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Category: Random Musings

Trust vs. Vulnerability

[Photo source: http://managingcollections.blogspot.com/2008/07/fragile-objects.html]
[Photo source: http://managingcollections.blogspot.com/2008/07/fragile-objects.html]

My default mode is to trust people. I tend to think the best of people and to believe they are who they claim to be. I like living my life this way and want to keep doing it.

In the past few years, though, I feel like I’ve been overly trusting. Not protecting myself enough. Part of this is my habit of being too revealing of my thoughts and emotions. I talk to people about my hopes, my dreams, my plans, my misgivings, my desires. Sometimes these same folks then talk to other people, and I find my confidences coming back to me in the form of recriminations or gossip.

As a result, I’ve been slowly shrinking the circle of people in whom I confide. It’s a small enough group now that we could all fit comfortably in a car together. These people have become precious to me as a result. I need – absolutely need – people in my life with whom I can talk about the things that matter most. People who get my story, who know how I work, who understand the way I talk and act and feel. Without them, I descend into an inner monologue that’s unhealthy and limiting.

I was unpleasantly surprised recently to learn just how few people I really do trust. Even some to whom I’ve told my deepest, most intimate stories have then passed them on to others. Is anything more disappointing than learning that those you love and depend on don’t place the same value on the situation?

I wonder if there are people who I’ve disappointed in this same way. I hope not, but I expect so. I love to gossip. It’s the thing I work hardest on changing about myself. Every version of the Buddhist precepts, which are guidelines for living an awakened life, mentions wrong or false speech. The Buddha understood that loose lips sink ships, so to speak. Gossip weakens communities, strains friendships, and makes it more difficult for all of us to engage with one another without fear and suspicion. I’m trying hard to eliminate unskillful speech. It ain’t easy.

This is tough territory to navigate. How do I keep an open heart but also take care of myself? How do I build community without leaving myself too vulnerable? Is “too vulnerable” even a danger?

Thanks for reading. I welcome your comments on this topic. Oh, and here’s “Trust” by Prince from the one true Batman film:

BATMAN 1989 VS PRINCE TRUST from Denis Gilbert on Vimeo.

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Advice for new college students

11147062_462854910541237_9158612717607468137_nLast summer I wrote a letter to someone I knew who was about to go to college. It was full of things I wish someone had said to me when I was 18. Or ever, really. I thought others might benefit from a depersonalized version of this letter, so here it is.

/ / /

1. YOU DON’T NEED TO FINISH COLLEGE RIGHT NOW IF IT’S NOT THE RIGHT THING FOR YOU. Sure, it seems exciting and great. But if it turns out not to be exciting and great in a year or two, and you realize there’s something else you need to do for a while, this is the time to do it. No responsibilities, few debts, no kids, no spouse – in short, you’re as unfettered as you’ll ever be. You’ve been in school since you were at least 6, probably even younger. It’s OK to do something else. It’s hasn’t been that many years since people were traveling the world with a backpack or shipping off to sea at your age. Don’t let anything pass you by just because it isn’t what you expected.

2. TRY EVERYTHING. I don’t mean every drug. Unless you want to, of course. I mean every opportunity. There are so many things I didn’t figure out to try until just a few years ago, and I should have been doing them for years. Or I should have at least crossed them off the list. Live outside your comfort zone. Treat the whole world as one big hike and keep going, snakes and all.

3. IF YOU WANT TO, DATE TONS OF PEOPLE AND HAVE LOTS OF SEX. Nobody else will say this, so I’m going to. Be safe, of course, and keep your wits about you. Not everyone wants to sleep with lots of people, but if you do, DO IT. This is a great time to find out what you’re made of, what you like, who you’re looking for, etc. Don’t wait till you’re in a long-term relationship to realize that you have no idea what kind of person you want to be with. Trust me on this one. It’s big.

4. EAT WELL AND SLEEP. You’re probably going to push yourself, and that’s great. Don’t settle. Keep moving forward. But be sure you eat well and get enough sleep. If you don’t, you’ll eventually know it when you crash.

5. MAKE TIME FOR QUIET. Get out in nature if you can. But even if you have to find space on campus, find five or 10 minutes a day when you can just close your eyes, follow your breathing, and stop taking in or processing data. If you can find 20 minutes to do this, even better. And try not to do it in your dorm room. Find a quiet space with trees and birds or a nice bench or someplace that isn’t where you always are. You might need to find a new space in the winter. Or just bundle up.

