good news

My boss has specifically instructed me to put up a sign on the microwave that says "NO STINKY FISH!" Love it. LOVE IT.

pathos:hilarity

I am unsure of whether its okay to post the nonhilarious on my blog. Silly, because its my own damn blog and i can do whatever the fuck i want with it. But its personal with me.

I mask a lot of shit with the funny. Obviously everybody does this a little. But my good friend emily and I have been discussing what these online journals mean. We don't treat them exactly like our diaries. Even Emily, who makes no show of telling hilarious stories, but always tries to speak from the heart, purposefully excludes some things. So what do we decide to include?

I wish that the things I call "funny" would read as somewhat sad and truthful. But isn't this because I want somebody out there to understand me? I want someone to think "gosh, that strikes me. This "sooz" has touched me today." I want the pathetic and human and strange behavior around me to read as somewhat universal and beautiful; not just funny.

The problem is I don't really know who is reading this. I can't see their faces. Its not like an audience, where they're sitting in the same room as me. If I could see their faces I would be able to gauge what their reactions are. I would thus be responsible for what I am dishing out. But in this imaginary web space, there is no way to own what you say. So it is safer to try and laugh at things.

Last night I had a very long discussion with my roommate about religion vs. faith. I arrived at a question about "fate" and "predetermined plan." Many people make the statement "It was meant to be." But this ignores time. To say that type of butterfly was meant to change its colors over hundreds of years, is to act like this current stage of the butterfly is the final one. You are not acknowledging where the butterfly will be in 200 years. Roomie said we could imagine God as a constant gardener, always with his fingers in the dirt, always making things work the way they do. Not like a creationist viewpoint. Not like God created the beginning and then just sat back to watch what we would make of things.

I find "God" in everything, but especially science. I find it spiritually exciting that there is an explanation for most things, even the suspicious and "supernatural." I just wish there was a better name for God. Nature? I think the best thing is the action, the drive forward of the universe. And the endlessness of it. Even if it blows up, it was meant to be. Because it was. And that simplest explanation is the most Godly one.

Politically, it is so fucking frustrating when people use their faith to separate the "right" and "wrong." As soon as they take a position of "this should be forgiven" and "this shouldn't be" they are "playing" God. When you leave the Goddening to God, you show your real faith.

Here is one more thought about faith: If you choose to have faith, then are you not admitting that the thing which you have faith in, is not actually there? Faith seems like the biggest choice a person can make. But it is a double-edged sword, b/c by making the choice of faith, you are acknowledging it is a choice. You are saying "I want to believe in this. I don't have any evidence it exists, but I want to believe in it." Its a beautiful thing to do, and humans are so lucky that we have the capacity to think such things, but it also acknowledges that the Jesus, Buddha, etc. is no more "there" than a ghost. I think we see what we want to see or are ready to see; that the volition comes from our brains.

I'll take the "not boring" dish please

I wrote this blogpost, just now, that was so boring! It seriously made me sad that I was trying to make clever remarks about "cubicle behavior" and how it was like comparing lunch condiments to...
It doesn't matter. The truth is, I've got to get out of here! Oh my god, let me out! Please! I am going to scream!
I really thought that at age ____ I would have been well on the way to saving the world, or at least be involved in some sort of theatrical production that traveled to wartorn countries and helped the suffering masses express their pain through the miracle of performance.
I also thought I might have revolutionized "time and space" as measurements in performance, and also that I might have created a new acting training called "pathos:hilarity" and NONE OF THESE THINGS HAVE HAPPENED YET!
I am really not in a good mood today, and I'm trying so hard to cheer the fuck up. Probably too hard. Probably I need to just relax and have a good time, right? Would somebody please point me in the direction of this place of happiness?
Oh my god I want to kick my shoes off and run outside screaming and jump into ground zero like its a freaking swimming pool. I want to get in one of those adorable small cars with a guitar and a jawharp and strike out to the West, and meet Bobby McGee already! I also want to get the fuck out of this office! Did I mention that yet? It's not even so bad an office. I don't want to sit here anymore, though, and its not because I don't get any exercise. I have a hard time buying that the answer to crazy-stir-disease is "going to the gym." I think crazy-stir-disease is a symptom of global rot! Global rot, I tell you!

