How to Get Your Mind in the Mood (Blog #788)

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Phew. After having breakfast with a friend this morning, I spent the entire day, about eight hours, wrapping up at my friends Todd and Bonnie’s house. For the last three days I’ve been cleaning antique hardware–removing paint (with chemicals and elbow grease), then either polishing or repainting what’s underneath. I’ve been to Lowe’s four times, Walmart twice, and Walgreen’s once. I’ve been up and down more steps than I can count, working feverishly because the painters are coming back tomorrow to rehang doors and need the hardware to do it. Thankfully, I think, everything is ready.

Here’s a picture of some of the polished brass. I’ll spare you photos of the rest, but in terms of volume, each door  (on average) has 2 large plates, 1 small plate, 2 knobs, 2 hinges, and one lock (small plates and hinges are shown in yesterday’s blog)–and there were seventeen doors (I think).

Here’s a video of in inner workings of one of the locks. I took it apart because the bolt was sticking out, tilted like a drunken sailor. I had to open up another lock to figure out how to fix it. As it turns out, a small piece of metal had popped out that was supposed to hold the bolt in place (I hammered it back in). I don’t narrate the video, but notice that a small, bent wire pushes the latch out. The bolt itself works via two levers–one that pushes the bolt in or out (and moves horizontally), and another that “locks” it in the lock position (and moves vertically). The small piece of broken metal I hold up at the end of the video is what I found when I took the lock apart. It’s the broken-off end of a skeleton key, which would have been used to 1) lift the vertical-moving lever and then 2) slide the horizontal-moving lever, thus locking or unlocking the door.

 

After a full day of manual labor, about nine, I sat down on Todd and Bonnie’s porch with a cup of coffee and intentions of resting. My thought was that I’d drink my Joe, take a shower, then hang around to blog. However, while scrolling on my phone I learned that two of the three bridges from Fort Smith to Van Buren were going to be closed at ten due to the recent flooding of the Arkansas River. (We’ve either already have or are about to break a record for this area. It’s not pretty.) So rather than be stranded in Fort Smith, I threw all my stuff in Tom Collins (my car), and booked it across the bridge.

When I got home (safe and sound) I was apparently still in “get shit done” mode. (It’s hard to turn it off once it’s on.) First I changed a florescent lightbulb in the laundry room (Dad’s been asking me to for weeks), then I repaired a shelf that fell down in my bathroom WELL OVER a year ago. The wall anchors had come loose and left big holes in the wall. And whereas I’d been thinking I’d have to patch the wall (and that wouldn’t work because I don’t think we have that paint anymore), I came up with another solution during one of my many trips to Lowe’s. (It’s tough to explain, and I didn’t take a picture of it.) Anyway, the shelf is up now. It didn’t hang flat against the wall initially (the top was farther out that the bottom), so I shoved a thin bar of cheap motel soap between the wall and the bottom of the shelf to fix it.

Glad to know that soap’s good for something.

After I hung the shelf, I felt compelled to decorate it. See the above photo. The tin next to the dinosaur–ironically–says Fossil. Anyway, because I used a lot of stuff from the shelf on the opposite wall to decorate the just-fixed shelf, I then felt compelled to decorate that one. Since I’m picky as shit, this took a while. Nonetheless, I settled on displaying a few of my favorite handwritten cards along with a small collection of tins I have. I use them to store jewelry, pins, and USB drives. Fun fact–the duck in the ABOVE photo is a USB drive. It’s from The Peabody Hotel in Memphis.

Don’t see a duck? Time to see your eye doctor.

Since I stole the cards in the above photo from a shelf in my bedroom, I then “had” to redecorate the shelf. (I’m sick, I know.) Thankfully, this was easy, since a fellow writing friend of mine recently sent me a couple post cards (thanks, friend!). I just needed to find a way to stand them up, since they don’t stand up on their own. Finally I thought of it–binder clips, turned upside down. The perfect thing!

Now I’m ready for a break. For real this time. I’ve already showered, and all my projects, except this blog, are completed for the day. If there’s a lesson for today, it’s that once you get going on something, it’s easy to keep going. This applies to cleaning antique hardware, decorating your home, writing, and even paying your bills. It also applies to creativity. That is, while working at Todd and Bonnie’s this week, I had to get into “creative problem solving” mode. How can I clean this brass? How can I fix this lock? Well, ask your mind to do something, and it will. What’s more, it will often go above and beyond simply because it’s in the mood. And we can fix this, and we can fix this. What’s the skeleton key for unlocking your mind’s creativity or getting it into problem solving mode? How do you get your mind in the mood? Curiosity. Wonder. I wonder if there’s a way to–I wonder what would happen if. In other words, you have to gently ask, and then your mind will go to work.