6. KEEP IN TOUCH WITH A COUPLE GOOD FRIENDS. This is invaluable. You’ll need people to talk to about what’s happening in your life. You’ll make friends at school, but it’s great to have some people in your corner who aren’t on the same campus and therefore aren’t in the same social circles.

7. TRAVEL. Yes, take big trips to faraway places. But also just get on your bike or in a car or on a Greyhound and see some other places. Even if it’s the next town over or some little hamlet on the lake. Get out of your normal surroundings and see how some other folks are living.

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Why I love (and why I think you’ll love) Wittertainment

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I really love movies. I don’t think I have exceptionally exacting tastes — I tend to enjoy being entertained and I usually don’t think a lot about what I’m watching, though like anyone there are films and genres I like or don’t like. I also really love smart people. And the combination of loving smart people and loving movies is why I absolutely adore Kermode & Mayo’s Film Review, the best English-language film review show on the planet Earth and probably on other planets. Mark Kermode is a film reviewer with both a brain and a heart, and he’s willing to put both into constant use to help us navigate the hundreds of films released each year. Simon Mayo is both delightful and necessary as the Everyman host who keeps us grounded and also sneakily inserts even more heart into the show. If you listen for a few weeks, you’ll start to become familiar with the in-jokes and nuances that make the show such a delight to listen to, and make people so fervent in their support. I’ve been saying this for years, and I’m still saying it: All I want in life is a friend who also listens to this show so we can talk about it and say “Hello to Jason Isaacs” together. So listen, OK? You’ll be so glad you did.

LISTEN TO KERMODE & MAYO’S FILM REVIEW

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Why I Talk About And Write About Sex

I often post things on social media that people find too explicit or too sexual. Poems, articles, what have you. I talk about these things for a very specific reason: I wish someone had talked about them when I was young, or in my 20s, or in my early 30s.

When I grew up, nobody talked about sex. At least nobody I knew. Not family, not friends, not teachers, not religious leaders. Sure, as teens there were sometimes short conversations about things we didn’t really understand, and most of us were experimenting in our early teens. But other than “don’t have sex or you’ll get an STD or AIDS and die, or you’ll have a baby” there was almost no useful discussion at any level about sex.

Let's_talk_about_sex!Because of that, I never had any idea what it was I wanted from my sex life. To me sex was mystical and often scary. That sounds ridiculous to me now, but it sure didn’t for most of my childhood and adulthood. And it harmed me greatly, and led to relationships I should never have entered.

Now I live in a college town where there’s a new sexual assault every week. I don’t think our national reluctance to talk about sex is the only cause, of course, but I sure do think things would be better if we took sex out of the realm of a conquest, or a prize to be won, and moved it to the level of a normal part of human interaction. We should teach young men about their bodies and about women and about how to express sexuality, and about non-heteronormative ideas of sexuality, too. (We should also teach them not to rape women.) We should teach young women the same thing, and also not teach them that if they dress or act a certain way they have it coming.

Sex can be fun and funny and romantic and beautiful. It doesn’t have to be all those things all the time. Most importantly, it should be consensual and informed. People should decide to have sex — or not — based on actually knowing what the hell they’re talking about, and what their options are. Maybe then we could start to dismantle our rape culture and our Puritan notions of sexuality and move to a place of mutual respect and pleasure.

Anyway, I’m going to keep talking about sex. And as always, nobody has to read any of it if they don’t want to.

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Charting A Course For The Next Part Of My Life

Not too long ago I had an enormous personal disappointment that turned into a major epiphany. Before I tell you about the epiphany, I want to fill in a little bit of background.

I’ve written many times in recent years about my struggle to figure out what to do with my life. I’ve had dozens of jobs since leaving college after one year in 1993, and none has ever satisfied me. I’ve even done quite a few of my “dream jobs,” including working as a musician, a radio announcer, and a comedian. For a long time I was hard on myself about my indecisiveness, although more recently Josh Korda, my Buddhist mentor, has helped me stop pathologizing my life choices.

When I was a kid, my Aunt Linda introduced me to Father Edgar Holden, a Franciscan friar she worked with in a Catholic school. He used to call me “Jaybird.” And no, none of you are allowed to call me that. Anyway, there was something magical about Father Ed. I was a Catholic, and had of course seen many priests, even at that young age, so I don’t think it was just his superhero suit. He had an aura, for lack of a better word. He wasn’t pompous or anything like that. In fact he spent most of his time cracking jokes. But I could just tell that behind the humor was something else. I didn’t know what, but I liked it and wanted to be part of it. So I decided to be a priest. (And also, sometime soon after, a paleontologist.)

