Musings and Abstractions

I wonder

2011-03-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

if people understand the intimacy of what is happening in these pages: a soul lain bare. To pull no punches is a difficult trick to master, but that is what I have attempted to do here in these pages. I’ve been doing this for almost five years now, and if one were so inclined, they would have one of the most in depth understandings of a human being for that timeframe as could perhaps be possible.
What’s on my mind?
What’s not on my mind?
Right now…
Good-bye.
It’s a bit premature, admittedly.
However, what most people fail to understand is that this is my last opportunity to find a space among other human beings.
I’ve been a lot of places, done a lot of things, and want for nothing but time to appreciate the splendors that are granted to the sentient.
That is not, however, leisure time. To appreciate something properly is a lot of work, and that’s what I want to do.
Here’s a secret that nobody knows—soul laying bare: should the venture fail, society will lose me. Not that that’s any kind of significant loss for something as mighty as society, and it would be more like a self-imposed hermitage than anything else.
“Living as if I weren’t even here”
Why would you want to do that?
Do you know how much living you must be capable of in order to make it appear as if you weren’t there? There is no getting around the fact that you are. No matter how much you tell yourself that your “being” is just electric impulses flying around your brain, and that this is all a kind of illusion being fostered by the sensory information that is coming in to the brain, there is no getting around the question that, based on all probability, I probably shouldn’t be, and yet here I am.
What a question that is.
I have investigated many questions. That question wins. It beats them all. What is it about something that makes it seem like there ought to be nothing?
The only answer nature can’t give man, but the only real question we want answered is this: what are we supposed to be doing here?
All right, we are. What now? What comes next? What is it about life that makes me want to do more and more of it? To climb more mountains, to dig in the earth, plant seeds and see what she can grow. To touch what it means to be a part of the natural order of things once again.
Damnit all to shite and fuck!!!!
I’m lost there aren’t I.
GODDAMNIT!
Why don’t I just go write Walden.
Fuck.
But that’s where it’s at, isn’t it?
That’s why Walden is Walden. Nature. She has taken on an entirely new nature in the past couple of weeks as a result of the fact that I am now beginning to look at nature on a cosmic scale. In other words, nature was worked out a system of systems that works consistently and strings these systems together in order for things to keep moving. One of the unfortunate drawbacks of all these systems is that they eventually fail. You could almost say that nature is BUILT with a failure device inside it, constantly acting, trying to fail, if only to learn. At any rate, this aspect of nature repeats itself at the level of cells and at the level of the universe in equal aspects.
It’s actually quite hard to imagine, but perhaps that’s just me. I just had a hard time imagining NOT writing. I think I was actually trying to not write this week, just to see how things went, but then, as soon as I started doing it, the fingers just wanted to keep going. There’s your fucking Hume for you, too. He’s been showing up like a bad rash recently.
That’s how my brain works, by the way, and I know it is: input through reading, process through subconscious (who knows how long this can take), and output through action based on learned outcomes. I read Hume more than six months ago, but my brain is only really now coming to understand the significance of the things he was talking about.
That, and I feel too much. It can be dangerous, sometimes, because I know that there are areas of my mind that I could go into that would make me feel so much I would probably vomit. Caroline. Can’t go there. She’s been coming up in my mind lately, and flashes and rushes of memories go through me so hard it’s like being punched repeatedly in the stomach: the good and the bad altogether. I owe her everything. It’s hard to imagine my character without her in my life.
Being in this place is weird. The rememberer has been remembering things that it hasn’t remembered in a long, long time. I have pity for people who can recall memories readily at any time. Having access to those depths of emotion at your constant beck and call would be too much for me and I’d have a breakdown. Perhaps it’s because I don’t remember the details of things… all I remember are the impressions, feelings, and emotions. The details, where everything was, what who was wearing, and everything surface gets lost in the intricacy and detail of the sketched feeling that I put together in my head to go with image.
Neruda understands: why do I feel the whole of your love at once?
The whole of love is pleasure, pain, bliss, fury, and even things like boredom, consolation, and most things in between. The whole of anything is all of those things. I’m afraid that that’s just the way it works when you take on the whole of something.
Here’s a whole something I’m not sure I’m ready for: another relationship. I’ve been through the mill now. I’m jaded. I’m aware that I’m jaded. I’m aware that I’m full of shit. I’m aware that I’m not very good at socializing. What I want is more clearly stamped in my head than ever. It’s a later-twenties male sexual revolution. We don’t want what we used to want. If we wanted a ho, we’d go to the club and get some chick all fucked up and convince her that having sex with us is a good idea. Vapid is a word that quickly comes to mind. I don’t have time for that. I also don’t have time to deal some old bullshit relationship that isn’t bound for a life together, while, simultaneously know that I don’t want “a life together” just yet AND how painful it is to get into a relationship knowing that it’s going to end.
It doesn’t hurt any less simply because you know it’s going to end, and sometimes it hurts more. That’s not fair. There’s a quandary for you:
What am I supposed to do about love now?

Change

2011-03-14T10:29:00.000-07:00

is what’s needed, and change is what’s planned, but we need your change.

In brief:
My compatriot(s) and myself are heading off to the lands of the east(ern United States).
Whilst others might join, the two main adventures are:
Myself (currently employed as sub-vice grill overlord and pizza creator extraordinaire—go to Grinder’s in the Crossroads district of Kansas City…
That’s where you’ll find me, all my fancy degrees and ideas, and great philly cheesesteaks.
Namelessfacelessother: best friend and confidante of myself for more than a decade, and currently about to graduate with what we’ll call a degree in biodynamic agriculture.
The two of us, with other like-minded folks, have a vision.
That vision is based on family, love, care, devotion to learning and effort, the perpetual quest into the character of the human being, and awareness of all that is around us.
We want to see how much of our stamp we can cut out of nature, how much we can develop within her and with her to use the relationship to its fullest, how we can rip ourselves out of the blind numbness of a pervasive ideological culture—and before anybody says anything: they are ALL pervasive ideological cultures…that’s almost the point of a country.
What we want to know is if culture, standing alone and unthreatening, can survive inside the other culture.
We’re pretty sure it can.

So, in stage one, we will build a farm.
It will be as self-sustaining as possible.
It will be biodynamic.
It will be organic.
It will become a part of the nature around it.

Thus the need for change… pocket change… lots of it.

You see, we have the funding for the land and the house already—praise whatever entity it is that pops into your mind when you say your prayers, but we need to find a place in the very literal sense of the term.

So, myself and my compatriot—with his wife in London wishing he and myself the best of luck I’m sure—are going to find a place.

On the ground, in a car/truck/van/camper/whatevermakesitselfavailabletous we will set off to look at lands in the east coast that are near to universities with appropriate doctoral programs (we all want to continue our educations), to hospitals (my compatriots wife has recently graduated from Med School and is looking to be Dr. Mrs. Compatriot in the USA), to fishing (and potentially hunting) possibilities, to mountains (as much as the Midwest is my home, my heart belongs in rather more rugged terrain), and with the appropriate kind of soil for growing the most diverse crops.

We have managed to both acquire one month of time to devote purely to this adventure.

We will be in a car together.
We will scout the land together.
We will sleep in our mode of transportation or camp when possible.
We need only money for food and gas for thirty days.

I, on behalf of—even though he might not approve—my compatriot, therefore plead with you for your bits of spare change, shrapnel, coins, or whatever you want to call them.

Make a little jar and write on it:

Change
For Eli and Jesse’s Road Trip
And Change

Then, dump all that spare change you get into it. We’re not asking for any more than to help us out for the next two months… we leave on May 1st.

If it makes you feel better about the donation, the scope of the biodynamic organic farm extends even further into the future, but you can email me for the dynamic unveiling of that surprise… which isn’t really at all surprising if you are even vaguely aware of who I am…

Anyhow, pocket change please.
Can we have it?

Know that your donation today
Could have a huge impact on tomorrow.

(obviously we accept cash, checks, and gas card donations as well… don’t get it twisted… if you want to help us out like that, we’d be SUPER HAPPY about it.)

{All donators eligible for free stays at “Sated”←potential name for farm}

May all beings be happy,
May all your change be good,
And may the seeds of
Equanimity ripen in your mind.

Peace
Much Love
And Gonzo
Myself

changesated@live.com

Also, go to poeticmindofeli.blogspot.com

Communion

2011-03-07T10:50:00.001-08:00

It is now that we break bread.

Here is my body, which I give unto you—residence in the present: body mind spirit.
Take and eat.
Here is my blood, which I give unto you—what can flow more clearly from the soul than words.
Take and drink.

Invocation finished. I mixed them… did you see it?
Damn my eyes.

Everybody I meet seems to want to talk about the soul. Everybody everywhere who is sufficiently aware of themselves, their environment and their culture seems to have a nagging draw toward the things of the ephemera.
A lot of people don’t even realize that what they are attempting to describe is precisely within my personal understanding/definition of soul.
I laugh when thinking of defining the soul.
It’s like trying to define “an.” What does “an” mean?
Well, it’s an article.
I didn’t ask what its function was. I asked for its definition.

Can you see my path?

Function. Utility.
Perhaps we are here to be of some use, but perhaps this use-value goes beyond our scope of understanding and means something on the universal scale.

Seekingly find being.

We must all seek for the thing-in-itself inside the thing-in-itself. As these things—soul, god, and the like—exist as words, it is in the nature of words themselves that the nature of these things can be investigated. If the things of the spirit take primacy over the things of the physical world, then why is the manifestation of those spiritual things in the form of language?
What is god without the name of God?

In the beginning was THE WORD, and THE WORD was with god, and THE WORD was god. From a purely grammatical point of view, the message here is obvious, and yet it has been overlooked for so long. THE WORD is the subject. God is the object. Anybody who’s studied anything about the nature of the subject/object debate can understand this importance.

Sartre’s gaze: in becoming the object of another’s gaze I recognize in myself my perpetual state of object-hood. To all others I am an object of scrutiny. When we are not subject, our psyches feel terror.

I’m mixing things up again, and I know it, but we lie to ourselves perpetually and explain away our insignificance by making ourselves the most important being on the planet. That is, until somebody looks at us.
That’s how fragile it is my friends.
As soon as we recognize the fact that we are just some object in the mind of the Other, the structure cracks and has the potential for total collapse.

Most people feel all of this as opposed to knowing what they are feeling and why, but their experience with it is similar to everybody’s. The eyes are portals to the soul. When two people’s eyes meet, if they linger there at all, they cannot help but give away enough of their soul for the other to feel them—every piece contains a map of it all.

So, it’s no real mystery why most people want, in the deepest parts of themselves, to discuss the deepest part of existence. What is it about something—the fact that something “is”—that makes us believe there probably about to be nothing? We look around at the great cosmic fluke that has given rise to our various civilizations, and what the reasoning person sees is that based on all probability none of this should be here.

But nature has her ways, and they are not so different from human ways, but they occur on such a magnificent scale that there is no REAL way to comprehend it. Nature goes beyond the Earth: our planet is in the nature of the universe. Nature has a policy of attempting to give as much possibility to everything as it possibly can. In other words, even if the probability were to read something like 1:1,000,000,000—nature can usually supply the billion or two or three that it requires to find that one. The almost billion other attempts are all important, but they are also pretty standard failures. It is the anomalies that need to be investigated. It is in the point-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-one percent that we ought to be looking: these are the ones whose mysterious point of soul has extra-perceptual manifestations of spirit. The probability of YOU, and YOU alone existing is astronomical. Perhaps there is something in the universe that makes of some people’s probability beyond astronomical and places them squarely within the universal. Find these people. Their soul peaks out consistently, no matter how much they attempt to hide it. It emanates from them sub-consciously, spiritually and it carries weight unlike any kind of physical burden—and you’d better believe it’s a burden: imagine the weight of feeling the pull of the universe without having any idea what it is, how it came to be, or why it pulls you in the directions it does.

To feel is an enormous thing. To feel the universe is indescribable.

To those earnestly seeking to know, I bid you seek fervently and find forever everywhere.

I experience the most joy when sending my love through spiritual channels to those I love all over the world. Maybe, sometimes, you feel something good for half a second for absolutely no reason… well, you might’ve just been a part of my daily love dosings. Now, in no particular order, I give my love to:

May all beings be happy.

Timeline

2011-03-03T09:13:00.001-08:00

of my life
(Part II).

The importance of my time in New York City should not be underplayed. What made it so important was that my intellectual and emotional development was occurring simultaneously. My body and my mind were going through a phase of intense growth, with the resultant growth pains—breaking hearts and broken minds. The reading, understanding, reflection, and searching into the self of the mind and spirit made of me something else. When I left, I was not what I was, I was what I was going to be: an artist, a writer, a wanderer, and free. I had been writing a book that was making my lose my mind called Fodder… it was suspended until I return to New York City.

That was the summer of 2008. I took a road trip across the country with my ex-girlfriend. We stayed in Tennessee. We were not meant to be. It was fun. We were not meant to be.

In the Fall of that same year, I sent my resume to a recruiter whose job it was to find jobs in Korea for teachers of English as a second language.

In September of 2008, I was on my way to Ochang, South Korea. On my first night in Korea, in a small town where I can’t seem to find ANY English, my co-worker Bon brings me a quart of milk and a two liter bottle of water. I thank him, cry, and nestle into my tiny bed.

While in Korea the most appropriate question might be: what didn’t I do. Most of it I did with one or two other people, but a lot of it was alone… honja.

There’s something called Mudfest which seems to speak for itself.
There’s BIFF—an international film festival in Busan.
I got paid money to play my guitar and entertain people.
I went busking on the streets of Suwon.
I hosted an open mic night.
I learned to hate Seoul.
I learned to speak some Korean.
I met the best human female I think I have ever met in my life (Park Inae… I love you dearly).

However, one of the most important things I did was reading. I read everything. I was in Korea for two years, and in those two years I put such titles as Being and Nothingness, The Republic, A Treatise of Human Nature, Phenomenology of Spirit, Dante’s Inferno and Purgatorio, and Vanity Fair among countless other novels and books of poetry.

It was during this time that I was also writing a book about the experience of being a foreigner/teacher in South Korea.

It was during this time that I wrote a play in three acts based on Voltaire’s Candide and the idea that man exists in three states: suffering, boredom and work—which became the three acts.

I fell in love with a Super-Korean girl named April. She was lovely, older, and a great lover, but her Korea streak made her need to seek other attentions. It ended.

I met truly good people. I was party to what I’d assume is a felony. Friends of mine who were in a band that was playing in Dagu on the same night as our city hockey team was playing Dagu decided to rent a giant bus and take everybody together. A mini-fridge was thrown out a window. A fire extinguisher was discharged into my room. Fleeing happened. We were involved.

Nights of soju and roses.

After my contract finished in September 2009, I went to another school in November in Suwon, but I took a wee break to visit my recently married friends in London (the aforementioned Italian bird and high school wrestling buddy) and Agent X in New York City.

Korea was a peak of freedom. I climbed mountains. I ascended where westerners hadn’t dreamed of seeing. I searched through the depths of literature and the soul. The very first F1 race in Korea happened in 2010, and I was there for it by myself. It was beautiful. I wandered around the tiny town of Mokpo. They have these little parks and tiny hills to climb. There’s a giant jjimjilbang next a bus terminal where we caught a shuttle to the race. I almost got stuck in the race parking lot… alone… in the middle of nowhere… but hey, we’ve been there before.

No fear. No edge. When having a plan is good, having no plan is fine, and needing a plan is as good as anything, something happens to the mind.

I suppose that it would be possible to say that I accepted the reality of nature. When put into a natural situation, even if harsh, I could survive or die and be happy either way. It’s hard to die in manmade situations if you’re simply paying attention. Be very aware all the time, thinking, “Now I am living in this way.”

The truth holds no fear for me, nor does the bone-crunching power of nature—unless you consider it in the same vein as the fear of god: knowing but at peace with.

It is 2011. I haven’t really been in Kansas City for a decade. I live with Agent X. The future is fuzzy, but I can see an outline. This residence is my seventeenth roof to live under in ten years. May all beings be happy…

and may my loved ones feel the happiness I desire for them in every moment. Share love. Share life. Be well. Be calm. Go forth. Go safely. Do intently. Do proudly.

Let’s Be Very Clear

2011-02-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

about something: reading is one of the most productive uses of a body’s time. Perhaps that’s precisely the point: a body’s time. If the body’s time is pondered for a second, what comes immediately to mind is death, so how on earth is reading a justifiable part of that relatively short existence?
The soul.
The soul is universal and eternal and infinitesimally small and infinitesimally large and permeates everything.
But of course there arises the eternal question, the question that has plagued science and religion (to a lesser degree) from the beginning of time—I couldn’t help myself:
Why is there something instead of nothing?
Perhaps a better rendering of the question might be:
What is it about something that makes us believe there should be nothing?
The latter question would probably be answerable, and that answer would be that we see the universal structure everywhere: it is present in the very smallest particles, it is viewable in the night sky and our understanding of astronomy, and you can even find it in reading.
What is this structure that we see?
(I can see we’re on a basic ontological search here…)
Mostly-empty space, is what it turns out to be.
At a cellular level, most of the atomic structure is a cloud, a haze, and a constantly moving something-or-other.
Have you ever seen a picture of a galaxy? Looks a lot like a cell to me.
I bet the universe looks like that.
But I suppose I’ve been avoiding the “why” question that I posed earlier.
Basically, I like to avoid discussing why questions because they inevitably lead to metaphysical inquiry, and metaphysics is not my strong suit because it seems to me to be based largely on things like belief. If I were to categorize the different kinds of physics, I would say that general, observable physics would be precisely that: observable. We can watch the rules and principles that we believe to be true actually happen—thereby offering a kind of “proof” for the them. However, metaphysics deals with things that are—rather unfortunately or very fortunately depending on how you look at it—almost always experientially based.
The words I chose to use there are very specific and I want to make sure that metaphysics—or at least Eli metaphysics—is not reduced to a purely subjective perspective. Just because metaphysical understanding has at least one foot in the experiential aspect of humanity does not mean that an entire blanket of personal experience can be thrown over the whole situation: there are always teachers that come before and disciples that come after any kind of metaphysical experience. In other words, you have to be prepared for the experience by some kind of coach who has been there before, and you will be so changed by the experience yourself that you will in turn attempt to guide others seeking metaphysical experience. In a lot of ways, the experiencing of why is a community project.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
“Happiness is the virtuous activity of the soul.” That’s some bastardized Aristotle for you, but he places this caveat on that activity:
over the course of a lifetime.
Inside the body’s time are two other times: the time of the mind and the time of the soul.
One of them marches steadily onwards (the body).
The other two are based on the initiative of the possessor.
The power of the mind is basically limitless, and the same can be said of the soul, but it takes time and dedication to develop either of them. It is for this reason that Aristotle decided that the virtuous activity of the soul needed to extend over the course of an entire lifetime.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that we will probably never know from a scientific perspective why there is something instead of nothing. If we take what we know about nature and apply it to the universe, then our universe is probably just a cell in the skin of the universal fabric that spreads its one fact throughout everything it touches: is-ness.
If God—capitalization intentional—exists, then he must necessarily be bigger than the universe: what good is an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present god that isn’t big enough to be everywhere at the same time, able to out-muscle anything, and know absolutely everything?
No good. God isn’t dead, but it’s a fuck-tonne bigger than we could ever imagine, and I believe that her name might be Nature.
We call it Mother Nature and think of trees in autumn or lakes during the summer or snow drifts in winter and giddy springs, but our sight is very short. It is probably more likely that Mother Nature extends to the galaxy as well. The nature of the galaxy is to spin around a giant black hole. The nature of our solar system is to spin around the sun. It turns out that nature is probably extendable to the very reaches of the universe and—perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here—beyond.
What is the one incontrovertible fact about nature? Is-ness.
Nature is also imbued with a very slippery touch of magic.
Oak trees growing from acorns? Magic.
So, you’re telling me that we bury this in dirt, keep giving it water, and that’s about it? Yup. It turns out that the process (while infinitely more complicated in reality) is basically that simple. Imagine the entire earth as the brain and the products of the mental work the things that make the earth such a beautiful place—trees and streams and whatnot. The core and the movement and all the stuff we don’t see would be the world’s sub-consciousness and the visible stuff would be the consciousness. The planet would be the body. The soul would be the magic of the fact that it is.
Why is there something instead of nothing?
“Nothing comes from nothing.”—Many people said it, but notably Shakespeare
Because without something to work on, nothing gets worked on… the work stops. Realistically, we are probably here to develop as fully as possible the unique manifestation of universe that we are—that what the ancients believed at any rate. The truth of the matter is that we are probably an accident based on a pure numbers game:
“Billions and billions and of planets, huh? That ought to be enough for a while. Let’s see what happens. We can always make more next time. We’re not super busy.” Maybe we’re a product of nature attempting to create something that can overcome her at last, but she simply hasn’t quite gotten the recipe perfect yet.

Composed on Valentine’s Day

2011-02-14T10:22:00.001-08:00

and related to love. These days, I can’t get these Laura Marling lyrics out of my head. It’s disconcerting because they are deeply involved with things that I would like to think of myself as being deeply involved in—if not presently.
I have an unhealthy relationship with love. To say that I love to love love, would be only to understand what Joyce meant. We are all pieces of love. Love is a part of the universal structure. Nature is love. It’s hard, sometimes brutal. Sometimes, when unrequited or scorned, it can be downright vicious. But it can be gentle and humble and sweet and lying dormant for ages. It’s not our awareness that makes us special creatures in the universe, it’s our awareness of our awareness (damned tautology) and the resultant reflection, allowing for reason that make of us unique manifestations of universal energy.
I don’t know if anybody has ever really considered it before, but perhaps humanity, with its layered awareness is actually a punishment.
The great order of the universe is composed of who-knows-what kind of logic. Perhaps it is those creatures that will beat themselves to death—physically or mentally—attempting to understand this awareness they have of the world around them that are the scorned creatures of the universe. Most animals content themselves to the understanding that they need to find food and shelter, procreate, and try to stay alive. Humans are different. We want more.
Perhaps that’s part of where love comes into play. It is a higher level of existence to understand the great cosmic order wherein part of staying alive is creating for one’s mate and progeny the ability to continue existence. It is the satisfaction of one of the highest callings of nature: survive.
In some ways, surviving is the easier of nature’s dual calling. Reproduction, especially for humanity—and this is where it can become quite a trying task to be a human—can take place in two different realms.
While at first glance it doesn’t seem as though these two worlds, as opposed to a unified one, would cause all that much harm: you simply have to pick. Ah, but the problem is, of course that these two worlds (the physical and the intellectual/mental) interact with each other, are inseparable from each other, and even exist in the exact same place at the exact same time. As is probably pretty evident, that one remove brings with it both the possibility of cataclysmic disaster and inconceivable joy—where the former is something like a cutting off of one’s self from their awareness and the latter is something like coming to a kind of harmony and balance within the universal spectrum.
Words, words. Nothing but sweet words that turn into bitter orange wax in my ears.
But love and the mind are not strangers to each other, and they are both on pretty decent terms with the body, so why shouldn’t love be the web that weaves them together and makes of itself such a delightful nuisance?
The love of the mind, the love of the body, and the love of the soul are all very different breeds of the same species. There are some people whose genetic makeup just clicks with your genetic makeup, and when your two parts come together there is a whole lot of joy, thoroughgoing joy. There are people who stimulate your mind in such a way that, though they might not be what you are normally physically attracted to, the fact that they stay in your mind—haunting it as it were—for so long and popping into it at such strange times that you can’t help but gravitate toward them. There are people you are drawn to, or who happen to cross your path, whose soul (unique manifestation of the universe) reaches out and connects to another soul such that there can never be a severing: it is as if they could actually communicate with each other through the universal schema of symbolization and communication which renders space and time impotent.
Sometimes vaulting into the heavens leaves one with as tendency toward flights of rhetorical fancy, but never fear because the fall always leaves one bruised and slightly more cautious the next time… slightly.
There are merits to all of them. It is very nice to have somebody there to take care of those bodily needs that seem to creep up as a matter of course for the human body—both men and women get the craving. It is also very nice to have somebody there to talk to, to listen to, to learn from, to teach, and to deal with the things of the mind. It is also very nice to have that soul mate.
Perhaps that’s why it is so difficult to find what people refer to as “the one.” To find a soul mate is incredibly difficult. The soul has so many strands, threads, strings, colors, styles, and whathaveyou that the chances of bumping into one that fits your particular network of soul whatever is pretty chancy I’d say—by which I’d mean nearly impossible. A mind-mate is somewhat more probable, as the mind is based on the structure of the universe—finding a mind that is structured similarly to yours can be somewhat trying, but determination and effort will find you attaining your prize. The body, with its physicality makes just about any tool capable of pleasure. The flexibility, shape, and size of each particular unit is taken into the alternate aspects of their partner(s), and it makes pleasure possible from just about anybody.
It’s hard to say whether or not the pyramid of pleasure is oriented properly with the soul at the top and pointing towards to the heavens with the base of the body holding us steadily to the earth—primacy being sometimes relative—or if it’s not something inverted with the point of the soul creating a fulcrum whereby the body and mind must remain in balance or the whole structure begins to lean and tilt with the potential for falling over completely. Either way, what we see when we look at the thing with the proper set of eyes is that they are all connected, all important, and all necessary of thorough investigation.
My loves are spread all over the world. I have not known physical love in a couple of months. A mind with which to commune would be pleasant in the extreme, but unfortunately the style of my mind makes me too pensive and standoffish to seek these minds out. The nature of my soul makes me a wanderer, a finder, and a perpetual bad bet for the long run. Of course it’s because I’m scared. Did you think I didn’t know that? Fear runs rampant in the parts of my mind that desire my own breed of greatness. The nature of the fear is something that might bear discussion, but it is definitely there.
At any rate, in my present solitude—which is not entirely un-welcome—I reach out to the ones that I have loved, the ones I will love, and those for whom my love transcends time and space. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have been loved by those who have loved me—from family to lovers—and perhaps luckier to have loved those same people. I regret none of my relationships. My inadequacies and deficiencies as a human being have made me, unfortunately, a villain of the highest caliber, and I carry it with me every day. No regrets, no surrender. I love those people perhaps more powerfully now I see the effect they have made on my life. Share love today.

The Soul Searching

2011-02-08T14:51:00.000-08:00

There is a perpetual hesitancy in the words of those that would attempt to put words to truths which sit outside the scope of language: all translation is loss, and doubly so when translating the matter of the spiritual world.
Science’s biggest problem is that it makes too much sense.
Religion’s biggest problem is that it doesn’t make enough sense.
As with most things, the reality is not in the extremes.
There are always anomalies. That’s the point of them, to be. But one example cannot supply enough oomf for a reasoning, sentient being—at least, it shouldn’t. This seems to be where they both get in trouble. The one camp gives proofed evidence, and the other the evidence of faith and belief, which are rationally irrational.
It is at this point that everybody usually picks a side. People start saying that you have to believe this and that. Fuck them. Even that, using that particular word, would be abominable to some. It’s all about control.
So I have become a myopic spiritual vagabond.
I know because I see repeated structures, and that this sits nicely with me.
But I suppose I should tell the story of how my understanding of these terms came to be, so either buckle in for a quick tour of my spiritual upbringing or fast forward a bit to the parts at the end which are undoubtedly bound to be better than this rag.
My father is a music minister. He and my mother attended a Christian college in College City, Arkansas—while this seems like a preposterous name for a REAL city it is in fact a real place and home to Williams Baptist University. At any rate, Sundays were spent in church watching my father lead the music and learning more than anybody should probably need to know about any book (and that’s coming from me).
At any rate, as usually happens, unhappy children rebel against their parents. My morality and spiritual quest took a back seat for a couple of years.
Then, one day I picked up a book called The Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle. I read it from cover to cover. It’s basically about what it takes to build a great society. What do you need? Great men. How do you get great men? Genetics? True, but is it possible to make them? It should be. Education. This is how the ancients viewed education: training the citizen to be the best possible citizen (and therefore human being) they could be. It is inside this desire to create a thoroughly decent human being that we find the questions of morality, desire, turpitude, and, alternately, the place of truth and honesty in the life of the citizen.
This was, in other words, the birthplace of logic. In the course of this logic, there cropped up the eternal question: what of the soul? The ancients went crazy. There is a whole science full of its own signs and significations that the Neo-Platonists got into where they were actually defining the soul—or attempting to do so. Over-zealous as they may have been, they did interesting work and proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that interest in this issue of the soul would probably not die out quickly.
It didn’t. It should also be noted here that, in the language of that era (and I believe most people are dealing with Latin here) soul, mind, and reason all translate as roughly the same word—think about that in terms of the good book for a second.
(Quick side note: I think that Christians are doing themselves a very great disservice in cutting themselves off from other potential readings of their book. There are incredible lessons in that book that get missed because we don’t know how to read it.)
Anyhow, with the fall of the Roman Empire came the Dark Ages and for 1000 years, with many of the manuscripts of the ancients lost, the Christian church grew.
Then came the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and the bastions of Christianity started falling and making way for thinkers like Nietzsche, Hegel, Sartre, Kant, Steiner etc etc etc, and the intellectual revolution was underway… but all great thinkers come upon the one question that will perpetually baffle:
“I say my good man, but what of this “soul” business?”
But it was essentially shelved and labeled “a bummer” because there was simply no way to know—I believe this was sort of the birth of Nihilism: if there’s no way to know, then what’s the point? Please, for the love of god, don’t go getting all technical with the definitions of Nihilism because I could’ve just have easily phrased it: if there’s no way to know, then everything’s true! To believe in nothing is actually quite a feat. At any rate, you catch my drift I’d imagine.
Steiner once said that the spirit surrounds the unique physical manifestation of itself, and then went on to describe it as something that actually penetrates through the layers of physical self and extends beyond, out into space. “In his later years, Velazquez never painted things. He painted the space around them.”
That’s where the spirit can be most easily seen. When it gets all mixed up with the physicality of the body, strange things happen.
All things that can be said to be share the similar trait of being. They are all connected by this, if by nothing else. And it could be said that that connection, whatever it is, is the universal spirit. People, animals, planets, galaxies, and whatever else was, is, will be are unique physical manifestation of the universal spirit—a bit like an arm hair or a pimple or a fingernail: never exactly the same, although they look awfully goddamned similar.
Well, I looked all over. I found eastern texts to contain a similar kind of structure, albeit in different words or a different style. It seems like there are four basic elements to human existence: the body (the seat of the spirit and the mind), the consciousness (sensations of external and internal sense), the subconscious (involuntary activity), and the spirit (the answer to the question: “why is there something instead of nothing?”).
Religions are usually a manifestation of a too-heavy emphasis on only one or two aspects of existence. The key is balance.
That’s a lie. The key is effort. Balance is impossible. One of the unique quirks of the universe is that nothing NOTHING is perfect (if only because nature doesn’t understand the terminology), and balance is a kind of perfection. One must try diligently to achieve that which they know is, in the end, not achievable because that is the path that will lead them towards knowledge of the world that lies inside of everything, that universal spirit that pervades everything, tearing through what we think is impenetrable, and making of us all unique universal manifestations, special, and ultimately dead, but that’s okay: to not enjoy sentience would be the greatest sin of all.
Heidegger has this thing about the four-fold: the heavens, the earth, the mortals and immortals. The earth is the consciousness: it makes the sensory world possible. The heavens are the sub-conscious: think the word “god” and you might be on to something. The mortals are the bodies that we receive: our unique manifestation. The immortals would be the spirit: immortality and eternity permeating every thing.

What’s the World Coming To?

2011-02-04T11:28:00.001-08:00

A more appropriate question might be: what is it that I’ve become? As a result of the decisions I have made, as a result of the situations I have been forced to deal with, and as a result of the education that gave me the gift of sight I made a decision. I made it a long time ago. If there’s no sense in fighting it, then there’s no reason to fight it, and if there’s no reason to fight it, the best one can do is to simply step outside of it and provide an example of alternate possibilities.
It must be as a result of the possibilities that I have found in my own head that I see them in the world-at-large, but this hardly matters when you consider how narrow each individual path is, and it’s strange to think of how things rely on each other—what is the narrow without the wide?
There are very rarely things that are easily separable into even two. Dichotomies are only ever two by virtue of their prefix, for their further destruction into their own component parts rules out the possibility of ever reaching binaries. There is always a third, and usually a fourth, lurking perhaps unseen.
Black
White
Gray
Shades of Gray
All things mirror the universal structure. There are things. There are things we can sense. There are the things we do involuntarily. There is the answer to the question: why is there something instead of nothing?
Obviously, even this falls in on itself when we begin to see that the things we can sense have a parallel—or perhaps a perpendicular—that runs through the answer to the question when we “feel” one way or another about an idea.
An atom: protons, neutrons, electrons, and the cloud that hides the electrons and their movements… begging the question and subsequent un-answer.
If you’re gone for too long, when you come back you sometimes think it would’ve been better to have just stayed gone forever.
But then you get to hang out with your nephews, you get to spend time with the family that has always been there for you, and you get to spend most of your days doing what you feel like you need to do, the decision becomes a markedly more difficult one, doesn’t it?
It’s easier to be less disappointing when being it somewhere far away.
Or is it that I need my life to be my own, free from the tyranny and rancor of the bulk of humanity. It is difficult to know what to want, but that’s the most fruitful aspect of the human experience. It is inside those questions of what things are coming to, and being able to see them honestly, recite them faithfully, and understand them truthfully that we begin to watch the flower of our humanity take root. And when once taken root, the tendency for most plants—be they of the spiritual or physical nature—is toward growth.
Nurture the questions of existence. Breathe in the death you accept and exhale it as the possibilities of what the world could be.
Sometimes making words is like making love,
One makes meaning in the physical/mental/psychological
And the other the mental/psychological/spiritual
Realms.

A Winter Mind's A-Wandering

2011-01-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

I curse time’s non-existence.
That’s a helluva first thought, isn’t it?
It is, at once, challenging, thought-provoking and a statement that comes off like a question. That’s what I can do. That’s about the only thing I think I’m even slightly good at, but a well-constructed sentence, carrying heft and meaning, has very little place in our world any more.
It makes me want to cry. As I wander through my dealings with the English language on a daily basis, I encounter—as one would expect—egregious liberties being taken with it. That would probably be the most politically correct way I could say the thought in my head. However, that particular version would probably not be thought too much of in some circles of society, and it would be rendered otherwise—or at least this might be how it’s registered in the listener’s head: They’s some dumb muthafuckers out there. The reality is, as usual, sitting somewhere between the two extremes.
Personally, I am hyper-sensitive to language. When language is being used in a way other than that to which it ought (verb tenses and the like), my ears immediately perk up. What I’m not doing, by any stretch of the imagination, is making some kind of snap judgment about a person based on their relationship to language; however, what I am doing is becoming aware that there is something unique in the language of my interlocutor. It could be there for a variety of reasons. As you speak over periods of time, you can gather details about whether this is ignorance (having never been taught it), a learned behavior from some external stimuli, or if it is, in fact, stupidity.
It would probably be accurate to say that in all of my experiences with this sort of thing, stupidity has almost never been the root.
The failure is usually in the past. As a matter of fact, I hereby declare that every failure is in the past. Can you imagine a future failure? That’s exactly the point: you’d have to imagine it. The fact of failure is simply that it exists only in the past tense. So, here we encounter the fact that any present misuse of the language has its root in the past. Well, looky here, son: the key to the door of the past simultaneously unlocks the door of confusion—or, otherwise: reflection, refraction, and refucktion.
So, when I hear people flagrantly abusing their own language, as if it were nothing to them, I grin and bear it. It ain’t their fault. They’s jest doin’ what thur pappy taught ‘em.
But all that being said, I fear for the future of the United States of America.
When a county’s people are so comatose from all the drugs and sitcoms and booze that they can get their hands on, they can’t see spectrums of importance very clearly.
There I go, once again professing to have some kind of insight into the things of importance. In reality, the only things I know for sure are related to my experience and my understanding of certain concepts. My understanding.
I could say to you that sometimes one of the only things that higher education teaches you is that getting ahead in this world isn’t worth it—especially if you’re an earnest student of the arts.
I could say to you that money is imaginary and carries only the weight of metaphor—which I’ll grant you is pretty epic, but you’ll pull out a dollar and ask me why something that is constantly unstable can’t be real?
Which will make me think.
When was the last time anybody thought about how unstable the human person is? From the thoughts that occur to us at any given time to the dead skin that is constantly falling off our bodies to the emotions that rock us to the core one moment and leave us indifferent the next: nothing that is alive is ever stationary.
But, then that would mean that money is alive.
Consider the implications of that for just a moment.
What we might be approaching is something like the definition of what it means to be alive.
If something is alive, then it only follows that it should share at least one other characteristic of other things that are alive. It is possible to say that even rocks are alive—especially at a cellular level. What, then, could all living things possibly have in common?
It just might be that they are all constantly in involuntary activity. That’s the cellular structure. At the cellular level, everything is moving. You could even go farther and say that at the atomic level this idea is still applicable.
This definition might, at first, seem too broad, but what if it isn’t broad enough?
The universe is constantly in involuntary motion, isn’t it?
Is the universe alive?
If the universe is alive, what are the implications?
If history has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is that nothing that lives can’t die. All things that are alive will eventually die. Our sun, our earth, our solar system, our galaxy and, yes, even our universe will eventually stop being alive. All you have to do to understand this concept is think about the average lifespan of a housefly (or some such critter) and think about its concept of time. Comparatively, every single day in the life of a housefly is roughly equivalent to 2-3 years of a human life. One day = three years. One day = One thousand days (give or take). Apply this same concept to the idea of us, our solar system, etc, and you’ll begin to see how time ripples out over the cosmos—making the end of it something beyond comprehension but, realistically, well outside of the realm of possibility within the span of human existence (ALL of human existence).
This could possibly be interpreted as a negative situation. One might possibly pose the question: “where then is our importance?” Our importance in the place of the universe is that we have been given the precious opportunity to experience it. Therefore, it becomes our responsibility, our duty, and our obligation to explore it and experience it as much as is possible. The depths of the reality and un-reality of the human experience are the as-yet unplumbed depths of possibility.
“As-yet unplumbed? Are you kidding? Look at what we’ve accomplished!”
And the response is: “It is truly astounding. Indeed, it is one of the greatest marvels of human endeavor that this thing sits here before me, and I acknowledge that; however, I can’t help but think about how limited the things of this earth are. They work nowhere else.
Perhaps the soul is like that as well. Perhaps if we were to manage to travel to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and meet the people there, it wouldn’t matter how different we were, they would’ve by now come to the same conclusions that the soul offers: care genuinely about understanding and being understood, with patience and practice most things suddenly become possible, and that honesty, faithfulness and truthfulness are the keys to establishing and maintaining relationships. Or, as an alternate possibility, they’d annihilate us with their annihilat-a-ma-tron because we’re different and from somewhere else. Either is as likely it would seem.