Ask (nicely) and it is given.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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You can’t play small forever.

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A World Where You Belong (Blog #787)

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For the last two days I’ve been cleaning antique hardware for my friends Todd and Bonnie. This is turning out to be a chore. (I’m scrubbing my brass off.) Not because the work is difficult, but because there’s a lot involved, like running back and forth to the hardware store for supplies. Today I discovered that all the door hinges are not, in fact, solid brass. Rather, they’re brass plated. Or were, since my cleaning them really did scrub their brass off. Now they’re just ugly metal hinges. But never fear, we decided to spray paint them (satin brass). Some of them are drying now. Others are still in a crock pot being heated up–so I can remove the old (white) paint on them then put the new paint on.

A project like this is clearly a damn process. Take the hardware off. Put it in a crock pot. Scrub the paint off. Then either shine it or spray paint it. Put the hardware back on. This evening I bought three different types of screws for putting the hardware back, then got back to the house and realized two of them were the wrong size. Screws too short–story of my life. (That’s a sex joke, Mom.) Anyway, tomorrow I’ll go back to the hardware store and try again. That’s the deal when things are a process–you just keep taking one step at a time until everything is done.

Or until you are.

While working today I listened to a lecture by Stephan Hoeller that said projection is a function of perception. That is, first you perceive or understand something, then you project that perception out into the world. For example, I first understood (mentally) that I needed to spray paint the hinges, then I talked to Todd and Bonnie, then I bought the paint, then I sprayed the hinges. Perception preceded projection. Over the last several years I’ve perceived a number of things in therapy–like, that I needed to set a boundary or have a conversation with someone–then proceeded to project those cognitions into my life and relationships, even on to this blog.

In a lot of New Age and even spiritual material, the world is referred to as a mirror. This isn’t to say that if you witness something horrific on the ten o’clock news that you’re horrific, but it is to say that the way you respond (mentally, emotionally, physically) has a lot to do with you and very little to do with any specific horrific thing you may see. When Donald Trump was elected, I wasn’t thrilled but I wasn’t emotional. Conversely, I had friends who cried. As the fact of the matter was the same for everyone (Donald Trump was elected), and yet there were so many varied responses, I can only logically conclude that those varied responses were due to each individual’s PERCEPTION of what had taken place and what they thought that meant or didn’t mean. My point is that we’re never just responding to what’s “out there,” but rather what’s “in here.”

Another way of saying this is that you don’t see the world as IT IS, but rather AS YOU ARE. Again, if you think the world is a terrible place, that doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person. Scared, frightened, or angry, maybe. My therapist says that if you have unresolved trauma and don’t deal with it consciously, you’ll deal with it unconsciously. “You’ll externalize it,” she said. “You’ll get involved in a bad relationship, become paranoid, or develop a neurosis.” Um, guilty–I’ve done all of the above. When I was a teenager and my dad was in prison, I became a HUGE conspiracy theorist. I despised the government. Looking back, I can see that I was simply overwhelmed and terrified, fearful that what happened to my dad would one day happen to me. But since I either didn’t know how or was unable to experience and give voice to my emotions (my perceptions), they got pushed out on to “the bad guys.” In other words, I wasn’t a scary place, the world was.

Now I think the reverse was true. (I was a scary place. The world was –the world.) Not that ugly things don’t happen in the world (and we all know the government killed JFK), but I know that how I respond to those things absolutely belongs to me. I own my emotions. If I see something horrific and get sad or angry, it’s not because that horrific thing put those emotions into me. No, they were already there. Wayne Dyer used to say that when you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out, and–likewise–when you’re squeezed, what’s inside YOU comes out.

What goes down must come up.

Hoeller says that we project our perceptions (my therapist’s word for projection is externalize) in order that we can interact with them. That is, for decades I believed and felt that the world was an unsafe place to live. This, I’m sure, had to do with our house burning down when I was a child, and then, later, Dad’s going to prison. Or maybe it was my being in a car accident. Pick a trauma. The point is that my mind, body, and emotions had definite reactions to those events, but I did everything I could to shove those reactions down and shut them off. This is impossible to do, of course, at least for very long. What goes down must come up. Again, this can happen consciously or unconsciously, but either way–you must interact with what’s inside you.

