500 Miles in Someone Else's Shoes

I've been hesitating on what to write about the Camino. I'd thought the lessons would all become apparent to me along the Way, but to be honest, they're only just starting to peek out of the shadows. It is like the ease with which one can solve the problems of others but not one's own: the issue has to be seen from a different perspective. Now that it has been nearly a month since I finished walking, the experience is finally folding together to the point where I can start making sense of it.

That's not to say the Camino was completely free of life lessons learned. In fact, I ran into an Italian hippie in Galicia who pointed out that the roads were paved with cow shit (I'd noticed) and said he had the realization one day that the more time he spent watching the road to avoid the cow shit, the more beautiful scenery he was missing. I agreed and added that, even if one steps in the shit, it can still be washed away. However, it was the "missing" aspect that I've only recently begun to notice.

I've been working heavily on another blog, Bill Beaver's Best Laid Plans, a travel blog. As I've been writing and incorporating pictures, I noticed how few pictures I have of some areas and how few are actually of higher quality. This may be a standard ratio among photographers, but it has only highlighted what has been missing: time.

There are ten commandments of the Camino. I have been unable to locate a full list online, only references to the list I saw but did not fully process in Castrojeríz, but one stands out right now: You shall not change your pace to match another's.

I had mapped out my Camino to start on March 3rd and conclude on April 8th. A day behind in Pamplona, I figured I would sacrifice a day in Santiago to compensate. Instead, I met two other peregrinos with whom I decided to keep pace, not the least reason of which being that one was close in age to me and attractive. I kept pace with both of them for half the Camino, hurrying through some towns I'd originally planned to explore in more depth. I caught up to my missing day and surpassed it. True, we seldom walked together for long, and by the midpoint of the Camino, both went further than they'd said, and I was left behind.

Someone wiser could have seen these two as faces who had entered and left my life, as is the natural way of things, but instead, feeling hurt and abandoned, I continued at the pace they had set. I made photographic sacrifices: it was too much of a hassle to take out the camera, and I was losing time and distance behind them. What if I didn't see them again in Santiago before they left, four days before I arrived? It became this huge, important matter that I somehow catch up with them, so much so that, even on the days where I decided to go slower, I still put in the same distances and made the same photographic sacrifices. I stopped making friends in the same way as I walked. I became hurried and impatient with people who wanted to chat. I was pushing myself to catch up with someone else's Camino and had given no more than a fleeting glance at my own Camino and what it meant to me. That, at least, has affected my journal and work afterward, especially as I read more into these places and learn more of what I missed.

Now, that being said, 480 miles is a long walk with lots to see and limited memory card space. I was subject to the complaints of my body and the more pressing matters at hand than just snapping photos, like where to rest. However, the fact remained that the complaints of my body were directly proportional to the number of kilometers walked in a given day, as set by my desire to catch up to my past friends in the future. This is a very important parallel to daily life and one that demands awareness.

I'm a people pleaser. After a year in Codependents Anonymous, this still presents a problem, especially in the way I pace my life. Right now, I am unemployed, but my biggest concern right now is not that I'm running out of money (I'm okay for a while longer); my biggest concern is that I will have to justify myself to my mother. Each time I get a text message and see it is from her, even if it's a funny picture of the dog, I immediately get ready to explain my actions in a way that she will find acceptable and thus let me off the hook. It is a mentality that regularly takes me away from what I was originally doing. I'm trying to walk her Camino.

On a project level, for the last year, I have been floundering in a field of non-creativity, owing to one of my college lessons that said something to the effect of "You only have a few years to make it in the business." This thought led me to blaze through and submit my first screenplay to multiple companies, a screenplay with which I was not personally happy but which I thought the readers needed to see soon. I jumped to match their pace and sent them inferior work. I have tried to churn out short scripts for my director friends quickly, the idea being turnover, turnover, turnover. Thus far, I have not had anything produced because the work is hurried and inferior. I'm noticing the same in my photography, ignoring lighting and rushing framing to churn out content before I'm overlooked by someone who does not exist. I am walking the Camino of the professional world.

In romance, well, hell, what haven't I already said about romance? To the present, I've operated my relationships on the idea that my date needed constant entertainment, a complete sharing of interests, and anything else they may request, as soon as they request it. Otherwise, they would leave me behind. And this was important to me. I have put down my own work, beliefs, and interests because someone else, whom I happened to find attractive, found them subpar. I have been walking the Camino of everyone I ever dated and completely lost myself in them each time.