Consider the Turtle

2010-11-23T08:57:00.001-08:00

Or don’t. It doesn’t really matter to me. Seriously. When I think about the things that are worthy of consideration, whether or not you consider the turtle doesn’t even make it on the top 500. But I’m beginning to think that this perspective is not in keeping with the public at large.
Let’s be honest. There are a helluva lot of people out their giving a helluva lot of attention and care to some super serious horse shit.
Bugger ‘em.
Relax, bro. You can’t really help it that you got involved in this situation, now do what’s right and get out.
Simple as.
But why does it seem like we want that kind of thing going on in the first place? It is as if people put themselves in these situations deliberately—if only to have something interesting to talk about.
My most extreme apologies if I don’t give a flying fuck about who’s fucking who. Excuse me if the goings on of Ryan Reynolds or Brad Pitt or one of the new ones that I’m not even aware of don’t have any bearing WHATSOEVER on my existence. Reading about other people’s shitty or glorious lives does nothing for me unless it’s surrounded by a few hundred pages so I can know EVERYTHING—or at least everything I’m supposed to know. This dealing in portions from parties to create a feast always winds up tasting foul.
I am distrustful of law because it deals with types and not individual instances. In higher courts you cite court precedent, but as soon as you do you are saying, “This is the same type of thing.” Nothing is ever the same. Nothing.
On the other hand, it is only through the proceedings of the trial that we can all attempt a kind of more-appropriate judgment.
If you dig too deeply into the facts, the facts will overwhelm you. If you don’t dig deep enough, they all begin to look the same.
What I’m saying is precisely the opposite of the unintended intentionality that you’ve recently been reading so much about.
Consulting slowly now the last remaining brain cells bent on creation, what do we find but that which can be created can create
or destroy and that which can be destroyed can be created or destroyed.
Does that mean we’re all creators and destroyers?
Yes.
Yes, it does.
There once was a man named Roderick Jason Taffeta. Rodi, as his sister called him, was consistently careful.
Careful to jump out of airplanes only when the proper altitude had been reached. Careful to ensure that the bungee cable had been checked thoroughly before dropping 143 meters and screaming for what seemed like ever. Careful to pack exactly two days of food and no map for the three day hike in the mountains. Careful to experience as much as he could as safely as he could.
“Give recklessness a go!” came the din.
“No.”
“Once?!?!”
“I’ll do just about anything once, if it seems to be worth it… which only a vast array of experiences can tell you.”
“You are a strange sort of fellow… saying nothing and something simultaneously.”
“Thirsting I see.”
“Right…”
“We got hotdogs and American cheese on slices of bread with Mac and Cheese for dinner Rodi,” called his sister from somewhere in the distance, “come on down.”
Awesome, he thought to himself… Awesome to the max…

Dear Fates~

2010-11-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

I am setting out, embarking as it were, on a new chapter—perhaps a new book—in my existence, and I suppose that this little epistolary communiqué is meant to be a plea. May the transition not be too easy, but neither make it too hard. May it be not unendurable at the very least, and endurable at the most.
You see, I’m especially susceptible to the visceral kinds of emotions and feelings that one encounters when doing what I am going to do, and there is a part of me that is almost excessively worried about what it going to happen to my brain when it begins to settle into a new mode of being. I’ve done it before, you know, and it’s something like a metaphysical hemorrhaging that happens: the spirit opens up, gushes forth, and it is everything a body can do to keep it basically enclosed. By this I mean that particular kind of gushing that is unbecoming of a spirit and makes the body and the mind vulnerable to all kinds of attacks. The gushing of the spirit in goodwill and kindness towards other human beings is downright beautiful, but this particular kind of gushing is dangerous. When the blood is gushing into the heart to be pumped into the lungs, where it is filled with oxygen, then gushed back into the heart and then sent to the extremities of the body where it nourishes needs, we have good gushing. When the skin has been ruptured due to some external force or implement, and blood is gushing out of the body, there is a distinct sense of peril.
Basically, I’m scared. Should we be afraid, at least a little bit, of the people we love? I think so. Love exists in at least two realms, and it has taken me a long time to come to terms with this: the love we share and the love we keep for ourselves. The love we share is combination love. When we love each other, when we say that we love our relationship it is a particular kind of love. When I say that I love ____. That is my love. That person cannot take away that love from me, so long as I choose to hold onto it. The love that is a combination of loves can be ripped asunder as soon as one person steps away from the equation. After all, if there is only one person in a love relationship, in what sense is there a relationship.
Family, being whatever it is, is in the unique situation that it manages to cross those two boundaries. Your immediate family cannot, technically, be ripped asunder. Your father is the man who impregnated your mother, and your siblings are those who were a further part of that union. You can say, “You’re not my father,” but that doesn’t make it any less true that your father is in fact your father. That’s family: even verbally disowned is still blood related. Divorce or disowning is the ending of the first kind of love, but the second kind of love remains as long as we hang onto it.
Is that romantic? That’s what I’m dealing with here. Do you see how it’s dangerous for me? Do you see why I need your help?
I’ve been gone so long. A decade IS a long time, isn’t it? I know that from the high point of knowledge of history, ten years is not a very long time, but on the scale of a human life, and during the formative years especially, a decade can be forever.
I know that all I can do is be the me that I’ve become, and believe me that’s what I plan to do, but I’m just hoping (against hope) and praying (to whoever/whatever might hear me) that what I have become is worthy of where I’ve been and what I’ve done. You have been so good to me already, and it is my ardent desire that the gifts I have been granted, the possibilities I have ridden, and the events of my existence have carved out of the marble block of me a suitable character.
All that being said, I’ll cut you a deal… if you even make deals. I will do my best to continue on the path to becoming the best me that I can be if you continue to offer me the blessings you have so consistently offered and the lessons you have so unswervingly, parentally taught me. The balance I feel in my life is thoroughgoing. For every opportunity I have taken, it feels as though an equal effort to experience that opportunity fully has followed, and I only hope that I am not mistaken in this. So, if I continue to work hard to improve myself: mind, body and soul, will your lot continue to reward me when you see fit and teach me when necessary?
Let my fear be a sign unto your greatness. I don’t know your official title (the title of this piece is simply perfunctory and expedient), and I can’t say that you go by the same name everywhere, but I am quite certain that you are, whatever that may mean. And I will take that old mystic fallacy of the drug culture with me to the end of my days, and perhaps beyond, but there must be somebody tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
I feel you when lost in the music in my guitar.
I feel you in the words that issue from my fingers.
I feel you in the motion of the seasons.
I feel you are everything.
I feel you might be composed of nothingness.
I am afraid of you.
I do love you.
I go to meet you wherever you are.
I am in perpetual awe,
and I think you appreciate that more than anything.
Peace
Love &
Gonzo
Eli
p.s. If it’s not too much trouble, could you find it in your infiniteness to direct my course to people I can help to grow and people who can help me to grow.

Work

2010-10-13T05:28:00.001-07:00

“There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily. Labor omnia vincit improbus.”

“When ascetics stay in one place for a long time,
they begin to languish, stuck in a mire of sloth and intertia.”

“There is no royal road to learning, no short cut to the acquirement of any valuable art.”

People who come up to me after playing a show somewhere often say that they too want to learn the guitar, and, usually, that they even tried, but they gave it up for one reason or another. Anybody that asks me for a free lesson or two, gets them almost immediately because they actually take no time whatsoever to learn:

1) Play every day: the more the better. If you can only play for 30 minutes, that’s fine, but if you can play for two hours, that’s better. Half of playing guitar is the ability for your fingers to hold down the strings for a long time, and if you don’t play every day the muscles in your fingers atrophy. Nobody thinks about finger muscles.

2) Give it time. Perhaps in 6 years of steady playing, you will be competent. Even if you’re playing it as a hobby for thirty minutes every day, you will be decent enough in a few years. If you’re really serious and play two hours every day, sure, that time will probably reduce, but if after one year you can play a C and a G chord really, really well, you probably don’t understand how far you’ve come…

Most things in this life could probably be boiled down to these two little rules: practice and be patient. As a matter of fact, I personally guarantee that absolutely anybody can learn absolutely any skill with enough practice and patience. Admittedly, we’re dealing in the world of the physical here. By that I mean it might not be possible for anybody to learn the details of string theory or quantum mechanics or neo-materialist literary theories, but if somebody wants to learn how to bake, having had no previous experience with flour or ovens or cutting in butter or anything, with enough time and enough practice, they will eventually be able to bake about anything you could want.
As a matter of fact, I would say that anybody CAN learn about quantum mechanics or string theory or anything else if they are determined to. It might take twenty years of daily effort, but if they want it badly enough, they will get there.
Therein lies the nut, though. Desire is something that we generally consider to be the major player in the world of the physical. I want your body. You want to kiss me. I want to eat delicious food. I want to see something beautiful. I want to learn how to play the guitar. I want to learn to bake. What gets lost in the melee of growth and development that happens as a result of desire transmuted into effort for the acquisition of the desired object(ive) is that desire is mental. What happens when you learn something new or put effort into getting something? The mind expands. The mental world that you have developed for yourself grows in conjunction with the skill or effort required to possess the object petit a.
Sometimes what we think we want has nothing to do with what we really want, and the only possible remedy for such a situation is the attempted acquisition of what we think we want, because only then will we be able to have the truth of our desires.
Oh, let them talk about the constant motion of desire and the inability to ever have what we want, should we decide against ever attempting to acquire our desires, the human experience seems to get lost. Perhaps it is that we have become too accustomed to our inability to have what we desire:
--Beautiful celebrity bodies being paraded on every channel
--Unobtainable automobiles
--Skills obtainable but requiring a lot of effort
--Advertisements for things not everybody can afford
Perhaps we try for a while. We go to the gym. We save up every month. We practice for a while. We play the lottery. But years of failure have taught us all that we can’t get most of the things we desire, so what’s the point in trying?
We are all ascetics. When we languish in our mires of sloth and inertia, our resolve grows weak, and when once resolve is weakened, the dam might as well have already been breached.

All Things Come to an

2010-10-04T21:17:00.001-07:00

end, but not all things get finished… or at any rate finished in the way that we want them to be. It’s funny how instructive our middle school years can be in this arena. Thinking back on timed group projects where the winners were the first people to completely finish their project, I remember the dejection of looking at an unfinished project when the time came to an end.
On the other hand, it also seems as if when a things finishing time and ending time coincide there is a moment of something-or-other. It’s that moment when you look around and see that everything is as best as it could be for the moment, and something like a touch of pride comes over you for having done what you set out to do in the allotted amount of time.
My time in Korea is coming to an end. In just over a month I will board a plane and return to the land of my birth, to the land of pounds and inches (good-bye the simplicity of a system based on tens), to a land of expansive emptiness and massive cities (although Seoul puts them all to shame in terms of mass), to the land of freedom, and to the land of beer that’s worth drinking.
I think part of why I am okay with leaving Korea now is that I have finished my project: a book reflecting the culture of Korea (emphasis on reflection), noting personal adventures, and full of cogitations on what it means to be a human being in general.
Freedom comes up frequently in these thought-sessions, and it occurs to me that freedom is a concept that exists in the two worlds of existence: physical and mental.
In the physical realm, it is usually pretty easy to tell if you have freedom: are you confined to move in a small space, do you wear shackles, or do you live behind a locked door that you didn’t lock. On a larger scale, there are the geographical confines of the country in which you live and the reality that other countries are different: language, culture, values, morals, etc. It’s amazing how much of a factor fear plays in the reality of freedom. I find that a lot of Americans have the attitude that there is probably no better place to live in the world than America, so why should anybody ever leave. From a psychological standpoint, I believe it’s that they fear their paper towers might be torn down from the reality of another country being… better than America. On the other hand, Koreans aren’t afraid of that. Most of them don’t like Korea and want to go somewhere else, but they don’t because there aren’t many places where speaking Korean is going to get you very far… so they learn English. Physically confined, whether from an institutional or geographic sense, is usually uncomfortable for the other side.
Freedom of thought is an incredible thing. The ability to have a revolution of the mind is perhaps the greatest freedom in the world, and it must be owned that western people are generally the people that have this characteristic. From an early age, we learn that it is entirely possible to defy our parents. We say, “No!!” we bear our punishment, and we learn that it will be just fine—and perhaps all of this because it’s what we see all over the culture (especially in the media). This one characteristic of Western thought carries itself through to moe in the adult manifestation of our ability to change our mind and be independent. Perhaps that’s what we don’t understand when we are children, but the defiance that we pay for is exacted from us in the future as well with the independence we must all bear. On the other hand, Korea is a country where when father or mother says you “should” do something, it’s the same as saying you “must” do something. What seems like a hint or a nudge in America is an edict in Korea, and you can probably guess what an order feels like to a Korean. If mommy or daddy says you must do something, there is really no not doing it. What they get from it, though, is essentially a lifetime of dependable dependence. They’ll live with mom and dad until they get married, and mom and dad will determine if the boy is worthwhile or not—usually depending on how much money the boy has and what prospects he has for the future.
At any rate, my time being associated with these cultural differences is coming to an end, and a whole new period of being culturally different from the place I am is going to begin. I am afraid of this particular ending.
I’m afraid because it feels finished. I’m afraid because I have changed so much. I’m afraid because I plan to be in a place that I haven’t been, steadily, for ten years. I’m afraid I might like it. I’m afraid I will find it odious.
Sometimes beginnings are far more terrifying than endings.
What I have gotten used to, and what is coming to an end, is simply (yet complicatedly) this: everything I now know is just a little different. Did you catch the most important word in that sentence? EVERYTHING. Every single thing is just a little bit different than what I used to know, and now everything I’m used to is tinged with the dust of being just slightly different. Everything from McDonald’s special sauce to the grocery store experience to the pub experience to the restaurant experience to the food experience (which is sometimes VERY different) to walking down the street is different. There is nothing like seeing big groups of Koreans standing on opposite corners of a vacant street and not daring to cross because the sign is telling them not to… I always think that my mighty western ability to think logically tells me that there is no danger, so I can probably run across. Also, I know that’s called jaywalking, but tell me the last time you saw somebody get a ticket for jaywalking… much less a foreigner on a neighborhood street in Suwon, South Korea.
It’s all ending. The parts that remain unfinished are simply my relations with the people I have met here. The people I’ve become acquainted with are very special to me. It can be difficult to make lasting friendships here (look up Aristotle’s three types of friends) and this is because there is that nagging, lingering reality in the back of your head that reminds you of the ending of your time here. Generally speaking, you can come away every year with about two or three truly good friends. The hundreds of others that you wind up meeting all fall to the wayside eventually—for me at least. Once again, the physical aspect of the friendship is coming to an end, but the mental aspect endures until such time as the physical can be re-ignited.
All endings are beginnings, but not all finishes are. When you finish a race, you don’t immediately begin another race. However, at the end of the race, you begin a period of not running. I’m not sure if my logic is spot on in this aspect, but I think it’s something like all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Finishes and endings are certainly related, but why do movies not end with the words: The Finish. Even the French “fin” or the Italian “fine” that comes at the end of movies translates to “end.” What is their relationship? Finishes, it seems to me, are those brief periods of elation or dejection that come from small victories or defeats on the way to the end. Life will end, and whether the bulk of your experience comes on the side of defeat or victory, remember that what’s important is growth, learning, and the ability to free the mind from dangerous constraints while developing it into a muscle for good.

Appypollylogies

2010-09-26T23:25:00.000-07:00

This is once again bound to be more of a journal entry instead of a serious inquiry into the state of the human character, but perhaps there is something inside the things we do that helps us get a glimpse of what we are.
I’ve been on vacation for a week. It all started last Monday. We just had to get through Monday, and then we were all free for a week—Korean Thanksgiving… thank you for falling smack in the middle of the week this years instead of on the weekend like last year. So, as was usual, I made some tentative plans: off to the mountains on Tuesday, in the mountains on Wednesday, back home Thursday, pub quiz Thursday night, Friday – friend’s going away party, on Saturday my band was making its debut, and Sunday was a day devoted to time well spent with an important person in my life—my intimate friend.
But Monday came first, and Monday morning I found that I needed to clean my apartment because I was hosting a small gathering that night. This took up most of my morning. Work is six and a half hours of teaching small children the intricacies, delicacies and preposterousness of the English language. Then, the gathering began with one. Then, there were two, and then our party was complete with four, and we decided to eat grilled pig intestine and drink perhaps too much. After much, much, soju, beer, and bokbunja, it was time for pool and the continuation of the imbibing of quantities of the aforementioned. Once again… vacation. Celebrate now, because to wait for even a moment puts you in danger of regret.
Tuesday morning was rapid packing for going into the mountains. It was easier packing than usual because we didn’t plan to rough-it as much as we could have—by “we” I mean myself and my Chinese best friend: just a couple of nights camping but not having to cook. More expensive, but we were in celebration mode as it may or may not be one of the last times we ever see each other.
Unfortunately, when we arrived in the city that was the gateway to the mountains, there was one of those… what’re they called… typhoons. That’s the one. Camping became a last resort very quickly. So, we took a bus to the base of the mountain range where there was a small village and stepped into a hotel and out of the incessant rain: 30 dollars for a floor with pads, a TV, a fridge and a bathroom. Grand. I have an idea…
Because this room had no beds, it turned out that it was the perfect size to pitch our two individual tents and have our camping experience right in the motel.
First, we’d eat and get a little tipsy, because there is nothing like putting up a tent when the odds are most against you.
The night ended on a jocund note: the pure enjoyment of good company, good food, good drinks, and the knowledge that this moment is significant.
Seoraksan National Park in South Korea’s Gangwon-do has had a very special place in my heart for a long time. The first time I went there, I went with a friend, and we managed to find perhaps the most difficult hiking experience in Korea. The second time I went, I once again went with a friend to tackle the beast again and test it and myself; however, we were turned away because of lingering snow on the top which we were not prepared for. The third time I went, I went alone, and conquered that trail with something like aplomb, and including a brief dip in the river along which I hiked. This was my fourth time in the park, and for the first time, because of some safety concerns involving the slippery nature of the large rocks Korea uses to create their trails, it was time to stay at the base of the park and do all those things that most people usually do when they go to the park.
The rain ended in the morning, and we woke up prepared. There were waterfalls to see. Just past the entrance gate to the park, there is a left hand turn that leads to a series of waterfalls which terminates in something called The Rain Dragon Waterfall. It had rained heavily for almost 24 straight hours. The streams were swollen and the river was heaving. Essentially, somebody very big had seen that this series of waterfalls actually resembled an entire dragon: smaller falls all the way up, curving, jumping, diving, leaping, powerful falls in themselves, to a powerful fall that became a nexus point for the entire stream. All the water that went down to the valley came from this point. Magic.
Then we took the cable car to the top of a mountain where, with a little rock climbing, you could literally stand on a rock that you had no doubt was the exact tippy top of this mountain, and the expansive views were definitely incredible—but I’ll contend that when you walk all the way up there it seems even more moving. We ate some stuffed squid and took a little nature walk for a couple of hours, left the park feeling how powerful the sight/smell/touch/taste/feel of nature could be, had some more stuffed squid and beef stew, and then we went camping.
It isn’t quite fall in Korea. It’s just around the corner, and it usually lasts for a week, but every once in a while, mother nature likes to send previews of what lies in the future, and after a typhoon seemed like the perfect time: it froze. We froze. For the first time in almost 6 months, I believe that it was actually 0 degrees celcius.
Thursday was about the trip home. When I got home, I got a surprise visit from the girl I’ve been seeing, and, after a couple of hours, as I was putting her on the bus home I got a reminder about the pub quiz happening that night. “I’ll be there man.”
Fortunately, we took a cab—it’s an hour and a half walk, but I was tired. Unfortunately, we lost the pub quiz. Unfortunately, we decided to walk home. When I arrived at home, I literally fell on my bed, not feeling well, and having an uncomfortable presentiment about the following days.
I woke up Friday, or rather I should say I finally got out of bed at 7pm. The truth is that I woke up at 8:30am to vomit, and spent the rest of the day not doing anything or talking to anybody, because I sounded like Tom Waits with strep—band performance tomorrow… I’m the lead singer…
It’s always strange to watch someone go away from Korea. You know they all eventually will, but you never get over the sense that your time here is transitory, your days here ARE numbered, and that very soon it will be you that’s the one leaving. At any rate we looted our friends apartment after a night of debauchery—a strange, soothing, mollifying process that lets you know they’re gone and pacifies you with things you need but haven’t been about to acquire.
Saturday consisted of 18 cups of tea, cold medicine, and rest—not to mention loads of emails to the band members about the probability that our show might not happen then deciding that it’s going to happen no matter what. It happened. It was our debut. Considering that it was our first ever performance, that we practice once a week (sometimes 2, sometimes 0), and that I still sounded like Tom Waits with strep, it went over pretty well. At the very least, we got a lot of sycophantic praise that we stuffed into our caps and walked away with. And we did walk away, too… 45 minutes away to a chicken and pizza restaurant. Booze kept me going, and when I got home, it ensured that sleep was almost immediate.
Sunday was a day devoted to the girl I’ve been seeing, but I hadn’t unpacked from Seoraksan, I hadn’t done any cleaning in almost a week, the dishes were still piled up from the last two days’ extended couch stay, and I had promised to make her food—the ingredients of which were absent from my apartment. So, I did what needed doing: dragged myself out of bed, forced myself to ignore that my body felt like it had been through a meat grinder, went to the supermarket, cleaned my apartment, and started cooking. Galbi jjim, look it up, it’s delicious, and it uses grated pear in its sauce.
Essentially, it was another day in bed… essentially.
She left at 8pm. At 10:30 I was asleep. I woke up at 10:30 this morning and played guitar for 2.5 hours until I had to go to work.
That’s it. That’s the end of another week…

I am

2010-09-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

exhausted.
But that’s how I like to be.
I have been so active in the course of the last couple of weeks that I am finding it difficult to function right now. What I need is something like fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep in a cool room with no thoughts of doing anything other than sleeping. That’s what I plan to do, too.
But I’ve performed twice in three days, been heroically drunk, done things that a good boyfriend ought to do, and I am the proud owner of a bronze medal bearing the mark of a bodybuilding competition in which I took part in the bench press competition.
I think it’s entirely possible that drinking beer from noon until 2am the night before the competition seriously affected my performance, and I actually feel pretty bad about the whole thing because the team that took second place earned that spot by virtue of the fact that they did one more rep than my team.
Jam session
Open mic host
Going away party
Pool hall adventure
Outdoor music and beer festival
Bench Press Contest/Open Mic
Now I’m at work. It’s not that I don’t like work, but I’m certainly not that fond of it that I want to be there while simultaneously being completely exhausted. It’ll be fine.
Unrelated note: I think that one thing Asian animation has going for it is that it does still no how to make a body wait for the action. It understands how to build tension by making you wait for the smoke to clear, and, what’s more, they’ve even managed to make so many of these similar situations that a body is still not sure if the maneuver just pulled off will be successful or an utter failure. Sometimes the smoke clears and it’s all over. Sometimes the smoke clears, and it’s just beginning. That makes for a pretty decent life metaphor, doesn’t it? I’m waiting for the smoke to clear and I’m not sure if what I’ve done here will have been successful or fruitless.)
I have 9 weeks left in Korea—that’s the outside figure. The inside figure is six weeks. These facts are playing wild tricks on my mind. You see, I’ve gotten so used to being in Korea and on my own that it’s difficult to imagine how I will adjust to being in a place where people understand not only my language—well, for the most part—but also the way my mind works.
What’ll it be like to take the spirit that I have developed for adventure in Korea and turn it toward my homeland: every day is an adventure here, and I will desperately attempt to keep that same frame of mind for the return home.
For example, the other night I was busking in Seoul near Gangnam station, when a group of foreigners came up to where me and my friend had set up shop and started talking to us about things and stuff. It turns out that they were also from Suwon and just happened to be visiting Seoul. Two of them had been in country for two weeks and were still wild with the excitement and newness of things. Well, we had stuffed our earnings into a backpack and decided to head home. When we got to the bus stop, we realized that we didn’t have the bag. We trooped back to our home base and noticed that the bag was gone. We assumed/hoped/prayed that the people we’d just met had picked it up, but as none of them had phones, and only one of them asked for an email address, it was still a bit touch and go. Anyhow, we consoled ourselves that all we lost was money, some extra clothes, and a small day pack… in other words, nothing too important.
The next day I was having dinner with my girlfriend when I received a phone call from a friend of mine who had received a phone call from a friend of his saying that he had a backpack that belonged to a certain busker. Ah, the way the universe moves is sometimes extremely intriguing. At any rate, that which was lost on Saturday was returned on Sunday, money and clothes in tact. As a bonus to the story, the guy who picked up the bag (and you’d better believe I treated him to a few beers for the effort) is also a pianist, and it has been mentioned that the band I am currently fronting could use a good keys player… I’ve invited him to our practice. He does also play the saxophone, which could be interesting.
What kind of equivalent story will there be when I wander back through the world of the United States of America. Could I, like I did at the music festival, walk up to the organizer, say, “Could I play a few songs?” and wind up as one of the performers? Could I win 3rd place at a weightlifting competition? Could I find out how small the world is meeting good ‘ol Midwestern boys while busking and having it turn out that they are all somewhat musically inclined? What are the chances?
If I remember correctly from two years ago, it is sometimes hard to meet people attempting. It can be somewhat difficult to encounter people that are actively seeking out newness and freshness and coincidence and beauty and truth and going and doing and being. What I seem to remember is complacency and apathy and an entire generation of people that forgot about Rage Against the Machine and are currently growing fat and illusioned and sinking into the illusion and loving it. Plato’s image of people staring at the shadows on the wall and believing that the shadows are the things themselves rings in my ears when I see the vapid reality of modern culture all over the world. If you’re not going to attempt to see the objects for themselves at least take the time to try to find the light source.
Damnation, I do get preachy sometimes, but forgive me for being invested.
So, perhaps I have just answered some of my own questions. I have a unique “in” to the generation I’m talking about. The children of this country are being daily corrupted by an educational system that is focused on attempting to gain funding for things they’re not even sure about: when the business of education becomes the business of making money the business of educating slowly moves down the rungs of importance. The older generations are too set in their ways. It is the generation of affectable human beings between University and their mid-thirties to forties that hold the keys to the future of this country and whether or not we will become a nation of dunces or a nation of people committed to understanding the reality of things. Are we ready to take up the struggle? My plan is to put down in print the reality of things and attempt to wake up the slumbering juggernaut of the energy of a generation with so much power it has been purposefully lulled to sleep by the powers of the people that that energy would slaughter. Words should be our weapons. Our battlefield is the field of the mind. When that’s been won, the physical dominoes fall into place. This blog was all over the place… I’m not sorry…

My social calendar is full

2010-08-30T23:31:00.000-07:00

and I hate it. I’m essentially a reclusive ascetic content to spend my days and my time in the comfortable research of what it means to be a human. Every so often, however, it crops up in my research—and in my existence in general—that part of being human is all wrapped in being a part of humanity: the community aspect. Roughly, I am engaged to be functioning in society (as opposed to the gentle autocracy I wield over myself in my own residence) every evening for the next week.
These times are always important for me, and they remind me of how lucky I am that have the opportunity during the other times of my life to pursue those things which seem to fulfill me most fully: study and practice. However, study without application and practice without the game are exercises in masturbation. So it is that these moments of putting what I’ve been studying and practicing have special meaning for me.
I hate the fact that I have to get myself away from practice, but practice is very safe. If you screw something up, nobody’s watching you and quietly saying to themselves (and sometimes yelling loudly): “You suck.” That’s the beauty of practice. It’s the quiet advancement of the self in whatever area you are attempting to improve; however, it is in the game that what you have been practicing for so long really makes itself known.
Okay, it has just occurred to me that what I am differentiating between when I say study and practice is precisely what Plato is always on about: the visible versus the intelligible realm. When I talk about study, it is the reading that takes up some of my time every single day of my life. Whether it be a novel, an academic work, or language acquisition book, the thing I am exercising is my intelligence. When I talk about practice, it is the physical labor involved in acquiring any kind of skill. So, my practice is going to the gym three times a week, playing guitar/singing, and walking.
This is kind of strange, but my intelligible realm and my physical realm seem to have awkward counterbalances… damnit, I’m looking at myself through a strange lens… I would say that walking and language acquisition make up a duo, going to the gym and reading a novel are a duo, and playing music and reading academia are a duo.
When I go walking, I tend to do so at a particular pace and with the express purpose of being in the midst of a walk. Every time you go walking, you can find something new. Oh, that restaurant looks awesome, I’ll have to come back here. Oh, that’s where the library is. You’re picking up the language of the place where you are. The language of where everything is. You’re drawing a map inside your brain by engaging with the physical reality of the thing. This is what the acquisition of language does. Language is the drawing of maps with the mind toward meaning. When you “get the lay of the land” by actually traversing the land in question, this can be likened to getting the lay of the land of language: the more you traverse it, the more you feel comfortable with it. The bulk populace: temperance/consciousness
Going to the gym is something that happens three times a week, and it’s basically always the same. It’s comfortable. I know what I’m going to do. I know how it’s going to feel. I know that it is going to require some effort, but I know that kind of effort all too well—thanks to years and years of practice at it. In short, it’s become something that is basically just a part of my existence. Having spent the last ten years of my life almost insatiably reading novels—for pleasure or for academic purposes, my life would feel naked if it was void of a novel to read. In short, reading novels is comfortable, I know how it’s to be done, I know how it’s going to feel (especially if it’s a good novel—Proust was an exception (I’ve never felt anything like that from a novel)), I know that it will require some effort (or, at least, it should), and I know that effort all too well. The auxiliaries: courage/the body
The practice of music and the study of academia are paired because of the strenuousness of the activities. They require more effort than the others because this is the active attempt to learn something, to change the way I think about myself and the world at large. Music has the special, magical affect of being effective to the mind as it watches harmonies and melodies fall into place. It is basically sensory practice: it has a look, a feel, a sound, a touch, and (in some cases) you can almost taste it when it’s done well—perhaps that’s why we call some music tasteful and others disgusting. Reading scholarly works performs the same actions for the intelligible realms. It helps the mind see more clearly, feel more appropriately, hear what people are saying more thoroughly, touch the inner recesses of the self, and taste what it means to be human. The guardians: wisdom/sub-conscious
It occurred to me (and Gad how I love how writing does this) that writing pervades them all. They are all doing their jobs, and writing is somehow related to all of them. Walking is one of my greatest sources for writing fodder, and one constantly learns about themselves at the gym (if they are paying attention), which means words to be made. Novels are chock full of meaning that needs to be struggled with, and there is nobody out there who would deny that acquiring a second language doesn’t affect the way we write and what we write about: we are language. Finally, the deepest sources of writing whathaveyou comes from the strenuous exercises of practicing music and studying scholastically. The community: morality/spirit
I am just a writer who is doing the job that I’m most fit to do, and it is with this in mind that I bear the labor of pulling myself away from my practice and study in order to gain the knowledge that comes from the combination of theory (that which results from practice and study) with experience. I will bear the inanity and mundanity of a society that has moved away from a desire to truly know what it means to be human and finds itself floundering in a world of trivialities involving which celebrity is wearing what designer and wondering what it must feel like to be a millionaire. I will taste the fruits of the lifestyle I’m battling against in just the same way a flu shot works: a bit of the infection so the body knows what it is fighting against; and I will breathe the air of a freedom that looks good on the outside, but bears inside itself the seed of slavery that will one day ripen. To be the slave of a slave:
Brannigan: I'm de-promoting you, soldier. Kiff, what's the most humiliating job there is?
Kif Kroker: Being your assistant.
Captain Zapp Brannigan: Wrong. Being *your* assistant.

