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Dreams and Quiet Voices #3

I woke up yesterday haunted by a sweet, sorrowful song that is relatively unfamiliar to me.

Sleep studies have shown a few interesting things in (relatively) recent years, one of which is the idea that while humans naturally sleep for 8 hours, a pattern emerges when distractions of artificial lights and alarm clocks are removed, where the sleep occurs in two four-hour stages, and that it’s a modern invention to think we should sleep through the whole night. This pattern is referred to as Biphasic Sleep.

Album Cover, This Mortal Coil

The theory goes that artificial light, a recent addition to the world, keeps us up long past the sunset, when our natural circadian rhythms start winding us down for bed. A hundred years ago, so this thinking says, it would be quite natural to wake up in the middle of the night, lie awake (relatively) for an hour or two, then slip back into sleep (NIH article).

That hour or two is an interesting time, cognitively. It is a creative time, half-conscious, where ideas come, or we solve problems. Or we spend it making love. I am more curious about what is happening in our minds and consciousness as we bridge the two deep sleep cycles. The powerful dreams come just at the beginning of this waking period. So too do these times when I run, over and over, a song track in my mind. It comes unbidden, and has a life of its own, and I am simply here to understand why.

Which makes this song, ‘Song To The Siren’ by This Mortal Coil, interesting. It’s one I recently added to my rotation, but that’s not unordinary.

Song to the Siren, by This Mortal Coil. Press play to listen

Why this one?

First, it makes the hair on my neck stand up listening to it. I am overcome with a powerful feeling of loss and nostalgia. The halcyon days of youth become a faded dream I just woke up from. Half-memories, half promises; of heartbreak and hardship. I don’t even know the words, but the feeling is always there, as soon as the song starts playing, and long after it ends. A timeless state. Just like the minutes and hours at the end of a sleep period.

The first thing I do usually when this happens is listen to it in the morning, right after meditating. I listened to this one on single-song repeat for hours. Its mystery slowly unfolds though I am still at a loss for why my subconscious singled it out. It begs the question: what is happening in my life that this is a message for me now, from my deeper self? I am on my own in a foreign country, dealing with the vagaries of noise pollution and a community that cares deeply about some good things, but not at all about things like health standards, building codes, or peace and quiet.

Sometimes it is just a feeling, a mood. Nothing more.

This song came to me through a MasterClass I was watching by David Lynch, talking about the creative process and filmmaking. He wanted to use it for ‘Wild At Heart’ but it was out of his budget… but he loves this song, so I listened to it. And it is very Lynchian… moody, mystical, dark but soft.  I am in pursuit of my own creative forces, particularly in writing fiction, and I have been practicing thinking about mood in new ways. During my photography career I was very focused on concept and technical skill, but not so much on mood. I am trying it on as a worthy pillar for good fiction and good storytelling. So I have set myself up to try to feel it, like David Lynch does. He talks about ‘falling in love’ with an idea. I guess this song is the memory of that love. It resonates with me as I emerge from a yearlong period of mourning for the end of my own marriage.

What is it we lose, when we forego this period of trance-like deep creative half-dream? I believe this is the time we integrate our conscious thoughts with the deep well of subconscious information processing we do all day, every day. We clear out the garbage, tidy the house, connect our will to circumstance, and ask ourselves for help. This series about dreams and quiet voices is an exploration of my own trance state, and what I can learn, and how I can benefit from paying attention to it.  For now, I will simply feel the ethereal, moody dream that I seem to gravitate towards at this time in my life. I will give it time and space to be. So it is!

More from this series:
Dreams and Quiet Voices #2
Dreams and Quiet Voices #1

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The Leap Taken

So many kids grow up in fear, and never taking the leap of faith. I try to seize every chance I get to feel grateful to have been raised in the woods, 15 miles outside a town of 2000 people, at the end of a mile long dirt road. Of course as a child I just wanted to go learn about the culture of the big city… Now in my adulthood, I want to find a place just like it and stay there for a long time (ok, with internet).

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Motorcycles and the Art of Zen Maintenance

If you have not read ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance‘ by Robert M. Pirsig, then stop reading this and go get it on audiobook. The book is a foundational exploration of the metaphysics of quality; or a rambling, semi-fictional semi-autobiographical novel that expounds, though never professes to be a factual doctrine, on topics including epistemology, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of science.

