Always be true to yourself.
It is a simple phrase and one that has been uttered a few million billion times by this point. It comes in different flavors and dialects depending on the day, but the message is carried through the same way, piss poorly unless you are the one saying it.
And you will say it, usually after you have accepted it as fact and are trying to pass it along to the next person, who, like you, will ignore it until suddenly it becomes a thing of Truth.
A Thing of Truth. A beast with an identity and a meaning so far outside of the simplicity of words and communication that it looms and thunders as it is said. Internally, usually, nothing changes much in the face of the general rest of the world, but internally the resounding ring can last for minutes to hours.
Always be true to yourself. Be who you are. Do what you do. Don't deny the world your extra greatness. All of that.
I have spent most of the day in a slump, unable to properly focus, eating and shitting and drinking the day away hour after torturous hour, wondering why it was that I could have a whole day and feel no use for it. Of course, in that, I was terrified of the idea of tomorrow and as tomorrow looms only a few minutes in front of me I am finally at a sense of peace and excitement, soon it will be a new day and I will tackle it at the knees in a display of poor sportsmanship and avant gesticulation.
That's just who I am now.
But as for today and its many and varied horrors, to thy own self be true. I did not write first thing in the morning. I gave myself a pass, thinking I was being nice, thinking I needed the break. I shot myself in the metaphorical foot. I don't write to work, I do not write to live. I live to write. I am not actually getting anywhere, not actually moving through the day until I write.
That's just who I am now.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Entry 11 November 15, 2009
I somehow missed October altogether. Which is an odd thing to say, given that I was around this October. Conscious and aware. Not hidden in the depths of myself and the deep and unsettling pool that I sometimes manage to sink into. I have lost four of the last seven Octobers to a depression that works like a waking dream. Everything is fuzzy and indistinct. Nothing seems to matter and my control over the situations I find myself in is loose, easily changeable and in the end a matter of particular memory and perception.
Which is a word-heavy way to say that I do poorly with a from of seasonal depression. Which is also a way of saying that I am doing better in life and don't actually know how to deal with it. Associates congratulate me on my accomplishments and I don't feel great. I feel contempt and anger at their kindness. I see a duplicity behind each mention of my improved state. They don't mean anything by it, they are not accusing me of anything. But I reach into myself and pull out all of these bitter black chunks of dead that lurk inside.
This is not a journal of despair, this is a journal of hope and the quiet thoughts that occur in the evening when the sun is gone and the stars shine and the moon gives us its presence. I mention these things not because I want to say that I am depressed or really to remind myself that I once was. I'm just thinking out loud. Poking at something I cannot otherwise explain. There is a danger within to fail. We are all a collection of impulses and outcomes and I can't seem to convince myself to add up the figures each time instead of simply guessing the answer from the knowledge that I have been in the general area before.
Which is a lot of long winded hooey.
It is late, and I am tired, as great men are heard to say. I admit that this is not what I intended this journal for and I hope to do better in the next go-round. But I am proud to have been here to share what I can with those who will seek it out. The need for humans to write and send their private thoughts into the digital void is silly to me. Do we expect answers to questions, do we expect someone to care and to reach out? Or is it simply a matter of producing work and placing it where I am accountable, where I can't so easily take it back, where it becomes hard to admit that I did not say that or feel that at one time or another.
I'm asking the rhetoricals here, so it is obviously the latter. But it had to be said.
Which is a word-heavy way to say that I do poorly with a from of seasonal depression. Which is also a way of saying that I am doing better in life and don't actually know how to deal with it. Associates congratulate me on my accomplishments and I don't feel great. I feel contempt and anger at their kindness. I see a duplicity behind each mention of my improved state. They don't mean anything by it, they are not accusing me of anything. But I reach into myself and pull out all of these bitter black chunks of dead that lurk inside.
This is not a journal of despair, this is a journal of hope and the quiet thoughts that occur in the evening when the sun is gone and the stars shine and the moon gives us its presence. I mention these things not because I want to say that I am depressed or really to remind myself that I once was. I'm just thinking out loud. Poking at something I cannot otherwise explain. There is a danger within to fail. We are all a collection of impulses and outcomes and I can't seem to convince myself to add up the figures each time instead of simply guessing the answer from the knowledge that I have been in the general area before.
Which is a lot of long winded hooey.
