brezsny-on-the-blog

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): "The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards." So said British essayist Walter Bagehot. I would add the following corollary: The fortunes of many individuals have declined because of belief systems and structures that were invigorating earlier in their lives but that gradually became paralyzing or parasitical. Has that ever been true about you, Capricorn? More importantly, might it become true in the future? Please take inventory of your reliance on theories and attitudes and methods that made good sense once upon a time but that are now becoming irrelevant or even counterproductive.


a system, according to physics, can handle a certain amount of input and/or stimulus. it also gives off a certain amount of chaos, entropy, or energy. this is called the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

all things, according to this Law, move toward a state of chaos and degeneration.

what stumped scientists for over a century afterward was the argument that yeah, things move toward entropy, but what about things that move toward higher organization, like, um, life itself? atoms form into molecules like amino acids, which form into single cells, which form into more complex systems, until one day something says, "Hmm, I feel like sprouting legs," and climbs out of the primordial soup to become homo sapiens. and even this evolutionary miracle forms more complex systems according to humanity's needs: villages, towns, laws and social orders and structure.

even a freeway exhibits this growth and evolution towards greater order.

true, said some guy at the university of brussels whose name i can't remember let alone spell, but a system whose input exceeds its output of entropy comes to a crux, or a crossroads. it can go one of two ways:

it will either cease to be a system (aka go ka-blooey) or it will reorganize itself into a more complex, "higher" structure that can then handle the greater input. it will also, as a result of its evolution, give off greater energy/entropy/whatever as a result. so the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics still applies.

as things grow, information gets processed. when the threshold of this informational limit is hit and remains at this threshold long enough, chaos ensues as the system gets overwhelmed...until the system realizes (in some way) that what used to work doesn't work anymore, and the old system is thrown away in favor of a new one, or is manipulated in some way as to improve its capability to handle the new level of input.

that's what's been happening to me, and it's what the support guy said last week.

i don't really think i was upset at any of the things i professed to be upset at (though yeah, they were really irritating me), but it wasn't the source. my system just wasn't able to handle things anymore, the good or the difficult. because it's all stimulus, and it was too much for my system.

frankly, it's still too much for my system. my sleep's been pretty wacky, and my appetite's been weird and less than stellar. i'm tired all the time, emotionally sensitive, and easily overwhelmed. and it's easy lately to get really down on myself.

but *ks* helped me see that's what's been going on, and then the support guy squished my gut chakra. a conversation with a friend-slash-business partner let me know that i had finally failed to keep those personal things separate from work, and so i'd pretty much just spilled over everywhere.

knowing this, and knowing that my best efforts to try and control the spillover was only making things worse, helped me to not stress about it as much.

as much. i still stress.

lots of things going on, and with all this positive growth really uprooting some really deeply-buried, heavy-duty stuff, i'm exhausted in every possible way a person can be exhausted. i know that once i get through this chaos i'll be a better person -- able to handle more positivity and more challenges, even-- and i look forward to it, but i don't know how to get through this except to, well, "sit through it and just wait it out" seems to be what i'm being told.

my biggest struggle comes from not knowing how to "observe it, feel the feelings, and let whatever happens be okay" while at the same time not explode or spill over onto others. if my outside life is any indication of the inside of me, i'm overheating, shutting down randomly, and letting the dirty dishes pile up while simultaneously getting pissed at them for piling up.

go figure.