I read it when I was in high school, searching for signs of who I was and what I could call Truth. The book is about a son and a father primarily, which was a good reason for me to read it. At that point I wanted more Father in my life… and my own dad spent time reading metaphysical books… I was drawn to the mysticism of Carlos Castenada and classics like ‘Stranger in a Strange Land‘ by Robert L. Heinlein and ‘Brave New World‘ by Aldous Huxley, two books I would also recommend any teenage boy (and teenage girl) to read. Blow your mind, it’s good for you.

But this is not about those books. I read them all before I took my first motorcycle ride. Long before I owned one of my own.

Since then, I have carried my love of riding motorcycles through decades… and more than one accident. Most were close calls without injury. One of them changed my body – and my baseline level of pain and discomfort – permanently. But, as the Chinese saying goes, no illness, short life… one illness, long life. I’ll save any more than that for another story.

Still, I Ride

This is about riding. I love riding. I love everything about it. I love the vibration of the machine, a rumble-hum under me. I love the rush of the passing air, each moment rich blasts of thick, heady mixed pungent smells and sensual signals – temperature, sounds, air quality – and somatic sensations of velocity, acceleration, inertia. Smells like miles of cut grass or the salt of the sea, on cliff-spanning rides near my longtime home in San Francisco. Or in Bali, smells of damp earth and mushrooms after the rain, or the acrid sting in eyes and nose caused by smoke from local villagers burning refuse.

Or here in Nayarit, Mexico, where the chalky smell of dust permeates even the densest olfactory notes. A bouquet that includes heavy intoxicating flowers, the oxygen-rich air of the jungle around the road, Dust and sand kicked up by passing machines, or even the man-made smells of engine oil and steel shavings coming from local shops or passing trucks. Or the other manmade smells of cooking meats, shrimp poblano, chili and lime. Confection stands and taco carts. Here there is also smoke from burn piles among the Agave farms.

These smells tell me the story of the land I am passing through, of which I am part as I pass by. A motorcycle does not separate you from the land or the city or the country or the road… rather it gives you superpowers as you move through, over and in it; you become able to slice and swoop, to crawl or wander. To soar triumphant like you just won your deepest desire. A soul-filling power.

The atmosphere is more than the smells it contains. It gives you feedback on your speed and direction. You begin to see the land you pass through as a map of billions of different chemicals floating all around in a soup of air. You pass through pockets of floral chemicals. Culinary terpenes and rich oxygen from the forest. The local pocket of the stench of a dead animal somewhere off the road.

The wind on your face tells your body that you are free, moving fast. Both of these sensations contribute to the best feeling of all: that of flying! Low to the ground, following the contours of a descent or the swell of a rising hill, passing through shaded tunnels made from tree branches grown all around you like a flat solid roof and rounded walls as you rocket through curves and climbs.

There are moments on my motorcycle when all care about destination or the slow things in your life melt away; moments when no other vehicles are around, and I am alone, with just the body-feeling of acceleration, of the thrill of exposure, sounds of the birds or the rushing air, or better still of the music I listen to when I am happy. Times when I crest a peak, or round a new bend, and the world lays out a vista that takes my breath away. Sprawling splendor splayed spectacularly for my sore sight, like I am being shown a gift of wonder, and allowed to explore it on wings of controlled explosion, the power coursing through me with a hint of danger. No worries can keep up with a man on a motorcycle.

I Am Alive

Now, in this moment. For sure. All others might be a matter of debate, but not this one. In this moment, all that exists is this moment, with me as witness. And I am free. Tomorrow might be another day, but right now, I am completely free, released from all judgement or expectation, and releasing all others from any obligations to me. I am free in a free world. Free from the tyranny of mere ambulation. Free from the extortion of the local Taxi mafia. Free to simply experience the wind on my face, and the wonder rushing by.