It is late, and I am tired, as great men are heard to say. I admit that this is not what I intended this journal for and I hope to do better in the next go-round. But I am proud to have been here to share what I can with those who will seek it out. The need for humans to write and send their private thoughts into the digital void is silly to me. Do we expect answers to questions, do we expect someone to care and to reach out? Or is it simply a matter of producing work and placing it where I am accountable, where I can't so easily take it back, where it becomes hard to admit that I did not say that or feel that at one time or another.
I'm asking the rhetoricals here, so it is obviously the latter. But it had to be said.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Entry 10 September 28, 2009
I am weak of late. Sure, there was a bout with an actual illness. Fires in the local area caused sinus pressure that caused insomnia that caused sinus infection that resulted in three days of drifty drousing. But more than that there has been a complete lack of focus in the things that I have been doing.
As they say, out of danger, out of work.
I'm not sure anyone says that. But someone should. It is so much easier to get on and about life and the important things in life when you feel pressured and afraid of what will happen if you don't. But eventually you will lose focus and start doing whatever to pass the time and fill the void in your life left by not spending nearly enough time doing what is important.
As always I know in my head and in my heart what I want and the path I must take to get there. Which in no way stops me from taking the wrong and stupid paths because it is late, and I am tired.
I harp on people being too weak and simple for their, or anyone else's, good rather often. But for all that bravado and nay saying I am aware that it takes too much effort to be anything but. And I will not fault people for being unable to keep up the effort necessary to be decent.
It isn't just exhausting but outright haunting.
And to sleep one must be free of worry, and to be truly awake one must be constantly full of it. So we cycle daily between having the energy to make a difference and being too beaten down to care.
And I'm not sure we could function any other way.
As they say, out of danger, out of work.
I'm not sure anyone says that. But someone should. It is so much easier to get on and about life and the important things in life when you feel pressured and afraid of what will happen if you don't. But eventually you will lose focus and start doing whatever to pass the time and fill the void in your life left by not spending nearly enough time doing what is important.
As always I know in my head and in my heart what I want and the path I must take to get there. Which in no way stops me from taking the wrong and stupid paths because it is late, and I am tired.
I harp on people being too weak and simple for their, or anyone else's, good rather often. But for all that bravado and nay saying I am aware that it takes too much effort to be anything but. And I will not fault people for being unable to keep up the effort necessary to be decent.
It isn't just exhausting but outright haunting.
And to sleep one must be free of worry, and to be truly awake one must be constantly full of it. So we cycle daily between having the energy to make a difference and being too beaten down to care.
And I'm not sure we could function any other way.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Entry 9 September 7, 2009
Night. Night. Night.
Anything that can be done can also be done in the still of darkness. There is something warm there. Something comforting. Something primal. However you might come to the night, it is always waiting for you.
But it may not always be a place that you want to be.
Night is a menace and night is a friend. Night is an entity that truly is the opposite of the day and though it may not always be for some it will always be there for others. In a world where the concept of diametric opposites is too often a device of politics and bad psychology the night stands as a proper other.
It defines itself through what it is not. And because you can count on it to be definitive it will always remain hard and distant but universally inviting and inevitable.
I'm not certain where the world will take me in the future but I know that the night will be waiting to great me with silence.
I'm fascinated by the night because it is the place I spend the largest portion of my free time. Many of us do. Yes, you are unconscious and sometimes vividly hallucinating during that time but it is still and it is yours. It is ours.
The thoughts that one develops while slogging through the night are what forces us to act through the day light times when the sun beats the ground and actions become reality.
Entering the night with a sense of disquiet and buzzing behind the eyes and in the ears is as likely as the quiet and stillness. The night is teeming the same way that it is dead. There are no guarantees about how you will find yourself but at the same time you cannot hope but to be there long enough to discover something new.
Of course, the night also ends over time and I will take a cue from that and stop.
Editing is a task for the day, and this was less than composed as the darkness pressed around and the stillness without worked its way within more slowly then I hoped.
Anything that can be done can also be done in the still of darkness. There is something warm there. Something comforting. Something primal. However you might come to the night, it is always waiting for you.
But it may not always be a place that you want to be.
Night is a menace and night is a friend. Night is an entity that truly is the opposite of the day and though it may not always be for some it will always be there for others. In a world where the concept of diametric opposites is too often a device of politics and bad psychology the night stands as a proper other.
It defines itself through what it is not. And because you can count on it to be definitive it will always remain hard and distant but universally inviting and inevitable.
I'm not certain where the world will take me in the future but I know that the night will be waiting to great me with silence.
I'm fascinated by the night because it is the place I spend the largest portion of my free time. Many of us do. Yes, you are unconscious and sometimes vividly hallucinating during that time but it is still and it is yours. It is ours.