Teacher and Student

2010-08-18T09:05:00.001-07:00

These two labels seem to follow me around and lurk in all the corners of my world. In this moment I’m a student, and fifteen minutes later I’m playing the role of teacher. Even in the sub-conscious realm that writing comes from, it becomes apparent how I see myself:
“I’m a student.”
Vs.
“I’m playing the role of teacher.”
I don’t feel worthy of the title of teacher. To be a teacher is an incredibly important job. It means that the lives of young people are in your hands. I am absolutely certain that the importance of the role of the teacher has been almost completely lost in the bulk of the civilized world—although it might be preserved somewhere in the uncivilized world (although I can’t say for sure). We’re talking about a person who, for an extended period of time, is in control of how our children are learning to think. Imagine the importance of that. Is school important? Hell Yeah! I’m afraid that both schools and teachers have been tainted with a healthy dose of economics and politics, which basically serves to render them impotent.
(In a side note: if you are interested in a world where the educational system is something else, check out “The Glass Bead Game” or it’s alternate title “Magester Ludi” or it’s German title “Das Glasperlenspiel” by Hermann Hesse. It’s… educational, and it won a Nobel Prize for a good reason.)
Being a student is one of the greatest situations you can find yourself in, and what I call “terminal students” are all over the place. I once new a guy who was just heading back to school in order to get his third Master’s Degree. Don’t get me wrong, what I’m talking about here is the fact that I absolutely love being a student, but what I have learned in the last couple of years is that there are most definitely two different kinds of students.
One of the greatest pieces of advice that was ever offered to me, was given by a college professor, and it was just as I was finishing my Master’s Degree and trying to decide whether or not I simply wanted to continue on with my PhD or do something else before jumping right back into academia. She told me that being a professor is more difficult than it looks. Apart from all the academic knowledge that you must be up on: proper ways to make your paper comply with the MLA, tidbits and factoids that you must know, metaphor analyses, and language components (she was definitely an English Lit teacher), there was the fact that so many students from so many various backgrounds walk into your office, and, in a way, it is part of your job to ensure there success somehow. This goes for all subjects and all levels of education, but it is especially true in the studies of the humanities.
With that advice in mind, I embarked on a quest to become a student of life.
Of course, the ironic part of becoming a student of life is that to do this I became a teacher in Korea, but I’m going to be very honest and say that teaching English in Korea is not the most academically intensive occupation one can do.
I have been a lot of places and done a lot of things in this life already, and I feel confident that I have experienced enough to be able to teach some people some things; however, I don’t want to simply be a teacher, I want to be THAT teacher. You know the one, right? The teacher that actually affects their students. Oh, you accept up front that you won’t be able to affect them all, or, what’s even more depressing, even most of them, but I know that I remember the name of my high school English teacher to this day—well, one of them. I don’t know how many teachers I actually had throughout my education—countless perhaps?—but I know that I only remember the names of a few of them, and I’m sure that this is the case with most people.
It is with this goal in mind that I set sail for some of the most random occupations that are available. When I tell my mother that I’m going to be a long distance semi-trailer truck driver for a while and then I’m going to be a farmer, she is—as is certainly appropriate for a mother who is concerned about the state of her offspring—*ahem, concerned. You can imagine the conversation:
“You’re wasting your education. You should be teaching not farming.” Etc.
I know that she means well, but I am getting my graduate degree in living right now, and once I have that, then I can return to the world of academia knowing that I will be well-prepared for the baggage that students will be carrying with them into my office.
Everyone’s path is different. This is the struggle that maintains the parental/progeny battle. As soon as parents understand that their children must be allowed to go their own way at some point, the sooner the world crumbles. They never will and never should accept this because they ARE the owners of years of extraordinarily valuable experience, and it is their job to be the voice of reason that their children disregard but come crawling back to—or not. They represent a path that has been taken, tried, and found acceptable. Children naturally rebel against this path. They want to find themselves, so they must move away from the teachers and be what they’re going to do, be their own teachers, and become students of the world.
Here I sit: studentteacherstudent. I learn daily from Plato and William Thackeray and the guitar and exercise and run-on sentences and inappropriate lists and my students. Meanwhile, I teach the nuances of essay writing, grammar, reading, listening, and writing to some eager and some not-so-eager young faces. Then I come home and try to learn from everything I do.
What I want most in the world is to be a conscientious student, but I find myself to be lazy sometimes.
Have you ever wondered what happens to a mind that is constantly engaged? I want to be very clear and state that engagement and entertainment exist in different realms. Because I have a Korean girlfriend at the moment, last weekend I went to see Step Up 3 in 3D, and I quickly realized that when something is visually stimulating or impressive, the story, the engagement, the challenge (which is a word that I would love to have perpetually associated with the word engagement), and the effort are not necessary. If you’ve ever seen a movie from Hollywood, you can guess the story from the first fifteen minutes.
I digress… Engage the mind and see what happens. It responds remarkably well to challenges. Remember all those people that said they wrote twenty-page papers in one night and got good grades on them. That’s the effect and power of adrenaline mingling with the brain juices. You can accomplish a helluva lot when pressed to do so, or you can accomplish nothing with a lot less effort. Something or nothing seems like a pretty simple choice to make, but effort is something else. For now, I will remain mostly student and look forward to the day when I will be able to say that I am mostly a teacher. Until then, I am always a writer.

Why do we want to feel fear?

2010-08-12T18:33:00.001-07:00

Amusement parks specialize in the peddling of safe fear. The reality is, of course, that on any given day, at an average of 10 minutes per trip with (roughly) thirty people, that math is something like:
30*6=180
180*12=2160
So, more than 2000 people EVERY DAY ride those “terrifying” things. In a year, it’s hundreds of thousands. Those statistics ought to be enough to make one feel absolutely secure in sitting down on those death machines, but why does your stomach still turn and your heart rate jump exponentially?
It’s because—apart from the “being freed from gravity”—there is always that possibility that something will go dreadfully wrong.
Human beings love being that close to danger.
It’s the same in love. We are at once willing and yet unwilling at the same time because we know we’ll be at the precipice of potential disaster, but when it comes to matters of the heart we can be even more unwilling to let our guard down.
As it turns out, most things depend almost entirely on the attitude you take into them. If you take an attitude of arrogance and entitlement into something, you’ll find out pretty quickly that this particular attitude can be quite off-putting to quite a lot of the population. If you take the attitude of genuine interest and enjoyment into whatever venture you’re wandering into, you’ll find that people respond in kind.
I don’t have many opinions that matter. Socrates was right, we’re all ignorant, and it’s because there is too much to know. The amount of things that I know for sure could be counted on a hand that’s been maimed—and indeed that image seems most appropriate—while the things I don’t know couldn’t be compared to all the sand in Hawaii.
It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that I should start to believe in things other than human nature, but it seems like the investigation of that one thing could occupy a body for the entirety of a lifetime. It encompasses everything, see. Politics, literature, art, music, science, math, culture, economics, morality, ethics, sensuality, sexuality, language, and knowledge all fall under the umbrella of human nature.
But it’s unimaginably complex, and that’s a bummer? The structures of exactly how a human goes through its world can be broken down into types, but there is always room for jockeying, and that one piece of information means that there is always room for jockeying in everything.
I teach students how to write long sentences, and it makes me happy when they write nonsense:
Fat Eli and ugly Benjamin almost always drink dirty soju, which is delicious, over the moon, but crazy Alice and stupid Peter powerfully sleep in the subway, which is loud.
Does it mean?
Music means something, I think.
I wonder sometimes whether or not politics in the modern sense of the term has anything to do with the politics as the ancients envisioned it?
What kind of effect does the population size have on the method of governing?
What does it mean that almost all philosophers and political theorists and religions forget about the ground of their theories: is-ness.
Without the body there can be no mind. Without the land there can be no country. Does the mind actually create? Or is it perpetually a step behind?
Right now I feel compelled. That’s all.
It seems like I want to cry, and my stomach hurts, and I’m confused about why it seems like there’s a car horn honking in the next room, and all I really want to do is play the guitar, and I keep wondering when my bowels will unleash the hellish bind that I know is in there, and my computer died, and I don’t know what to do about the future, and how the hell am I going to send all these goddamned books home, and when will I finish my studies of the Korean language, and what do I do about the feelings I feel for a girl I know (and she knows) I’m going to leave in a couple of months, and why do I find myself in that position, and why do I think I actually want that particular situation, and why does it feel safer to love at a distance, and why do I believe that I am (as yet) incapable of loving because I still don’t know myself well enough, and I’m pretty sure I know about four people (probably more) who would hate that statement, and I don’t believe in a Christian god, and I know about a million people who would hate that statement, and what kind of arrogance does it take to know something that’s impossible to know, and what’s wrong with having a belief that’s different, and there are so many words I don’t know, and the decadence I’m dealing with in my life must be remedied, and what’s so decadent about using the air conditioner, and I eat leftovers all week, and survival seems like a more worthy goal than the acquisition of free time, and it is a belief I have that most of the free time across the world is spent exceedingly unproductively, and that makes me very sad, and TVs in taxis makes me even more sad, and the more I understand what is possible for people in general the less I understand people generally, and when will parents learn that their kids inherently want different things than life-givers, and when will kids learn that their parents have that most incredible of all of life’s little educators: experience, and when will humans learn that it doesn’t matter whether we know these things or not it is precisely that conflict has always existed and is necessary and productive when understood as a method for growth and development, and I fucking hate war, I hate war, I hate war, and I don’t understand why people are so bad to each other, and I’m sorry I got into an argument with one of my best friends, and I feel like I need to talk to her, and I had a dream about her the other day and we were in Venice with my father, who looked exceedingly sad as he was perpetually attempting to get away from us while toting (very literally) two babies with him and I wandered off on a walk—which happens so frequently these days that I sometimes get very scared to step foot outside my door lest I wander around for hours and stare in rapture at the fact of existence, and I miss having meaningful conversations, and sometimes it feels like I’m a dinosaur investigating my own extinction, and sometimes I just want to be quiet, and half of my time is spent recovering, and the other half is spent ailing, and I don’t know what from.

The Monster

2010-07-30T22:27:00.001-07:00

There has been this lingering demon in my head since about a year ago. My friend and I had made it to 설악산 (Seoraksan) National Park in South Korea, and we were trying to figure out the best hiking that we could get in when we ran into a Canadian girl who said she had done this loop in about eight hours. It was the only loop trail, because the trail everybody traditionally took was straight up 대청봉 (Daecheongbong) and then came back the same way. My friend and I are anything but traditional. What we did, however, fail to take into account is that this young female was born and raised in the mountains, spent every weekend in Korea at another national park climbing as many mountains as she could. My friend and I spent every weekend getting sauced and climbing very low hills if we did anything—another longish story. At any rate, that climb took us (precisely as the KPS times told us it would) around 12 hours. It hurt so bad it is almost incomprehensible to think about. There aren’t even any Koreans who are crazy enough to do that. They stay in a hut about halfway through (well, it’s more like two-thirds of the way through).
I have this mildly sadistic challenge streak inside me, and I wanted to know if it could be done better, faster, and with less ache. I trained. I went back. These are the notes I took:
I had intended, during the course of my hike yesterday, to keep notes and give an accurate description as possible to what one encounters on what I call “The Monster.” What follows is basically an hour-by-hour transcript of the bastard.
Some words of advice: realize that this route is VERY dry. At the top of the mountain—for basically six hours—there is no potable water. In other words: BRING WATER… lots of it, because, like I said: dry, arid, and painful at the top. Second piece of advice: it is twelve hours, and you’ll need plenty of food. You’ll need a fair bit because you’ll need hourly snacks and something significant every four hours or so. Third, do something to train beforehand. It will help, even though you’ll still definitely feel it. Fourth, invest in some proper hiking apparel because attempting this route in jean shorts and t-shirts WILL result in very uncomfortable rashes—in places you might not imagine.
Okay, the first hour takes you through 소공원 (So Gong-won)—the park at the base of the mountains). The entrance fee, as of 2010, is a staggering 2500 원—the equivalent of about two dollars. The park itself is nice. There’s a tourist motel inside of it. As of this year, there is a bunch of trees whose claim to fame is that there has been a restaurant under its shade for 200 years. There’s a garden. There’s a giant statue of Buddha. You can take a cable car—but get there early for this as it fills up extraordinarily quickly. There’s a trail to a waterfall.
Your trail rambles past all of this and past a couple of restaurants deeper in the woods. Finally, you come to 비선대 (Biseondae)—a rock, a restaurant, and the crossroads. The trail to 대청봉 (the previously mentioned peak) is to the left. It’s 10.8km away and the backwards version of what I’m describing. To the right is about 10 minutes of moderate incline. At this point, the 1st hour is over and you can choose to go see the monk who lives in a cave on the side of the mountain (to the right) or continue up the trail to the left. The main advantage of the cave is that it affords one of the greatest views of 설악 (Seorak) Valley, and the main disadvantage is that it adds about 30 minutes or an hour to your ordeal. Understand that from this point, the next three hours are essentially ascension. There are brief respites here and there, but for the most part you must keep in mind that you’re going up a mountain in Korea, and what better way than to throw down millions of stone stairs and walk straight up that fucker.
Anyway I should make a couple of important points. The 2nd hour (as in the hour moving away from the cave) is probably the hardest. It just keeps going up. In the third hour it is possible to get some spring water, but ONLY if it has rained recently. If you’re desperate, there’s usually a trickle you can get something out of. The fourth hour has a more reliable spring, although still touch and go if it hasn’t rained recently. It also begins to let you know what the KNPS classifies this particular (ahem… 2-day) hike as a hike/scramble. It’s dry and rocky at the top, which means that you’ll be doing some “scrambling” over bits of mountain.
Take a break and assess yourself. Get a bit to eat, because after four hours you’ll be at 마등령 (madeungneung). The KNPS says its 1327m. If you’re fatigued, just turn around and walk the three hours out. Seven hours is already a helluva long hiking day and there is nothing to be ashamed of in it. If you feel up for it, just keep to the trail at the left. The next five hours are a great mix—and by great I don’t always mean good. Essentially, what you need to keep in mind is that you are walking along the ridge of the mountains. This means two things (at least): fantastic views, vistas, and geological features; and walking over mountains that range from 1300m to 1200m. In other words: in order to get from view to vista to geological wonder you will have to do steady alternation between ascending and descending, sometimes significantly. After a steady descent of 20 or 30 minutes, you’ll find the corresponding ascent just around a corner. Three hours of this (after the previous four hours of steady ascent) has the tendency to make a body tired. So, the last two hours are psychological hell. There is a long descent at the end of the third hour, and you start to believe that you are going down in earnest. You start to feel relieved. You start to breathe easier. You start believing: that wasn’t so bad. Then, you turn a corner and start going up. “What sadistic bastard put this here,” you think, “but, oh well.” The you turn another corner and you’re still going up. You turn a third corner and you see an almost sheer scramble that terminates youknownotwhere: MERDE!! The main advantage you have no is “having come this far.” Either way is four hours—maybe six if you turn around—and it’s best to just press on. A little hint: baby steps are fine, and the knees prefer them to having to pull the body weight long distances.
So, you take another forty minutes of ascent in stride (as it were) and realize your situation. It hurt psychologically and physically, but you’re heading back down now and everything is going to be fine of course. Not on your life. You got more ascent yet to come. Essentially it is only the last 30 minutes of this five-hour section of hiking which are pure descent. 희운각 hut awaits the weary traveler with foresight enough to make a reservation. Otherwise, you head to the right and three hours of walking down steps made of stone or metal. A recommended 2-day hike is what I have just described, mated with a stay at the hut, then an ascent of Daechoengbong the next day.
However, since that’s not what we have decided to do, I recommend that you take this ambling, non-strenuous section of the hike—which follows a river all the way back to the park—is: take your time. If it gets to be after 6 or 7 and you’re near the rock that was crossroads, take the opportunity, break the rules, and jump into the crystal clear river. It’s cold, clear and perfect for a body aching from (by now) 10 hours or so of hiking. At the very least, find a place to put your feet in.
The most enjoyable part of this section of the hike is watching the river trip and fall and create pools that look delicious bare are made inaccessible by… factors. After 2-3 hours of river-watching and steady heading down off the mountains, you make it back to the rock. Keep in mind that you still have a one-hour walk to the park gate, but after what you’ve been through, it’s like a walk… in… the park. The beauty of 설악산 is its relative closeness to society (Koreans would have it no other way). If you’re staying in a motel, you can just stop at a restaurant on your way back. If you’re camping, you can pick up some beer, soju, or (and) maggeulli and spend the evening—which will be very short—over a couple of drinks and grub. Sleep will be easy to come by.
Either way, the images your brain will be processing at the end of the day will be: mountains in the distance, sparsely populated with foliage, that look like great bowls of ice cream topped with chocolate syrup; three and four level waterfalls emptying into deep pools; vast expanses of mountain range that seem to dance waltzes with the imagination; never-ending trails of rock stairs that have been conquered; scrambles over treacherous mountain-adz tops that you realized would have maimed you had you slipped; and finally, what is possible for humans to do in a day.

lethargy

2010-07-21T23:39:00.000-07:00

The last few weeks have seen me in a noticeable state of lethargy… in a way. I am not entirely sure that I can even really call it that, because lethargy for me still involves doing quite a lot. I still manage to do quite a bit of reading (FINALLY finished Hume’s tome), study the Korean language, go to the gym, play the guitar, and go for four-hour training walks (I’ll soon be hiking). I suppose that what I’m really talking about is the fact that I haven’t done a whole lot of writing lately, and this is largely because all that reading, exercising and studying is just such a part of my daily/weekly routine that I find in them only the pleasures that one usually associates with those things that are solid and reliable. The fact that I haven’t written much lately is a sign to me that A) I have been living too much in the future and planning my return to the states (which I necessarily wish to keep somewhat secretive, and if I write about it, it’s not very secret is it?)
B) I haven’t had a whole lot to write about. Which is both true and untrue because I believe that there is ALWAYS something to write about; however, what I’m experiencing at the moment is a re-surgence in my sex life which I have always had a hard time writing about because of modesty and respect for the nature of that act.
All that being said, not enough people write about sex in such a way that does it justice. I’m afraid that “Marko, breathing his hot breath on her heaving bosom was enough to send shockwaves of desire through her body. His gentle caresses and strong, firm but soothing voice had caused a need in the pit of her being that could be satisfied by only one thing. She grabbed his ebony hair and let him know what she wanted.” just doesn’t quite do justice to something that can be of such great import.
I had a girlfriend for seven years (essentially), and for the bulk of that relationship it was long-distance. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out what two college-aged students who would go for long periods of time without each other would do when they finally got together. Perhaps the best word for it was frenzy. Usually they’d only have about two or three days together because of the restraints of school or work and, for those of you who have experienced something like it, that’s generally a good amount of time to spend doing basically that one thing. After that, the spirit might be willing, but probably not, and the flesh will be spongy and sore. However, it is as a result of sessions like those that I learned a lot about what IT means.
I think that I have actually been blessed by the fact that I am not an excessively pretty person because that meant that I didn’t get to experience a lot of one-night-stands. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I have been in Korea that I had that hollow experience, and I can say from experience that it is much more fulfilling and dignified to have the experience of the body with somebody you care deeply about.
It seems highly probable that I’m just a big softy and that my parents raised me to be respectful of women, but two of my favorite things are spooning and—dear god I wish it had a more manly name (maybe I should make one up)—pillow talk. There is something about the intimacy of the act that seems to permeate everything that goes from the build-up, through the act itself, and it seems like the only appropriate finish is the intimacy of touch-to-touch and close conversation. As a matter of fact, it was precisely when these things stopped happening that the previously mentioned relationship started to fall apart.
I’m also beginning to see that there are a couple of different possibilities for significant kinds of physical intimacy. Almost everybody that’s had an opportunity to get drunk with somebody they love has experienced the kind of alcohol-fueled madness that results from what starts as gentle hand squeezes under the table or soft skin caresses that nobody sees. It can be wild and passionate and one helluva lot of fun because it so often feels like the primal call of nature: I need your body. I don’t care how intelligent you are or how funny. Right now, I want your body. This is the urge (not always accompanied by drunkenness) that affects those dealing with even low levels of satyriasis and furor uterinus: a pure desire to slake the physical thirst that wells up in all of us; however, in the bulk of the population this thirst peaks its head out only periodically.
Another kind of physical intimacy that is possible occurs when two people want to illustrate, using the body, how important they are to each other. This shouldn’t be overlooked. I have often considered that there are a lot of triptychs out there (conscious, subconscious, spirit; father, son, spirit; guardians, managers, workers; etc), but I think that the most frequently left-out aspect of all of these is the ground—thanks Heidegger. Without an earth, there can’t be humans. Without humans, does the concept of god exist? Without god is there a need for heaven? Without the body, can there be a seat for the soul? One of Rudolf Steiner’s greatest ideas was that the soul is outside the body, but, unless I missed it, I’d like to think that it doesn’t just sit outside the body but permeates it, through and through, and extends beyond the confines of the body. Call it an aura, but I guarantee you that you have met somebody or been around somebody and felt them immediately. That’s the extension of the soul outside the body. It is during this kind of physical intimacy, where two souls are charged with the connection of intimacy, love, caring, and compassion that something different happens. The fulfillment of the physical need of the human body to release itself is one thing, to touch souls in this particular way is something that warms the entire being, from the consciousness to sub-conscious, from the soul to the body.
It could be argued that the accomplishment of this warming is what the kama sutra is about. Sure, it teaches you a lot of fun ways to go about doing something that’s already fun, but it could be argued that these are attempts to find the most pleasant and fulfilling way of satisfying your partner. Let’s all be honest and say that man-on-top-pounding-away is perhaps the most boring of all the potential positions. It is the remnant of a man-centered universe. It can be fun every once in a while, but variety is the spice of life, and that almost goes double for the bedroom. Get creative, not because it’s fun, but because it is an illustration of how much you want your partner to feel. It’s an illustration of how on fire your soul is to touch their soul in a meaningful way.
Sometimes, I think the most important moment in any relationship is the simultaneous laughter that happens during the act itself. It’s possible. It ought to be fun, and what’s more natural than to laugh when you’re having fun?

#100...What the...

2010-06-30T18:37:00.000-07:00

*&^% is happening to me? I have been in Korea for eight months, and the amount of mental rupture and rebuilding that has happened in that short amount of time strikes me as somewhat unbelievable.
The things that I have held to be gospel seem to shift almost as rapidly as the weather. To be perfectly honest, perhaps nothing would make me happier than to know that I have managed to so attenuate myself to nature that my mind and body go through seasons that directly coincide with the seasons of the earth, but I know that’s not the case.
While I am no doctor (I might have to ask my doctor friend about it though), I think that what I am experiencing is a psychological un-rest the likes of which I have heretofore not been acquainted, and it’s all because I am trying to deal simultaneously with the past, the present, and the future—which, for me, is a lot to juggle. Generally, I live my life from day to day (on a budget of $35 a day) and deal with things when they come up; however, because my present situation is becoming tenuous due to the fact that my work contract is nearer to being finished than it is to its beginning, my mind naturally turns toward that almost impossible question: what next?
For me, tomorrow is today, and today is yesterday, and yesterday is tomorrow. Floating seems like an appropriate metaphor. I’m up above the clouds, floating through the atmosphere as a cloud and thinking about what’s underneath the cloud cover.
What is most peculiar is that I am comfortable here. It might be upheaval, but what I know from experience, and the reason I feel so calm during what I know is change, is that these are the fundamental moments of any particular life. These are the times that define who you are going to be. These are the transitional moments from who you were to who you are becoming.
Focus is changing, and I just noticed that there are so many –ing verbs here, and that makes me extremely happy, because any time you are –inging, it means that you are, right now, in motion.
You know what?
That’s it for now.
That’s all I wanted to say.
Well… that was all I wanted to say.
But, just as I was about to post this, I realized (saw) that this is my one-hundreth post, and that means something.
Okay, I’m not sure exactly what it means, but “something” seems reasonable.
I started this blog because I was unhappy and needed a place to vent. Then, it became a venue for me to work through all of things that don’t quite fit together in my head—one of the beauties of writing is that when you are engaged in it you are engaging one of the most fundamental aspects of humanity: the ability to create meaning. And what happens when you do this? Jigsaw puzzle pieces suddenly start fitting together.
Generally, I have no idea what I’m going to write about when I sit down, but I have found that when you just let the fingers do their thing and turn off the consciousness, the sub-conscious seems to spill itself all over the page, such that when I return to it I understand myself more fully.
At my current teaching position here in South Korea, I teach an essay class, and the most difficult part about the entire class is getting the kids to actually forget about content and simply do the writing. I have for a long time maintained that the only important thing about writing is that it’s done. It is done to a higher or lower degree of accuracy in some cases, but that only barely matters. The ability to use complex symbols on a field an almost distinctly human attribute, and the more involved we are with our humanity, the more we understand ourselves. Korea is a funny place because people here don’t really want to understand themselves. Rather, to be more specific, they are taught that it doesn’t really matter to understand their selves because everybody is essentially the same. Now, Korea is one of the most homogenous cultures on the planet, and it is certainly interesting to see a society functioning based on the fact that everybody is pretty much the same and it is only our age and our title that distinguishes us, but it doesn’t jive very well with my western conception of the individual.
Apparently, there was no Enlightenment in Korea.
I can’t decide if there is a better. Koreans don’t care, AND it doesn’t matter to them because they have been raised to not care. So, Koreans walk around being super-Korean, and it’s easy to predict what everybody’s going to do.
(In an interesting side note, this has an adverse affect on their ability to learn English because when you are attempting to learn English, you necessarily have to get involved in the culture—language is not a tool, it’s something that we exist, something that we are, something that defines us. They can learn vocabulary and use the vocabulary, but it isn’t until they begin to understand the culture of individualism that they can truly grasp the language.)
On the other hand, western people are so unpredictable, that you have millions of people walking around doing whatever the hell they want, and it sometimes goes way too far. All one has to do is look around the public school systems in America right now to see what too much individualism will cost you, and in my humble opinion the price is dear.
So here I am, writing blog number 100 about God-Knows-What and I’m staring at my books that will have to find their way back to the USA soon and I’m drinking coffee that hasn’t been prepared from an instant coffee-creamer-sugar mix and I’m wondering whether or not I will be able to learn the skill of hunting when I get back to the states and I’m dreaming of the home that my friends and I plan on having together with the crops we plan to grow and I’m thinking about whether or not justice is a natural or artificial virtue then coming to the conclusion that it seems more artificial than natural to me and I’m thinking that it’s no wonder Ernesto Guevara turned out the way he did after seeing the things he saw and meeting the people he met and I’m trying to figure out what kind of songs I should put together for the show next week—new songs, old songs, some kind of mixture…--and I’m thinking about the worthless, cheating girlfriend I had when I first came to Korea and I’m thinking about the incredible, worthwhile girlfriend I have now who will have to be given up—not something either of us are looking forward to—and I’m thinking about a double digit number that seems kind of incredible given that it was three or four for so long and I’m thinking about the fact that one of my classes is finishing their book today which means I will buy them pizza and I’m thinking about how to make the future tense in Han-gul and I’m thinking that earlier this morning I conducted an entire banking transaction entirely in Korean and I’m thinking that becoming a writer is probably the best idea I have every had and I’m thinking about the weekend and I’m thinking about the sound of my air conditioner and I’m thinking about thinking and I’m thinking about you.

Thought Nuggets

2010-06-22T05:50:00.001-07:00

A recent trip to the aquarium inside COEX mall in Seoul put me onto thinking about the diversity of life and adaptation. A quick look at the diversity that makes up the life that lives in the waters of the world, and it shouldn’t be a far step to understand the diversity that is possible, not only simply on the surface, but within the character of each individual as well.
There are fish out there that look astoundingly like rocks, and you would have trouble distinguishing them yourself if you weren’t assured by a little placard just off to the side insisting that there is a fish in there—and then it actually moves.
I think about camouflage in both the literal and physical sense. There are insects that camouflage themselves so well that you can literally step on one and be none the wiser. Furred animals have adapted the color of that fur to better suit their surroundings—simply look at the red fox and the arctic fox (not to mention scores of others). People use camouflage in warfare to keep the enemy unaware of their presence for absolutely as long as possible. Finally, people camouflage themselves when it comes to their feelings and emotions and true selves. How many times have you gotten to know somebody, and after a while you realize that the person you met at first was very different from the person you know now?
(I want to point out that this personal, metaphorical camouflage is by no means a “bad” thing, but rather something that almost every human being in the world makes use of in order to accomplish goals. It is a reality rather than something that ought to be judged. The use some people make of this human characteristic can be questionable, but by and large we ease people into deeper knowledge of us.)
There are fish that actually go fishing. The anglerfish has a strange fleshy growth that sticks out from the top of their head and acts like a lure. Other fish would do what is more properly called hunting. The bigger predators (sharks, whales, dolphins, etc) are obvious, but there are other fish that use camouflage and lie in wait (flounder and other flatfish).
Once again there are parallels in the world on land that extend to both the physical and mental realms. In the physical world, fishing is a term that means both the physical act of going to a body of water and putting a line in it and the metaphorical sense of things like “fishing for compliments” or “fishing for answers” or “fishing for approval.” Essentially, any time you are using a lure (either in words or physically) you are doing the act of fishing. Hunting is in much the same category. I grew up in the Midwest, and let me tell you that hunting is quite an ordeal in that particular area of the country. Guns, bows, scent killer, tree stands, licenses, birds, deer, and whatever else can be brought down. It could be said that any time you set a goal, plan the work you have to do, work the plan that you’ve set down, and then attempt to accomplish something you are hunting.
There are animals that have managed to develop a method for needing both the land and the water. Imagine a penguin that was entirely landlocked. Without the ability to fly, that penguin would be in an absolute world of hurt. Thought about another way, the fact that penguins can stay on land keeps them out of the jaws of some fairly hungry whales that are probably swimming around. Frogs, snakes, walruses, seals, and many others have this ability to traverse the treacherous realms of land and water.
Man is at the top of the food chain precisely because he has the ability to be a predator in both realms of land and water. While he might not frequently go into the water to catch fish (although it is possible and happens), he has the ability to float on it and to use it to his advantage, and perhaps that’s the nut: man has the ability to use both the land and the water to his advantage. In the realm of the mind of man I think we could definitely liken this to the distinction between possibility and the world of the senses. All those things that are simply believed without having been proven is the world that lives in the water:
“Based on these and other observed patterns, conservative extrapolations suggest as many as 2,000 or more coral-reef fish species await discovery on deep coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific.” --The Marine Technology Society Journal. And that’s just on coral reefs. What about the depths? The land is what we can see, what we can experience, and what we can feel with our own two hands. Man is perpetually caught in this whirlwind of that which he believes and that which he knows through experience and understanding. It is land and water.
Finally, there are anomalies. Excuse me, but what the fuck is a seahorse? Where did this character come from? What kind of madness did this species go through to develop to this point? What’s the point of a jellyfish? The moon jellyfish reproduces both asexually and sexually, while also going through something that resembles a plant stage. Exqueeze me? Just look at a blobfish. Look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DvdcrcihBA&feature=related
or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX90r12ANjY&feature=related
and you will have no problem saying that there is some diversity among aquatic creatures.
What could be more obvious that the diversity among the species on the surface. There are about 900,000 different kinds of insects, just for starters. Take this and add to it all the other varieties of birds, amphibians, reptiles, arachnids, mammals, and (the big kahuna of them all I think) plant life, and you start to get an understanding of diversity that borders on incomprehensible. Finally, if you take all of this apply it to the scope of the human mind, what becomes possible? The physical diversity of the aquatic scene (if we can trust our previous examples) is probably capable of being mirrored in the human mind, and that (if I may say so) is mindblowing, shocking, and eye-opening. Think about the way you think, how and what. Think about the number of things your mind does every second that you don’t have to think about, the number of things your mind is conducting in a day, and the number of thoughts that controllably or uncontrollably race through your head. If you can think about these things and find that you are not suddenly standing in awe of all that is right here in front of you, possible for you, available for your investigation, then I’m afraid you might be missing it.
The difference between man and the animals is something huge, and yet it is nothing at all. One of the major differences is that man provides for vast quantities of others, instead of just for himself. Man has formed societies and created a leisure industry (can you imagine anything more laughable to a cat?). We pay for our time off with money, instead of work. That distinction seems unimportant, but it wholly separates us from animals. When you’ve hunted, eaten, and protected yourself, you’ve earned a rest. Remember to watch the way the world is and appreciate what you’ve got. Work hard. Appreciate diversity. Calm down. Other people are probably just different from you.

What do you do…

2010-06-15T05:49:00.001-07:00

when this is what’s floating around your head?

--The efforts which the mind makes to surmount the obstacle, excite the spirits and enliven the passion.
--People have (with the help of convention) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy, but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult.
--‘Tis impossible that reason and passion can ever oppose each other, or dispute for the government of the will and actions. The moment we perceive the falsehood of any supposition, or the insufficiency of any means our passions yield to our reason without any opposition.
--All those who love know exactly the limit they are prepared to go to. They know exactly what is required.
--To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
--We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
--How keen everyone is to make this world their home, forgetting its impermanence. It’s like trying to see and name constellations in a fireworks display.
--For this reason (love being difficult) young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.
--Morality is not an object of reason… vice and virtue are not matters of fact.
--But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is—solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.
--When the mind pursues any end with passion… by the natural course of the affections, we acquire a concern for the end itself, and are uneasy under any disappointment we meet with in pursuit of it.
--Love… is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
--The pleasure of study consists chiefly in the action of the mind and the exercise of the genius and understanding in the discovery or comprehension of truth. If the importance of the truth be requisite to complete the pleasure, ‘tis not on account of any considerable addition which of itself it brings to our enjoyment, but only because ‘tis in some measure required to fix our attention.

My world consists these days in the maelstrom of love, passion, understanding, human nature, and truth. I’ve thought about it for a bit, and I’m totally fine being thoroughly unable to accurately define any of those terms in a relatively small space. Then, I think about the fact that those things are swirling together, and defining them while attempting to overcome the contiguity they share with other ideas and impressions, the causes and effects of their existence or absence, and the resemblances they have to the constant stream of my impressions, and I wind up in awe at the state of the human character.
I understand why people drink.
I understand why people do drugs.
When you let the mind run free and wild, it overwhelms itself… easily.
Most people learn to curb this complete mental freedom that we all have through their training as children—and you’d better believe that everything that happens to you in school and at home is training. They learn to focus on certain things. They are taught that some things are important while some things aren’t. They are shown what it means to love every day they watch their parents interact. Passion is illustrated through the media, the relations, and the relationships that are seen every day. Understanding is reached whenever I am told it has been reached, whether that’s a test score, a light bulb moment, or a goal being reached. Human nature is constantly being monitored, constantly updated, and it is in our nature to be nurtured while nurturing our nature—that whole argument is stupid… not ignorant: stupid. Truth is the combination of individual theory and practice (and I’m going to leave it there because it would take a lot more space to try to define it), but it is seen and felt periodically enough to not give up on it completely.
Currently, I am teaching English as a second language in South Korea, and I have had the unique opportunity to observe some cultural phenomena that are highlighted by similar phenomena in the USA.
Korean children are taught to abhor failing. This cannot be stressed enough, so I will illustrate it. When I first arrived here, I would give a test or quiz, and fifteen minutes later check up on how things were going. Sometimes, if a Korean child doesn’t know the answer to number 1, they stop, having failed, and will not simply skip it and go to the next one. Any inability that they have is an automatic failure and they get that deer in headlights look we are all so aware of because they know they are in the process of failing.
American children are taught that sometimes it’s okay to fail, which always registers as: failing is fine. We lower our standards so that they’re not failing, but this is a backhanded way to say that failing is acceptable because we can always change the standards by which we’re held. You have only to see the educational standards of the United States stacked up against the rest of the first world—what an awful denomination, and I have no doubt that you will see what I mean.
The problem, as I see it, with both of these systems is that the focus is entirely wrong. In the first place, it teaches students that failure exists. Failure can only be the unachieved goal set for a person by somebody who is not that person. When I set a goal for myself, it’s a want. When somebody else sets it for me, it’s an external expectation. When I don’t achieve somebody else’s goal, I don’t get them what they want. When I don’t achieve my goal, I don’t get what I want. That’s it. I haven’t failed anything.
Doesn’t that sound a lot like: the only failure is not trying?
Yes.
That’s because (with a slight modification): in every genuine attempt involving legitimate effort, progress is always achieved, even if it looks like a regression. Attempt to love, attempt to feel passion, attempt to understand human nature, and attempt truth.

More Notes from the Bus

2010-06-10T06:49:00.001-07:00

My enemy has presented himself to me. He is loud. He understands nothing. Believes instead of knows. If you were asked to bow as you entered the temple of another faith (a temple that you have chosen to come to out of curiosity), simply as a sign of respect for other human beings attempting to struggle with their reality and searching for it wherever they can find it, would you do it?
I would.
The problem is, of course, that you cannot engage a religious warrior un-religiously. Try as you might, there is no possibility of them being able to separate their cause from your attack:
You attack A Muslim? You are attacking Muslims.
You attack a Christian? You are attacking Christianity.
We love taking our victimization and extending it through contiguity to our group—whatever that might be.
Perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the religious program is that the individual is lost, engulfed in whatever belief system they have associated themselves with, and the importance of the individual may be this:
his or her ability to maintain objectivity in the quest to develop society towards the next phase of human growth. Tainted with the beer goggles of religion, this is impossible. Why are there so many shared stories? Why are the traditions so many and various, and yet so similar? It would seem totally possible that in ancient times people simply spread out, and as they observed their world the stories which had been passed down to them changed as their personal observation allowed it to change, and right no we’ve got what we’ve got. I like the idea of the brotherhood of man. Eons ago when Jacob and Esau were on the outs, it was Brother V. Brother. Are we not all descended from that unknowable, primordial wellspring? Whether it be God, whether it be an accident of nature, or whether we are simply a fungal growth on some giant turd floating in the toilet bowl of space, we can all call each other by our proper name: human.
Stop disseminating hate—and believe me that when you’re telling someone they’re wrong you ARE disseminating hate.
Ask them to define their terminology more clearly for themselves, for you.
Ask them to clarify their position and simply identify any potential non sequiturs.
Ask them about the meanings of words such as belief, faith, love and meaning.
To be able to accurately define these words for one’s self is the first step on the path to the dissemination of love. Control yourself.
…
I try to avoid the topic of religion because people get so worked up about it. The thing that I am most put off by is proselytizing. I understand that Jesus said something about making fishers of all men, but he didn’t say what kind of fishermen. Catholics read that verse, too. It doesn’t say Catholic fishermen or Baptist fishermen or Protestant fisherman, simply fishermen. What is a fisherman but a seeker of nourishment the belly ache for understanding that we all have? Seekers and, sometimes, finders of those calming moments that remind us we are on this beautiful place for a time—and indefinite article kind of time. Seek to love. Find love. Seek peace. Find peace. Take the example of almost all religious leaders: live by the example of peace, harmony and love.

