i had an interesting experience the other day...i was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, typing away at something or other (or perhaps internetting, as i am also prone to do), and a flash of recognition erupted into me. it wasn't deja-vu, or anything of the sort...i had been sitting next to a wall (a rather thin one, it should be noted), and i picked up on a piece of the conversation in the next room. now, i hear conversations from the guys next door frequently; at least once every day. they're crazy characters, sometimes bursting into song in the middle of their little office. but i have learned to completely tune them out when i'm doing my own thing, so it's rare that i actually pay attention to anything that they are saying. the small fragment that i caught, however, happened to be about myself....not directly, but rather it was about the company that i work at. it wasn't derogatory, it wasn't praise; it was just a passive comment slid into one angle of a joke. but where it gets weird is....i wasn't actually listening to them when they said it.
despite the phalanx of distractions that surround me at any given moment, and despite the fact that i was engrossed in many other things, my senses reached down into me, like a hand, and pulled me up into the cool waters of the present moment. this means, if i understand correctly, that my mind actually has reserve storage for everything which is currently happening. and i think that this concept is amazing. despite the reality that you may not be paying attention - in fact you may be completely distracted - you are still caching information on some level unknown to your conscious mind.
i know for a fact that i didn't hear them talking as it happened....i just wasn't listening. simple fact. but, after the actual conversation had occurred, my mind decided to grind it through its economizing machine, just to see if any of it were useful to me. so it stored all these impressions that i was unaware of, packaged them up in some obscure encryption to keep them from me, and sorted them neatly into piles of relevance. beginning of a joke: irrelevant. to the bin with it. vocal inflections: irrelevant. binned. company name: relevant! ring-ring! hallo! what is this that we have here? and then my mind, sufficiently prompted, investigated the situation. it retracted, uncrumpled papers from the bin; in fact i was able to recall the joke in its entirety with no problems whatsoever. this was very odd; i'm certain all of this happened in the snapping of fingers, but still i regarded the ensuing sensation with some degree of scrutiny, and found my recognition of the thing to have happened definitively after the reality had lapsed.
and holy shit! how amazing is that?
this is encouraging, enlivening, for a number of reasons. i've always personally been fascinated with the mind...seeking ways to understand how it makes sense of this chaos that we label our world (Recursive with a capital, i know), and constantly prodding/asking it for insight into its inner-workings. rarely does it give any non-cryptic answers, but every once in a while i am present while it slips up, which offers a whole new perspective on matters. this is one such instance. i wonder how long such information is stored? is it possible that it is still stored outside of us, lingering in the atmosphere, and an uber-short timeframe is the key to being able to still disentangle it from all the other static which spins its wheels perpetually, replacing and realigning? is this something which you could train your mind to perform better and better, with more regularity, until you were able to recall, to access this liminal brain-space, consciously and actively? i could use some extra brain-bank, personally...i always describe my mental function to people as 'a little different', in that i have astounding recall for minute detail, but only once i have a serious trigger with which to work, a hook to hang my reminiscence.
November 5, 2009
October 20, 2009
when you're strange
it is entirely remarkable how we are constantly surrounded by strangers. do you have those words, sometimes, where you always miss the same letter when typing a word, and must go back in order to fix it? strangers is one such word for me; it always ends up 'stanger'. which is not so much even a word; i checked just now. regardless. looking around, i find an overwhelming feeling, a filling-up, with the sheer force of strangeness around me. i don't know any of these people, yet we share such a base commonality that i am able to find comfort in their presence, and perhaps comfort too in that they, for the most part, do not know each other....i am not the odd mind out; i am just as curvy of a jigsaw-piece as all of them, as far as any distinct one is concerned.
they are all focused on different tasks, different projects; all have different thoughts rifling through their minds even just now. there are some moments which rob us of this individuality...say for instance that a red-mortar firecracker goes off in this coffee nook right now. bang! everyone flinches, every mind is void and catches pace with the circumstances and general confusion just as quickly as the others, for the most part. then we are together, somehow. we have all had the same experience, at the same time, and while we may not consciously acknowledge it we have been bonded to these people to a degree; we have been the same as them through circumstance, they have shared in ourselves. on larger scales, this is school spirit, this is patriotism, this is the flexing and uncording of the various muscles of the humanities.
but i feel comfortable around all these people, despite the concrete reality that no firework has bound our shared existence. it seems to be bound on other levels, less immediate and less discernible. i am somewhat surprised to find this comfort within me....not shocked, necessarily, as it has been building, rumbling around, for as long as i can remember, but at least a little surprised to find the ease with which i regard them. just like anybody i have clasped onto my fair share of social anxieties throughout my youth, but at some point they were hammered at by something...good...the human spirit perhaps, and partaking in the realm of it...and ever since then my anxieties (at least, the social ones) have been crumbling, like a cracked and eroding reservoir wall, spilling more positivity and more goodwill as time continues to batter away at it. for all the uncertainty that i could choose to see in this room, knowing that in any human lie sparks and clashes between dignified Ubermensch and primal beast, instead i am experiencing an outpouring of kinship and warm curiosity.
it is funny how difficult it sometimes seems to meet people, such as when you move to a new city. i'm certain, at this moment, that all it really takes is patience, and then just the tiniest pinch of the outgoing archetype to be summoned within you. looking around, i barely recognize anybody...maybe a face of two that i have seen elsewhere, but nothing solid enough for confirmation. but i recognize that other people, like myself, run in general patterns. you are bound to meet people time after time, despite the randomness of the city, because people seem to be creatures of habit. unless you never venture outside the confines of your walls, you will of course see the same people again and again...perhaps not every day, perhaps not always in the same places...but it will happen, and the only way to not take advantage of that situation is to stay silent, antisocial. or to be looking too....specifically.
the problem, i believe, if there is one, is a tendency to not see people. normally, i take so little notice of other people, other than to regard their general occupation of space and time (and perhaps attractiveness, natch). all these people are incredible, multifaceted minds, flexing and fluxing in ways i cannot even begin to comprehend, but until i make some recognizable contact i resign them to one dimension, just a flat-frame appearance, and leave them at that. i feel bad about this, but really, what more are we to do? i could spend my entire life trying to meet everyone that i could, and still not be able to tackle more than just my own state (or perhaps one more at an extreme best!) additionally, meeting people would become meaningless; i would be saturated with information and it would leak out of my brain faster than 9th grade geometry class. so, it is reasonable to only expect to meet so many people...it just seems a shame, with all the interesting things going on in the minds of the people, all the projects and emotions and expressions which remain intriguingly and perplexingly bottled to me.
on the upside, as a writer, i am beginning to pick up more on the realities and expressions of the people whom i do know, and even beyond that beginning to culture an ability to observe someone whom i do not know and divine something core of them (or perhaps just my own imaginings, but that will do fine for myself and my work). it is incredibly enriching and endlessly interesting, to the point where i must draw a solid line between the observing and the recording, just to ensure that i get something tangible completed instead of whiling away in a fog of thoughts and inspirations that might slip into dizzied memory without a measure of ink.
i am basically never bored anymore.
they are all focused on different tasks, different projects; all have different thoughts rifling through their minds even just now. there are some moments which rob us of this individuality...say for instance that a red-mortar firecracker goes off in this coffee nook right now. bang! everyone flinches, every mind is void and catches pace with the circumstances and general confusion just as quickly as the others, for the most part. then we are together, somehow. we have all had the same experience, at the same time, and while we may not consciously acknowledge it we have been bonded to these people to a degree; we have been the same as them through circumstance, they have shared in ourselves. on larger scales, this is school spirit, this is patriotism, this is the flexing and uncording of the various muscles of the humanities.