When I was a tween, my family and I jumped ship from the Catholic church and became Methodists. Not for theological reasons, but because we liked the pastors on that side of Main Street in our town better than the priests on the other side. When we switched, I met Rev. David Durham and Rev. John Holt, the pastor and associate pastor of the church. Both were inspiring men, in very different ways. David was the model of the learned theologian. He spoke several languages and read even more, and talked with a calm voice no matter what was happening. John was a nut. This is the image I always remember: John riding his bicycle down the center aisle of the church, a rubber chicken poking out over the basket. I looked at these two men and thought yup, I still want to be a minister. At one point during high school, I went with John to Colgate Rochester Divinity School to check out a seminary class.

At the age of 15, I realized I didn’t believe in god, largely because it was around this time that I made my first atheist friend and learned that was an option. And just like that, the idea of being a religious leader seemed dead. I’d never heard of Unitarians at this point.

During my second time in Japan, from 1996-98, I started to explore Buddhism. To cut a long story short, I’m now a Buddhist in addition to being an atheist. Buddhism opened up a new possible path, that of being an interfaith chaplain at a hospital or college or prison. I applied twice to Naropa University in Boulder, but couldn’t afford to go either time.

My life has had many twists and turns in the past, well, 41 years, but even more so in the past five. I got divorced, moved around a lot, became homeless at one point, and ended up living in the one town in the United States I said I’d never live in, having visited it many times while married to a former resident. (Side note: It’s going pretty well, actually.)

So here we are, in 2015. And back to my disappointment. Without going into the nature of it, I’ll just say that I chased something and didn’t catch it. The process of not catching it turned into a one-night reevaluation of the path I’m on. And the next morning, I realized what I need to do.

My friend and fellow union organizer Rev. Mike Roberts told me about 10 years ago that I was more prone to the religious impulse than anyone he’d ever met. John Holt, the guy with the chicken, told me a few years after that that I needed to “get paid to love people.” And ever since I was a little kid, I’ve known that a life in an intentional community is what I want. And thus, the epiphany:

I’m going to figure out how to be either a Buddhist chaplain or a Unitarian minister.

I have a few things to do first. I have some college loans in default, and I need to get them out of default so I can get more loans and finish my bachelor’s degree. (I was only in college as a full-time student for one year, but many years later I went back and nearly finished a degree at SUNY Empire State.) Then I need to enter either a Buddhist chaplaincy program or a Unitarian divinity school. I’m extremely poor, so I also need to figure out a way to add to my current income, both right now to survive, and during the years it will take me to finish school. I have two young kids in State College, so I hope to be able to stay here while doing all this.

Later this year I’m going to turn 42. (The answer!) All my life I’ve been saying “I’m only 25 … I’m only 30 … I’m only 35 …” Well, I’m not getting any younger, and I’ve felt called to do this work my entire life. If not now, when? Probably never. So: now!

I’m telling you all this for two reasons: first, because I tend to write about my life very publicly all the time; and second, because I’ll need my community’s help to stay on target and to accomplish these goals. I’m defining “community” very broadly.

It’s time. Time to do the thing I’ve known I wanted to do since I first looked up and saw Father Ed’s clerical collar. I want to help lead an intentional community of people who care about one another, who work for social justice, and who are guided by a strong ethical system. I’m a little daunted by the sheer amount of work in front of me, but I’m even more excited by what waits on the other side.

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My #XtremeShakespeare Suggestions

1J_Kr_3Q_400x400Each night, the Nerdist show @midnight suggests a hashtag for people to base jokes on. Last night, for Shakespeare’s birthday, the theme was #XtremeShakespeare. Here were my contributions. You can follow me on Twitter at @jasondcrane.

