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Dressed In The Dark Episode 45: Two Very Short Films

I didn’t like last episode. I didn’t make the point I wanted to, I rushed the whole thing, and a bunch of other reasons. I like doing this podcast, even though I don’t know what to do with it. It struggles to find its voice, as I struggle to find mine. Here’s Two Very Short Films, I hope you enjoy them.

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Transcript

When I was 11 or 12 years old, I, like most people, enjoyed a slice of toast with butter on it. 

One day I was buttering up some toast. My father came into the kitchen, needed to use the butter, and of course, he found some toast crumbs on it. As often happens. 

He wasn't too happy with this. He proceeded to give me quite the tongue lashing. At the time, it seems pretty intense, but now with some distance, it’s pretty clear there was something else going on. Some toast crumbs shouldn't set somebody off like that, but thats neither here nor there.

As a response, I became hyper vigilant about leaving any kind of mess in the butter dish. And then one day I saw my father buttering toast, and when he put it back in the fridge, it was all crumbed up. At that moment, a few things happened inside of me.

First of all, I lost a lot of respect for my father. Not only him, but authority in general. That's neither here nor there. 

But I did learn something else from the experience. I learned that no matter who you are or what you do or how you think of yourself, you're gonna leave some crumbs in the butter. It's worthwhile to go over your actions every once in a while and see what you're doing that you don't understand is wrong. Or that you don't realize you're even doing.

Am I a better person for this? I don't know, but it's been about 30 or 35 years and I still can't forget it.

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52 New Episodes Coming Soon

It's been awhile, just wanted to let you know new episodes are on the way. Look for them over the next week or two.

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Dressed In The Dark 51: Dressed in The Dark: The Motion Picture: A Meditation On Meditation

Transcript

Back when I was in high school, I had a friend. I have some friends now, too. It's not like that. But this particular friend, one day he had asked me, “How do you learn how to meditate?” I guess I was in 10th or 11th grade, which would put me about three to four years into practicing meditation.

I told him that the way I learned is that you inhale and count to four. And you hold your breath, and you count to four. And you exhale, and you count to four. And you do that anytime during the day you want. You can lay down, you can sit up, you can do whatever. Just do that.

Eventually, your body will figure it out. You won't be meditating that way. You'll stumble upon your own way. And that's how it's supposed to be, as far as I know. So, that's what I told him.

A few weeks later he came back, and he said, “You're full of bullshit. The way you told me to meditate, didn't work at all. And after a few days, I figured out my own way to do it. You don't know what you're talking about. I don't even know why I asked you to teach me how to meditate.” And just like that, my career as a meditation teacher was over.

Sometimes I still get asked that question.

Now I just tell them, get a giant pile of Legos, sort them by color. Pay attention to how you feel and find something that makes you feel that way.

And just like that, you’re pretty much meditating.

Meditation is the practice of stopping your thoughts, but like any practice, there are phases. First, you have to start, you have to jump in the pool and see what's there. You have to observe, you have to understand yourself, and then you can quiet yourself. When you first start to meditate it sounds a lot like what you're about to hear, which is a recreation of not only someone who starts to meditate, but the beginning of every meditation after you're good at it.

You can't change how your mind works.

You can only change how you deal with it. And that's what meditation teaches you. So, I hope you enjoy this recreation of a typical meditation session.

(Three minutes of simulated internal dialogue while attempting to meditate)

Meditation is a practice like art, law, or medicine. It's never perfected. You never good at meditation. You just better. You never good at dealing with the inside of your head. You just get better. And getting better is enough. You don't have to be good at it. If you keep meditating, it'll change a little bit, but you have to stick at it. Next time we'll talk about what happens after you get used to it.

Transcript

I am a hoverboard enthusiast.

I wasn't always. At first, I didn't trust them because they claimed to hover, but they had wheels.