but i feel comfortable around all these people, despite the concrete reality that no firework has bound our shared existence. it seems to be bound on other levels, less immediate and less discernible. i am somewhat surprised to find this comfort within me....not shocked, necessarily, as it has been building, rumbling around, for as long as i can remember, but at least a little surprised to find the ease with which i regard them. just like anybody i have clasped onto my fair share of social anxieties throughout my youth, but at some point they were hammered at by something...good...the human spirit perhaps, and partaking in the realm of it...and ever since then my anxieties (at least, the social ones) have been crumbling, like a cracked and eroding reservoir wall, spilling more positivity and more goodwill as time continues to batter away at it. for all the uncertainty that i could choose to see in this room, knowing that in any human lie sparks and clashes between dignified Ubermensch and primal beast, instead i am experiencing an outpouring of kinship and warm curiosity.
it is funny how difficult it sometimes seems to meet people, such as when you move to a new city. i'm certain, at this moment, that all it really takes is patience, and then just the tiniest pinch of the outgoing archetype to be summoned within you. looking around, i barely recognize anybody...maybe a face of two that i have seen elsewhere, but nothing solid enough for confirmation. but i recognize that other people, like myself, run in general patterns. you are bound to meet people time after time, despite the randomness of the city, because people seem to be creatures of habit. unless you never venture outside the confines of your walls, you will of course see the same people again and again...perhaps not every day, perhaps not always in the same places...but it will happen, and the only way to not take advantage of that situation is to stay silent, antisocial. or to be looking too....specifically.
the problem, i believe, if there is one, is a tendency to not see people. normally, i take so little notice of other people, other than to regard their general occupation of space and time (and perhaps attractiveness, natch). all these people are incredible, multifaceted minds, flexing and fluxing in ways i cannot even begin to comprehend, but until i make some recognizable contact i resign them to one dimension, just a flat-frame appearance, and leave them at that. i feel bad about this, but really, what more are we to do? i could spend my entire life trying to meet everyone that i could, and still not be able to tackle more than just my own state (or perhaps one more at an extreme best!) additionally, meeting people would become meaningless; i would be saturated with information and it would leak out of my brain faster than 9th grade geometry class. so, it is reasonable to only expect to meet so many people...it just seems a shame, with all the interesting things going on in the minds of the people, all the projects and emotions and expressions which remain intriguingly and perplexingly bottled to me.
on the upside, as a writer, i am beginning to pick up more on the realities and expressions of the people whom i do know, and even beyond that beginning to culture an ability to observe someone whom i do not know and divine something core of them (or perhaps just my own imaginings, but that will do fine for myself and my work). it is incredibly enriching and endlessly interesting, to the point where i must draw a solid line between the observing and the recording, just to ensure that i get something tangible completed instead of whiling away in a fog of thoughts and inspirations that might slip into dizzied memory without a measure of ink.
i am basically never bored anymore.
September 12, 2009
wow
it has been a seriously long passage of time since i have pasted up any words on this thing. a lot has happened; details are unimportant and unwarranted; more of a telephone thing anyway. so, what has been on my mind of late?
how long has it been since you have taken a lengthy, analytical and prognostic look at your life? are we settling for the concerns that we have now, which become so overwhelming and eclipse the backgrounds behind them? i feel relatively complacent of late, which always pings as a red-flag status for me once i realize that it has been going on. it's summertime, and the living is easy...money that was made is now spent. weekends, so longed for and anticipated, are shrunken in a haze of relaxation and sloth instead of being charted with intriguing mental cartography. all is fine, i am young...but i am beginning to feel the pangs of frivolity, the lament for lack of accomplishment and distinction.
i am at a loss for how to describe my job; it is good and i feel fortified, insulated by it. at the same time, i feel like it thieves forty hours a week from me - more counting transit - that could be the blankets and backpacks of a genuine pioneering. it isn't that it takes all my time...a large chunk to be sure, but not all of it. but i feel drawn toward vivacity, towards the city, being young and ever-awake. i feel like maintaining friendships is absolutely essential, and rewarding, and that such a thing should not be abandoned for lofty artistic dreams...yet in the mathematical set i am working with, job + friends + sleep = matt at 26. wedging more in has proven difficult.
i have also come to acknowledge that relaxation is essential. this plays into the idea of friendships, because a good friendship is stress-relieving instead of stress-inducing. my job creates stresses; hell, just being inside my mind creates stresses of its own. decompression is a must, if i don't want to end up a crazy person, aimlessly wandering the alleys of Portland. if the equation is as simple as it seems (probably not the case), then what i need readjustment in is my work. do i try to find something else; something incorruptibly-fulfilling and which broadens my horizons as an artist? do i just need something as simple as to pare down my hours, such that i have more time to commit to personal projects and still stay afloat financially? finances are an argh. i see now how adults become progressively more preoccupied with such concerns, and how it has the ability to rob you of so much potential. i have some degree of scorn for our current incarnation of the capitalist system based upon this, but here is probably not the time or place to complain about how you can't stay afloat by scribbling away your days in coffee shops and mountaintops, even if it were for the advancement of the human spirit and all that riff-raff.
so, for the summertime being, i am currently stunned into inaction against this front. it marches over my mind with its full strength, and i plan to observe and characterize it before moving my own armada against its dark and foreboding will. i just need to find a way to set reminders for myself, little mementos that disarm my fear of its structuring ways since i know another, more ideal life, rooted somewhere in the deeper portions of my thought. i have faith at least in myself, as long as i am successful in keeping myself the same self. the people we naturally evolve into have different sets of strengths and weaknesses, different centers of gravity based on their abacus-arrangements and allotments.
how long has it been since you have taken a lengthy, analytical and prognostic look at your life? are we settling for the concerns that we have now, which become so overwhelming and eclipse the backgrounds behind them? i feel relatively complacent of late, which always pings as a red-flag status for me once i realize that it has been going on. it's summertime, and the living is easy...money that was made is now spent. weekends, so longed for and anticipated, are shrunken in a haze of relaxation and sloth instead of being charted with intriguing mental cartography. all is fine, i am young...but i am beginning to feel the pangs of frivolity, the lament for lack of accomplishment and distinction.
i am at a loss for how to describe my job; it is good and i feel fortified, insulated by it. at the same time, i feel like it thieves forty hours a week from me - more counting transit - that could be the blankets and backpacks of a genuine pioneering. it isn't that it takes all my time...a large chunk to be sure, but not all of it. but i feel drawn toward vivacity, towards the city, being young and ever-awake. i feel like maintaining friendships is absolutely essential, and rewarding, and that such a thing should not be abandoned for lofty artistic dreams...yet in the mathematical set i am working with, job + friends + sleep = matt at 26. wedging more in has proven difficult.
i have also come to acknowledge that relaxation is essential. this plays into the idea of friendships, because a good friendship is stress-relieving instead of stress-inducing. my job creates stresses; hell, just being inside my mind creates stresses of its own. decompression is a must, if i don't want to end up a crazy person, aimlessly wandering the alleys of Portland. if the equation is as simple as it seems (probably not the case), then what i need readjustment in is my work. do i try to find something else; something incorruptibly-fulfilling and which broadens my horizons as an artist? do i just need something as simple as to pare down my hours, such that i have more time to commit to personal projects and still stay afloat financially? finances are an argh. i see now how adults become progressively more preoccupied with such concerns, and how it has the ability to rob you of so much potential. i have some degree of scorn for our current incarnation of the capitalist system based upon this, but here is probably not the time or place to complain about how you can't stay afloat by scribbling away your days in coffee shops and mountaintops, even if it were for the advancement of the human spirit and all that riff-raff.
so, for the summertime being, i am currently stunned into inaction against this front. it marches over my mind with its full strength, and i plan to observe and characterize it before moving my own armada against its dark and foreboding will. i just need to find a way to set reminders for myself, little mementos that disarm my fear of its structuring ways since i know another, more ideal life, rooted somewhere in the deeper portions of my thought. i have faith at least in myself, as long as i am successful in keeping myself the same self. the people we naturally evolve into have different sets of strengths and weaknesses, different centers of gravity based on their abacus-arrangements and allotments.