The Mind of Man

2010-06-01T05:49:00.001-07:00

is a hall of mirrors. Almost every thinker from the beginning of time has noticed, one way or another, that they way the human mind works involves reflections. It is absolutely appropriate that reflection is the word that has many meanings, and those meanings are basically the structures of the mind of man.
The first and most basic definition of reflection is could be thought of as direct observation. I see my reflection in a mirror. That reflection is passive and inactive. It is a bit humorous to think that when we see ourselves, our bodies, we are looking at the thing that is inactive; however, the body is merely the stage for the action. Think about the theatre. Does a stage do the acting? It can, and certainly ought to be, a character—in some methodologies and in some plays the stage might even be the central character, but it doesn’t actually do anything. Its simple existence is enough for it to be important, and it is enough for the body to exist to make it important.
(In a small aside here, I would like to make a plug for taking care of the body. In general this involves three things, and they are the biological imperatives. Eat food that is conducive to good health. What will happen if you eat McDonald’s every day for thirty days? Bad things. What will happen if you eat a balanced diet and one day (let’s say in a month) when you’re out and about, you happen to stop at McDonald’s for a convenient meal? Probably not too much harm will come from this. Do something physical. Have sex, go for a run, play soccer, and do whatever it is that needs doing for a few hours every week. You don’t have to be a gym rat, going every day, just ensure that you are taking care of the physical needs of your body to stay in shape, otherwise atrophy ensues, and that kind of atrophy is impossibly slow and painful. Taking care of the body’s shape is essentially the shelter from the always-impending storm of atrophy. Protect your body, as much as is possible from harm. Don’t do incredibly stupid things that are guaranteed to harm you. It is important to note that the body ought to be put in certain dangerous situations every once in a while, but don’t be reckless about it. Your body will thank you for it.)
The next kind of reflection that happens is the first that happens in the mind. Let’s call it a Hume-ism: impression. Essentially, all this amounts to is that you are taking in all the sensory bits and pieces that you can. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you see yourself and you start to think about the scar just below your right eye, or the zit that creeping into existence on your chin, or the fact that your left ear is slightly higher than your right, or “Damn, I need a haircut,” or that black eye is swelling up pretty intensely. These impressions are, in themselves, some of the simplest thoughts that human beings can have, but they are floor number one, built on the foundation of the existence of the thing in the mirror.
It works equally well with the other senses. Close your eyes and touch your skin. Your impressions are that your arms are really hairy, or your fingernails seem to be long. Take a deep breath and smell yourself. Lick your skin. What do you taste like? Listen to yourself, and I mean really listen to yourself saying something. All of this information we pick up about everything around us through the sense organs that have been granted to us, and it is the most basic information that we have. If the stage is the foundation, the sensory impressions that we pick up become the set on the stage. We are beginning to get an idea of something coming together.
The third type of reflection involves giving back—let’s call it a reaction. Imagine a line of mirrors set at an angle and a laser being pointed at the first one, only to have the light reflected down the line of mirrors. This is the first stage at which something actually happens. It is at this point that we are actually doing something about the idea that we now have, and it amounts, basically, to an explication of what the impression is. Take the color blue. The eye sees the color blue, the brain recognizes it as a thing existing on a plane, and finally you say its name: blue. Action, in this sense, is the very physical action, whether in speech or motion, that takes place as the result of an idea. First impressions become ideas that give rise to a reaction. If we continue with our analogy of the stage, then the actors have begun to populate the set. We now see that there is A) a stage B) a set and C) actors. These actors are even saying things, but it is essentially incoherent babble for the most part, or, if comprehensible, then the most rudimentary of meanings. In our other analogy (that of the building) this is essentially the enclosed building. It exists, it has vitality and color, it is populated, and it is enclosed. Foundation. Floor. Ceiling.
The final type of reflection is that metaphorical type of reflection that reaches into the past—and I am pretty sure it is always into the past that it reaches. When I sit and reflect on my life, I am thinking about the accumulated knowledge of my days on this planet, the myriad routines I have subjected myself to, and the cultural knowledge that has somehow been implanted in my brain. This is where the magic happens. Habit and our customary way of doing things are pulling the strings. We only recognize blue because we have seen it and been told its name before—in the past. Had we encountered blue for the first time, without having been told its name, there is no way that its particular moniker could possibly spring to our lips. Think of a child just learning his or her colors. We must be told something in the past for it to affect our present or future.
What presents itself as a problem for this type of reflection is that everything gets muddled here. Before the roof was on the building, we could see inside it and understand what was going on, but now our view is obscured. Before, the actors were wandering around the stage babbling in basic incoherence, and now they are saying things that seem to matter in a way that seems to make sense, and it is the unseen hand of the director that is reflection in the metaphorical sense that makes it all possible.
I have encountered this four-fold in other places, and it took me a long time to accept it, but when a thing keeps coming up in so many and various places, you start—perhaps by habit and a customary way—to believe and understand it. Heidegger’s four-fold is almost essentially this, but with different names: earth and heavens, mortals and gods. The earth is the existing thing, the initial impression (the entrance of the mind onto the scene) would be the heavens, mortals would be the populated stage, and the gods would be the realm of history and habit that seems to invisibly pull strings.
It seems to me that this is the way we go about things. Call them whatever you will, but these seem like reasonable structures of the consciousness: body, consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit. It’s what makes humans capable of doing the things they do. Animals do not have the same metaphysical structure. Their minds and spirits do not work in the same way. If for only this, I implore you to go about using the abilities and skills that are inherent in you simply by virtue of being human to start working on your understanding of your own reflections. Sit quietly for a while and stare at yourself, notice that you are, notice what you really look like, say something to yourself, do something with, go somewhere, and be great.

I Have a Dog

2010-05-25T06:32:00.001-07:00

I’m not sure that I want a dog, but a dog is what I am currently in possession of, and it presents something of a dilemma for me.
Let’s start with the apparent facts.
First, the canine in question was abandoned on a side street of South Korea with its puppy—she was protecting the little guy but not ferociously.
Second, she has obviously been somewhat domesticated: she has been trained to save up her defecations for the walk, she seems to only ever want to eat human food—turning up her abandoned nose at the dry dog food I purchased for her, and she is generally well-mannered.
Third, she is cute in that mangy, street dog kind of way—I’m sure that there is a fashion trend somewhere along the line that could best illustrate what I mean.
Fourth, she has this tendency, whenever I touch her (and this has, for some reason, been a theme amongst myself and female dogs that I could never properly explain) she has a tendency to empty a bit of her bladder on my floor. This is not exactly serious because I was at first worried that I would be cleaning up dog crap, and dog urine is less offensive than dog crap in the cleanup department.
Fifth, my time in South Korea is going to be coming to an end in about six months, and that raises a lot of “what if?” questions about her future when I leave.
Sixth, she requires two walks a day (morning and evening to help empty that problematic bladder as much as possible) and she has basically added an hour of chores to my already pretty packed days.
Seventh, weekends in Korea can be wild times, and I can be away from home for days on end, which means that I would have to find something to do with her in the meantime.
Eighth, the girl that I am currently spending a lot of time with has an aversion to dogs that goes back to a childhood incident wherein she was chased for a very long time by a very big white dog that was apparently trying to injure her—the veracity of the story only called into question by the chase (dogs aren’t known to chase people unless the people want them to) and the fact that the dog was big (the biggest dog I have seen in Korea is an eight-month-old beagle). Now, they do have wild dogs in Korea that are apparently very big and very feral, so we don’t want to discount that fact, and it barely matters whether the story is real or not because the reality is in her very apparent aversion.
Ninth, I am on a budget as it is. My current financial reality is somewhere between “getting by” and “struggling” depending on the day, and there are certain financial realities that owning a dog entails that I’m not sure I am capable of shouldering at the current time.
Tenth, I would like to consider myself a person who is at least capable of some compassion. I have certainly had my moments where the feelings, needs, and realities of others have been disregarded, but those were also extremely important points in my own personal development where certain decisions had to be made for my own sanity. One thing I know I am not a person who is fanatically devoted to animals. I have never had the experience with one that would make me do whatever is necessary for an animal to survive. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a point I would go to (and I’m reaching it currently) to secure the well-being of a fellow creature, but if I have to choose between the dog eating and me eating, I would certainly choose me.
All of these things amounts to just about the same thing. There is really only one decision for me to make, and to be perfectly honest I am pretty sure that I have already made it, but the problem that I encounter—here as almost everywhere—is (in the words of the wicked witch of the west) “how to do it.”
Do I just want to drop her off at some shelter?
Do I want to see if any of my foreigner friends would like a cute little companion for their time in a foreign country?
Do I just take her for a walk and not come back with her?
There is a restaurant behind my apartment that serves dog soup, should I see if I could sell her to them?
Do I do what I usually do and wait for the universe to push me in the right direction?
I even suggested in jest to my cohorts a couple of nights ago that perhaps I could slaughter her myself and make my own dog soup as an exercise in seeing how far I could push the cruelty in my heart.
I thank my mom and the sages I have had the benefit to study for the fact that I know the answer is to do what I usually do and wait for the universe to push me in the right direction. A clear path will open itself up. It is apparent that I have put myself in a position where I want to ensure that whoever takes possession of the little girl will be in a position to love her more dearly than I’m sure she was before. She cowers sometimes when you stand over her and it’s clear that she wasn’t exactly fawned over repeatedly. As a matter of fact, I feel like I’m probably the middle ground on the way to a better place for her. She is moving towards positivity. When she was abandoned, that was pretty negative. With me, she has somebody that is willing to provide for her needs, show her some affection, and illustrate the fact that everything is going to be all right. What I want for her next owner is that extreme lover of animals who would do just about anything to have a companion, that person who would ensure beyond their own well being the well being of their pet, and that philanthropist of animal love (not in the unnatural way) who will teach her real love.
I was told that the average Korean approach to having a pet is to want one, but, when it gets too difficult or financially disadvantageous, to get rid of it at the drop of a hat. This is not unusual for the Korean character that is so built on the desire to have things happen quickly that results in extremely rapid changes of mind—Buddhism might be the best thing for Korea with its emphasis on the pace of nature.
Her name is Dog, and I can’t help but run through “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” every time I look at that punum.
It is almost stunning the things that you can get up to when you decide to take a two-hour walk at four o’clock in the morning as you’re walking home from the bar. It is important here to point out that as much as I may or may not find dealing with the issue of Dog tedious, I by no means regret it. I care enough that I being left out on the street is no way to treat a dog, and I am certainly not mistreating the little dear who is being fed, sheltered, walked, petted, and generally taken care of; however, it’s time for her to move on to a better home. Learning is a very large part of my daily routine, and I have certainly learned some things about myself as a result of this ordeal: I am not quite prepared to devote my life to the well-being of something a lot smaller than me (read: dog, cat, human, or otherwise). I CAN do it. I WILL do it if it’s necessary. But if I had my druthers, I’m fine with not.

Good and Bad

2010-05-18T06:00:00.001-07:00

Pointless. I am coming to believe and understand that it is pointless to attempt to define what is meant by good and bad. There are only vague concepts, and these things are usually so personal that it barely matters. What is good? Is there a difference between this question and: what is the good? What is bad? What is the bad?
What I see as the major problem here is that both of these terms are temporalized without anybody being immediately aware of it. Good and bad imply the past and the future. If something seems good in the present, it is either because there was some pre-existing condition that makes the whateveritis seem so, or, likewise, a view that the whateveritis will afford us some kind of benefit in the future. The same can be said for something that is bad. Either there was some pre-existing condition that makes some present situation seem bad, or, when observing something there is an overwhelming sense of dread, the future seems bleak. There is never a condition wherein NOW something erupts as either good or bad.
The next major issue with dealing with terms like good and bad is that they are also culturally different. Take the example of women in different areas of the world. A Muslim woman might be keeping herself covered because she is sincere in her belief, and, for her, it seems like a good thing to do. Those women in the modern age who would consider themselves as sexually liberated will have no problem going out and having intercourse with many anonymous partners while at the same time experimenting with mind expanding drugs, and that will be good. In Korea it is good to live at home until you get married. There are a number of thirty-somethings still living with their parents, perhaps sharing a bed with their younger siblings, and this is a good thing. Imagine getting an American man of thirty-something years old to A) live with his parents B) share a bed with a younger sibling. It might be a bit difficult. There are the Mallrat Brodies of the world out there that might not have trouble living at home, but as long as they have their space.
But lets take a step back for a second and see that with these two fairly simply understandings, we can say that good and bad are terms that involve terms that are intimately intertwined with the space-time continuum. What was good in the Incan culture (i.e. sacrificing children to gods, eating guinea pigs, and rejecting gold for the true worth of having a lot of followers) would be somewhat frowned upon in the modern age by most cultures.
(Let’s call this a bit of an aside and a cultural criticism: who’s to say that human sacrifices aren’t made to this very day in the metaphorical sense? Just about everybody everywhere has been brainwashed by culture or advertising or family or religion or economics or whatever, and this could be a sacrifice of the human character in its own way. What is purely human any more? What is not derived from custom and culture? What is not pushed on us by fat cat businessmen attempting to make a buck? What vaguely talented sixteen-year-old girl with a pert rack hasn’t been exploited when given the opportunity? Can we even be said to be human if we don’t think for ourselves?)
Heap on top of this the fact that the discussion of good and bad is a distinctly human distinction. There is no good and bad in nature. Think about a hunt: lionesses head out into the Serengeti. They hunt. They plot their attack on a group of gazelles. They wait. They’re patient. They know what needs to be done. They fail. They don’t bring down any food. Good for the gazelles, right? Now imagine that this situation repeats itself over and over. The lions start to die. The hunting pack shrinks. Food becomes even harder to acquire for the lions. Eventually, they all die. Good things are locked into time and space. In nature, if we can be allowed to use this term, it is actually “good” for the lion to catch the gazelle—perhaps not for the individual gazelle (which is probably the lamest, slowest one of the group anyway). Not only are good and bad terms of spacial and temporal significance, but they are also distinctly human, and beyond all of this they must be constantly qualified by the individual which is experiencing them—what’s bad for one is good for others.
Well… then what’s the point? What’s the point of ever delving into an investigation of something that will necessarily reveal something that can only point the time, place, and individual human that is investigating it?
Sometimes the answers to questions are in the questions themselves, and you should investigate good, the good, bad, and the bad because it will point out the time your in, it will tell you about the place you are in, and it will tell you about yourself. What greater good can there be? When you look honestly at what is good and bad, with the most careful attempt (although fruitless) at objectivity, you will reveal things about your time that you can’t understand in the present, but individuals in the future will be curious; you will reveal things about your place that might seem unimpressive or unimportant to you, but those who come after will be interested; you will reveal things to yourself about yourself, your place in society, your place in your existence, and your reality that you would never have been able to come to an understanding about otherwise.
I’m going to put it here in print that I am convinced that when people stop investigating these things that seem utterly fruitless (what is good? What is bad? What is truth? What is the nature of the human character?) we almost automatically stop advancing as creatures. Humans have been given the faculty to go about their day reasoning, even if only to themselves, and it seems to me that the most appropriate venue for these cogitations is in precisely the place you’d least likely expect it to be: the arena of impossible to answer. The most obvious reason for this is that questions with answers have a tendency to put the search to an end, whereas questions that cannot satisfactorily be answered keep the investigation in motion. Questions without answers pose more questions, and these questions keep the quest going. As a matter of fact, if there is a universal truth or a universal good, it might be in the form of the eternal quest to understand that which is impossible to understand. Religion claims to have answers to impossible questions, be wary; however, it simultaneously poses a question about which it is impossible to know with certainty, and it can therefore not be completely written off. The path of the good, the path of the just, is the path that travels toward the perpetual advancement of the self while causing as little harm (bad) as possible because causing no harm (bad) is impossible (read: failure is inevitable, and, in the words of Epictetus: Pursue the good ardently. But if your efforts fall short, accept the result and move on.)

What is it about thinking?

2010-05-11T05:49:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of strands in ol’ duders head… man. Recently, I was sitting there having a beer with a friend of mine—one that was coming towards the end of a string of beers—and he said to me something that I wasn’t sure I agreed with, but something that I have come to understand in a different way.
All he said was:
--People like you and me, we just can’t help it.
Is there such a thing as simply being unable to help it? What part of what we are is pure instinct? What part of us is so practiced that to break the habit of that practice would require something almost cataclysmic?
I have often maintained that there is nothing whatsoever to stop the consciousness from choosing an entirely new way of being, and I’m pretty sure that’s true; however, in order for the decisions that the consciousness makes to become lasting and (perhaps) permanent, there needs to be a thoroughgoing personal discipline to back it up.
So, I started to think about the things that I couldn’t help. I have a drink before I go to bed. It’s almost compulsory these days. I’m not getting belligerent. I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not drinking excessively, but I do have that drink every day. I can’t help wandering. There are some days that I leave my apartment having absolutely no idea where I’m going or why I’m going there, but it is precisely to there that I am going, and I take comfort in that. I can’t help playing guitar. If I went a week without playing some guitar, I might crack because it’s an hour or two a day where I get to practice my instincts, feelings, and auditory senses. I can’t help writing. I recently went four months without writing… much. I did it intentionally because there hasn’t been a period in my life over the course of the last nine years where I didn’t write anything that lasted any more than three months. By the end of the fourth month, I had the shakes and words pouring out of me that made no sense, but simply had to come. I can’t help reading. I am a compulsive reader, constantly involved with, usually, three or four books at once. I always have a toilet book (there is nothing better for an excuse to read for ten or fifteen or twenty… or thirty minutes). I always have something else—generally a work of historical significance because I am a literature nerd who can’t pull himself out of the old school. Generally I have some work of a spiritual bend for daily meditations—I’ve gone through things from Buddhism to Taoism to Stoicism to Christianity, and I plan to make it through whatever –isms and –itys that I can. Finally, I will have a work of philosophy that I’m plodding through slowly.
The question that has popped into my head lately is: what is it about my activities that connects them—apart from the fact, of course, that I am the one doing them?
I can’t help thinking, and by thinking I mean reasoning, investigating, pondering, wondering, criticizing, being skeptical, accepting, and generally wandering through the musical liquor of words, impressions, and ideas.
When I read something that means, I smile. Today I read this from David Hume’s “Treatise of Human Nature,” 1.4.7, paragraph 12:

I cannot forbear having a curiosity to be acquainted with the principles of good and evil, the nature and foundation of government, and the cause of these several passions and inclinations which actuate and govern me. I am uneasy to think I approve of one object and disapprove of another; call one thing beautiful and another deform’d; decide concerning of truth and falshood, reason and folly, without knowing up what principles I proceed. I am concern’d for the condition of the learned world, which lies under such a deplorable ignorance in all these particulars. I feel an ambition to arise in me of contributing to the instruction of mankind, and of acquiring a name by my inventions and discoveries. These sentiments spring up naturally in my present disposition; and shou’d I endeavour to banish them, by attaching myself to any other business or diversion, I feel I shou’d be a loser in point of pleasure; and this is the origin of my philosophy.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure why I started reading philosophy, but I know now and knew (somehow) even when I started that it was not to find answers. There are no answers in philosophy. As a matter of fact, Hume tells us: “Philosophy…if just, can present us only with mild and moderate sentiments.”
What the fuck do we study it for?
Precisely for those moderate sentiments.
What does it matter when Derrida says that everything is metaphor?
What does it matter if Camus tells us everything is pointless and the greatest decision we can make every day is the one to NOT commit suicide?
What does Heidegger’s four-fold matter?
What does Ethics matter?
I know (kind of) what I feel, my impressions—at least that I have impressions, and ideas (or at least that they sometimes burst with a severe force through my mind). I know that these things are the result of my investigation into things. I don’t read things to find something. I don’t read in order to know something. I read in order to mull things over. I am consistently skeptical because it keeps my brain limber. I think I actually hate knowing the answers to things. It annoys me. Any time you CAN’T know, that’s where I want to go.
What is time? What are the structures of the human consciousness? What is justice? What is injustice? What is pleasure? What is pain? What does “the” mean? What is an idea? What is good? What is bad? What is beauty? What is art? What does it mean that music is such an important part of the human experience? What is a soul? How do we reason? How do we answer questions that can only be supported by theory, observation and experience—the matter of truth—but no facts?
Theory, observation and experience are the necessary components of truth, but it’s that last one that, if I might be allowed a platitude: throws the wrench in the gears. You cannot experience what I experience. Sorry. I’m not sorry. Fitzgerald: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” I hereby make no claims on my ability to function—sometimes I maintain that I’m barely human. There is only personal truth. Sorry to you universal truth adherents. The other bummer about truth is: you can’t put it into words. Truth in words defeats the point of it.
That’s something to think about.

Wondering Again

2010-04-28T05:44:00.001-07:00

It would seem that the most common activity for me to engage in—for what seems like the last umpteen years of my existence—is the simple act of wondering.

I’ve been trying desperately lately to come up with some kind of delineation between thinking and reasoning that will account for the difference between them.

Inconspicuously, it would seem, lines tend to draw themselves where they oughtn’t to be, and onlookers begin wondering where exactly these demarcations come from.

Style and content are constantly connected while simultaneously being creatures of difference: contain them and they escape, free them and they only coagulate.

It is convenient to think that everything in the world exists in only the three shades of non-color, but that’s to do a disservice to combination and absence, isn’t it?

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian is a funny word to me—sitting up in that auspicious space along side such words as: wobbly, uvula, bovicide, and guttersnipe.

In Korea, when you’re teaching phonics, as funny as it is, you’re supposed to correct the children who are mispronouncing the words six as sex and fox as fuc*$.

Have you ever notice that when you finish reading a book your life is somehow changed, your perception has someway been altered, and something is different.

Considered at a different level, any kind of reading is practice in an art that is distinctly human: deciphering the meaning of symbols plopped onto a field.

Considered even further, reading material of a challenging bent is a taxing task for human reason, and it could be said that exercising reason is exercising humanity.

Considerate people are becoming fewer and farther between for inexplicable reasons, although I would have to blame the Enlightenment and Adam Smith.

It is at this point that I should also very much like to thank the Enlightenment thinkers and Adam for their contribution to the world of letters and understanding.

It is at this point that I ought to make very clear that all good ideas can be morphed into bad ideas: religion, Marxism, democracy, monarchy, anarchy, wisdom.

Dash-adding is a common-place element-in-the-closet for philosophers, bakers, chefs, people-of-repute, people-of-disrepute, and all those ne’er-do-wells.

Extricate yourself, please, for the love of god, from excessive, some would say ridiculous, superfluous comma usage, and I, who care, will be happy.

Complaining has never made anything better, she said to me. I responded back quickly that it certainly made me FEEL better, and that’s anything isn’t it? She responded that she supposed she had been casting a rather wide net using a ridiculous word such as anything that can mean everything, nothing, a car, a word, a meaning, a place, a noun, a verb, a book, a drink, a person, a trash can, a phone, a key, and anything else that you can put an ‘a’ in front of, but it was up to me to not take her out of context and understand which—which she was sure I did. What was there to say except, I’m sorry you feel ways about stuff: it can be a real drag when you’ve been given only two lines to say something exceptional. Of course this lead to an even greater misunderstanding of what I was actually attempting to mean versus what was conveyed, and this conversation (if it could be called such at this point) was well on its way to the resolution that perhaps it’s impossible to ever convey precisely what you mean when language is your only mode of transportation. What’s with all the talk about boats, she said as a loud thump on the wall made both of us jump nearly out of our skin—me thinking about what a phrase like “out of our skin” actually means and she thinking that somebody had obviously been killed with a blow to the head from a blunt object. Did you hear that? Of course I heard it, I said, I have a BS degree in Hearing and Auditory Sciences from Castiglia University in Firshampton Bay, New Cataractistica, just south of Bis. What the hell are you ever talking about? she rightfully queried. I’m not sure your over-active intelligence could sink so low as to appropriately grasp the simplicity of what I’m attempting to accomplish. You see… she cut me off with a wide-eyed stare and a finger raised to her lips when another epic-sounding thump bounced through the wall from our neighbors in 12C.
Death is the specter haunting US this evening, she said, I’m absolutely certain of it. How like us all, I pensively offered, but weren’t we attempting to have a conversation about something of great import before these rascals next to us decided to go about thrashing each other about and committed crimes that will inevitably lead to a lousy night of sleep for everybody involved. Why is that all you ever think about is sleep? It’s important for invigorated cogitations. When was the last time you considered help? Well, to seriously consider help, one must consider all the ontological ramifications of the question: what is help? Help means different things to different people, and it is entirely possible that what is helpful to Peter—which might well be the return of some lost goods, is not what is helpful to Paul—who is perfectly content with his lot in the whole ordeal. Yes, she said, I can see how that is wise, but I can also see that your inability to see without using your eyes is hampered by the plank of incomprehensibility. Pray, do you know the plank of incomprehensibility? she asked. I have made a very intimate acquaintance on more than one occasion with the aforementioned plank, and I should like you to know that it, she, he, we, they, you, and I have come to an understanding? And what, if I might inquire, is that? It’s where two people, in dispute, discuss matters to such an extent that there is an agreement, or, at the very least, an accord between them. Extraordinarily helpful, but you know what I meant. Did I? Do I? Don’t you? Don’t you what? No… don’t you? Wait… don’t you? or don’t I? If I had said don’t I that wouldn’t have made any sense. It is a question direct to you. I thought you were being ironic. No, just a bit silly. Have you learned anything? When it comes to antagonistic thumping, let it be known that death is absolutely certain, and sometimes dying is the most succulent activity the brain can engage in—apart from leaving prepositions at the end of the sentences they’re in.

Things Written Outside Family Mart

2010-04-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

in Busan, South Korea with a pitcher (1L) of beer, a bottle of soju and a bowl of ramyun noodles.
I have on my Waegukin hat right now. Whenever I am in an area that is saturated with us, I feel strangely ill at ease. I am still terrible at shopping. I am still not good at getting girls to sleep with me, but apparently I am talented. Or, at least I have been told so for a couple of mediums (read: writing and music). What do you do when you’re Paul Varjak?
I always want people to sit down and tell me their lives.
Busan would be a very different experience for me, I know that much, but why do I always run away from things that seem like they will mean something in the future?
A Filipino family has set up a convenience store outside of the convenience store, and the store is their van. They seem happy.
Set me straight. Buy me beers and set me straight.
I surprised the hell out of my friend last night be being American. Is it so hard to believe?
There are big things coming in the next short time. I feel them percolating, and soon it will be time to serve them up. The future is a blank slate. We defile with our created meanings. What will you? Just put the pen on the page and see what spews forth.
I am at the scene of previous exploits, wandering through significant memories. You remember when “that” happened? Of course you do. But always bear (bare) in mind the significance of the past tense.
Yesterday I walked for eight straight hours (including four hours of city walking and four hours on a couple of mountains), spent six hours in a spa for eight dollars, went to the beach, played a show that lasted almost two hours, got heroically drunk, played the after hours show, went to a bar where cute girls talk to you while you drink—one of them was dressed as a chicken, before retiring the day at my friend’s rooftop flat.
That’ll do it, hey? If for that one day, the weekend was full.
Hey, remember that time when you slept so softly next to me? It was here in this place that we touched something. What was it? Why do I have to be so intense? When will I learn how to have fun with relationships and words and meaning and all that the world would have me understand?
I wish I understood things. I wish I could concentrate on things for longer than five hours at a time. I wish the world would rotate backwards for just one day, long enough to fuck everybody up, and then return to normal. I wish the best minds of my generation had a voice to say what they see. I wish the minds of my generation weren’t blind. I wish the reality and pain of eternal separation from meaning on no man, but it’s what we are all stuck with. I wish I could see as a Korean sees. I wish life made sense—when it so clearly doesn’t (and that is its beauty). I wish I had some insight into what it is about society that seems to foster a sense of money. I wish anybody could understand why it is impossible to own money. The one thing that makes “ownership” possible—or is it?—can never be said to be something you own, only something you have. If it were consistently seen in this light, don’t you think that we’d understand more about life? It is all fleeting. You own nothing. You are given the care of it for a short time, and the only thing that really, truly matters is the actual care that you give to it: what kind of use you make of it, how you allow it to help humanity, and the utter, delicious, beautiful meaninglessness of it in the long run.
Don’t give me this crap about an after-life, and please don’t call it believe because believing is based on experience. Faith is what it is, but it CAN be totally groundless. Jesus arose from the grave. Lazarus arose from the grave. Did they come back from heaven? If Lazarus was a good man, and ostensibly in heaven, don’t you think he’d be mad if Jesus brought him back to earth? Perhaps heaven is the rest the mind can take when it’s dead, and the nutrients the body gives back to nature that breathed life into it.
It can be amazing what we will endure for the sake of endurance. She’s tall and thin, she’s short and fat, and all we want is to feel something, anything for a pure moment. Keep an eye out for what will come, it might take unexpected forms.
What do the Korean police do, exactly? Or, maybe a more appropriate question would be: what is it about the USA that keeps our boys in blue so busy?
The obvious answer is crime. What is that nature of this crime? Everything. What is it about the USA that makes the crime so rampant? The unwavering devotion to not giving a shit about fuck. Does the fact that the cops actually carry guns exacerbate the issue? Probably. Maybe. Causes and effects are necessarily related. The question is: how?
“What?” is a way of looking at the world honestly. “How?” is a way of making all the necessary connections that exist.
Which one can I bone?
If it were possible, could you break the back of the established guilt purveyors? They sell it as if it’s free, but don’t we all know the truth? You ought to feel guilty for this. Please feel guilty for that. Drink down the insignificant significance.
We’ll feed you until you defeat us.
Hahahaha!
(you never will)
Congestion is relative,
by which I mean, of course,
that relatives
can congest the most free-flowing
of folk.
Friends will do the same,
and things we can’t control—
by which I mean most of a life—
but the trick at this point is fully
to invest yourself in decongestants.
Clear the sinuses with a good book.
Free those nasal passages in writing.
Create your pain away.
Accept the things you can’t control.
Forever seek to control
absolutely nothing.
Remember life is really good if you
simply let it be, and follow purely
spiritual whims to
the ends they’ll carry
you to.

Classes

2010-04-12T06:52:00.000-07:00

I startled myself today with the realization that I’m pretty sure I have never left university. What I mean is that the habits I developed in university have stayed with me since then, possibly more than any other time in my life.

Normally, especially with the way most university students go about living, this might not be the healthiest or most advantageous form of living on the face of the planet, but my particular manifestation of it has some interesting quirks. The imbibing of intoxicating chemicals is still around, but in a far, far, far… um, far diminished form. That’s what university is about isn’t it: let’s drink until we can’t feel feelings any more five nights (and sometimes days) a week. Ah, well, you grow up eventually, and a couple of post-work relaxation beverages covers your needs with maybe a heavy night on the weekend for fun.

There is also still the tendency to keep late hours. This is not anything new for me really because I have been a chronic insomniac since I was in middle school; however, what I learned about myself in university is that if I exhaust myself absolutely thoroughly in both a mental and a physical way, sleep will come. As I thought it was very important to study before playing, and there was usually a lot of wrestling practice before studying, this actually worked out pretty well for me. I would be exhausted from working that day (I worked two part-time jobs), going to classes, going to wrestling practice, and spending a few hours in the library, so sleep was never too far away from me.

Those heady days are reminiscences of my undergraduate work, and it struck me as if all of a sudden that my graduate days were pretty similar. I was working a part-time overnight job in Manhattan (a labor intensive affair that actually caused me to lose thirty pounds), while being a full-time Master’s student in Queens, and juggling all of that with a girlfriend. There was always travel, work, reading, studying, writing, late nights, and at this point I was starting my guitar studies as well.

All of which brings me to Korea. The place that I find myself now (which is to say South Korea) has been very good to me. If you have ever had any desire whatsoever to teach English as a second language, Korea comes highly recommended. Korea can be everything you want it to be, whatever you want it to be, and everything you don’t want it to be. It’s that last one that you have to watch out for, but what will happen in that case is a personal growth and development that is beyond comprehension—you will be different. At any rate, Korea has been very good to me.

Last year, I was in almost complete hermitage. I was in the process of writing a book, and it took up most of my year; however, in order to cull enough fodder for the book from the year, I had to go out and do interesting things (climbing mountains, mudfests, wandering into unknown cities, trying all sorts of new food, and generally finding myself in the most out-of-the-way places that a foreigner could find him or herself), and this took up a lot of time. Beyond that, I was furiously reading and developing my understanding of myself and human beings: from Buddhist readings to philosophy to history to novels to classics and everything in between. Finally, there was a load of guitar practice that happened every week.

I’m not sure who else on the planet is stuck in the mode of being a perpetual student, but I find that my days are happiest when I spend them studying for most of the day, working hard, and playing hard whenever I get a chance. My days are like a personal university that I am putting myself through, and there is even a kind of schedule and what you could call classes.

Music A: The learning and memorization of works of music by other artists.
Music B: The creation of original music.
Literature: The examination of a work of classic literature (right now it’s “The Story of
My Life” by Giacomo Casanova).
Philosophy: David Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”
Creative Writing: Currently working on a short story to be submitted to a journal and poetry is a consistent activity
Languages: I study Korean three times a week in an attempt to see how the acquisition of a second language affects the way a person thinks

The more I consider it, the more I feel like I’m in training, but it’s for something that I’m not sure will ever happen. The other day I read: “You bank on your pursuits to give you happiness, thus confusing means with ends.” Banking on pursuits will bring you only sadness, while pursuing will see you only consistently advancing. It’s difficult because we don’t know what we’re really striving for—the future being as unknowable as it is—but we know we’re working towards something. I feel like this needs a little bit of a further explication, and what I mean is that there is now way to say exactly how our goals will manifest themselves. Let’s say your goal is simply to be the CEO of a business. If that’s your only goal, you might wake up and find one day that you have achieved your goal: you are the CEO of a business dedicated to midget porn. Your goal, technically, has been achieved. You worked toward achieving it, and you did, but you couldn’t have known at the outset (unless you had said to yourself “I want to be the CEO of a business that is dedicated to midget porn”) what the manifestation of it would be.

I have always wanted to be a traveler, and I have traveled a lot. The vagueness of the goal hasopened up avenues and vistas that I had never thought possible, but it also manages to surprise me on a daily basis, and there is something to be said for stability. Everybody, on every day of their life, is training to be the person they will become. What you are doing consistently, every day, is determining the kind of person that you are going to become in the future. You will not decide to be a champion bike rider on Monday and win the Tour de France the next Friday. It is the same in existence. What kind of existence do you want to have? What are you doing today to develop the kind of person that you want to be in the future? Look at what you’re doing regularly, and understand that this is probably what you’re going to do until you make a radical decision to change your training regimen. It’s as easy as recognition, but you have to really see, and remember that slow is the way of nature.

