In Cold Blood

Right now I'm rewatching In Cold Blood, the film about Truman Capote's novel on the murders of a innocent ranching family. I haven't read the novel and don't know if it would be possible (emotionally) for me to, but I understand the controversy around the subject matter all while I'm reminded what a superb story it is. Truman Capote was right. Nobody wants "monsters" humanized, and it was an incredible risk and artistic achievement to attempt it. If someone murdered someone from my family or a loved one I would want blood, immediately. But the power of our shaky social contract, where if you violate the code of the tribe and are rightfully expelled, is still as surprising to me as  the power of chemistry in connecting on some level with each other. It's also a testament to our skill as storytellers, how we can weave this simplicity into our real-life, complex situations, where we can reduce someone who might have been a victim of abuse their entire lives to an inhuman monster to maintain our own narratives of the "right" way to be passing time. Our own experiences are never as linear as any "story" until after the fact. Or maybe it is so simple as that, and we make it overly complicated?

Anyway, I like the movie. It makes me feel empathy that I didn't feel before, and I think that's an important feeling to be capable of having.

Colorado!

We're going to Colorado for the first time!

I absolutely love Kayak's explore function. It's great if you have a budget/schedule preference, but not a location preference for your next trip. As far as I know, it's the only travel site that offers something like that. And as a freelancer, whose life is mostly determined in two to three month blocks of time, it's a wonderful way to find new places to travel to.

I used to be prejudiced against traveling within America when I worked full-time. With only ten days off per year, it seemed kind of like a waste for some reason, beyond taking long weekends here and there upstate or to beaches. We broke that streak with our last trip to Hawaii, which was probably more of an easing into American travel considering it's a zillion miles away and a tropical country, so now I feel ready for this.

Know Thyself

With Oscar season around the corner, I've been trying to catch up on all the top picks for Best Picture.
My favorites are Birdman and Whiplash. These two deal with similar themes – the path that you go down to acquire some kind of skill, talent, or recognition; the sacrifices and challenges that go along with any kind of success with it; and how to cope during moments of real or even perceived loss of that. I think anybody in a competitive, creative field can identify particularly well with these stories. The self-doubt, the soaring highs when you succeed, and the crippling lows when you fail, and how quickly they can appear or even coincide.

Both main characters were attempting to bend themselves into roles that did not come naturally, and were suffering for it. Trying to carve the lumpy, imperfect you into the version you think you should be, whether it's for career, success, happiness or whatever, is pretty much the definition of ambition. Isn't that what makes greatness? Something about you was lacking before – by determination and sheer willpower, you can have it. It's a catalyst for change, for progress into something better.

I wonder how I would have viewed these ten years ago, when I was dripping with enthusiasm and motivation and hopeful visions of the future. Now that I'm older, I can also see in them characters that don't know themselves, who they are or what their limitations are. They're taking risks beyond what they were capable of, which in America is usually considered a noble and worthy risk to take, unless you fail miserably. But if you think about it, couldn't many people succeed one in a million times if they gave up on everything else and forced themselves day and night at it? 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. It just means you worked harder than everyone else, and honestly, I've grown to feel that it's not always worth it anymore. I lived that way for ten years and I was miserable. I stopped and now I'm happier. Life is short.

I find it surprisingly easy to shake off these never-ending analyses nowadays. It's become much simpler. Am I OK, or miserable? OK = continue. Miserable = change something. It's a little sad when I'm reminded of the way I used to be through movies or other people, but I also do not miss it at all. My ghost chasing days might be over for good. I remember always hearing people say "I wasn't happy" when talking about giving up on something, and I used to feel pity for them, because I was happy doing what I loved. Now that I can see how much I lied to myself for so long, everything is much more clear.

Frugal Living

One of the many things that changed once I made the leap from working full-time to freelance was the way I view and use my income. Working full-time, the steady paycheck was nice but living in New York with a New York lifestyle meant I was living paycheck-to-paycheck. Saving was always a challenge, and vacations and other cost-of-living benefits were usually at least partially subsidized by credit card debt. I carried a balance on all five of my credit cards and felt constantly like I was barely treading water. A lot of this was my own fault – I allowed myself to be financially irresponsible because I felt so overworked and drained that I "rewarded" myself with going out, buying new things, and blowing money whenever I felt like it.

The shift into taking more control of my life and finances coincided also with some personal growth where I really tried to take a look at myself and why I was so unhappy. I saw a therapist, I began meditating and tried to get in touch with the sense of self I had lost in the past few years. Not to sound too new-agey, but once the change happened and the thorn was removed, I was able to heal surprisingly fast. I've lost a lot of the desperation I used to feel of constantly never having enough. My income comes much more sporadically, but I've been fortunate enough to pay off all my debt in the past year, and also save much more without the constant desire to buy something or go out to fill the hole I used to feel. I've been able to set personal goals for once beyond taking a vacation in six months, like buying a home or starting my own business, which always seemed completely out of reach.