July 11, 2009
a passing of time
well.
it has been quite some time, hasn't it? lots of happenings, changes of seasons, musics ebbing and flowing through my list of recent listens and new discoveries. things are always similar, however; let us see if i can pick up the pace of this writing as quickly and as intently as i remember myself having done in the past.
a quick update on myself. i have been reading quite a bit, all manner of short books which satiate the mind for a time. i've been noticing lately, in light of these books, that books with a heavy density of ideas seem to leave less lasting impressions with me on the whole. of course, reading philosophy is an entirely different gear of mental motion than a casual story, but still i have to note the finding that, for a reason which i may dive into, readings which overwhelm me with the rapidity of their ground-shattering ideas tend to slip into grey area of my mind. i find that with shorter, more spaced and storylike books, there is less of a chance of being overwhelmed by the waves which crash into you; you have more down or recovery time and as such your mind has more of an opportunity to turn over the ideas which are given to you and do something memorable with them....even make them, in some incarnation, your own. with a lot of the writing that i would typically read, the writers are incredibly profound and prolific, so much so that it takes an equal mind to keep up with them unless one wants to get all 'literary analysis' and pore over every page for a matter of hours. to do this disrupts the pace, and so i cannot resign myself to it. and yet, being less intelligent than these giants of writing, the crashings of surf, their own minds against mine in turbulent and one-sided conversation, tend to rip my footing out from underneath me, erode my balance, and leave me dizzied and disoriented. many times i cannot tell whether or not i pay more attention at any given time to the story itself, or the ideas which it carries in its pockets.
this is a lesson learned for me in writing: do not over-pace, do not saturate with intensity. a gifted writer is one who, without condescending, can thresh out his ideas and their forms almost surgically, taking one piece and pinning it to a page...keeping the entirety shrouded until it is ready to be revealed as the sum of its parts. good writing is archaeological, it is constancy in your ability to dust and connect, connect and dust. i think personally that i used to have an idea about how my writing would be this immensely good thing that could not be ignored for all its potency, and yet what i come to realize more and more is that a tasteful balance is the essence of one's ability to write coherently, impressively. there are artistic aesthetics which must be adhered to, for threat of entirely butchering the very concepts that you are attempting to reveal to your audience by their misapplication or neglect.
in short: the human mind, at least insomuch as i can speak about it from my own experience, is something which cannot be rushed. it is a delicate recipe, a plant which grows in its own distinct conditions and which only flowers at the correct temperature specifications. i would call these temperatures "focus", for lack of a better...focus can be achieved by a set of conditions that must be conducive, conductive of real thought. many of the books i have read are harsher environments, attainable only to the most adaptable and giving minds, and often i find myself stumbling through them for a lack of interest which really is anything but. it is an incompatibility, an incompatibility. learning, challenge, must be paced appropriately or it will founder before making it off of the shore. part of this responsibility lies on the person who would seek knowledge...you have to prime yourself in order to work with what you can. but in addition, part of the responsibility lies in the hands of the teacher, in order that they might create a lesson with proper pacing and enough tangible ties to allow for navigation through it.
i hope that i have a gift for storytelling.
it has been quite some time, hasn't it? lots of happenings, changes of seasons, musics ebbing and flowing through my list of recent listens and new discoveries. things are always similar, however; let us see if i can pick up the pace of this writing as quickly and as intently as i remember myself having done in the past.
a quick update on myself. i have been reading quite a bit, all manner of short books which satiate the mind for a time. i've been noticing lately, in light of these books, that books with a heavy density of ideas seem to leave less lasting impressions with me on the whole. of course, reading philosophy is an entirely different gear of mental motion than a casual story, but still i have to note the finding that, for a reason which i may dive into, readings which overwhelm me with the rapidity of their ground-shattering ideas tend to slip into grey area of my mind. i find that with shorter, more spaced and storylike books, there is less of a chance of being overwhelmed by the waves which crash into you; you have more down or recovery time and as such your mind has more of an opportunity to turn over the ideas which are given to you and do something memorable with them....even make them, in some incarnation, your own. with a lot of the writing that i would typically read, the writers are incredibly profound and prolific, so much so that it takes an equal mind to keep up with them unless one wants to get all 'literary analysis' and pore over every page for a matter of hours. to do this disrupts the pace, and so i cannot resign myself to it. and yet, being less intelligent than these giants of writing, the crashings of surf, their own minds against mine in turbulent and one-sided conversation, tend to rip my footing out from underneath me, erode my balance, and leave me dizzied and disoriented. many times i cannot tell whether or not i pay more attention at any given time to the story itself, or the ideas which it carries in its pockets.
this is a lesson learned for me in writing: do not over-pace, do not saturate with intensity. a gifted writer is one who, without condescending, can thresh out his ideas and their forms almost surgically, taking one piece and pinning it to a page...keeping the entirety shrouded until it is ready to be revealed as the sum of its parts. good writing is archaeological, it is constancy in your ability to dust and connect, connect and dust. i think personally that i used to have an idea about how my writing would be this immensely good thing that could not be ignored for all its potency, and yet what i come to realize more and more is that a tasteful balance is the essence of one's ability to write coherently, impressively. there are artistic aesthetics which must be adhered to, for threat of entirely butchering the very concepts that you are attempting to reveal to your audience by their misapplication or neglect.
in short: the human mind, at least insomuch as i can speak about it from my own experience, is something which cannot be rushed. it is a delicate recipe, a plant which grows in its own distinct conditions and which only flowers at the correct temperature specifications. i would call these temperatures "focus", for lack of a better...focus can be achieved by a set of conditions that must be conducive, conductive of real thought. many of the books i have read are harsher environments, attainable only to the most adaptable and giving minds, and often i find myself stumbling through them for a lack of interest which really is anything but. it is an incompatibility, an incompatibility. learning, challenge, must be paced appropriately or it will founder before making it off of the shore. part of this responsibility lies on the person who would seek knowledge...you have to prime yourself in order to work with what you can. but in addition, part of the responsibility lies in the hands of the teacher, in order that they might create a lesson with proper pacing and enough tangible ties to allow for navigation through it.
i hope that i have a gift for storytelling.
May 23, 2009
halt....hammerzeit
so it seems clear that i am stepping away from writing smaller entries, and launching into a larger piece of work. but it's daunting, at best, so i think that from time to time i will still be finding spare change to spend on some abstract and unaffiliated subjects here. this site was always a good cathartic release for me, and i'm glad to have the vent here where i can always find it.
memorial day weekend! i should by all rights be excited about this single-day-more-than-usual break for working purposes, but it seems i have been signed up to go to Bend for a good portion of my time off. hopefully that will be fun; if nothing else it will be good to get into a truly fresh area where my mind can recharge, and perhaps recapture a piece of originality. even though i have of broad spectrum of things that i do these days, i feel that for the most part they are things which i have constantly done before. and there is a definite charm to reliving experiences, especially since they always hold some new context even if in small degree...it has been on my mind that repeatability, replay-value, is among one of the foremost tenets of the american economy. sometimes you just want to know what you're getting, or know what kind of atmosphere you are going to immerse yourself in. i do it all the time; holing up in coffee shops because i welcome their kaleidoscopic atmosphere, while still having a comfortable and calming familiarity. at times, though, i get burnt with doing the same things and going to the same places. these ideas start to coagulate, to clump together into a ball like a putty, and they become less and less distinct from one another. it is a phenomenon which i regard thoughtfully, and often, because it seems like the larger themes of my thought and life are reflected in these massed-stars; they are certainly useful if only to illustrate and make more tangible the waves of time passing over me, and how what i think about changes in both manner and mood. but they also, at times, begin to acquire a stale taste which makes me eager for something new.
