Hey Dad, I am You!

i'm worth it?
so this will go down as the year art took a back seat to money. we were pretty shameless for a while there, wanting to live on art alone. doing whatever it took to squeek by. Vincent did it, though he was destitute, save for the loving grace of his brother, Theo van Gogh. [Vincent's great grand nephew was murdered in amsterdam in 2004, by muslim extremists.] we're fortunate enough that my mother believes that ashok is incredibly gifted, and she helped us when we needed it. i have no shame about this because we weren't living large, ne'er a vacation have we taken in 9 years, ok yes, little ones now and again to Seattle, Portland, Sedona, Scottsdale, etc. But never out of the country and never extravagant. our single extravagance has always to do with food, but if you know ashok (or his brother) you know that ample amounts of food--glorious food--is crucial to their existence. they must have really starved in their past lives. now i'm channeling this into my visits to the grocery store and am really good about cooking, as opposed to eating out--which is SO overrated. ANYway...my point has nothing to do with any of this, but wasn't it a pleasant digression? i live for the tangent, in the non-trigonometrical sense. SO, i was blue this weekend because i got a call from a recruiter in the educational publishing field for a position that i am sure i am unqualified for. after i spoke with her, i was sure i would never hear from her again, but she left me another message today. you know, now i am on the goal-less path. no future circumstance is going to make me happy. i know this. but i am going to be brutally honest with this broad. if she still wants me, i now--very recently-- know what i'm worth, in my egoistic framework. fuck yeah, i'm worth the 80-95k salary range. i'll try not to think of all the indian over achievers who were making that kind of dough after college. whatev! i don't know what i mean anymore, but if she wants me for this job, and i want the job, then ok. i am not salivating for it or putting any stock into the future.

am i in control?

first, a little more wine. ok, you maybe don't know about Guru Nitya Chaitanya Yati, but every week (ideally!) a small group of us here n Chicago gets together to discuss the Atmopadesa Satakam, or The One Hundred Verses of Self-Instruction, revealed to us by Narayana Guru, Guru Nitya's guru's guru. are you confused yet?? Not self as in you the personality, the ego, but beyond and within that. you don't have to read atmo to get what i'm saying--not that i get what i'm saying--, but atmo spurred this train of thought, that's all. so for years i've been living with this notion that i control my fate. that my thoughts have a direct impact on what happens to me, kind of like that Oprah book club book The Secret. there was a book like that called The Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier, written in the 1940s that has much the same philosophy behind it, which is that we as individuals hold the cards. i had/have this fervent belief that i could control my circumstances, and for awhile, my reality reflected this "notion". but now, i am coming to question these things. not to say, as in the protestant notion of pre-destination, that no matter what i do or think it just doesn't fucking matter because this life will unfold the way it was "meant". not quite like that, but...what? i have come to such an impasse that i have let it all go. i want nothing, well that's not necessarily true for everything, but philosophically i want nothing. and i no longer believe in the power of "positive thinking", and i don't necessarily believe that this is a bad thing. mind you, i have come to no conclusions about anything. i am merely thinking. shit, that's probably been the problem all along.

i miss my daddy

that's it.