well, hello there. how are you? i am fine, thanks for asking. did i mention it was my birthday recently? i turned 34, which is one of those weird interstitial ages, the bookend of the coveted 18-34 demographic. i suppose i have one year left to be trendy and watch MTV. after then, it’s sensible shoes and VH1.
this birthday sort of snuck up on me, but i’m glad it did. it’s like a cab that arrived just at the moment i needed a ride from one part of town to the other, from one chapter to the next. it’s a fresh start, all new beginnings and seasons changing and tides turning.
except that i don’t really feel a year older this year. so far, 34 has felt a lot like 33, which felt a lot like 32. the years have begun to blend into one another, and i often find myself having to think hard every time someone asks me my age.
the worse part about aging is still the aging part, with my metabolism slowing, wrinkles deepening and gravity winning every battle. each day, i can see my genetics at work, determined to give me the same bunions my grandma had, the same droopy eyelids my mother has. the gray hairs have become relentless. i tire easily. my back aches constantly.
the best part is all that wisdom shit i’ve heard people talk about for years. i’m finally starting to get it. i’m finally starting to get comfortable with the world as it is and my place in it. i don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. i trust my own instincts. i know the areas i need to work on and i know which ones i don’t. i feel clear-headed, driven and in control, secure in the knowledge that i’ll land on my feet because i have to and that life will take care of everything in the same way it always has.
as in years past, this year’s birthday saw a fabulous party held at my friend Raidis’ house, whose own birthday is two days after mine. the party was damn near perfect, with great friends having a great time (photo essay forthcoming). i felt loved and deliriously happy.
this should be a good year.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Landmark Forum: Day 3 (Part V)
(sorry for the delay in publishing this sucker. if you missed my earlier essays on my Landmark experience, you can find them here; read from the bottom.)
“life is meaningless and we are meaning-making machines.” this is the crux of the Landmark Forum, the conclusion we arrived at after three grueling days of instruction. everything had led up to this, the big transformative lecture, given sunday afternoon at around 4pm, the one that would make us “pop” into our new and improved selves whose futures were brighter than before.
life is meaningless and we are meaning-making machines.
we are all going to be dead one day. you can’t take anything with you. there is no inherent meaning in anything. there are only experiences, which we ruin with our interpretations of them. we project our views onto everything and everyone around us, views whose only function is to reinforce our belief that we are right.
we need our meanings to live, to make sense of the world, to make sense of ourselves, to put everything in a neatly labeled box. we put ourselves in that box, too — with fixed ideas about our strengths, weaknesses and limitations, ideas that are artificial and borne of trauma.
the weekend had been spent examining that trauma and the ideas it has created, ideas that have cemented themselves into the baggage we have carried from one life experience to the next, baggage that has made us self-righteous and self-conscious, that has stopped us from pursuing our dreams and becoming the person we were meant to be.
the time had come to let it go. because the simple truth about life is that things happen and then other things happen. none of it means anything, even when we force it to mean everything. life is just events. and a transformed life is taking those events at face value and not coloring them with our judgments and interpretations. a transformed life is joyful and limitless, positive and fearless, honest and authentic. on this side is nothing, on the other side is everything.
Angie delivered this speech while running around the room. she had clearly given it many times before and knew which words to emphasize and how much eye contact to make. as expected, the crowd drank the kool-aid with great enthusiasm, questioning nothing, with a few vocal dissenters resisting the idea that their lives held no meaning. some people had their head in their hands, crying uncontrollably, while others looked elated, as though all their burdens had been eradicated.
“do you get it? do you get it?” everyone was asking everyone else. a buzz weaved through the room. people were hugging, some were still crying; smiles were everywhere. after being lost at sea for two days, we had finally hit the shore and walked toward it as changed people.
life is meaningless and we are meaning-making machines.
Angie opened the floor up for questions and the hits kept coming, with several suddenly transformed participants gushing about their new personal philosophies and listing the myriad ways their lives would change. the unhappy campers stepped up to the mic as well, looking forlorn and arguing with Angie about purpose and god.
i looked uneasy, as usual — and felt bewildered. i didn’t feel particularly transformed and wasn’t sure whether that made me totally crazy or perfectly sane. why was i resisting so much, i wondered? why was i looking at all these seemingly happy people with such a judgmental eye? why did i refuse to walk toward the light of unfettered possibility, toward a life without the trappings of the past — the baggage of hurt and rejection, disapproval and disdain, ridicule and grief, heartache and disappointment?
why did i cling so fiercely to that baggage now that Landmark threatened to remove it? why did i not want to transform into a blank canvas on which i can create a future that’s more beautiful than the past? “go there,” i told myself. “just let it take over. look at all these happy people around you. don’t you want to be happy like them? what do you need your misery for?”
but i can’t do it. my ego refuses to vanish. it needs the pain. it wants the pain, with its hard-won hurts to linger and learn from. it needs to interpret the events in my life, because events inherently do have meaning. otherwise, it’s just birth, love, school, work, marriage, loss, death, and then the end?
how could i not ascribe meaning to any of it? how would i be able to keep stringing sentences together, sentences that are sometimes about pain and disappointment, about stories aching for interpretation? how could i create a life where meanings no longer existed? i would need to cancel this blog, abandon my Dish-Interested column, stop reading the newspaper and live in a cocoon.