At least for these next few months, the last part of an 18 month sabbatical from working full time, I am calling the west coast of Mexico my home. Soon I will return to the world of traffic, of deadlines and meetings, of deliverables, of expectations and obligations. But for this time that I have left, I allow myself to fully experience freedom. Also, I need a way to get around that doesn’t rely on anything tourist related, especially the taxi drivers here. Believe me it’s a racket…

For this reason, I just took a 5 hour bus to Guadalajara, and spent 3 days in negotiations, testing, and dealing with a large international payment, and returned to San Pancho, riding my new Honda 150 custom Cafe Racer, back over 300 kilometers. It’s a long ride, and I had a heavy backpack. That combination takes a toll on my body. But it’s worth it. I have a main line to euphoria, an always-ready emergency exit from the drudgery of the world of things. An off-ramp to the metaphysical realm. And a practical means of transportation in my adopted ex-pat community- the area just north of Puerto Vallarta, near Punta Mita.

Now, instead of being a drag, or a chore, or feeling like work, I am excited to plan days of errands… a trip to PV to take in my dry-cleaning becomes an adventure. I can say yes to friends that live the next town when they are having people over. And going to the beach now feels like a red carpet event.

I am sure that my mother, who will read this, has an entirely different feeling about me riding motorcycles than I do. But to her credit she does not pass guilt on to me for my dangerous habit. Perhaps now, reading this, she will understand a bit more why I choose to ride here. Because the flavors of all other things in my life stand out, are stronger and sharper; all experiences take on their own identity, made clearer by the feeling of being completely alive. It is like salt on the plate of food that is my day.

If I go too long without that feeling, I can forget to look for it, and to cultivate it. Its my little garden and I keep it alive, surrounded as it is by chaos and mere anarchy. That feeling is a phase – shift, a state. Like the places I go in meditation. Or it’s the exact yang to meditation’s yin. The latter is done in the dark, inside, in the quiet, with eyes closed. The former is done fast as can be, outside, engine growling into the rushing wind, eyes wide open. A quickening, to meditation’s stillness. Both make me feel present, in this moment. I ride to keep the balance.

We must all maintain our Zen. It is the contemplation of impermanence. Without constant practice, it will disappear. My motorcycle is one way I maintain mine. A way for me to not be bothered by the rain. Or the noise. Or the pressures of my particular perspective. Or other people. Or unimportant things. Or my own shortcomings. Or the shortcomings of others. Or the natural, unconditioned state of my free spirit.

I get that from riding my motorcycle.

And that is a little piece of Zen in my life, that I can share with you.

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What I Have Learned from Sound

Signal from Noise.
Or the longest AirBnB review ever

This is what I see from my writing desk, in the outdoor kitchen

I have been living for the last two weeks in the noisiest, most chaotic, diverse zone of head-splitting blow-your-top auditory assault of an AirBnB I have ever spent the night.

I am new-come to a foreign land, in a pueblo not larger than a hundred cement-block buildings along a small river that empties into the Mexican Pacific Coast. A landing place for the last few months of my sabbatical; a time for development, acceleration, and growth after a challenging last two years.

I sit here now at my desk, aka the dining table in the outdoor kitchen. There is nothing more than a single white curtain between me and the ubiquitous passing vehicles: water trucks starting their deliveries at 5:30 am. The construction trucks from the multi-unit development project a hundred feet down the street to my right. Old beat-up pickup trucks with cheap megaphones hawking shrimp or fruit in shrill, nerve-grating timbre. Motorcycles with no DMV restrictions on sound or exhaust.

All of them run rumbling and screeching in protest at the torture of the washboard cobblestone carrera that lies as a major throughway into town center, a mere 25 feet from me as I write this. The trucks kick up dust that spills from the construction project just past the brewpub next door, on my side of the street.

Sounds from inside my apartment late at night

It breaks my focus. 

I can’t concentrate.

How long is this debilitating painful annoying aggravating disturbing tranquility-shattering cacophony going to last?

I came here with an itinerary and a schedule. One that was built over months of planning in silence and abundant personal space. One that assumed it would be chaotic here, but relied on the idea that spending a little extra on AirBnB would allow me to at least shut out noise while inside. Enough to meditate. Or read. Or, failing that, maybe during some hours of the day it would be relatively quiet.

This was not the case

I can’t keep myself in any rhythm.

