Thursday, December 21, 2017

Religion from Shanghai to Ubud

A Mandarin is a Chinese Bureaucrat or Imperial Magistrate.


Hindu, the Bat Cave (Pura Goa Lawah), the monkey forest.   

Taoist -- Qin Yubo a Taoist Deity in the City God Temple, Shanghai, filled with the Guardian Gods of the City.

1997 Informative Essay- My Issue is "I'm Always Right." Wahproovit All Night

What I'm reading below from  20 years ago produces the feeling of a riot in my mind...

I'm trying to communicate coherent thoughts today like I almost did in 1997 when I attended something called "The Landmark Forum,"which was basically a good experience, by the way.
What I wrote then makes sense to me now and perhaps helps others as well, so I'm posting it here...

However, I also remember that the idea of writing my story was to dismiss it, therefore it becomes worse the more I try to clarify it...the more you fix a problem the more you prolong it...

"My issue is

I am always right and I prove it all night to the destruction of the relationship.
I was born and loved.
I played piano. 
I felt different from the kids in the alley
I didn't connect physically. 
There was teasing by the older girls, and I was sensitive and protected by my parents, though my parents couldn't do much to, or about, the outside world.   (Instead my parents effectively sheltered me from the outside world...)

I am sure that I was better by being different. 
At a time when My Favorite Martian was a popular TV show, I was a martian.   My friend (Michael Cavagnetto) accepted me as that and when I went to breath the car exhaust he said cut it out you're not. He humored me, but it was fun for me that he went along with my special delusion.

I think people like being with a special person so I tried to be one, to get friends, but actually I never (developed close relationships) because I was never genuine. I was always different and somehow it became right to be my way. I wasn't successful except in my own mind where I was the tremendous hero of supernatural ghost stories, fantasies that compromised my happiness to show how real they could be. 

(By fantasizing, I could convinced myself to believe in my own imagined successes.)

I remember ending one of my ghost stories by confronting a chasm in the cellar by the plumbing
(There were copper pipes under a bar counter at the far end of the finished cellar at 67-113 Dartmouth Street.  Across from the bar were built in bookshelves where I could climb up and catercorner like a monkey.  Covering the cellar floor were black and white tiles large enough for life-size chess pieces to stand upon, so it felt like a location from Alice Through the Looking Glass.)

(As for the ghost story, I persuaded those ghost friends, to back away as I bridged from their ghost world past - 1910?  into my day to day existence of a finite life path.)
I was exceptional and I received some recognition in my 8 years of small school. (Our Lady Queen of Martyrs
High school recognition lasted for the first semester, then my grades plummeted to average.  (Archbishop Molloy   I remained isolated until I joined a rock band.)

My friends were unique but I would abandon one for the more interesting other - a lovely girl friend at 8, a boy – (a href="">
well, I made movies with them and this involved them in creative projects.

If they weren't enrolled, someone else would be there. I never planned filming prior to the moment. Something turned out and I was right to do what I wanted. No one expected anything. In fact there was no competition. I was doing what no one else was doing at the little league. I was making a movie.   (reel three of The Ruins is here with the Pink Floyd sound blocked:
Then, because I didn't practice piano, I did what no one else was doing, wrote songs.  (sample concert (a href="">

I was struggling against excellence in a competitive field (no sports for me... but then I remember loving everyone, all the children in the alley, playing a casual game of baseball while the sun was setting...a lovely event).

I could excel if no one else was doing it at the time. That forged the way for my doing what no one else was doing, ever, in a performance or in writing, but I got so far gone that I embarrassed myself and those around me, because my art was an expression of my emptiness, and here I drop terms like necrophilia and fixual?? ideas.   (For example, my movie, The Last Dodo considers the practice of circumcision as a mark of civilization )
I thought my ideas crazy – like songs of one boy loved by a group
(“Yes It's True” into “Crowded Avenue” )
They were from current pop ideas, I guess.

So I figured, if you are creative, inventive and unique then your limitations won't matter, and indeed I improved, but improved no further because I had proved enough.
And nobody could get it.

I couldn't say about it (writing songs, making these little movies) that I was doing art as my work.  No one wanted it and I was so undisciplined with it. 

 Of course I was right about its uniqueness, and my uniqueness, and I was lonely because no one could accept my distant aloofness... 

Actually, when I revealed myself, I presented a boring ordinary privileged kid with barely an iota of relatable suffering, who had abused his own privacy, and was in fact his own abuser... 
– what was I punishing myself about? 

I was a child (of 4) when I discovered sex.  I couldn't rightfully share that with anyone, and I was getting all the secrets through self-discovery. No sharing there. I was too embarrassed about it.  Years later I could share it but (felt that I and my partner) were at different levels.

I've become so bored by this (I think that was the intention of this exercise), still trying to focus on "I'm right" and that "everyone comes back and agrees," and I prove (I'm right) through the acceptance of my creative work, which remains nebulous and incomplete because of time constraint excuses, preventing the confrontation of people's judgments.

I who am so judgmental and so vicious in my critique with such command of words yet I never really hurt any one.   I'm only dangerous in my callous lack of discretion in revealing secrets, and ihaving no integrity because my word is never fulfilled except by coincidence which I play up, and by blind luck.   Really I act only under pressure and am amazed when it works out and I take all the credit.

Susan (I had a friend as a client who I represented in a car crash) kept pushing me on her case to the point where I said to the adjuster, pay me her demand or she goes to a really good attorney. 
What the hell was I talking about? I have no self regard and I succeeded (the adjuster offered me her demand and we settled her case.).

 I've been trashed and remain here because I don't care, and succeed and don't care.  How did I get to be an attorney?  'cause I'm so smart and angry, but barely able to drag myself around with these gifts and a creative mind and just being there.  (Yes I'm an attorney:

I don't take drugs or drink.
So the details go to the present (1997) total loneliness because people expose my falsehood of greatness and uniqueness and yet there is something going on so I'm trying to picture what I want and be right about it before going for it.

I want a relationship, and an active creative life. I'm just a story teller. Where do I go? What do I do?
I wrote a show with Jim Vogel while I was in a workshop (Gunshy, our 10 minute musical for the BMI Music Theater Workshop That was an opportunity for the greatest exposure to other people's greatness, and I didn't have time, only excuses.

(I like that piece, Gunshy... based on a William Saroyan short story, knife like,Knife-like, Flower-like, Like Nothing at All in the World) 

All I can say is my opinion of my work matters in that I can pick and choose and it's only mine. How do I leave this stuff?

(We need each other.  I admit I need people.  I need you to agree with I take a stand and be a possibility, and from where I stand, I will listen to your possibility. )

This was 20 years ago....