The Best Poem I’ve Ever Written

Don’t know why I feel like posting this now, but this is something I wrote a long time ago. Someone asked me: “Mark, describe your perfect relationship…”

White hot spark,
Slow, steady burn.

– Me.

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeemmmmmmmoriiiiiiiiiiessss……!

The Simmian helped me flush out two new ideas thisafternoon, after I called one of her good friends a) “a moron” and another “flat-fucking insane”:

My idea is this: Memories have a pretty solidly defined half life. As they get older they become less powerul. Duh. This is obvious, of course.

Here is where the idea comes in-

Let’s say Andy and Beth are friends with Charles. Person Charly pisses off both Andy and Beth. Person Andy then eventually wanders off before making up with Charly, after getting into a tiff with Beth. He does not speak to either Beth or Charly for a long time. Eventually Andy & Beth start talking to one another again. Andy and Beth have radically different feelings about Charly now because Beth and Charly have continued to be friends. Ok, so so far this is obvious.

Here’s my idea- As new moment-by-moment impressions of Charly are imprented on Beth, her memories of Charly being a jackass actually have a faster half-life. Andy, since he has no new imprints of Charly will also have fading memories, however the tone of his memories remains the same. Even though his memories of Charly’s antics are dimishing, They are still negative, whereas Beth has been overwritten with positive imprints. As well, Andy is in the process of re-imprinting himself with positive impressions of Beth, which accellerate the dismissal of the bad impressions.

This sounded a whole lot more clever in my head.

I think this might be something that is “Elusively Obvious” as termed by Moshe Feldenkrais. It is obvious when you hear it, but when you have a negative experience with someone and stop talking to them, yet your friends continue to communicate with them and eventually like that person again… The elusively obvious idea is that the ONLY way to re-color the tone of your memories is to imprint new, positive, ones.

Yea, maybe that’s worthless.

My other idea:

I am positive someone else has said this, but it came to me in a flash of light thismorning so until I find another source I’ll claim it for my own:

People generally remember three things about you:

1. The last thing you did

2. The worst thing you did.

3. The Nice things you have done for them get stacked on a “scale” and they remember the number that the scale reads, but no details. I need to work on this idea before it will make much sense.

Remember one bad thing that person X did to you, and I bet you can recall the incident in detail. Where they a good person? “Sure” you answer. Name one good thing they did for you? It takes a few moments to draw that up out of secondary storage. The meeter reading is what is remembered, not individual good incidents.

Example from me:
Name one bad thing this one particular person did(to me): Easy
Is she a good person? Yes, most certainly.
Name one good thing she did: This is actually more difficult for me.

Try the exercise, and see if you agree.

Be Nice to Mark Day

For some reason everyone has been really nice to me.

On the Aspen trip, which I discussed a little previously, I spent a fair bit of time around a great couple: Marry Ann and John. Marry Ann has the kind of personality that people just gravitate to, and John is a great guy and very very bright. (These two remind me very much of a couple that the Simmian is best friends with, except that Marry Ann is not a domaneering idiot, and John is not flat fucking insane- They are both really likable people) Anyway, Marry Ann sent out an email saying that her and John were making an impromptu camping trip, and they wanted everyone to come along. I can’t, and wrote her saying so. Her response:

“You are so much fun to be around. I’m going miss you this weekend.Maybe next time ”

That has to be one of the nicest things someone has said to me in ages, and I told her so. ’nuff to make a grown man shed a tear.

The other person that really made this better than my birthday was my friend Rob. Rob doesn’t get a Nickname because he doesn’t need one. Rob is one of my best friends, and probably my second harshest critic next to myself. There is no such thing as “tough love” for Rob, with Rob it’s “HAWRD LOVE”, implying that it doesn’t get any more brutally honest. When Rob has an opinion, you’re gonna know it. We dissagree on a lot of things, but we just seem to get along in a really great way. When Rob has something critical to say you need to dig in your feet, brace yourself, and listen hard, because while he is rarely wrong, he is often right. Friends like this are PRICELESS.

I had an idea for a “Theft deterrant system”, and I told Rob about it. He replied with:

“that is really an interesting and creative idea”

Which kinda blew my mind, because Rob doesn’t say stuff like that very often.

I did a ton of tickets today, and I’m goin’ home feelin’ groovy…

Sexist dating comments

I welcome you to leave comments to this entry with your own quotes, but please, nothing nasty. I’ve edited both quotes to make them gender-neutral, because they go both ways.

“No matter how cute that boy/girl sitting in the corner is, someone, somewhere is sick of his/her shit.”

-Some bathroom wall

“A beautiful man/woman can only live up to his/her looks for a very limited period of time,”

-Kurt Vonnegut

Ruff! Ruff! Power Tools!

On Sunday I went to a wonderful seminar put on by Nachshon Zohari. He is a licensed therapist, and Chassidic Jew, and simply wonderful person. The Chassidic movement seems to have this huge outreach program these days, fighting what I would call a “war” against secularism. Nachshon’s angle is that he simply passes on some aspects of the more esoteric areas of Jewish Mysticism.

Jewish Mysticism is known in broader circles as Kaballah, however that word has been generally associated with people such as Madonna, and pop culture. While this is good for publicity, it takes away some of the public legitimacy. This is the same sort of phenomenon I observed in myself when I heard John Travolta was involved in Scientology. I pretty much wrote him off as a bit of a nut.