The thoughts that one develops while slogging through the night are what forces us to act through the day light times when the sun beats the ground and actions become reality.
Entering the night with a sense of disquiet and buzzing behind the eyes and in the ears is as likely as the quiet and stillness. The night is teeming the same way that it is dead. There are no guarantees about how you will find yourself but at the same time you cannot hope but to be there long enough to discover something new.
Of course, the night also ends over time and I will take a cue from that and stop.
Editing is a task for the day, and this was less than composed as the darkness pressed around and the stillness without worked its way within more slowly then I hoped.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Entry 8 August 21, 2009
I want to write you something important. Something meaningful. Something that resounds and resonates. Which requires me to concentrate. Which I don't want to do at the moment.
I just took a walk around town. I do that. Common past time. Used to be something I did every night, or nearly every. But now I find that I am doing it once a week at best. A good hour of rounding a few neighborhoods. My route is little changed over the past seven years, which is odd considering how often my starting point changes. But I loop the local campus and I loop past a few strange apartment complexes.
I revisit each time I have made the trip before. I consider the memories and emotions. I see how the landscape and buildings change. I remember the times when and I don't associate with my past self and the past versions of my town. I mostly just stop on a square of sidewalk or in front of a building and get slammed with concise, clear, play by plays of the last significant event that happened to me there.
They call it baggage for unknown reasons. A case you take with you that has things you will need in it. But this isn't helpful stuff. This is simply what you remember from a time that you wanted something that perhaps did not happen. A time that you want to will forward to the present or yourself back to the past and act differently. Time travel does not exist.
And it isn't about preventing paradox or the problems with the world crashing or universe imploding. It is about the inability to get anything done. Every single day would be Groundhogs Day or 12:01 for every single person. A million billion redoes and extra lives until we got it right. Anyone with a lasse faire attitude would be treated as the definitive god of cool.
So we are not allowed to undo, our choices have to carry with them some form of meaning or they will cease to exist and then the world will stop turning and then the universe would implode.
So perhaps paradox is just mathematical regret. And perhaps we find ourselves needing to push on because dwelling creates issues.
But I want to walk across town and not feel like I am in the Baskin Robbins of emotion. I shouldn't be laughing until I start crying until I start singing until I want to crawl into a ditch until I sigh until I turn around until I decide that this was a bad idea into a good idea and then I get home.
Because the swings are as tedious as the worst of the locations. And more common. And I should just stay home and write anyway.
I just took a walk around town. I do that. Common past time. Used to be something I did every night, or nearly every. But now I find that I am doing it once a week at best. A good hour of rounding a few neighborhoods. My route is little changed over the past seven years, which is odd considering how often my starting point changes. But I loop the local campus and I loop past a few strange apartment complexes.
I revisit each time I have made the trip before. I consider the memories and emotions. I see how the landscape and buildings change. I remember the times when and I don't associate with my past self and the past versions of my town. I mostly just stop on a square of sidewalk or in front of a building and get slammed with concise, clear, play by plays of the last significant event that happened to me there.
They call it baggage for unknown reasons. A case you take with you that has things you will need in it. But this isn't helpful stuff. This is simply what you remember from a time that you wanted something that perhaps did not happen. A time that you want to will forward to the present or yourself back to the past and act differently. Time travel does not exist.
And it isn't about preventing paradox or the problems with the world crashing or universe imploding. It is about the inability to get anything done. Every single day would be Groundhogs Day or 12:01 for every single person. A million billion redoes and extra lives until we got it right. Anyone with a lasse faire attitude would be treated as the definitive god of cool.
So we are not allowed to undo, our choices have to carry with them some form of meaning or they will cease to exist and then the world will stop turning and then the universe would implode.
So perhaps paradox is just mathematical regret. And perhaps we find ourselves needing to push on because dwelling creates issues.
But I want to walk across town and not feel like I am in the Baskin Robbins of emotion. I shouldn't be laughing until I start crying until I start singing until I want to crawl into a ditch until I sigh until I turn around until I decide that this was a bad idea into a good idea and then I get home.
Because the swings are as tedious as the worst of the locations. And more common. And I should just stay home and write anyway.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Entry 7 August 10, 2009
I would like to start off with something like "Oh what a night" or "I've been here before and I must say..." but all I really have is "ummm, yeah?"