Shrimp-mongers run circuits past my door, all day every day, calling out with tinny megaphones

I came here to write, to be creative, to practice very clean and healthy living. To fast intermittently, meditate, practice music, and take care of my body. It was more the plan of the Monk I had been back in Arizona than anything I could be here in this place. A monk has his mountain temple. I have a sound tunnel with no wall, that fronts this cobblestone street. In the back there is a square hole larger than my shower cut out of the grey concrete wall, with a screen on it and no window. The hole opens to an outdoor kitchen being used at all hours by 3 teenage girls. They play music, have boys over, drink and laugh, loud like they can’t conceive of anything put on this earth that could stop them, I might add… They practice twerking. They fix midnight snacks at 2 am after coming home from the bars or beach fires.

Nothing separates my bathroom from the patio where teenagers party, except a screen

I can’t close the window. It isn’t there.

Dogs bark, a staccato clap from any angle, any distance, any time.

And I came here to spend my time convincing myself spiritually that ‘there is no spoon’ not getting angry because physically there is no window. My meditation is literal practice to not get into patterns of aversion towards unpleasant sensations.  I’m taking a bath in unpleasant sensations. And the water is full of other people’s things. People I didn’t invite into my bathroom.

All I can think is, what can I do to stop the noise? I can’t think of anything that isn’t mean. I can’t think. I want to be mean. I get angry. I feel overwhelmed. It’s a physical feeling, like waking up inside a barrel filled with hot sand, naked, with a sunburn. And not being able to get out. Sometimes when it gets too much to bear I take a walk. Or a run. Or I go to the beach, but that just reminds me of hot sand…

Construction on the other side of the lot next door. The bottom left is a bar with live music every night

I am amazed at watching other areas of my life suffer because of sound. My diet for one. I can’t plan my way around the tasty, cheap tacos on every corner. A salsa-trap too sweet to avoid. My Keto cookbook lies unopened, covered in dust from the trucks beating the cobblestone street for 3 weeks. My desire to talk to strangers, or have patience with the building manager. Or neighbors.

I retreat, into a shell of noise-cancellation headphones, that leave my ears itching and sore overnight. All else is chaos and disruption. Noises caused by other people become black and solitude white. The world divides. I check out of the noise, of the outside. Especially at night, I turn my back and walk away as the building manager tries to explain that the neighbors are new and there is nothing he can do. I feel rude by the time I get to the top of the stairs. But I do not have the energy to change it. All non-survival level concerns are excused away by lack of sleep.

I am guessing this is all typical stress response for many people. It is a privilege that I don’t have bigger stresses in my life than noise. That doesn’t make it easier.

Recorded from my bed at 1 am

And nothing gets done. I can’t focus. I contemplate giving up.

A war zone should even have some hours of quiet.

I try to tell people about this torment. Friends who listen with a polite smile frozen on their mouth. Or strangers, who clearly prefer to go back to having fun. No comprehension in anyone’s eyes.

Am I the only one who is bothered by this? Why does this racket bother only me? And why so much? Other people live here too…

There is a bar, right next to my building. It has really good live music, if that’s what I’m into. It sounds muffled but still loud if I’m not, or simply lying on my bed trying to read. They promise to stop at 9pm. It’s a rule, the locals keep promising me.  Its written on the AirBnB. I think the rule applies to the whole town. There are about a baker’s dozen bars here, one for every block. I have usually thought about complaining at least a hundred times before 11:30 pm.  Most nights. At its worst, I had to listen to binaural white noise at 3/4 full volume on my good quality headphones with active noise cancellation in order to fall asleep. I could still hear the boys howling on the patio at 1:30 am.

Cement blocks open to the outside

Should I go over there and talk to them? None of my friends suggest this option… I talk to whomever will listen. I can’t think too hard about who they might be.

My sleep gets blown up. I am half asleep all day.

Where is the joy I felt just a few weeks ago? The extra gear? The springed step?

There is another sound tunnel, right next to mine. A stranger lives there. Her music, like mine too, can be heard easily from my writing desk, which is my kitchen table.

Everything is fuzzy, like I experience it through a long tunnel, like it comes from far away.

