The Apotheosis of Christopher

Alterations Angst

2008-07-26T07:23:46Z

Later this morning, a man will try to get alterations free on some suits I sold him earlier this month.

I may just tell him "no" and let him return the stuff. This will be maybe $100 out of my pocket. It was a big sale.

I may, instead, point out that

-The $750 he spent on the actual suits (accessories being a different matter) represented well over 450 hours of labor in a garment factory alone... to say nothing of the shipping and retail work investment.

-The $125 in alterations he is trying to welch out of represents over 6 1/2 hours of work for our on-site master tailor and is subsidized by our company. How much do you think a skilled craftsman like a tailor gets paid? They aren't flipping burgers back there.

-The $10 "gift" (an upgraded garment bag) that he demanded go along with the purchase came out of my pocket... albeit reduced by my employee discount. Men's Wearhouse doesn't do freebies. I, the salesman, did.

-I will be there even though I'm supposed to have the day off. I'm there because he and other customers asked me to be there. On *my* time.

I don't mean to play the sympathy card too hard. Men's Wearhouse makes a healthy profit, and I make a decent (if substandard) living at it. It just bothers me when people imply that my tailors or I are personally somehow cheating them. Oddly, I'm more protective of my pint-sized tailors' honor than I am of my own.

This was supposed to be a short post

2008-07-26T06:02:19Z

Last night I finished a nearly month-long, very private project. Yay. Now I shall have free time.

Now I think I have my next one lined up; I abandonned my plans to build and paint Enochian tablets some months ago when a supplier failed to come through with the li'l wooden pyramids. I think that it is time to seek another source and start again.

Yesterday I went in search of bath products (MANLY!) and ended up buying all of Bath & Body Works' Ylang Ylang scented stuff since it was clearenced to the point of being nearly free and I enjoy the scent. I'm not sure how I feel about being the sort of guy who has a frangrance theme.

I failed to contact my school today to get the promised schedule. I found myself overwhelmed at work and forgot all about it... just as I've often forgotten other semi-essential things (Will and Resh, calling family on their birthday) a lot lately when my schedule has become impacted. I think I need to set my iPhone to remind me. It is sad that such external reminders are needed- It seems to me to be a personal failure to need such a crutch.

I wasn't supposed to work tommorow. Then I was only supposed to be in for the meeting (8:30-9:30 AM). Then I told a great customer that I'd be there to help him if he showed up when we opened... then another, then another, then another in sequence (10:30, 11:30, 12:30). I can now reasonably expect to be out of there by 1:30 or 2 PM. It is great to be appreciated at work, but I have to ask... where the hell were all of these customers wanting to make appointments every other Saturday that I have worked? Where were they when I was standing around being forced to make small-talk with my coworkers all of those pointless mornings making below minimum wage?

I guess I should just be happy to have a job in this economy, and to have a series of people making appointments to buy wool jackets from me in California in the summer. Salez Skillz, yo.

On a related note, neither my introspection nor my therapist have generated an answer for my ongoing concern about my inability to make small talk with normal people. I've been trying. "Hey Bob, how's the lawn? The kids? Nice weather we're having." I can do it, but I feel like anyone with the least bit of interpersonal awareness can tell that I'm uncomfortable and am bullshitting. In most cases they either can't or are polite enough not to mention it...

I really need to quit overthinking certain things.

aeneas_rising @ 2008-07-21T23:51:00

2008-07-22T07:00:05Z

It was quite a day.

If I turned off my internal narrative about life and quit trying to make a coherent story of it, I think it would be lovely right now.

...

I was stalled by my academic advisor again. "I'll have your schedule to you by Friday."

Otherwise the day was spectacular.

Hella Norcal

2008-07-21T04:48:05Z

Dispatch from Sacramento:

I always look like a terrorist when I return from a trip. Somehow a run to Walgreens is never on the agenda to pick up shaving cream, so right now I have a five-day stubble. I'm not sure when "scruffy" turns into "unibomber", but that threshold has been crossed.

Tommorow I get to see a pretty ladyfriend. This leaves the unhappy choice between dry shaving, shaving with floofy chick shaving cream that my sisters use for their legs, or showing up a-la Al Gore circa 2006. I think I shall smell of baby powder and lilacs.