i am at odds with time lately. my weekends seem to flit away, which would not be so concerning if they weren't in contrast to my weekdays, upon which i typically do not get anything meaningful done. and let me separate senses there, because i do have a full-time job, and a good one at that....i just don't think that i accomplish anything monumental or inspiring while a chip away at it every monday through friday~ my time balances are all mixed-about, because one must save some time for relaxation or risk excess stress. it would be nice to have more time to write, more time to paint, more time for music. always people think it would be 'nice to have more time'. i realize that it must be made, and i am making it, but i worry that my life-formula is currently incorrect because i feel like i am always struggling with time-management. it does not seem, as it sometimes does, as though time is in my corner.
on the other hand, i am much happier, overall, than i have ever been. i can't remember being so satisfied with everything since i was a child. i have complaints, of course...nobody wants an office for 40 hours. but what is irregular, what seems different than ever before, is that all the time i find myself with a genuine smile on my face, and more goodwill towards everyone on the planet than i can usually muster. i have come to a lot of realizations, which ones supposes could be considered maturities, about people in general, and i've subsequently found myself to be in possession of a lot less inward negativity than i used to exhibit. perhaps it comes from having more personal confidence, and being less worried about what others think. i can't pin down the roots precisely (natch; they are underground), but i know that things are better, in so many ways, than they had been for me during say, high school and college. i am actually happier in a lot of ways than i was in college, the so-called 'golden' years, and i take that to be a positive thing. perhaps i am nourishing myself in all the right ways, and have nothing at all to complain about~ least of all time.
perhaps i can find a way, today, to make peace with time. that sounds infinitely pleasurable. here go.
oh.....GO NUGGETS!!~
memorial day weekend! i should by all rights be excited about this single-day-more-than-usual break for working purposes, but it seems i have been signed up to go to Bend for a good portion of my time off. hopefully that will be fun; if nothing else it will be good to get into a truly fresh area where my mind can recharge, and perhaps recapture a piece of originality. even though i have of broad spectrum of things that i do these days, i feel that for the most part they are things which i have constantly done before. and there is a definite charm to reliving experiences, especially since they always hold some new context even if in small degree...it has been on my mind that repeatability, replay-value, is among one of the foremost tenets of the american economy. sometimes you just want to know what you're getting, or know what kind of atmosphere you are going to immerse yourself in. i do it all the time; holing up in coffee shops because i welcome their kaleidoscopic atmosphere, while still having a comfortable and calming familiarity. at times, though, i get burnt with doing the same things and going to the same places. these ideas start to coagulate, to clump together into a ball like a putty, and they become less and less distinct from one another. it is a phenomenon which i regard thoughtfully, and often, because it seems like the larger themes of my thought and life are reflected in these massed-stars; they are certainly useful if only to illustrate and make more tangible the waves of time passing over me, and how what i think about changes in both manner and mood. but they also, at times, begin to acquire a stale taste which makes me eager for something new.
i am at odds with time lately. my weekends seem to flit away, which would not be so concerning if they weren't in contrast to my weekdays, upon which i typically do not get anything meaningful done. and let me separate senses there, because i do have a full-time job, and a good one at that....i just don't think that i accomplish anything monumental or inspiring while a chip away at it every monday through friday~ my time balances are all mixed-about, because one must save some time for relaxation or risk excess stress. it would be nice to have more time to write, more time to paint, more time for music. always people think it would be 'nice to have more time'. i realize that it must be made, and i am making it, but i worry that my life-formula is currently incorrect because i feel like i am always struggling with time-management. it does not seem, as it sometimes does, as though time is in my corner.
on the other hand, i am much happier, overall, than i have ever been. i can't remember being so satisfied with everything since i was a child. i have complaints, of course...nobody wants an office for 40 hours. but what is irregular, what seems different than ever before, is that all the time i find myself with a genuine smile on my face, and more goodwill towards everyone on the planet than i can usually muster. i have come to a lot of realizations, which ones supposes could be considered maturities, about people in general, and i've subsequently found myself to be in possession of a lot less inward negativity than i used to exhibit. perhaps it comes from having more personal confidence, and being less worried about what others think. i can't pin down the roots precisely (natch; they are underground), but i know that things are better, in so many ways, than they had been for me during say, high school and college. i am actually happier in a lot of ways than i was in college, the so-called 'golden' years, and i take that to be a positive thing. perhaps i am nourishing myself in all the right ways, and have nothing at all to complain about~ least of all time.
perhaps i can find a way, today, to make peace with time. that sounds infinitely pleasurable. here go.
oh.....GO NUGGETS!!~
April 16, 2009
aw
you know what's twisted, in retrospect? elementary and middle-school magazine drives. seriously, it seems like there should have been some child-labor laws violated there.
but man do those mag companies know how to market their shit - leeching onto cute little kids who need money for field-trip funding~ then rewarding them with toys that probably cost twenty cents to batch up in china. just awful.
but man do those mag companies know how to market their shit - leeching onto cute little kids who need money for field-trip funding~ then rewarding them with toys that probably cost twenty cents to batch up in china. just awful.
April 9, 2009
some shadowed places
let me theorize for a moment here. i had a dream the other night that was oddly coraline-esque, in the sense that i was struggling with some dominant monster in the house that i grew up in. i don't remember a lot of the details; i wish i had written closer to the actual event but i haven't been finding the time lately, and it just struck me upside the head with its oddity. i do remember that i was in my parents' bedroom, though as characteristic in dreams it was not so much the same in furnishings, or size, just in relative location and perhaps general shape. this is an energy-center of a house for children, so i can understand why my mind would choose it as a setting of some sort. i'm sure that i also branched, at some point, into my own childhood room, which was just across the hallway...an easy jaunt even if progress was hindered by battle, or whatever~
i'm not really sure where i intend to go with this prelude...it strikes me as, not necessarily unusual, but quite curious that so many of my dreams happen in or around my old house. you would think that my mind would be engaging nightly with newer problems, newer ideas, and setting them appropriately in my new surroundings...but perhaps these are too volatile, in my lack of knowledge of them, to paint adequate pictures for a backdrop. i'm fairly certain that my themes, the ideas that my dreams are really digging their fingers into, hashing out, are more intelligent than they used to be...that they deal with different issues as they develop, as i come across them in my actual experience. but they come as ghosts in my old haunts, which, for my part, was unexpected.
so, the parents' bedroom was unique, usually not a typical setting. there are other places which recur with more frequency...namely the backyard. we had a good-sized backyard at my house in the springs, and i suppose that i spent a good deal of time in it. in the dreams, however, it is permeated with a sense of mystery, of vagueness and enormous, almost incomprehensible, size. i wonder about myself as a child, and in the wonderment i find this charmed recurrence of earlier self. it makes me wonder about the most basic sensations in life....that of the security of the home; the focus of life for everyone that you know. the comfort found inside those walls, and how that is imbued upon a childish mind....what the outside would have meant to me, then. i imagine myself, done up in blue one-piece winnie-the-pooh pajamas, gazing in rapt bewilderment out the glass doors in our main entryway, trying to decipher the strange wilderness, the unexplored depths of our backyard. what does a two-year old think of a tree? of grass and flowers? do they have the same positive valence that we would attribute to them now? part of me thinks that they would be frightening totems (head on pole) of the outside world, of complete loss of control.
of course, to a child, unknowns behave in different ways than they do to us now. our adult selves build up apprehensions based upon our past experiences; they fortify us from the outside world with snowglobe-like bricks, each teeming with motion and memory, each distorting the outside world more and more as we look through them, sometimes not even being able to see past the memories themselves. children become apprehensive, fearful, but only after their base comforts have already been stripped from them. a child misses his mother only once she is gone, not before; a child does not fear being lost until it actually arises. we tangle with these scenarios before they exist, and in that we lose something valuable in our interface with the world - we begin to focus more and more, and ultimately we see less and less.
so here i am, standing with my hands and nose pressed against the glass separating my child self from his house's backyard. squirrels scamper by, and i do not understand them. i wonder what sensations they call to my heart.