In between, or when away, my mind clears. My thoughts, focus, perspective, slowly come back after a time. And my mind says to me:

  • Yes, this is really an anomaly. Enough independent and random sources of chaotic noise to be a perfect coincidence. But also a great lesson for you.
  • You have had a nice and privileged time in Arizona. You are welcome, it has been a difficult year for many.
  • Yes, the sanctity of silence and serenity is seriously significant. You need to prioritize it in order to live the way you like.
  • It’s ok to cry uncle.  Sometimes toughing it out is not the best way to move through it.
  • Uninterrupted concentration and its shadow, daydreaming, are good for you. they help with expression, problem solving, and staying motivated.
  • You make this noise too, practicing your saxophone.
  • Good job not escalating when you are disturbed. Especially when you are out of your mind angry with the teenagers at 2:00 am and you can’t sleep. An eye for an eye makes for terrible neighbors.
  • It takes some time to be able to read how a place works. Sometimes it’s hard to listen. You can’t be of a place unless you can hear its rhythms.
  • Be grateful you don’t have bigger sources of stress.
  • It’s a particularly first-world sense of entitlement to lose your shit over the roosters before dawn. Or even to expect building standards. Anyone who has lived in a 3rd world country for longer than a week, outside a luxury resort, knows this.
  • It also teaches you to love your home country more because of the absence of the things Americans take for granted.
  • Yes, I can become accustomed even to the chaos and unexpected interruption of anything and continue my practice. Wow.

I can say it’s gotten easier. I’ve meditated on the distractions to meditation. And I’ve heard them speak. I’m not angry anymore, because I have had to throw out my high expectations, at least for now. And things are fixing to be better soon…

Soon, I’ll be moving on. As soon as I can. Sooner than my term ends here. Losing a little money is an acceptable price for peace of mind. My equilibrium is priceless. Solitude and silence call to my soul. Until then, it’s 18 hours of noise cancelling headphones a day, and go deeper inside.

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Observations on the Via to Guadalajara

Cement and cinder blocks dot and bunch in lots alongside the Via to Guadalajara. I am on a bus, to get out of the noise of San Pancho, to celebrate a week of slow travel in Mexico, and maybe to buy a little moto… we will see. It’s an adventure.

A fat and lazy sun does its mediocre best for a February midday. Such things matter here. Oxxo’s everywhere, like some monocultural organ in the body politic.

Haciendas directly front the main 4-lane Via – turning into apartment buildings – then shops – and – Voila! A Pueblo, or a major Mercado Central.  There’s little difference between the two.  Here’s the taxi stand… white stenciled sedans fleet and flit about, marked by their home Mercado.

I pass dry dusty earth, caught in a mess of tropical vegetative chaos. Agave farms, i would guess to make into alcohol, in various stages and healths, like a Mezcal version of Napa county in my home state. The wild vegetation here is hungry, clawing to climb anything that stands, reaching like a drowning castaway clings to a would-be-rescuer, pushing both down.  The whole vast landscape looks sun-blasted, yet right now seems to be catching its breath.  At least a few months of respite from the ruthlessness of the summer sun. 

Palms proliferate, happily sprawling any expanse of favorable earth, cultivated or not. Some palms are made to live in order, some worship the gods of Chaos. The countryside presents itself gently with rolling hills in partial vegetative cover, greens and browns in mostly agrarian formations, much of the flat land cultivated.

Orchards, of this or that or those, grow into a single solid overstory, otherwise seemingly healthy. A dark mystery lies waiting between the trunks. The shadow stretches quickly away into darkness, out of sight. Nothing much grows under there, though thoughts of what may lurk are easy-come. The mind speculates quickly out of control.

Little country huts, half hidden in fruit trees on hills, tickle my simple, pushing invisible buttons of a dormant child-like imagination. I smile.

People, in surprising quantities, everywhere. Mexicans like pastels. It’s a thing here. But it’s hard to say why? Likely because they are the furthest away from the ubiquitous didgy gray of the unfinished cement block houses. That and bright shocking purples, yellows, and reds are the colors represented by flowering succulents of all types, the mainstay of the native flora. I see a fair amount of ‘Se Vende’ signs, on buildings, complexes, hotels or lots, from my tinted bus window.

