Just for historical keeping's sake...I was down for SXSW, and what was supposed to be an outstanding weekend of shows and hanging out ended up becoming incredibly stressful. Lots of cigarette smoke, the sheer number of people, the heat, the weight of my luggage, the unknown tiredness of my body, and all the physical history of my being in school beforehand just absolutely overwhelmed me Saturday night. It was not a good scene: I was out on downtown and just walked back Aaron to the bus station, and though I really wanted to go see The Bird and The Bee at midnight, my throat was about to shut tight on me. I called home and again went into a twisted emotional state, and I sought solace inside a quiet Asian restaurant with a bottle of water. Talking with the parents for twenty minutes, it was then that I decided to head home and find some comfort in something that will always be with me: family. We just spent some days together in Phoenix for one of Mom's work conferences, and while she did those, we just had some time together hanging out.
So yeah, it sucked I missed some shows I really wanted to see, but I feel that it was important just to come home and get some rest. A lot of sorting my mind out has been going down as well...I have put chicken back into my diet again after reading more and more about it online and in "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and I think I finally felt how much stress was induced into my life just from the past week of social connections and school obligations. Even with the family in Phoenix, I felt so many times where the stress was hanging on. I got constipated once I started overthinking about the foods I ate. I got tension headaches once too many thing were getting to my mind at once. There were times when I just had to put the headphones on and zone out to some music. I think My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr. saved my sanity for some moments of this trip. I still had some of the throat feelings erupt at certain times. Even right now, some of those emotions want to flare up.
There was an important moment during the car ride today that brought a new light to the mental situation. Throughout this time home, I immersed myself into the book Spontaneous Healing by Dr. Andrew Weil, and it was a super helpful suggestion from my Dad. If there was one really important thing to take from the book, it would be all the short stories of people who have had near-fatal conditions healed just by the sheer will of lifestyle changes and the keeping of the mind and spirit. I really took that to heart throughout the entire time I have been here at home and in Phoenix. One of the most important moments of that nature came during my second night here when I had had trouble eating some "Chey-Co-Dan Soup" for dinner, and in frustration, I thought about very negative emotions controlling my mind that evening. That was the evening Dad presented me with the book, and upon reading some different ways of thinking with a more "visual perception" of various ailments, I gave some of the advised ways of thinking a try. Since we had been watching Planet Earth, and the episode was one about the giant caves of Mexico, I imagined my mouth and my GI system as one of those caves, and all the food that I ate was just everything that entered the cave in the giant chasm to the depths below. With those thoughts, I kept thinking of new ways to make everything feel more efficient, and I think all those success stories from the other recorded patients kept my spirit alive for this trip. And being family helped me feel secure for that energy.
There is some notion of truth to those corny infomercials that push "miracle advice," as to all we know, as fake as television makes everything to seem, I put in thought what Bill tells me with trombone lessons these days: "Why not?" I mean, why should I not believe that some of these stories just may be generally true? Maybe I am trying to defend myself by saying that this creative energy to do something with one's life should NOT have to be told within some television infomercial, and maybe I do want to call this guy (Tony Robbins, to be specific) a total sham, but then I took in a different light towards thinking that this informercial was probably the most positive thing I have seen on television all week. The entire time I was up late at night, watching this, probably not as hopeless as some other people who may have been watching the same program, and the only thing I was told was that I could take advantage of my life.
So back to that car ride moment, in Weil's book, he quotes a man who has experienced numerous "moments of ecstasy" while "going on multiple lone walks in the forest," and what this man states is that in order to be better and to carry that positive emotion all the time, you HAVE to carry that energy at all times and HAVE to stay positive, and if you can not do that when you get to the most dejected of states, you have to "put up a front" with your energy, and eventually that passion will just manifest itself back into you.
I am all one for action over words, but at the very least, I need to keep repeating to myself how important these words are to my state of mind.
-c
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