I have been concerned over the last several days that I am no good when given to my own devices and time. I want to live in a spontaneous world in which I am always in demand and must be forced to solve problems on a split second notice and use years of discipline and planning in practical ways to combat an uncertain world.
But when it comes right down to it I am much better off actually doing the steady learning and rigorous schedule bits. I find that if I give myself time to relax and play I just end up feeling nauseous with a headache. I need to have something at least vaguely important to do or I just come apart at the seems.
And if you happen to have been privy to my life for the past 10 years you will find a lot of time spent wasted and crazily drifting trying to find a foothold of some sort to stabilize me. And the whole time I did work and school as best I could as tertiary things. My personal well being was my number one concern because I was flailing so wildly. But if you are ever in a situation where things are spiraling and difficult to deal with you will often find that standing still and scrutinizing the issue gets you run over, or eaten by raptors, or knifed by a psycho. I always tell people to act first and spend time thinking about situations either before or after not during.
And yet, there I was, in the midst of a shit-storm of my own creation and while there may have been occasional eyes that let me feel safe or at least, not threatened, there was never really a time that I was in a good place.
Now it seems that I have a chance to be in that place, but I have to keep pushing forward. Though I may feel tired or even overwhelmed I need a lot less time to gather myself and heal then I tend to think. If I try to baby myself then I become fragile and tender. You have to put weight on a bad foot to help it heal and I have to, likewise, but pressure on myself to get going.
I doubt that I am alone in this way. However, the pressures I chose to place on myself get abundantly and swiftly complicated. I have been known to make poor decisions and I have been known to rush down paths.
Is where I am and what I'm doing worth risking for what I could be doing tomorrow? I don't know.
I have been concerned over the last several days that I am no good when given to my own devices and time. I want to live in a spontaneous world in which I am always in demand and must be forced to solve problems on a split second notice and use years of discipline and planning in practical ways to combat an uncertain world.
But when it comes right down to it I am much better off actually doing the steady learning and rigorous schedule bits. I find that if I give myself time to relax and play I just end up feeling nauseous with a headache. I need to have something at least vaguely important to do or I just come apart at the seems.
And if you happen to have been privy to my life for the past 10 years you will find a lot of time spent wasted and crazily drifting trying to find a foothold of some sort to stabilize me. And the whole time I did work and school as best I could as tertiary things. My personal well being was my number one concern because I was flailing so wildly. But if you are ever in a situation where things are spiraling and difficult to deal with you will often find that standing still and scrutinizing the issue gets you run over, or eaten by raptors, or knifed by a psycho. I always tell people to act first and spend time thinking about situations either before or after not during.
And yet, there I was, in the midst of a shit-storm of my own creation and while there may have been occasional eyes that let me feel safe or at least, not threatened, there was never really a time that I was in a good place.
Now it seems that I have a chance to be in that place, but I have to keep pushing forward. Though I may feel tired or even overwhelmed I need a lot less time to gather myself and heal then I tend to think. If I try to baby myself then I become fragile and tender. You have to put weight on a bad foot to help it heal and I have to, likewise, but pressure on myself to get going.
I doubt that I am alone in this way. However, the pressures I chose to place on myself get abundantly and swiftly complicated. I have been known to make poor decisions and I have been known to rush down paths.
Is where I am and what I'm doing worth risking for what I could be doing tomorrow? I don't know.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Entry 6 August 2, 2009
"I resent the way that you make me like myself," says Mike Doughty in a song. I'm not sure who the exact "you" is in his statement but I can certainly align myself with the sentiment. There are days that I know my life is not my own, that I must spend every moment breaking free from my selfish inward gaze and place people before me.
High words, and hopefully true words, but rarely sane words.
I keep reaching for the term "gravitas" because it holds a powerful key to unlocking something essential in life that I feel has been missing lately. I want my actions to mean something, I want the thoughts I have to change the world and upset reality. But it is an enormous responsibility to have things you do matter, we are all better off having the things we do be unknown and unseen. Nobody has the shoulders to bear the weight of public scrutiny indefinitely. Perhaps we obsess over the banal minutia of celebrity and fame simply because we cannot fathom what it would be like to follow someone that was doing something worthy. It would likely break them, and then nothing would be done.
I test myself against the outside world and I compare myself to others, it is human to do so, it is vanity and it is ego and it is self-fulfilling and self-destructive and above all else, addicting. I cannot make my actions matter nor can I make my thoughts reality, but I also cannot stop trying for either one.
