I still can’t settle on a headline capitalization policy.

It’s 11:45.  Between the supermoon and our city’s version of Mardi Gras I ain’t sleepin’.  My brother-in-law is in town helping remodel my mother’s bathroom, so every room in the house with upholstered seating has a slumbering human in it.  I’m holed up in the half bath, wide awake and worried about loud typing.  The woman who was literally howling for four hours straight finally quit as Vlad’s creepy snoring started up.

Jenny is so awake.

Earlier, I read this Adam Yauch profile at The Awl.  Turns out Dave Bry has what it takes to win a round of Six Degrees of MCA.  He talks about Yauch’s gracefulness in accepting his cancer diagnosis.  I’m not surprised.  My rudimentary knowledge of Buddhism tells me they believe in rebirth and that human life in itself is suffering.

What I found more notable was Yauch’s ease in regards to his own growth as a human being.  The Beastie Boys I invoked in yesterday’s post were superficial party boys without much regard for respecting people or thinking too deeply about much of anything.  Yauch was all in, yet we watched him mature to be a man of impeccable integrity.  Bry remarks that Yauch was open, honest, at peace and very matter of fact about his past.  Another tenet of Buddhism is not dwelling on the past.  I assume this attitude of his that I envy…

There’s movement.  I’m definitely typing too loud.  Oh, faster makes it worse. Switching bathrooms.  I’m back.

is due to his faith.  I don’t dwell on the past, but I also find the cliche about not regretting your mistakes because they made you who you are today complete and utter bullshit.  I’ve done things that have really hurt people in ways I’ll never make amends for.  We all have.  It is what it is, but it’s not okay.  It’s not worth it, and I find any other sentiment offensive.  It’s self-centered.  These things don’t define me or effect my life in any meaningful way, but they will always bug me.  they eat at me a little, and  I don’t know that I want to be the kind of person not bugged by these things.

But Yauch seemed to accept himself, almost compartmentalized it.  That would come in pretty handy.  It’s odd how in many other areas of my life I find compartmentalizing a little too easy.

That’s it.  No neat conclusion this time.  Just needed to get those sheep counted.

This Rolling Stone interview from 1998 addresses Yauch’s journey to Buddhism and what it meant to him.

Update: “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” 
? Saul Bellow

That’s the only reason this piece of crap is still here.  Blame it on the big emo supermoon.

 

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