Tommorow I will also get my schedule for USF to complete my degree. I hope. On the upside this involves going in to The City, where I shall negotiate or do battle with one "Francisco, from the University of San Francisco!!!!" Yes. Whenever he says it one can hear all four exclamation points.

Today we travelled to Watsonville to find my non-driving youngest sister a 1980 Roadmaster Harley Davidson moped for her birthday. It putters and aspires to zoom. Now she can finish her beauty school without having to face the terrors of public transportation. Now I can no longer taunt her by singing "Beauty School Drop Out" from Grease. Shame that. I was rather proud of my show-tune.

Someday I will have a vacation that is not a series of missions.

If they could be trained to use the toilet and completely waxed, I think I'd really like the cats here. They are absurdly affectionate and go about their day prosecuting inscrutable missions of their own, skittering about on the hardwood floors dead set on achieving... something.

My old herbal store in Santa Cruz has undergone some sort of modernization. It now includes a super-crunchy granola supermarket (which makes Trader Joes and Whole Foods look like cheap gas station convenience stores) and has switched out its bins of dried herbs for pharmasutical grade alcohol and oil extracts. My reaction to this was... mixed. I bought in bulk, however. My mortar and double boiler will go unused, but I was just going to do the extraction myself anyway...

I hadn't worn sandals in years. Ouch. Ouch ouch.

Updates

2008-07-16T19:27:03Z

Since my last post:

I accidentally set my computers time/date a month forward and posted here. When I set it back, I found myself locked out of posting here lest (horror of horrors) my posts should be out of sequence. Meh. I guess I could have set my clock forward each time I posted....

I won my war at work. While no one really "wins" an office fight, particularly not at my company, I achieved all of my goals while sustaining only minimal damage myself.

Ding dong quoth the munchkins, the witch is dead

My new boss has made work much more tolerable. If I planned to stay it would really rock...

I've resumed my weekly or better trips LA-wards. I'm reconnecting with some people, looking to reconnect with others. At some point there should be a goth-ish night in the offing. Malediction perhaps?

Homemade cookies are delicious.

I'm done wallowing in fail.

The time to take my 2nd degree is coming soon. I haven't scheduled it yet, but I can feel the need building as my מלכות issues are resolved or at least reconciled with. Likewise, a traditional masonic initiation should be in que thereafter... though this time I won't have one fall so hard on the heels of the other. I realise in retrospect that taking two unrelated initiations in sequence is like trying to appreciate a fine wine and a fine rum at the same time. Unmatched doublefisting isn't just gluttony, it is confusing!

I attended the LVX practical magick session last week led by Fr. WIT. It was what I've been waiting for in a lot of ways in terms of coming back to group work. Apparently I will also be childing the Mass late next month opposite a someone I hope to become better friends with. Given that LEO will be the priest, I'm stoked! Once my plate is cleared of things to memorize I may move on to the deacon role, though my calling to that is not what it should be to fully embrace the responsability.

I'm about to go north for a week (Thursday the 17th through Tuesday the 22nd) to see my family, resolve my school issues, knock some sense into one or two people who need it, and maybe get to visit a few friends I too seldom see.

The Equinox thrills and annoys me.

105 degrees is too hot for a suit. This applies doubly when one has no air conditioning in ones car.

You should drink more water.

Veritas

aeneas_rising @ 2008-07-10T01:53:00

2008-06-13T08:56:15Z

Things are going better. Just about everything in my life is coming together into some kind of order:

-The school situation will clear up shortly. No... really! This time it will!

-My little war at work is coming to a head, which means it will soon come to a close.

-I've started working out again.

-Personal work has also been renewed.

-MY COMPUTER ARRIVED! HUZZAH!

Unfortunately, said computer has also been reformatted. As such the $$$ I spent on the tech-guy coming out was sort of wasted. I think I can reconstruct most of what he did... eventually.

I expect to be at Mass tommorow.

Christopher cast in bronze

2008-06-05T08:46:18Z

While I was in PA, we went to a museum that had all of the guys who signed the Constitution standing around at full size in bronze. What else was I going to do? I thought that this set deserved its own post. Fun!

Good News

2008-06-04T07:02:13Z

I'm terribly pleased to be a former Republican congressional campaign manager who turned in his party card to vote in the Democratic primary the following year.

