Leaving Angry

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today - don't know why, don't know how but Marty was just not in a good mood at all.
Thursdays are sale day at the auction which means $$$ for them and headaches for me. I spend the morning getting nickle and dimed with tiny little, annoying requests to get this unit (car) cleaned over here, wipe this one off, take a sticker off here, dress these tires - you see the pattern?
Any way - it's 110 acres of hot Arizona blacktop and the temperature is rising and not just outside. So I find my zen-like center, swallow hard and put out the many fires that seem to keep flaming up. I don't actually do all of these inane little tasks but rather I have a crew of guys who I keep sending out to various locations (like little orange-clad cleaning taxis) around the lot. I hate having them out there and I hate having to be responsible for someone else's mess but also they all seem to come in the same stretch of time every week - about 30 minutes before the sale. We are here about 3 and half hours before the sale but no one is too concerned with how things look until the last minute...
I know it's my job and tomorrow I'll be fine - but today I was rage-boy all morning so I concocted this story about how sick I was feeling and conned my boss out of the rest of the day- met Christy and she bought us some tasty Chipotle (we call it Chipoodle) - I suggest taking advantage of their online ordering at lunch - I walked in and walked out while the line was wrapped (literally) around the store...I would have HATED me.
Feeling fat smug and full - I made my way home where I took a splendid fiesta and now am typing away for you fine people.

Life is good.

Monkey mind on the cushion

So I joined this meditation group: Phoenix Shambhala Meditation Center and I went for the first time on Sunday. I have been looking for a spiritual path for some time now. I read a lot of things Buddhist and I have been putting this off for a while but all the books in the world won't substitute for actual practice on the cushion.

It was 30 minutes of sitting meditation, like 15 minutes of walking meditation and then another 15 of Tonglen and or sitting meditation...

The point of this is to strengthen my mind, to quiet it and focus on my thoughts as they arise - so the goal is to not think but I found myself only too often thinking about not thinking and then thinking about that and so on and so on and...you get the picture...

As meditation goes, it was total disaster and pretty much what I was told to expect: Monkey Mind. As I fought with uncooperative, painful joints and what seemed to be ADD smothered in hyperactivity I noticed the Zen-like beautific calm of my fellow meditators and I hated them for it. I want that, I want to notice that one stray thought that arises from my trance-like state (which I imagine to be in the form of a devastatingly simple but meaningful haiku) and experience Nirvana. I want to see universes in a flower, experience dimensions of existence not induced by animal anesthetics - I WANT SPIRITUAL PURITY DAMMIT!

I can't wait to go again, it was great.

***************************************************************

On a more realistic note - I just got a phone call from work - the air compressors are failing and we are losing pressure. I just know I am going to have to go back...

Open

I blog, therefore I am...right?

What do I say in here?
Who do you get to meet?
The guy who looks back at me every morning while I Sonicare my teeth?
Or the guy who is endlessly interesting, refreshingly candid, without a hint of self consciousness, comfortable in his own skin?
I don't know who the hell that person is.

Look - I am 42, made some mistakes in my life, I'm overweight (but losing it), I've been lucky enough to find someone who loves me for who I am and she is pretty wonderful so that must say something good about me, right?

So why am I here?
What do I have to say that makes you want to listen?
Where is my voice?

What do I do better than a lot of people?
I watch, I listen - I am an people watcher of the umpteenth degree, I have my black belt in people watching and I can say that one thing that bothers me more than anything is the massive inequality that pervades our society - racism, classism, ageism, weightism - if you can add an ism to it then it probably exists. For all of our advances, for all of our sophistication, we still act like a bunch of kids on the playground, we pick on the ones that are different, we ignore the ones that are silent and we hate what what makes us uncomfortable.
I've grown up different, I've grown up feeling just a little awkward, never fitting in. Maybe it's because I see, maybe I am just a weirdo or maybe we all feel this way somewhere deep down inside and it scares us so much that we will do anything to fit in, or at least feel like we do and that includes excluding the ones who don't fit into our need for a tidy and orderly world.
Why do we have this all pervading desire for labels, pigeonholes?
Why must everyone be put into some sort of neat category that clearly shows who and what they are?
Who the hell fits into that?
I sure as shit don't and I don't want to put you or anyone else in a box just to make sense of my world. I like it messy, I like it unkempt - I like it as strange as possible. I have had some strange and wonderful characters populate my life and I am grateful for each and every one of them - from the Mexican trannies who lived over the diner on the corner of Belmont and Sheffield and sold me K in Chicago to every one of the colorful felons and inmates who work for me here (and drive me absolutely batty with their bullshit) - I couldn't have done it without you.
I like people - it takes all kinds and if you can stop and see that, then maybe you are in the right place after all.