So what now? The physical Camino is over, and now I'm almost a month back in Los Angeles. The question now floating in and out of my head is "How do I get back on my Camino?"

It's not an easy process. I've built so much of my worldview on expectation and assumption that the idea of dropping them is confusing. I've lost so much of my ideation process in the grand hurry that I now have to dig deep in order to get it back. I have to find a job that, yes, will pay the bills, but at the same time, I may also need to be a little more picky with what I choose instead of just picking something to be employed again and not have to explain. Hovering over this is the concern that, if I couldn't figure this out with all my alone time on the Camino, how could I possibly figure it out back in the big city of LA?

The process is already starting. It takes a return to the old world to see what has been picked up from the new one (or is that reversed?). Writing Bill's adventures, above all things, is highlighting how much is lost in trying to walk someone else's Camino. The point is, people will wait if they know it's worth their while, and if not, it is no catastrophe. I have walked to the End of the World, and I remember enough to know that this is not it. So the plan, as of now, is to finish the blog, to focus on writing a good book instead of a quick book, and to find a job that lends itself to both of the previous. It may take until May to accomplish; it may take longer. I have time, and I have my lessons to back me. However, I have to stay on my Camino now. The plantar fasciitis reminds me of that.

The Way to Love (Part 2)

Moving right along, I'm a mere five pages into the book, and already I'm back at the chapter that gave me the most trouble. It starts with a quote from the book of Luke (14:26): "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."

In my ongoing search to not just be "good" but also to be "content," I've attempted putting this into practice by itself, and it's only led me to be bitter toward my family and my friends when they don't play by my rules. "Hate them, treat them disdainfully, and you'll be free" was the philosophy. But when it comes to seeking happiness, that really doesn't work. On re-reading, the point was sort of along the lines of a superhero movie: Those people and things you hold most dear are also the most dangerous to your personal well-being. I look at the recent death of my roommate's grandfather. She and her mom spent the better part of four months living with the grandparents and their cantankerous adopted son. It challenged some relationships and ruined others because of the obligation to help those who refused to be helped. The obligation, the commitment, was for family. Now, the family principle is one that I struggle with, because in so many of the religious "guidelines" I read, the central path to God, the Dharma, or what have you, is independent of family and other earthly "ties." So this is troubling.

"Hate" is a strong word that's thrown around loosely, and it doesn't work for me. I don't hate my parents. I don't hate my life. Is this why I'm not perpetually happy? As I read on, the terminology fit my tastes a little more. De Mello suggests not that we renounce our family, our friends, our ambitions, or our possessions all at once - he points out that violently ending a tie binds it to you forever - but rather to realize that they are attachments, that they are not eternal, and that, should they go away or turn against us, we should be ready. Perhaps "ready" is too pessimistic a term, but in all actuality, nothing lasts forever. Eventually, the whole human race will go extinct, for Pete's sake. But that's beside the point.

The book suggests making a list of all one's worldly desires and, having done so, addressing each of them with the following phrase: Deep down in my heart I know that even after I have got you I will not get happiness. So let's do that.  What all do I want that's making me miserable?

• A spouse/partner
• A group of reliable friends
• Approval from:
• My parents
• My extended family
• My friends
• My acquaintances
• My employer/coworkers
• Complete fucking strangers
• My inner voice/God
• Success/Influence
• As a writer
• As an actor? Performer?
• Financial (money for travel)
• Travel (happy without?)
• The garden
• The collections

This could be interpreted rather pessimistically, but the text doesn't say that having these things will make me miserable. Rather, it is pointing out that getting any one of these things will not magically make me happy. Happiness is not a goal. Making it a goal puts it in the intangible future, like a carrot at the end of a stick. Phrases like "the good old days" or "things will get better" are distractions that, no matter how you phrase them, force you into an unhappy present. This doesn't mean you have to go around all day repeating "I am happy. I am happy. I am happy." Lying doesn't help. However, letting yourself be happy, appreciating what you have and what you gain while being open to further gain or loss, is the sort of serenity that permits happiness, whatever that may actually be.

