The Nocent part 5

  The other day I was at work, mopping the floor at the end of the day.  When I was done, I dumped the water from the bucket.  I had forgotten to squeeze the mop out of as much water as possible so it could dry over night.  I didn't want to have to empty the bucket again so I detached the wringer and placed it in the sink.  I put the mop in the wringer expecting an easy time of it.  What I didn't take into account is the pressure required to wring out a mop.  I found out the hard way that a sink isn't designed to accommodate a wringer's specific requirements.  I think I knocked the faucet about half an inch to the left.  I thought to myself, "Paul, if you can successfully think of a dumber way to do this, I won't be forced to smack you upside the head."  Yeah, no I couldn't think of a dumber way.  Oh yeah, but about the Nocent:
  I was sifting through my folder of short stories and I realized that several of them relate in some way to characters from the Nocent.  I went through every story and found the ones that would take place before the Nocent novels and the ones that take place after.  Since I already have a collection of short stories as a prequel to the Nocent trilogy, it was just a matter of adding more stories to it.  It was at that point that I decided to make a fifth book.  I don't have a title for it yet, but there are six stories already to be included in it!  Oh, baby oh, baby oh, baby.  You know, if fried chicken grew on trees, I would say that God's Chinese.

Phonebook or Hacksaw?

  Yesterday my wife and I were at a gas pump.  I was pumping while she used the provided squeegee to clean our windows.  Once the tank was full, it started to overflow so I quickly loosened my grip, but it was too late.  There was gasoline all over the side of the car.  My wife said it was bad for the paint job and wiped it clean with the squeegee.  We then had an argument about whether the pump makers were at fault for making pumps that don't stop when the tank is full or if I was at fault for not knowing by the sound of the filling to stop when the tank was full.  We've agreed that next time we get gas together, she'll pump and I will listen to see what it sounds like when the tank is full.
  Later on, we had further discussion as to the differences in her world view and my own.  I observed that she seems to have a deep inner peace and joy that is unreachable by any outer stimulus.  I, on the other hand, rely on outer stimuli to bring me even the briefest glimpses of joy.  My levity has no longevity, only brevity.  I compared it to a pile of shit that occasionally has a butterfly briefly land on it, as opposed to a nest of butterflies which occasionally has a shit fleck bounce off it.  She used the example of the gas tank to help illustrate to me her outlook compared to mine.
  She used a story of a little brother looking at his bigger brother who is tall enough to reach doorknobs to open doors.  Should he admire or resent his brother?  He could look at his brother and want to be like him by maybe putting down a phone book to stand on to reach the doorknob, or he can lay in the grass and have a fit.  At this point in her story I interrupted and gave my own analogy which I felt was closer to our reality.  He could either do the phonebook thing or he could grab a hacksaw and cut his brother's feet off so that he can no longer reach the doorknob.  She agreed that this was an appropriate analogy to describe our differences.
  Her way is to lift herself up above her challenges so that life's circumstances don't have to be a problem to her.  Just like listening to hear when the gas tank is full.  My way is to eliminate the problem at the source by wishing a slow and painful death on anyone who causes me grief.  It occurs to me now that an even closer analogy would be if the younger brother wished that people should either make doorknobs lower on the door or die a horrible tragic death.
  This helps me to see why I keep alternating between anger and depression.  I'm filled with anger that I know I don't want to live my life by, but I don't know what to replace it with so when I try to rid myself of anger, I'm left only with emptiness.  If I took on the responsibility to rise above circumstances and become my own solution to any challenge, I believe I can achieve the inner peace and strength that she possesses.
  This reminds me of a story I wrote called Desultory Rival in which the souls of Cain and Abel have reincarnated all throughout history.  In every lifetime, Cain has killed his brother again and again.  It all started because Cain resented his brother for finding favor in God's eyes through his sacrifice of choice animals as opposed to a bunch of fruit.  Instead of lifting himself above his situation, he cut his brother down.  He chose the hacksaw over the phone book.  In every situation I become faced with from now on, I will ask myself, which I am choosing to use.

From Within

  When I was a kid, the movie Dumbo made me cry during the scene when, in spite of losing his magic feather, Dumbo finds it in himself to fly.  I never knew why it made me cry.  Years later I heard a song by NOFX from their Punk In Drublic album, called "Happy Guy".  It's a song about a man who is an avid church goer.  In it are the lines, "His hopes may be false, but his happiness is real.  Don't try to judge him.  He's just a man."
  Over the years there have been two particular events I will talk about here that have brought a great deal of emotional scarring to my life.  My favorite childhood memories revolve around going to my aunt's house every summer in Tucson, Arizona.  She was so loving and kind.  I was so happy.  The first event occurred when I turned 18 and went to see her.  She revealed to me her true character.  She is a shallow, crude, crass, rich and snobby woman.  She acted the way she did when I was growing up because she had always envied my mother for having such a lovely family.  She wanted me to prefer being with her.  And I did.  At that moment, I felt so low and used.  It felt like everything I grew up to believe in was a lie.
  Not too long after that, I joined a church.  Over the course of seven years, I learned a lot about faith.  Many people were amazed at the amount of faith I had.  Along the way, I started to notice hypocrisies and inconsistencies between what I was learning and what I was seeing with my own eyes.  I decided to leave the church and I was shunned.  They said I had "fallen away from God."  This shattered my faith and filled me with self-loathing and bitterness toward God.
  Then today, I had a conversation with my wife about Christ and the fact that he never actually healed anyone.  He always made it a point to tell them that it was their faith that healed them.  From this I looked back at Dumbo's feather and the Happy Guy and I realized that nothing had been taken away from me because nothing was ever given to me.  My aunt didn't give me happiness.  That came from within me.  The church didn't give me faith.  That too came from within myself.  So I never lost those things.  They've always been just below the surface of my anger and low self-esteem.  My wife always keeps me on the right path!
  Coming to those realizations made me remember a scene in my Nocent books in which a character who has ADHD falls into a coma after a run in with a zombie.  His father is able to communicate with him through a psychic medium.  The boy, Alex, is no longer stuck within his physical brain.  His spirit self has easy access to all his memories and a wealth of knowledge that he doesn't get to use while he's in the flesh.  This awareness of his hidden intelligence helps him to believe in himself more when he awakens from his coma. So in a way, it was never his brain that limited him, it was his lack of belief in himself.
  The Dalai Lama in his book, The Universe In A Single Atom, says Buddhism teaches that Enlightenment is the reaching of total awareness and focusing of attention.  ADD is the lack of focus of attention.  I know because I, myself have ADD.  If I am to believe what Buddha says, I can achieve focus through meditation. Right now, I take my Strattera, but maybe that's my new magic feather.