  • Don King Lear
  • As Yule Brynner Liked It
  • Cory-Haim-Olanus
  • Henry V, That 80s Show Where The Alien People Were Actually Lizards And That One Lady Swallowed A Mouse Whole
  • Twelfth Night Without Internet Access
  • Real Housewives Of Windsor
  • Jonathan Winter’s Tale
  • Dramedy Of Errors
  • Orange Julius Caesar Salad
  • Midsummer Night’s Dream About That Meatloaf Song “Bat Out Of Hell” On Infinite Repeat All’s Well That Ends Down A Thirty-Foot Well – Are You All Right?
  • Much Ado About A Crapton Of Stuff
  • Hamlet
  • Stephen King Lear
  • Mercury Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto Venus And Adonis Timon Of Athens, GA, R.E.M.’s First Drummer, Had A Bad Coke Habit
  • Maybe She’s Born With It, Maybe It’s Cymbeline
  • Measure For Measure For Measure For Measure For Measure For Measure For Measure For Measure For Measure
  • Christopher Titus Andronicus
  • Love’s Labour’s Left Luggage Lately Lost, Larry
  • The Barbell Merchant Of Venice Beach
  • Henry IV, Part 1,752,937,886
  • Othelloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
  • Little Richard III
  • MacBeth I Hear You Callin’ But I Can’t Come Home Right Now
  • Romeo & Juliet & Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
  • Two Billion Gentlemen Of Verona
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Pausing to consider the good bits

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I find that I often get pretty down on where I’m at in my life. So I’m taking a moment to reflect on what’s going well:

  • I’ve got two beautiful kids who love me.
  • I have friends and family who love and care about me.
  • I’ve got a roof over my head and food on the table.
  • I’ve got a job I like.
  • I’m producing three podcasts — one, two, three — and hosting a radio show.
  • I’m doing stand-up comedy, a lifelong dream.
  • I’m about to start playing music again. At least once. 🙂
  • I’ll have a second book out before too much longer.
  • My freelance business is going OK.
  • I met a cool new person today and reconnected with another one.
  • I’m doing what I need to do to keep my depression at bay, or at least controlled.
  • I’m on my 954th consecutive day of meditation.
  • I’m alive and I haven’t given up.

All things considered, not too bad.

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Ain’t got no home: Thoughts on having no roots

The Hagyard Building in Lenox, MA, where I lived with my mom and grandparents at various times as a child.
The Hagyard Building in Lenox, MA, where I lived with my mom and grandparents at various times as a child.

I don’t have a hometown.

For years and years, if anybody asked where I was from, I’d say Lenox, Massachusetts. That’s the town I lived in when I was born, though I was actually born next door in Pittsfield, site of the nearest hospital. We moved a lot when I was a kid. My biological father changed jobs, then he and my mom got divorced, so she and I moved a couple more times. Then she remarried and my dad worked for the FAA, so we moved again. Here are the dozen moves we made between my birth and fifth grade:

  • Lenox, MA
  • Amesbury, MA
  • Lenox, MA
  • Pittsfield, MA (Plunkett St.)
  • Lenox, MA
  • Pittsfield, MA (Edward Ave.)
  • Lanesboro, MA
  • Syracuse, NY
  • Oklahoma City, OK
  • Watertown, NY
  • Greece, NY
  • Canandaigua, NY (technically our house was in Bristol)

“Where are you from?” didn’t really become a question I thought about until I started going to school in Canandaigua. But once it did, it was very important for me to be from Massachusetts. There was one another kid from Massachusetts in my grade (Jarrod Graham, from Springfield), and we both reveled in being out-of-towners. I think for me it was like being part of a club. I’ve always liked being part of something, and in this case the something was “people from Massachusetts.” Or maybe “people from elsewhere.” By this point, I was quite used to being the new kid, having switched schools four times during kindergarten (in three states), then again in second grade and fifth grade. And it felt cooler to be from a whole different state than just from the next town over.

I stayed in Canandaigua until I graduated from high school, never wavering from the firm belief that I was from Lenox. I’d moved from Lenox by the time I was five, maybe even four, and of course by the time I graduated I’d lived in upstate New York longer than Massachusetts. That didn’t matter to me, though. Lenox was my hometown.

A panel from Lynda Barry's book One Hundred Demons.
A panel from Lynda Barry’s book One Hundred Demons.

Certainly another factor in my passion for Lenox, as I later uncovered in therapy, was its connection to a perceived “golden period” in my life. My grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles were all in or near Lenox, and in my child’s memory it felt like a magical time of family and security. My grandpa, Bernie Flanders, was from Pittsfield and my mom was from Lenox, and I really wanted to be the next in line. I wanted their long, shared history in this place to be my history, too. It wasn’t, of course, but I desperately wanted it to be.