For the majority of today, I was sitting in a beautiful place, watching bunnies and butterflies and listening to birds and distant laughter, yet part of me was horrifically worried that someone would be trying to contact me via the cell phone I had intentionally turned off and locked in the trunk. Suddenly, there was a whole explosion of unintended worries: Who could be calling? Why? What could I be getting done? Who will hold me accountable for what I'm not getting done? Are all the people here wondering why I've been sitting here so long? Do they approve? That's six thoughts desperate for approval in the span of a squirrel's hop. Thought trains like this, or rather, Big Brain Bangs (BBBs) are more frequent than I wish I had to admit. They go something like this:

The Appearance BBB

• Find defect (zit, flab, unwanted hair)
• Sign of age, wasting away
• Unattractive
• Will not attract mate
• Will live and die alone
• UNHAPPY

The Intelligence BBB

• Make a mistake (at work or in writing)
• I was careless
• I don't care - why not?
• I'm lazy and have no sense of responsibility/concentration
• I never accomplish anything of consequence
• I will live and die alone
• UNHAPPY

The Friendship BBB

• Friend cannot hang out
• Friend doesn't like me
• Friends never hang out: none like me
• People in general don't like me
• I'm an unlikable person
• I will live and die alone
• UNHAPPY

If we cut out all the extra fluff, we can pare this down to "To live and die alone is an unhappy existence." While I could point out that no one with an active imagination can truly live alone, that might defeat the purpose.  To point out that nearly everyone dies alone, or rather, not in the company of those they love, helps a little more.  What has bugged me lately is the work, which I've considered a distraction to keep me from thinking about my perceived lack of love.  The question I've never, up until this point, asked myself is, "Is this the sort of work I'm meant to do?"

As mentioned before, I'm clinging to an idea of what I should be, when the fact is, I may not be so well suited to that idea after all.  The inability to let go of that idea has brought my focus to unhappiness, but letting go brings with it the fear of "What comes next?"  There is so much fear surrounding this, which comes out of the belief that I need approval... of EVERYONE.  So maybe, this is my first thing to address.  What things are there to do, which others might not approve of, but which are good for my soul?  This can't be something that will earn me praise or a cheap thrill from another source, even myself (Yay, Kyle!), but the point is, as today demonstrated ten years ago, any day could be your last.  Why go out wishing for what you want when what you need has been there all along?  There are a lot of things I could stand, not to eliminate from my life, but to loosen the hold.  This will probably solidify better as I read on.

The Way to Love (Part 1)

I'm re-reading The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello on account of a realization the other day. I'm smart, something my peers, professors, and parents have all admitted, even myself. However, pure intelligence comes at a high cost, that of the soul. By soul, I mean that energy that not only gets a person out of bed in the morning but also instills joy and a sense of purpose. Read it as you will.

This thought train started rolling last week when my friend, who has asked me to write a short musical for him, asked a simple question: Would you like to work with a lyricist? Immediately, the thorns shot up, the mask was back, and I slunk back into the corner with my poisonous jaws at the ready, while inside my lair of instant defense, the worm that already lingered there began to gnaw at me again. With every nibble came the crippling doubts of why I had failed so spectacularly at this one task when I had promised to succeed. All of this took place in the span before I could even form a rational thought, and I sputtered a little, asked instead to work with a musician, and went home feeling miserable. Why? It wasn't that he had said anything with intent to offend or put me down; it was the fact that I had shat out inferior material and presented it as something to be proud of. It was a song, yes, but it was soulless.

To be a skilled craftsman, artist even, a person needs feeling and expression, a message, if you will. What I've noticed in my work as of late is that an idea will spring into my head, and I'll start writing it without thinking it through. I've never completed a full outline, and it shows when the piece falls apart at the end of Act 1, where I lose my patience. By then, I revert back to form: "Stick to the form, and you'll get through it. End your Act 1 at page 15, your midpoint at 60, and your end before 120. It does not matter what you lose in the process." Oftentimes, the idea may not have had an actual meaning behind it, but it seemed cool at the time and became a commitment, for which I held no love or interest, like my past attempts at dating. Without love, there was only commitment, and from that commitment came soulless things, things about which I still hang my head to this day, years after the fact. I commit because I crave success, but even more than I crave success, I crave approval.

The first chapter of the booklet addresses this directly. It asks the reader to compare the feeling of receiving praise with the feeling of taking in a gorgeous sunrise. One is fleeting and leaves a person wanting more, while another is simply satisfaction. Screenwriting, in which I have my degree, demands commitment for success in a business where soul is only as deep as a pocketbook. I have committed myself to writing because I gave up on veterinary medicine. I was afraid to have responsibility for an animal's life, and in the process of giving up that goal, I lost responsibility for my soul.