The ultimate challenge of a dreamer is to press onward with a course of action with no regard for the negative possibilities and potentiality of such but keep firmly in mind the downsides and hurdles. Too often dreamers are counted as disaffected and useless because they freeze up when their plans go awry and most of their plans are doomed for such set backs from the beginning.
Case in point, if you decide to do something crazy you have to be prepared for it not to work even while you chant the positive outcome like a mantra. To ignore either side of the coin is to invite ruin and futility to all of your actions. The self-help mentality has began to program us to think only in one direction, that being open and fair with our personal assessments is the road to failure. I demand that the opposite must be true. It is in our one-sided certainty of success or failure that we create the largest problems. The gulf between our projected actions and the potential end point of those actions will destroy us most profoundly.
I leave you tonight with a thought that is best considered when the lights are out and the sun is down and the clear sky creates a still black mirror that reflects your inner thoughts: If you lived in a social vacuum and there was nobody to compare your results with, would you be pleased with your decisions?
I know that I would, it is only in the light of scrutiny that I find an immense pool of doubt and recrimination, but perhaps you see it differently.
And in the end, my opinion on the subject should not matter.
High words, and hopefully true words, but rarely sane words.
I keep reaching for the term "gravitas" because it holds a powerful key to unlocking something essential in life that I feel has been missing lately. I want my actions to mean something, I want the thoughts I have to change the world and upset reality. But it is an enormous responsibility to have things you do matter, we are all better off having the things we do be unknown and unseen. Nobody has the shoulders to bear the weight of public scrutiny indefinitely. Perhaps we obsess over the banal minutia of celebrity and fame simply because we cannot fathom what it would be like to follow someone that was doing something worthy. It would likely break them, and then nothing would be done.
I test myself against the outside world and I compare myself to others, it is human to do so, it is vanity and it is ego and it is self-fulfilling and self-destructive and above all else, addicting. I cannot make my actions matter nor can I make my thoughts reality, but I also cannot stop trying for either one.
The ultimate challenge of a dreamer is to press onward with a course of action with no regard for the negative possibilities and potentiality of such but keep firmly in mind the downsides and hurdles. Too often dreamers are counted as disaffected and useless because they freeze up when their plans go awry and most of their plans are doomed for such set backs from the beginning.
Case in point, if you decide to do something crazy you have to be prepared for it not to work even while you chant the positive outcome like a mantra. To ignore either side of the coin is to invite ruin and futility to all of your actions. The self-help mentality has began to program us to think only in one direction, that being open and fair with our personal assessments is the road to failure. I demand that the opposite must be true. It is in our one-sided certainty of success or failure that we create the largest problems. The gulf between our projected actions and the potential end point of those actions will destroy us most profoundly.
I leave you tonight with a thought that is best considered when the lights are out and the sun is down and the clear sky creates a still black mirror that reflects your inner thoughts: If you lived in a social vacuum and there was nobody to compare your results with, would you be pleased with your decisions?
I know that I would, it is only in the light of scrutiny that I find an immense pool of doubt and recrimination, but perhaps you see it differently.
And in the end, my opinion on the subject should not matter.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Entry 5 July 23, 2009
Breathing the air. Breathing the air.
A central theme of a journal that is written to capture the feelings that I have at night will forever be the air. Perhaps you are not as lucky as I and live in a place where the air is foul and hangs damp and miserable in the air like a man that can't find his dog, his woman, or his truck.
But if you live where the air is fresh and clean then you get an epic sense of gravitas from each inhale. There is something alive about the air at night. Something that reaches into your mind and soul and unlocks all the locks that have been battened down against the bullshit of the world. And you feel open.
Open to ideas and thoughts and memories and people. And you want to just be, and you want to absorb, and you want the world to blur into pastel swatches. Nothing distinct, nothing stand alone. Everything must jumble and seep and bleed.
There is something primal about peace. Something that brings me to thoughts of death. When living is a daily prize and death is promise given to you at your birth. You want to avoid it, but you know that you can't escape it. Nor should you.
And I'm not going to spend a lot of time working on some kind of existential argument about the wonderment of death. I have other locations for that and honestly the French did it best and there is no reason to heap dirt on such a well constructed monolith.
I'm too full of gin, and Ben Folds, and pan fried peanut noodles.
And I have what I have and I work each day to protect it and keep it safe. It may sound materialistic, and I'm not going to rationalize that it isn't, but a lot of what I am doing right now is more about putting myself together in the eyes of others. People invest in you every day that you live and they deserve a return of their investment. A return of their kindness and sympathy, money and time, love and vicious over-reaction to everything you do.
