Bionic Teutonic

I love living in the city. Normally it feels vibrant, creative, and full of opportunities. Other times (like, oh, say, today) it feels like you are running a guantlet of noise, traffic congestion, and crazy people. Take for example the guy this morning who was yelling at every passerby at the top of his lungs that they were all “fucking morons” and were all “out to steal his bread”. While I can’t verify the accuracy of the statement, the fact that he had a large piece of newspaper sticking out of his hair encouraged me cross the street before I became the object of one his pronouncements. I’m totally fascinated by people that are this stereotypically insane. I wonder what their perspective on themselves is. Do they ever stop and think “Holy shit. I’m totally bat-shit crazy”? I kind of doubt it, but I like the image of that guy with the newspaper sticking out of his hair having a random moment of lucidity, laughing about his own personal character eccentricities, then going right back to berating the public. I wonder if the cold weather we are having is somehow bringing the crazy people out of the woodwork. There sure seemed to be a lot of them this morning. I’m assuming life gets much more difficult for crazy homeless people when they have to deal with the cold as well as whatever hallucinations are chasing them.

So I’ve been reading about St. Paul the Hermit (don’t ask) and in every bio I read, it mentions that he became good friends with Anthony the Abbot. I’ve been totally obsessed about this all day. Hermits have friends? Doesn’t that sort of defeat the whole purpose? I wonder what kind of etiquette one needs to follow when one is the friend of a hermit. Can you just swing by for tea, or is that considered rude? Of course, I imagine a Hermit rarely leaves his cave (solitude being harder to come by when one does), so it’s not like you run in to him at parties or the grocery store. How else are you going to stay in touch? Did Paul ever feel the urge to pump Anthony for all the latest village gossip? (So-and-so just got married. So-and-so was fed to the lions last week, etc.). Did they ever just hang out and kick it? Perhaps their friendship was based on taking care of each-others errands while the other was undertaking 40 days of silence and fasting. And how does a hermit maintain their solitude and still feed themselves anyway? Maybe Paul was just putting up with Anthony because he needed somebody to bring food, perhaps an occasional bottle of wine. Maybe every hermit has a friend who they rely on in such as way. Also, when your friend the Hermit starts to smell a little bit, do you tell him? Because really, who else will?

I find it disappointing when you are offered a lollypop with a brown wrapper, and it turns out to be chocolate instead of root beer.

At my yoga class this morning, there was a woman who walked in over  half an hour late, set up her matt, and proceeded to be much more vocal  than the rest of us for the next hour. I found myself getting  increasingly annoyed, pretty much because I’d decided in my head that  when you show up that late, you relinquish your right to distract me  with you banter. Of course, this is an incredibly non-yoga mind set to  have. I’m sitting here judging this woman instead of concentrating on  my practice, which then set me to wondering (again, not focusing on my  practice) where the line is between trying to let go of your judgment  and accepting what life throws at you, and being a passive doormat  because your irritation level won’t let you deal with a situation  rationally. I really wanted somebody to tell this woman (gently, of  course) to shut the hell up, but I certainly didn’t feel like being  that person, and really, it was only irritating me because she showed  up so late. All this is to say that I’ve been thinking about how easy  it is to let ourselves get distracted from our own health and happiness  by the most trivial shit. It’s hard to let go of the little twitterings  in our brain that believe we can force the world to be different if we  just get irritated enough (Which never seems to work for me, unless you  count becoming totally distracted and wasting my time fretting over the  trivial as working). The ability to let go of those irritations feels like what I imagine wisdom to be, and I wonder if I’ll ever get there or if it’s simply something you continuously need to work on.

I’m addicted to news. I admit it. I obsessively read every day’s headlines, plus any interesting stories my RSS feeds send my way. At times I feel bad about this addiction, like I could be spending my time doing much better things, but I can’t help it. Somehow, putting aside my news habit seems like giving up hope that I’ll find reason for optimism among all the tragic and depressing news. Plus, I’m fascinated with all the tragic and depressing news. I want to know the bad stuff. I want to be aware of what other people in other places are going through.

Part of my fascination is also tied to how the news filters in through various lenses. I first realized that the news is much more than simply reporting the facts during the 1st Gulf War. I was living in Germany when the war started and was exposed to one version of it, yet when I went back to the States for Christmas break, it was like watching a completely different war unfold. If a story is of particular interest to me, I’ll find several sources to read so I can get the story from several perspectives. I’m amazed at how much information we now have at our fingertips. We have access to much of what is going on in the world pretty much as it is happening. Sometimes you really have to dig to find it, but it’s usually there.

When I was a kid, my parents put me into piano lessons, which I took pretty much up until I went off to college. When I was really little, I remember thinking that each note was somehow good or evil. Their moral standing was not a static thing either. It varied from song to song. While a B-flat may have been a force for evil in one song, in the next, it was imbued with a righteous glow. Each notes respective goodness or badness was intuitively understood by my childhood self. I did not have any power to influence its standing no matter how hard I tried. It simply was what it was. I assume that this was part of the tension that certain songs play with, but I really don’t know.

I was remembering this outlook towards musical notes the other day when I was playing around with my keyboard and I realized that I no longer have the same moral compass. A note is simply a note, and does not have any inherent goodness or badness. I don’t have any memory of this changing at any given point in time, but I find myself wondering if a) I’ve gained some perspective and can thus see each note as simply a tool to be used for a purpose, or if b) I’ve lost some innate childhood insight into music that is really the deeper understanding. Maybe it’s a bit of both. I don’t know.