Would you hire a zebra?

I know now that zebras are not cool.  I never suspected that they were not, but now I know that they really are not.  (Mind you I may backtrack on this latter statement.)  Still how did I find out?  In the most unexpected way.

My wife and I went away to Baltimore this weekend to get away from the children and the routine of long weeks of work, mainly spent in front of computers.  We checked in this fancy modern tower in the center of town, two steps away from the harbor.  The room had lots of windows, a warm velvety tone and had robes available in the front closet.  The robes looked plush, inviting, made of that sick terri cotton.  One had a black and white zebra pattern, the other a dark red leopard one.  Apart from noticing them, I didn't give another thought.   Soon my wife and I were deeply engrossed in the hustle and bustle of mid-town until late that night.

We were woken up the following morning by a robotic voice popping through the loudspeakers.  My hand fumbled for my watch.  It was 4:10 am, and according to the voice a fire had broken in the hotel.  We were asked to abandon the premise at once.

I grabbed the zebra robe from the closet on my way out, my wife the leopard, and we rushed down the stairs.  Soon we reached the lobby.  We were among the first to get there.  Within minutes however, the lobby filled with people, barely dressed.  While we waited around for clearance, it was suspected that a drunk had pulled the alarm signal, we watched the crowd finishing dressing.

Since I had a front seat, pretty much anyone running out of the building had to pass in front of me.  It was a great eye opening moment.  A field trip for a sociologist.  First I was surprised by how many people slept in pajama.  About a third.  It would never even occurr to me.  I wouldn't say, the lobby was like a pajama party, but someone walking from the outside would certainly have thought so.  Then my second observation was more direct and personal, because apart from me, no one else wore a zebra robe.  I spotted about twenty other leopards in the relatively calm crowd.  I searched for a while, thinking that may be I had missed one.  No.  No zebra in sight.  Curious to think that in a state of danger, everyone without exception but myself had grabbed a leopard robe.

So what to make of this?  Well, it had to be related to my work, or rather my lack of.  I have been unemployed for so long that I began wondering if unconsciously I was actually becoming the single out zebra in the crowd.  Am I really that visible?  Invisible?  Had I really lost all my aggressive leopard energy?  I looked around suspiciously, asking what all these people had in common that I lacked.

Obviously the argument can be turned upside down.  I patted myself for being original to pick up a zebra robe instead of melting in the anonymous mass of leopards?  So far so good.  The conclusion is not as clear as it seems however.  Somehow something kept tugging at me.  Do companies really hire zebras?

Ghost in the Machine

I must first clarify a point, in reference to my being assaulted by my night tormentors (the bills, the laundry list of quick-fixes, the saviors and miracles, etc...)  I made a mistake in my previous post.  It is not exactly what it seems.

First the stories.  Well, they do go around my concrete-mixer mind like wild horses.  No amount of taming suffices.  A horse in a concrete mixer, whether wild or tamed, is still nothing more than a horse galloping inside a concrete mixer.  AKA a story. (If you don't know what I mean, think of a hamster wheel).  Controlling them, via awareness, as you drop down the maelstroms of emptiness at the centre of the black torus, and they stay behind, you are finding yourself in the middle of the ocean, with nothing familiar to cling to. No rafter. Not even a lousy misplaced piece of flotsam.  If you do find drift wood coming your way, you know you're lying to yourself.  But if you don't, then you've entered a different kind of life. . .  But I'm getting carried away here, ahead of myself.  Put it on the count of gravity or even entropy. See I can't even take responsibility for what I am saying. In truth, it's all false modesty. Just to show all my hard work, under the guise of deprecation.

For the clarity's sake, let's backtrack a little. And talk about The Ghost in the Machine.  If I remember well, the whole mess was started by a French man, going on by the name of D.  D took it upon himself to prove the existence of God in the most simplistic way.   He thought, (right there he should have known better) that he could think about the existence of God, then it was a manifestation of God's will, and the proof that he existed.  This tiny little indulgence of language created a massive and unwelcome duality. We still have not recovered from it.  This endless wrestling game gave birth to the Ghost.  The Ghost was this purely foggy worker that was supposed to link body and mind, since they were now disconnected . . .  But the Ghost, like all good ghosts, and trust me, just watch all the shows coming out on TV as well as all the horror films these days, did what it did best.  It escaped.

