In the Self-Centered Dream

Monday, November 24, 2014

The Connection

YAllfest, y'all.

It was a huge event in Charleston a few weeks back, the biggest names in Young Adult fiction. I mean, the biggest--James Dashner, Veronica Roth, Gayle Forman, etc. And I was there, baby. I was there.

As a volunteer.

Photo: #YALLFest2014 this weekend. Veronica Roth, Michelle Hodkin, James Dashner...all the big names are in town.

Waiting for Dashner.

I managed long lines, took tickets, helped authors sign their books. Fans came from as far away as California and Canada and stood in lines for several hours. The authors were so very professional. They wanted to spend time with their fans, each and every one of them. But when you have 300 waiting for your attention, you can only spare 30 seconds.

My wife asked if that's the experience I wanted as an author. I answered NO. But YES. Then NO. I answered NO-YES. Which is no answer at all.

I recently heard Bill Murray say that fame isn't as much fun as you think. The money, well, the money is nice, but you don't need fame to have money.

I don't feel like I need 300 people waiting for my sloppy signature. That's the NO part. The YES part is the connection the authors were making with readers. Connecting with a reader is, without a doubt, one of the most gratifying elements of writing. When they have the same experience reading my stuff as I did writing it, that's the final door.

The YAllfest authors felt this, too. I know Michelle Hodkin did.

She was so personable that I had to point out, very diplomatically, she had a lot of fans waiting. "A lot," I said. "As in A LOT." She said, very sweetly, "I'll stay as long as I have to." We had to explain, very diplomatically, that's not the issue. If she continued taking 3 to 5 minutes with each fan, she would be there until midnight.

But the fans wouldn't.

Amadine

The process of writing is one of frustration and exhaustion, but one of immense gratification. The experience of a story unfolding in my head, of navigating through the fictional maze to find a cohesive plot, of having gooseflesh when I type the last word...well, that's the stuffing.

But it doesn't shine without readers.

You can only dance in the mirror for so long before it becomes an absurd routine. The audience, at some point, needs to be part of the dance. The challenge is to get the story out of my head, to get it on paper for others to experience. That's the wall to climb, the maze to navigate. Readers aren't just a part of the process.

They're essential.

I don't need a line of 300. An email every now and then will do. Its all about the connection. Or maybe I'm drinking my own Kool-Aid, and I just want to hear how awesome I am.

That's quite possible.

http:bertauski.com

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

An Otherwise Hard and Dark Life

It started with an email.

It was polite and gracious. Not asking for anything, just a short note that stated how much she enjoyed reading my stuff. Heartfelt, it was one line that got me. One line that went:

"[Your books] afford me much pleasure in an otherwise hard and dark life."

I don't know her or her situation. Don't know where she lives, how old she is or what she looks like. It doesn't matter. That one line. A hard and dark life.

Darkness comes different shades.

I grew up in a stable family, a good home, and a safe community. I grew up with all benefits of an education and a capable body. Not disfigured, I maintained friendships and romances. With all of those gifts, why would my life become dark?

I don't know.

And that was the problem. I had no legitimate reason to feel hopeless and alone. Confused, scared and depressed. On paper, I was living the American dream. So why, then? Why would my life also feel hard and look dark?

There are children in this world suffering atrocities greater than the imagination. I recently read the confessions of a serial child molester and what he did to his 10 year old stepson for a year. Nightmares had nothing on that boy's life. What would he give to have my life?

And yet I still saw clouds, what I thought were clouds, for miles and miles. I saw no point to all of this, felt no value in life. Despite having a family and girlfriend-turned fiance-turned wife, I felt alone. I didn't have a right to feel this way.

And that made it worse. Because I did feel this way.

Depression has no bias. If someone hasn't experienced the weight of its gray sky, it looks like weakness, like petty self-centeredness. You just need to will yourself back to mental health. Right? Suck it up, pull up the bootstraps, get tough.

I got lucky.

I had good teachers, good counselors. I had good genes that didn't reach for an easy way out. I wanted to find a way through it. After years of hard work--Zen retreats, group therapy, individual counselling--I slowly saw the sun. I realized, because of the work, that the sun was always there. I just needed to look toward it.

But, in the meantime, there is the work. There is always the work. And in the middle of the long, dark night--when the work is gritty, is sweaty and nasty and filthy--its nice to know someone else is out there, someone else has been there, and understands.

Understands the sun in behind the clouds.

It always has been.

http:bertauski.com

Drayton, the Taker FREE

Friday, October 3, 2014

Let It Be. And Then Some.

I learned Zen from Joko Beck in the early 90s. I had sat meditation with other teachers, but Joko made practice accessible. No wacky koans, nobody getting smacked with a stick. With Joko's practice, I understood how to do it. And why.

Kyosaku: the stick of enlightenment stings a bit.

The bones of her technique were thought-labeling.

An emotion, she described, is simply a bodily sensation tied to a thought. When we sit on the cushion, when we practice during daily life, we label our thoughts and experience the bodily sensations that accompany them. We rest in the moment, whether it be pleasurable, painful, angry, or happy.

We let it be.

This was life changing. Instead of running from uncomfortable experiences like embarrassment or shame or fear, I allowed the moment to unfold, remained present with the sensations and identified my thoughts. It wasn't easy, but for me there were no alternatives. Life, at that time, was not working.

