.

So we have a symmetrical contrast — a French scientist who became a monk and a Vietnamese who became a scientist. The symmetry would have been more perfect if Thuan had been a monk first and then disrobed. But that is not too necessary. The idea of the book is a dialog on various topics between Buddhism, represented by Ricard, and science, represented in Thuan. This in itself is a welcoming reversal to the perhaps stereotypical perception that science belongs to the West and Buddhism to the East.

The book started with a background of both Ricard and Thuan — how both became what they are right now, and it gave an account of the two’s long conversation together when they met in a conference, an event which led to the present book. The chapters deal with topics which are of interest to both Buddhists and the scientists, such as, the structure of matter, the beginning and the end of the universe, mind, consciousness, mathematics, whether real knowledge and truth can be obtained through either Buddhism or science, and so on.

The first chapter opened with a general account of the orientation of both Buddhism and science. What are the purposes or the objectives of both enterprises? Science, of course, aims at finding truth about the natural phenomena, theories that would explain how the phenomena came about and how they are to be understood. Buddhism, according to Ricard, aims at the same goal. Buddhism has an interest in knowing what the truth is like, because then the practitioner would gain an insight which will lead him or her to attain the Final Goal, that of liberation from all sufferings.

And here is the main difference between science and Buddhism lies. Science appears to want to know how things are just for the sake of it, or at least that is the version usually put to us by scientists, who claim that the purpose of basic, in contrast to applied, science, is just to know the truth without using the acquired knowledge for some other purposes. This account of the distinction between basic and applied science is very much contested, because even the so-called basic science is fraught with interests which are immediate and social, but that would take us further from the present point of this essay, so more on this later. The point here is that the version of the real distinction between basic and applied science here appears to contrast with Buddhism. For Buddhism it is not enough just to learn how things are just for the sake of it. Buddhists would say that that is an example of lobha, or desire, in this case desire for more and more knowledge. If this is so, then the desire for more knowledge would lead us further away from the Final Goal. So if science is viewed in this way, then the objectives of both seem to lead each in opposite directions.

The Thai version

That does not seem to be what Ricard has in mind in his dialog with his physicist counterpart. According to Ricard, Buddhism has an interest in finding truth about the natural phenomena, and he apparently believes that only through getting at this truth is the Goal possible. However, if such is really the case, then it becomes difficult to understand how the Goal has actually been achieved by countless practitioners of Buddhism throughout the ages. This is because even now such truth about the natural phenomena has not been fully achieved. Scientists are still debating among themselves and are frankly acknowledging that there is a lot that we do not yet know about our natural world. What, for example, is Dark Matter or Dark Energy? Right now there is no satisfactory account. Are there really parallel universes or ‘multiverses’ where our own is just one among countlessly many?

According to Ricard, one would have to learn about how things really are before one has a chance to gain Realization. After quoting the Buddha in one of the sutras when he told his students that his teachings were only a handful when compared to the whole of knowable things, which were as many as all the leaves in the forest, Ricard says:

But experience shows that it is necessary to understand correctly the nature of the exterior world and of the ego, or what we term ‘reality,’ if we want to eliminate ignorance. That is why the Buddha made this the central theme of his teaching. (The Quantum and the Lotus, Random House 2001, pp. 12-13.)

The problem here is how much of this ‘correct understanding’ would suffice. The Buddha’s parable of the leaves in his hand and the leaves in the forest shows that we can make do with the small amount we have and achieve the Goal. This would be all we need if what we really want is to achieve the Goal and nothing else. Science, on the other hand, seems to want more and more. You can’t stop at the level where you smash atoms to bits; you have to smash the bits further and get even smaller bits. You can’t stop at seeing this far out in space; you have see even further and further. But do the ever smaller bits belong to the leaves in the Buddha’s hands or out there in the forest?

It is true in a way that Buddhism has an interest in knowing the reality. Ricard’s examples of knowing the real nature of the ego and the “empty” characteristic of everything are good ones. But in Buddhism it does ultimately speaking not matter whether what you get is the real truth any way, so long as you sincerely believe it is. This is very difficult for non-Buddhists and especially scientists to understand, because they typically would think that our own thinking or conception of things is one thing, and what is out there objectively is another. But that is not the case in Buddhism. You will achieve Liberation if you sincerely believe that the ego is just a mental or conceptual construction and that reality is empty of inherent characteristics. What things really are outside of our conception or perception is not so important. They can be anything they like. They don’t matter at all.

One of the main practices in Tantric Buddhism is to visualize that the place that we are in right now is the Buddha’s realm full of jewels and the like. Every sound that we hear is mantra; every sight that of an enlightened being; the air we breathe is the air of Enlightenment, and so on. Here what scientists or empiricists usually take to be the “truth” has no place. In full visualization, in the eyes of an enlightened one, a “truth” is just that, a bubble in the water.

Everyday you fight against extinction,

Clocks tick on as time and life stand still.

Memories they offer no assistance,

Waiting for a time when scars will heal.

Free the pain…that eats the soul….