I entered writing as a relative newcomer. I did not have an all-consuming passion for movies and, honestly, I still don't. In fact, I don't have much passion for anything anymore. At age 23, having not yet produced something I am proud of or that has evoked any kind of meaningful response from anyone else, I have deemed myself a failure and resigned myself to the remainder of my life as a worker ant, occasionally churning out pages to satisfy the writer's group and hopefully one day get noticed and asked by rich men to write soullessly for money. I don't have my money or connections. I never made those real connections in college. I observed the other writers, either with jealousy or resentment, and never took the time to learn from them. Their perceived success on and off the page amounted to my failure, and that was it.

The fact of the matter is, the picture is enormous, and my eyes are glued to a scuff on the frame. It's like when I was in my single-digit years, rock climbing with my dad, and I suddenly let go of the rope and the rock to hang precariously by my dad's belay and examine a particularly fascinating species of lichen. I get called an asshole on occasion on the road for misjudgments of distance. My focus is on the minute. When I write a story, I will occasionally get stuck on a scientific question that will send me on a three-hour internet hunt, which, by the time I finish, I realize I didn't need to take anyway. I'm in a constant state of distraction from a goal I haven't even really made concrete yet.

In summation, my illusion is I need to have fulfilled two things already: to be a genius and to start a socially-condemned relationship and make it work 'til death do us part. It's quite simple, really. Just write something that's not only brilliant, but also that people will read/watch again and again and incorporate into their personal philosophies and cultures that have been shaped by countless other sources for thousands of years like J.K. Rowling. After all, according to Chris Ciccone, you only have to be a genius once. Next up, I have to find a man who genuinely loves and cherishes me tantamount to my own feelings and be at my beck and call yet understanding that I need lots of space. And it needs to happen three years ago!

After a while, you can only lie to yourself for so long. You can only crank out so many half-assed pages and force so many half-baked relationships before the pressure becomes absurd and the victim mentality takes hold. The recoil continues. The nightmares about insufficient sleep end with a clenched jaw, receding gums, and TMJ disorder, among others. And for what? Out of this whole flea-bitten circus, what good does it do anybody? I tell myself I have let go of fame-lust and love-lust, but it is always there, in waking and sleeping, always adding pressure, always reminding me that I'm not doing what I want to be doing, that I'm not where I should be. I should be successful, dammit! Why am I not?

My brother gave me this book for Christmas two years ago. I read it in two days, loved it, and then gradually perverted the message for the subsequent two years. I had to give up all hope of success, all hope of love, and turn instead to the invisible figure of God. After all, isn't that better than everything else? It was better to withdraw from people and shut myself up than to be a part of the clingy world. The thing was, the book never said anything like that. This first chapter, a heavy four pages long, points out that there are fleeting joys and substantial joys, but we are programmed to pursue the fleeting ones. I am at peace when I go for a drive and see the history of California. I tear my hair out writing pages that I don't even like, and I beat down on myself for not being good enough or accomplished enough to talk to someone I find attractive. There is this rancid bitterness that piles up from time to time, because, deep down, I know that what I am pursuing cannot, in and of itself, bring me contentment. I could write a renowned screenplay and then be pushed back into obscurity immediately after. I could start a great relationship and lose him to cancer shortly thereafter. The focus needs to be on something greater. If I'm going to write, it has to be for a reason other than fame. If I'm going to have a relationship, it has to be for something other than sex and sharing insecurities. There needs to be something bigger, and right now, I can't figure out what that bigger thing is. Maybe re-reading this book will help.

The Massager

Holy crap. My parents gave me a seat-back back massager for Christmas. I'm trying it out now. Again, holy crap. This thing actually works really well. I freakin' love back massages and before now, I had to rely entirely on the two people I dated a year for anything like this, but now, this device may just be my key to independence. Reminds me of a song...

Familiar

There is a familiar deer in a familiar forest eating familiar grass under a familiar blue sky. It dines with familiar squirrels and listens to familiar birds. It hears a familiar twig snap and recognizes the familiar smell of danger. And so it bolts, in a way familiar to us.

In the past few years, dating has become a cervine lifestyle: The moment I hear that familiar twig snap, I don't care if it's a mountain lion or a careless rabbit, I'm ready to get the hell out of there. It wasn't always this way. In fact, there was a time when I used to lie down and present my vulnerable underbelly to the mountain lions and say, "Here, this portion would be rather tasty, don't you think?" Unfortunately, when the mountain lions decided I didn't taste very good after all, I learned that self subjugation hurts worse than being disemboweled. Now, I'm not so much fleeing for fear of pain as for fear of shame.