i won’t do it. as corny as it sounds, i need to suffer for my art. i need to accept every ounce of pain that life is kind enough to bestow upon me, because that pain will keep me honest in my work. without it, i’ll have nothing to write about. without it, i’ll lose any heaviness that resides in my heart, the teen angst that still lingers in my soul and the Russianness that defines the very fiber of my being and transform into an over-inspired L.A. asshole who’s high on her own positivity and can only write about one topic: self-help.
me writing articles on self-help? me becoming one of Those People who frames her life in daily affirmations, loads up her shelves with stupidly titled self-help books — “A User’s Manual for the Human Experience,” anyone? — and confuses enlightenment with a moralizing superiority complex that nauseates all her friends? me transform into THAT?
the thought disgusted me.
i looked around again. people were still smiling, seemingly overjoyed with their newfound non-identities — glowing, vibrant and beautiful. they looked alive and, suddenly, they all looked alike: a mass of empty vessels, colorless, humorless, detached, eyes glazed over with a semi-smile etched onto their faces. they had crossed over. i had lost them. i suddenly felt very alone.
“do you get it?” the guy sitting next to me asked. i turned to face him. he looked positively giddy. “life is meaningless,” he said, “so we should just enjoy it and quit worrying about what everything means. that’s so awesome!”
“yeah,” i said, “i got it — years ago. you’ve never heard anyone say that life was meaningless before? didn’t you read ‘The Stranger’ in high school? this is just rehashed existentialism. it’s not that awesome.”
the idea that i was being a bitch didn’t escape me, nor did it bother me much. the idea that i paid $420 and wasted three days on a clichéd motivational seminar that amounted to nothing more than “seize the day” bothered me A LOT.
the dinner break came and i congregated with my newly transformed friends, who were all sorts of happy. it was as though they were all part of a group orgy where everyone came at the same time, everyone except for me. i tried not to play Debbie Downer during dinner and instead ride on the coattails of their good vibrations, which was easy to do as their positivity was quite contagious. i found myself getting contact high.
i also found myself still getting criticized by the group, this time for rejecting the transformation, but i countered their arguments with accusations that they were making meanings out of my actions — meanings Landmark would not approve of.
after dinner, i would congregate with my fellow Landmarkians for one final time. there was a “graduation ceremony” the following Tuesday that i skipped, the one we were encouraged to bring our friends and family to (even if that meant flying them into town) so they could learn about the transformative possibilities of Landmark.
clearly, i didn’t believe in these possibilities for myself, at least not if they were administered by Landmark. while i could get behind some of the coursework — such as examining one’s past in order to make peace with it and living life to the fullest — the mildly abusive coaching sessions, the nonsensical lingo, the emphasis on obedience masked as integrity and the discouragement of independent thought make Landmark Education a company i could never give another dollar to.
because even though Landmark claims to give participants their lives back, it can also take their lives from them. Landmark understands better than anyone the human inclination toward creating meaning, and after chipping away at our identities for two days, Landmark fills the empty space that it created with its dogma. it made sure to do all the thinking for us, with homework every night and assignments at every break that deprived us of any time we could have spent thinking for ourselves.
Landmark filled the gaps, owning us, dominating us, brain-washing us by erasing our personalities and chasing away our quirks and idiosyncrasies — things from our pasts that may scar us, but that also define us as fully formed individuals. instead, we were left with a blank slate on which to create a future of our own making, a blank slate we are told we can do anything we want with.
but we can’t do what we want; we can only do what Landmark wants, because we are no longer in control. and Landmark wants us to take more classes, to hand over more money, to enroll our friends and family in our transformed lives, otherwise our great experiences might end. this is why Angie insisted we drink no alcohol or take drugs during the process. Landmark wanted to be our drug. and it became a drug akin to cocaine, whose addicts feel invincible.
why would we ever want it to end? Landmark has made us feel alive again by re-engaging our senses and awakening us to a world of possibilities that we knew existed yet somehow could never access. Landmark helps us access it now, because Landmark’s promise is power — a power it’s convinced us can only be found in its coursework, even though it’s resided in us all along.
i don’t doubt that plenty of individuals have benefited from Landmark’s coursework, and i admit that i felt invigorated in the weeks immediately following the Forum, as i would have after taking any motivational seminar (which is all the Landmark Forum is). but in time that vigor faded and life became average again.
i suppose i could have returned to the Center and gotten my next fix by enrolling in another course that would have made me feel invincible, only to come down again and then re-enroll and re-enroll until my savings were depleted. but cheesecake is much cheaper. hell, even cocaine is cheaper.
so even though i never suspended my disbelief and reached Landmark’s nirvana of transformation, i am glad i took the Forum. if nothing else, it reminded me of a few basic truths about life and reawakened a few dreams i intend to accomplish in this one. it also helped me appreciate my past as something meaningful that should be cherished instead of discarded, even the miserable parts.
and, despite all its attempts not to, Landmark actually strengthened my personal belief system, making me even more secure in who i am and how i think, so much so that i could fail a self-help seminar and feel just fine about it.