The first month I wasn't working, I stayed in and ate everything in the house – canned soups, pasta, toast. I renegotiated our cable bill down and began trying to minimize, donating clothing and getting rid of some of the crap that I'd been blindly accumulating. In my spare time, I searched online for more tips on this new lifestyle I was trying to embark on, and discovered the huge community of individuals minimizing and living "frugally," and even on the further end of the spectrum, homesteading or living off the grid.

Being self-sufficient is incredibly addicting! I've fantasized about growing my own food, learning how to create things I need, and waste less. I try to learn new skills in my down time. I go out less often. I repair damaged clothes/shoes instead of tossing and replacing them. I find myself checking the per unit prices when grocery shopping and spending more time comparison shopping. I still slip up from time to time but have lost most of the obsessive compulsion to chase things that I used to have – instead I try and channel that energy into this new and healthier outlet, and I'm so grateful to have found it. I feel much more in control of more aspects of my life, and have less anxiety about the things I can't control. I feel free.

Hawaii!

Still a bit jet-lagged, but back from Hawaii! I haven't gone through all my photos yet, but a few thoughts:

1. Hawaii doesn't have ebola, NYC does – Hawaii 1, NYC 0.
2. Hawaii has as many churches as beaches.
3. Honolulu has a LOT of Japanese tourists.
4. Spam is not meant to be eaten every day.

Sailing up my dirty stream: still I love it and I'll dream...

- Pete Seeger, 'My Dirty Stream (the Hudson River Song) 

I've been heading upstate nearly every weekend for the past couple months. It started last spring and has continued more and more frequently as time went on.

I'm officially hooked! As a born and bred New Yorker, "The Country" was something that took me a while to appreciate. When I was seven and visited an uncle in Middletown, it was drowsy carsickness. In high school it was the boondocks. In college it was hunters and God-fearing people that ate instant potatoes, or else batshit hippies in tie-dyed shirts who never showered and lived in the past. Isn't it weird how the same things can be so different to one person depending on what phase of your life you're in?

I don't know what to call this phase of my life since, like most people, it won't make sense to me until years later. Maybe like, the "something's changing but I don't know for what end or how to get there" phase. I quit my full time job and took my career into my own hands – but for how long? And what's next? It's not possible for me to worry about it right now. I'm not married and although in a committed relationship do not plan for marriage or for kids – but is that sustainable? I physically can't think about it now, I'm busy looking at this frog on this lily pad. It could be the meditation, or the ayahuasca, or the various disappointments or humiliations suffered in every other aspect of normal social life, but I hit a point where I realized I could take all of these and sort of shelve them while I go look at woodpeckers for an hour and by the time the woodpeckers go to bed, nothing else really seems to matter anymore. 

One thing I can't get over, as a city mouse, is just how soft everything looks. In my head, I completely understand that if I ran into a wooded area I would get scratched left and right by twigs, maybe stung by some kinds of unfriendly insects, or impaled on a split branch. But when I just look at trees they look soft and fluffy and comfortable. It's a completely different visual experience than living in a city where everything is made of brick and concrete and steel, and what you see feels impossible to compromise with. You work around them. In the country, you can walk slowly and the leaves won't bite. Someone should study this.

The Vine of the Dead: The Work I did

Three days ago, on Thursday, I took Ayahuasca in a group with nine strangers and a shaman.

I had heard more and more about it in the press – Marie Claire, the NY Times – but I always assumed it was something that would I wouldn't come across. I had already gone to Peru and other parts of South America, and was clueless that it even existed. I certainly wasn't going to go back down to South America to trip, and I was OK with that. Then, a friend who was doing his own personal journey throughout the continent emailed that he did it, and loved it, and I got the very first twinge of envy.

My biggest weakness is envy. I am constantly afraid of missing out on something, and it has led me to some reckless and impulsive decisions. But that envy can also be helpful, because it builds and drives me to focus, something that is usually fairly difficult for me, so that when the opportunity arises I'm ready to jump on it. When that same friend returned home and texted me last week that he knew a shaman visiting who had some open spots, I was ready.

I felt a little nervous when I received The Diet email, which forbade meat, any dairy or other animal products, fruit, caffeine, salt, sugar, or anything preserved. It also forbade alcohol and sex. The point, the email explained, is to experience this ascetic deprivation in order to prepare you to commune with The Plant Teacher. I did my best (with a couple of slip ups) for the days leading up to it, feeling buzzier and more alert than I have in months. I was hungry all the time, but it was easy to keep my ultimate goal in mind.