Trying Very Hard

2010-04-06T07:19:00.001-07:00

Right now my brain is a bit muddled. It is in the process of attempting to connect the dots between Giacomo Casanova, David Hume, Epictetus, quasi-miracles, Frank McCourt, and teaching phonics. The most obvious connection is that I’m dealing with all of these things on an incredibly regular basis currently. But there is always some way in which the things most seemingly unconnected can be connected.
All right, I fully understand that there is danger in attempting to make connections between the unconnected. This is, as a matter of fact, South Park’s bread and butter: what kind of ridiculous non sequitur crap is going on in the world at the moment. A beaver dam collapsed, people are stranded on their roofs, and it’s obvious that the REAL cause of the problem is global warming.
Epictetus warns us that we should consistently call things by their right names:
“When we name things correctly, we comprehend them correctly, without adding information or judgments that aren’t there. Does someone bathe quickly? Don’t’ say he bathes poorly, but quickly. Name the situation as it is; don’t filter it through your judgments. Does someone drink a lot of wine? Don’t say she’s a drunk, but that she drinks a lot. Unless you possess a comprehensive understanding of her life, how do you know if she is a drunk? … Give your assent only to what is actually true.”
This has actually been a big theme of my time here in Korea: what is the right name for something. I remember the first time I looked at a 5000Won note and said in my head, “Sweet, I still have oh-cheon-won.” The fact of the matter is that it is not five thousand won. It is oh-cheon-won. That seems like a really minor example, but the effect is astounding. Korea is actually ripe with madness for calling things by their correct names. My Korean Made Easy book has this to say:
“In Korea, people are addressed by titles based on age and position, which are complex even for Koreans! … So now you may understand the reason Koreans almost always exchange business cards upon first meeting—these cards contain each person’s appropriate title.”
This idea of calling things by their right names is a rampant issue in modern society. For example, I recently was presented with the argument from a farmer that large-scale, factory farming is more efficient and therefore more sustainable. Here we are presented with exactly the kind of non sequitur that ought to be avoided: efficiency and sustainability are exclusive terms. One does not imply the other, and they are only barely even related. What he meant to say was that large-scale, factory farming is more efficient that small-scale, organic farming at producing large amounts of product because that’s what efficiency actually implies.
Extending this idea into the world of literature, I have been recently reading over Giacomo Casanova’s conversations with Voltaire that he recounts in “The Story of My Life,” and when your life is constantly running between languages, you are placed in the very difficult position of ensuring that you are consistently being accurate in your naming of things. More than once in the text he refers to times when he is embarrassed in France by his inappropriate turns of phrase or inaccurate verbiage due to his Venetian heritabe, and being in Korea—with its multitudes of titles and ambiguousness in accuracy for determining those titles—has made me feel his pain very acutely.
The most obvious arena for this discussion is in philosophy, language theory, and the discussion of what words actually mean. What is an idea? What is a thought? Defining the simplest terms is sometimes the highest goal of philosophy. Hume is attempting to differentiate between things like belief and THE IDEA of a belief. What’s the difference? Is it significant? What if it is? More importantly, he’s trying to figure out what the difference is between cause and effect, and THE IDEA of cause and effect. Imagine if you will that not every existent thing has to have a cause prior to it.
This really messed me up today. Think about it for a second in terms of your own life. Your existence right now is not determined by some previous cause. Even if you were to say that you were caused by your mom and dad having sex you could fall into error very easily. That sex was merely the canvas on which your existence was to be painted. That would be like saying that the canvas Leondardo purchased caused the painting of the Mona Lisa. The reality is that the effect of their sex was the man ejaculating into the woman. That’s it.
This question has been messing with me lately as well: what of the spirit? Reading Rudolph Steiner a while ago gave me the messed up idea that the spirit is outside the body, wrapping it like a glove. At first, this idea made a lot of sense because I believe wholeheartedly in the Joni Mitchell-an “touching of souls,” but it also seemed strange that the spirit would simply exist outside the self. What I have come to think in the last few weeks is that the spirit permeates the self and extends beyond it. Yes, it does exist outside of the self, but it also manages to saturate the body with its essence. I have recently come to really hate the idea of the spirit being inside me: how can I share something that is doomed to remain inside me. No. I like this idea of a saturating, permeating, extending spirit that can touch people.
Frank McCourt is an Irish-American who taught in New York City for thirty years. Teaching is one of the most honorable professions that any human being can engage in, but I want to qualify this statement by saying that it is a profession that should never be entered into lightly. What is education? To call it by it’s right name would be to say that it is the foundation of the human character. It is everything. One of my students today said, in the course of a grammar lesson about “used to”: People used to think that food was really important, but now we know that money is more important than food.” She didn’t learn that from experience, she learned that from the education she achieved. (In a bit of a side note, I went ballistic, but they couldn’t even imagine a world in which there were no supermarkets from which to purchase food.) The question Mr. McCourt seems to be posing is: what is education?
To be honest, I leave it up to my phonics kids. They teach me almost more than Hume and Epictetus and Casanova together. You haven’t lived until you’ve spent twenty minutes of your life trying to teach six-year-olds the difference between pup and pop. The Korean word for rice is pronounced pop, and, even at six years old, these kids have been saying pop for the bulk of their life. After twenty minutes of repeating the pronunciation of pup for them, they still didn’t get it. Imagine the power of the mind that allows for this kind of thing. At six years old the mind is already very powerfully trained. Imagine the kind of training it has received, and how much experience it has, at calling things by the names it’s been taught to call things. The final question is, what if all that education, all that time being taught what to call something, is fallacious, and you wind up calling something by its wrong name anyway? “To live outside the law you must be honest.”

It occurs to me suddenly...

2010-03-30T08:04:00.000-07:00

that this post will make almost no sense.

“Nothing is more precious to the thinking man than life itself;
yet in spite of this, the greatest voluptuary is he who best practices
the difficult art of making it pass quickly.
It is not that he wishes to make life briefer;
Rather, he wants amusement to make him unaware of its passing.”
--Giacomo Casanova

Yes, that comes from the infamous ladies’ man himself. It turns out that that cat knew a lot of things about stuff. In the seventeenth century, the Church replaced the vague sin of "sadness" with sloth, which ought to explain a lot of things from the simple fact of its is-ness. When idle, the mind and body have all sorts of recourse to experience those things which it would much rather not: investigation into itself (which naturally reveals nothing but perpetual isolationism). This one fact tends to make the self sad, which is why sloth actually gets at the heart of the matter.
I don’t know what people do with their days. What do they think about? What are they invested in investigating? Do they investigate anything? What do they think about? How is a day in the life of an average human being passed?
“Ulysses” is one of my all time favorite books, because it is simultaneously a day in the life of average men and un-average men. These are just guys doing their work, getting paid, and trying to make it through as best they can; however, it is not generally in the scope of your average guy’s day to stay away from home all day in order to allow your wife to have an affair; similarly, it is not in the average guy’s day to find the apparition of a savior in the man who has stayed away from home all day to allow his wife to have an affair (and, almost simultaneously, masturbate to a lame girl sitting on the beach while hiding behind a bush).
Or, is it rather that this is exactly what happens to us every day without our full comprehension of it?
I have spent most of my day contemplating the question: “What is time?”
I don’t know how many people do this every day, but today it happened to me, and any time this question pops up (which it sometimes does with surprising, disturbing frequency), I find myself face to face with a fundamental, unanswerable question.
It should also be understood at the outset here that these fundamental, unanswerable questions are essential to existence—in my view of things, and it is not the answering of them that matters, but rather the attempt. There is no way to describe in words what time is because it is something that is experienced, combined with something measured. There is no way that words can touch that: the impotence of my chosen career suddenly becomes manifest.
But, looked at in terms of some of my own definitions of things, Time, then, illustrates a certain truth. Time is the theory that things succeed each other in simultaneousness. There is no way, except for in the world of comic books and science fiction that two times can exist simultaneously. There is no way that 2010 and 2009 can exist, especially for me, at the same time. It is precisely this sequential habit we have of dealing with time that forms its reality as infinite and singular. In practice, it occurs as moment to moment. The moment that I am currently involved in gives way to the moment that will follow it, and this has been so much the historical case with me that there is absolutely no reason to believe that at some point the moment I am experiencing now will be followed by the moment that immediately proceeded it. That is absurd. I will be the first to admit that absurdities are fun, but when dealing with things in earnest, absurdity ought to play a very insignificant part.
What is the difference between the idea of a thing and the thing itself?
To answer this question, it is probably most appropriate to look at the nature of inter-human relationships.
The idea of the relationship I have with my significant other is often far, far more appealing that the actuality of it—whether we choose to acknowledge this fact or not. Sensual and emotional comforts are very appealing, and when the choice is between having physical/emotional comfort and dealing with the pain of aloneness. In the sage like wisdom of Bradley Nowell:
“Sleepin’ by yourself at night can make you feel alone.”
However, the idea of being able to share the pain of being a human being (“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”) is sometimes not a technically effective remedy for the maladies of the relationships itself: constant verbal battles, physical confrontations, emotional drainage, etc. Even still, the mind most frequently, almost consistently errs on the side of combating its reality with a cohort. What is that about?
Perhaps Casanova had it right: it’s not that we devalue life because of its necessarily fleeting nature, it pains us so intensely to understand fully—all in a moment—the monumental reality of that which is passing us by.
And perhaps that’s where time comes into play: we wanted some kind of way to be able to measure the experiences of the human character. Then, after reflection, we found this measure flawed: like attempting to divine which line was greater, the longer one or the shorter one. They are both simply degrees of the same thing. They are both lines and there is no way to decide with one is greater. There is only the possibility of applying an artificial title on one such as “longer” and the other as “shorter.” Even here we run into trouble because we are dealing with comparisons and there is nothing intrinsic about these delineations—which sort of automatically renders them derivative. There is nothing about line A in particular that makes it longer. It is only in comparison with line B—a measurable distance shorter—that this distinction is even possible, which makes it an artificial designation.
For example, take two line segments. One of them is four inches long. The other is two inches long. Which one is greater? Perhaps neither, they’re both lines after all. Which one is longer? Artificially, the one that’s four inches long. Introduce into this situation a circle whose circumference is five inches. Which is greater? That’s apples and oranges! What is a circle but a continuous but measurable line? It is line that is five inches long surrounding a space. What’s incredible here is that the distance from one side of that space to the other is less than two inches (line B). Which is greater? Which is longer?
These are the questions that plague my days.
In short, I think that Casanova is right; however, I think it deserves an amendment in the form of direction. Perhaps man may seek amusement in order to avoid the fact that the most precious gift he has been given is slowly, steadily wasting away in front of his eyes; however, it ought to be noted that the particularities of the amusements are more important than the amusements themselves. Consider if you will the state of two men who have been similar disposed to amusements, but one finds his in the digital imaging of the television and the other in the quest for an understanding of the self that he is through personal experience and investigation of what others have written. Can you imagine which one is going to actively seek out new and varied instances of personal growth and development? Can you imagine which one will probably develop a kind of eating disorder and tendency towards sloth?
I have seen the former and I have seen the latter.
From personal experience I urge you to seek out those amusements that develop the understanding of the self. I fail to see how American Idol induces this urge. Who among us, in this day and age, is actually attempting to understand how we understand ourselves?

Let Them Come

2010-03-22T17:08:00.001-07:00

Flow comes to mind here. At no point should expectations be raised. Co-ordinate desire with the pleasures of the flesh? Is this possible? No. Desire is, by definition, a non-physical entity.
Who would guess that I waded through the cold uphillness of the path to get here?
Make up words and write them over top of other words. Do it Now!
Essential freedom of thought in this place.
Can a pink melodica change the face of things? Maybe it can. Accept the reality of that possibility.
Keep contained within yourself the seeds of greatness, and trees cannot coagulate into full-grown entities.
Compositionally speaking: the human character is perpetually separate.
Hopeless recombination!!!
Can you re-consult oracles?
Will they tell you something different? Or
can they? Are they forced to tell you consistencies?
Do words have to be linear, or is it simply to aid in comprehension.
It’s funny the power music has. Start a tune. Maybe people don’t know it, maybe they do. It turns out that I can play “Caress Me Down.”
Convince yourself that which isn’t… is. Consultations are free
in Birmingham.
“Love of mine, someday you will die, but I’ll be close behind, and follow you into the dark.
No blinding light, or tunnels to gates of white, just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark.”
“The light wraps you in its mortal flame, abstracted pale mourner, standing that way against the old propellers of the twilight that revolves around you. Speechless, my friend, alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead, and filled with the lives of fire, pure heir of the ruined day. A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment. The great roots of night grow suddenly from your soul and the things that hide in you come out again so that a blue and pallid people, your newly born, takes nourishment.”
Misunderstood significance runs rampant here. Does it mean? Yes. What does it mean? Recognize the fleeting and let it be fleeting. I hate Coldplay. I love having a pen in my hand… comfort. Free play meaning fluid. This place is where you learn to accept the fleeting reality that is human existence.
Obvious, isn’t it, the radical shift in tone?
Brainwaves have this way of jumping around, especially when channeling the sub-conscious that is entirely unpredictable—a bit like the path of a tornado. I think only the consciousness is allowed to concentrate. It would probably defeat the purpose if our sub-conscious was allowed to concentrate. Its job is to move quickly and file everything. It is the most efficient secretary ever conceived. Then, when everything is filed, it turns itself around and around like an enormous rolodex, speed reading everything over and over and over, faster than it is possible to comprehend, until it comes to understand whatever it is it’s possible to understand.
It throws the trash away into dreams—or at least the stuff it doesn’t want to deal with anymore—which is why dreams are usually so entertaining and useful.
It makes people pop into your head at precisely the moment they are supposed to. Over a week ago I received an email from a very dear friend that lives in New York City. It was an important email. It had a lot of information in it, and it certainly required a response, but not immediately. Time wears on, and a couple of days ago, for no reason whatsoever, her name popped into my head as if the sub-conscious was done sorting through whatever it had needed to sort through and the appropriate time for a response was now.
What is that about? How can we get more in touch with this mysterious brain process? Can we? It’s probably not worth it. We would never be able to understand it anyhow.
Let it be what it is. Those simple words are all too difficult sometimes, aren’t they? It is almost human nature to want to mold things, shape things into an image of our own, but the reality is that things, left to their own devices, are usually better off without human interference. Most endangered species wouldn’t be endangered in the first place, and nature has this funny way of knowing which animals ought to survive and which oughtn’t that is so outside the scope of human knowledge that…
A thought: can humans be said to be a part of nature? We are the only animal that attempts to mold nature to our own will. We keep people alive that, in the natural order, would die. We mow down trees and plants to build ghastly metal structures. We destroy the beautiful to erect the disgusting. Perhaps this is the essential fallacy of humanity: we ARE a part of nature. We have just spent so much time attempting to convince ourselves that, somehow, we can win. There are ways to defeat little bits of nature here and there, but nature likes to give us little warning signs like hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, tsunamis and volcanoes that ought to illustrate how quickly Mother Nature could tear us down to our real size (which is pretty puny if you think about it) if she so desired. To her, time is nothing. The average human lifespan doesn’t even register as a blip on the surface of her history or her future. The sun is going to die. OK… IN FIVE BILLION YEARS!!!!!!!!!!!! Some quick math: what’s 5 billion, minus 100 (and we’re being VERY generous with a human lifespan here)?
499,999,999,900. That is a very big number my friends.
No. Humanity won’t last that long I’m afraid. All is pointless, hopeless, and fleeting. BUT THAT’S ITS BEAUTY!!! That’s where the beauty comes from, not this immortality everybody thinks they want. In immortality, all is pointed, hopeful and enduring. If only for the fact that, to me, living in a state of hope forever sounds like the worst torture anybody could endure, it seems like the dread of the knowledge, the truth, that things will come to an end, seems like a far, far better thing than living in the dream world of hoping that they won’t. So let them come, whatever they be. Let them go, whatever they are. Let them do whatever they will.

Static

2010-03-13T06:06:00.001-08:00

Sometimes we become static, and the thing about static is that seems to be moving, but it’s reality is stationary: all those lines on the TV ARE moving, but they’re moving no farther than the screen will allow them; all those sounds are moving around, but they’re confined to the space the headphones will allow them; all those feelings between people exist only so long as they’re allowed to exist. The essential irony of static is that it seems to be something much more than it is. It pretends to take up all this time and space, but it’s pulling a French Drop and you’re missing the whole point.
Life can get very caught up with the static is involved in, and this causes the person who is in the unfortunate position of dealing with the static the sense that they’re dealing with something truly important; however, when it becomes possible to step back, the affected person sees clearly that what they were dealing with was bullshit.
I suppose that what I’m talking about here is the liberation that comes from turning off the TV, putting down the headphones, and letting those feelings go. It turns out that the scope of complication to which we subject ourselves is precisely our own doing.
Ancient practitioners of the phrase “first, take care of the self,” would practice three things in the attempt to develop the self and understand how much of our mental anguish is brought on us by ourselves.
First, they would test themselves. These tests would take the form of deprivation and exercise in poverty. For example, one documented test of the self was to develop a hunger through doing sport, present oneself with a table full of delicious and savory foods, then turn away and be content (if not happy) having the same food as the slaves. Granted, the people giving themselves this test were usually well-off men of some station in society, but could you imagine the aristocracy or the upper sector of the bourgeoisie in America practicing poverty in this way? The question would come up: why should I? The answer would come back: “We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once lean how far poverty is from being a burden.”
Second, they would interrogate themselves. Interrogate has a lot of negative connotations, but what it means in this context is more like cross-examination—although that particular word seems to be AS loaded with negative connotations as the other. Essentially, it means that when you wake up, you ask yourself what you plan to get accomplished that day in terms of the development of the soul—not just a list of chores that need tending to. How will you expand your understanding of truth? How will you find your way to that which is consistently good? How will you move gently correct your brother who has gone astray? Once you have prepared yourself for the day, go through your day with these goals in mind, and before you go to bed, review. What did I do today to help develop my soul? What did I do today to expand my understanding of truth? What bad habit have I cured today? What fault have I resisted? In what respect am I better? The facts of human reality are that we are the only creature capable of developing itself into something better. Birds do not try to be better birds. Dogs, left to their own devices, will only seek out food and the occasional hump. Humans are in the unique position to become better humans through the development of their character.
Finally, they would focus on the labor of thought with itself as goal. This is related to the fact that man is the only animal that is capable of thinking about thinking. In other words, if you take the unique structure of human consciousness, it allows for this metacommentary of thought. It is the consistent check-up on the representations we have in our minds. When we see something, it represents something else to our minds, and is that secondary image appropriate, unbiased, tuned to the development of the good? The best example is money. In the time before money was as standardized as it is and there were variations in coinage—the nascent stages of money—a vendor would spend a long time verifying that a coin was what it was claiming to be. They would bite it, they would throw it in a metal bowl and listen to the sound, and they would take as much time as necessary to ensure that what they were getting was the genuine article and not something derivative. The same care ought to be taken with the thoughts that course through us. Is this something wholesome? Is it derivative information? Where does the image that I’m forming actually come from? Am I simply repeating a formulaic seeming-truth given to me from outside, or am can its veracity be determined through my combination of theory and experience.
These practices were taken very seriously by those who chose get involved with them. After all, if you’re going to be a great runner, then you should probably take care of your feet and exercise often. If you’re going to be a great wrestler, then you should practice frequently and take care of the body. If you’re going to be a great man, then you should develop the soul daily, and take care of the mind.
It is precisely at this point that static comes back into play: we live in a society of spectacles, distractions from a reality that is possible to develop. What happens when we choose to focus on the spectacle nature of society is that we delve balls deep into the static, we leave the TV static running at a very loud volume, we turn up the headphones, and we take our gaze away from the development of the self.
I don’t know why, but I feel like it is important here to state that this development of the self is in terms of the society that the self is inside. It is every man’s duty for the development of the society to develop the self. This is very different from the selfish ambitions of those who would radically attempt to take charge of their lives and thereby take control of others—I guess I’m thinking of Smith’s stupid hand and all those ruthless business bastards whose only goal is making money…this is not the development of the self for the betterment of society. I hate you Adam Smith. At what point did you forget that the reason humans have to develop themselves is because they essentially suck at living.
I guess what I’m here to advocate is the turning off of the TV—in a literal and metaphorical sense, the taking off of the headphones—is that a gasp of horror from iPod advocates everywhere that I hear, and returning the gaze to the development of the self. Take back control of your life by cutting through the bullshit static that seems to expand the more we allow it to gather. It is almost as if, once we give it a foothold in our life, the complacency and laziness that comes with unessential drama mushroom clouds until it is all we see. The point is, of course, to not let things get that far. Start practicing selfness now. Start waking up and making sure that you have a plan for making yourself better.
If you don’t know how, take some advice from the ancients, because the development of the character of the self necessarily involved reading, writing and physical activity. Start up a simple regiment of thinking in the morning. Find a good meditation book like “The Art of Living” or “The Tao Teh Ching” or “The Art of War” and start your day off by thinking about HOW you can make yourself a better human being… just thinking. That goal being accomplished (and it shouldn’t take any more than fifteen or thirty minutes), watch one less TV show and use the time to go running. If you can’t run, go for a walk. Join the gym. Start a yoga class. The body is the seat of the mind and a healthy body aids in the health of the mind. Finally, do some writing at the end of the day and recount what you did to make yourself better. Recall the words from the book you had read earlier. Write about the things you thought as you walked. Were they wholesome? Were they directed to the essential challenge of nature for the human being: how can I be better at being? Follow this simple regiment for one month and see if anything comes of it. Put down Dan Brown and pick up Epictetus. Turn off American Idol and go for a walk. Write.

Three Fingers

2010-01-31T07:36:00.001-08:00

In what seems like a fantastic fact, I haven’t done any writing in quite a while, but I woke up today (already awake of course), and the urge to deflower a perfectly innocence blank space with characters and metaphors sprang up from the time fog.
It’s an almost primal urge. The need to create, I mean. What is it from human history that instills in all of us the drive to create something out of nothing? It is probably related to the fact that the consciousness, subconsciously, feels the need to illustrate to itself exactly how it came into being. It looks at itself and wonders how there was nothing there, then there was this thing, and a thing to recognize that thing apart from other things. So, when we create something, we take essentially nothing and make it something.
Midnight on Sunday, there is three fingers of whisky next to me in a small glass, and that will probably serve me throughout this entire writing process.
Life is sometimes only about focus. What the human character focuses on is the road that particular character is choosing to walk down, and it is always a choice. You can choose to focus on anything, but I think there’s a funny sort of turnaround that happens when your focus is on the big picture—and I’m not talking about in a business sense because even that is not broad enough.
One generally thinks of focus as a pinpoint. When you focus all of your energy and attention on this one particular thing, that is focus, which is true; however, it is also entirely possible to focus on one particular thing like existence. What is it like when your focus is entirely on what this thing existence is? It’s a focus of a different kind, isn’t it? There is very little that doesn’t fall under the scope and scale of existence, and when you focus on a full existence, only wanting to become yourself, an endless hallway lined with doors seems to open up right in front of your eyes. Existence is every one of those doors and none of them simultaneously. Each door is a part of existence and the whole of it. Each one of them has to represent the infinite eternal present instant. That is where existence takes place, in the present progressive reality of the human being. Humans are not present simple—something immortalized, usual or always true. Humans began at some point in the past, are moving through something, and that something is expected to continue until an unknown point in the future. I am living.
Sartre’s idea that we don’t use language like a tool (some kind of hammer for a metalworking experiment), we exist language is never more apparent than in the unfortunate area of grammar. Why do we need grammar? It is an illustration of the state of the human character. Oh, you ought to know that USING proper grammar is not important except in the area of thorough information conveyance, but grammar itself is an invaluable peak at the inner workings of human beings.
What are the easiest things in life? Things we know are always true. Things that happened at some point in the past and have been immortalized—either in writing or scheduling. Things that are even usually true are pretty simple. This is why, most of the time, the present simple for most verb forms is the easiest—very few oddities.
What is the most difficult thing in life? Life. To be is pretty difficult. I know that in at least three languages, “To Be” is always an irregular verb form. What does that tell you? In Korean, they separate something that is inherent inside of you (something you have—I have 26 years inside me… “I am 26 years old”) from something that you do (“I am a teacher”). They both translate to “I am,” but they are rendered differently in Korean.
What about the future? We don’t know a whole lot about the future, and the form is usually some form of the present simple: I will talk to you later. The unknowable future manifests itself in its connection with the present.
The past, especially in English, is probably the most difficult verb tense to get your head around. There are so many irregular past tense verbs that it makes the head spin. Smack that together with the past participle, and your left in the lurch. If we take a look at that, the past is complicated, isn’t it? And I’m not talking about grammar any more. We carry the past around with us, but it’s always changing based on new information that we have gathered or how our memory has retained the information we learned.
If you’re confused, imagine the difficulty of teaching these things to children. Well, to be fair, I don’t have to teach children that they ARE language and this manifests itself in grammar, but the reality of teaching that to them makes it a very daunting task. While they don’t need to know it, they need to understand it at some level. All of us understand it at some level. That’s why we use the language we do. It is we. This is probably why one of my favorite pastimes, one of my favorite hobbies is wandering through meaning. What does something mean? What can a single word mean? What does it mean to ask a question instead of making a statement?
I have been told, more than once… recently, that it can sometimes be no fun talking to me because my questions are always really difficult, and this can be a little off-putting. I remember that one of those times it was after asking what constitutes a coincidence, whether it’s related to an accident, and if one is a derivative of the other. I find that defining words as thoroughly as possible is a great workout for the brain, but sometimes people actually want to talk a lot of rot. If you were a toaster, what would you say to the person that owned you?
These are the questions that pop through my head. Even the fact that most of what happens in my head happens in the form of a question is an illustration—from a grammatical standpoint—of my character. For anybody that wanted to know, that’s pretty much how I go about living: questions. What happens when I do this? Okay. Lesson learned. What happens when… this? Okay. Life is a question that isn’t meant to be answered, but is sure as hell meant to be asked.
This week is a big question for me. Something new is starting, and I understand that vagueness can be a very irritating thing for people—especially me. I’m off and wandering into a world of meaning again, and there is excitement for me at a soul level because this is something that I have wanted for a long time. It doesn’t mean anything technically, but it means what it will. I wrote that line in a poem a long time ago: “It means what it will in the future,” and I have found it more and more true as time has passed. Most things that happen only develop meaning as time washes over it. What does that mean from a grammar standpoint?
I guess the last thing I’m going to say is that art is in the same tense as the human being. Art was created at some time in the past, is moving the present and will continue until an unknown time in the future. Even performance art started, is affecting, and will continue to affect. How many people were affected by something they saw and made a change in their life that will continue into the future?
What will you investigate over the course of three fingers of whisky?

A Letter

2009-12-21T18:14:00.000-08:00

Dear Christmas~

I guess I officially don’t understand you. I mean, I think I understand, but I understand the sentiment holding you up even more.
Sometimes, aren’t you a giant excuse to remember the loved ones you forget about all year long? That’s actually sad, but what if you weren’t there?
No, I think we’re definitely better off with Christmas in our lives; however, I also think that the manner of Christmas ought to be redefined.
In Korea, Christmas amounts to a bank holiday, a day off from school, and little more than a nice lunch with the family feeling good about life.
In America, Christmas lasts almost two months (sometimes more), costs a crap load, and has become the time of year that businesses rely on to pull them out of the red.
Okay, seriously, there has to be some kind of balance we can reach—Chanukah seems like a nice balance: one week, candles, remembrance, a few gifts, okay.
But why does religion have to get all mixed up with you?
So many people go to church one day a year.
Oh, and, um, Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th, but it’s tradition isn’t it?
This is just something that I’m throwing out into the winds of possibility and might eventually regret: could you ever be about simple celebration of the beauty of being there and alive? Santa being the cartoonish representation of the giver of the free gift of existence?
You know, the more I think about it, you probably started as precisely that: a simple celebration in the heart of winter to remind humanity of the warmth that perpetually burns in the breast of all who are alive.
But Pagans and Christians all wish to have to their stamp on things and we wind up with the mind-bending reality of seeing the juxtaposition of a magic cartoon octogenarian master of breaking and entering and the birth of the son of god.
In what world would these two things normally be allowed to be together?
Or…
is it just me or do those two things suddenly make perfect sense?
Ah, there’s my cynicism coming back through again and I apologize because this was meant to be a serious epistle of thankfulness for your existence.
Once, a while ago, I went through a period of serious appreciation for everything around me, and I do mean everything: the pencil I was writing with, the couch I was sitting on, the door I walked through, everything and everybody received a certain amount of love energy from me.
I have since stopped this practice (although I’m not sure why), and what I want to say right now is that I appreciate the reality of you.
The fact that you are instead of aren’t is enough to win you some appreciation from the mind of this thought wondering wandering Ulysses of ideas.
I’m not sure if you’re meant to be celebrated with lights and presents or simple dinners or nothing or fruitcakes or family or friends or lovers, but I do know (from somewhere in my spiritual existence) that you are meant to be celebrated.
What would happen in a world where you were celebrated with everybody everywhere doing a rhythmic rock riot fist to Metallica’s Battery?
What would happenin a world where you were celebrated by everybody picking up the nearest text of intense philosophical inquiry and quietly searching into their existence?
Ah, you’ll once again have to excuse me, but I have this penchant for unanswerable questions.
There is beauty in you. I can see it. I think it’s hiding beneath the layers of meaning that various groups are attempting to ascribe to you, but you are a day like any other.
On any other day you could give gifts to your loved ones (and they might even mean more for their unexpectedness).
On any other day you could get the whole family together and have a loving family meal where you genuinely appreciate each other.
But this is what holidays are for, and what does that illustrate?
At some level I’m almost certain that, for the most part, we don’t want to spend time and money on our family and friends, but there is this one day every so often that tells us we ought to, and so we do.
The human character is essentially a super-selfish character with walls built up around itself to deflect the pulsing arrows of those who would call it out.
--No, I’m not. See what I give when I’m supposed to give?
There is none holy, no not one.
Do you know why I think that there is not one holy person in the world?
Because people aren’t holy, days are, and that’s why you are special: humans are spiritual, but they exist inside the holiness of days.
What’s unique about you is that almost every group of humans all over the planet has decided that you are an especially holy day.
Let me restate that in different words: every single day we can exist our spirituality is a holy day (making every single day of our life special and important and real), but some days are holier than others by virtue of… something-or-other.
A personal day is a personal holiday, a personal holy day in which something is more special than other days, and there is great beauty in that.
What’s in a day?
Only everything, by which I mean nothingness, by which I mean the foundation for building whatever you want it to be.
O, Holy Christmas, I hereby thank you for your existence and make a pact with you that I will celebrate my existence and the existence of the human characters around me and the existence of the planet and the existence of every pine needle that has fallen to the ground with a little bit more fervor than on other days.
You win.
I will probably not decorate a tree or my room or my house until I have children whose cries of “Daddy, why?!” need placating, but know that inside my heart there will be great joy in your holiness.
If there is indeed magic in you, and let’s just assume for the sake of argument that there is, could you send a little of it to all those I would say I love, all those I would say I like, and all those others I don’t know.
That’s a tall order, for sure, but let’s just say I believe in you.

Cheers
e

What a Week

2009-12-13T03:37:00.001-08:00

I have been thinking a lot, lately, about how the mind can manipulate itself, and, knowing this, if it is then possible to turn the mind into a tool the likes of which has never been seen. There was a conversation in a Bundang bar last Wednesday about Sartre’s concept of Bad Faith. Well, I haven’t thought much about Bad Faith since reading Being and Nothingness, but given my current life plans, it seems surprisingly relevant.
The principles of Bad Faith I have been using to reprogram my brain have been working. My upbringing caused me to believe certain things that weren’t true. Perhaps they existed as facts somewhere, but as nuggets of truth, there was certainly no experience with them that told me these facts were truth, and, as of late, I have been lying to myself about certain skills I have in order to make them a reality.
The principle of bad faith is pretty simple and pretty obvious: you habitually, subconsciously or consciously lie to yourself in order to accomplish a goal. Somewhere inside, the self is perfectly aware that this is not currently a fact, but we start acting like something long before we actually are that thing. If you think about the world of business, most big businesses in the modern age want you to start acting like the role you want to take on long before you actually step into the role. It’s like you’re always a little bit ahead of yourself, when you’re actually a little bit behind yourself. The only difference between bad faith and actual faith is the fact that you know you are lying to yourself in bad faith; whereas, in faith (such as religious faith) you are either not aware that you’re lying to yourself or you have had some kind of experience that has made the facts into a truth—so that you ACTUALLY believe.
Religious faith and I have not gotten along in some time, and it’s only because I have had no experience with religion that smacked of truth. The world is a spiritual entity, but I’ll leave the religion for other people.
I have experienced the truth of bad faith. I am not a guitarist. Why, then, do I play guitar every day? I am not a writer. Why, then, do I write ever day? Because I am continually lying to myself and telling myself that I am exactly not the thing I am is because my sub-conscious knows that if I knew full well that I was a writer and everything was fine or that I am a very accomplished guitarist, then there would be no drive and no desire. Bad faith is essentially the key to the ignition of desire. What do you want? What do you really want? I mean to ask: what does your soul want? What does your being want more than anything.
Here’s something I’ve discovered, if you focus on something long enough, and work at something long enough, that thing perpetually gets closer and closer. Even if you never actually achieve it, the journey toward it is impossible with the bad faith necessary to drive your desire.
A conveyor belt comes to mind. That’s what I want. I want a conveyor belt. That’s essentially a metaphor, but that’s what I want. Constant motion, constant newness, and the feeling that things are impermanent, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for a week. It has been sitting in the back of my brain for years, but the fact is that I have never possessed the focus to work through all my layers of programming to make it so. Now, I have focused my entire being on achieving this goal.
Have you ever noticed that we usually get what we really, really want? This is because when our soul wants something, it will move time and space to do it. Clock time doesn’t exist, but time has reality in the form of a construct—we’ll leave the question of time’s actual existence for another post—and it’s reality is in the life of the mind. When we want, time does not matter, and changes to whatever we want it to be.
A long time ago I watched a movie that unexpectedly changed my life. The Butterfly Effect is about a man who can change time, but every time he does, his entire brain re-wires itself—which hurts. That is a logical metaphor for the reality of what Bad Faith does to the brain. When we wrap ourselves in layers of sub-conscious padding in order to accomplish some goal we’ve got in mind, we wind up uprooting the whole system that’s already in place, because when you deal with the consciousness, every slight change changes everything because the consciousness and the spirit are related.
So, here we are. It’s been probably one of the most difficult weeks of my life, in terms of spiritual/consciousness upheaval, which has also taken its toll on my body—funny how those two are always related. When the spirit and the body are exhausted, man can sleep his deepest sleep: most restlessness and insomnia are caused by the mind or the body not being sufficiently exhausted; however, when man has exhausted both the physical and mental/spiritual aspects of his existence, there is really no way not to sleep. That is something I have had to learn from experience.
What we do now is keep up the lie. The way forward for me lies in wrapping myself up in layers and layers of cushy subconsciousness in order to accomplish my deepest desire. It is actually pretty strange to watch myself making decisions and focusing on things that I have never focused on before, and finding that when I turn the power of being toward a desire, all thoughts flow toward it, and with flow comes change. Where are you sending your flow? I guess that’s the big question, isn’t it? What are you looking at constantly? Where do you find your mind wandering to all the time?
That is actually the how of change: simple focus. Focus implies inside itself that this is a fairly constantly thing, and the only difference between change that happens quickly and change that happens at the level of the soul is time. When we focus on something for a little while, we get a little bit accomplished. When we focus on things with the radiance of the being for a long time, we get a lot accomplished. Here we encounter an area that perhaps Hegel never considered in his considerations about quantity, because the fact of the matter is that how much you invest in something does affect that thing. The more time you invest, the more you get returned.
For one week I have been focused at a soul level. For one week I have, basically, managed to lay the groundwork for what will be habitual over time.
I have wandered down many, many paths in my lifetime, and I’m about to wander down another one.
Sun Tzu says in the Art of War (and I am at war with my consciousness): “There are five essentials for victory…know when to fight… know how to handle both superior and inferior forces… ensure your army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks… wait to take the enemy unprepared… and have military capacity (i.e. not interfered with by the sovereign). If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”
Wandering onto the battlefield, I have done enough research to know myself, I have done enough research to know the enemy, and I have my eyes trained on what is necessary for victory. Will I win? Yes. Yes I will. There is not a “No” in my world now, and no “Maybe” about it. Victory.

What is Competition?

2009-12-05T17:31:00.000-08:00

The very first rule in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is:

“War is of vital importance to the state.”