I wanted nothing to do with them until my nephew brought one around. It looked like he was having a lot of fun on it. So I asked him if I could try it. Of course, he let me. I asked him how you ride it. He said, “I don't know, you just kind of ride it.”

So I got on it and I fell off, and I got on it again, and I fell off. That happened for a while.

Eventually, I got on and I wobbled. My knees bent. I bent backward at the waist and I stabilized. My mind quieted like someone had set off in a firecracker or something. I just thought, “Forward,” and I moved forward.

I thought, “Backwards,”and I moved backward.

As I paid attention, I realized that I would pick which way I wanted to move and my feet would shift. Not a lot, just a little in accordance with my thoughts. And then you're riding the hoverboard. You don't even notice there are wheels.

It feels like you're floating, or hovering.

It got me thinking about how maybe the body knows things too. It's not just me in here. Maybe there's something else. Something that already knows how to ride hoverboards. I wonder what else it knows.

I'll make it talk.

Last night, I threw up in the middle of the street. The neighbor was walking his dog by. Another neighbor came out, sat down on her porch, lit a cigarette. As I continued to empty the contents of my stomach onto the concrete, she stood up and went back into her house.

Some of it splashed onto my bare feet. Some of it soaked the bottom of my pants. I went to bed without washing either.

I just want you to keep that in mind when I'm talking about fancy things.

Did I mention it was red and there were about 15 minutes before I figured out it was the three Gatorades I had drank earlier and not most of my blood (repeats as echo).

It's not like I don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about meditation and talking about talking to yourself and all that crazy stuff. But if meditation were enough to fix a life, I would have at the very least thrown up in the toilet inside a house, like a civilized person, not in the middle of the street with an audience.

So, meditation mostly just extends the gap between having a thought or feeling and needing to act on it. It's the difference between making a fist and throwing a punch. It's usually not enough to change your life on its own. It's up to you to decide what to do with what you find in the gap between thought and action. Once you're exposed to it, you can ignore it or you can’t ignore it.

And that moment will impact and become the source of all your future decisions in some way. That's all.

Anyone who tells you more than that is selling something.

And you hold your breath, and you count to four. And you exhale, and you count to four.

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Dressed In The Dark 50: A Special Tale

Summary 

A special story for a special milestone.

Transcription

It's the 50th episode. So, I wanted to tell a special story.

This took place about 13 years or so ago, at least more than 10, but less than 15. Time gets weird after a while.

I was in the car driving from Philadelphia to upstate New York to go to the Renaissance Fair. I had just gotten north of Princeton, I was heading on 206 towards Tuxedo Park. Somewhere along the line, my stomach decided it needed to go to the bathroom. And it wasn't a gentle request, this was something that was going to have to be taken care of.

I decided that I would just hit the Burger King, there was one a few miles down the road. The problem was that the Burger King wasn't a few miles down the road, my brain had erased about eight or nine miles of road in between where I was and where the Burger King was.

So, just to cut to the chase, it was too long. And I ended up shitting my pants in the car. Somewhere in an upper middle class New Jersey neighborhood. It was pretty embarrassing. Even though nobody was around, it didn't stop the embarrassment from happening. I cleaned myself up and I was on my way. There were no other incidents.

Then a few years later, I was in a bar eating some questionable seafood and washing it down with warm lagers. I was walking home from the bar when the same thing happened. First, the terrible clenching of the stomach, the panic, the weird walking, and finally defeat.

When you shit your pants, you just trade one problem for another. No longer worrying about where you're going to go, it's now a question of where you're gonna put it. A sense of relief is quickly overshadowed by a sense of shame.

And that was about, like I said, more than 10 but less than 15 years ago and I like to remind myself of this story when I start to feel hubris setting in. You don't ever stop shitting your pants. You just go longer and longer in between episodes.

It's been a while and I think I'm in the clear, but I'm just getting older. Can't last forever. It's just- it's just a humbling thought. You're always going to shit your pants. No matter how cool you are. Sooner or later. It's going to get you.