Kaballah, however, has been around for a while. The basic background is this:

On Mt. Sinai Moses was given the ten commandments, right? Right. But it was much more than that. He was also given the entire Torah (part of which is the five books of Moses), the Midrash, a series of stories that help interpret the Torah, and what would eventually become Kaballah- The mystical, deeper foundation for the structure of the world, and the structure of ourselves.

For thousands of years the study of “Kaballah” was restricted to a very small subset of people- Classically men with rabbinical training, that were married and over the age of 40. Seems pretty chauvinistic, right? Well, it is because it is gender exclusive, however one must remember that in Jewish tradition women are basically very close to perfect. Men, however, have a great deal of trouble keeping their focus, and really are vastly far away from perfect. Women “get” it. Men “struggle” with it. Thus, in orthodox traditions men and women are separated during prayer by a screen because men lack the ability to focus if something bright and shiny crosses their path. Speaking from experience, if there is a pretty girl in the room I have to thank G-d that it is the lizard part of my brain that maintains brain function and breathing, otherwise I would keel over and die. Women are only subject to this issue if a man walks in the room that is extraordinarily rare, who seems to ooze masculine energy. These men are very rare.

Jewish Mysticism and Masculine Energy

I asked Nachshon if I could write about this seminar, and he seemed enthusiastic. My friend Kath could not attend, so I figure posting my notes wouldn’t be such a bad idea. The trick here is going to be boiling down four pages of dense notes into something that won’t make you, dear reader (At this point you are probably singular, and I am most likely talking about only myself proofreading), go catatonic.

First he started with two really interesting aspects of Kaballah that I will not expound on too much-

Jewish (kabbalistic?) tradition believes that every person has a unique “genius”. Something that we do better than anyone else, or something that we are truly good at. Even my Dad at one point said to me: “Find one thing to be really, really good at.” For me it was playing Adventure on the Atari 2600, but what can you do.

Something that I have recently come to understand is that there is a difference between your “genius” and your “path” or in the classic sense (not the western sense) “Kharma”. Classically Kharma indicates what a person is supposed to do, how they are to behave. A sort of “path” if you will. It is not my Kharma to rob banks. It is in my Kharma to be a bit of a butt hole once in a while.

A concrete example:

My “Genius is this: I am a coach. A guide. More precisely I am a catalyst. People rarely come into my sphere of influence and leave without changing. I push people beyond their comfort zones. This is generally not done in a pleasant, therapeutic, or organized way. Instead people generally find me that are “stuck”, and at some point in time during knowing me something happens. It’s kind of like mixing hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide in a bowl and serving it for breakfast. No stove or match necessary for your morning enjoyment. When those two chemicals are mixed they cannot help but react, that’s why they are used for rocket fuel. When people are around me, they cannot help but react. It leads to explosive, brief friendships where once the chemistry is done firing on the short term everyone is too exhausted to continue.

I generally refer to this as “Character Building”. It is not something I generally set out to do, it is just something that happens around me naturally. I take no ego from this- In fact sometimes I wish it would go away, because it destabilizes things, and can really make life difficult. It also can make me tough to be around, and when people have gone through whatever they are supposed to go through near me, they generally leave and don’t look back. That’s fine, but at a certain point I realized that taking people with me from one phase of my life into the next was nearly impossible. I have one friend from Halifax, two from Bermuda, and maybe three from San Francisco. I have already burned through several friendships in Colorado- Once people are done they walk. It’s not about being selfish, or not wanting to give back, it’s about being exhausted. Plus, I can be a little tough to take in large quantities.

But we are all here to do what we are here to do, and G-d has a funny way of rewarding people that do things that are hard. Example: All those people that called me up six months after we last spoke and say “Hey, so I was actually pretty pissed at you about six months ago when we stopped talking, but the more time passes the more I realize just how much I grew for that experience. Thanks for pushing me, and making me think. Take care, Mark.” They did tough work, and they were rewarded. For my part, I am simply a not-so-innocent bystander.

I continue to define my path. Right now my path is this: “To help others to achieve their maximum potential”. I am way off my path, even though my Genius tends to simply manifest itself on an ongoing basis. I tend to be very safety- minded while riding, and encourage others during training and racing to move beyond their comfort zones. I don’t think this is enough, although it leans in the right direction. I’ve decided I need to start volunteering to work with kids.

So how do these two things, Genius and Path, relate?

Your Genius is something that is intrinsic to you. It is a constant, and a tool you have. Your path is something that you have to travel upon, or in fact… transcend. Your Genius is your greatest tool, or asset, in transcending your path, and achieving your life’s objective.

The bulk of people I don’t think know either their Genius or their path. I am lucky enough to have an idea of both, although this came after years and years of either not caring, being selfish, and then later on a tremendous amount of self examination, and most recently (in the last couple of weeks) self acceptance.

These two aspects, Genius and Path, combine to form what I have decided to call “Purpose”. If you ask most people “what is your purpose?” most would not have a clue how to answer. But if you break it down into those two aspects, Genius and Path, it becomes a problem that can be addressed in chunks. Each of those two aspects can also be broken down, although I haven’t thought much about that yet.

At this time defining my purpose has eluded me, although I know the direction I must travel.

I’ll write more about the seminar tomorrow. Right now I need to transcend back to the planet earth and get some tickets done.