if i had to guess (since the time i am describing is before memory), and i am going to infer from my dreams now, i would venture to say that i felt fear. not a gripping terror, but an ambiguous shadow floating just beyond my perception, darkening. i say this, because in my dreams i find this same darkness to it. it has apparently been chosen as the place where i work out most of my unconscious struggles. i wish i had a running count of the number of dreams and/or nightmares which at some point trample through that backyard, which in reality has not a trace of ominousness to it but, who can say what a mind will twist anything into at the end of the day~ different sections of that backyard are honeycombed off in my mind; each attributed with memories and characteristics, properties which are real to me but which never belonged.
additionally, as if that weren't enough, i have an amplification of this wilderness....i have my family's cabin, secluded deep in the woods of kenosha pass. this was the spot for family vacations, an inexpensive spot to get away from it all, and i'm certain that it is tethered to numerous memories for everyone who goes there so it is a logical place to return to. i have spent time at this cabin as far back as i can remember, and always it has been a holy temple to me, an observation of the depths of nature and a retreat from the world as i knew it. this cabin is a fantastic place; perhaps you, reader, will be taken there one day~ but it has also developed, for me, as an extremely psychologically-powerful token. i go to this cabin, in my dreams, in my unconscious mind, when apparently there are mountains of rubble in my head that need to be worked through. almost always this cabin appears to me as a fractured house of the most haunted and haunting capacity possible. always there are deep-seated ghosts, literally; always it is overrun with the raw power of nature, crowned with black, spindly insects, the wardens of what deeper unsettled spirits lie slumbering there. the woods around this cabin host my deepest dreams, my deepest indications of what being 'lost', or pursued by the night, feels like. always it is an incredible adventure just to get to this place, rarely by car as would be expected; typically i must forge my way through snowfields and packs of savage animals, cross extreme conditions and distances in pursuit of something i do not know, at least not consciously. i am never sure what the motivation for returning to this place is, but always there is something drawing me towards it.
i do not know why these nature spots have become the seats for my subconscious psyche. all i can say is that they are bottled with unspeakable things; they reflect a different side of the world, as if i had stood in the middle of them and used the mirror from A Link to the Past. things do not make sense there, and everything is darkened. i thought it notable, towards the goal of figuring myself out a little better...and it always helps me to sort out my thoughts more clearly, this 'writing'.
shhh! listen:
royksopp - "royksopp forever"
i'm not really sure where i intend to go with this prelude...it strikes me as, not necessarily unusual, but quite curious that so many of my dreams happen in or around my old house. you would think that my mind would be engaging nightly with newer problems, newer ideas, and setting them appropriately in my new surroundings...but perhaps these are too volatile, in my lack of knowledge of them, to paint adequate pictures for a backdrop. i'm fairly certain that my themes, the ideas that my dreams are really digging their fingers into, hashing out, are more intelligent than they used to be...that they deal with different issues as they develop, as i come across them in my actual experience. but they come as ghosts in my old haunts, which, for my part, was unexpected.
so, the parents' bedroom was unique, usually not a typical setting. there are other places which recur with more frequency...namely the backyard. we had a good-sized backyard at my house in the springs, and i suppose that i spent a good deal of time in it. in the dreams, however, it is permeated with a sense of mystery, of vagueness and enormous, almost incomprehensible, size. i wonder about myself as a child, and in the wonderment i find this charmed recurrence of earlier self. it makes me wonder about the most basic sensations in life....that of the security of the home; the focus of life for everyone that you know. the comfort found inside those walls, and how that is imbued upon a childish mind....what the outside would have meant to me, then. i imagine myself, done up in blue one-piece winnie-the-pooh pajamas, gazing in rapt bewilderment out the glass doors in our main entryway, trying to decipher the strange wilderness, the unexplored depths of our backyard. what does a two-year old think of a tree? of grass and flowers? do they have the same positive valence that we would attribute to them now? part of me thinks that they would be frightening totems (head on pole) of the outside world, of complete loss of control.
of course, to a child, unknowns behave in different ways than they do to us now. our adult selves build up apprehensions based upon our past experiences; they fortify us from the outside world with snowglobe-like bricks, each teeming with motion and memory, each distorting the outside world more and more as we look through them, sometimes not even being able to see past the memories themselves. children become apprehensive, fearful, but only after their base comforts have already been stripped from them. a child misses his mother only once she is gone, not before; a child does not fear being lost until it actually arises. we tangle with these scenarios before they exist, and in that we lose something valuable in our interface with the world - we begin to focus more and more, and ultimately we see less and less.
so here i am, standing with my hands and nose pressed against the glass separating my child self from his house's backyard. squirrels scamper by, and i do not understand them. i wonder what sensations they call to my heart.
if i had to guess (since the time i am describing is before memory), and i am going to infer from my dreams now, i would venture to say that i felt fear. not a gripping terror, but an ambiguous shadow floating just beyond my perception, darkening. i say this, because in my dreams i find this same darkness to it. it has apparently been chosen as the place where i work out most of my unconscious struggles. i wish i had a running count of the number of dreams and/or nightmares which at some point trample through that backyard, which in reality has not a trace of ominousness to it but, who can say what a mind will twist anything into at the end of the day~ different sections of that backyard are honeycombed off in my mind; each attributed with memories and characteristics, properties which are real to me but which never belonged.
additionally, as if that weren't enough, i have an amplification of this wilderness....i have my family's cabin, secluded deep in the woods of kenosha pass. this was the spot for family vacations, an inexpensive spot to get away from it all, and i'm certain that it is tethered to numerous memories for everyone who goes there so it is a logical place to return to. i have spent time at this cabin as far back as i can remember, and always it has been a holy temple to me, an observation of the depths of nature and a retreat from the world as i knew it. this cabin is a fantastic place; perhaps you, reader, will be taken there one day~ but it has also developed, for me, as an extremely psychologically-powerful token. i go to this cabin, in my dreams, in my unconscious mind, when apparently there are mountains of rubble in my head that need to be worked through. almost always this cabin appears to me as a fractured house of the most haunted and haunting capacity possible. always there are deep-seated ghosts, literally; always it is overrun with the raw power of nature, crowned with black, spindly insects, the wardens of what deeper unsettled spirits lie slumbering there. the woods around this cabin host my deepest dreams, my deepest indications of what being 'lost', or pursued by the night, feels like. always it is an incredible adventure just to get to this place, rarely by car as would be expected; typically i must forge my way through snowfields and packs of savage animals, cross extreme conditions and distances in pursuit of something i do not know, at least not consciously. i am never sure what the motivation for returning to this place is, but always there is something drawing me towards it.
i do not know why these nature spots have become the seats for my subconscious psyche. all i can say is that they are bottled with unspeakable things; they reflect a different side of the world, as if i had stood in the middle of them and used the mirror from A Link to the Past. things do not make sense there, and everything is darkened. i thought it notable, towards the goal of figuring myself out a little better...and it always helps me to sort out my thoughts more clearly, this 'writing'.
shhh! listen:
royksopp - "royksopp forever"
April 2, 2009
today
"friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... it has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival."