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Dressed In The Dark 49: Talking Allowed

Summary 

Why is talking out loud while alone so strange?

Transcription

Lately, I've been talking out loud to myself, uh, not like that, not like walking down the street full-blown conversation muttering. I mean, I'm doing that now, but I'm recording a podcast, so it's okay.

And it's okay to yell at cars, and computers, and televisions, and things like that. But for some reason we get weirded out when we just speak aloud when we're alone. I’ve, I’ve found that when I do this, I'm usually doing something I shouldn't really be doing. I'm just wasting time, distracting myself or something. And, um, I developed a habit of when I'm doing this and I recognize it,I just say out loud what I'm doing.

Like the other day I was getting ready to start my day. Sitting, having coffee, reading the news. And I realized what I was reading. And I just said out loud, “Now more people will have more options when it comes to the size and color of their Android keyboard’” and when I heard those words out loud, I wondered what kind of idiot wastes their time reading an article about how big a spacebar is on a phone keyboard.

And, I realized that I was an idiot. Over time I've stopped wasting so much time on stupid things like that. It's been helpful talking to myself. It's a shame that we frown on it so much.

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Dressed In The Dark 48: The Red Light

Summary 

I stop at a red light and learn something about my self.

Transcription

It was a regular Wednesday, I was with my buddy, we were going to pick his kid up from school. Coming from the beer distributor, not like that, we were fine. We were just coming from the beer distributor.

We hit an intersection with a red light, you know, nothing special. And the car in front of me, when the light turned green, didn't move. So I immediately thought it was some asshole on their cell phone and I honk my horn, prep my middle finger. And then the guy still didn't move.

I beeped a few times. So I thought, well, maybe there's something wrong. You know, maybe he's not a dick. He looks like he's trying. So I leaned out my window, and I asked him if something was wrong. And his truck was broken. It just broke down.

So I pushed him out of the intersection. And we went off to school. And I thought to myself about how jumping to conclusions, doesn't really help me. That truck was stopped. I didn't know why. I assumed the guy was being an asshole. Because it always is.

That's the thing. We base so much of what's happening to us now on what happened to us in the past, then they merge together somehow. We're never really where we are.

This time my assumptions were wrong. But a few weeks later, with my buddy we were doing something else, I forget. We’re at a red light, car in front of us doesn't move when it turns green.

So I beep, they immediately start moving. And from the way they swerve around the road for the next 70 to 100 feet, it’s pretty clear he's not paying attention. Can't say that he's on his phone. All that I can say is he's not paying attention. I spent so much time focusing on my actions and the reactions they cause that I overlooked the fact that other people are constantly influencing how I feel, and I can't be responsible for that. Nor should I try to be. My responsibility lies in how I react to something not in how other people act. That's a weird thing.

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Dressed In The Dark 47 Christmas Lights

Summary 

Christmas lights. Is there anyway to do them right?

Transcript

Christmas lights are pretty weird things. Well, I mean, I guess it's more, they're fine. They're just lights. It's our attitudes towards them.

If you put your Christmas lights up too early, someone's got something to say about it. If you put too many up, someone's going to have something to say about it. If you don't put any up, you’re Grinch. If you leave them up too long, someone's going to have something to say about it.

We're fortunate enough that we have time to devote to how we feel about other people's Christmas lights.

It's a strange thing to have this luxury. It's a shame we use it this way. It's like we're capable of doing everything except just looking at the lights Christmas.

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Dressed In The Dark: 46 The Pepperoni Incident

Summary 

I get to learn about false expectations, instead of eating.

Transcript

It was maybe about a month ago. I was still recovering from having my teeth removed and I was meditating, or more accurately trying to meditate. It was kind of difficult because I was…I was starving.

I mean, it would be more appropriate to say I was hungry. Starving is a little bit, a little bit dramatic. So when you don't have teeth, it's really hard to eat. And applesauce and milkshakes get old fast.