“life is meaningless and we are meaning-making machines.” this is the crux of the Landmark Forum, the conclusion we arrived at after three grueling days of instruction. everything had led up to this, the big transformative lecture, given sunday afternoon at around 4pm, the one that would make us “pop” into our new and improved selves whose futures were brighter than before.
life is meaningless and we are meaning-making machines.
we are all going to be dead one day. you can’t take anything with you. there is no inherent meaning in anything. there are only experiences, which we ruin with our interpretations of them. we project our views onto everything and everyone around us, views whose only function is to reinforce our belief that we are right.
we need our meanings to live, to make sense of the world, to make sense of ourselves, to put everything in a neatly labeled box. we put ourselves in that box, too — with fixed ideas about our strengths, weaknesses and limitations, ideas that are artificial and borne of trauma.
the weekend had been spent examining that trauma and the ideas it has created, ideas that have cemented themselves into the baggage we have carried from one life experience to the next, baggage that has made us self-righteous and self-conscious, that has stopped us from pursuing our dreams and becoming the person we were meant to be.
the time had come to let it go. because the simple truth about life is that things happen and then other things happen. none of it means anything, even when we force it to mean everything. life is just events. and a transformed life is taking those events at face value and not coloring them with our judgments and interpretations. a transformed life is joyful and limitless, positive and fearless, honest and authentic. on this side is nothing, on the other side is everything.
Angie delivered this speech while running around the room. she had clearly given it many times before and knew which words to emphasize and how much eye contact to make. as expected, the crowd drank the kool-aid with great enthusiasm, questioning nothing, with a few vocal dissenters resisting the idea that their lives held no meaning. some people had their head in their hands, crying uncontrollably, while others looked elated, as though all their burdens had been eradicated.
“do you get it? do you get it?” everyone was asking everyone else. a buzz weaved through the room. people were hugging, some were still crying; smiles were everywhere. after being lost at sea for two days, we had finally hit the shore and walked toward it as changed people.
life is meaningless and we are meaning-making machines.
Angie opened the floor up for questions and the hits kept coming, with several suddenly transformed participants gushing about their new personal philosophies and listing the myriad ways their lives would change. the unhappy campers stepped up to the mic as well, looking forlorn and arguing with Angie about purpose and god.
i looked uneasy, as usual — and felt bewildered. i didn’t feel particularly transformed and wasn’t sure whether that made me totally crazy or perfectly sane. why was i resisting so much, i wondered? why was i looking at all these seemingly happy people with such a judgmental eye? why did i refuse to walk toward the light of unfettered possibility, toward a life without the trappings of the past — the baggage of hurt and rejection, disapproval and disdain, ridicule and grief, heartache and disappointment?
why did i cling so fiercely to that baggage now that Landmark threatened to remove it? why did i not want to transform into a blank canvas on which i can create a future that’s more beautiful than the past? “go there,” i told myself. “just let it take over. look at all these happy people around you. don’t you want to be happy like them? what do you need your misery for?”
but i can’t do it. my ego refuses to vanish. it needs the pain. it wants the pain, with its hard-won hurts to linger and learn from. it needs to interpret the events in my life, because events inherently do have meaning. otherwise, it’s just birth, love, school, work, marriage, loss, death, and then the end?
how could i not ascribe meaning to any of it? how would i be able to keep stringing sentences together, sentences that are sometimes about pain and disappointment, about stories aching for interpretation? how could i create a life where meanings no longer existed? i would need to cancel this blog, abandon my Dish-Interested column, stop reading the newspaper and live in a cocoon.
i won’t do it. as corny as it sounds, i need to suffer for my art. i need to accept every ounce of pain that life is kind enough to bestow upon me, because that pain will keep me honest in my work. without it, i’ll have nothing to write about. without it, i’ll lose any heaviness that resides in my heart, the teen angst that still lingers in my soul and the Russianness that defines the very fiber of my being and transform into an over-inspired L.A. asshole who’s high on her own positivity and can only write about one topic: self-help.
me writing articles on self-help? me becoming one of Those People who frames her life in daily affirmations, loads up her shelves with stupidly titled self-help books — “A User’s Manual for the Human Experience,” anyone? — and confuses enlightenment with a moralizing superiority complex that nauseates all her friends? me transform into THAT?
the thought disgusted me.
i looked around again. people were still smiling, seemingly overjoyed with their newfound non-identities — glowing, vibrant and beautiful. they looked alive and, suddenly, they all looked alike: a mass of empty vessels, colorless, humorless, detached, eyes glazed over with a semi-smile etched onto their faces. they had crossed over. i had lost them. i suddenly felt very alone.
“do you get it?” the guy sitting next to me asked. i turned to face him. he looked positively giddy. “life is meaningless,” he said, “so we should just enjoy it and quit worrying about what everything means. that’s so awesome!”
“yeah,” i said, “i got it — years ago. you’ve never heard anyone say that life was meaningless before? didn’t you read ‘The Stranger’ in high school? this is just rehashed existentialism. it’s not that awesome.”
the idea that i was being a bitch didn’t escape me, nor did it bother me much. the idea that i paid $420 and wasted three days on a clichéd motivational seminar that amounted to nothing more than “seize the day” bothered me A LOT.
the dinner break came and i congregated with my newly transformed friends, who were all sorts of happy. it was as though they were all part of a group orgy where everyone came at the same time, everyone except for me. i tried not to play Debbie Downer during dinner and instead ride on the coattails of their good vibrations, which was easy to do as their positivity was quite contagious. i found myself getting contact high.
i also found myself still getting criticized by the group, this time for rejecting the transformation, but i countered their arguments with accusations that they were making meanings out of my actions — meanings Landmark would not approve of.
after dinner, i would congregate with my fellow Landmarkians for one final time. there was a “graduation ceremony” the following Tuesday that i skipped, the one we were encouraged to bring our friends and family to (even if that meant flying them into town) so they could learn about the transformative possibilities of Landmark.
clearly, i didn’t believe in these possibilities for myself, at least not if they were administered by Landmark. while i could get behind some of the coursework — such as examining one’s past in order to make peace with it and living life to the fullest — the mildly abusive coaching sessions, the nonsensical lingo, the emphasis on obedience masked as integrity and the discouragement of independent thought make Landmark Education a company i could never give another dollar to.
because even though Landmark claims to give participants their lives back, it can also take their lives from them. Landmark understands better than anyone the human inclination toward creating meaning, and after chipping away at our identities for two days, Landmark fills the empty space that it created with its dogma. it made sure to do all the thinking for us, with homework every night and assignments at every break that deprived us of any time we could have spent thinking for ourselves.
