I am back after a family trip. It was good, but also overwhelming to meet so many new people. Coming back, I felt the rush of anxieties waiting for me. I also felt the clarity that comes from having stepped away for a little bit. A view from higher-up. Choice.
In "When things fall apart", Pema Chodron says "When we feel inadequate and unworthy, we hoard things". I wonder now if my desire to "save things for later", my hesitance to share, my reticence in speaking up, all stem from the same sense of insecurity. And that perhaps arises from the fear of loss, echoing the primal loss of a parent.
And so I'm here, sharing, for everyone and no one. Open, vulnerable.
Finally June is over. This summer has been uncomfortable, inside and out. It's been a rough couple of days. Some sadness never leaves. I noticed myself trying to distract myself from these feelings. Most of the time, that works, at least temporarily. But, sometimes it doesn't. At those times, distractions (usually on a phone or computer) are like lies I am telling myself. And so I'm trying something different.
I'm trying to be still, to breathe through the heavy feeling in my gut, to accept the anger and grief that is washing over me. To fight past this hurricane lashing at the trees, to the hurt child who had no words and no one to help him understand. Now I know some things can't be understood, only accepted.
I wrote some code today using Valtown, starting to build a simple email-powered tool to remember things. I used Townie AI to help me build the scaffold of the tool ($1.50 in credit usage). And then continued building on top of it. The built-in auto-completion tool in the code editor is excellent too, taking care of a lot of boiler-plate-y code. For someone who is a bit rusty with server side javascript and typescript, the autocomplete was a great way to build something without feeling stuck having to refresh a ton of new concepts and syntax. This was especially useful since I have been stuck in the pit of not knowing where to start with refreshing my knowledge of all this stuff. Now I can learn slowly by osmosis *while* I build this tool. Plus, Valtown hides all the complexity of hosting, etc.
All of these features combine to provide a tool which helps me get straight to figuring out what I'm building (and why) and not get bogged down in the minutiae of the how. Excellent tool!
Today, I tried something different. I noticed I was returning to a past pattern, and realized I could take a different approach this time. Perhaps, rather than trying to solve a problem with a root-cause-analysis, we could focus on the immediate problem instead and work backwards. This seems a better approach in this difficult relationship. It gives us a place to start finding common ground.
I felt proud of being able to break that pattern. Again, there is uncertainty about what may happen. I printed a few copies of a photo zine recently and was surprised at the outcome. There are always unknown unknowns when forging a new path.
Things don't work out the way you want them to. I found myself reacting to this situation first with anger, then frustration, then sadness and then wanting to argue. I found myself composing point-by-point rebuttals and air-tight arguments complete with fist-pumping and undeniable turns of phrase. When I came up for air, I realized that perfect arguments don't fix relationships. Now, I am disappointed and sad. But, that's uncertainty. Sometimes hope is not enough. Acceptance. Perhaps a different approach? There's a deep dark sigh lingering within my body. Somewhere in that inky blackness, there's a tiny sparkle of hope.
I tried leaning into uncertainty today. I did something because it felt right to do, without knowing what the outcome would be. It felt scary and difficult. But it felt worth it for a chance at a change. If nothing happens, at least I tried. It also felt right to do, and that gave me focus.
I was at the beach today, it was cloudy but cool. The gulls struggled to soar as they tried vainly to catch the weak thermals rising from the sand. The ocean was cool and calm. I lay on the sand and started up at the sky. Later I did surya namaskar and got sand on my forehead. I ate a chili hot dog for lunch. I then rode my bike very slowly until the end of the boardwalk, taking pictures as I went. I was a kid again, exploring the secret streets of my neighborhood on my bike. On the way back, my front tire slipped into a gap between some warped boards and pitched me over the handle bars. Apart from a few small scrapes I was fine. I made friends with a couple of grandmas who came to look in on me as I sat bruised on the boardwalk. "Bruised on the boardwalk" - could be a song name. I then biked back home and had a beer.
It was a difficult day today. The heat radiating from every bit of brick and concrete was paralleled by the anger and frustration with my father. The repeated patterns of our relationship was the sticky sweat soaking my tshirt. My mind was mush. A nap in the afternoon was a short break but the heat would not stop. Doomscrolling was the only remaining reprieve, a faustian whirlpool of momentary forgetting, it numbed me for a few hours until my phone battery ran out.
I then read about the four maras that assailed the Buddha, devputra mara, skanda mara, kshela mara and yama mara. And noticed these swimming through my mind - the seeking of pleasure to escape the pain, the return to the security of a past self, the self-amplified intensity of feeling and the fear of death. I was there is all I can say now, one foot out of that torrential river, at least for a moment.
It's sweltering today. As a reprieve, I watched Ballerina (2025) sitting in the cool and dark movie theater that I had almost all to myself. The movie had its fun and clever moments, but it was also exhausting in its relentless murder. The body count was so vast, that they could make a sequel where all the dead rise up as zombies and attack the movie crew! It may not be very different from this movie. People are dispatched so quickly in this universe that it felt like death meant nothing. Every kill then is pointless, although I wouldn't be shocked if a bunch of gold coins burst forth when someone gets headshotted. For Eve there is only one kill that is meaningful, her father's. Anyone else in her way is a step towards the end of the movie.
People in the movie keep talking about having a choice, and Eve seems to regret hers, but the director seems to be saying that her only path through this movie is as a killing machine. Later in the movie, even her little regret disappears beneath firey cruelty until I lost my natural desire for the hero of the story to succeed in her quest. This leaves the movie feeling empty.
What saves it are moments where Eve finds creative use of the environment in her fight. Like with the duct-taped knife, the steel door, and the ice skates. These pale in complexity and humor to Jackie Chan's work, or Buster Keaton's (who is directly referenced in a fight with a TV remote).
My awareness of the seamless choreography did taint immersion, but also highlighted the incredible work by Ana de Armas and the stunt team to create compelling and often brutal action (I had to watch between my fingers sometimes). It's refreshing to see a movie soaked in wide-angle full-body action rather than shot-reverse-shot conversation. And yet, as a movie steeped in ways the human body can move, it stands bored in comparison to pirouetting Hong Kong action cinema. There is far more creativity, flamboyance, humor, blood, drama and death to be found in films like Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Five Deadly Venoms, One armed swordsman or Eight diagram pole fighter.
Hello fellow sparrows!
Today is the first day of the rest of my life.
A big change happened in my life last week. I spent the week reeling. I felt alternately guilty, bored, anxious and fearful.
This week is different. I want to embrace the uncertainty ahead with curiosity.