I felt slightly more regret, walking into a small, hot apartment in a faraway (by New York standards) neighborhood, and while meeting the shaman and his wife, who looked like what an inexperienced casting agent would cast as hippie-types. I felt even more when I realized that every other person in the group was a man. They were all ages and types, the only common theme being their open, easy friendliness. But I still wondered what I had got myself into.

The shaman walked us through what felt like a long, boring botany class. His wife saged us individually as we prepared to drink the small shot glasses. The first was like a strong, medicinal Chinese tea. The second was what I imagine eating silica gel would be like. (When I drank it, I turned to my friend and said "It's like drinking silica gel!" and he laughed at me and asked how I knew what silica gel tastes like.) It felt like someone had stuck an industrial strength vacuum tube inside of my mouth, and I was grateful for the glass of water the shaman's wife provided us with.

I was told it takes about an hour to kick in, but if I had to estimate it was less than fifteen minutes before I got sick. I felt an incredible heaviness on my chest and the uncontrollable urge to throw up. I tried to breathe deeply and meditate but I couldn't overcome it, so I grabbed my bucket (we were asked to bring our own puke buckets!) and I threw up. I remember being surprised how much you could throw up when you've fasted for ten hours. I wondered if this was a mistake – I didn't feel cleansed, I just felt nauseous, achey and sick, as if I had food poisoning.

There was a fan in the room, and the low click-click-click as it oscillated started to do something to my vision. When I closed my eyes, I saw a glowing, grid-like net that jerked along with the fan's sound. Things began animating out of the grid, which quickly escalated to the most visual experience of my life – scenes upon scenes seemed to be happening all over the insides of my eyelids, which had suddenly become like an infinite iMax screen. Animals, violence, laughter, families. I felt like someone was pulling my eyelids shut when I tried to open them, and I felt the first sense of The Other: "LOOK AT ALL OF THIS!" it seemed to be shouting. "Do you see??"

I want to be able to explain it better but I don't think it's possible. I will say there were definitely three distinct phases: The first was the visions. Not to be hyperbolic, but I felt as if I saw millions of visions. There was so much to see, and none of it was scary at all – I felt an incredible sense of calmness, and more curiosity and fascination, with what I was seeing. I saw a lot of hands. The hands spoke in a type of sign language, and I understood them all. I scratched my shoulder at one point, and the hands pointed at my shoulder. It felt like I was being shouted at by millions of voices. They were so excited I was there and were all desperate to show me things.

Then, out of this cacophony came the sense of another being, an important one. It felt like a woman. I didn't see her, or hear her voice, but I felt her, and I heard her. "Do you want me to show you something?" she seemed to ask, over and over again.

At first I was nervous. I opened my eyes, and I saw the room I was in, and the visions stopped. She didn't like this, and before long, this method stopped working. I saw the visions whether my eyes were opened or closed. Finally I gave in, and she began showing me the things, many things that I don't even feel comfortable talking about yet.

This began the second phase, where I regressed into a whiny baby. I had had questions prepared to meditate on: "What should I do with my life? What's next for me?" but in the actual moment, where she was there to answer me, all of my questions seemed so silly. The questions got simpler. "Who am I?" I whined. "What comes after life?" I asked and asked and asked, more questions than I even knew I had, and she answered. I asked what my spirit animal was, and she laughed at me. I asked what color my aura was, she showed me. It was purple.

This Q&A session was intermittently interrupted by a particular vision she would show me to make her points. At one point I had had enough. It was too much. I wasn't ready for all of this, I couldn't process it. I felt like I had been there for days, I was exhausted, and I had to work the next day. I opened my eyes and saw the room, came back to reality, and checked my phone. Forty minutes had passed, and ayahuasca usually lasts 4-8 hours. I was in it. It was too late.

When I ran out of questions, she and everyone else continued to show me things. I understand now why they call it the Plant Teacher. It felt as if I was being taught by millions of souls desperate to show me something. They were competing with each other, but I could understand all of them at the same time. I wasn't me anymore. I tried to take notes and she blurred out my writing and then my pens ran out of ink.

The third phase was the quietest. I suppose it would be the come-down, but I was still learning. The visions had subsided, but I still felt the presence of the Others. They were all still talking to me, comforting me, embracing me. We're all in this together, they seemed to say. You are not alone.

It was, without a doubt, the hardest, most powerful, and most meaningful night of my life. I slept three hours that night and woke up feeling like how a sick person who was suddenly cured must feel the first morning. I felt healed and new and perfect. Something had happened to me, and I did not ever want to go through that again.

It's only been three days now, but that's worn off. I want to learn more.