Landmark filled the gaps, owning us, dominating us, brain-washing us by erasing our personalities and chasing away our quirks and idiosyncrasies — things from our pasts that may scar us, but that also define us as fully formed individuals. instead, we were left with a blank slate on which to create a future of our own making, a blank slate we are told we can do anything we want with.
but we can’t do what we want; we can only do what Landmark wants, because we are no longer in control. and Landmark wants us to take more classes, to hand over more money, to enroll our friends and family in our transformed lives, otherwise our great experiences might end. this is why Angie insisted we drink no alcohol or take drugs during the process. Landmark wanted to be our drug. and it became a drug akin to cocaine, whose addicts feel invincible.
why would we ever want it to end? Landmark has made us feel alive again by re-engaging our senses and awakening us to a world of possibilities that we knew existed yet somehow could never access. Landmark helps us access it now, because Landmark’s promise is power — a power it’s convinced us can only be found in its coursework, even though it’s resided in us all along.
i don’t doubt that plenty of individuals have benefited from Landmark’s coursework, and i admit that i felt invigorated in the weeks immediately following the Forum, as i would have after taking any motivational seminar (which is all the Landmark Forum is). but in time that vigor faded and life became average again.
i suppose i could have returned to the Center and gotten my next fix by enrolling in another course that would have made me feel invincible, only to come down again and then re-enroll and re-enroll until my savings were depleted. but cheesecake is much cheaper. hell, even cocaine is cheaper.
so even though i never suspended my disbelief and reached Landmark’s nirvana of transformation, i am glad i took the Forum. if nothing else, it reminded me of a few basic truths about life and reawakened a few dreams i intend to accomplish in this one. it also helped me appreciate my past as something meaningful that should be cherished instead of discarded, even the miserable parts.
and, despite all its attempts not to, Landmark actually strengthened my personal belief system, making me even more secure in who i am and how i think, so much so that i could fail a self-help seminar and feel just fine about it.
Monday, June 07, 2010
Status Change
i’m single again. actually, i’ve been single for months but circumstances kept Mo and i living together until he was able to secure new accommodations and move out, which he did just a few days ago. so now i’m living alone again, which i suppose makes me officially single.
to commemorate the occasion, i made the (always dramatic) status change on Facebook, moving from In a Relationship to Single. at least i bypassed that nonsensical It’s Complicated phase, though living with an ex-boyfriend does tend to complicate one’s relationship status. i do not recommend it.
the reasons behind our split are also complicated, but ultimately involve some longstanding issues we could never seem to resolve, issues that needed to be resolved before we could move forward as a couple. what those issues are are none of your fucking business. i will say that they do not concern cheating, lying, stealing or any of that type of salacious drama.
if i’m close to you in real life, you probably already know this news anyway. if i know you and haven’t discussed this with you before, i never plan to so don’t ask. and please save your sad eyes and “time heals all wounds” clichés for someone who needs them because there are few things i hate more than being pitied. i already know i’ll be fine.
the truth is i’ve already had a few months to get accustomed to my new status as a single person and i’ve been around the block enough times to know that the world will not end because of my heartache. so truly, i am doing fine. i suppose i could say more about it and maybe should write some sappy referendum on love and life and loss, but i don’t really feel like it right now.
to commemorate the occasion, i made the (always dramatic) status change on Facebook, moving from In a Relationship to Single. at least i bypassed that nonsensical It’s Complicated phase, though living with an ex-boyfriend does tend to complicate one’s relationship status. i do not recommend it.
the reasons behind our split are also complicated, but ultimately involve some longstanding issues we could never seem to resolve, issues that needed to be resolved before we could move forward as a couple. what those issues are are none of your fucking business. i will say that they do not concern cheating, lying, stealing or any of that type of salacious drama.
if i’m close to you in real life, you probably already know this news anyway. if i know you and haven’t discussed this with you before, i never plan to so don’t ask. and please save your sad eyes and “time heals all wounds” clichés for someone who needs them because there are few things i hate more than being pitied. i already know i’ll be fine.
the truth is i’ve already had a few months to get accustomed to my new status as a single person and i’ve been around the block enough times to know that the world will not end because of my heartache. so truly, i am doing fine. i suppose i could say more about it and maybe should write some sappy referendum on love and life and loss, but i don’t really feel like it right now.
Monday, May 31, 2010
One-Hit Wonders: May 2010
as expected, searches for the Landmark Forum have invaded the keywords pulling up my blog this month. and yes, i know i owe you the last installment of my Landmark experience. (it will be published this week, promise!) the best of the non-Landmarkian others are below.
- site:millatimes.com diaper
- chronicles of extermination
- guy on reality tv show gets sprayed by a skunk video
- wife, tits, blogspot
- school hunks#ii=25
- accidentally swallowed a crab shell
- automatic drip tits
- how to stop a tree stump from smelling
- how do i meet milla? i think she is hot.