I've always been resistant to the practice of positive thinking, of using meditation to feel good. It struck me as self-centered. The point of our life shouldn't be to feel good, but to serve life--allowing the moment to be what it is, to be present with the yuckiness, if that's what's there, instead of steering toward something we like...those yummy feelings.

Rick Hanson's book The Enlightened Brain approaches practice from a unique perspective, tying spiritual practice to neuroscience. The physical structure of the brain, the way it's wired, affects how we think and feel. It colors our perceptions, forms our life. And our brain is neuroplastic. It can change, reshape.

Our mind can change our brain which can change our mind.

Hanson's guide to meditative practice.

LET IT BE
We must be aware of thoughts and bodily sensations, to let down our defenses and allow the present moment to unfold. This is still the first step and, for most of us, very difficult.

LET IT GO
I often find myself, in times of stress, ruminating on my misfortune, wallowing in self-centered thoughts. When I feel mistreated or wronged, whether justified or not, I spend a lot of time clinging to thoughts of anger and revenge.

Of being right.

But the active process of letting go of these attachments, to stop clinging to thoughts and feelings of vindication or self-centered sorrow, is as equally difficult as the first step. I like my little stories of power and revenge and victory.

Because they're all about me.

LET IT IN.
Let it in refers to filling the void, the emptiness that is left behind after letting go with something more productive. That's the key word, productive.

When I'm in a good space, I tend to have more space for all of life--the good, the bad, the ugly. I have more ability to use all the crayons.

This, in a way, is how I see "positive thinking" as a beneficial practice.

If I am practicing with a particular situation, let's say a difficult person, I can BE present with that experience. I can let GO of my reactions, but thirdly, I can fill that void with thoughts and feelings of compassion, of love. This, Hanson says, is the neuroplasticity of the brain at work.

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

Practice is simple. And, for most of us, the hardest thing we'll ever do. But, honestly, what else are you going to do?

http:bertauski.com

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

The "Free Will" Question

I once asked Elihu Smith, dharma heir of Joko Beck, if free will exists, or are we just a series of chemical reactions, an identity formed and programmed by our past experiences and memories, enslaved by our DNA?

Elihu answered, "Who's asking that question?"

And bow.

http:bertauski.com

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Brainiacs Included

"You listen to really smart audiobooks," my wife told me.

I had just finished The Future of the Mind and had started into The Elegant Universe. The chapter on string theory was playing when she used my truck.

"It doesn't mean I understand it," I replied.

I had a chemistry class in college. This was the late 80s. The professor was this stuffy Alfred Hitchcock doppelganger that lectured with authority to an auditorium of 300+ undergraduates. If he caught you talking he'd hold up his piece of chalk and ask with a booming voice, "Do you want to teach? Mmm? Do you?"

And he'd hold that piece of chalk up until all 299 undergrads were staring at the offender. The silence would drag out and then he'd say, one more time, "Do you? Mmm?"

I never talked again.

But this professor taught us that atoms operated like billiard balls, bouncing off each other. And the more energy they had, the faster they collided. Seemed easy enough, until I learned somewhere else that the billiard balls metaphor had been disproved decades ago.

Someone forgot to tell Alfred.

In the 70s and 80s, we learned that protons, neutrons and electrons were the fundamental components that made up reality. Turns out that's not even close. Now there are gluons and quarks and gravitons. In fact, the smallest fundamental particle is debatable, although string theory suggests that the fundamental particles aren't point particles but strings. Tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny tiny strings.

The crazy thing is that the laws of physics operate differently on this tiny ass fundamental scale than they do on the macoscopic, or universal, scale. Einstein's theories didn't apply to the microscopic, one the reasons he didn't buy into quantum mechanics. But physicists continue to create theories that are bridging the differences.

But here's my second level of fascination when listening to brainy audiobooks: physics isn't just for calculators. To most of us, it seems like physicists are nothing more number crunchers with minds that process faster than Deep Blue. But intelligence shouldn't be measured only by one's ability to calculate. Creativity is an essential ingredient, to imagine, to see beyond our constraints, to fearlessly open ourselves to the unknown. Many of Einstein's groundbreaking work started as thought experiments.

That means he dreamed them up.

There are physicists that spend an entire lifetime cooking up theories to explain reality. These theories have to be mathematically sound and, if possible, experimentally verified. If the theory warrants enough attention, it will be dragged through a gauntlet of criticism, of peers poking and prodding and doing everything to tear down their creation. If it's still standing after the last bullet is fired, then maybe--maaaaaaybe--it'll be accepted. In the beginning, Einstein was scalded for casting doubt on Newton's gravitational theory, a theory that had been a cornerstone of physics for hundreds of years.

Turns out Einstein was right.

But that's not always the case. Watch Particle Fever on Netflix. It's a documentary on the Geneva particle collider. You'll see a community of off-the-charts brainiacs behaving like middle America does on a Sunday afternoon. Instead of rooting for touchdowns, they're placing bets on bosons and upquarks and shit that resembles fireworks. The results of these historical experiments could verify theoretical physicists ideas. Or disprove them.

Imagine a lifetime of work, everything you've conceived of, your legacy, proven wrong beyond-a-doubt in one fell swoop of the particle accelerator. There's no consolation prize for 30 years of effort. And yet physicists work this way, a lifetime effort they may never live to see realized. Einstein was still working on theories on his deathbed because creativity exists only in this moment.

Brainiacs included.

http:bertauski.com

Halfskin
Clay