Dharmic Vertigo

Today I changed my blog header from the free-wheelin' "Nakedmanatee's Page O'Fun" to the infinitely more pretentious "Dharmic Vertigo." Why? You mean besides the obvious response of "The power! My God, the power!"? Well, while the first title does seem to accurately capture my brand of simple, good for you humor, I wanted to show the other side of Dave. The thoughtful, photo matte-finish side of Dave. And hey, Dharmic Vertigo just sounded plain cool. And what's cooler than being cool? (Ice Cold.)

What is Dharmic Vertigo? Dharmic Vertigo is the cosmic 18-wheeler truck you thought you escaped from only to look in your rear-view mirror to watch it make that impossible u-turn and come barrelling after you. Dharmic Vertigo is the the Bond villain that makes 007 realize that all he really wanted to do was to garden and read Ludlum and play Pictionary and listen to Jimmy Buffett records. Dharmic Vertigo is that person in your life who has died and is haunting you, hiding out in the crawl space just outside of your peripheral vision, asking, begging you to reconsider poetry.

Dharma is your life's purpose. I bet you didn't even know you had one. Or maybe you do but disbelief clogs your soul like a trip to McDonald's clogs your arteries. You do have one. If I'm wrong and there is no such thing and it's all a fairy tale and you just live at best, a life of around 85 years and then you keel over with the last thought escaping from your head shouting, "Damn, and here I thought it was all about my love of balloon animals,' then I will owe you a big ol' apology, my friend. And a bag of Jolly Ranchers. I'll owe you a bag of Jolly Ranchers.

I was looking at a blog MUCH better than this one and on it was a quote from Lauryn Hill. I don't know the exact wording she used, but the basic idea behind it was that Lauryn was saying that our passion for life was our way of saying thank you to God for living. Now even if you don't believe in any type of organized (or disorganized) Higher Up entity chick or dude, it's a great sentiment for living. I firmly believe in passion. I don't care what it is. It could be stamp collecting. Or Voltaire. Or Voltron. Or Twister. Yeah... naked Twister. It doesn't matter. What matters is the caring. Care about something. Because if you do, if you find that passion, it will inject itself and activate every lazy-ass cell in your body that's just sitting there waiting for you to die so it can go and find something more interesting to do... like form with some other bored cells and become bark or something. Becuase your poor little cells want to do something. It's in your purpose. It's there. Find it.

As any five year old will tell you, the quickest way to an andrenal high is to consume 5 packs of Smarties, then spin around in your front yard until you come crashing down face-first into the grass, giggling uncontrollably with dirt now up your nose. That, is Dharmic Vertigo. It's the rushing, blood to your head, happy euphoric feeling that gets your endorphins swimming through your body like toddlers rushing down a water slide. And it feels good. It makes you stupid-happy because you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. Your life's purpose. That's Dharmic Vertigo. And THAT's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.