song of the day: Don't Look Down (Jim's Big Ego)
word of the day: psychomachy (conflict between the body and the soul)

marci and i do gazing zazen for an hour each day. it's basically zazen except instead of staring at a wall, you gaze into another person's eyes. we also have the added element of having our baby Ara with us, who's 10 months old at this point. most days Ara does great with meditation, she just hangs out, looks around, or sleeps. but other days, she really freaks out, screams, pulls her moms hair, scratches her mom's face, spits all over mom- your basic demonic behavior. it's a different kind of challenge for me, i have a weird kind of damage to my inner ear, it's probably a combination of hearing damage from music (loud shows, studio sessions with headphones, etc) and the fact that i had tubes six or seven times when i was a kid, which left a ton of scar tissue. anyway, some days my ear drums are completely fucked, they crackle and distort every thing i hear- like i have a garbage disposal going off in each ear. some sounds set it off worse than others, and sure enough, one of the worst sounds for triggering it and aggravating it is a baby's cry. and Ara screams like a punk singer when she gets pissed. so we sit in zazen somedays, ara literally ripping marci's lips and eyelids off with her razor-like fingernails, spitting on her, kicking, and screaming my ear drums into excruciating torture chambers. the witness and the witnessed in another queer psychomachy- one more state that comes and goes.