- peacemaker weed
- suppository straitjacket
- i slept with john taylor duran
- does johnny depp own the antelope valley mall
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
American Idol Double Feature
Photo courtesy Osmosis Online
Dish-Interested: Cancel American Idol
Has anyone besides me been watching the hot mess that is American Idol this season? And if you have been watching, do your eyes and ears also regularly revolt against you by spontaneously catching fire?
Granted, it’s not the worst piece of entertainment that ever existed, but it’s so much worse than it used to be that it’s become almost unwatchable. It’s like the difference between seeing Madonna perform today versus seeing her perform in her heyday. Sure, you can still catch a glimmer of her former fabulous self, but even more noticeable are the tell-tale signs that you’re seeing a has-been clawing at her forever-gone former glory. In other words, it’s sad, sad, and sad.
And sad-sad-sadly, American Idol has reached the same past-its-prime status, where its best work is decidedly behind it. Anyone who has doubts about this needs only to consult...
next up is my second article for Metacritic.com, which i plan to do a lot more writing for in the coming months.
Ranked: American Idol Seasons 1-9
After nine seasons, five judges, hundreds of contestants and thousands of auditions, Fox’s American Idol has cemented its position as one of the most successful shows in television history. It’s the seminal rags-to-riches story, making overnight stars out of its musical hopefuls whose fates are determined by a voting public.
Perhaps it’s this accessibility that makes Idol so universally appealing, as fans have a say in the outcome and can vote for their hometown heroes. Sprinkle in some taciturn judges, celebrity musical guests and plenty of “pitchy” performances and you have the recipe for...
Friday, May 14, 2010
Summer Reality TV Preview: 15 Shows to Watch
because i can never be busy enough, i've taken on Reality TV Writer duties for Metacritic, an awesome website that gets actual traffic (unlike this one). my first piece had me writing about the hottest reality shows to keep you cool this summer.
wow, did i actually write that? i can't believe they hired me to put sentences together, though i'm glad they did because it means i'm that much closer to getting the book deal that will make me rich and famous! (a girl can dream. don't ruin my fantasy.)
wow, did i actually write that? i can't believe they hired me to put sentences together, though i'm glad they did because it means i'm that much closer to getting the book deal that will make me rich and famous! (a girl can dream. don't ruin my fantasy.)
It’s time to get real
With temperatures ticking upward and episodes of American Idol winding down, reality TV aficionados will need new unscripted entertainment to occupy those hot summer nights spent indoors with the air conditioning up and the television blaring. Thankfully, five brand new shows and ten returning series will help fill the void.
Among the new shows are peeks into the mystery-laden world of ghosts, doctors, artists and mental disorders. The returning series feature old favorites such as The Bachelorette, Intervention, and the second season of MTV’s smash hit Jersey Shore, which promises to showcase a summer vacation far more exciting than yours or mine...
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Stuff and Things
when i haven’t been busy writing up my experience at the Landmark Forum (final installment forthcoming), i have been busy with other stuff, none of it particularly “transformative.” there are other writings going on, some of which will be published here soon enough, and there are life-in-flux changes going on, also soon-to-be published.
in general, life has been alright in that could-be-better, could-be-worse sort of way. freelance work has slowed considerably in the past few months right as my social life has picked up. it seems as though everyone is busy having a birthday party or a drinks thing, or maybe a gallery opening or a Mother’s Day meal or a visit into town for the weekend. i have accepted almost every invitation extended to me and plan to continue doing so. i see a social summer in my future.
in other news, my dreams of an exterior home remodel have been put on hold (again), this time indefinitely — or at least until the lousy housing market turns a corner and gives me some equity i can pull out, only to put back in. until then i’m looking at completing a few smaller projects to achieve my much-needed sense of domestic accomplishment. so perhaps the bedrooms will finally get their closet doors and maybe my ass will get a new couch to sit on.
also ahead are tentative travel plans — a trip to the east coast in the fall to visit friends and family — and a weekend jaunt to San Francisco. if i’m lucky, i can squeeze a long weekend to Portland somewhere in there and also another trip with my girlfriends to the day spa in Ojai. (that last one is already scheduled.)
otherwise, i can’t believe it’s the middle of May already and that half the year has slipped away from me. as in years past, i always think i should have more to show at this point, that i should have been a productive powerhouse these past six months but instead have been wasting too much time and not saving nearly enough money. i’m not even sure where i think i should be exactly, but it never feels like where i actually am.
i need to work on that. i need to work on a lot of things. or maybe i don’t need to do any work. maybe i should just sit still for a change and try to appreciate the moment.
in general, life has been alright in that could-be-better, could-be-worse sort of way. freelance work has slowed considerably in the past few months right as my social life has picked up. it seems as though everyone is busy having a birthday party or a drinks thing, or maybe a gallery opening or a Mother’s Day meal or a visit into town for the weekend. i have accepted almost every invitation extended to me and plan to continue doing so. i see a social summer in my future.
in other news, my dreams of an exterior home remodel have been put on hold (again), this time indefinitely — or at least until the lousy housing market turns a corner and gives me some equity i can pull out, only to put back in. until then i’m looking at completing a few smaller projects to achieve my much-needed sense of domestic accomplishment. so perhaps the bedrooms will finally get their closet doors and maybe my ass will get a new couch to sit on.
also ahead are tentative travel plans — a trip to the east coast in the fall to visit friends and family — and a weekend jaunt to San Francisco. if i’m lucky, i can squeeze a long weekend to Portland somewhere in there and also another trip with my girlfriends to the day spa in Ojai. (that last one is already scheduled.)