So, I was lying there trying to hit my meditative state and I couldn't. Because I kept seeing visions of bread and pepperoni dance around in my head. These indignant distractions went on for about an hour.

Having realized that I'm not going to get anywhere right now. I got up and I went into the kitchen. I took the hint. I didn't know it, but I was on the verge of learning something, something I'd rather not have learned. I opened the refrigerator and I scanned it for a little tub of pepperoni that I knew was there next to the yellow jello. Next to the Gatorade. And it was gone.

I was an angry, angry, small child for a second.

I shut the door, took a couple of deep breaths.

Maybe I missed something. I thought I should look again. This time, it was the same. There was no pepperoni.

Instead of being angry, I was sad and I closed the door again. I walked over to the loaf of bread, sitting on a table. I opened it and I pulled a slice out. Maybe I missed something. I thought “One last try. Who knows what's in the fridge now?” So I went and opened the fridge again, same result. Bread's not bad by itself.

So I sat down at the piece of bread and I put it in my mouth and I bit down. It hurt. I took the bread out of my mouth. Wasn't a mark on it. I couldn't even chew through a piece of bread. Pepperoni was way, way out of my reach at the time. So I rolled the bread up into tiny little balls and swallowed them one by one ‘till I wasn't hungry anymore. And I went back to my bedroom to try to meditate again.

Wondering why do I have expectations? The fridge is never going to meet them.

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Dressed In The Dark: 45 “Classical Guitar V. Fart Jokes” Or I made a new podcast

Transcript

When I was 14, I got a guitar. That's all I did in high school, play guitar. After I got the guitar, I started playing classical guitar, which is like playing guitar, but it's harder- takes more time. It wouldn't be unusual for me to practice six, seven hours a day during a school year, more in the summer. I eventually got into a really good music school.

Which I couldn't afford to go. It didn't bother me. I just kept playing guitar. By the time I was 25, I realized that playing classical guitar had netted me, um, $75. I know it's not all about money, but you need more than $75 every 11 years.

So, I did what any reasonable person would do. I started a band, made myself the singer. Wasn't even important to me that I couldn't sing at all.

We made up for it by telling fart jokes, singing songs about eating babies, monsters, making stew out of puppies, and all that fun stuff. Immediately popular. Within months, we were playing two or three times a week. What I learned from that is there's no correlation between effort and reward at all. It's quite possible to put thousands of hours into something and fail.

So, I made another podcast. This one is about a fake life coach named Hugo Holmesnow and his reprogrammed sex bot cohost. They pretend they're smarter than everybody and offer answers to your problems. It's also animated and it comes out monthly.

This podcast will keep coming out whenever it comes out. But if you're into goofy shit, and you like the occasional fart joke, head on over to www.youareyourfault.com.

Check out the new podcast, the whole episode is after this. I get my teeth ripped out tomorrow. So, I'll be back as soon as I know how to talk again. I hope you enjoy You Are Your Fault, The Podcast Of Hugo Holmesnow.

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Dressed In The Dark: 44 (Facebook live event) Let’s Take A Few Minutes To Look At This Small Pile Of Bottle Caps

Video from a Facebook live event of the same name. Includes some fun bottle cap history and facts, as well as a live demonstration of bottle cap removal. We end with a few moments of silence.

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Dressed In The Dark: 43 Meditation Pt. 2 Or, “I Threw Up In The Street The Other Night”

Summary 

Part two of an occasionally ongoing series regarding meditation, part one of a hopefully not that common series about vomit.

Transcript

Last night, I threw up in the middle of the street. The neighbor was walking his dog by. Another neighbor came out, sat down on her porch, lit a cigarette. As I continued to empty the contents of my stomach onto the concrete, she stood up and went back into her house.

Some of it splashed onto my bare feet. Some of it soaked the bottom of my pants. I went to bed without washing either.