Whenever I would go to Lenox, I’d feel “at home” in a way I never felt in Canandaigua. I hated school, and I never really liked the town, even though I made some good friends there. But our infrequent trips to Lenox were trips home for me.

When I graduated from high school, I moved to Japan for a year as an exchange student, and never stopped moving:

  • Furukawa, Japan (September 91 – June 92)
  • Potsdam NY (September 92 – May 93)
  • Rochester, NY (September 93 – October 94)
  • Tucson, AZ (October 94 – June 96)
  • State College PA (June 96 – October 96)
  • Yokohama, Japan (October 96 – December 98)
  • Hilton Head Island, SC (January 99 – January 2000)
  • Brooklyn, NY (January 2000 – June 2000)
  • Concord, NH (June 2000 – Fall 2000)
  • Rochester, NY (Fall 2000 – Fall 2007 or maybe 08)
  • Albany, NY (Fall 2007 or 8 to March 2011)
  • Manhattan (March 2011 – summer 2011)
  • Brooklyn, NY (summer 2011 – June 2012)
  • on the road (June 2012 – October 2012)
  • Auburn, AL (October 2012 – August 2013)
  • on the road (August 2013 – October 2013)
  • State College, PA (October 2013 – present)

That’s another 17 places, not counting moves within some of those cities. I got married in Tucson, and we kept moving. I got unmarried in Albany, then ended up homeless and on the road (my cleverly named “Jazz Or Bust Tour”) in 2012. Somewhere around that time, when people would ask me where I was from, I would say New York. Unless you’re from the state of New York outside NYC, “New York” means “New York City,” and that was certainly the impression I wanted to convey. I lived in New York less than two years in total, but I still to this day often say I “moved here from Brooklyn,” which isn’t even true. I moved to State College from Alabama. But Alabama is such an anomaly in my history that it just doesn’t make sense to mention it and then have to explain it.

In the last year or two, I’ve noticed a new trend. I’ve lived in or traveled to so many places that I have something in common with most people I meet. I’ll often tailor my response to “Where are you from?” to the person with whom I’m speaking. Just the other day I met a wonderful person from Tucson, and Tucson was very important to me and still informs who I am. It was in Tucson that I got married, and started my careers as both a musician and a radio host. The ripples from those events are still with me now. So I happily become someone from Tucson, without ever saying I was from there.

The problem with all this is that I’m a man without a country. Or at least without a hometown. I still love Lenox, and my parents recently moved back to Canandaigua so I go there sometimes. But nowhere feels like “home.” New York City did for a while. I felt like I fit there. Like I knew how I worked. But I don’t really have a Place That Is Mine. State College sure as heck ain’t it, although my kids are here and that means a lot.

It bothers me. I want to have a home. A place to go back to. A place I’m really, really from. I don’t have that and it sometimes make me feel like I’m floating around with very little grounding.

Unless something changes drastically, I’m going to live in State College for the next nine years, until my younger son graduates from high school. I’ll be 50 then (!), and the chance to have a hometown will have long passed. But maybe not the chance to go somewhere and finally make a real home for myself. We’ll see.

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I used to want world peace, but now…

…I just want YouTube hosts to learn to pronounce “genre” and to remove “to where” from their speech patterns, as in, “They keep saying it to where it drives me nuts.”

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Why so serious?

purple

My coworkers Grace and Kelsey were talking about being able to recognize which customers had used which cups based on lipstick color. I said I was going to start wearing red lipstick to throw them off. Kelsey suggested I’d be better in purple … and said she had some with her. Thus, the photo above. I think I look fetching.

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I don’t snore!

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I don’t know where this came from originally, but I got it from my friend Thompson.

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This is what interviewers have nightmares about

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I sleep very deeply and rarely experience my dreams, but I had a dream just before I awoke today that I went to a music festival in England to do interviews for my show. I met the guest in a pub, along with another journalist. I didn’t have an adapter for my recorder because I’d forgotten about the electricity difference. I’d also forgotten to do any research and I wasn’t even sure of the name of the guest. His manager was with him and was disappointed to learn that the show wasn’t going to be streaming live on Facebook, which I don’t think is even a real thing. And there was a British journalist there and she said she’d also be asking questions during the interview. Right before that scene was a scene in a hotel where my roommates were two douchebros. Oh, and I spent the entire scene in the pub endlessly unwrapping mic and power cables.

I awoke unsettled and embarrassed.

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