otherwise, i can’t believe it’s the middle of May already and that half the year has slipped away from me. as in years past, i always think i should have more to show at this point, that i should have been a productive powerhouse these past six months but instead have been wasting too much time and not saving nearly enough money. i’m not even sure where i think i should be exactly, but it never feels like where i actually am.
i need to work on that. i need to work on a lot of things. or maybe i don’t need to do any work. maybe i should just sit still for a change and try to appreciate the moment.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
The Landmark Forum: Day 3 (Part IV)
i came late to class on the third day — intentionally. landmark made such a fuss over being on time for everything, claiming that we lacked integrity if we were even one minute late, that i tried to be late as much as possible. i arrived only 10 minutes after class began that morning and was thankfully spared the pestering phone call from Landmark asking if i planned to attend that day (i think those started at the 15-minute mark).
i felt uneasy walking into class, not only because i was late but moreso because the third day held the mighty promise of transformation, the day of salvation when our souls would be saved by the holy hand of Landmark. it seemed that people had already started transforming by way of the confessionals that lifted their burdens and buoyed their steps. a buzz permeated the room. it was almost infectious.
i took my usual seat in the back row, tired from a sleepless night that saw my mind racing aimlessly at lightning speed. i had disregarded the homework assignment, this one again instructing us to call someone and “enroll” him or her in a new possibility we’ve created for ourselves. (bonus homework was to call three people.)
beyond surviving the day, i had created no new possibility for myself. i called no one the whole weekend except for my parents (just to say hi) and one of my best friends, Sharon in San Francisco, who is knowledgeable about new age stuff given her job as a life coach. she had taken the Forum ten years ago and was also freaked out by it, which is a surprise considering her tendency to gravitate toward this sort of thing.
“you know, in self-help circles people make fun of landmark. it’s known for being cultish and weird, especially because some people become so obsessed with it,” she told me.
it was easy to tell who from my class would become those people. they were the oversharers, the “seminar stars” whose hands shot up at every opportunity to speak. they were the ones everyone knew everything about: the guy who was newly sober, going through a divorce and had a childhood gay experience his father walked in on, thereby turning him into a macho athlete; the closeted bagpipe player turned workaholic who also had daddy issues and couldn’t keep a girlfriend; the verge of divorce girl with two kids, a history of depression, a love for yoga and a master’s in clinical psychology.
they were the ones who routinely sat in the front row, their eyes bright, backs straight and hands folded in their laps. they not only drank the kool-aid, they guzzled it as though their very lives were on the line. the verge of divorce girl told the class on the first day, “you can hypnotize me, you can cut me open, i don’t care because i need help any way i can get it.” by the third day, she had vowed to get off antidepressants and was calling every person she knew to “complete” with them.
the day began with more lessons aimed at deconstructing our identities. there was talk of our “strong suits,” which were otherwise positive aspects of our personalities formed from traumatic childhood experiences. so if we experienced rejection during grade school, we may have arrived at a life of independence because our underlying fear of rejection convinced us that we couldn’t rely on anyone. to me, this sounded like Landmark’s lame attempt to make us feel insecure about things we normally felt good about. so what if i’m independent now because some girls were mean to me in kindergarten? isn’t that better than being co-dependent?
there was also talk about life being dangerous, which Landmark says is a belief cemented at birth, as we slide from the cozy comfort of our mother’s womb into the bright and scary world where a doctor smacks our ass to make us cry. every interaction with the world thereafter reinforces this belief, we are told, so by the time we reach adulthood we take no risks and are afraid of everything and everyone.
i found myself sitting next to Mike during this exercise, a savvy twentysomething i had not met before the third day. when it was time for the requisite sharing with a partner, i discovered that Mike was a fellow skeptic who told me he had become so bored over the weekend that he began counting the lights in the ceiling and the letters in the laminated posters on the wall. he said he felt almost offended by the curriculum. “i know who i am,” he said, “but i’m really surprised that so many people here don’t know who they are.” i must have pinched him to make sure he was real. along with Sophie, who was still rolling her eyes at every lesson, he was the only other skeptic i encountered.
that’s not to suggest that the other 72 students succumbed to the brainwashing. i recall that one woman who admitted on the second day to being in a sexless marriage did not show up on the third day. other people were dropping off as well, a handful every day — sometimes after particularly brutal confessions — but Landmark made it impossible to identify who or how many by removing their empty chairs, making it seem as though every seat was always occupied.
the morning session ended with a lesson on how to invite people to our “graduation” ceremony on tuesday night. we were asked to bring at least three of the people we had enrolled in our new possibility over the weekend. part of living a transformed life meant inspiring others to transform themselves, we were told. one man raised his hand to say he had recently moved from australia and didn’t know anyone in LA he could bring. Angie suggested he fly his family and friends out. “be unreasonable! a reasonable life is the lowest form of living,” she said, a common battlecry of the weekend.
anyone we brought in as a referral would have a chance to sign up for the Forum on tuesday night. and if we wanted to sign up for the Landmark Advanced Course, which typically follows the Forum, the discounted rate was $595 if we signed up by tuesday; after then we’d have to pay the retail price of $850.
during the mid-morning break, i sat with my Forum buddy Eduardo who was falling down Landmark’s rabbit hole. he felt incredible, he told me, his worries were slipping away. his transformation had begun. “it’s amazing what i am feeling. it’s like a connection to the universe flowing through me. everything is beautiful around me and i’m open to new possibilities in this life that i can now create for myself. there are no limits anymore.