I just want you to keep that in mind when I'm talking about fancy things.

Did I mention it was red and there were about 15 minutes before I figured out it was the three Gatorades I had drank earlier and not most of my blood (repeats as echo).

It's not like I don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about meditation and talking about talking to yourself and all that crazy stuff. But if meditation were enough to fix a life, I would have at the very least thrown up in the toilet inside a house, like a civilized person, not in the middle of the street with an audience.

So, meditation mostly just extends the gap between having a thought or feeling and needing to act on it. It's the difference between making a fist and throwing a punch. It's usually not enough to change your life on its own. It's up to you to decide what to do with what you find in the gap between thought and action. Once you're exposed to it, you can ignore it or you can’t ignore it.

And that moment will impact and become the source of all your future decisions in some way. That's all.

Anyone who tells you more than that is selling something.

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Dressed In The Dark: 42 Meditation Pt.1

Summary 

I stuck a microphone inside my head to record what happens when I meditate.

Transcript

Meditation is the practice of stopping your thoughts, but like any practice, there are phases. First, you have to start, you have to jump in the pool and see what's there. You have to observe, you have to understand yourself, and then you can quiet yourself. When you first start to meditate it sounds a lot like what you're about to hear, which is a recreation of not only someone who starts to meditate, but the beginning of every meditation after you're good at it.

You can't change how your mind works.

You can only change how you deal with it. And that's what meditation teaches you. So, I hope you enjoy this recreation of a typical meditation session.

(Three minutes of simulated internal dialogue while attempting to meditate)

Meditation is a practice like art, law, or medicine. It's never perfected. You never good at meditation. You just better. You never good at dealing with the inside of your head. You just get better. And getting better is enough. You don't have to be good at it. If you keep meditating, it'll change a little bit, but you have to stick at it. Next time we'll talk about what happens after you've been doing it a little bit.

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Dressed In The Dark: 41 It Was A Routine Tuesday

Summary 

It was a routine Tuesday until an uninvited observation caused necessary revelations.

Transcript

It was just a routine Tuesday, nothing special, nothing extra. I left my bedroom, headed into the hallway on my way downstairs. As soon as I got into the hallway, my head was filled with images of going to Burger King. An assortment of logos and jingles and memories flashed into my mind.

Immediately after this, I smelled French fries coming from the kitchen.

I thought it was a little weird and unfair that my subconscious mind would act on sensory information before I even registered that I was smelling something.

I began to think of the implications of this. How many times have I done this and not noticed? Is this why the world is the way it is? Are we all just driven by environmental triggers that set us in action before we even know what they are?

I mean, that's a lot for a Tuesday.

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Dressed In The Dark: 40 Hoverboard

Summary

I don’t know how to ride a, or do I?

Transcript

I say this without shame. I am a hoverboard enthusiast.

I wasn't always. At first, I didn't trust them because they claimed to hover, but they had wheels.

I wanted nothing to do with them until my nephew brought one around. It looked like he was having a lot of fun on it. So I asked him if I could try it. Of course, he let me. I asked him how you ride it. He said, “I don't know, you just kind of ride it.”

So I got on it and I fell off, and I got on it again, and I fell off. That happened for a while.

Eventually, I got on and I wobbled. My knees bent. I bent backward at the waist and I stabilized. My mind quieted like someone had set off in a firecracker or something. I just thought, “Forward,” and I moved forward.

I thought, “Backwards,”and I moved backward.

As I paid attention, I realized that I would pick which way I wanted to move and my feet would shift. Not a lot, just a little in accordance with my thoughts. And then you're riding the hoverboard. You don't even notice there are wheels.

It feels like you're floating, or hovering.

It got me thinking about how maybe the body knows things too. It's not just me in here. Maybe there's something else. Something that already knows how to ride hoverboards. I wonder what else it knows.

I'll make it talk.