Like cleaning antique hardware, this is a damn process.

Having walked this trying-to-be-conscious road for a while a now, I’m just gonna say it’s not fun and it’s not easy. That being said, I’d highly suggest dealing with what’s inside you consciously rather than projecting or externalizing it, since that’s even worse. After all, when you’re problem is projected (over there), what can you do about it–other than become a social justice warrior? But if your problem is inside you, now we’re talking. And yet, this is why the work is hard. Looking at what’s inside you requires owning every action and reaction you’ve ever had. It means sitting with thoughts like, I was terrified. I am terrified. I’m oh-so-very scared. But once you do, I promise, the world that used to appear unsafe and frightening will change. It has to–because you did. Because your perceptions, and thus your projections, did. This is The Good News, that if you can perceive and project an unsafe world, you can perceive and project a safe one, a world where you belong.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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The deepest waters are the only ones capable of carrying you home.

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On Handyman Things and Attention (Blog #784)

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It’s just before midnight, and I’d like like to keep this short because I’m tired, covered in bug spray, and generally “done.” That being said, I often say I’d like to keep this short and end up going on and on nonetheless. This is, after all, what writers do–write. Recently I told my friend Marla that I frequently fantasize how conversations will go and imagine every possible outcome (and that sometimes this drives me crazy). She said, “Marcus! You’re a writer. We imagine.” I mean, I was thinking of my wild imagination was a bad thing, but it OBVIOUSLY comes in handy for the line of work I’m in. My point being that although my wordiness can keep me at the keyboard longer than I’d like, I’d rather have too much to say than not enough.

That would be dreadful. (For a writer. Maybe not so much for, I don’t know, a President on Twitter.)

The reason I’m worn out is because–believe it or not–I’ve been working, like manual labor, most the day. This afternoon I did handyman things for Mom and Dad. First, I installed grip bars in their bathroom to make their getting on and off the toilet (the terlet) easier. (Everyone’s gotta go.) I’d been saying I’d do this for months. And maybe this sounds like a cop out, but I think I knew it was because once I started, I wouldn’t stop. That is, today when I got in the handyman mood with the grip bars, I stayed in the mood. Next I installed a smoke detector. Then I fixed a spring on their dishwasher. “What else?” I kept saying.

This evening, for several hours, I cleaned antique door hardware for my friends Todd and Bonnie. (Outside, which is why I’m covered in bug spray.) A few days ago I put a pile of paint-covered brass hardware in a crockpot with some dish soap. This is a cool trick I learned online–the heat breaks the chemical bonds of the paint, and it just comes right off. Of course, I still had to scrub the hardware today, since the crockpot process leaves the hardware pretty rusty dirty. Again, the internet saved the day. It said I could scrub the hardware with baking soda and lemon juice, so that’s what I did. Worked like a charm.

I don’t have a before photo, so just imagine those decorative plates completely covered in white paint.

After several hours of cleaning and scrubbing (and refilling the crockpot with more hardware), I called it quits. Granted, I could have gone on. There was more to do, and as I said earlier, once I get in the mood, it’s easy for me to keep going. To keep push, push, pushing. But I’m really trying to do better at this. To not cram a week’s worth of work into one day, to not cram a semester’s worth of knowledge into my head in one month, to not cram two days worth of blogging into one night. You know, to stop, dammit. Anyway, that’s what I did tonight at Todd and Bonnie’s. I called it quits. Then Todd and I ate pizza, drank beer.

Now I’m house sitting at a friend’s house, a different friend/house than earlier this week. THIS friend has a hot tub. So whereas, yes, I have other things on my mind, other things I’d like to talk about, I realize that there will ALWAYS be more to talk about, always more to do. So even if I’m in the mood to do these things, so what? Being in the mood, I think, is simply a matter of being focused on something. That is, whatever you fully give your attention to automatically becomes interesting. So I know that I can turn my attention FROM writing TO hot-tub sitting and the world will keep turning. The writing–and everything else–will be there tomorrow.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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More often than not, the truth is a monster. It gets in your face and makes you get honest. Sometimes the truth separates you from people you care about, if for no other reason than to bring you closer to yourself.

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