What is of vital importance to understand here is that, dealt with metaphorically, this is probably one of the most shockingly accurate statements about humanity that has ever been uttered. War as a metaphor for the competition that is existence has recently come to mind as an accurate way to explain things.
It is, after all, a fundamental question. Any time you can ask the question “What,” followed by an “is” or an “are” or an “am,” you are dealing with a fundamental question. Ontological investigation of existence has a way of encompassing things and forcing one to describe honestly that which defies explanation. What am I? What are you? What is love? What is truthfulness? What is truth? What is an orange?
Bearing all that in mind, “What is competition?” Well, competition is one of the most fundamental realities of the human experience. Adam Smith understood this concept. The Buddhists have a concept wherein the simple recognition of a thing changes it. Even this, in its way, is a competitive stance. By recognizing a thing, we are already attempting to control it, and what is an attempt to control but a competition? When two similar stores open up, the competition can begin. They will lie to themselves and say that it’s all about the customer, but the reality is that it is about being better than the other guy, because if they are better than the other guy, the customers will come. The underlying principle of Sartre’s gaze is the competition. When I look at you, we are locked in a competition of who will be the subject and who will be the object.
There are necessarily at least three variables in every competition, which is one more than you might at first imagine: two competitors and a prize. In your standard athletic competition, there are two athletes and the prize is a medal or the title “Champion.” When it comes to economics, the two competitors are the stores, and the prize is the dollar. It is important to understand that the prize is always a thing, and never a person. When two men are competing for the love of a woman it’s not actually the woman they’re competing over, it’s her body. There is no competition on the level of the soul. A soul mate is one in which there is no competition.
One of the most rational explanations for the soul that I have ever come across says that there is only one soul, and that people are simple different manifestations of this soul. In other words, there is a soul-goo that surrounds existence, and the human creature is simple a little piece of the soul that has raised up in the manner of a wave that will eventually swell and then break, returning to the level from whence it came. There is no competition in that which is one. Consciousness pulls people away from this understanding of the soul and rips us into three pieces: consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit. The spirit is that piece of our consciousness that reminds us where we came from, and the other two are the challenge.
It is our challenge to defeat the consciousnesses and stay focused on the spirit; however, in the world of humans, there are very few people who would willingly stay focused on the spirit because the universal soul is too huge to understand. It is much easier to deal with other human beings on a personal level. To all those who would say that dealing with other human beings is very difficult, this is true; however, the universal soul/spirit is infinite, and that is impossible to understand—comprehending the infinite is an exercise in insanity.
So, we do battle, on a daily basis. We wage war constantly with the consciousnesses of other human beings. It IS possible to come to some kind of understanding about another human being, and largely because you are asking the metaphysical question, “Why?” These kinds of questions might involve a shorter or longer list of variables, but the number will eventually be reached that creates a consensus, and concessions will be made. Why did you do that? Money. Why did you do that? Money. Power. Why did you do that? Well, you see, the fact of the matter is that I was dealing with some childhood issues of radical sub-conscious flavoring, and they made me think that money and power were the essential creatures in the world. Whatever. Why can usually be answered. Why questions end when the book ends. Why are we here? To die. That’s when we find out. It’s kind of a bummer, but would you have it any other way? Really? Why questions are a competition with somebody (or perhaps your own consciousness) to find an answer.
I have been dealing with the world of ontology lately and foregoing the world of metaphysics in order to deal with the reality of the infinite, but I recently been called back to the world of competition and metaphysics. I was once told that there is no morality in ontology. “What is this thing?” only asks that you observe it honestly. There is no morality in observation—just like there is no morality in pure science. Morality is imposed people by various people and places and institutions and this is a fact. Law and rules and morality are a competition between the state and you (which the state usually wins), your parents and you (which, up to a certain point, the parents usually win), and other people and you (which, up to a certain point, is quite a stalemate). Dominance, victory, and power hang in the balance. All of these things are illusions.
What kind of power do we have to stave off death? None. What kind of victory lasts forever? Not a single one. What kind of dominance is anything more than lived-for-a-while? None. They are not eternal and infinite because they live in the life of the mind.
In order to deal with human beings even more effectively, I will take it upon myself—i.e. I will begin a competition with myself wherein I will battle my intellect and other people to win the prize of understanding—to investigate this thing called competition. As a part of the normal human experience, it is important to understand. Most religions or spiritual sects would have to agree that the normal human experience is full of suffering and crushing defeat—otherwise there would be no need for them, and this is due largely to the fact that people are all clinging to the illusions they hold so dear. It wrecks the head. The consciousness is repelled at the fact that it has no existence without the body. The body is seemingly endowed with consciousness. From whence? To whence? Nobody knows for certain. So we live in our world of illusion, and it is more comfortable, by and large, than reality. Even the suffering we endure as a result of constant competition is nothing compared to the incomprehensible reality of infinite existence. Space goes on forever. Forever. Forever. What a word that is. Can you imagine forever? No. No, I’m afraid you can’t. That hurts. Bugger it. Moving on. Can you imagine what it would be like to get in her pants? Yes. Yes I can. Okay, let’s go with the second one. I hereby enter myself back into the human competition for the sake of inquiry and understanding. My textbook is Sun Tzu’s art of war. Let’s find some things out.

Some Times

2009-11-25T04:52:00.001-08:00

Some times are strange—note the intentional gap. Yes, I believe that there is power in some times.
I just realized that my hands are reflected upside down in the shiny part of the middle of my computer speakers, and visual oddities always make me do a double take. It’s absolutely stunning the power that seeing something can have.
Recently, I started edited a work that I wrote last year, and it’s funny to see it again. It’s very much a snap shot of a very strange time in a fellow’s life.
The thoughts fly so rapidly at times that it is simply absurd to try to lock them down. Answer this question for me: what do you do with all of your down time? When you have nothing to do, what do you do?
Would it be possible for somebody to convince you that if you simply focused on constantly being productive in the here and now that you would manage to get one helluva lot accomplished?
Would it take the example of an entire life?
Sobeit.
Maybe that’s my goal. What is possible in a life? The other day I read a story about Nikola Tesla that said he averaged two hours of sleep a day and lived until he was eighty-something years old. Granted, he was a bit of a freak, but do some math:
22 hours every day * 365 days a year * 65 years (for example) = 521950 hours
16 hours every day * 365 days a year * 65 years = 379600
Tesla essentially lived twice as much as other people. Who needs sleep? Oh, well, I suppose that if you’re okay with murmuring to yourself and not being able to control the physical self when the mental self takes over, then you’ll be fine.
There has to be some kind of balance, right? Maybe that’s what all that eight hours a night business is all about. I have found that six hours is more than enough for me on just about any given night. Eight hours sometimes makes me groggy. I know a lot of people that manage to sleep for ten or twelve hours, and I can only EVER manage that with aid of some kind.
Is it some kind of subliminal training we put ourselves through?
For the last couple of days, I have walked to work and found myself on the verge of tears. Usually there is a song playing on the iPod that I connect with something I can’t connect to at the moment, and all that disconnection brings tears. It means a time so profound some little while ago, and yet I think…

Creating meaning. People can’t take away the things that mean to you. Did you know that? You, yes you. The reason most academic papers say to shy away from the pronoun “you” when writing is that it becomes to personal almost immediately. The consciousness, the psyche, is so absolutely terrified of being addressed directly (and believe me when I say this happens much less frequently than you probably realize) and seen for what it is (nothingness), that it is jarring to find that word in print. It is even more jarring when the you is connected to something that makes you feel. Have you ever been hurt? Have you ever been loved and left? Do you remember the one you loved? Today, I had one of the moments where I ran into a thing you wouldn’t believe. You are simply reading along, and all of a sudden, you stumble across yourself in between the lines on page. You were an asshole at that time and you know it. There is no going back to change it, but every time you go there it brings the tears to your eyes. Can you believe the things you did? Can you believe the things you said? It brings tears to your eyes now as you think about it. You have to believe that you made all the right decisions, because, essentially, you did. Who’s to say you didn’t? You did what you had to do. There is a certainty you know who you are. Or are you the one who felt the searing pain of dislocation? Were you the one who felt like your arms were being ripped out of your sides and your legs were being ripped off of your body? Were you the one whose time was suddenly wasted? You still loved. You still felt. The carpet was pulled out from under you and you were left naked and alone in the depths of psychological despair. You re-live the pain of every smile you thought was so genuine, but now feels so genuinely false. You re-live the hurt of every joyous moment in their arms when you go back into your memory. You tell yourself that wasn’t what you want. You put a gigantic psychological band-aid on and move into the world a new person. You were to many scars as it is. Why can’t you ever pull yourself out of the past? Why can’t you stop the perpetual onslaught of the bleakness of the future? There is weariness in your gait. There comes a time when you probably ought to stop asking questions and start answering them, but that time is difficult to assess. Do you know what’s going on right now? I, which is to say, the author, am subjecting my sub-conscious to an evacuation. I don’t even actually know what this is about, but the fingers are furious at something and they fly more quickly than I can keep up with. Yet, I still know when I end sentences in prepositions. …-the Fuck? We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the dessert, when you came to mind, and I played your song. Who are you? Do you even know? And we’re back to questions again. Sometimes I have intense delusions about people coming back to my work after years and years and years and having to collate and bind all of these words into some kind of manageable whole. Blogging is very much like masturbation. But what if it actually winds up meaning something. I know for a damned sight that if I were to go back through these bastards I would probably have some kind of mental shock that would ruin my system for at least a week. The overload would be palpable. I have hereby written almost one thousand one hundred words in almost exactly twenty-five minutes. I’m officially too lazy to do the math on that. But it comes down the fact that some times are meant for disposal, and what better way to dispose of oneself than to create meaning, because that is something I have done here. Whether or not it’s a decent meaning or an important meaning or a loving meaning or a worthless meaning is secondary to the fact that it is meaning. Does it mean to you? Perhaps, perhaps not. Some times are not for you. Some times are reserved for me and me alone. You know, I only started these words because I needed some time to charge up the iPod for the journey I plan to take to Home Plus so I can return a sheet that is the incorrect size and buy: water, gin, and olives—I have grown beyond the need for vermouth. Just chill the goddamned gin and serve it to me in a cocktail glass please. In another random note, I’ve been learning some Korean lately—which is important when you understand that Korea is my current residence—and I can officially say, “Hello. My name is Eli” in Korean. Oh, it’s the small battles that are sometimes the biggest. Oh, to be there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Could you ask for anything more? Welcome to the world of my in-sink-er-ator. This time it’s for you to make meaning from.

Fantasy Letters to Famous People

2009-11-21T00:31:00.000-08:00

Volume I:
Brandon Boyd

Dear Brandon~

As we have not ever met, I hope you don’t mind the familiarity of the first name greeting, but I have recently gotten the premonition that we will eventually meet under seemingly happenstance. The whys and wherefores of the meeting are not exactly important, but the fact of the matter is that I think we have something to say to each other. What that thing is I can’t say, but I feel as though you have something to say to me that can only be said face to face, and I feel that there is some piece of wisdom that I can impart to you. We will only know it when it happens.

Does it seem strange to feel so certain? Perhaps it ought to, but I also feel as though it doesn’t matter if the premonition ever comes to fruition, because, in a way, I am meeting you here in these words.

I remember my late teens and early twenties being something of an “All-Incubus-all-the-time” kind of ridiculousness. There was something that made me gravitate towards the pain in SCIENCE, the activity in Make Yourself, and the dawn in Morning View. That has been my journey, too.

I also want you to know that while this volume of words is addressed to you specifically, it by no means means to exclude the band. You see, what I didn’t understand at the time, and something I understand only slightly more now, is the organic nature of the music and the words. Mike and Jose and Brandon form the core of something that manages to speak. Oh, there are a lot of people that don’t like your band. Hell, there are a lot of people that don’t like everything… it’s a bit like cancer: you can get it from everything these days.

The danger is suddenly very apparent that this is wandering into one of those pointless hero-worship fan letters written by a fourteen year old girl, which is by no means the intention. What I think you all have come to understand in your lives is that it is possible to develop the human character. The arc of your musical accomplishments and undertakings is something that smacks of in development. There are methods to develop the mind—and I would imagine that you are all great students of not only your instruments, but your minds and characters.

Do you read a lot? I read a ton: Aristotle, Joyce, Proust, Tzu, Zizek, Epictetus, Sartre, Hegel, Dostoyevsky, and Rudolf Steiner all have a place on the spectrum of things that matter to me. It’s not about taking their words and believing them, it’s about applying them to the character. One of the things Rudolf Steiner believed was that the soul or the spirit existed outside the body (as opposed to inside it). Just think about the potential ramifications of something like that. Don't judge it. Let it be. But think about it. There are so many things, but what do they mean? It’s important to give up ever actually finding out. There is no answer.

The answer would ruin it. The answer would fuck everything up. Without questions there can be no development. It’s the question that was put into place. Whether you believe in god or Buddha or Jesus as the son of god or Shiva or Zeus, the function of god is to provide people, not with an answer as is so widely assumed, but with the question. There is a very famous line from a very famous book that says that if there were no god it would be necessary to invent him. (In an unrelated note, if you’ve never read “The Brothers Karamazov,” it’s worth the time and effort.) It would be necessary to invent him precisely because of the fact that people need to have the question. What I see in the music of the band is precisely this type of development that comes from asking the right questions.

One of my many personal aphorisms is that I learned to read in High School, in college I learned to ask questions, and while studying more intently at grad school, I learned how to ask good questions. To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember a whole lot about EXACTLY what I learned, and this is probably because I have never had a brain for facts. My focus is simple truth. Facts feed the brain. Truth feeds the soul. And there are far fewer truths than there are facts, but I find the sustenance of truth to surpass the sweetness of facts. Facts are the fat group on the food pyramid. Maybe it’s because their illusion as fact is built into them. They are a fact because we want to believe in it. It is a fact that there are twelve inches in one foot, but only on earth does that fact matter even one iota, and there is a lot of universe out there. Facts are a might arbitrary to me. I don’t even think I could tell you one truth. I feel them. I know them when I see them. But I couldn’t tell you one. There are things I think I know, but one of those things I think I know is that there is always wiggle room in the things we think we know.

All that’s left is the understanding that the total development of the human character ought to be our only focus. We don’t even really know for sure what is possible in the human character (and I suddenly feel like I should explain that when I use the term “character” I mean the mental (cognitive), emotional, and spiritual aspects of humans), but I feel instinctively that if we only spend our life doing it, we’ll come to understand nothing—which I think ought to be the goal. When we understand, we stop questioning, don’t we?

I would like to sit and play a writing game with you, I would like to play guitar with Mike, I would like to drum circle with Jose, and I would like to sit and break bread with you all. One of the other things I think I know is that things tend to happen exactly as they’re supposed to, and really shouldn’t happen any other way. To fight the universe is to lose a fight.

It was nice to have met you. I’m currently teaching English in Korea. If you’re ever in the area, look me up.

Peace
Love &
Gonzo

Eli

Documentation

2009-09-26T08:13:00.001-07:00

Things written recently:

“I am re-entering the USA. I am less than thirty minutes from American soil, and my heart is racing.

New York City… goddamnit. I’m back. For a week.

Claire on Wednesday.
Patrick on Thrusday.
I think I will take Caroline her Pee-Wee.
We are very done.

I can see it.

I’m shaking right now. Why?

I don’t think I want to be here. I’m pretty sure that American is not my home anymore. The world between my ears and the joy in my heart are officially my new permanent residences. Just as my job is now (quite simply) a writer, my home is (quite simply) wherever the words are that I am.

Good-bye to angst-ridden questions of where I ought to live. Wherever I find myself, that’s where I’m supposed to be.

Funny that I make that already clear distinction right now. Keep in mind that one can never know the future.

Do your year in Korea again. You must, must, must.

What now? What comes next?

Last night at the Ramble Inn, they brought out a guitar. Why is it that when I start to play, the people are happy, or (as it happened at the Jisan Valley Rock Festival) wind up sitting behind you on the hill, clapping for you, and sitting through an entire impromptu set only leaving when you stop playing?

Ah… stupid question. Change: “What is it about my performance?”

Perhaps there is something there isn’t there? The key, now, is to find a way to make a living out of it. On the road? On Tour? You can do it my boy. You can do it. Rock and Roll!”

Written after Seeing You

Seeing you well
makes my heart
quake.
Can you ever know,
really, what you
meant.

You and I, we were
not meant to
be,
and yet we, yes we,
were something to
mean

that for which forever
was built to
stand.

What does that mean?

We, as in us, isn’t
a thing we can make
real,
and yet we, as a
thing that cannot
be,
some ways manages
to mean more
universally.

You were perfect for me at that time;
and I would be a fool to resent it.

Isn’t this what you wanted, really.
Cautious leap of faith into skills.
“Would that it were a home
instead of a house,” one might say.
Interlocutor reply,
“But a house IS a home,”
“Explain yourself,”
and the like.
Thusly to the breach, we fly!
A well-flung phrase,
a thrust of wit,
and the game dances itself
across its own hardwood floor.
Who thought these things?
Who thought into him?
All pieces of game,
all the smackings of might,
suffer a neophyte learner
to sink ever more and ever more
into my being with
__________________________.

It Feels So Good

2009-09-16T23:59:00.000-07:00

to write. Bob Dylan coming softly through the speakers, a cat napping gently in the early hours of a London morning, and me interrupting it with the sounds of keyboard clicks and thoughts manifesting themselves. I am extremely comfortable here.

I have been in London for five days now, and, somehow, I’ve already managed to find a kind of equilibrium with the world around me that reveals itself in the smile of an existence hell-bent on fully existing.

I’ve been watching the wheel of time as it moves here. You see, I’m visiting friends, but that’s not exactly accurate. I’m visiting a part of my heart? No. I’m visiting a part of myself that is external to me. That’s probably closest, but the exactitude I’m looking for doesn’t actually exist. The reality of my situation is thus: after leaving Korea, I am staying at a girl’s house that I met in Australia. She is married. She is married to a friend of mine that I met in high school. She is Italian and studying to be a doctor in London. My friend has just entered a biodynamic farming school under the tutelage of students of the Rudolf Steiner Anthroposophy. They met in New York City when she came to visit me. I watched them fall in love.

The sheer number of things that had to come together to make this thing even a remote possibility numbs my mind, but here I am inside it and writing about it, which feels good, and I’m simply enjoying the reality of being inside something that smacks of significance. These things don’t just happen. These things are uncommon. As a matter of fact, as I was explicating my theory that it feels like we are all moving towards something even greater (she and he and I and another and his significant other), she said to me, “But you also make that decision.” Hell yes we do. Somewhere along the line you have to look at your situation, realize it’s unique, and seek to find a way to perpetuate the uniqueness almost indefinitely. This is difficult thing to do, especially when you understand the nature of time and space, because all things change and pass away. Nothing is truly static. However, there has to be a way to incorporate that reality into the nature of the thing that you’re trying to develop, and when it is genuinely incorporated, what’s to stop you from metaphorically ruling the world? (Even if it is only your small chunk of the world.)

Ah, well, we’re wandering into spaces that can’t be comprehended right there and it’s probably best if we reign everything in and start talking about the whats and hows of the present, huh?

I am unemployed again, and feeling like the universe is waiting for something, somewhere, to send me to the most appropriate place. I have discovered that in my life there is only so much control I can exert over my reality. At one level this seems like a bit of a bummer because everybody wants to believe that they can control their reality; however, the fact of the matter is that because man is a social being, there is only so much control that he can exert over his reality. He can desire. He can yearn. But, most of the time, he will always find himself at the whims of others. Even your super-wealthy aristocrats are reliant on those they would oppress. Without the lower classes, your quantity of money would be worthless. That’s a bit abstract, to be sure, but any time you’re dealing with money you’re dealing with metaphorical value, never actual value.

I wonder if anybody has ever considered that money is a little bit like language? Surely somewhere along the line has looked at money and decided that this bit of money is sufficient to describe my desire to purchase this object, much as this word is sufficient to describe this thing or this desire. Money would have to be a derivative of language. It has the same structure.

Speaking of structures (and I fully realize that this post is bordering on SUPER-random, but we’re dealing with consciousness diarrhea right now), I have been thinking about how the generally three-fold structure of existence that I have heretofore acknowledged might have a fourth-fold. All right, it comes from Heidegger, and that’s as it may be, but when we look at it objectively without the hullabaloo surrounding him, he might be onto something really important. The structure of human reality as I have previously said it to be is generally something in the realm of the mind and the body and the spirit. These are just terms and you can just as easily substitute consciousness, physicality, and spirit. I found that I generally found that I would then have to mention that consciousness is then split into the general consciousness of sensual awareness and the sub-conscious of body and mind processes that we don’t “think” about. Heidegger cleared this up for me with his development of the four-fold: earth and sky and mortals and divinities. Mortals would be the physical. This is our body. We die. That’s a part of it all. The earth and the sky are the two levels of consciousness. We are always on the earth. We are always inside a world of sensual awareness. However, we are also always under the sky, and this is something we forget. In other words, we are always inside the world of consciousness, but we are also under the rule of a sub-consciousness that is there but generally forgotten about. The divinities would be the world of the spiritual that is clearly undeniable in existence.

I will say it clearly, right here, right now:

I don’t like religion. Attempting to regulate something so organic is akin to the travesty that is Genetic Engineering in plants. I know that cloning and genetic engineering is abhorrent to most of the religious community, but when I look at what they’re doing to the spirit, it’s largely the same but in a different realm, engineering something to fit around something they can’t understand, when they ought to allow themselves to not understand.

All that being said, I see the spirit of the universe in almost everything when you take the time to notice it. The other day, walking around a farm, I saw a patch of five flowers that had sprouted up out of the ground. It wasn’t a garden. It was surrounded by grass all over the place, but there were these five flowers that decided they would grow right there and bugger all those that told them otherwise. That meant something to me. That seemed to wreak of the spiritual. Today, I’m going to walk the south bank of the Thames and visit the Globe Theatre, a spiritual quest for me to be sure.

I’ve Never Been Good

2009-09-06T19:40:00.000-07:00

with good-byes. I find myself, now, at yet another crossroads where I must begin again on another road. Words that mean the world to me:

This spring, I am going to set off on the road again.
I have been staying here about as long as I am meant to,
so now I think it is time to find a new place to reside.
When ascetics stay in one place for a long time,
they begin to languish, stuck in a mire of sloth and inertia.
I want to embark on a new path, like an eternal beginner,
clumsily starting all over again from the beginning.

--Beop Jeong

While it is nearly Autumn, I find that it is time for me to be somewhere else.

It has been an absolutely incredible year. The places I’ve gone, the things I’ve done, the people I’ve met and all the other things “I” have been granted the opportunity to experience seems to somehow pale in comparison with the knowledge that I DID these things.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that for the last year, what I am most proud of, is the fact that I attempted as completely as possible to embody the idea of genuine action. Human beings are about the only creatures on the planet that can make conscious decisions without being entirely hampered with those… instincts. We have language. That, in itself, allows for jobs and occupations. We have money. For all of its metaphorical reality, it allows us leisure time—which is why Aristotle says that the truly good life involves having at least some money. The issue that, I believe, most people run into is the ontological use of this time: what am I to do with it?

The most common medication for free time is television. I don’t like television. Full stop. You see, it’s not that I don’t like it because of its “mindless entertainment” value. It’s not even that it can be used as a kind of hegemonic indoctrination tool—although this aspect is quite terrifying. It is precisely that what we have worked so hard for, and by that I mean what the pinnacle of humanity has been striving for (i.e. leisure time that sets us outside the realm of animalism) has come to nothing more than staring at a box of moving pictures.

This all smacks of time. Time can be a blessing or a curse. When we are at our leisure, time is a blessing. When we are at our work, it is a curse. Time is precious. I’m through asking why time is or who invented (although I would say that “I” make time). I’m through with all of that. That fact of the matter is that time IS, and our only real task is to ensure that this gift is used appropriately.

So, when I see that humanity is slowly trending toward sedentary mindless submission to hegemony, it makes me feel good that while people are watching their favorite shows in their dark houses illuminated only by the TV screen, I have been out amongst the world, wondering at the way the light manages to make it through the tops of the trees, throwing myself in giant puddles of mud, wandering through clouds at the top of mountains, listening to Korea reggae bands at an abandoned ski resort, visiting forty meter tall Buddhas carved on the side of a mountain, eating pajeon and drinking mokoley, bathing in one of the largest bath houses in the world, eating that raw fish that was so disgusting when I was a child, watching sunrises and sunsets thirty-six hours apart, memorizing books, writing books, and, generally, just doing.

It is ironic that I, as a writer, put very little stock in people’s words—and this applies probably most rigidly to my own words. I find that action will always eclipse what people say. For example, for my last weekend in Korea, I decided to go somewhere I had never been before. There’s a city called Taean, a not-too-large city on the west coast of Korea. South of Taean, there’s a city called Anmyeon-do, which is essentially a hole in the ground. South of Anmyeon-do, in the middle of I don’t even know where is where I was. My friends said they were coming with me. I left earlier than them because I was meeting the girl I’ve been seeing, and they were going to come later.

They said they were coming. Getting to where I was from where they were was a huge mission. It took me almost five hours, and they were leaving almost five hours after I did. They came. They did what they said they were going to do. I celebrated my last weekend in Korea with the people that actually cared enough to do something real with me. I’ve been to so many going away parties that it actually makes me sick. Oh, they’re always fun affairs to attend, but they’re also usually always too superficial for my taste. What I had on the beach, eating barbecued shellfish with the people I cared about most in Korea meant more to me than almost anything. But that’s always been my style I suppose. I would trade depth for superficiality any day of the week.

What am I saying good-bye, too? I find myself not knowing the answer to this question. I know I’m saying good-bye to my current place, and the people as I have known them will change immensely by the time I get back. I’m saying good-bye to the comfort of the known and once again traveling into the breach of the unknown. Where things are up in the air and I am at a loss for understanding, somehow feels like the place most appropriate for my existence.

I don’t know. I will maintain that until I pass out of this realm. Who’s to say about life? Who’s to say about time? I will certainly not be the one so arrogant as to proclaim that can know. Knowing now the things than can happen in one year, in one day, in one hour, and in one minute of an existence genuinely lived moves us ever closer to the complete acceptance of ignorance… in a good way.

So, good-bye to whatever it is that I need to say good-bye to, and hello to the beginning of what’s next. Ah, conclusions, they’re always so inconclusive, huh?

Language.

2009-08-19T18:04:00.000-07:00

An-yeong-ha-se-yo: Korean Hello. In what was a super-unexpected moment last night, I learned the value of speaking a new language and the difficulty in acquiring that ability. To be perfectly honest, I was on a date with a Korean woman in which one of the rules was, “What you say goes.”
At one point, she said to me: “All right. From now on, I say that you can only speak Korean, and I can only speak in English.”
This semi-ridiculous request is possible only in light of the fact that I have acquired some Korean language skills and sometimes respond to her in Korean.
What I hadn’t realized before this time was that my skills were pretty much limited to the ability to say hello, read a menu, order food, beer and soju, ask how much something was, answer yes or no, and ask somebody “Really?” or "Are you okay?"
The truly coincidental nature of this encounter is that I had just spent the last two hours working on English pronunciation and conversation with a pair of high school students. From a purely technical standpoint, there are four sections to language acquisition: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. I have long considered reading and writing to be the two most integral aspects of language acquisition. This is because when you read, especially out loud, you are reading, speaking and listening. Then, when you start writing, you are officially practicing all four aspects.
The reality is that all four aspects have a certain personality that MUST be respected.
Reading. When I read a menu. I understand what it is I’m ordering. This has been an extremely valuable skill to acquire. Korean food is delicious, and it’s even more delicious when you have some idea of what it is you’re ordering. When I read out loud for a Korean person, I have to repeat things three times because my pronunciation is terrible.
Writing. I can write in Korean characters. As a matter of fact, I can create Korean phonetic equivalents for most English words, and this is extremely valuable for teaching when a student can’t quite understand how to pronounce a word. I could not write a Korean sentence to save my life. I could copy one out of a book, but I couldn’t create one of my own volition.
Listening. I pick up bits and pieces of conversations. This is a naturally occurring phenomenon any time you are immersed in a new language. I know when my Korean teachers are talking about me. I know when they’re talking about the food. In other words, I know what they’re talking about, but I have no idea what they’re SAYING. The cook at my school knows zero English, and she’ll just jabber away to me in Korean, and I know WHAT she’s talking about, but I couldn’t respond to her if I tried.
Speaking. The clang of a shop bell means 안녕. Reading out loud, speaking the words off the menu to order food. Talking to the attendant at the bus station and getting tickets to Oksan. Saying yes or no to the students. I can’t create a Korean sentence. It’s hopeless.

What I’m really getting at here is that the creation of the language is the key to understanding it—and by “it” I mean the language itself. Whether in the context of reading, where your reading out loud is a creation of language audibly. Or when you are writing and creating language that means something above and beyond the simple ability to write the letters or phonemes. Or when you can actively listen and respond. Listening and responding are connected in the same way that the earth and the sky are: you are always on the earth and under the sky (only on very rare occasions is this not the case… which is why climbing a mountain is such a worthy endeavor). Having a conversation and seriously being able to communicate with the language, creating meaning, is the key.
When I come back to Korea for my next contract, acquiring Korean is going to be of the utmost importance. Koreans don’t HAVE to speak English in Korea. If I’m living in Korea, it is rude of me to EXPECT it. The contract I will have with myself is that I will, by the end of next year be able to sustain a conversation in Korean. It’s printed now, and it will come to pass.

The Way of

2009-08-03T18:07:00.000-07:00

nature. The incredible power of nature was recently re-thrust upon me.
I have been aware of the immense power of the natural for quite some time. As a matter of fact, I remember the first time its immensity was thrust upon me—I was in New Zealand, lost in the bush, surrounded by mountains, and crying because I didn’t know which way to go. Once you have been humbled by nature, even just once, you recognize it, forever afterwards, as the predominant power on the planet.
For example, so much talk these days is revolving around the greenhouse effect and what we’re doing to “destroy” the planet. Nobody seems to think about the fact that all we’re doing is creating an environment that is inhospitable to human life. The planet heats up a few degrees, the polar ice caps melt, there is massive flooding, and the end result is simply that the planet takes a blow.
We cannot stop the earth from rotating. We cannot stop the earth from revolving around the sun. This is the bigger nature that we forget about, I think. In our hubris and naiveté we believe that what we have built is the best part of nature, but the fact of the matter is that almost everything humans have built defies nature. Wal-Mart strikes me as one of the most absolutely nature defying edifices in the world. Convenient or not, it seems slightly unnatural that you can go to a building and get fruits, vegetables, frozen fruits, frozen vegetables, canned fruits, canned vegetables, dried fruits, aerosol cans full of things that smell like fruits, fruit of the loom underwear, fruit decorated wastebaskets, orange hunting vests, berry vine seeds.
Granted, I’m taking a somewhat super-naturalistic point of view in terms of nature. In other words, I’m thinking about it in terms of what I have seen and experienced while spending days in the mountains where it can sometimes be a mission to find the next stream and collect some water. And let me tell you that if you don’t have food with you, finding food in nature can be a painstaking task if you don’t know what you’re doing.
All our most revered structures will collapse one day: the stock market, the government, society, and, eventually, mankind. That is the way of nature when you attempt to control it. It is slow, patient, and willing to take a lot of punishment, but, in the end, it will always manage to overcome.
Futures are perpetually unknowable… this is a fact it isn’t even worth debating any more. So, it is entirely possible that we were meant to develop like this. It is entirely possible that nature pushed us in this direction so that we would destroy ourselves. Perhaps the great wheel of existence saw that this particular creature was pushing the boundaries of goodness and needed to be flexed in a direction that would eventually put it out of the world’s misery. I guess I am thinking here of an enormous tree that looks so strong from the outside, but inside is little more than a hollow, ready to be pushed over by a strong wind.
There are only two options these days: fight the fight against the unfathomable structures of humanity and attempt to get people to turn away from their greed-mongering, stuff accumulation, and (to be frank) comforts—which seems a little bit like attempting to hold the ocean back with a spoon—or suck it all up, squirt it into a drying purulent vein, and pray that the end isn’t too painful. Has it gone too far? Do we still think we can conquer nature? When was the last time you climbed a mountain? What good are guns and bombs against the methodical march of rivers and magma?

Everything Looks

2009-07-21T17:40:00.001-07:00

huge. And we’re talking here about very nearly gargantuan. There is at least one reason I can cite directly for this, and this is the fact that last weekend, while wandering around in the ocean at the Boryeong Mud Festival in South Korea, a large wave smacked me in the face and in my idiocy I hadn’t taken my glasses off. Well, these things happen.
It should probably be pointed out, here, that I have terrible eyesight. To be technical, my eyes are something like a -8.00—whatever that means. All I know for sure is that without assistance, I literally cannot see one foot in front of my face. Well, the first task was naturally to rectify this whole “inability to see” situation that I had managed to get myself into, and, let me tell you, there was a note of the frantic at first when I remembered that glasses can oftentimes take a little while to get sorted out… days in fact. My last pair, with its Transitions ability, super scratch-resistant coating, and high density lens material had taken a week to construct. As I said to my friend: “They were just super-sweet glasses, man.”
“And now your super-sweet glasses are in the ocean in South Korea.”
Touché, salesman.
At any rate, I then remembered that my life revolves around reading, writing, and teaching. These are three things for which sight is pretty necessary, and tears were almost starting to well up at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to read a book for a week, but the brain does magical things when it’s pushed: contacts. Duh. Optical shops always keep a steady supply of contacts on hand, and it’s as easy as going to one and telling them my prescription (this is a handy little number to memorize by the way).
To make a long story short, we succeeded in finding me some contacts.
I haven’t worn contacts in a while (somewhere between five and ten years—which is pretty significant considering my age), and when I put in these contacts, everything looked enormous. I had a copy of a collection of Martin Heidegger’s works with me, and as I looked at it, I could’ve sworn it wasn’t that big when I had put it into my bag. I looked at my hands, and my friend said, “Oh, don’t even look at the mitts… they might scare you.” And, indeed, they were abnormally large. My shoes, my thighs, my backpack, and my feet had all taken on this extraordinarily massive aspect. Not that this ought to be unusual, because I AM a big man, but, at the same time, this was messing with my mind. When I got home, I looked at my little 13” Macbook, and I could’ve sworn it was just as big as my friends 19” whatever it is.
At first, I thought this was simply some kind of optical illusion involving the proximity of the lens to the eye, and, indeed, this is probably the "being" definition, but what of the "nothingness" definition? Does that question even have a place here?
You see, I am leaving my current situation in Korea very soon. I have done a lot of research. I have almost finished writing a book. And my life is taking on an air of mounting madness. There is madness all around me. My best Korean friend is leaving. His wife and daughter are AWOL. The other Korean teacher at my school is leaving. I get the very distinct feeling of rats leaving a sinking ship. After all this time and all this research and all these happenings and all these adventures I have had: it seems like everything is so significant. Combine that with my belief in the fact that every moment in our life is so significant, and everything being so seemingly huge is probably not too far off the mark, eh? We’re dealing here with the world of my existence being huge (through the miracle of optics) and the world of my reality being huge (through the madness of a life lived in an almost pure spontaneity). What does it all mean?

It Is Possible to Say

2009-07-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

too much. The thunder outside my window just said plenty. As a matter of fact it startled me. This is why almost every major eastern religion is very big on silence. The other day I made a note to myself that silence is always pregnant. What I mean to say by this is that silence is always, always, always in the state of “about to give birth to sound.” Sound is created out of silence.
This is striking, though, for a number of reasons. Silence is never possible, or, at least, it isn’t sustainable. The only place, technically, that silence can ever occur is inside a vacuum, and human beings cannot survive there. And yet, it is the goal precisely because it is unattainable. Would the sound of gently falling rain (and all that white noise in general) be so soothing if it weren’t for the fact that most of the time there weren’t those sounds? Doubtful, mon cher, very doubtful.
It works the same way in communication and words and language. This is where the beauty of poetry derives its nature from, and why wordiness can be boring. Poetry is the art of saying as much as possible in as little space as possible. That definition might garner some arguers, but I’d stand by it. Even if you take the great epic poems like The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Beowulf, Paradise Lost, and just about any other, the space that these things are covering is truly beyond comprehension.
The terseness of William Carlos Williams, is perhaps a good juxtaposition:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel 
barrow
glazed with rain 
water
beside the white
chickens.

The thing is this: when in the midst of silence, I and I alone pull out the meaning. What does Williams mean by that “so much depends upon” business anyway? It doesn’t really matter what he meant by it. His silence on the meaning is the license to subjectify. Or what is the real significance of Homer’s Catologue of Ships in The Iliad. Art is a thing thinging. Silence is nothingness nothing.
(Sometimes I get playful with the language, and I’m well aware of my excesses in this department.)
I want to know what it is possible to NOT say, and the more I experiment, the more I come to find that you can NOT say almost more than you can say. This is art. What is a painting but a two-dimensional representation of something else? Ah, but it means. What does it mean? Barely matters. It’s not saying anything technically. And yet it is by its simple presence. Just like me. Just like you. We are all things thinging.
I’m working on brevity these days. Stopping the word flow just when it’s necessary. Otherwise I wind up waking up to way too much watered-down matter. It is the rainy season in Korea, and I suppose you CAN have too much of a good thing, but, so far, the falling rain saying things to me hasn’t yet grown old.

