My Life As An Alien To Earth

I drove myself out of insanity...by d.t. emerson

2008-04-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

Is reality bugging you? Well, maybe you just can't see it; neither can I, at least most of the time. I have learned that I can control it, however, in very small ways; but, does that not necessarily imply that I can control it in big ways?

Driving could be such a calm event yet, for many, it is an outlet for aggression. Overwhelmed by a pressing need to be somewhere in order to get some thing drivers often find themselves hurrying. They act in ways they would never consider unless armed with 1500 pounds of steel, rubber and fiberglass wrapped around them. Often they are talking about some thing while driving to some other thing, and thinking of yet another thing. Armed with tiny communication devices pressed to their ear, they swerve in an out of traffic focused only on their strong desire to get to the stuff they want as quickly as possible. Perhaps, their imminent death is always at the back of their minds as they hurry to and fro attempting to get as many activities in before their end is at hand.

How often have you glanced into your rear view mirror to see an anxious, aggressive, and overwrought person within two feet of your bumper? It used to drive me mad. I was very clever, armed with evasive maneuvers to eliminate hostile tailgaters.

Lagging, Evasive Maneuver 1: Let off gas and go five to ten miles per hour slower. This is a passive aggressive type action which served to infuriate the already wicked person behind me and gratified my ancient instinct for revenge. This would often cause a surge of adrenaline.

Intermittent Braking, Evasive Maneuver 2: This method might well cause both parties to get a boil with adrenaline as it is much like a game of cat vs. mouse or chicken. I would randomly, softly apply the brakes creating an illusion of slowing down without actually doing so. This is very effective at causing great amounts of anxiety to both drivers involved in a tailgating dogfight.

Fake Brakes, Evasive Maneuver 3: This action requires old type manual headlights that can be turned on and off and only works during daylight hours. Flipping on the lights would turn on the back, tail lights simulating to the unknowing tailgater that you are slowing down.

Hard Braking, Evasive Maneuver 4: This is the most dangerous method and, for that reason, the most effective. This is how we teach the person behind us that it is not safe to follow someone this closely at a high rate of speed. I have heard of someone who applied this technique so perfectly that they were rear-ended, totaling their own car—instant Karma. One would only want to use the hard braking technique when they are ready to have an accident and, perhaps, kill someone.

Often driving to work became a teaser for the workday itself. I could arrive as if I had just finished the first round of a prize fight unscathed and seething with anger and wallowing in the energy of the fight side of the fight or flight response. Assume that many have experienced this on their way to work. Even the most timid of your coworkers are very brave when it comes to road rage. You might find yourself surrounded by donut eating, furious people who have just finished one round of the workday battle royal, i.e. getting to work. Don't dare press their buttons.

Having realized that I am an alien to this planet, I started trying to cease getting involved in tailgating/ sparring matches. Why? I suppose we have this illusion that aggression is a bad thing and it might well be a good practice to reduce the amount of friction in our daily life. As a rule us aliens like small steps better than big ones. So, instead of giving up driving, I decided to try to make in a more pleasurable experience.

Somewhere I had read or saw someone addressing the topic of road rage. It may well have been Dr. Wayne Dyer as I have found it quite helpful to heed some of the advice from his books in the past. The source suggested that when one finds themselves in a potential road rage situation to simply take a deep breath and repeat in their mind, “everything is calm and peaceful...everything is calm and peaceful”. So, I started to apply this mantra while driving. I thought up a twist on the calming affirmation: I would lean back in my driver's seat and very calmly lay my right arm across the passenger seat. To someone driving so close that they could hear my radio, it might appear that I was oblivious to them. I started to consider how dogs can sense your fear, and your anger. As a lifetime owner of dogs, I know this to be true. I thought perhaps if I exude a cloud of calm around my vehicle it might well touch the person behind me. Or, they might decide that since their aggression was being ignored, they might attempt to just pass me at the earliest opportunity.

