So, apparently I need to invest even more time in constructing some manner of handling the nuclear fallout from making a video. Especially if I am going to dip into subject matters like the “Demon” I really need to pony up with a plan. But intensity in any part of life tends to add a certain intensity and immediacy to everything that happens around.

I realized that my normal process of dealing with the “stirring-up” has been significantly interrupted since the “Requiem” and to go from there to the “Demon” without allowing myself time to break it all down was just too much. But somehow, necessary for me to go through.

Now if you are also in a place where you are being pushed to confront some Demons you have been comfortably resting with and ignoring – all hell can break loose. If you saw the picture of me and my nose then you now what I am talking about.

And all it took to undo the maelstrom was to sit and write six simple lines to open the city of love and suddenly, my world is at rest again. Because sometimes, what haunts us are ghosts who long to be let go and are no longer ours anymore, but we cling to them because they are familiar and safe, even when they hurt or cause pain, they are something that we know.

As much as the city of love is going to be about the story of my life, I realized that what I was fighting was that it needs to be an ode to the absolute beauty of living and that was not what I really wanted to do because I have become so use to trauma and tragedy. Sometimes, when we examine our own themes is when we allow ourselves to rewrite our own experiences.

I read an interesting article about character this week and the difference between a philosophical point of view and what is the developing psychological views of it (and credit to the NYT for writing about this).

In the philosophical view, we talk about people as having certain immutable or highly developed aspects of their character (goodness, charity, strength) that are core elements of how they act and react. The image they used was a funnel. You can pour as much and as many things as you want into the wide opening of the funnel but only so much of it will make it out the narrow end. From a broad selection of events and experiences, the action of the person is defined by only a narrow amount of things (their character).

Psychology has begun to think much differently about character and action. They are beginning to see the funnel as upside down, with very little of what is going on around you making in the narrow top, but then your actions are determined by how that little bit interacts with a much larger pool of experience et al that is constantly swirling around inside of us.

From there I went to the DSM-V and started examining the different characteristics of disorders and picking out ones I recognized in myself and working backwards through the past few years of my life to see how they have developed and strengthened in response to events that have been going on around me. The point of recognition, they say is the key to being able to change anything about yourself. Once you see the pattern it becomes much less easy to participate in it.

Patterns spotted, I know what needs to be done. And I stood up and wrote six lines that completely changed the nature and direction that the city of love was threatening to go in. I see less dark and tragic retelling and more an absolute celebration of what life means.

Now, at some point in time, I would prefer the nature of my self revelations to arrive by post. Maybe a text message from within, ya know? But I also realize that there are other things at play in my life, that while I can control my participation in them, are a part of something larger that I live in service to. Now that’s a relationship I am only just now beginning to learn how to negotiate.

No one is more complex and difficult to get to know then yourself. Perhaps because we often just act almost intuitively without having to explain ourselves to ourselves.

Ok…back to work now.

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