As the seventh of eight children, I was raised with little pressure. For instance, no one at home cared much about my test scores, or even whether I took tests. This was wonderfully freeing but disorienting, so as an adolescent I absorbed the culture of driven materialism that still dominates American society. Of course, this created the suffering that arises when we live life from the outside in, rather than the inside out. That blessed &%#$ suffering helped me let go of societal expectations and feel around for my “inner compass.” Ever since, in any argument between Compass v. Culture, I’ve [...]
The Tardigrade is a truly wondrous creature: an eight-legged microscopic beastie also known as the “moss piglet” that can go without food or water for more than ten years, live in the vacuum of space, stew in boiling water, and keep waddling onward, good as new. Tardigrade energy is the totem of people who just will not freaking STOP, the spirit animal of all who believe everyone needs to hear about their gruesome dental history, their endless arguments with ex-spouses, the exploits of their moss-piglet children. Which reminds me: Tardigrade is also the totem of Things That Aren’t As Cute As [...]
Fear is a terrible sensation, one we never, ever want to feel. How lucky we are to live in a time and place where it’s so often possible to avoid the things that scare us most: violence, disease, natural disasters, dangerous animals, and, at least until the very end, death. Instead, we get to sit around on our widening behinds watching television shows…about violence, disease, natural disasters, dangerous animals, and death.
Hmm.
I noticed a long time ago that fear often comes packaged with enthrallment. We don’t look away from accidents or guns; we give them our rapt attention. This tendency [...]
Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of my friends are getting kind of pronoid. Okay, more than a bit. To be honest, there’s an epidemic of pronoia among people I love. I’m even showing signs of it myself. I feel it’s important that you know about this condition, just in case it begins to affect you or someone you love.
Pronoia is the opposite of paranoia; it means believing that people and circumstances are secretly conspiring to help and benefit you. Insane, right? I know! Yet I find myself slipping into this frame of mind, especially when I hang out [...]
Turducken is a dish consisting of a deboned chicken stuffed into a deboned duck, which is in turn stuffed into a deboned turkey. If turducken is your totem animal, you have multiple layers of limp energy with no solid internal structure whatsoever.
Turducken energy is complicated, overstuffed, and excessive. When Turducken waddles onto your table, you can be sure your goose is cooked on many levels. For example,
you may be trapped in a terrible relationship, unrewarding job, or unsatisfying ménage a trois because you lack the backbone God gave your feathered brethren. Call on Turducken to help you absorb [...]
I spent at least half my childhood drawing. By the time I got to college and signed up for my first drawing class, I was pretty comfortable with a pencil. My teacher was a brilliant draftsman named Will Reimann. To impress him, I fired up all my best tricks: lots of varied lines, fade-outs, soft gradients. One day while I was drawing, something landed on my sketch pad. It was a mechanical drafting pen.
“Use that from now on,” said Mr. Reimann. And he smiled the smile of a man who has hatched an evil plot.
Oh, how I hated that [...]
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