A Few Notes from My Reality

2009-07-09T08:49:00.001-07:00

Today I went for a run, and I decided that instead of heading in the direction I normally head in, I’d go the opposite way and run it in the other direction. The spirit of adventure will always lead to discovery, and I discovered that the opposite direction to what I had been going was at least a third again more difficult than my traditional route. It is important to know that I live about halfway up what would probably be most appropriately described as a foothill, the first part of my run is always downhill, and it concludes with running uphill. Normally I head east first, turn to the north, make a left and head west, and finish it off with a southwardly sprint the last fifty or a hundred meters up to my apartment. It turns out that the “westward ho!” portion of my run—which is the longest uphill portion of my traditional run—is the shortest portion of what I think is about three 3k (let’s call it 1). So, today, I ran 1k downhill, then proceeded to run for almost 2k uphill. I learned something. I learned that sometimes, when you choose a different path, it might wind up being more difficult; however, you’ll never know unless you take it.
This has been something of a theme for my reality. I have a tendency to find paths and wander down them fully understanding that there is a possibility it might be more difficult, but, simultaneously, finding it very difficult to care. Shying away from difficulty has never been my style. My style, as a matter of fact, would probably be best characterized as somewhat reckless, but only to a point.

Today, I managed to get one quarter of the way through memorizing Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair,” and all I keep thinking is that the more I dive into these poems and wrap my head around them, the deeper my understanding becomes. Only the other day did the realization that this work was doing more than it claimed to do cross the threshold of my mind. It is mapping the arc of a relationship. The first poem is like love at first sight: body of woman, white hills, white thighs, you look like a world lying in surrender. Over the course of the next nineteen poems, the passion transforms itself into something else, until, by the twentieth poem, when he knows it’s over, he writes: tonight I can write the saddest lines—all of which is followed (after the "official" ending of the relationship) by the "Song of Despair." Now, I am an English major by trade, and I probably should’ve picked that up long before this, but I had never actually sat down read them all through before. I used to just open it up to whatever I felt like and read it because they were all so beautiful, but now that I understand his project, I read it with new eyes.
The eventual failure of all romantic concepts of love is ever-present in the work, and that is the reason for despair. The other day, I was talking to my Korean co-teacher and she said that she married her husband fifteen years ago and it was great. They loved each other and it was incredible. Now, after fifteen years, two children, and the effects of time there is no love left. Those were her exact words: “there is no love left… only duty.” That is what becomes of love. It turns into habit and duty. It is my job to be with this person. Romance and passion will always, always fade. It is our lot to deal with this reality.

Habit has been an interesting topic of conversation lately. Tonight, during the course of teaching my adult students how to speak English, I gave them the topic: tell me three bad habits you have and three ways to change or stop them. I gave them mine to begin with: forgetfulness, going, and not listening to doctor’s directions. As to the first one, my methods for changing or stopping it were: practice (like my memorization of Neruda’s book), mnemonic devices, and playing memory games (which is a little like practice, but not quite AS focused). To stop going would be very difficult for me. I find myself every day, as I mentioned, wandering down new paths, but I gave them these three methods to attempt a change: watch more TV (I have what would best be described as a near-passionate-hatred for the thing because people get into the habit of watching too much of it and they have to be there for their shows or whatever… I don’t understand it), sleep more (I have a tendency to sleep for six to eight hours no matter what or when—even if I’ve had a heavy night of “socializing” the night before and all logic would point to sleeping forever… I’ll be up in six hours and doing work), and (as my student suggested) get married. As for listening to doctor’s advice: get married (the same student suggested it), almost die more frequently (that’d sort me out), and have children (for obvious reasons). What is really interesting to me is that when it was their turn, they could give me their bad habits, but they all said that it was impossible to break them. That was almost the saddest thing I’d ever heard. When a revolution of the mind and body is not possible, is there life? Or, are you just living out of habit? The thought actually terrified me: the life lived purely out of habit.

I recently committed Facebook suicide. For those who’ve been in a coma for the last 5 years, Facebook is an “online social networking utility” that allows you to stay connected to all your friends, all over the world, simply by joining and finding them. From personal experience, it is a pretty incredible thing. I have lived in some fairly out of the way places and done some fairly out-of-the-way things, and it was always nice to log in to Facebook and find my friends and see what they were up to. Through a friend I found out that I couldn’t quit Facebook (and their are political reasons that we won't go into right now). This always rubs me the wrong way—like when I was running an overnight crew for a big company and it seemed as if I couldn’t quit… until I did. Tell me I can’t do something, and I’m at least going to attempt to do it, right? It has more to do with the challenge than anything else.
Anyway, the fact that you can only “de-activate” your account (like pushing pause) but never quit the thing aside, there was also the curiosity that started to well up in me about what life would be like without Facebook. I have been on Facebook since my university days in 2004 when the thing was brand new. When I mentioned on my Facebook account that I was quitting, I got one response that said, “That’s just stupid. I don’t believe you.” Some people can’t imagine their world without Facebook. I CAN imagine it, and I wanted to see what life would be like without it. It’s been a week now, and I’ve noticed a serious lack of clutter in my email inbox (they send you notifications about almost anything unless you do the work of requesting them not to), about an hour of my day back every day, a day less cluttered with sifting through people's ridiculous "status updates," and a feeling of freedom that I think I had been missing. It’s too easy is the problem. Nobody wants to do the work that’s required for actually maintaining a friendship relationship. But if you’re up for it… send me an email: elijtaylor@gmail.com. Or, better yet, send me an actual address and I'll write you a letter.

Radical Subjectivity

2009-06-30T18:49:00.001-07:00

Okay, I have realized it: I have a “type” of movie that I like. It has nothing to do with comedy or drama or sports or anything of that nature. I like movies (and books, and articles, and stories) about radical subjectivity.
Case and point: three of my favorite movies are: Themroc, Can Dialectics Break Bricks, and Pierrot le Fou. For those who are not familiar with these three films, allow me to explain what I mean.

Themroc is a fascinating little French film in which the only really distinguishable word in the entire film is yelled by the main character at the beginning: “Themroc! Themroc!” The rest of the film's meaning is conveyed in that classic writer's way of “showing” not “telling”—probably one of the reasons I am drawn to it. The story, as such, is about a man who has had enough of not owning the means of his own production, quits his job, and becomes a radical subject. He affects others as they realize their own subjectivity. The film ends on two high notes. The next to last scene, Themroc comes down from the world he has created for himself because he’s hungry, and he comes back with two police officers which he and the family across the way (people his radical subjectivity has affected) roast on spits and eat—a delicious metaphor for “the revolution” if I do say so myself… teehee. Then, the police have had enough. They haven’t been able to get him down, and finally they send up a bricklayer to block off the world of the Radical Subjectivity. Themroc brings the bricklayer into his world (with a couple of the women who have wanted a taste of his radical subjectivity) and the movie ends in a fairly wild orgy. In short… Themroc. Watch it.

Can Dialectics Break Bricks is a bit more radically in your face with the propaganda, but once that’s waded through, you’re left with an absolutely brilliant film. The film itself is a Korean tae-kwon-do film; however, some French guys decided to detourn (http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm) the film and give it a slightly different angle. The humor comes from the classic karate movie aspect in which there is the good dojo (in this case the dialecticians) and the bad dojo (in this case the bureaucrats... “The bureaucrats are coming! The bureaucrats are coming!”) In short, it is a hilarious little movie about how the weaker, poorer, dialecticians overcome the bureaucrats. The real twist is that there is a “radical subject” amongst everybody who sits outside the dialecticians because he understand that the only way to truly get through what they’re trying to work through is by confronting it face to face—he actually has a meeting with the bureaucrats and says, “Let’s talk about it!” whereas the “dialecticians” only want to talk amongst themselves. It is essentially the post-Marxist understanding that it is only through confrontation of the issues in a non-violent way that a start can be made. Violence might have its place, but only as a final resort when the bureaucrats are tired of being made fun of and defeated by the words. Awesome. Awesome. “Dialectician” is one of my all-time favorite characters in film.

Pierrot le Fou is a little bit different, if only because it’s a love story. Now, the question might be asked, “How can a love story about two people be about radical subjectivity?” The answer is, of course, that love is a subjective phenomenon. This subject has been taken up numerous times over the course of this blog and need not be re-hashed here, but, needless to say, understand that love is a very personal, subjective type of situation and you’ll understand fully what I mean. Pierrot is the French “stock-character” of a sad clown whose love is bound to leave him for the happy clown. Pierrot is the name applied to the main character (whose name is Ferdinand) by his love. He hates the name. He leaves his wife and children for his love. They live a completely unconventional life: after stealing a car, Ferdinand is playing with the steering, explaining that they could go anywhere, but never really going that far, and his love says, “Look at him, forced to stay between the lines.” At this point, Ferdinand says, “Really,” and proceeds to jump the curb and drive the car into the ocean. They get out and walk along the beach as if nothing happened. He eventually kills himself, after shooting his love, by painting his face blue and wrapping dynamite around his head.

I was talking to a friend of mine last night, and he told me that he and his wife had planned to move to England in a year and half and volunteer—he spent a year in Wales after university helping disabled people (he has some kind of certificate). Right now, both he and his wife have stable jobs, but neither is really doing what they want to do. They have no kids. They are simply going through the motions, so they decided.

I just found out that my cousin, a former executive in a very small publishing firm, has decided to give up his position in order to go make cheese from the milk of goats... in Poland. I want to simply write that sentence again: I just found out that my cousin, a former executive in a very small publishing firm, has decided to give up his position in order to go make cheese from the milk of goats… in Poland.

I just found out that my best friend, who has been attempting to get a visa to go live with his wife in England—they met in New York City through me: I met her in Australia and went to high school with him—has recently had his visa application approved and will be moving to jolly old England in a couple of months (he had twice attempted to assault the gates of the home of queueing and crumpets but had been unsuccessful).

I, myself, will be heading back to the USA after a year in Korea only to come back to Korea (Busan) while I pay of some debts that accumulated over years of spendthriftiness, after which time I plan to join the Peace Corps and either spend two years in the South Pacific learning how to farm or in South America learning the same, and after that I plan to volunteer to go teach English in Africa—I will be then have been on six of the seven continents… DAMN YOU ANTARCTICA!

The crux of this whole argument, and the thing that most people don’t understand (REALLY understand), is that, while your dreams might not include traveling the globe and doing whatever wherever: you can do anything. YOU CAN DO ANYTHING! Good god almighty how empowering is that?
(One minor note here, if you have children, please think of them first… the next generation needs to be protected.)
But if you have no children, and you’re unhappy, then freakin' Go somewhere else. Do something else. Be someone else. Stop whining. The only one stopping you is you.

Vibes

2009-06-23T17:39:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I feel the universe at an unnatural level, or maybe I’m just projecting. Lately I’ve been attempting to distinguish between what is meant by existence and reality. There are probably many definitions, but the way I tend to distinguish them is to say that existence is based on presence or occurrence of something in a particular place or a situation and reality is more of a psychological state (I suppose I’m borrowing from Lacan here). In other words, that which exists is that which takes up space in the perceptible world or is subject to being experienced by the five senses: touch, smell, see, taste, and hear. In this sense, we could say that a book exists, my body exists, that awful smell coming from the sewer, and that dog I hear across the park all exist. Sight is a huge one here, because the things we are able to see with our own eyes make a big impression on us. Combine that sight with touch, and we’re talking about something with a lot of “existence”—especially in this definition of the term. That which is real, then, would be anything that we could say to be “feeling”—emotions, pain, etc. Love would be the most poignant example of something that is real. Love is real, it is undeniable, and it must be dealt with in your world.
It gets a little bit sticky here, because when I say something like, “God doesn’t exist,” I am by no means saying that God isn’t real. I’m saying that he doesn’t have an existence in the sense that I can go up and touch him. When, in the case of, say, a book, its existence is verifiable tactilely. In the same turn, it is possible to say that God is real. God exists as a psychological state that can be “felt.” Love is the same way. You can touch the manifestation of love (i.e. the object of your love as he/she is spooning with you), but there is no way to touch “love.” What does love look like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? The problem with existence is that it changes for everybody, and this is because everybody’s existence is individual. You might think that reality is the same; however, the interesting thing about it is that because the structures of consciousness do not change from human to human, the real can “feel” more real than anything in existence. This is why love and religion are so powerful.
Most of the time when we experience something that is “real” (most prominently love and religion), what we are experiencing is the structures of consciousness taking over. In part, this is why it is such a wonderfully diverse experience: everything we experience that is associated with the experience is sent from the sensuous experience with the world (the existence) and it then passes through consciousness where it takes on hues that perhaps weren’t there technically, colors seem to pop up out of nowhere. Sunsets are suddenly more beautiful because they are experienced with this “other.” Lazy mornings in bed are all the more perfect. Church services are all the more meaningful. These are all forms of worship in the consciousness. Then, after consciousness, it is reflected into the sub-consciousness where it takes on even further signification. In a way, it’s like a game of telephone that the mind plays with itself. There’s the immediate significance of being there with the person, the sensuous experience. Then, there’s the conscious experience that amplifies (or diminishes) it. Next, there’s the sub-conscious chewing of it into a cud where the original is almost completely lost, but there is the lasting ball of something-or-other that leaves the delicious taste in our mouth. Finally, the reflected reflection is reflected once again into the spirit, where it is something that is felt in terms of the universal. This is where the experience that was so immediate becomes something beyond significant, it becomes a part of the fabric of who I am. It becomes me. That’s the power of the real in terms of the mind. It takes the immediate, the present, and anchors it in the self so that it is a kind of perpetual present, because I am that moment.
It is very tempting to set existence and reality at odds with one another. It is very tempting to say that you should attempt to be inside more than you should be inside the other, that you should trust one more than you should trust the other. On the one hand, the “present” of existence is entirely verifiable because of its sensuousness. I can pick up this coffee cup. I can hear my feet crunching on the trail as I walk. I can touch the bark of this tree. I can see the sun shining on the lake. I can smell the garlic and onions cooking in the pan. I can taste the flavor explosion in my mouth. These are the delicious experiences that make up my existence. The real, on the other hand, being nothing more than a psychological state, is unverifiable from a sensory perspective. But how many stories are there of people “feeling” god moving them in a particular direction, in the present, that changed their entire life? How many people experience the reality of present love that changes their life?
The thing about it all is that the mind is kind of in control of everything. All right, I should amend that statement and say that the brain is in control of everything. There is no way to fight the structures of the consciousness. We all have them. They are observable and have been observable for a very long time. In a way, you could call them a fact of life. Love is real. God is real. While they are still individually determined in terms of the “how” these things are experience, their possibility of reality is consistent. Perhaps that’s the difference: reality also contains the realm of possibility, whereas existence does not.
I have been told that I will never be able to love and that I have never been “in love.” From a personal perspective, I think this is perhaps a bit harsh to yours truly. As a matter of fact, I would say that love has been one of the driving forces of my entire existence; however, this is neither here nor there because love is a personal experience of the conscious experience of being with another person. What I mean to say is that perhaps why it might sometimes seem that my love is something other than love is because it exists in this realm of incredible possibility. Reality is not static. Reality is infused with the flavor of possibility, of nutty eternity, of mad infinity, and it only follows that love, at least in my experience of it, ought to be infused with the same flavors.
(For some reason I feel it necessary here to clarify that this eternity and infinity is not the same as “’til death do us part.” That is a lifetime. I’m talking about the possibilities of experience the reality of existence now.)
We’re combining the head the heart I suppose. We ARE both of them anyway.
It is entirely possible that, in this life I am leading, and with these views I’m holding, I will wind up cold and alone and stranded in solitude. I ask too much. I know.
It has also been my experience that there are certain things to compromise: the color of a room, when to go out, what to have for dinner, etc, etc, all the things that don’t actually matter in other words. When it comes to the state of the existence and the reality of possibility, it best not to compromise. Be now, with the understanding that rapid change is always possible. I never know what tomorrow brings. It is a blessing and curse. It is a consistent adventure, but it is also quite scary. My mom said to me yesterday, “Nothing you do surprises me anymore.” Across the world? Have fun. You did what? Wow. Who knows? In the infinite, eternal, present existence exists the reality of possibility.

Head and Heart

2009-06-17T07:17:00.001-07:00

Some questions were never meant to be answered. “Why are we here?” springs to mind rapidly. That question is predicated on the assumption that you can know. You can’t know why, and it is pure arrogance to assume that you can know the answer to a question that goes so far back in history that there will never be any documentation. I should point out that this is from the technical, “proper” standpoint of “Why” as a question dealing with history. Any time you ask “Why,” you are asking a question of history. “Why did you do that?” Why did you do that thing that happened in the past? “Why are you going that?” What result are you hoping to gain from what you’re doing? “Why are you here?” What series of events led you to be where you are? Given that we can never properly know the scope and sequence of events that led to the present, it’s a preposterous question. Given the possibilities and probabilities of all that CAN happen in the future, it is a preposterous question. Questions like these can be interesting to explore, and they can lead to some fascinating self-discovery; however, it should also be noted that asking these questions is a little bit like trying to tear down K2 one rock at a time, single-handed. You could work for five consecutive lifetimes and not get any closer.
My personal preference, when it comes to these kinds of questions, is “What are you doing?” I love the present continuous tense. It is now, and it is perpetual. It forces you to take a look at what you are doing and to describe it as it is, honestly. It’s kind of like something I read about Buddhism (I think it was Zen, specifically) not too long ago:
“If you’re peeling potatoes, most of your major religions will try to remind you of everything external about where the potatoes came from and where you came from and where your praise ought to go. In Buddhism, just peel the potatoes.”
That’s what you’re doing. In a way, none of that other stuff matters. You see, where the potatoes came from doesn’t matter because the potatoes are there now. You bought them or grew them or whatever, and whatever the situation, they are there now. It doesn’t matter where the potatoes are going because you could trip and fall and send them flying into the trash can—where they would probably stay—and who can say it’s never happened to them? Don’t worry about it. Just peel the damned potatoes and appreciate being there at the time you’re doing it. Finished. It might make you smile when you realize what a distinct privilege it is to be there and alive and peeling those potatoes in that corner time in that corner of space in the world. Be where you are, not where you could be or where you were.
Well, I’ve managed to get pretty sidetracked by these abstractions here, but let’s get down to brass tacks: there are questions that aren’t meant to be answered and can never be answered (see above), and there are questions which are meant to be answered but can’t ever be answered, and there are questions are never meant to be answered but can, and there are questions which are meant to be answered and can be answered.
As it regards the second category of question, the biggest one is: what happens when we die? We are all meant to answer this question, but it will cost us our life, and can therefore never be answered in a technical sense. We can only answer it when we take the steps necessary to answer it, which ends in our inability to answer it. That’s kind of a bummer. All I’m going to say about the possibilities of an after-life is this: you can have faith and you can believe and I’m not going to stop you because you can never KNOW—and let’s just make double clear here that I’m talking about knowing in the head sense, not the heart sense.
Questions of the never meant to be answered but can be answered generally fall into the realm of tragedy. You should never know what a Holocaust looks like, but we’ve seen it. You aren’t supposed to know what it feels like to kill somebody, but you can. There’s something in this, an object petit a that I’m missing (or rather that could be developed), but here, now, we’re going to move on to…
Question that you are meant to know the answer to and questions that you can know the answer to. These are generally questions about overcoming fear. These are the questions where heart knowledge pushes one to brain knowledge. You feel something, but you don’t know it in your head. You feel it, but you haven’t experienced it. One of the greatest questions for this is: “What do you do when that which you want looks at you and says, ‘I want you, too’?”
You feel like you’re meant to know. You feel like you can know. The only thing standing in your way is the obstacle of the self, of the fear that is inherent in following feeling. Emotion is not knowledge. Experience is knowledge. Emotion is hope. The problem is that emotion is real. I AM this feeling. This is the inherent problem with love. We feel it. We experience it, but it never “exists”—in the sense that we can feel it physically (and don’t confuse feeling physically with the ephemeral touch of another… because that is sensory perception feeling and different). Love is Real. Love doesn’t exist. It’s kind of like God.
“What does love feel like?” is a question best left to poets who can write:
“Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows 
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.”
That’s what love “feels” like, but you can’t touch it.
The key here is freedom. Most people are actually afraid of their freedom. You are free to do anything. “Don’t tell people that!” You are. I’m not even sorry to say it. You are completely free to do whatever you want. Should you do whatever you want is a different question. Can you do whatever you want? Yes. That’s kind of a scary idea for people.
“What about my job? What about my career? What will people think? What do I do with X? What about this? What about that?”
Those are all valid questions, but they can all be dismissed with the doing. That’s freedom. Your job and your career? If it’s really what you want to do, then you’re fine. If not, then why are you there? Screw ‘em. Why punish yourself for the rest of your life because THEY expect you to be there. People will think what they will. They always have and they always will. Screw ‘em. Let ‘em think what they want, for they see only in part, but when in comes to YOUR life, YOU see in full. Your things and possessions, as almost every religion will tell you, are holding you back anyway. You can’t run away from your problems, let’s get that straight, but you can sure as hell get far enough away that they are not oppressing. Fear. Fear. Fear. Sometimes what it boils down to is a fear to truly live. How did those voices of experience get to where they are? Experience. Why take somebody’s word for it when you can KNOW. When you can BE it. When you can DO it. When you can GO. Respect is due to those whose theory matches their experience: they know in mind and soul. You failed? It’ll be hard. It might be the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced. But now you KNOW, head and heart.

The Importance of Being Tuesday

2009-06-09T07:07:00.001-07:00

As a soft Korean rain falls outside my window, I reflect on my day. You see, today is Tuesday. Normally, I suppose Tuesday doesn’t mean all that much. To be sure, Tuesday generally, simply, hangs around as one of those extra appendage days of the week. It certainly doesn’t have the reproachful aura of a Monday. It certainly isn’t somewhat positive like that Hump-Day Wednesday business. Thursday has a strange aura because it is so close to the weekend, and if you went to a college where there were classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and different classes on Tuesday/Thursday, you would probably even say that Thursday was the start of the weekend. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are too obvious to even touch, which leaves Tuesday in a really awkward place.
One regular day (“what kind of days are regular” is the obvious question to ask here) just over one month ago on a Monday, I was walking to work and pondering this exact question of what each day of the week “means.” What I came up with, in brief, is explained about, and I decided to do something about that Tuesday business.
I am by nature a very spiritual person. To be sure, my grandfather, my father, and at least one uncle are ordained ministers in Church—mainly Southern Baptist (or just Baptist). At any rate, you can probably imagine that I spent many, many days of my formative years in and around dealing with spirituality—although from a purely technical standpoint it is important to say here that what I was actually working through was Religion. At any rate, I have a lot of history with Spirit.
Recently, as a matter of fact, I finished reading Saint Augustine’s Confessions, and I highly recommend it to anyone with the slightest bit of interest in matters of religion and faith and spirituality. Just before Augustine, I finished Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, and the world of spirituality was swimming around my head. Finally, as I am currently residing in Asia, I have been investigating the eastern traditions of spirituality, too—a focused reading of the Tao Teh Ching and a long study of a book called May All Beings Be Happy by a Seon Buddhist monk named Beop Jeong. With all of these various traditions of spirit running around my head, I decided to take Tuesday and see what happens, what kind of importance it gains, when we invest it with some spirituality. Being an at least fairly diligent ontologist, the question was: how?
That’s when it struck me that there is something that really combines everything. There is something out there that has history and roots in every major religion. There is something out there that goes beyond religion and touches on humanity itself. There is a spiritual experience out there that every individual experiences every day whether they realize it or not. Have you guessed what it is?
Food. Nourishment. Fasting.
I have long had a very intimate relationship with food. I was once asked what my three favorite foods were, and my response was:
1) Super fresh. As in, I just got these from my garden out back. I grew them, and now I’m going to eat them. This food is intensely good to me. I just had some shellfish at a beach in South Korea where they had basically just pulled everything out of the water that morning. It… was… incredible.
2) Handmade/homemade. It might take a little bit longer to make, and I can guarantee you it will, but I will always prefer something that has been loved for a few extra minutes to something instant. The last time I had Mexican food was in Korea and we couldn’t find any tortillas, so I made them from scratch (I haven’t had the opportunity to it in a while, but my skills were still there), and the mouth can taste love.
3) Anything with good people and good drinks. It is entirely possible to eat anything, including food that might taste horrible, but if you are with the right people and the right bottle of wine, the beauty and spirituality of the experience come out. The other night I had the opportunity to make dinner and share a bottle of wine with somebody I care about, and there is almost nothing else that I would rather eat than those moments spent together.
So, I already have a spiritual association with food. Add to this the fact that I am incredibly adventurous with food and you’ll see how deep the spirituality goes. “Oh, people eat this, huh? Well, gimme some, let’s see.”
The other day I was sitting with a friend of mine at the shellfish feast I mentioned earlier, and she said to me something like, “I really prefer to have food I know,” when it struck me that I would almost PREFER to have food that I have never eaten before. If you know you’ll like something, there is no adventure. If you don’t know, you can turn it into a spiritual adventure.
Finally, the reality of the human experience is such that without food or nourishment for a long period of time, we would die. Food is necessary. You could almost say that we are food. I am by no means advocating that old saying, “You are what you eat”—although there may be a nugget of truth in there—what I am saying is that we exist in the perpetual need for food. That need IS who we are.
And so, Tuesday’s are fasting days. It is too difficult to fast on the weekends. I am a fairly weak person when it comes to food, and I very often find myself out with some of my very favorite people every weekend enjoying number three mentioned above. I know myself at least well enough to know that attempting to fast on the weekend was right out. Monday already has enough going for it—or against it as… as you will. Wednesdays I go into town and play the guitar and get to be with my people. Thursday was up in the air. Friday… well, Friday might as well be the weekend, eh? Essentially, the deciding factor was eenie-meenie-minie-moe, catch a tiger by its toe, if it hollers make him pay, fifty dollars every day, my momma told me to pick the very best one and you are it. Tuesday it was.
I have been fasting every Tuesday for a month with absolutely no religious intent. I fully understand that this is perhaps nothing new, and it is certainly not new from a religious standpoint. However, I have already been able (even in the relatively short time of this experiment) to observe some interesting things. First, I always appreciate food much more on Wednesday than I did on Monday. To look down at the bowls of soup and rice before me at family meal on Wednesday MEANS more than it did on Monday, and I’m working on a way to make it mean the same thing both days. Second, I’m not really all that hungry on Wednesday morning. I’ve become very aware of the fact of the habit of eating, and how the body gets used to doing eating at certain times. In this place and at this time, I am not much of a breakfast guy, and my body has gotten used to only having a cup of coffee, so the need isn’t really there when I wake up. Third, it is simply a will power workout. When you realize that you CAN say no to food for an entire day, you realize that you can do other things. Your brain is shocked into the realization that there is nothing to stop it from making an entirely new decision in its way of being. At least… that’s how I experience it.

Beyond Romanticism

2009-06-02T18:06:00.001-07:00

One of the most difficult subjects to understand that I have ever encountered is Love. There is of course the argument that love is not meant to be understood, and there is some validity to this argument: as a feeling, it’s only requirement is to be. It is meant to be felt, not thought about.
But what manner of emotion is it?
What is it about love that makes us do the things we do?
How can love make us feel so intensely?
Is there a right time for love?
Can you force love?
What happens when you want somebody so much, and yet it seems as though the world is conspiring against you?
Is love personal? Or universal?
Can we love? Or is that just a plurality of loves?
It has been my experience that “I love.” What I mean by this is that the emotion I feel for somebody is my own. The emotion that somebody feels for me is his or her emotion. The most common manifestation of this principle is how people tell each other that they are in love:
“I love you.”
And the response is usually:
“I love you, too.”
When “too” is used in this position at the end of the sentence, it means “also.” In other words, what is really being said here is that “I love you,” and “I also love you,” but, in this situation, “you” is the same thing. In other words, what these two hypothetical people are saying is that they love their relationship, not the other person specifically. What are the psychological ramifications of this? Are there any?
It seems to me that it is fairly common to fall in love with the relationship. The person can be anybody—proven by the commonplace that we oftentimes come out of a relationship, fall into another relationship, and look down to find ourselves in the same relationship with somebody else. It is in this situation that the love is not for the person, but it is for the psychological fulfillment that comes from having somebody with you.
Perhaps I am simply being pedantic. What kind of importance can a little world like “too” have in reality?
Yes, that was most definitely a rhetorical question. I will leave it up to you start having this conversation with your loved one:
Look them in the eyes before and during your saying, “I love you.”
And as their response, have them say, while looking at you, “and I love you.”
Change as necessary.
It could be an interesting experiment. Maybe nothing will change, but I know, from personal experience, that is sounds and feels different. The “why” it feels different doesn’t matter, the “what” that feels different is a matter of language—and I have been over the fact (many, many times in this blog) that we ARE language, and the how of what changes is the personalization of the salutation (you know that this person is talking about you specifically).
The changeover to personalization is huge. What happens when you start lauding the relationship over the person is that the other person is put in charge of being able to take the love away. What I mean by this is, “YOU can end OUR love.” When love exists in the form of a fantasy-type relationship (in that there is no way to combine two people into one—sex is the greatest illusion of this), the love sits outside of the individual on this very precarious pedestal. When love is personal, I make the decisions regarding it. If “I” decide that I love “you” no matter what you do, then I grant all. In other words, “you” can do things that might make “me” reconsider our relationship, but because this love is mine and mine alone (which, by the way, is simply a recognition of the fact from both a theoretical/philosophical and physiological standpoint that we are all individuals and “we” is simply a plurality that is easily divisible), I make all the final decisions about who takes it away.
The easiest argument to make against this position is: what kind of love is it where there is no trust, or where there are no boundaries? If you think about the question long enough you’ll see first that when there are no boundaries, this love is boundless. I am not sure, but I would imagine that in this love where there are no boundaries and all is honesty and truthfulness and faithfulness to the truth of love in the individual, there would probably be less “infidelity” than one would imagine. Who wants forbidden fruit that isn’t forbidden? As far as trust goes, it is simplified. The only trust I need to have is that you love me right now. The trust is taken out of time and placed where it ought to be: in the present. Traditionally, you are trusting your partner to make decisions that don’t negatively affect the future of your relationship. In this new love you are trusting only in the fact, the reality, that your partner loves you right now. There is no future beyond if there is no love now. Two people focused on their present individual loves seems to me (scary and unconventional as it might seem) to be “the love of the future.”
Everybody loves a little romance. It is nice to feel wanted. It is nice to have those little gestures that say, “I care about you.” It just plain feels nice. The problem with romance is that it is traditionally concerned with the future. How many couples would complain that all the romance went out of their relationship after they got married? In this new love, there would be room for romance because it would be day-to-day courtship. Every day would be a glorious affirmation of my love for that person, simply because I have him or her right now.
Ah, yes, the older generation is probably sneering at my youthful naiveté, and why not, they’ve got life experience on their side, and that teaches them that they need to plan for the future; however, they’ve also never tried living an entire life this way. I think that there is discipline in living your life in the present. I believe it takes a great deal of will and strength to wake up every day and joyously affirm that I love this person. I don’t even know if it’s possible. Maybe it’s not, but why isn’t it worth trying? Is it too free?
“They're scared.”
“They're not scared of you. They're scared of what you represent to them.”
“All we represent to them is somebody who needs a haircut.”
“Oh, no. What you represent to them...is freedom.”
“Freedom's what it's all about.”
“Oh yeah, that's right. That's what it's all about. But talking about it and being it...that's two different things. It's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. Don't tell anybody that they're not free, because they'll get busy killing and maiming to prove to you that they are. They're going to talk to you and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it's going to scare them.”
“Well, it don't make them running scared.”
“It makes them dangerous.”

A Collection

2009-05-16T00:59:00.000-07:00

This is simply a collection of the things that I’ve read in the past week: snippets, if you will, from what I’m trying to put together in my head. I guess this is most aptly what I'm doing with my life.

11
Thirty spokes converge upon a single hub;
It is on the hole in the center that the use of the cart hinges.

We make a vessel from a lump of clay;
It is the empty space within the vessel that makes it useful.

We make doors and windows for a room;
But it is the empty spaces that make the room livable.

Thus, while the tangible has advantages,
It is the intangible that makes it useful.

--The Tao Teh Ching

“It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between “literally” and “figuratively.” If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively; it feels like it’s happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means that you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means that you are so happy that you could jump for joy, but are saving your energy for other matters. The Baudelaire orphans walked back to Count Olaf’s neighborhood and stopped at the home of Justice Strauss, who welcomed them inside and let them choose books from the library. Violet chose several about mechanical inventions, Klaus chose several about wolves, and Sunny found a book with many pictures of teeth inside. They then went to their room and crowded together on the one bed, reading intently and happily. Figuratively, they escaped from Count Olaf and their miserable existence. They did not literally escape, because they were still in his house and vulnerable to Olaf’s evil in loco parentis ways. But by immersing themselves in their favorite reading topics, they felt far away from their predicament, as if they had escaped. In the situation of the orphans, figuratively escaping was not enough, of course, but at the end of a tiring and hopeless day, it would have to do. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny read their books and, in the back of their minds, hoped that soon their figurative escape would eventually turn into a literal one.”

--Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, No. 1: The Bad Beginnings, or Orphans!, Ch 3, last paragraph

"Where is it I've read that someone condemned to death says or think, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he'd only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!"  

-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Ch. 13

“The external proletariat (including, as its largest part, the peasantry), which came to provide the Soviet leadership with a mass basis for the struggle against capitalism after the First World War, emerged as a historical “subject” seemingly by virtue of (from the Marxian standpoint) an exogenous event, namely, by, virtue of the fact that the revolution succeeded in backward Russia, failed to materialize in the advanced industrial countries, and subsequently spread from Russia into preindustrial areas, while the advanced industrial countries continued to remain immune. But this event was not quite as exogenous as it seems… The sustained weakness of the revolutionary potential in the advanced industrial countries confined the revolution to that area where the proletariat had not been thus affected and where the regime had shown political disintegration together with economic backwardness.”

--Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis, Ch. 1: Marxian Concept of the Transition to Socialism

“The right of nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say, of his own life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own judgment, and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto… And consequently it is a precept, or general rule of reason, that every man, ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of war. The first branch of which rule, containeth the first, and fundamental law of nature; which is, to seek peace, and follow it. The second, the sum of the right of nature; which is, by all means we can, to defend ourselves.”

--Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 14: On the First and Second Natural Laws, and of Contracts.

“It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who's showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already, I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace”

--Thom Gunn, The Hug

An Un-Special Wednesday Morning

2009-05-12T18:31:00.001-07:00

Somehow, it’s May. Somehow, it’s well into may. My mind is swimming right now; or would it be more appropriate to say thrashing? Poetry, language, though, photos, religion, pedagogy, existence, fruit, subjects, posture, form, function, style, content, objects and action all have very powerful daily effects on me. What is it about these subjects that drive me? Maybe it’s a desire to know. Maybe it’s simply a desire to do. There’s a big difference there, and I’m not sure I’m capable of distinguishing it.
I want to make music. I want my life to be music given to others. I want what I consistently fail at achieving.
Do other people think, almost daily, about the importance of the length of sentences in determining their relative importance in the meaning of a piece of literature?
I do.
And I’m sure others do, too.
How do we go about filling up our time on this terrestrial sphere so that the uselessness of existence isn’t an ever-present burden to the affected consciousness?
There are so many ways.
And they go by diverse names.
Thinking of the past can consume much of one’s time, as can thinking of the future, but so, also, can existing entirely in the present—this latter being, I think, most conducive to actual existence. Cogitations of that which has gone by is a waste of the moment you’re living in on a moment that cannot be changed. Rumination—which has an interesting double meaning—of things to come ought to be done carefully as time can, and usually does, make fools of us all. Perhaps this is why I am a bigger fan of direction than directions (that “s” makes a huge difference). What we miss when we are involved in these time-thoughts is that they are all happening in the present. Again, we miss the present.
Where are you… right now?
To lay down the load seems like a thoroughly enjoyable thing, and I suppose it is entirely possible. Mercurial seems to be the best nomenclature for the perpetual state of my mind: that which I believe today might, by tomorrow, be altered by new information. Or, it might not. It’s hard to say. There is so little absolute truth in the world. Everybody’s right. Everybody’s wrong. Can there be a nugget of absolute truth that humanity can know? I hesitate to mention God—with a purposeful capital—because you would be hard-pressed to find a Hindu or Muslim who would agree with a Southern Baptist, and conceptions of God always seem to me to fall into the realm of personal truths—because if I’m right and somebody disagrees with me, then they are wrong and need to be shone the true light (which is to say: my light… this little light of MINE).
I think there is truth to be found in consciousness. We all have it. It is universal. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that every consciousness in the world even has the same shape or form or style. What gets put into it might differ in content, but the shape (consciousness, sub-consciousness, and spirit) remains the same. The consciousness is the sensual world (what Hobbes might call the “voluntary actions”), the sub-conscious that of the involuntary actions (to a point), and the spirit is that nugget of reality that is so tangible and yet so difficult to describe. Maybe it’s time for me to start asking a new question: how is truth?