Let it go….just let it go

Dare to breathe… to face the truth,

Make it so… and let it go…

Time will heal the faithful always tell us,

Darkness something you alone control.

Take a step towards your destination,

The past is gone it’s time to let you know…

That all the dreams…both yours and mine…

Will make you shine…they’ll let you shine…

So come with me…

I’ll hold your hand…

I’ll take you there…

We’ll make a stand…

We’ll free your soul…please

Make it so… make it so….

let it go….just let it go…

R.M Roberts ©2009

On my way to a meeting at an office tower in Akihabara, I noticed this subtle and attractive landscaping. I like how the garden breaks up a barren space and uses traditional elements of Japanese gardens– bamboo, rock, natural fencing,and emptiness– in a non-traditional scale and grouping.

Yours is the doorway to death.
& I’ve let you on the inside.

I came
I came

& I came again

I couldn’t get you out of my mind.

My self destructive tendencies-
so cordial with how you waited

I wanted to die
I wanted to die

I wanted to die because I was baited.

You are the destruction
The Torment
the Death

I feel every day.

You stole my home
You stole my womb
You stole my life

& stole my fight.

I was a prisoner because you baited me
I should have known better

I tried

The Full-ness of a Body

This is not what I intend to write on the Subject of Infinity, but it is a projective chain of thoughts. It is a tracing of a yet un-consolidated line of interpretation.

Fido the Yak presents a symbol/concept which – and I’m not sure of its origin or complete meaning - is quite intriguing in the light of my recent readings on Spinoza, the Infinite and mathematics. What I would like to call the Full Set. This is how Fido describes his imagination of it

}∅{ is like an in-cept, yet it emerges discursively as a response to the arche. How does it originate? Autopoietically? Or do we acknowledge that it is a con-cept with the arche? (Like its withness with the empty set.) I talk about }∅{ extemporaneously because the extemporaneous describes it. If you can be in a state of consciousness that includes nothing while excluding nothing then }∅{ can describe such a state of consciousness, or a goal of thinking, a guideline, better. Maybe you’d want it to represent an empty concept, I don’t know. I say now the }∅{ expresses the acknowledgment that the explanation never exceeds its explained, which is a way of saying it never accomplishes what it sets out to do, and that “foundation” is a metaphor—you may see why I call it “the breach.”

We are running in similar directions, but I prefer in my own thinking to not think of it as a breach, so much as a whole plenitude, close to Deleuze’s Full Body, the Body without Organs. (Here my thoughts proceed from his in-spiration, in perhaps an appropriation.) It is closely related to Spinoza’s notion of the Infinite as something that cannot be broken. So, in my hands, it would describe the infinite proximity between any two limits.

It emerges from Spinoza’s diagram of bound infinities, which proclaims that within any bounds there are an infinity of magnitudes which are themselves divisible:

It is important to see that for Spinoza these are magnitudes(and not simply points on an imaginary line, which are at best ab-stractions). As magnitudes, they are FULL. Now, if we are to play with symbols, the requisite symbol for Spinoza’s point about bound infinities would be something like }∞{, which is to say, between any imposed limits, there are an infinity of magnitudes buried. Also importantly, and somewhat divergent from Badiou’s concept of Count-as-one, the symbol should not be {∞}, because for Spinoza any (abstract) internal bounds already, already refers to, or references to some degree a determination that lies outside of it, as in his Letter 12 diagram…

The sub-section between AB and CD {}, already includes comprehension of the circle circumstance itself, }{. Or, the internal count-as-one (set), really is composed, determined by the bordering edges of something beyond it, as a mode of comprehension, consciousness itself.

Playing With Symbols

So, while Spinoza in Letter 12 seems to be presenting something of a }∞{ determination, what would be the intuition of the full set }∅{, which is our subject here mean? It is not that between any two abstract limits there is some sort of nothing, or emptiness (for Spinoza denies the ontological consistency of the void). It is rather that the act of distinction and limitation itself drives itself toward the impossibility of separation: as we enter into the infinity of magnitudes (let us start with Badiou’s count-as-one teeming/erupting with multiplicities) {∞}, we are pre-positedly forced both outward…}∞{…but also inward to the full set itself…}∅{…the way in which what lies between simply cannot be divided at all and remains unbroken. It is not the sheer multiplicity that lies between any borders (inside, or outside), but rather the implicition that there is no “gap”, the very fullness of Being, from which mathematics, figure drawing and set-making composes only an abstraction, an imaginary class. It is for this reason that for Spinoza rational thought leads ultimately to an Intuition of immanent wholes and a speed of thought. 

Or, if put another way, any conception of emptiness, or lack, or nothing {∅} (whether it be mere psychological wanting, or mathematical 0), diverges upon the fullness of being, showing itself to be a figment.

So speak again, bright angel
because this silence is so
unbecoming of you.
I thought I had it down,
thought I’d come to terms
with the absence of your voice
and the visions that it brings…
Well, I was wrong.
To see your words spun loose again
only serves to make me
acutely aware
of the emptiness they fill.
The part of me that lives through you.
The part of me that
dies a little
every time I say goodnight.
The part of me I can never seem to find
if only because I don’t know where it’s hiding.
Until you showed me – reassured me
made me realize I don’t have to be invincible
- or immortal
That the only thing I need
is to listen
to what I’ve told you all along.
So speak again, bright angel,
because I will wait here forever
just to listen.