The method wasn't working too well at first. This, I surmised, was because the sense of calm I was attempting to create with the affirmation (“everything is calm and peaceful”) was simply a band-aid covering my festering anger-sore. The anger that had for years emerged at the moment I noticed someone close to my rear bumper was still simmering just below my false affirmations of calm. I was still being tailgated. But, in the spirit of true effort and a commitment to change, I also gave up on the evasive maneuvers mentioned above. There is something to be said for good, old-fashioned perseverance.

d.t. emerson

After weeks of effort, I started to notice a change in what was happening to me on the road. People would tailgate me for a short time then quickly pass or even sometimes just back off! It was starting to work? My driving time was altogether different; it was no longer a source of anger and frustration but a time of calm. When not glaring into the tiny rectangle of the rear-view mirror there was time to see clouds, trees, and birds outside the windshield.

Now, I almost never get tailgated; and I wonder if it is my changed perception of driving, or something perceptible that I am projecting outwards that other drivers unknowingly sense, or...does it really matter what it is? I've change the way I see the world, or the way the world I create behaves. If it can be done on this small scale, imagine the possibilities. Start small.

Evolution of tool use...by d. t. emerson

2008-03-13T18:51:00.000-07:00

My legs were the first to act. They rolled off the side of the bed taking my upper body with them in an almost rodeo-like move. I rose from the bed in a roar of dispassionate vivacity, half in a dream, mostly in regret for not finishing that dream though I couldn't remember it nor why I missed a psychotic, nighttime brain play. As dreams faded, shuffling steps carried me to the daily first stop: the bathroom.

The eyes had already been hard at work guiding me from bedside to toilet-side so nimbly that I took their art for granted. They washed themselves with invisible blinks focusing on the dim world; weaving together a million tiny camera shots into a movie.

The lungs, so friendly, doing their job of filtering cubic feet of gas to aerate my blood; left and right working together in perfect unison. They sustained me without question.

It was time for my hands and fingers to play the days first dexterous role. I used my fingers to guide my bladder emptying device in the right direction...not a difficult task to hit an 18 inch wide porcelain receptacle but slightly challenging in the semi-conscious state of early morning. Next, I used same hands in nimbly pulling up my pajamas. Then, one finger automatically scratched my eye. I went from floor porcelain to wall porcelain and turned the tap with right hand, then together right and left hand artistically sculpted a sweet smelling froth from a bar of soap which cleansed and freshened the dark quiet of early morning.

My full body was starting to awaken as the damp, earthy smell of coffee put its stamp on my brain. The olfactory is so close to the brain; a shame it's such weak sense in humans but a driving one nonetheless. Robot state of awakening was dissolving.

Shuffling still...my feet, hands and fingers guided by my crusty yet moist morning eyes managed to fulfill my wish for a cup of hot coffee. My lips savored it; the fumes helped to warm and soften the air that breathed life into my lungs. The hot fumes of the coffee tickled the flakes in the corner of my eyes and I rubbed them clean. A hair, a fleck of skin, a dandruff chunk an eyelash fell from me here and there, like leaves from a fall tree. My brew was becoming a part of me; certainly these things that flew about had mixed into the liquid.

After just a few sips of caffeine, my mind was turning, churning while my body all the while was taking steady care: breaths in and out, heart steady and strong, yawn refreshing oxygen, blinks moistening eyes. Meanwhile, brain wandered into the dark places of other peoples thoughts, of dreams I can't have, of "why can't I be happy?". It took such a different path than eyes, lungs and heart. How does this dark force of mind work unlike my feet and hands and try to upset me, knock me off my balance and keep me in a spin? This organ does not work like the rest! Surely if I heeded it's whims I would run into the street in front of a car and end this pain of life. Yet while it churns and boils, it orchestrates the coffee sips and oatmeal bites and leaves yet enough space to conjure up scenarios of certain disappointment, fear or even death.

The brain is my enemy until I use it as my feet and hands to sustain me. Better to let my hands, feet and lungs take care. Mind them instead.

I got the flu by d. t. emerson

2008-03-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

Flu is grounding, taking the human body down to a level not unlike dying. I know because I was near death once. The flu hits you like the first hill on a roller coaster. Like the grim reaper, it always strikes in the wee hours. In my case, the flu came while I was going to the bathroom. Throbbing chills came on in a sudden shock wave. Unable to stop midstream, I was forced to stand and finish my business in a near convulsive state. Aiming was impossible and outside the scope of my care.