Scratch that. I'm just proud to be an American right now.

War hero on the right. The man I voted for, and will vote for, on the left. Either way we all win.

Veritas.

aeneas_rising @ 2008-05-28T02:14:00

2008-05-01T09:18:33Z

When I am drunk I find mugging in front of a mirror absolutely facinating.

Would you trust this man?

Would you buy a suit from this man? A high end refrigerator? Would you let him enlist you in the Army?

Would you fuck this man?

Would you vote for this man? (Differentiated: On TV or if he met you in person?)

For a politician I am not a pretty man. Perhaps not for a salesman either. Dental work is needed.

Who's your daddy?

:-D

The (sorta) Great Debate

2008-04-17T06:51:15Z

I'm counting that as a win for Hillary.

However, I'm pretty sure that unless she plans to completely welch on her newly made campaign promise of creating and defending a "security umbrella" in the middle east, she is now running on a platform of Armaggedon.

I'm sorry, but she basically just said "A vote for me is a vote for backing middle east peace on the backs of our soldiers." This is a world-ending scenario.

"Massive retaliation." A NATO against Iran? Lovely. I reiterate now that I will not rejoin the Army if she is elected. She just promised more knee-jerk war than Bush.

Speaking of President Bush, while I myself am hardly sputteringly enraged by him like many people I know, I do feel that the chance for the perfect partisan jab was missed by both candidates.

"You have stated your intention to 'use past Presidents' in your administration. How would you use George W. Bush?" (Paraphrased)

Missed. Opportunity.

How could both of them drop THAT ball? They both just... let it go. Pollingreport.com indicates that the approval rating for President Bush is around 33%... so I'm guessing that a Democrat taking a cheap shot wouldn't have cost them many swing votes!

View Poll: Beating Around the Bush

aeneas_rising @ 2008-04-15T02:54:00

2008-04-15T10:02:23Z

It is odd- Somehow the line between "LJ People" and "Real Life Friends" blurred, dissolved, then somehow was recreated in photo-negative over the last few years. I can't really come here to write relatively anonymously about things that happened in my life.

Maybe that isn't a bad thing in and of itself...

It is comfortable to keep people and ideas compartmentalized. That comfort, however, is unhealthy when taken to an extreme.

I must work on this. It is not a ball of ethical/interpersonal string that is easily distangled.

...

I want to go play in the woods @ Point Magu later this month with friends. That, at least, is simple.

werk

2008-04-11T06:16:56Z

My boss seems to be intentionally scheduling everyone for times they cannot/should not work.

The other sales guy can't work Friday nights (he's young and wants to party) while working Friday mornings for me seriously messes with my 2 job sleep schedule. We can't switch shifts. We are scheduled that way for the next month. No reason... that's just how the boss scheduled it. No flexability.

I asked for morning shifts this tuesday and thursday so I could do Book of the Law reception stuff. Sure enough I got 2 night shifts.

In other news....

...

...oh wait, there is no other news. Work rules my life.

memo

2008-04-10T01:35:47Z

ATTN: Me yesterday
FROM: Me today
RE: Dumbass

2 PM meeting south San Diego with a notoriously innefficient and behind schedule federal agency?

Planned detour to Garden Grove?

8 PM rite in Panorama City?

On a weekday?

Not without a helicopter.

-----------------------

Traffic + Poor Planning = teh suck

Preflection

2008-02-26T10:02:27Z

"All right. Fine. You really want to know what I want? You really want to know the truth? I want my people to reclaim their rightful place in the galaxy. I want to see the Centauri stretch forth their hand again and command the stars. I want a rebirth of glory, a renaissance of power. I want to stop running through my life like a man late for an appointment, afraid to look back or to look forward. I want us to be what we used to be! I want...I want it all back, the way that it was. Does that answer your question?"

I often fear that I am more Morden than Vir, whom I would prefer to be.

I think, however, that I am ultimately Londo. That is satisfactory.

How is it that healing injuries that you do not believe you have is somehow the same as being a man you don't think that you are?

The next few years will be less interesting. The following decade moreso. I'm almost ready to start again.

What do YOU want?

aeneas_rising @ 2007-11-29T02:19:00

2007-11-29T10:36:41Z

There aren't a lot of things I honestly feel a deep, gut fear of anymore.