Tomorrow…

2009-05-01T07:13:00.001-07:00

is Buddha’s birthday. I’ve never really thought about it before, but I suppose it makes sense. Jesus has a birthday. Muhammad has a birthday. Sure. Why not? This is not something that is generally celebrated too often in the Western world, but it is a national holiday in Korea, and, I’ve heard somebody say something sometime about being Rome and… well, I forget the rest of how it goes.
At any rate, tomorrow I am going to celebrate Buddha’s birthday. I’m going to do this in what is probably an inappropriate manner—having had very little experience with what a celebration of this kind would entail, but I will spend the day in meditation, introspection, and fasting. Traditionally in Korea, a visit is made to the nearest temple—or whatever temple you choose—and the monks there provide the visitors with food (usually gimbap—sort of like a California roll: seaweed, rice, and whatever is around all rolled up), and everybody attempts to understand themselves a little bit better.

So, instead of gabbing on here about whatever it is I think about whatever it is that’s going on in the world of my mind these days, I’m simply going to leave you with some thoughts to make your “Buddha’s Birthday Bash” a beautiful one:

“To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.”
--Buddha

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.”
--Buddha

“On life's journey Faith is nourishment,
Virtuous deeds are a shelter,
Wisdom is the light by day and Right mindfulness is the protection by night.
If a man lives a pure life nothing can destroy him;
If he has conquered greed nothing can limit his freedom.”
--Buddha

“When the student is ready, the master appears.”
Buddhist Proverb

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. ”
Alan Watts

“Zen is not a philosophy, it is poetry. It does not propose, it simply persuades. It does not argue, it simply sings its own song. ”
Osho

“Sit quietly doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself. ”
Zen Wisdom

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both. ”
Zen Wisdom

“To what shall I liken the world? Moonlight, reflected in dewdrops. Shaken from a crane's bill. ”
Dogen

“May all living beings,
All of my neighbors,
Be happy,
Be at peace,
Be comfortable.”
--Beop Jeong, Seon Master

“This spring, I am going to set off on the road again.
I have been staying here about as long as I am meant to,
so now I think it is time to find a new place to reside.
When ascetics stay in one place for a long time,
they begin to languish, stuck in a mire of sloth and inertia.
I want to embark on a new path, like an eternal beginner,
clumsily starting all over again from the beginning.”
--Beop Jeong, Seon Master

Right This Moment
“Do not let this moment escape.
Pay close attention, every second, with the thought,
"Now, I am living in this way."
Do not be distracted, do not think useless thoughts,
do not get lost in the words of others, but rather inspect things for yourself.
In the same way, do not get bound to my words here.
Go on your own path!
Do not spend this moment in vain.
These moments pile up and become an entire life.
Do not be to tense.
If you are, you lose your resiliency,
and then it is difficult to maintain consistency.
You have to be joyful in the living of life.
Everyday begin again.
Again and again, wipe yourself off and rise up from this tired old quagmire.”
--Beop Jeong, Seon Master

Wandering Mindspace

2009-04-24T07:29:00.000-07:00

On my way home from work this evening, I was pondering what it is that makes up a person’s day. I thought about my own experience because that is what I am most accustomed to, but I would like to know how other people view their days. On an average week, I put in at least five, solid, sixteen to eighteen hour days without trying. At least two days a week, it’s more like twenty—and they’re not the days you think.
It’s raining gently outside, and on this evening, I’m letting the light clackety click click clack click clack of the keyboard play a harmony to the universal melody outside my window. That is what I think about in your average moments.
I was asked the other day, by a very good friend of mine, two of the most difficult questions I have been asked in a very long time—and their ontological nature probably has something to do with it;

“What do you do when you get lonely?”

and

“What do you do when you get bored?”

Starting with the second question first, it is entirely possible to take the Slavoj Zizek approach to the question and Hegelize things a bit by saying: I never get bored. But, then again, I’m always bored. Consistently bored. What have we accomplished? Perhaps nothing, but perhaps I really don’t ever feel bored. My sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-plus hour-long days come with zero effort on my part. I wake up, I have many, many things to accomplish (usually some combination of reading, writing, playing the guitar, sorting out business with whatever needs sorting out) in the morning, I spend ten hours involved in work-related, school-type things, I come home and spend three hours doing more of what I did in the morning (except this is also usually when I study Korean), I have a bit of dinner, and that’s a solid day. On Wednesdays I go into town and play the guitar. On Saturdays I let the wind take me where it will. Both of these days are usually very, very long. Sunday is devoted almost entirely to reading, writing, playing the guitar, and doing something physical (hiking, walking around, running, the driving range, whatever). I quite honestly have very little free time.
So, with all these things taking up my waking hours—to the point that I barely have a chance to take a breath and have to schedule in relaxation time—how is it that I am unfailingly, bewilderingly bored? The answer to that question is that I am perpetually avoiding boredom. Somewhere along the line in my life, and who’s to say exactly when it was, I decided that boredom was a curse. We choose to be bored. How can you be bored inside an existence that has so much to offer? I have considered the possibility that perhaps it is the creation of things that keeps me occupied. In any given week, I write forty-sixty pages of words. That’s not an incredible amount by any stretch of the imagination, but I spread that out over the course of the week, chipping away at it, an hour here, an hour there, and, suddenly, I have managed to spend between twenty and thirty hours of my week in the act of writing. Practice is one of the biggest focuses of my life, and my body is currently practicing writing every day—only barely caring about what happens over the course of that writing helps (I once had a writing professor tell me that quality comes from quantity, by which he meant that without the appropriate amount of material to work with, there is no way you’ll be able to craft the highest quality product—we’ll get it in editing!). I read at least a hundred pages from a variety of books during the week (I’m currently working on Style in History, Confessions (Augustine), and May All Beings Be Happy), and I read fairly slowly, marking, and notating (DAMN YOU EDUCATION HISTORY) which tends to take time. I could play the guitar for hours on any given day of the week, if I were allowed. I am very actively running away form boredom. I exist boredom in the sense that I AM not bored. Or something like that.
As far as the second question goes, it is important to know that the question was posed to me by a known womanizer after he had just been broken up with—as with the other question, but that had happened earlier in the day and was unrelated to his philandering. We were in Busan. He was lying on the bed and I had a traditional mat on the floor. “What do you do when you get lonely?” To be honest it caught me off guard, but I think the answer to it is roughly the same as the other one: I never get lonely, unless of course I'm horribly lonely.
Our lives are like a giant block of marble that we are given when we are born. For the first few years, other people hack away at it and give us a basic shape. Then, after a while, they tell us to help them out, and we gladly hack away at this gigantic block of marble. After a while, something strange happens that I can’t really understand right now. We are left holding the chisel and the hammer. Other people can come along and, if we let them, they can start hacking away at our block of marble, and we can wander over to theirs and do the same. The problem is that if you want to create your block all by yourself, you have to keep people away. Most people want to hack at your block of marble. They want to put their imprint on your life—perhaps it is the sub-conscious need for re-direction from the affairs of their own life. We wind up in a sticky situation because everybody wants to make their own life’s work, and everybody wants to hack at other people’s lives. Sometimes this is beneficial because sometimes people need help with their vision. Sometimes it is detrimental and downright annoying.
Existential theory says that we are forever alone because our consciousness cannot be combined with another consciousness. Christians say that God is that fulfillment. As a matter of fact, most mainstream religions make the claim that what they are offering is the fulfillment of the void. But, does spiritual/consciousness loneliness fulfillment mean the same as physical loneliness fulfillment. I think only a fool would say yes, if only because they aren’t the same species. The same genus… perhaps, because they can have the same effect, but the tactile sensation of being held FEELS different.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that mankind seems to be perpetually stuck in the abyss—or at least hopping back and forth over it—between the physical and the spiritual. In the physical world, we do our work for the day. In the spiritual world, we do the work of our life. Every day, when we are simply doing whatever it is we’re doing, we are accomplishing this two-fold fact of existence. Investigation of the spirit that is alive and well in the world requires physical effort, and when there is spirit to investigate, who could be bored? Who could be lonely?
The funny thing is, I just had the thought… at least that’s what I think RIGHT NOW. It could all change tomorrow. I, in my perpetual, professional ignorance don’t know.

This Past Weekend

2009-04-14T17:38:00.000-07:00

Normally, this is the kind of story that would go in the book about the sheer possibilities of life in terms of what can happen to you when you go to East Asia to teach English, but I’ve decided to go a slightly different direction and put it here instead:

The plan was to wake up in the middle of the night on Friday night, go into town, have a couple of pre-bus drinks, and catch the bus to Busan. It was a friend’s birthday that weekend, and we had organized a road trip to that beautiful city on the water in Southern South Korea—famous for its sushi. I had managed to wrangle myself a gig, so that Saturday we would take the bus down to Busan, do whatever, Saturday night I would play a show (a little guitar and singing action), and Sunday we would go to the beach. Awesome.
We all met at the scheduled time (3:30am) at the scheduled place (MJs in Chungdae, Chungmun, Cheongju, South Korea… REPRESENT!!!), and everything was going fine. The sun started to come up and we decided to take off in the heavy mist of the morning. We had been playing pool, and part of the reason we were leaving is because one of the people we were playing pool with had been getting hot-headed and saying stupid things (mainly because he had been losing), so we thought it best if we just leave. I went to go say good-bye to the owner who was a good friend that hosted Cheongju’s open mic night (loving labeled Acoustica), and when I turned around I saw my friend get hit in the face. I don’t think our hot-headed friend realized what happened, and, to be honest, neither do I, but before the situation could be sorted out, all 6’4” 275lbs of me was on top of him, smashing his face into the ground telling him to cut it out, or we would seriously stop it. When I got off him I could tell he wasn’t done, so I picked him up like a baby and repeated the… um… threat. When I put him on his feet, you could tell he was still upset, but having experienced the ease with which I had dealt with his feeble British body, he decided to stop. We wandered off into the morning, one of us with a wobbly tooth and blood coming from a fat lip.
So, we proceeded to get shockingly drunk. It is what it is, they say. It certainly made the four-hour bus ride on a bus built for Asians more tolerable—most of which we slept through.
We arrived in Busan, secured accommodation (always take care of the essentials first), and then our little group split up. There were three boys and two girls, and we were only barely acquainted with each other, which meant that we had different agendas. One of the girls had a friend in Busan, she managed to contact him, and he had met them at the bus terminal. So, the three of them headed off on their adventure, and the three of us headed off on our own. They went to a temple, and we went hiking to a temple/hermitage.
I love hiking. There will never be a time in my life, I’m pretty sure, when the shocking beauty of nature is not the most pacifying moment of my existence. Where we walked has some of the best views of Busan that I have ever seen, and we all stood in awe for some time, marveling. Then, we made our way back to the cable car that would take us the rest of the way down the mountain. The cable car takes you about two-thirds of the way up the mountain—meaning that you have another two hours of walking (or so) to get to the top, but also meaning that it is about a four hour walk up and a two and a half hour walk down. The problem was, of course, that we had no idea which way “down” was AND it was getting dark. What to do? Fortunately, god-given Koreans that owned a restaurant near the cable-car departure at the top decided to help us out. This was interesting, as we had seen cars on top of this mountain, but we had often wondered how they got up there. Let’s just say that it involves one helluva lot of off-roading. So, the three of us went four-wheeling in a Land Rover a Korean couple that looked as if they were easily in their sixties. It… was… awesome, and we figured out how they get the cars up there.
When we got down, two of we three went to the spa—one person decided that he had been to the spa once and had seen enough penises then to last him a lifetime. Korean spas are separated into male and female and the rule is complete nakedness. Having spent most of my adolescent years showering with my wrestling team, this didn’t present much of a problem, and our other companion was a man from China—where they have similar institutions. The gigantic spa attached to the Nongshim Hotel in Busan is one of the greatest and most relaxing experiences I ever get to have. Love’s it.
But, it was getting quite late by now and I did have to play a show after all, so we went back to the hotel, collected our traveling companion, rejoined our other companions, and we all wound up at a very special place near Busan University called The Basement. This beautiful little spot (“A place devoted to subterranean living”) is, aptly, in the basement of a building, and the owner is a westerner from Syracuse. I played my set, it went pretty well, we all had some fun, and the owner invited everybody that was left in the bar out to eat—granted, this was very late at night and there weren’t that many people, but still… it was a very nice gesture, and he took good care of us. Call this a reckless plug for the Basement in Busan… GO THERE! Tell them Eli from Ochang sent you and you’ll get taken care of, believe me.
(There is a short bawdy story involving one member of our merry crew (not me), but this story is best left for another space.)
After stumbling home, we managed to pass out in our rooms and a-wait the dawn of the new day. We were going to the beach, but we had to get supplies first. So, we went into the equivalent of Wal-Mart Supercenter: Tesco’s Home Plus. We bought towels. Okay. I bought a capo for my guitar because I had managed to lose mine. This was a little bit unusual, as I had never before seen a music section in a Hope Plus, but okay. Also, I bought a set of stainless steel nunchuck’s from the sporting goods section… for the equivalent of $3.50. Yes, it was that easy. These things could easily level somebody’s head—thank god we didn’t have them Friday night—and I had bought them at Tesco’s for less than $5. I think that is the only reason I actually bought them.
The rest of the day was spent on the beach, laughing in the sun, wrestling, playing in the sand, walking through the water, and enjoying life. Towards the end of our stay, we decided it was time to sample the famous Busan sushi. For those who don’t know, sushi in America isn’t sushi. That’s what we call Gim-Pop—a rice roll (the California Roll, etc). Sushi is when I see the man remove two fish from the tank, watch him take them back to the kitchen, and return about three minutes later with sliced fillets on a bed of uncooked noodles. Freshest fish in the world. Delicious with sauce.
Well, we got so into the raw fish that we missed our bus home. Whatever, these things happen. So, we stayed another night in a hotel (a grand total of a $12 expense). We caught the first bus back in the morning and slept all the way to Cheongju. Then I got taken for a sucker by a cab driver, but was too tired to argue… because I was home.

A Few Questions

2009-04-05T06:45:00.001-07:00

Can you care about somebody so much that you would rather deal with the pain of premature separation than deal with the pain of loving them even more? Or is that simply running away? Can you simultaneously run away and run toward something? Can you make decisions that would be called hard by some standards, selfish by others, ridiculous by still others, and incomprehensible by others yet? Can life become something other than you had intended it to be?

Because it always does.

Did you ever feel yourself sink, in just a matter of seconds, into a quagmire of incomprehensibility manifesting itself and cogency? Did you ever wonder stupid shit like this winds up a possibility: You’ve been shot on the hand with a Monster XL Machine Blaster filled with Root Beer. SPLAT!!! Click here to shoot someone back Water Gun Fight!? Or did you ever wonder whether or not there is value in things that are popularly considered to have value, only to find that the value that is placed there is misplaced there by an overwhelming sense of urgency to conform? Did you ever break something and rebuild it perfectly?

Because it always is.

Where have you been that you cannot remember? Where have you been that you want to forget? Where have you lied down underneath the stars, simply to be precisely where you are, and wonder at the nature of emptiness? Where were you when you thought to yourself that the nature of the modern world society, no matter where you are, is one of hopeless emptiness? Or did you manage to look at society and never find this to be the case? Where were you the last time you looked at somebody with the thought in your mind: I share the same genus and species as this person?

Because you’ve never been.

When was the last time you stopped in the middle of the road as you walked home from work because your mind had been working overtime and finally, finally, finally come to an understanding of something? When was the last time you unleashed your subconscious into a work of art? When was the last time you had a conversation with somebody that was actually worth a damn and not full of platitudes about the weather and the more recent Hollywood release? Or did you manage to make it this far in life without ever experiencing anything like that? Where is there peace in this world? Where is there understanding of the fact that a peace is not a where?

Because you never did.

Who am I? Who is the most important person in your life? Who would you say has influenced your life more than anybody else? Who can seemingly make you do anything—even the things you don’t really want to do? Who came into your life when you least expected it and significantly impacted it to the point that you would say they changed your life? Who broke you? Who says so? Who played with you? Who laid next to you in the morning light and reminded you that life is still beautiful because it has them in it? Or did you never ponder the importance of the other people in your existence and the effect they have on who you are? Who can say what is what? Who can say this is this? Who has all the answers?

Because it is always nobody.

Why do you continue to ask questions to which nobody has the answers? Why do you ask questions concerning history that is unchangeable and immutable? Why do you sometimes wonder why “Why” is such a difficult question to worked up about any more? Why is the reason behind something so often given so much importance that what was done is overlooked? Why does it seem that the real meaning of something that has been done seem so much like it isn’t the reason behind it, but what happened as a result of it? Why is that intentions are always so emptily reducible to: because I felt like I was doing what was right? Why is it always a question of explaining oneself, when then this is pretty generally an impossibility based on the movements of consciousness that, while perhaps known, are only partially able to be tracked and very rarely fully disclosed to even the one attempting the explanation? Or is it possible that Why is truly a silly question, laced with grotesque distortions of inexplicable motion? Why can I never fully understand? Why are you so beautiful? Why am I so ugly? Why am I so beautiful? Why are you so ugly? Why is life such a day to day existence, impossibly pinned down?

Because of is.

What can you do about it? What are you going to do about it? What are you doing about it right now? What is it? What is what? What is a word? What is language? What is thought? What is consciousness? What is religion? What is life? What is love? What is pleasure? What is pain? What is worthiness? What is authority? What is a regime? What does it mean to be so involved with existence that you miss out on existence? What does it all mean? What is god? What is it about me that makes me wonder? What is it about you that makes you wonderful? What is it that makes us wonderfully wonder? What is human nature? What can you gather around you in one lifetime in terms of goods and things and products and stuff? What can you gather around you in one lifetime in terms of growth and development and an experience of the possibles of the mind? What can you gain from stuff? What can you gain from investigating your possibles? What is it about revolution that is so goddamned appealing? What is it about human beings that makes them capable of deciding on a whim? What is it about me that drives me to question things so incessantly and accept only that which I come to understand gradually? What is it about you that allows you to accept wholesale what I sell you? What is it about you that makes you question in the way you do? What is it about me that allows me to accept in the way I do? What does it mean to be exceptional? What am I supposed to do now? What condition of the mind allows for this sort of thing? What? Or did you never realize the power of What? What can you make of it?

Because it is everything and nothing and something in between.

Daily Meditation

2009-03-23T21:12:00.001-07:00

2
On the traveling road, I can feel the weight of my soul.
It allows me to reflect upon my own inner face,
how I live within all of life's situations.
Traveling is no simple hobby,
it is a rigorous journey of regulating oneself,
an opportunity to rediscover the significance of life.
It is also practice for bidding farewell to this world.
--Beop Jeong ("A Though a Day")

(I have long lived by the principle that traveling is one of the greatest things to do on the planet--if only because there is a planet to travel around on (echoes of "Don't end your sentences with prepositions?). At any rate, traveling is simultaneously one of the most challenging and rewarding things a body can engage themselves in because it forces you to renew your outlook on yourself every time you come into contact with new people or a new place. That is the "inner face." You see yourself when others see you, and you see yourself (probably) more clearly when new people see you. People that have a history with you will see you tinted by that history, tinted by the way they want to see you, and tinted with the hues of whatever else they might know about you. New people will consistently judge you differently and force you to recognize yourself in a new way. There is absolutely something to be said for the comfort that is conferred by those that know you and know you well, but I think you would be hard pressed to find anybody who has truly had a "comfortable" life. Life is a challenge. It moves and changes. In a way, you could say that traveling mirrors human reality. We are constantly on the move from pure consciousness to object and back again: subject, object, subject, object. We are forever in motion, and traveling in the physical waking reality is sense is simply the manifestation of what we're doing internally. Traveling, I think, ought to be further refined to take on a kind of Spartan sentimentality (in the "sparse" sense), and leave the luxurious four-star amenities at home. We're talking here about moving and finding your way, not calling ahead and reserving a room. Traveling ehre is stepping into the unknown. People often say they are "trying to find themselves," and they usually do, but what they don't realize is that the reason they find themselves is the trying, not where they look. It is the seeking that is important, not the place itself.)

Confessions

2009-03-07T01:19:00.000-08:00

I have spent most of the day crying at random intervals for reasons I can’t really explain. I have done things in my life that I can’t regret doing, and yet I can regret the fallout. Sometimes we all have to change. Sometimes that change has to bring with it a certain amount of pain. Can you imagine an existence, a person, who goes through life without crying? We are brought into the world crying, sort of an omen of things to come. Existence is a blissful agony. Sometimes we love to suffer. We think it makes us better, and maybe, in some instances, it does, but it only begs the question: “what is it about existence that necessitates this method?”

When we are infants, we cry because we are hungry, we cry because we are tired, we cry because, essentially, we really don’t know what we want. As we grow older, the reasons we cry might seem to be more diverse (i.e. the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the past, a physical injury, etc.), but the reality is that we cry for exactly the same reason in all cases: we don’t know what we want. Even in the event of the death of a loved one, what we are dealing with is our inability to know if there is someplace for the soul to go, or, if you claim to “know” that, then if they went there, and if you claim to “know” that, then what to do with that part of your life that was devoted to that person. You don’t know what will happen now. I cry because I don’t know the answer to a question: “What now? What comes next?” The inability to know the future is the fate of humanity. We are always moving toward it, never away. We are pushed, impelled, prodded, poke, goaded, delivered to the future by unseen hands, and there is nothing we can do about it. We have to move. We have to change. Even in stagnation, we’re forced along by time and life to be something other.

In a very short period of time in my life, I managed to hurt brutally, callously, and unforgivably at least half a dozen of the people that mean the world to me. Because I couldn’t… what? Because I couldn’t know. I know that this is no excuse, but sometimes I feel like there is something inside me that I am heading somewhere that will make most people feel uncomfortable, and I can’t know what will happen as a result of this, and as a result of that, I can’t bring that pain on those people I love.

What the hell is a sacrifice anyway? There is no way to know whether a thing done is a sacrifice until the future, even if the intention might have been stated as sacrificial, especially because it is often that when we are dealing with in terms of sacrifice is the reality of the world of the sacrificial party. In ancient times, the sacrifice was always an animal, and that animal, without fail, was required to die. This is why Jesus was the sacrificial Lamb of God: instead of an animal, it was a human sacrifice. That is an awkward thing for me to think about. Did God initiate a human sacrifice? What does that mean? No, no time for questions like that now.

I, for some reason, was reminded that Regina Spektor is alive in the world and has produced four (pretty good) albums. This reminder sent me to the world that I had lived in only one year ago, and hearing the soundtrack of that time period in my life sent me surfing on waves of unintelligible emotions. I didn’t know so much then. I was lost in a world where I didn’t even know if my mind would be able to hold out, and I’m actually pretty sure it didn’t. I was completely out of control. Perhaps it is best if nobody knows what was going on inside my head at that time, but then again, it is nearly impossible for me to live in this world knowing that those thoughts at that time were what they were. Or, rendered perhaps more appropriately, knowing that there was no controlling my thoughts or myself or my actions, and knowing that I had no me to hold onto. I didn’t know so much.

“You are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first, I loved you first beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth. I have to go, I have to go. Your hair was long when we first met. Samson went back to bed not much hair left on his head he ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed, and history books forgot about us and the bible didn’t mention us. The bible didn’t mention us, not even once. You are my sweetest downfall. I loved you first, I loved you first beneath the stars came falling on our heads, but they're just old light. They're just old light. Your hair was long when we first met. Samson came to my bed, told me that my hair was red, told me I was beautiful and came into my bed. I cut his hair myself one night, a pair of dull scissors and the yellow light. He told me that I'd done all right and kissed me till the morning light the morning light and he kissed me till the morning light. Samson went back to bed. Not much hair left on his head. Ate a slice of wonder bread and went right back to bed. We couldn't break the columns down. No, we couldn't destroy a single one and the history books forgot about us, and the bible didn’t mention us, not even once

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first.”—Regina Spektor, Samson

Sometimes I don’t know whether I am Samson or Delilah, and sometimes I think I’m both. I guess I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe crying sometimes is what reminds me that I’m living. Maybe it is the knowledge that I have made decisions. Maybe it is the knowledge that I have screwed up some of the greatest things I’ve ever been given… consciously. Maybe it’s the knowledge that I cannot undo the hurt or the pain for any party involved. Maybe it’s the knowledge that I would probably do it all again—even if I might do it differently. Maybe it is my inability to understand my own world. Maybe it is the fact that I don’t know so many things. Maybe existence is too overwhelming sometimes, and if we don’t break down and cry at the realization of the reality of our situation, then we are not really realizing the reality that we are. Maybe it’s the fact that that which is called sacrifice by some is selfishness to others. Maybe it’s the fact that selfishness is the way we’re built (at least at some level), because if there is no self-preserved self, then there is no self to give out. Maybe I’m scared of what I can become. Maybe I’m scared of what I am. Maybe I’m scared of that which haunts the darkest corners and recesses of the deepest, dankest parts of my consciousness… those long-undusted corners existing in perpetual darkness and solitude, but existing all the same. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

The Value of Hard Work

2009-02-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

In what might have been some kind of sub-conscious slip up, I almost wrote down for the title of this post, “The Value of Hard Words.” Perhaps it was just a mix up in the right and left hand digits, some wire that got crossed somehow—seeing as how the same finger on both hands is responsible for the D and the K respectively—but perhaps that is what I meant to say.

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god.” Word is god. I’ve been struggling a lot lately with the concept that we don’t employ language as a part of our existence, rather, that we are language. We exist language. Whatever it is that has brought us to this understanding, it seems to be a very real and difficult to understand concept.

I teach English to Korean children. My teaching strategy basically revolves around reading. Any time you are trying to learn a new language, there are four aspects that you must consider: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Those are the four components of any language, really. I make every single one of my students read whatever the current passage is that we’re working on out loud. Sometimes, they get bored because, especially for the higher level classes, the passages can be long; however, when reading out loud, you are practicing three of the four aspects of language: reading, speaking, and listening. Once I explain this to them, they usually understand. Then, a curious thing begins to happen. They get noticeably better at the language.

What I have discovered is that when they are reading out loud, they are interacting with the language, and, by proxy, with themselves. That’s why reading is such a dangerous thing for your totalitarian regimes: any time people are reading, they are learning about themselves and understanding their essential freedom in the form of consciousness and understanding. When we read we understand that there is nothing anybody can do, as long as there is something there to read, about how far we can read (I meant to type “reach,” but I like “read” better) into our own minds. But, the turnaround is, of course that this is a lot of hard work. You don’t just pick up a book and not work through it. Even when reading for pleasure, there is a certain amount of work that goes into deciphering the symbols on the page.

Language, the thing that we essentially are, the thing that we exist as, is an exemplar of existence in that it requires work. Life ought to be work. Don’t let me be misunderstood here: I’m not saying that life should be about going to a job. There is a difference between going to a job and doing the work of life. I think I’ve said it before, somewhere, somehow, but your life is either your work, or your work is your life. This is why I will never rise to the top of a Fortune 500 company. In the words of Bob Dylan: I’d give ‘em my heart, but they would want my soul—and, believe me, I’ve been close enough to this situation to understand that this is exactly what they want.

I have also been thinking about words, and heresy has come up pretty often, because I have been thinking about consciousness, as such, and the nature of religion—especially in its Christian mold—and there seems to be a parallel in the structure of the trinity and the structure of human reality, and I can’t help but think that my thinking here is complete heresy.

The three aspects or manifestations of the almighty are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Taken at a metaphorical level, God the Son is the physical manifestation of God, and this would represent the human body. God the Holy Spirit is the untouchable, but felt, essence of God that is haunting the world, and this would represent consciousness. God the Father is only knowable, only touchable, only approachable at a purely “real” level, after death. Oh, I understand fully from my years as the son of a Baptist minister and the grandson of a Baptist preacher that you can communicate with God every day through the power of prayer; however, what I am talking about here is approaching God in the sense that you can see him in his full glory in Heaven, you can eat at his table, and walk on his streets of gold. After going over the Nicene Creed, it is an understood part of church dogma that Jesus as God’s son was made of the same stuff of god and that he was not made, but rather begotten—meaning that he was always with god. In the same way, the Holy Spirit has always been. They are all manifestations of God. More accurately, they are all God. God is God. Jesus is God. The Holy Spirit is God. This only begs the question of me: what am I? Am I my body? Am I my consciousness? Am I the death that know awaits me eventually? Yes, yes, and yes. Also: no, no, and no. Just as god is not JUST God, or is not JUST Jesus, or is not JUST the Holy Spirit, I am not simply my body or my consciousness or my death. That kind of parallel structure is difficult for me to reconcile. Ah, faith. The issue isn’t faith, either, because what is implied is a specific form of faith. You can have faith in just about anything. Any time this fallback is invoked, in the sense of, “You just have to have faith,” what is really being said is: “You just have to have faith in what I and other people believe. You are not allowed to have another faith, because you’d be wrong.”

Do I have to believe in your shape of God? Do you have to believe in mine? What is the shape of God? What gender is God? Is he beyond gender? Where we created in God’s image or was he created in ours? There is something entirely incongruous about the image of god as a squishy human. As he exists in reality, God seems to be contingent on the physical human form to exist through, and that's weird to me. How can we be created in his image if he is omnipresent and omniscient? Or, did he have an image of us and create us into that, which would effectively make us a work of art? What are the ramifications of a thing like that?

I don’t really want to be heretical. I have a lot of work to do to understand this god character, especially now that he seems to be something of a metaphor of words. Or, perhaps, god is metaphor precisely as word is metaphor—there are hints of post-structuralism running around here. God is a lot of work to understand. God is a lot of words to understand. Words are a lot of God to understand. Words are a lot of work to understand. Work is a lot of words to understand. Work is a lot of God to understand. It would be a lot easier to just give up the struggle and go one way or the other: I believe in your Christian god OR I am an atheist. I choose to be other. I think I’m actively choosing, right here, right now, to engage in this struggle. Christian God is not winning right now, this is true, but who knows what happens when we truly engage and work out the words of God.

Scribbling

2009-02-22T06:38:00.000-08:00

I oftentimes find myself someplace, it doesn’t really matter where, seized by the urge to scribble down some note or other. Last night, a piece from a napkin entitled: Buzz Bar, Since 2003.

“For some reason
the primal need to
lay words down on
a blank field is
especially strong and
who am I to resist
a primal urge, huh?
What is this thing
we call need? Really?
I have to… I have to,
what? I have to survive
and reproduce. Those are
the only rules, technically,
but what are the repercuss-
ions of the biological
imperatives? Art is the
abstraction of reproduction.
It is the essence of the
“I have created something,”
and this, if for no other reason,
is the importance of art.
The primal need to create
something other. Reproduction.
What do we make then of
the mass produced? That for
which production in a
quantity is the only rule?
Does quality always suffer
from quantity? (and vice versa)
Is it merely the result of
having so much that
we actually wind up
regressing? Is it not
the sheer possibility
of vacancy that truly
troubles us? The sheer
possibility of the very
real anything that
terrifies us? Do we
not, rather, feel far
more comfortable
in a world in which we
understand everything?
And to that end, do
we avoid the incomp-
rehensible nature
of reality?”

A little piece I call: Scribbled on My First Setlist, Busan, January 2009

“What good
are all those
pills if they
don’t actually
help? It’s all
personal.”

And finally, an ambiguous piece I call: On the Back of a Grocery List

“It seems as
though there
is an absolutely
necessary number
of things that
Must, Must, Must
occur to me on
any given day, and I
am either suffering
them or controlling
them. Today I woke
up late and didn’t get much
done this morning. I paid for it
later.”

What does it all mean? And why do I HAVE to do it, knowing I don’t HAVE to do it?

What Do We Make

2009-02-14T05:12:00.000-08:00

of the world? Obviously, that’s a loaded question. There are layers. The first layer that presents itself is simply the observational mode of determining what is there in the world and, perhaps—but god forbid—making value judgments. In this mode we stand as in inactive participant. This is, in other words, a rather individual investigation of the ways in which the world works, and it has definite value for, especially, the scientist beginning on his road to analysis. In this particular mode, let it be understood, that there is simply the glance, the feel, the sensation of drinking in the thing itself, and in that this is an experience, it has what could be called value in and of itself. The human experience is unlike anything else in the world: to be an individual subject on the face of a planet with so much to offer in terms of the sensory world, experiencing many and various sensation is indeed a step on the road to understanding our humanity.

The failure of this first mode of operation in determining what we make of the world is precisely that we have only allowed the world to act on us instead of acting on the world and realizing the potentiality of what it means to be a human. From being acted on to being the creator of the action is a terrifying step because there are two very distinct and opposite possibilities: success and failure. The first is precisely the achievement of the goal set forth in the original plan of the action, and the second is the non-achievement of the stated goal. It is to be admitted that these terms lack something, and that something is that they are confined solely to the effort undertaken, and not to the undertaker at large. What this means, quite simply, is that success and failure can only be ascertained in terms of a particular venture into which the subject has decided to take him or herself. Now, there is a way to call an entire life a success or a failure, but this is only generally possible in a postmortem way. In this way, it is possible to say that, “I am successful”--which carries with it the connotation of "right now"--but not technically accurate to say, “I am a success,” because this latter would always have to qualified temporally with a “… right now.”

But, again, the terms success and failure run into opposition there in terms of the whole, and that, at a general level, is precisely because almost anything undertaken, any action worthy to be called a human endeavor is a success from at least one level, and that level is the education of the human character. To be there and alive and involved with that corner of time in the world is to make one’s stamp appear forever there, even if that forever is only in the one’s mind. Human endeavors are generally always life changing.

(I feel like it is important here to point out, simply for clarity sake that a “human endeavor” is first and foremost one that adheres to the (attributed) Hippocratic aphorism: primum non nocere: “First, do no harm”—which would rule out a priori murder, war, terrorism and abuse of any kind.)

Given that a human endeavor is what could, arguably, be closest in relation to the “long con,” how on earth can it always be positive? The answer is that the human creature will always benefit from experience, even if it is an experience of the failing kind that leaves a tinge of pain and hurt in the heart. To quote a few examples:

“Hindsight is twenty/twenty.”

“You wanna go ahead and stick that fork in that light socket, huh? Well, go ahead. I won’t stop you. Hurts don’t it. Won’t do that no more, will you?”

The Scientific Method—whereby the veracity of a conjecture can never be proven, it can only be falsified.

Scientific investigation is therefore the mode of operation that says, “Well, that didn’t work.” Or, to be made more pertinent to our discussion here, “That was a failure.” Life is a little bit like the scientific endeavor: one ought to be out there using their experience to formulate hypotheses, deducing predictions from the hypothesis, and testing. One of the first things Aristotle tells us in his Nichomachean Ethics is that it is a work of Political SCIENCE. It is an investigation into the ways of the world from the perspective of a scientist: “Here’s a proposition. No, huh? Well, how about this? No, huh? Well, it can be derived from this that our proposition was inaccurate, let’s revise, and, in fact, let’s test the opposite and see what happens.”

It is the perpetual looking into the way in which we make our world. “We must work our land.” Our land is precisely the possibilities that we have been provided with as a result of our being on this terrestrial sphere and having the physical and mental capacity to do something with this reality of possibilities. To make our world, what we must do is first accept that at some point, we will all fail—from a purely technical standpoint—and, from this understanding, move on to ensure that this failure isn’t multiplied by fundamental failure in the sense that after the technical failure of the body, the fundamental failure of a human is that all that can be said of a body is that it was…full stop.

No more seek the security of a life unlived. And no more allow failure to have a negative connotation. Actively seek out those avenues that afford one of the potential for the most glorious failure. What’re you busy?

For some reason, and I don’t really know why, but I feel like I need to insert here the idea that attempting to raise a good family unit has one of the greatest potentialities for failure in the world—and simultaneously the most potential for success (and I’m beginning to see that the two are contained in each other). But, if you are not actively involved in the lifelong investigation of what it means to raise a family, then go make something of the world. “Reach for the stars, and if you only make it to the moon, remember there are those who haven’t made it that far.” Make of life a journey, not a destination.