A man emerges from the tree line, his face all shadow and angle in the overhead sun. His smile exacerbates the shadow, just as the local friendliness of the gente makes the chaos and disinterest in my comfort all that much harder to bear. I am challenged by paradise here, spoiled for the paradise I left, where I long to be now, where warm arms await, at least in the back of my mind, where partially-imagined hopes lie.

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Good things from the 90’s (#2)

On a (3 mile) run, practicing the nose breathing technique. I am breathing about 18 breaths a minute, and my heart rate is about 120, for the whole run. (Mute if the nose breathing is annoying!)

There are some very good things that were written, produced, built, made, learned, discovered, or otherwise came in to being in the 90s… that we should remember. This was a time just before social media, with all collective knowledge right before the great digital shift, before the internet took over the world. These things, being mostly analogue, have possibly gotten the short end of the stick from our collective Third Millennium attention. That is why I will use this blog to occasionally write about some fascinating, useful, interesting, delightful, informative and generally value-add cultural phenomena from the last great analogue decade.

This first one is a book I just finished called ‘Body, Mind, and Sport‘ by John Duillard.*

I have chronic structural injuries and imbalances caused by accident, and deeper than that, by chance, circumstance and a dash of recklessness in my youth. I destroyed my knee in a snowboarding accident, and dislocated my sternoclavicular joint in a motorcycle accident a few years later. Both injuries are inoperable and both on the right side cause me to have chronic pain (knots in my back, and my knee swells up if I run more than a mile).

I had been training for a marathon when I blew my knee. After it healed, I have not been able to run more than a mile or two, for the last 15 years. But after reading this book, and practicing its method of ‘listening to my body’ during exercise, I run 2x per week each several miles, along with hiking and yoga and weight training the rest of the week. The impact on my life has been phenomenal: I have lost 15 lbs in the last 7 weeks, and am stronger than I have been since high school. It feels like I have superpowers.

The Point

Long story short, the book’s main thesis is that exercise should be a practice to integrate the mind and body, and the ‘no pain, no gain’ attitude towards fitness is actually destructive. First, the book runs through some exercises to identify the specifics of your body and energy and athletic types, based on Aurvedic practice. This includes diet, type of exercise, and also things to avoid for the three main types. These correlate roughly to ecto, meso, and endomorphs, though there is much more to it. Each type has an entire diet outlined for it as well as an exercise regimen.

The book then goes on to its main point- that we, like most mammals that run, evolved to breathe through our noses during normal exertion, and that breathing through the mouth is actually a stress-response, one we learned as kids stressed out by expectation or incorrect information, or simple illness. The entire second half of the book is about how to train yourself (and why) to exercise while breathing exclusively through your nose. For something supposedly natural, it’s a very unusual thing to attempt.

My Experience

But in the month since I have read this book, I have been practicing the techniques outlined by Dr, Douillard, and the results have been nothing short of spectacular. I am now running while breathing entirely through my nose. Not only has my breathing slowed down to about 16 breaths per minute during exercise, but my exertion and stress levels are minimal, and I end each run feeling fresh, energized, and rejuvenated rather than exhausted and stressed. My legs are strong, my knee remains stable, and I enjoy exercise immensely. I ‘work out’ 6 days a week! The book tries (and so far looks to succeed) in normalizing that experience that athletes talk about of being ‘in the zone’ – achieving perfect mind/body harmony such that everything just seems to flow.

The author is a doctor and athletic advisor who has spent his career proving the premise in this book, with lab testing, up to and including the Olympic level athletes and professionals. I will let the book stand on its own, but for anyone who has had stress injuries, or any other debilitating exercise experiences, or for those merely curious, I can’t recommend this book enough. The main premise is that, through a different, listening approach to exercise, we can return to the original (Greek, Ayurvedic) practices of mind-body integration that used to be the goal of exercise, before the obsession with winning took over.

And one final note about that- not only have these practices been used to win, but think about this: if you hate working out, or if you get injured, then winning will be the last thing you experience.

*I get no referral kickbacks from referencing anything on this site. I only talk about things I have tried and when possible I link to information, not purchase pages.