I've had a series of nightmares about an impending (if I might coin the term) Fimbulsumar. I keep waking up parched with thirst, thinking that my car (and the house air conditioner) are out of fuel. For good. That when I go to the bathroom sink and try to turn it on nothing will come out.

Fimbulvetr seems to me to be something coming much, much later... not really worth focusing on. Perhaps it is simply the Heat death of the universe - an idea which itself eats at me a little each time I think about it.

This is actually as close to an uplifting thought as I've had about it. After all, the fimbulwinter comes before Ragnarök, and part and parcel to the idea of Ragnarök is that of the world's subsequent rebirth

Oh yeah, and I want a Weighted Companion Cube Plushie for Christmas. For those who don't know and don't plan to play, here is why

aeneas_rising @ 2007-08-25T10:26:00

2007-08-25T19:15:37Z

An unexpected side effect of trying to gain control of the vacillations of my being has been to quell much of my LJ use.

ME seems to be a rather shabby concept, so writing about myself seems... Out of focus.

Book IV uses the analogy of ones self-awareness as being a candle in a dark room, with the desired mental state being like the curtains being suddenly opened to the day... Swallowing up ones own light. This makes sense. My greatest concern lately has been that sometimes I lapse into the worst possible version of this- The hated bovine deadness that is NOT useful. The line between atmahardarshana and sleepwalking thoughtlessly through life seems inclined to blur for me at times.

When the daylight passes I sometimes wonder if my candle is still lit

I'm sure that this stillness is better suited to stabilizing my life than my normal "examine everything to the last detail" comfort zone. The violent movements and wheels-within-wheels planning alienates me from people, I think. Being steady and predictable, only reacting rather than acting, just dealing in immediate problems rather than trying to learn and defeat systems will make me less threatening I hope

It just is not me

Feedback Loop

2007-07-17T22:35:44Z

I'm ruining the simple joy that I should be taking from this.

The fact that after 4 years of college and 4 years of military experience my first response to accepting a job that would have been a lateral move when I was 19 (JC Pennys sales to Mens Wearhouse sales) was overwhelming relief and self congratulations is a bit of perspective I wish I didn't have.

Every bit of "happy" is thus immediately negated by a sort of self conciousness or shame. Argh.

Now that I got that out maybe I can get on with my life.

Unscrewing Myself Step #1

2007-07-17T21:46:48Z

Get a full time job with benefits with a non-sketchy company.

Check

I'm overlooking for the moment the fact that I just shook hands on a base pay (not a draw though) of five dollars an hour. I'm also going to blow off the fact that it is retail commission- Two words I never wanted to even think of again.

It's a job. It is immediate. It is clean physically and ethically.

I can't understand why this took so long and so much effort, but at the moment I am happy.

Now on to Step #2

Establish a perimeter

2007-07-17T16:51:03Z

What a nice, clear way to start the day! Things are in much better order than they have been in awhile.

Yesterday I discovered that I do not have
1) Enough money
2) Enough info about my history
3) Friends who have known me long enough
4) A good enough present job

...to even apply to work for the government at this time. I'll try again in 90 days or so when I have a full commercial background check run on myself to get the answers they need. It isn't that I'm trying to be deceptive: I genuinely can't pin such things down and have no records that will help. Even the IRS (by way of W-2's) can only give a year-by-year statement.

Today I am interviewing at Men's Wearhouse. I'm overwhelmingly OK with this on both practical and philisophical grounds... which I will go into later. Right now I must iron a shirt.

damn

2007-07-16T19:21:32Z

It isn't often that something actually goes worse than I was ready for.

I don't really have words right now.

Fall back, rally, establish a perimiter, develop a new operational plan.

Yeah

-------EDIT----------

There is a danger in applying for a job everywhere you feel safe/happy at once; They may all reject you at once. Then all of your "Rally Points" are tainted should you need them.

Los Angeles - Riverside is a long way to fall back in a business suit, with no AC and no radio after being completely routed.

Ah well... Time to plan

Oh wait... there is good stuff!

2007-07-16T08:03:18Z

The subject of my previous post aside, the last couple of days have been really great!

Several jobs on their way to getting locked down, a night of security work, a great miniatures game... and today I spent with four of my favorite ladyfriends! Helping people move can be surprisingly fun.