~ C. S. Lewis
how good to have friends, people that we can merge ourselves with; the refraction of perspectives gives telescopic sight. what we can bounce off of a friend is a concept, a notion of ourselves that we have gathered, and we present it freely...a concept which is taken, and puttied, and molded in another mind, mirrored, until we really begin to get a better idea of what we meant in the first place. they can show us things, they can take us farther...obliterating our boundaries and creating impressions of some unexplored territory to the east. they will notice different things, they will append our own selves until we begin to merge the lines and become confused. and then they position us, they help us to see where we fit within this larger picture. they bring our artisan selves, our works and spirit, to places that we have not physically or emotionally been to. places that we shall not know for some time, but which could alter our way of looking at life.
my friends are powerful forces. for them i would burn my books, my money, my car, my apartment. i would sacrifice these things to do real good for them. time is never 'spent' with them; it is savored thoroughly. it is crafted and shared. to spend time is the function of a job, lathing away wafer-thin slices of us so as to preserve the rest (for what else is the remainder intended?) and in the space with our friends, in nurturing environments, we grow back to our former selves. we relearn skills, we reconstruct our memories which had been partially-stripped. we are the children of our freely-chosen experiences.
so damn, it's great to be here. my people build me up, when i am down; they recall the shapes that i am missing at any given time (which takes a fair bit of analysis and knowledge of myself on their part), conjure them from our shared spaces, energies, and present them to me swathed in new packaging. or forgotten packaging, which is the best sort. i could only hope to do them this same service when it is needed. there is responsibility inherent in knowing someone (if they can be said to be 'known'), that we must keep vigil over them for when they are in a time of need. we all need, at some point. being close, that is really something to be proud of....not independence, which callously walls the heart against hope.
i hope some of that made sense.
"treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
~ Goethe
~ C. S. Lewis
how good to have friends, people that we can merge ourselves with; the refraction of perspectives gives telescopic sight. what we can bounce off of a friend is a concept, a notion of ourselves that we have gathered, and we present it freely...a concept which is taken, and puttied, and molded in another mind, mirrored, until we really begin to get a better idea of what we meant in the first place. they can show us things, they can take us farther...obliterating our boundaries and creating impressions of some unexplored territory to the east. they will notice different things, they will append our own selves until we begin to merge the lines and become confused. and then they position us, they help us to see where we fit within this larger picture. they bring our artisan selves, our works and spirit, to places that we have not physically or emotionally been to. places that we shall not know for some time, but which could alter our way of looking at life.
my friends are powerful forces. for them i would burn my books, my money, my car, my apartment. i would sacrifice these things to do real good for them. time is never 'spent' with them; it is savored thoroughly. it is crafted and shared. to spend time is the function of a job, lathing away wafer-thin slices of us so as to preserve the rest (for what else is the remainder intended?) and in the space with our friends, in nurturing environments, we grow back to our former selves. we relearn skills, we reconstruct our memories which had been partially-stripped. we are the children of our freely-chosen experiences.
so damn, it's great to be here. my people build me up, when i am down; they recall the shapes that i am missing at any given time (which takes a fair bit of analysis and knowledge of myself on their part), conjure them from our shared spaces, energies, and present them to me swathed in new packaging. or forgotten packaging, which is the best sort. i could only hope to do them this same service when it is needed. there is responsibility inherent in knowing someone (if they can be said to be 'known'), that we must keep vigil over them for when they are in a time of need. we all need, at some point. being close, that is really something to be proud of....not independence, which callously walls the heart against hope.
i hope some of that made sense.
"treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
~ Goethe
March 17, 2009
happy patties
it might seem, by all outward appearances, that i am slacking largely. i haven't posted anything on here for something like a fortnight. but even so, it doesn't mean i haven't been writing.....instead i am trying to work on *gasp* projects, bigger things, which is nice because usually i can't screw up the courage to embark on something larger than what i typically write on here. explosions of thought. perhaps you will find them here as they are developing, or as they emerge from whatever sort of chrysalis they might happen to be in. that i cannot say for sure. but,
isn't that exciting?
i think it is.
isn't that exciting?
i think it is.
February 28, 2009
dreamcatcher
i had an interesting experience last night....i started hovering over the precipice of sleep, but not actually tumbling into it. i had an exhausting day, and laid down at probably two in the morning, but for whatever reason wouldn't completely drop off. my mind sunk into a sleep-like state; i was able to clearly "see" things that i was thinking about, literally visualizing things in sharp lines and shapes. i wasn't able to control it necessarily. sometimes it would be an eruption of colors, and sometimes it would be a clear landscape, a play with players, a created world.
i remember when i was smaller, say elementary age, i used to have a particular skill. i was able to visualize drawings on a page, before they were actually there, and from that impression i would basically just trace out what my mind had already splashed onto the paper. i'm not sure at this point what to make of that, or where it has gone. i'm not sure if i lack the degree of creativity that i had then, or if my mind is so partitioned and full of varied information that i don't have the caches left to accommodate such lucid imaginings. maybe my mind clings to this solid-state world that we have, since it is more constant in ways than the imaginary, and it keeps my arm steeled against nonsensical interruptions. at any rate, it is a skill that i miss. lately when i draw or paint, or write for that matter, i don't really have any idea where it will end up....i have no means with which to reign things in. usually i will make a first stroke, and then a second, somewhat geometrically or in a unique formation, and then i will treat it sort of like cloud-watching....letting my mind pick out a picture that it could be a piece, it could be a keystone of. then that leap of faith is what it ends up becoming. now, this is a great modus operandi for a lot of different reasons...i've learned a lot from it and it has a lot of real-world implications that are useful in my everyday life, the more and more comfortable with it i become. i'm not sure i want to change it, for the time being, because i think it to be a valuable cultivation, a little precious crop of my own that i can work on to my ends. but, especially in the wake of my experience last night, i kind of miss the vivacity and forthrightness that my creative mind used to exhibit.
last night, like i said, i wasn't able to sleep for awhile. my mind somehow gave itself up to this, and instead it chose to drift in a liminal state...dreaming without sleeping, but not like day-dreaming. much more potent. the interesting part of it all was the degree of control which i had. i could nudge it, i could guide it. it was similar to a lucid dream (in which you acknowledge that you're asleep and dreaming), but without the comical side effects that usually arise from having the predominant sectors of logic in your brain completely switched off. a unique and psychedelic experience, but arising organically. it was a combination of mental functions which, for me, is very rare. i suppose i'm saying that i think there is something interesting to be learned from it, or ways to harness it for a positive result.
as i lay there, eyes closed, i was thinking from time to time of running for a pen. clearly this would have disrupted the stream of the moment, so i didn't~ but even so, i think (although not verifiably) that, had i been aware that the situation was going to happen, i could have had a pen in my hand and a pad of paper on the bed and been able to capture what was going on in some decipherable form or another (words, pictures). i know that i was awake enough to process the ideas, and could have transmitted them had i the means, even keeping my eyes closed. the feeling was loosely that of a bout of sleep paralysis (for those that have experienced it), but i know i could move slightly without risk of shattering it. instead of focusing on how i couldn't fully interact with the tangible world, i focused instead on how i could interact with the intangible one. i wish there were a better way to photograph what's going on in our minds than drawing and writing, but there really isn't, so i suppose it's fortunate that these are mediums which i am comfortable expressing myself through. *take care not to end sentence with preposition, blar. i think this skill, if i can develop it, would be a huge resource for me to draw from. it becomes so hard throughout the day to catch your mind on the hop, and to really express your good ideas when they come to you...this could be a door of perception that is worth throwing open. i can't think of the window i would have to close to accommodate it~
what is a more genuine expression of your mind than a dream? a whole world, rich landscapes, personalities and societies, architectures, all constructed out of nothing but the raw impressions the real world has left you with, and how you own unique mind twists and bends them. signs, representations. i would guarantee, even without a smidge of research to back me up, that dreams are one of the foremost inspirations for painters....i have had so many dreams that have been the richest, most explosive color schemes i have ever 'experienced' (if one can admit that reality of them). finnegan's wake, one of the most revered works of fiction that exists, is allegedly the lucid documentation of a dream. i think that they are powerful, that they can give us insights into the utmost potential of humanity and vision; new eyes to see the daylight with.