A moan poured out of me as I made my way back to bed where for no less than ten minutes I shook with the covers pulled tightly around my neck. The moaning continued to heave from a spot near my solar plexus, deep and mournful. I feared I may be calling the reaper to my bedside. The covers did little to warm me as the ice water swirled in the marrow of my bones. Visions came: evil waking nightmares passing in a kaleidoscope of nonsensical whims, ancient petroglyphs, laughing clown faces, bright green and red gumdrops spinning in orange-purple cloud vortexes. The shaking subsided. Black silence followed.

I seemed to be connected to all the flus I ever had, in fever time: a place that exists outside of linear time, a place that sits just outside our waking reality. Cocooned in blankets, I knew if I tried to move the ice would return. The slightest movement beckoned chills to return. Breezes coming from the flick of my toe or the wiggle of a hair on my leg would spawn waves in the ice bath stirring inside of me. My breaths were deep, long and stuttered, staccato; I could smell the hot, damp sour of sickness in them. I remained very still for what seemed hours. Time bends, mutates, becomes meaningless during the throes of flu.

Sleep would not come: either that or the veil that normally separates it from waking was too thin to notice. Dreams flashed by. Thirst came, but paralyzed by fear of cold I chose not to quench it. The night lasted forever and it wasn't until a hint of the blueness of dawn came that true sleep came over me; even then, it was fitful and broken. It seemed I thrashed about during that time and I had vague recollections of objects flying around the room and clacking onto the wood floor. Perhaps the reaper had been there tossing things about while he danced to the rhythm of my hot breaths.

Flu victims are time travelers.

Oscar Dreams by d.t. emerson

2008-02-25T06:27:00.000-08:00

The Oscars are a truly American event, chocked full of blatant displays of ego, affluence and decadence. The only way I could console myself while watching them was to, at the same time, look away occasionally at my most recent foray into Buddhism: Pema Chodron's book "The Places That Scare You".

I suppose that I was a tiny bit frightened by the Oscars in more ways than I realize. My fear of their affluence is probably better characterized as the envy of it. On some level, I really wanted to be on that stage, wearing those clothes, flying in those jets and walking arm in arm with Nicole Kidman. I have often thought, however, that my first reaction to becoming rich by winning the lottery would be panic. Fame and fortune have a way of turning a person into a target; celebrity makes you "in season" in the human hunting ground.

I imagine I wasn't the only unemployed person tuned in to the prestigious event, feeling sorry for himself, seeing the dreams of others coming true while his own aspirations fall to the curb like drunken, homeless people. What struck me most about the Oscars, besides the fact that much of the content seemed mediocre, was the acceptance speeches. Many of the mini-speeches contained what celebrities must feel in their hearts is an honest effort at inspiring their fellow man to greatness. Many said something to the effect that: "Here's what can happen if you follow your dreams. You can have your dreams. Your dreams are possible. Who would have dreamed that a poor kid, from a broken home would be standing here on this stage today."

At my age, the best dreams seem to be of delicious deserts or of avoiding having my colon scoped. I started musing about what dreams I might have had as a young, poor child in my broken home. Through the haze of time I could vaguely see my earliest dreams: Cowboy and Astronaut. I was a child at the height of the U.S. missions to the moon. I also had a BB-gun; both dreams were possible. The late '60s were a great time to have big dreams.

We tend to forget our dreams as we age; many of them seem vague, like dreams. At some point the Astronaut dream devolved into college professor, I think. As I got older, the dreams got smaller as reality became more and more real. I wasn't inspired by Hollywood stars each and every day to continue following my dream. Somehow dreams seemed farther away while riding a public bus...must have been all the stops.

I was hoping just one celeb might give a speech like this:

"I am very lucky to be standing here today. I had a dream and I followed it; and every tiny little event that could possibly make it come true did. Thousands of people have appeared in and produced thousands of movies who have never made it to this stage or received honors of any kind. I know you have dreams too but not everyone gets to realize them as I have. Life isn't about achieving fame and fortune. For most of the people on this planet, life is a struggle to survive. To learn how to live in peace, to face each day with a calm mind and a soft heart is the dream we can all have, and can all make come true. Live this dream and you will find true happiness."