It actually now lives in the machine.  Blame D for releasing him in the first place.  D's Ghost equates Shelley's Frankestein, with the different that it is so much more refined and sophisticated than Shelley's stitched chunks-of-meat creature.  You can't see D's Ghost.  You can't even know it exists.  But it is here. Now. This very moment.  In the machine.  And at the wheel, driving silently our abundant world blessed in technology.

 Stay tuned for part#2

Cacophonia

What is cacophonia?  A country? A strange phenomenon?  A state of mind?  I guess all of the above.  Regardless when it hits you you know it.  Because it is truly unpleasant.  And when it occurs, it always does it without warning.  There is virtually no place to hide.  It befalls you like an impulsive summer rain and drenches you through and through. The din inside becomes so loud that it takes a remarkable mind to stomp it.  That's not mine.

Really, I am really not good at it. All I can see are my thoughts running around like wild monkeys on steroids. They don't even let me catch my breath. Not only there's no time for it, but also I have no ability to see what the wild monkeys are doing to me.  I can only blame myself.  After being demoted from my hero status, I knew that only choice was to head for the garbage cans of fairy tales.  You may find this to be an extreme reaction but someone like me, in my situation, has nowhere to hide anymore.  No novel where I can flounder through the plot of the story and make my way to my denouement.  No film where I can brave the darkest elements of my deepest obscure nature and the most excruciating obstacles an antagonist could throw at me.  Once you get demoted, you've reached the gates of the black doughnut . . .

Let me tell you about the black doughnut.  This is where I stand, and sorry to inform you but where you stand as well.  It may take you time to get there.  But you will.  We all do.  So listen to me carefully, when you fall into the black doughnut, all you have left for you to wrestle with is cacophonia.
Once the soothing and compelling curtain of stories crashes and burns at your feet, no amount of substitutions will work.  Your book is broken. Big time.  My book is broken.  I wish I could say my record is broken, but then again that would imply that I repeat myself and repeat the same foolish words.
Cacophonia is ruthless.  It will cull you up wherever you have collapsed and will scrape off the mask of persona without blinking.  Try to live without a persona without a transition . . .  This is the end of the road for stories and beliefs.  Beyond is a massive precipice.   Well, actually, it is not quite true. It is more like a rounded hole.  It is still very large.  The center, around which you can catch sight of the entire mammoth doughnut, around which you spend years and years running around, adding laps, like a blind puppy chasing some chimeric tail.  Have you ever perceived the doughnut as you fall, like I did?  Even just a glimpse? Write to me and share your experience with others.


Cacophonia greets me always in the middle of the night.  Trust me I've yelled at it not to come back.  But I'm weakened, my defenses are down.  non-existent.  It always come back for more.  The feeling of its crushing embrace, like pliers around your head, squeezing slowly and slowly . . .  As soon as I intuit its contact on my skin, I wakes up. My heart reliving the great fall beats like chugging locomotive.  Loud and uneven. The throbbing thuds in my ears.  My mind kicks in even before I cracked my eyes open.  Lists, rescue lists parade on the screen of my eyes.  I talk to myself: "How did I get here? Is it really possible that this is my life?  I have no job.  I have no contacts.  At my age no one is going to hire me back.  I drown under a mountain of debts.  I have no friends either."  Friends . . .  Let's talk about them.  They all deserted me as my situation worsened.  I clung to them, told them about the doughnut, the midnight horror.  They raised their eyebrows, with a cheshire cat grin for apologies, before heading for the door.  And the bills, the bills . . . Oh God the bills, How am I going to pay them this month?  Like a junky, what sort of tricks I'm going to have to resort to not to rock the boat.  What boat I'm talking about you're going to ask me? The boat that swirls around the doughnut.  It floats around in a toilet just waiting for the final flush to be sucked up by gravity down into the center hole.

Next post I will share my vision of blackness down in the centre of the doughnut. The Ghost in the Machine is not who you think it is.

Deconstructing The Myth

Let me share a story about a friend of mine. This friend of mine not so long ago commented on the eve of celebrating 30 years with the same firm how much he felt like a failure. "Look at me, everyone wants to congratulate me, celebrate my achievements, but I feel like hiding in shame.  I am an impostor to myself.  I settled for a second-rate life.  Sold my soul for security, with my second-rate career, my second-rate wife and my second-rate house."  He fell silent and then took a long swig at his tequila.  I looked at him and smiled while I considered his situation.