i'm so excited for the rest of this year~
i remember when i was smaller, say elementary age, i used to have a particular skill. i was able to visualize drawings on a page, before they were actually there, and from that impression i would basically just trace out what my mind had already splashed onto the paper. i'm not sure at this point what to make of that, or where it has gone. i'm not sure if i lack the degree of creativity that i had then, or if my mind is so partitioned and full of varied information that i don't have the caches left to accommodate such lucid imaginings. maybe my mind clings to this solid-state world that we have, since it is more constant in ways than the imaginary, and it keeps my arm steeled against nonsensical interruptions. at any rate, it is a skill that i miss. lately when i draw or paint, or write for that matter, i don't really have any idea where it will end up....i have no means with which to reign things in. usually i will make a first stroke, and then a second, somewhat geometrically or in a unique formation, and then i will treat it sort of like cloud-watching....letting my mind pick out a picture that it could be a piece, it could be a keystone of. then that leap of faith is what it ends up becoming. now, this is a great modus operandi for a lot of different reasons...i've learned a lot from it and it has a lot of real-world implications that are useful in my everyday life, the more and more comfortable with it i become. i'm not sure i want to change it, for the time being, because i think it to be a valuable cultivation, a little precious crop of my own that i can work on to my ends. but, especially in the wake of my experience last night, i kind of miss the vivacity and forthrightness that my creative mind used to exhibit.
last night, like i said, i wasn't able to sleep for awhile. my mind somehow gave itself up to this, and instead it chose to drift in a liminal state...dreaming without sleeping, but not like day-dreaming. much more potent. the interesting part of it all was the degree of control which i had. i could nudge it, i could guide it. it was similar to a lucid dream (in which you acknowledge that you're asleep and dreaming), but without the comical side effects that usually arise from having the predominant sectors of logic in your brain completely switched off. a unique and psychedelic experience, but arising organically. it was a combination of mental functions which, for me, is very rare. i suppose i'm saying that i think there is something interesting to be learned from it, or ways to harness it for a positive result.
as i lay there, eyes closed, i was thinking from time to time of running for a pen. clearly this would have disrupted the stream of the moment, so i didn't~ but even so, i think (although not verifiably) that, had i been aware that the situation was going to happen, i could have had a pen in my hand and a pad of paper on the bed and been able to capture what was going on in some decipherable form or another (words, pictures). i know that i was awake enough to process the ideas, and could have transmitted them had i the means, even keeping my eyes closed. the feeling was loosely that of a bout of sleep paralysis (for those that have experienced it), but i know i could move slightly without risk of shattering it. instead of focusing on how i couldn't fully interact with the tangible world, i focused instead on how i could interact with the intangible one. i wish there were a better way to photograph what's going on in our minds than drawing and writing, but there really isn't, so i suppose it's fortunate that these are mediums which i am comfortable expressing myself through. *take care not to end sentence with preposition, blar. i think this skill, if i can develop it, would be a huge resource for me to draw from. it becomes so hard throughout the day to catch your mind on the hop, and to really express your good ideas when they come to you...this could be a door of perception that is worth throwing open. i can't think of the window i would have to close to accommodate it~
what is a more genuine expression of your mind than a dream? a whole world, rich landscapes, personalities and societies, architectures, all constructed out of nothing but the raw impressions the real world has left you with, and how you own unique mind twists and bends them. signs, representations. i would guarantee, even without a smidge of research to back me up, that dreams are one of the foremost inspirations for painters....i have had so many dreams that have been the richest, most explosive color schemes i have ever 'experienced' (if one can admit that reality of them). finnegan's wake, one of the most revered works of fiction that exists, is allegedly the lucid documentation of a dream. i think that they are powerful, that they can give us insights into the utmost potential of humanity and vision; new eyes to see the daylight with.
i'm so excited for the rest of this year~
February 22, 2009
phantom limb
i kind of like the grey weather in portland. everything feels sort of muted, volume turned a little lower than usual, and it creates an odd harmony between all things. it acts in many ways like a thick colorado snowfall, which muffles sounds and tends to hang miniature weights upon any activity to be undertaken...but the greyness isn't so apparent a sensory change; you can't hear the karr-onchh of snow underfoot, sharp like glass shattering because there are no other sounds to vie for your ears' attention. i suppose that the mists here feel like some sort of oppression, something distinct which drapes off of your body like cobwebs. and it doesn't sound to a lot of people, especially when phrased as such, like a good thing....but i enjoy the directness of it. i like that it has no pretenses about being anything else. it's just, there, and it lends this tangibility to other sorts of oppressions, the kinds of sludges that we wade through every day in our lives and in our minds...it makes me feel as through i can assign this same 'thing-ness' to those (baggages), and that i can, now fully recognizing them for what they are, snap them over my knees like small twigs to be thrown down as kindling in my fire.
for some reason, this helps me to sort out my personality. i feel like i have a much healthier mindstate in portland, as opposed to other places lived, as though i am getting better and more rigorous in my gold-panning techniques (properly, being able to cut through the pitfalls that seem to be more and more dominant in everyday life, giving some lift to my feet and gaining golden perspective from a higher place). once in a philosophy class, we learned about an an idea of predator-creation, to coin a phrase. we have evolved to stay on our toes, as it were; to create situations which will keep up on guard, so that we won't be caught unawares when danger sneaks in peripherally. this worked out pretty well for us when we had wildcats and bears to contend with, but our current situation, as a society of evolved minds, has distanced us from most of our original concerns for safety. our instincts, however, those finely-tuned mental reflexes forged like clockwork over countless generations, remain. and now, caught in this modern situation, they force themselves into application and find all manner of new predators to conjure out of what should be minor troubles....social anxieties, insecurities, distant concerns about death and uncertain futures.
the problem with these apprehensions is that they are weaved thinly....not thick, easy to pluck strings, but rather numerous and minute, corded with great intricacy such that they gain an unparalleled fibrous strength and depth. these concerns are almost impossible, most of the time, to recognize as something separate from yourself....they come, sprouting to the surface, and they feel like 'you'. almost completely unrecognizable as something separate. you don't realize when they happen, but they darken like rainclouds and the world seems like it has always been this way, forever tinged with dejection and uncertainty. it is really, truly, very hard to break out of this cycle of thinking.
perhaps it is that i'm having a much more mindful year than any previous, taking opportunities to enrich my mind and my spirit, but i'm starting to pick up on these problem thoughts. indirectly, to be sure....i couldn't describe to you what i feel when i begin to acknowledge them. perhaps a subtle humming, like a struck tuning fork, a low-frequency from beyond a thin wall. perhaps meditating has helped me to pick up on a wider band of feelings, enabled me to stretch out the spectrum of emotions further so that i can chart my being with more accuracy. i can't say for sure. but i know that, being swathed in the clouds of this city, i feel a bit of that same logic, as if it has helped me somehow. helped me to locate the barnacles to scrape off of my hull when i have a moment to rest in port; filtered my possibilities into a better representation of what i would hope myself to be.
i don't see the weather here as a negative thing. i start to see it as recursive, mirroring myself in an outward reflection. and the funny thing is, i'm not saying that i am getting gloomier; quite the opposite really. the more i spend time in the shadows, the more i find myself able to bathe in the light, to preserve it, like a firefly in a bottle sitting on my shelves when i need it (or a photograph of one, if you want to get all buddhist about it~). and the more i can appreciate it, when it is actually present.
for some reason, this helps me to sort out my personality. i feel like i have a much healthier mindstate in portland, as opposed to other places lived, as though i am getting better and more rigorous in my gold-panning techniques (properly, being able to cut through the pitfalls that seem to be more and more dominant in everyday life, giving some lift to my feet and gaining golden perspective from a higher place). once in a philosophy class, we learned about an an idea of predator-creation, to coin a phrase. we have evolved to stay on our toes, as it were; to create situations which will keep up on guard, so that we won't be caught unawares when danger sneaks in peripherally. this worked out pretty well for us when we had wildcats and bears to contend with, but our current situation, as a society of evolved minds, has distanced us from most of our original concerns for safety. our instincts, however, those finely-tuned mental reflexes forged like clockwork over countless generations, remain. and now, caught in this modern situation, they force themselves into application and find all manner of new predators to conjure out of what should be minor troubles....social anxieties, insecurities, distant concerns about death and uncertain futures.
