Personal Diary / Journal - art, addiction and a whole lotta love

2020 Apr 28 Tuesday

Last night i got so mad.. the cat was running around and on came the news after a show that we watched. I was just relaxing after the show when the news hit me, it was full of bollocks and it got me over the edge. I couldn't calm down. Baby Love went into the other room to allow me some alone time. I got my ducks in a row pretty fast. Asked my mind to enumerate the things i saw around me, counted to 20 a few times, counted my breaths for a little while. To calm my body i did some small movements. It's part of my mind/body practice to break stillness. It's when i let my body move for just a little bit, little spasms or small, barely perceptible fluid motion with my back or whatever part of my body wants to move at that moment. Mostly it's my back, i guess it's because i rarely sit up straight. It worked like a charm, in five minutes i was at floating level again. I noticed my mind was trying to do it's thing with the dissociation where it blocks out reality but i didn't let it, i asked myself to keep being in control and fight the aggression i was feeling. Bless her soul, Baby Love, for leaving me to my own devices for a bit, at first she was playing this racing game but it was egging me on. I'm really glad i managed to return to a regular state from that, there were some pretty harsh and powerful feelings going around. I noticed that my mind and my body were in a vicious cycle, getting it worse. My mind was telling my body to optimize the position all the time, so my body couldn't relax, and my body was responding with an uneasy feeling that made my mind scared and paranoid. Oh well, i managed to break the cycle and calm down, it's important that i got through to myself, saw the pattern and intervened fruitfully.

[..] i'm having a little trouble with the conversation between my mind and my body. My mind has some predefined notions about what my body should do, some automatic mechanisms in place since a long time ago. For example, one of them is the automatic relaxation of tense muscles. I have taught myself or have been taught at a young age to relax always, to always try to be as relaxed as possible. Perhaps it has something to do with the image of coolness, something i may have strived for at some point in my life. May or may not. But i know i have strived to be more relaxed, thinking it was something good, to be desired. Now i have to change this automatic mechanism. Another one of these undesirables is the habit of "what goes around comes around", like i move my hand in a direction, or perhaps my body does, but my mind tells my body that it should bring back the hand to where it came from. Instead i should just go with it, my hand is there, this is what my life is now, with my hand there, what now? Is there a what now? Maybe my hand wants to be there for a while, or maybe now my leg wants to do something while my hand is still outstretched, or maybe the rest of my body should follow my hand instead of automatically bringing my hand back to my body by default. If i have something in my hand, like a lighter or a pen or my phone, maybe the automatic thing shouldn't be to drop that something as soon as i'm done with it. Maybe my body wants to hold on to it for a while longer.

All in all, it's going great, keeping at it, or better said renounced the enslaving of my body, just these minor hiccups left to resolve. In due time. Should i write them down on my focus board? Dunno. [..] Baby Love made me a little bowl with ice cream, frozen strawberries, nuts and honey. It was very good, not easy to eat. I deliberated just before i began to empty the bowl that i should indeed write down my findings and resolutions for this mode of mind/body practice. I guess i shouldn't call it a mode. It's more like a permanent parameter that i don't - at this point - want to change. I hope i never enslave my body again, rather work with it to complete the rest of my life. I'm sure it will be thankful once it's over the trauma. It's just begun to heal i guess. I have kept it fairly happy i hope, so as to not have so much lost joy to recover. We've been happy together.

I wonder if i should continue to write on the board, it's getting kind of full. I guess until i fill it i should continue writing on it.

[..] i found myself holding an unlit cigarette and the lighter for a prolonged period of time so i decided i would always wear my cigarettes on me, Baby Love provided a small cream can that she didn't like to use for an ashtray. This way i won't be tied to my ashtray for smoking, i will be mobile, portable as a smoker. Everywhere holding the power to smoke at my will. It is a power. The power to poison your body little by little, and demonstrate to the mind that it's weak and stupid. I proposed to the body and to the mind that we should stop smoking eventually.

I made a list of things to avoid. It's not long, but i had to erase the list for music playing. I took a photo and erased with some remorse. I wasn't looking at it anyway, haven't done so for a long time. Playing my instrument has become just doing my mind/body practice with the instrument in my hands, and with this "avoid" list, at the top of which lies "enslaving the body", i'm constantly doing my mind/body practice. I sure hope Baby Love was wrong and that i'll do this from now on until the moment i die. I'm very curious what will become of me. Of my process with these things.

Baby Love agreed to have a time to do whatever i wanted. I felt the need for this after not controlling my body so much, or at all, and felt the need to control more things around me. I should have been happy just worshipping my Baby Love, between the two of us, she's the Goddess and i'm the zealot. I better get it clear in my head and stop bitching that i want control. If it were up to me right now, i'd give my life up to her, offer her all of my time, my hands, my feet for her to do with them as she pleases. Even as i say this i realize it's not entirely true. I think i need something for myself though, a little wildness in me yet, some independence. I know she does too, so i don't feel guilty. She was reluctant at first to devote some time to my preferences, but she treated the subject very seriously and gave me what i asked for.

Time to test out my newfound mobility with the smoking.

[..] i've had a couple moments of frustration this evening and i've determined that they come from the mind. It may seem obvious, and i could have told you as much too, but all this time i've been trying to treat the symptoms of frustrations, the repercussions that it has over the body, the feeling of uneasiness etc, when instead i should have focused on soothing the mind. This is great, from now on i will ask my mind instead of my body the question of what is wrong.