“i feel a big change happening in my body. feel my hands, they are so cold. i would normally be hungry right now but i’m not at all. i feel light, like i could just float. and i feel alive, like this energy is running through me and i am it and it is me and it is everything. i feel so connected to the world. it’s so amazing. i want to feel this way all the time.”
“wow,” i replied. “sounds like you’re tripping on ecstasy.”
“that’s exactly what it feels like!” he said. “you know ecstasy activates neural pathways in your brain that already exist so you can get that feeling without doing the drug.”
“so now Landmark is the drug.”
back in class, Angie was acting pissed off. people were still coming late after the breaks, she said. (sadly, i had come back on time after that particular break.) we had no integrity, she said. we were uncoachable and uncaring, and she was tired of trying to help us when it was clear we didn’t care about helping ourselves. we were one of the slowest groups she had ever worked with, in fact. we were not getting it and it looked like we never would. we were still “running rackets” and “waiting in the stands.” and she was done with us. she was considering walking out because we just weren’t worth her effort.
the students immediately began pleading with her, promising that we’d try harder, we’d be better. she shouldn’t give up on us; she should allow us to prove her wrong, to show her that we could get it and that we were committed to our transformations. people stood up and begged. would she please stay to coach us and grant us the second chance she already knew she’d give us?
the whole exchange was wildly surreal and yet totally convincing. it was also thoroughly nauseating. i had read about this sunday morning tantrum in my research, but couldn’t believe the groveling it actually produced. more unbelievable was how quickly the students became the Forum enforcers. we had to check each other, it was said. we had to go on breaks only in groups and promise to return to class five minutes early from now on. like it or not, we were all each other’s keepers. as a group, we could do it. alone, we might fail.
the pressure kept on. it was suffocating in its intensity. conform, obey, transform. conform, obey, transform.
i looked over at Eduardo, who was sitting hunched over in the front row, his head practically in his hands. he looked as though he was still tripping on ecstasy. i tried to locate Mike and Sophie but couldn’t find them among the sea of heads. i started to feel queasy. what the hell was happening? everyone around me looked shaken, fearful over the threat of abandonment as if some primal childhood fear had been triggered. it was disgusting and manipulative.
Angie seemed pleased with herself. she stood at the front of the room, her control consolidated, about to deliver The Transformative Lecture, the one that would make us “pop.” but first she had to know: were we ready? did we really want it?
i felt uneasy walking into class, not only because i was late but moreso because the third day held the mighty promise of transformation, the day of salvation when our souls would be saved by the holy hand of Landmark. it seemed that people had already started transforming by way of the confessionals that lifted their burdens and buoyed their steps. a buzz permeated the room. it was almost infectious.
i took my usual seat in the back row, tired from a sleepless night that saw my mind racing aimlessly at lightning speed. i had disregarded the homework assignment, this one again instructing us to call someone and “enroll” him or her in a new possibility we’ve created for ourselves. (bonus homework was to call three people.)
beyond surviving the day, i had created no new possibility for myself. i called no one the whole weekend except for my parents (just to say hi) and one of my best friends, Sharon in San Francisco, who is knowledgeable about new age stuff given her job as a life coach. she had taken the Forum ten years ago and was also freaked out by it, which is a surprise considering her tendency to gravitate toward this sort of thing.
“you know, in self-help circles people make fun of landmark. it’s known for being cultish and weird, especially because some people become so obsessed with it,” she told me.
it was easy to tell who from my class would become those people. they were the oversharers, the “seminar stars” whose hands shot up at every opportunity to speak. they were the ones everyone knew everything about: the guy who was newly sober, going through a divorce and had a childhood gay experience his father walked in on, thereby turning him into a macho athlete; the closeted bagpipe player turned workaholic who also had daddy issues and couldn’t keep a girlfriend; the verge of divorce girl with two kids, a history of depression, a love for yoga and a master’s in clinical psychology.
they were the ones who routinely sat in the front row, their eyes bright, backs straight and hands folded in their laps. they not only drank the kool-aid, they guzzled it as though their very lives were on the line. the verge of divorce girl told the class on the first day, “you can hypnotize me, you can cut me open, i don’t care because i need help any way i can get it.” by the third day, she had vowed to get off antidepressants and was calling every person she knew to “complete” with them.
the day began with more lessons aimed at deconstructing our identities. there was talk of our “strong suits,” which were otherwise positive aspects of our personalities formed from traumatic childhood experiences. so if we experienced rejection during grade school, we may have arrived at a life of independence because our underlying fear of rejection convinced us that we couldn’t rely on anyone. to me, this sounded like Landmark’s lame attempt to make us feel insecure about things we normally felt good about. so what if i’m independent now because some girls were mean to me in kindergarten? isn’t that better than being co-dependent?
there was also talk about life being dangerous, which Landmark says is a belief cemented at birth, as we slide from the cozy comfort of our mother’s womb into the bright and scary world where a doctor smacks our ass to make us cry. every interaction with the world thereafter reinforces this belief, we are told, so by the time we reach adulthood we take no risks and are afraid of everything and everyone.
i found myself sitting next to Mike during this exercise, a savvy twentysomething i had not met before the third day. when it was time for the requisite sharing with a partner, i discovered that Mike was a fellow skeptic who told me he had become so bored over the weekend that he began counting the lights in the ceiling and the letters in the laminated posters on the wall. he said he felt almost offended by the curriculum. “i know who i am,” he said, “but i’m really surprised that so many people here don’t know who they are.” i must have pinched him to make sure he was real. along with Sophie, who was still rolling her eyes at every lesson, he was the only other skeptic i encountered.