Loving people is always about doing something stupid and detrimental. Logic is the enemy of love because love doesn't think forward to step two and logic can't stop thinking of step three, minimum.
I'mma going to take a bath and stare at the stars. I suggest you do the same.
A central theme of a journal that is written to capture the feelings that I have at night will forever be the air. Perhaps you are not as lucky as I and live in a place where the air is foul and hangs damp and miserable in the air like a man that can't find his dog, his woman, or his truck.
But if you live where the air is fresh and clean then you get an epic sense of gravitas from each inhale. There is something alive about the air at night. Something that reaches into your mind and soul and unlocks all the locks that have been battened down against the bullshit of the world. And you feel open.
Open to ideas and thoughts and memories and people. And you want to just be, and you want to absorb, and you want the world to blur into pastel swatches. Nothing distinct, nothing stand alone. Everything must jumble and seep and bleed.
There is something primal about peace. Something that brings me to thoughts of death. When living is a daily prize and death is promise given to you at your birth. You want to avoid it, but you know that you can't escape it. Nor should you.
And I'm not going to spend a lot of time working on some kind of existential argument about the wonderment of death. I have other locations for that and honestly the French did it best and there is no reason to heap dirt on such a well constructed monolith.
I'm too full of gin, and Ben Folds, and pan fried peanut noodles.
And I have what I have and I work each day to protect it and keep it safe. It may sound materialistic, and I'm not going to rationalize that it isn't, but a lot of what I am doing right now is more about putting myself together in the eyes of others. People invest in you every day that you live and they deserve a return of their investment. A return of their kindness and sympathy, money and time, love and vicious over-reaction to everything you do.
Loving people is always about doing something stupid and detrimental. Logic is the enemy of love because love doesn't think forward to step two and logic can't stop thinking of step three, minimum.
I'mma going to take a bath and stare at the stars. I suggest you do the same.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Entry 4 July 20, 2009
So many things have been written about the smell of rain and that particular moment when night sets in. The feelings that it produces, the overwhelming sense of nostalgia. It is enough to make one think that we remember the womb, that perhaps we have a genetic memory of times when water was home or we were small creatures that climbed under the brush.
Or something very close to that, given your artistic, scientific, or religious bent.
The important part is that we all have something in common with the coming of rain and the presence of the dark.
I think that I will need to run a particular set of talks in the future. I have a need to sit a small to medium group of people down and pitch some ideas that they will only start to listen to, but I will feel better talking out loud about them. There are certain things that only sound important or completely stupid when said out loud.
Spent the evening, well late night just before midnight, hanging out in a cafe and starting at the wall. Took my glasses off and unfocused, spent almost two hours just sipping coffee and staring into space. I wanted to understand something about the ways that you can come up with ideas in silence at home or int he bustle of a noisy location. There are so many different ways to live and to think, and we only cling to what we know because thinking about situations that you are not in is horrible.
Which is a bad way of saying that we crave that which is familiar, not so much because it is safe or easy or even good, but because you it is hard to think of situations outside of the situation you are in. Even if you have had better times before you will find it difficult to think of those times when they are no long relevant to your life.
Just like now, I can't think of the mood I was in when I first wanted to write this, I can only think how I am now, and it is much less useful then the space I was in earlier.
And such is the way of muses, life, and writing.
Or something very close to that, given your artistic, scientific, or religious bent.
The important part is that we all have something in common with the coming of rain and the presence of the dark.
I think that I will need to run a particular set of talks in the future. I have a need to sit a small to medium group of people down and pitch some ideas that they will only start to listen to, but I will feel better talking out loud about them. There are certain things that only sound important or completely stupid when said out loud.
Spent the evening, well late night just before midnight, hanging out in a cafe and starting at the wall. Took my glasses off and unfocused, spent almost two hours just sipping coffee and staring into space. I wanted to understand something about the ways that you can come up with ideas in silence at home or int he bustle of a noisy location. There are so many different ways to live and to think, and we only cling to what we know because thinking about situations that you are not in is horrible.
Which is a bad way of saying that we crave that which is familiar, not so much because it is safe or easy or even good, but because you it is hard to think of situations outside of the situation you are in. Even if you have had better times before you will find it difficult to think of those times when they are no long relevant to your life.
Just like now, I can't think of the mood I was in when I first wanted to write this, I can only think how I am now, and it is much less useful then the space I was in earlier.
And such is the way of muses, life, and writing.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Entry 3 July 12, 2009
Another day down. Another set of worries conjured and returned to the aether from which they spawned.