It’s that look in her eyes,
like she’s been running for days.
Something lost but not forgotten
as it claws its way to the surface of her mind;
she hasn’t slept for weeks
and so far, her dreams
haven’t caught up to her yet.
As that
small voice
in one corner of her mind
wonders
when all the fairy tales died,
she shouts it down.
With another page of this.
Another chapter of that.
Drowns herself in knowledge,
anything to forget that day.
The first day she was scared to dream,
the day where she didn’t
dance wildly along life’s road
reckless smile on her lips and
heart on her sleeve.
The day that she traded it all in
For this beautiful insanity.

Am I powerless to change?

Am I powerless to be anything different after so many tries?

Will He redeem me?

Tell me to help myself?

Tell me He’s had enough?

or just let me die?

I’m tired of failing.

Every day I taste defeat.

You would think it tastes great to me…

my stomach’s so full of it.

I’m alone in my body.

Just me, my emotions, my diseases, my body,

me…

Hello my friend where’s your head at today?

My eyes as I turn extinguish his words.

He listens intently as words go unspoken,

The touch of his hand a tear undisturbed.

R.M Roberts ©2009

Naked. In the context of anatomy for the male species, I may still be useful.  Nonetheless reduced to a mere mechanical object. It’s an indiscernible truth. Pretentious. And that has always been my fault. I think.

People will think that I can have a life worth living. That’s conceivable but other than what’s perceptible. I am nothing. Broken down. A little girl who’s peddling what’s littlest is left of her broken heart for an affection, for an attention to see through the invisibility. Settling for any attention. For anyone who barters.

Sooner or later they’ll leave. But it’ll be without anything. Amour-propre. And I end up lonely, destitute. It permeates to worthlessness. Between the was and is, I’ve lost myself. I don’t know myself anymore.

But maybe that’s they’re fault as much as mind. Them being themselves around me. How they treated me, held me, laughed with me. Convinced me that, wordlessly, this was the only way for me: held breaths, the space between heartbeats. Waiting.

I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now why exactly Hogar Clínica San Juan de Dios makes me feel so much heavier than the other two places I go to work. I thought at first it was because the illnesses are more permanent and visible–the children in San Juan have some some of physical disability, one of the boys just got his leg amputated, and lots of them have Cuban splints in their legs to make them grow–but that isn’t really true, because HIV is pretty permanent (Posadita), and Lady’s various crazy diseases (Hospital de Niños) are both permanent and extremely physically apparent. Furthermore, the kids at San Juan are active despite being in wheelchairs, and they give the best hugs ever.

However, working in places like this is always bittersweet, because the more you adore these kids the sadder you are about their misfortunes, and San Juan is the most bittersweet of all. My newest theory on the bitter is horror vacui, or fear of emptiness. The hospital clinic is run by a Catholic order called San Juan de Dios, and functions by donations. Because of mismanagement and over-generosity of the brothers in the past years, the financial situation has declined, and the clinic no longer has the resources to operate at its full capacity. This means that most of the beds in the large hospital are empty.

Posadita is always loud and overflowing, because there are lots of kids and they are all very energetic. Hospital de Niños is always jam-packed–there are never enough volunteers for the number of kids, and we only visit 4 or so salas out of many many many. In San Juan, right now we have only 4 permanent students. They live in a wing of the clinic that could easily house 50 with 3 or 4 bed-bound children. It sucks to grow up in a hospital. It sucks more to grow up in a hospital with flaky or nonexistent parents, and a permanent disability. But to live in a hospital with only 3 other children you can communicate/play with, with large rooms and spacious halls, where the sound of laughter and rolling wheels bounces off the dark empty walls? Very heavy.

On a lighter note, the movie theatre I went to last night to see Transformers 2 was not empty. Also, it was a pretty awful movie. However, Peruvian women laugh a lot, and in very funny ways, so I was entertained.

the ghosts seem to have vacated the upstairs
leaving behind a running toilet as a sleight to what once was
the years have rolled past without so much as a whistle’s shrill
to warn on-comers
and I’ve dulled to the point of almost not noticing.

I cannot remember why I made you cry, your front door
or the smell of your hair
I’ve misplaced anger, Rhode Island, a book by Auden.

third grade is gone.

these nights ache from more than just November’s chill,
Thanksgiving 3am, a room of absence, overflowing ashtray,
gas station-flavored coffee.

just waiting for a thing to come
something beautiful to haunt this awful place.

the ghosts have left the building,
and putting furniture together is easy.

God has seen all that you and I have done, and STILL HE holds out HIS hands to us. Really, this is it.  You and I have spent our lives looking for this..Reach out again to HIM, with your heart.  HE knows you need to be loved, but by pure and holy love. HE LOVES YOU

Barlow Girl~Need you to love me