stress is making my brain fall out

Do you fear becoming a zombie? I do. I learned today that some researchers are convinced that we are frying our brains with microwave radiation every time we use our cellular telephones. But that's not why I fear becoming a zombie.

I feel so stressed out lately that I am certain my neurons have petrified. They are like throbbing conduits of anxiety. Did I send all the emails? Did I return all the phone calls? Who am I neglecting? Did I forget something? Why do I feel like I'm contracting an ulcer?

I try to combat these feelings with meditation. Sometimes it works. Or I'll make a schedule, and usually this exercise reveals that I'm just too fucking overbooked. It's not that I need to be. It's that I'm compelled to be.

By what? I'm not sure. Maybe by the microwave radiation emitted by my cell phone.

inviting yourself over

Today I invited myself over to a stranger's house for a cup of tea. I mean, not really a stranger, but a friend of a friend, somebody I'd met twice in structured meetings, somebody I don't know but whose name I know. Is that weird? My friend gave me his number and said, call him, he has good advice, he will laugh, he will think it's funny.

He didn't laugh, at least not when we spoke, but he did return my call and say it was okay.

When I said, I need to schedule a week in advance, he was like, are you really that busy? And I was like, temporarily, yes, yes I am, but it's really not that temporary. Workaholism is a real bitch, but it beats drinking.

Maybe that's why my friend said to call him. "Are you really that busy?"

adopting the do-nothing mentality

The do-nothing mentality stems from conservation: of energy, of resources. The do-nothing mentality is avoidance: of risk, of waste, of work.

What is it that I require? Food. Warmth. Water. Companionship. Art? Perhaps art.

The art of doing nothing has been discussed, ad nauseum, by trendy people who like to sit in cafes. This bandwagon is not a vehicle on which I'd like to ride. I am not looking to sip coffee. I'm not looking to exploit others who will do my bidding as I lounge in a hammock. Rather, I'd like to have some land, and I'd like to live on it, doing nothing with my do-nothing friends.

The problems, of course, are the land, the finding of the do-nothing friends, the abject terror we might all initially feel at the idea of doing as little as possible. Subsistence: what does it even mean? Does it mean we'll all get strep throat right away and, without penicillin, succumb to rheumatic fever? Does it mean we will inevitably develop technologies, replaying the entire sordid history of imperialism? Does it mean we'll die premature and painful deaths pursuing wild animals with spears? Maybe we won't even get mauled - maybe we'll just twist our ankles while running and then slowly starve because we can't run after any more animals with our spears.

It's troubling, you know, the idea of the post-technological apocalypse. For about a week, there might be Dumpsters filled with day-old baked goods. For about a month, there might be cows and pigs and chickens on feedlots and in barns. For a season, there might be berries and leaves. Then, my friends, we'll have to munch on insects, at least, many of us will.

Would this be such a bad thing? Maybe we'd grow accustomed to it. But here's what troubles me: would we continue to miss the point of living, even after we lost our livelihoods? Would we build a post-consumer consumer society? Or would we remember, somewhere among the entomophagy, that it doesn't matter so much when we die or how we die or what we own, as long as we're doing nothing with the people we love right up until the end?

And yet...

Removing my last piercing.

I removed my navel piercing. I had an acupuncture treatment last week, and I don't know what kind of crazy energy is moving through me right now, but whatever it was, it made my piercing itch during my session. It was like a scab, this itchy vestige of a wound, something to be shed. I removed it during treatment, and I haven't put it back. Most of my piercing sites don't feel empty, but the tragus and the navel still feel like they are empty places, void of energy. I know that I will eventually reach equilibrium again, and I'm glad I decided to take my rings out. The universe is a strange and hilarious place, where everything is a cosmic joke, and there are no predictable plot devices upon which we can rely.

Peace.

Removing my piercings.

Hi everyone. I have decided to remove my nose and ear piercings. All of them. I will only wear earrings for sociocultural ornamental reasons from now on. I previously had worn my piercings as spiritual-emotional gestures, and for the last few days, almost a week, I've felt the need to remove them, that they have served their purposes, and so I'm going to remove them. All of them.

Well, almost all of them. I will definitely leave my navel piercing (for now). Though I have mixed feelings about the tragus, I'm going to have it removed.

I'm more shocked than any of you are at this news. I never thought I would take them out for any reason other than selling out. But I'm not taking them out for a job, for school, to make other people shut the fuck up about what I choose to wear. No, I'm not taking them out for any external reason. I am removing my beloved nose and ear rings for the same reason I had them inserted by various kind, patient piercers and gun-wielding chain-store clerks over the years: some inexplicable yet very decisive directive from the great internal beyond.

I love you all and love myself. Peace. Enjoy your body art carefully; it's the only permanent thing you own.