I wonder if there is an all encompassing trait of humanity that leads us to begin each day with an eye to the future and a head full of hope only to slowly whittle away and sabotage ourselves until we are left with nothing in the tank and desperate need for the day to end and the morning to come again.
From a rational standpoint it seems horrible depressing and self defeating but I have a theory that if you think about it long enough it turns around and goes the other direction. If we didn't get between down over the day we should never sleep and eventually go rather nuts by the end of it.
And there can also be something said about closing a day on a down note so that you are anxious to let the new dawn break. Obviously there are a lot of longer standing and deeper poets who have something to say about the dawn and its various impacts on the human psyche, but I like to get in an occasional non-specific observation when the mood strikes me.
That aside, it was quite the week for me. Between bills cropping up out of the firm mossy soil like weeds and a weekend spent with oodles of friends that pop out of the wood like weevils I haven't had a moment of relaxing peace in five days. I like the metaphors that involve comparing people to things that start with 'w'.
Not to say that I haven't liked the company or been happy to have distractions from the moneys I owe for years of not really living in the general fashion that is commonly recommended. But. But, there is a level of wanting to just sit in a quiet space and think about how you feel and what you think.
Danger lies down the obsessive portions of that path. There is a level in which you can be okay with yourself and a level in which you suddenly turn it all inward and begin exploding with dementia.
I'm not there yet, but I have been before and I'm hoping not to accidentally stumble down that area again.
On purpose is one thing. The accidental plunging into crazed despair is its own thing.
That is all I have for now. And a lot of hit was half formed. I'll spend less time thinking and more time crafting my words next time. For greater satisfaction.
I wonder if there is an all encompassing trait of humanity that leads us to begin each day with an eye to the future and a head full of hope only to slowly whittle away and sabotage ourselves until we are left with nothing in the tank and desperate need for the day to end and the morning to come again.
From a rational standpoint it seems horrible depressing and self defeating but I have a theory that if you think about it long enough it turns around and goes the other direction. If we didn't get between down over the day we should never sleep and eventually go rather nuts by the end of it.
And there can also be something said about closing a day on a down note so that you are anxious to let the new dawn break. Obviously there are a lot of longer standing and deeper poets who have something to say about the dawn and its various impacts on the human psyche, but I like to get in an occasional non-specific observation when the mood strikes me.
That aside, it was quite the week for me. Between bills cropping up out of the firm mossy soil like weeds and a weekend spent with oodles of friends that pop out of the wood like weevils I haven't had a moment of relaxing peace in five days. I like the metaphors that involve comparing people to things that start with 'w'.
Not to say that I haven't liked the company or been happy to have distractions from the moneys I owe for years of not really living in the general fashion that is commonly recommended. But. But, there is a level of wanting to just sit in a quiet space and think about how you feel and what you think.
Danger lies down the obsessive portions of that path. There is a level in which you can be okay with yourself and a level in which you suddenly turn it all inward and begin exploding with dementia.
I'm not there yet, but I have been before and I'm hoping not to accidentally stumble down that area again.
On purpose is one thing. The accidental plunging into crazed despair is its own thing.
That is all I have for now. And a lot of hit was half formed. I'll spend less time thinking and more time crafting my words next time. For greater satisfaction.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Entry 2: July 5, 2009
There is something wrong and cliche about starting a journal with "What a day!" but there is also something simple and honest about cliches. Something binding and true that should not be pushed aside just because you moonlight as a literary elitist.
The world has a well earned respect for people who live life fully without any prejudice or pejorative nonsense attached to the way that they live. David Carradine was good for that. He struck me as a person that just lived his life, other peoples assumptions about him were unimportant.
He knew the truth, and he smiled at all the rest.
There was a tabloid article about the man recently after his death that claimed two Chinese hookers had strangled him. ON many occasions I would rather leave the dead dead and not spend a lot of time poking the corpse with a stick, but in this case I found myself laughing in the aisle at Walmart. There was something profoundly funny about the articles boast. A rag that so often fabricated reality and sold it to the world weary and conspiracy nuts making a claim that if the man was still alive he would probably talk about favorably.
Everybody dies, so few get to have a sense of dignity attached to their passing and I think that Carradine pulled it off at the last moment by going out the way he lived, without any regard for the way that people would take it.
And so tonight I think about the way that people live and the deaths that come after them. When proper people die there is so little to be said. A lot of gathering with red eyed folk that stare and nod. They understand succinctly that there is a shared loss, but they also understand that this is the way of things, and the departed would have been honored to have such a turnout of people to share stories about them.