Nobody heard from that girl ever again. She lives in a cabin on a lake somewhere, all alone. A hermitess. And she holds on to the branch of the tree as she swings. Then one day, many years later, a woodcutter comes along. She is wearing a red cloak, like a riding hood, and she is planting gardens. He watches her for three days and three nights before knocking on her door to ask for supper. And they live forever. I mean like Duncan McLeod, The Highlander.

Is THIS true?

Just now, as I was trying to have compassion for the co-worker who is microwaving a fish (it fills the office with the smell of hot sea and stays all afternoon), he entered the kitchenette and asked me if I got a hair cut. I said "yes."
Him: You can tell. (long pause) Do you cut it often?
Me: What do you mean?
Him: Do you ever let it grow?
(with a hand gesture indicating really long hair)
Me: Yes. I was letting it grow before I cut it.
Him: That's good. If you cut it too much it won't grow back.

Seriously. He seriously believes that. Any thoughts? Is there ANY truth to that statement? Also can we talk about the "You can tell" statement?

Taking on the smells of the world

One of the hardest things about Dzogchen practice for me has been the breathing deep and taking in the suffering of others and and then exhaling nice, comforting thoughts back out to the other beings of the world. It really is hard to do this on the subway because of some of the smells. I've got a real nose for them. Here are some I have identified:
1. dookie
2. crotch rot
3. "I only brush my teeth at night"
4. "If I let this out silently, it doesn't count" (this theory is wrong. You can't compare farting to the "if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it" question because trees don't emit noxious gases)
5. peepee
6. Au de Four Days of Drinking and Smoking
7. the soil (is there actually soil in Manhattan still? Yes.)
8. Fish (or is it?)
9. Squid (is that what it is?)
10. Dead animals
11. Rotting Dairy
12. Dredlocks

There is a story of one monk who had not understood compassion fully, so the Buddha presented himself to the monk in the form of a dying dog on the side of the road. The dog's lower half was being eaten my maggots. The monk felt so much sympathy for the animal that he bent down and sucked the maggots out with his teeth. The Buddha transformed from the dog into his customary Buddha shape and told the monk he had now reached a new samsara level. Hmmmm.

A likeable lady

I found the funniest lady in our office today. Before this day I thought of her as the I-Don’t-Like-Gossip-Lady, because she has signs all over her cubicle that say “gossip hurts…don’t do it!”
Today I noticed her mug with our company’s logo on it. I said, “how does a girl go about getting one of those?” (Except I phrased it normally, and not like I was in the film Newsies) She told me when her group was relocated uptown after 9/11, the company wanted to do something nice for them. Then she paused. “So they gave us all coffee mugs….To collect our tears in!” and she burst out laughing so hard, and patted me conspiratorially on the shoulder. We both laughed for an abnormal amount of time, like when you’re both almost sad at the truth of such a thing. I promise I will NEVER gossip about that lady. She rules.

A script to remember

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/A_Walk_to_Remember.pdf

A few of my favorite things:

Favorite Error Messages:
"Object reference not set to an instance of an object"
"An unnamed file was not found"
(this one appears only of its own volition, after no attempts to do anything)
"Its not my fault"
(My computer has actually SAID this (with a voice) to me)

Favorite Office Supplies:
Electric Typewriter
Staple Remover
White-Out Tape

Favorite pronounciation blunders made by professional adults:
draw (instead of drawer)
fustrated (frustrated)

Favorite offensive "business talk" used by an Executive:
Pow Wow (used in the context of "let's roundtable this discussion")

XXXV.

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done:
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this,
Authorizing thy trespass with compare,
Myself corrupting, salving thy amiss,
Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are;
For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense--
Thy adverse party is thy advocate--
And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence:
Such civil war is in my love and hate
That I an accessary needs must be
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me.