that’s not to suggest that the other 72 students succumbed to the brainwashing. i recall that one woman who admitted on the second day to being in a sexless marriage did not show up on the third day. other people were dropping off as well, a handful every day — sometimes after particularly brutal confessions — but Landmark made it impossible to identify who or how many by removing their empty chairs, making it seem as though every seat was always occupied.
the morning session ended with a lesson on how to invite people to our “graduation” ceremony on tuesday night. we were asked to bring at least three of the people we had enrolled in our new possibility over the weekend. part of living a transformed life meant inspiring others to transform themselves, we were told. one man raised his hand to say he had recently moved from australia and didn’t know anyone in LA he could bring. Angie suggested he fly his family and friends out. “be unreasonable! a reasonable life is the lowest form of living,” she said, a common battlecry of the weekend.
anyone we brought in as a referral would have a chance to sign up for the Forum on tuesday night. and if we wanted to sign up for the Landmark Advanced Course, which typically follows the Forum, the discounted rate was $595 if we signed up by tuesday; after then we’d have to pay the retail price of $850.
during the mid-morning break, i sat with my Forum buddy Eduardo who was falling down Landmark’s rabbit hole. he felt incredible, he told me, his worries were slipping away. his transformation had begun. “it’s amazing what i am feeling. it’s like a connection to the universe flowing through me. everything is beautiful around me and i’m open to new possibilities in this life that i can now create for myself. there are no limits anymore.
“i feel a big change happening in my body. feel my hands, they are so cold. i would normally be hungry right now but i’m not at all. i feel light, like i could just float. and i feel alive, like this energy is running through me and i am it and it is me and it is everything. i feel so connected to the world. it’s so amazing. i want to feel this way all the time.”
“wow,” i replied. “sounds like you’re tripping on ecstasy.”
“that’s exactly what it feels like!” he said. “you know ecstasy activates neural pathways in your brain that already exist so you can get that feeling without doing the drug.”
“so now Landmark is the drug.”
back in class, Angie was acting pissed off. people were still coming late after the breaks, she said. (sadly, i had come back on time after that particular break.) we had no integrity, she said. we were uncoachable and uncaring, and she was tired of trying to help us when it was clear we didn’t care about helping ourselves. we were one of the slowest groups she had ever worked with, in fact. we were not getting it and it looked like we never would. we were still “running rackets” and “waiting in the stands.” and she was done with us. she was considering walking out because we just weren’t worth her effort.
the students immediately began pleading with her, promising that we’d try harder, we’d be better. she shouldn’t give up on us; she should allow us to prove her wrong, to show her that we could get it and that we were committed to our transformations. people stood up and begged. would she please stay to coach us and grant us the second chance she already knew she’d give us?
the whole exchange was wildly surreal and yet totally convincing. it was also thoroughly nauseating. i had read about this sunday morning tantrum in my research, but couldn’t believe the groveling it actually produced. more unbelievable was how quickly the students became the Forum enforcers. we had to check each other, it was said. we had to go on breaks only in groups and promise to return to class five minutes early from now on. like it or not, we were all each other’s keepers. as a group, we could do it. alone, we might fail.
the pressure kept on. it was suffocating in its intensity. conform, obey, transform. conform, obey, transform.
i looked over at Eduardo, who was sitting hunched over in the front row, his head practically in his hands. he looked as though he was still tripping on ecstasy. i tried to locate Mike and Sophie but couldn’t find them among the sea of heads. i started to feel queasy. what the hell was happening? everyone around me looked shaken, fearful over the threat of abandonment as if some primal childhood fear had been triggered. it was disgusting and manipulative.
Angie seemed pleased with herself. she stood at the front of the room, her control consolidated, about to deliver The Transformative Lecture, the one that would make us “pop.” but first she had to know: were we ready? did we really want it?
Friday, April 30, 2010
Dish-Interested: Sex Addictions Are the New Adopted Ethnic Babies
Photo courtesy of Osmosis Online
By now we’ve all heard about the marital woes between Sandra Bullock and Jesse James, the latest Hollywood couple to go up in flames in an epic cheating scandal of Tiger Woods proportions. Beyond taking the focus off of Tiger — who I hope sent Jesse a thank-you note — this scandal features another celebrity who, like Tiger, tried to pin his sluttiness on a sex addiction, one he received treatment for at a rehab center, instead of acknowledging the more obvious cause of his problems: being an asshole.
It’s as though no one in Hollywood can admit to acting stupid anymore without pointing to some addiction or disease as an explanation, essentially absolving them of having to assume any responsibility for their bad behavior while also denigrating people who, you know, struggle with actual addictions and diseases. In addition to Tiger and Jesse, David Duchovny, Russell Brand and Eric Benet (Halle Berry’s ex) have also been treated for their crippling inability to control their wild penises. And I’m sure after they left rehab, none of them ever had sex again. After all, recovering addicts are never allowed to use drugs or alcohol again. Just take it one blue ball at a time, guys.
But before we cart Jesse off to a 12-step program for his “sickness,” let’s not forget...
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
One-Hit Wonders: April 2010
... search terms inexplicably pulling up this blog ...
- first class nakid flight attendant
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- flatter than milla jovovich's chest
- "his freckles" freckled sunburn
- how can stop deer and rabite cgewing crop in my garden please
- my wife sucked my secretary's lactating tits
- tiger woods and milla
- catheter diaper
- my last name is milla i want to know where is my last name coming from?
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