But I'm Irish that way.
Until tomorrow, let your life carry its own meaning and your death simply stand as a period that gives anyone viewing the chance to tell the story again to thunderous applause and upturned heads.
The world has a well earned respect for people who live life fully without any prejudice or pejorative nonsense attached to the way that they live. David Carradine was good for that. He struck me as a person that just lived his life, other peoples assumptions about him were unimportant.
He knew the truth, and he smiled at all the rest.
There was a tabloid article about the man recently after his death that claimed two Chinese hookers had strangled him. ON many occasions I would rather leave the dead dead and not spend a lot of time poking the corpse with a stick, but in this case I found myself laughing in the aisle at Walmart. There was something profoundly funny about the articles boast. A rag that so often fabricated reality and sold it to the world weary and conspiracy nuts making a claim that if the man was still alive he would probably talk about favorably.
Everybody dies, so few get to have a sense of dignity attached to their passing and I think that Carradine pulled it off at the last moment by going out the way he lived, without any regard for the way that people would take it.
And so tonight I think about the way that people live and the deaths that come after them. When proper people die there is so little to be said. A lot of gathering with red eyed folk that stare and nod. They understand succinctly that there is a shared loss, but they also understand that this is the way of things, and the departed would have been honored to have such a turnout of people to share stories about them.
But I'm Irish that way.
Until tomorrow, let your life carry its own meaning and your death simply stand as a period that gives anyone viewing the chance to tell the story again to thunderous applause and upturned heads.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Another New Beginning: Like a Plague or Somesuch
It is late night on July 4th. There are the distant sounds of colorful explosions that shake portions of the city. I am sitting inside my spacious and loverly new home. I do not step outside to catch a glimpse of the splendor. I do not tilt my head skyward to see the lasting tradition of my country's founding lavishly blasted into the heavens.
I go outside for a moment of darkness and a quality in the air that I could find if I was blind and deaf and had no conception of time.
Night has its own mood. And I tap into that mood now.
I already have several blogs and online writing sites. I have projects and I have sites that are supposed to force me to work on projects. I have a serious site for essays about my life that are poignant and every word is carefully thought out. Which is a way of saying that I never update it, yes. And I have a site for angrily yelling at the cosmos, which turns a blind eye and refuses to acknowledge that there was anyone in the yard at all, dear, and though that effigy may look a lot like me it is all just a coincidence.
But, what I do not have at this point is a site for just everyday thoughts and summations. A journal that borrows from the special quality of the night and gives me a pattern to compare my life to in times to come. (I'm rather obsessed with patterns at the moment, been watching Numb3rs all day. And, yes, I hate that little 3, but I like the show.) My writing about myself has been stuck in a large rut for years now, looking back it has been easily 6 years since I was able to say anything particularly non-malicious about myself in the context of myself. I like me, but I'm not always certain I should get away with the things that I do.
So I present a journal site that is not here to be literary or to assist or show a story, a journal that does not yell at the cosmos, a journal that simply lets itself be without the large and ineffable prejudices that I sometimes use to judge myself so much more harshly then others.
And if you had any idea how harshly I judge others... oy!
I go outside for a moment of darkness and a quality in the air that I could find if I was blind and deaf and had no conception of time.
Night has its own mood. And I tap into that mood now.
I already have several blogs and online writing sites. I have projects and I have sites that are supposed to force me to work on projects. I have a serious site for essays about my life that are poignant and every word is carefully thought out. Which is a way of saying that I never update it, yes. And I have a site for angrily yelling at the cosmos, which turns a blind eye and refuses to acknowledge that there was anyone in the yard at all, dear, and though that effigy may look a lot like me it is all just a coincidence.
But, what I do not have at this point is a site for just everyday thoughts and summations. A journal that borrows from the special quality of the night and gives me a pattern to compare my life to in times to come. (I'm rather obsessed with patterns at the moment, been watching Numb3rs all day. And, yes, I hate that little 3, but I like the show.) My writing about myself has been stuck in a large rut for years now, looking back it has been easily 6 years since I was able to say anything particularly non-malicious about myself in the context of myself. I like me, but I'm not always certain I should get away with the things that I do.
So I present a journal site that is not here to be literary or to assist or show a story, a journal that does not yell at the cosmos, a journal that simply lets itself be without the large and ineffable prejudices that I sometimes use to judge myself so much more harshly then others.
And if you had any idea how harshly I judge others... oy!
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