I've broken things off with the Gentleman about five times now, but we're still dating. I attribute this to the fact that I haven't actually mentioned it to him. The past two weeks, the twigs have been snapping left and right, but I just can't tell if it's a mountain lion or a rabbit trying to mess with me. I madly want to know: Is he watching me? Is he interested? Why isn't he responding to me? Why doesn't he ask me about such and such? What is he doing messing around online at four in the morning when I sent him a text message question at two this afternoon? Shit, I'm out of here. Oh... There was a family feud... and he figured I was asleep by the time it was done... and he didn't get up until late. Okay, that's kind of considerate. Rabbit in lion's clothing.

Next time: Waiting late for a call to hang out. No call. Send passive-aggressive text about call. No answer. Find answer next morning: babysitting nephews. Respond. Nothing until later.

It's this crazy pinball track from fight to flight to collapse, and it's reawakening a side of me that I really hoped had been dragged away by the mountain lions. Now, every time there is no immediate response, I instantly develop a new scenario in which he is a combination of all of my exes: their journeys that I hinder, their secrets, their affairs, their lies, their patronizations. The psychosis takes less than five minutes to start and an hour to explode into this absurd, self-loathing, woe-is-me, screw-dating mentality, which, once the rabbit pulls off the lion's mask, leaves me ashamed again, yet insufficiently so to prevent another lapse the next time.

So basically, I am a familiar deer in a familiar meadow, waiting for the familiar snap of a familiar twig, but where it is snapping and where to run, remain unfamiliar. The more I run, the more exhausted I become. But what is the alternative? How does one face the lion's mask and still be happy after it's revealed to be a rabbit? Furthermore, how does one enjoy the meadow when there may be a lion nearby? This isn't one of nature's unavoidables; there are methods of defense, but what are they... in the world outside of simile?

Update
Now that he got back to me and very casually brushed me off on our evening plans without a "Sorry" or a "Wish you could be here," but a promise that he would send pictures from his imminent week-long trip, the decision is made. I'm not running; I'm kicking his ass out of the meadow. Positive attitudes aside, I think I have a right to be angry, and in response to the stereotype that people with Asperger's can't take social cues, I'm a hell of a lot more observant than he is. And here I am shaming myself for being pessimistic. You know what? It's better to be single and alone than involved and alone on a Saturday night. Central finger... salute!

The Gentleman

Old habits die hard, this one harder than the rest. It's cost me plenty over the years, and I've gone through all manners of counsel to be cured of it. It's left me sweating at night and cold in the morning, wealthy on Friday and broke by Sunday, on Cloud 9 at the start of the month and in Provo by the end. I've been "sober" for almost a year, but in the last few weeks, the great whirlpool has finally sucked me back into... dating.

Yup, I've been asked out. A couple of times in fact... And then I asked back... And so far, things have been going pretty darn well, and I'm terrified.

"Why, Kyle, would you be terrified of things going well?" might ask Hypothetical Post Viewer.

"Well, HPV," I would respond, "when things have started well in the past, they have ended very badly in the future."

"But you've made some major progress in the past few years," would retort the Hypothetical Post Viewer. "You've connected with yourself, learned how to subdue your impulses for control, and stopped idealizing other people."

"That may be so, HPV, but I have not yet tested my progress with another person. It's scary! Don't you know anything about testing?"

In any case, this particular fellow, who for now shall be known as The Gentleman, is diggable, i.e., I dig him. He's fun, creative, adventurous, and surprisingly chivalrous in a world of cads. I started off resisting the push of romance, but I think I've been won over. That makes me nervous.

While I'm constantly fighting off the old psychoses, not to mention the promise I made to myself that I would not date for a whole year from last December, there is still the strangest sense of impropriety to the whole thing, as if I shouldn't be dating again at all. It's this nagging little voice that says, "It's going to go exactly the same as before; why bother trying to stuff a sense of normalcy between cynicism and bitterness when you know how slippery it is?"

A lot of this is the past talking, coupled with advice from my elders that has stuck with me: "It is a naive infatuation." I can't have that be the case any longer; I need to know that I can feel real emotions for a real human being. The fact of the matter is that I enjoy spending time with The Gentleman more than I initially anticipated and that I want to have more adventures with him. In order to enjoy them more fully, however, I must learn to distinguish the emotions, both as I feel them and as others tell me I feel them. Then, maybe, I can get a grip on normalcy and maybe even enjoy guiltless dating. Inshallah...