Indeed, what was he supposed to do with such an excruciating awareness?  Well, contrary to what you may think, I hurried to congratulate him. At first he looked at me askance, displeased with the lightness with which I was responding to his despair.  I explained to him that by looking back at his life with crippling sorrow, he was closing the doors on many other opportunities.  But he had crafted such a cast-in-iron story that he was playing his part to support it only too well.  My aim was not to prove him wrong but to support him, gain his trust, and then usher him towards some other possible scenarios. So entrenched in his despair he was that I took the lead to show that maybe he had reached the end of a life cycle and, if that was the case, he could look forward to anticipating some kind of new beginnings.  He didn't shrug his shoulders or walk away, but he made some comments.  Exhausted himself in explaining why all was too late, impossible, and how the future looked really bleak from his windows.  Then he fell silent, mulling.

It takes an extraordinary level of awareness and character strength not to be affected by long-lasting negative circumstances.  So feeling victimized, alone in the world, unable to take action, depleted of hope, bankrupted emotionally, paralyzed by predicaments and forces beyond our control, is only natural.  The worst thing you can do is go after yourself for having the feelings you are experiencing.  So if you catch yourself suffering, procrastinating to act, and resisting changes out of fear, you know where you have landed.  Being unemployed for a long time, for example, working in the same dead-end position year after year, or chasing the same illusive dreams, favor such mental downfalls and take a serious toll on the health, especially when a lack a social and emotional support is chronic.

It took my friend a while to break through the thickness of resistance, fear and certainties he had grown used to.  Despite his second-rate outlook, he was way more courageous than he ever knew.  His spirit was still alive within him.  He just needed to reclaim it.  Today he turned his life around. Shortly after our meeting, he enrolled into a university and completed a MA in Environmental Studies.  Last time we met, he sounded and moved like a different man . . .

All this is not quite true.  Because the friend in question is me.  And this was just a sample of story I am so eager to play to myself on the giant Imax screen in my mind.  I am so broken, so unable to differentiate between reality and fiction; so emotionally, physically, socially, and spiritually battered, that I feel like the classic Hollywood hero who mistook his own tail and chased it around thinking he was living a fairy tale.  I stopped believing completely.  I am just here and now. And nothing else.  


Now, how many of you out there fell for this lovely uplifting story of mine, sucked all the juice out of it? Well, if you're one of them, let explain to you the meaning of cacophonia. I know it's not a word. Precisely.

My 2010 plan. Purpose and Meaning

Dear Readers,

You obviously have been aware that I have failed to post new content to this blog since its inception, late last Oct 09. There is a simple reason for this. I am in the middle of redefining the purpose and meaning of this blog. At first, I intended it to be a simple forum for sharing my thoughts. This goal has not changed. What has changed is the "simple" factor.

I have been planning behind the scene as to what precisely I would like to say, without being just another voice, screaming from the depth of the e-ocean, to be heard. Maybe this is where my specialty, the creative coaching thing, comes handy.

I work with artists. All types of artists: actors, musicians, performers, and writers. The bulk of my clients consists mainly of the latter: novelists, authors, and screenwriters. My main task consists in helping them to shape their projects in a way that resonate with them. To find their voice. What does this mean? Well, Purpose and meaning. So I ask questions such as: Why do you want to write this stuff? Do you honestly want to spend 2, 3 or more years with this idea? I always underline these questions because a great idea does not necessarily makes a great project. Why? Simply because, often there is no resonance. The creator is acting from a place of mind, the idea, and not of body, the theme, which is always about the experience of life. And the feeling that comes with it. No human connection makes for arid projects.

So how on earth does this relate to my planning? Well, it sums up. I could just write for the sake of writing. I am no this indulgent. So I took a deep breath, some latitude, to reflect on the purpose and meaning of this blog. Which boils down to how you, dear readers, would enjoy reading it. A quick return to the basics and within weeks I had devised an outline, a series of postings, which I will attempt to abide to at the rate of one per week.

So stay tune for my posting on the topic of creative coaching, relationships with others and self, the greatness of narrative, the rigidity of the left-brain thinking, and many more. And how they relate to you, your life, your authentic voice, and how they will expand you.

Looking forward

Frederic