I also passed a physical abilities test today in hopes of putting on a uniform. Woot!

OK, back to emo-ing

That was somehow dissapointing

2007-07-08T22:42:35Z

I just went to Fry's to pick up some little stuff, and decided to look at computers again. Soon I'll be in a position to get one! The Beast being dead has been very frustrating.

The computer world has gone in an unhappy (from my perspective) if understandable direction since I was last on the market for one.

The Beast, my old computer, was housed in a monsterous tower that came up above knee level. The sound it made even powered down split the difference between an old refrigerator and a lawnmower. It was internally lit with dire blue glowing diodes.

I was looking at the components section. A quad-core processor, RAM chips that have several times the memory of my first computers hard drive, a hard drive I cannot ever imagine scratching the surface of the capacity of, and a new motherboard to hold them all was upwards of $1200

Cool. Painful, but I'll eventually be able to do it. Yar.

So then I went to visit the premade computers section. That same money would actually buy notably more there... building from the ground up no longer seems to be the Fry's way.

So The Beast may be permanently dead. Now comes the bad part though- They were SMALL.

Tiny. Quiet. More calculator than processing monster.

I know this isn't supposed to matter, but damn it I LIKED requiring six fans and a cooling system to keep my baby at a safe temperature.

Oh well.

aeneas_rising @ 2007-07-07T02:02:00

2007-07-07T09:12:34Z

I REALLY like working for this security company. It is rare for me to find myself working without a ton of backup.

By "ton of backup" I mean literally 2000+ pounds of ill tempered guys crammed into some sort of uniform. This pleases me.

Today I was at a new job site. This manager somehow mustered over 3000 pounds of brawn. I was actually the one "extra" guy, but I was able to work anyway.

There was one minor scuffle. Six(!) guys mobbed the scene and cleared it before I could even get there. Yar!

I hope someone flakes out so I can keep working there.

...

2007-07-04T22:07:49Z

http://ironhymen.com/

It is what it is

2007-07-04T19:16:28Z

Perhaps it is silly to suggest movies that were nominanted in recent years for multiple Acadamy Awards, but if you haven't seen "The Constant Gardener" you are really missing something. Not something entirely pleasant- but something significant in many ways. I'll leave it at that.

The movie, combined with some reading of Book IV over the last few days, set me to rethinking some rather disordered lines of thought from the last few weeks.

"Atmadarshana" is my word of the day. I'm trying to wrap my mind around it, but so far as I see it... and for my purposes right now it means (in Crowley's words) "...(accepting) the Universe as a single phenomenon without conditions."

Take, for example, my reactions to "The Constant Gardener"- and in fact the catastrophy of suffering that is going on in Africa as a whole over my last few years of distanced involvement.

I have gone back and forth in a sort of diminishing cycle between:

A) Hating the rest of the world, the US in particular, for letting this happen

B) Despising the entire population of Africa for being so weak and being such apparently willing participants in their own suffering

C) Resenting God (such as my perception of him has been) for the whole mess, or even blaming some half baked anamistic concept of "Africa" as an entity (as distinct from its people)

D) Being disgusted with myself for (at varying times) being unwilling or unable to do anything to help

What are the two constants here? "Negative feelings" notwithstanding (they are a symptom, not a cause) they are "Africa" and "I"

Africa "Is what it is." Atmadarshana. In my current state I cannot change that. The only mutable factor in this cycle of pointless negativity is "I"

"I" must cease to be to cut through the static.

For those not familiar with western mystical traditions, I'm not talking about suicide (far from it!) so much as the annihilation of ego.

As I look back at the worst places I've been in, the best adjusted people always dismissed human reactions to the world around them by saying something along the lines of "It is what it is." In retrospect I think that was what has been little-by-little breaking my mind. That is the lesson. That is (in part) why I seek out such situations.

Perhaps if there is an overarching scheme to human experience, that is a part of why we are here?

That last sentence was horribly misguided, but I entered it for the sake of completeness. It is a flag I am putting up to mark a pitfall I have run across and nearly fallen into. Trying to attach meaning to it all puts one out of the proper mindset. "It is what it is."

Atmadarshana

I'm not done rambling, but this is a convenient place to break for now. Thoughts?