(Phaysis)

I woke up this morning. That in and of itself is a miracle, one that I daily take for granted. I also got out of bed. Even though I stumbled for the first 2 minutes, I still managed to stand in the bathroom and then walk with both of my feet to my desk. Tiny little miracles. Still clouded from the tiny little world of my dreams, I decided that today, just for once, I’ll deny the dark thoughts and do anything to deny them purchase on the mantle of my soul.

This holiday break has been a roller coaster with more downs than ups. Been playing the role of the moody gloomcow. I have every reason to dislike myself and my life, but for once this week, I’m choosing to ignore those reasons. I acknowledge that I’m manic-depressive, and what I have today is a mania, but if I can take this and rebuild myself to buffer against the darkness of the following night, then maybe that’s what I should be doing. I’m too much with the drab clothing. I’m too much with the negative talking. I’m too much with the sitting alone, hiding my face, and then feeling hurt when nobody comes over to sit with me.

I’ve had enough, at least for now. So if I avoid staring and thinking, I think I can keep the darkness at bay, I think I can trim back all the rough edges that the demons would grab on to, preventing them from latching on. I don’t want to be one of those scared people you see who run and talk and jump and do everything in their power to keep themselves away from their own scary dark thoughts, but at this point, the idea doesn’t seem so preposterous.

1. The Internet is the worst place to go if you have something to say.
2. Activity is not motion, but motion is an activity.
3. Don’t bring signs to a battle of words. They are inflexible and can be used against you.
4. If you’re fighting on two fronts, you’ll have to watch your own back.
5. Keep off the grass, especially when requested. When asked twice, doubly so.
6. Just because you’re seated does not mean you are immobile.
7. Educate yourself about the enemy, but resist the urge to use that knowledge to become the enemy once he is vanquished.

As a man, I have trouble, physically and psychologically, with the spare tire I carry around. Sometimes I feel like I’m the fattest skinny man I know. When a man has excess fat, biology dictates that his body stores it first around his stomach and waist. If he puts on more, then it forms on his legs and pecks. When women’s bodies put on fat reserves, they’re primarily around their hips, butt, and legs. Biology dictates this.

Now, when a woman asks me, “does this make my ass look fat?” my first response is to check for traps and tread carefully (I’m not walking into that one blindly…again). It’s a strange and dangerous question, and the implications of it, and its answer, are a wildcard. But it can be asked due to insecurity. As someone who can’t control where his body fat piles up, I understand what girls mean when they need some sort of validation for their body shape. We all want to be attractive.

However, the issue with body fat on women is that it’s a secondary sex characteristic. Traditionally, fat on the hips signals to us that they have a diet good enough to support bearing healthy children, and sizable breasts show they have the capability to feed their newborn offspring and keep them healthy into childhood. As such, we men are drawn to women with the right amounts of body fat in the right places. It’s a physiological turn-on.

That being said, can the same be said for women about men? Do guys with fat bellies answer some deep physiological drive? Do they turn you on somehow? Honestly, I don’t think it works quite the same, but I could be wrong. Thoughts?

A season of reflection is underway. After languishing for several years in a lonely place of decay, little bits of wisdom concerning aspects of myself and my life have been cropping up. After slinging around at the bottom in the mud and muck of the tiny little problems that keep me bogged down, I’ve decided it’s time to pull myself up, take a macroscopic look at things. Instead of trying to deal with the small things, instead of wasting my time and energy on trying to explain every internal struggle and find an answer for that one struggle before grasping at the next, I’m seeing now that it might be a better tack to take a systemic approach to my problems. To pull back and look at the grand scheme.

This is the corollary to trying to help a yuppie play the blues; you can give him a guitar, teach him technique, critique his methods, tell him how to dress, give him a list of topics to sing about, maybe teach him some of the blues canon — or you can fire him from his job, introduce him to women who will break his heart, shove him into the blues club, and tell him that’s how it’s done. It is at that point, hopefully, that he will get it.

I am one man examining his life as objectively as subjectivity will allow. I’m trying to get it. This so far has led me to a set of understandings: Continue reading