I must throw aside my jealousy and avoid the perils of not delighting in someone else's joy. According to Buddhism, joy is in part defined as delighting in someone else's success. Rejoicing: A joyful mind, free of jealousy or pride, that takes delight in the virtuous actions of ourself or others. I must also say, however, on behalf of my unemployed brothers and sisters that we have a dream; a dream to have a decent paying job that isn't like clocking in at the gates of Hell each day, to have health benefits and a paid vacation. This dream is lost to many in this country, and impossible to most in other parts of the world.

Too often we practice the art of schadenfraude, taking malicious satisfaction in another person's troubles. I was able to cross over to compassion for a moment, however, when I did some Buddhist style rejoicing during the Oscars. Tears came to my eyes watching Marion Cotillard accept her award for "La Vie En Rose". One speaking in a second language somehow gets to the truth: "Thank you life, thank you love." That's how simple it can really be.

I broke my glasses by d. t. emerson

2008-02-11T11:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, they’re only reading glasses but I’m unemployed so it really hurt me. I decided that sitting around the house waiting for a job to call was a little like the proverbial watching water boil so I decided to venture out into the snow and have a coffee. Surely, the phone would ring if I left it unattended. I ambitiously took two books with me prepared for a solid couple of hours reading.

I was headed for McDonald’s, oddly enough, for a latté. Having been recently fired from my job as a barista at a local coffee shop, I thought it was a good way to thumb my nose at the coffee snobs I used to deal with on a daily basis. Coffee snobs’ eyes roll at the thought of Starbucks so I can imagine that the thought of a McDonald’s latté might well throw them into anaphylactic shock. For me it was a way to combine revenge with pleasure without actually hurting anyone. Full of evil intent, I smugly removed the snow from the windshield of my truck knocking most of it onto my sporty sweat pants which I’ve had to wear most of the time recently. My waist is growing: wallowing in self pity doesn’t burn a lot of calories. I threw my two books onto the seat, my exercise for the day, and hopped in for a slippery ride down the street.

Upon arrival, I was pleased to see that at 11:30 am McD’s was nearly vacant. I proudly walked up to the counter and ordered a small vanilla cappuccino. Wow, I was so busy seething with revenge for my former employer that I forgot I wanted a latté. Oh well, only a coffee snob would know the difference anyway. I found a cozy little corner in the back and plopped down on a hard seat nestled between the emergency exit and the bathroom…now, two hours of good reading.

I pulled my glasses out of my pocket and noticed:

a. they were very dirty
b. they were bent

I take care of my slippers like house slippers. If I were to truly enjoy my afternoon of reading Dean Radin’s “Entangled Minds“, I would have to have proper glasses. I carefully wiped them with a spit-dampened napkin then proceeded to bend them back into a traditional spectacle shape at which point they snapped in two just at the spot that rests over the nose. “Shit”, I thought. At this point, in the past, I might have stood up in anger, chucked my cappuccino and glasses in the bin and sped home in a fit. But the new me thought, “I can work around this.”

I started by resting one half in the traditional manner and balancing the other half somewhat like a monocle on the other side. This worked, but only if I kept my head at the proper angle to avoid slippage. I read one page this way until the short side of the glasses fell off onto the table. Embarrassed, I managed to look cool as if this happens to me all the time. “These are special, travel reading glasses”, I said in my head. I read page two with just one half of my travel glasses keeping one hand on my other eye. This worked quite well for a time but it seemed to effect my comprehension. Not more than four minutes into my two hour reading session, I was vexed. I considered asking someone for a piece of tape and reconsidered thinking surely the lunch crowd was arriving by now and I didn’t want to inconvenience a busy, employed person with my silly needs.

By this point, the chair had started to find the nerve endings in my tail bone and I was beginning to think perhaps I should call it a day. In the few moments of reading clarity I had I was able to glean from Dean Radin’s book, which considers quantum physics and telepathy, that our world is a manifestation of our observation. On the level of photons, what happens depends on who’s looking. Hmmm…now I know why my glasses broke. Because I was looking at them!