the problem with these apprehensions is that they are weaved thinly....not thick, easy to pluck strings, but rather numerous and minute, corded with great intricacy such that they gain an unparalleled fibrous strength and depth. these concerns are almost impossible, most of the time, to recognize as something separate from yourself....they come, sprouting to the surface, and they feel like 'you'. almost completely unrecognizable as something separate. you don't realize when they happen, but they darken like rainclouds and the world seems like it has always been this way, forever tinged with dejection and uncertainty. it is really, truly, very hard to break out of this cycle of thinking.
perhaps it is that i'm having a much more mindful year than any previous, taking opportunities to enrich my mind and my spirit, but i'm starting to pick up on these problem thoughts. indirectly, to be sure....i couldn't describe to you what i feel when i begin to acknowledge them. perhaps a subtle humming, like a struck tuning fork, a low-frequency from beyond a thin wall. perhaps meditating has helped me to pick up on a wider band of feelings, enabled me to stretch out the spectrum of emotions further so that i can chart my being with more accuracy. i can't say for sure. but i know that, being swathed in the clouds of this city, i feel a bit of that same logic, as if it has helped me somehow. helped me to locate the barnacles to scrape off of my hull when i have a moment to rest in port; filtered my possibilities into a better representation of what i would hope myself to be.
i don't see the weather here as a negative thing. i start to see it as recursive, mirroring myself in an outward reflection. and the funny thing is, i'm not saying that i am getting gloomier; quite the opposite really. the more i spend time in the shadows, the more i find myself able to bathe in the light, to preserve it, like a firefly in a bottle sitting on my shelves when i need it (or a photograph of one, if you want to get all buddhist about it~). and the more i can appreciate it, when it is actually present.
February 15, 2009
you're actually engaged.
you and your friend approached me, reading over drinks, and we started talking about books. you asked me what i was reading so i flashed the cover, to which you replied that you had heard of him and read some of his other stuff. i'm certain that you hadn't, but these sorts of tale-spinnings are to be expected in our context. when you brushed your hand through your rigorously-conditioned hair, there was a distinct flicker on the only finger upon which flickers are to be dully noted; now placing your hand on the table it was clearly created by a smallish stone on a golden band.
"oh," i thought.
we continued our conversation for twenty minutes or so, you cooing and low-cut, and when i next looked down i was surprised to find that your ring had somehow managed to find its way off of your finger, vanished to an undisclosed location. there was a little red imprint around your finger where it used to be, and there was honey in your eyes when you looked at me. i hope it wasn't too much effort to pull it off without drawing any attention, because that was the last bit of my attention that you will be drawing from.
for:
http://youwillnotbedatingme.blogspot.com
February 3, 2009
perfect, whether to fly?
ah, it feel so good to be able to power through a regular-sized book, one that doesn't have the density of a neutron star. i was questioning my english-major status for awhile on account of the mazes that pynchon has been dangling a carrot in front of me all the way through, but i set that one aside and picked up a few breathers, and now i feel like i can come back to it sometime soon. what a relief. this is what i love so much about life outside of the constructs of college....you get to make your own directions, and give up on things when you want to, and pick up different things when you catch sparks touching them. its a bit of a black hole at the same time though, and you really have to begin to get a grasp upon yourself and what your driving motivations are. i could easily see one small distraction spiraling into months and months of absent-minded debauchery without real direction. what's curious, though, is that even that sort of approach has its definite benefits....you never know what you will stumble into in a tempest, or what might stumble into you, and you might pinpoint something spasmodically instead of via the typical slow-n-steady routes...likely even a lot of interesting things that would have lain long away from your intended paths. there are ups and downs to that of course. but at a certain point perhaps you have to relinquish control to your body and spirit, and let them guide you unguarded. you have to know that you will still get somewhere, that you will still learn something, and you have to think that your ambitions will find their way towards what "you" would intend, even if the route is circuitous. it is kind of like surfing around on wikipedia for hours and hours....it seems in ways like a sinkhole, but you learn quite a bit....and you likely wouldn't have clicked onto that next progression unless you had at least a slight inkling towards it, consciously or unconsciously nudging you self-ward.
the world's a brilliantly complex state of affairs. it seems like one misstep in it can ruin or take a life; conversely, it can create an opportunity or conjure an idea. every moment of every day, we are confronted with choices we can make, that we usually don't even consider. perhaps you would call those blinders that we put on, 'personality'. it's interesting to hear that word in a negative context, isn't it? but how could we function without some semblance of ourselves? we would completely dissolve into the world and its vast machinery if nothing compelled us to some constancy. there are literally 360 degrees that we can travel in, from any set stance, and once we've taken a step, there our 360 options are again, but they have changed slightly. for ridiculousness' sake we'll leave out non-horizontal travel~ but we situate and we follow paths, wearing down the tracks of our own memory with repetition, like the stairs of hellems. it sort of digs little ditches for our feet, you see, but one supposes that it makes life more intelligible so it remains the standard. you really don't get a fair picture of it if you're already enmeshed...but travel a little, and you really begin to acknowledge what a difference time and place, and the tiniest choices that we make in our lives, have on the whole tapestry.
the sad part about acknowledging this is that you realize, at some point or another, that newness is really what makes the world inspiring, what makes existence creative. people complain as they get older; they complain about the acceleration of their years, and about how those throttling years are no longer 'golden' (a precious metal reference...i doubt that people would admit it, but they may literally feel that the later years are less valuable to them, overall, than those forged of gold). it's all in the paths that we run, or dig ourselves deeper into; it's all in the timing and the actual use of our time. you can say that newness fades because we collect experiences....that there is only so much to do and that it is inevitable that we pass beyond these vivacious times. i just think that, at this juncture, i would respectfully disagree. the choice to work an eight-hour day, a forty-hour week, is not a societal norm in many places. when we do this we are shackling ourselves, or willing it to be done to us by others~ workplaces are efficient; they are well-oiled machines and they tend to treat us like mathematical functions, like specific applications or gears in a project that is ongoing, never-ending and ever-growing in the ideal of the market. we work so that we can live, so that we can have money to explore or dig ourselves deeper if we choose...but we are under the impression that money is life and that we are being sold the means to life~ it's right at our fingertips, no work necessary, but our entire country, our entire world has been designed to make it seem like an absolute necessity, as though one cannot do without it. i have a lot of deep-seated issues with all this, but clearly i'm still in it playing the game. it definitely burns deep down in me sometimes.
and now we pass the time in this manner, and now our days become more and more clustered...our experiences more and more similar to one another, our days adrift and unchanging. i think this is the reason that people report life as 'accelerating'; i think that when you act as a single function, if that is what is expected of you, you spend long portions of time doing the exact. same. thing. every day, every week, year out. when we're youthful, when we're in college or high school or what have you, our moments are constantly fluctuating. new knowledge, new people, new places, new things to do, new music to listen to, new ambitions and hopes. jobs have a way of crushing ambitions, relegating us to the present, and cramming us into it in a way that it is surprising to me so many people put up with. we no longer have the *time* to do different things, to be new selves; if we were able to then it would compromise our current positions~ so our days become more selfsame, and we snowball along with them, rolling up layer upon layer of habit and similarity and convention to block us from experiencing the changes that are, in the end, so essential to the living spirit and to keeping life crisp and new.
i would like for people to put a more genuine effort into finding jobs which they will really enjoy and be rewarded by. i would like for myself to do this as well. i'm working on it, sort of, although not really in an amending-the-current-situation sort of way....i'm trying to explore, and find something which really inspires me to devote my energies to it. all this i'm doing on the side, and trying to stay active about it. in the meantime we do what we have to, i suppose; i'm just tired of seeing people work jobs that they have no affinity for, that they continue on it because it is the path of least resistance on account of their own digging into it. we can literally be worth whatever we put the effort into being worth; all of us.
mind is burnt. matches out~
the world's a brilliantly complex state of affairs. it seems like one misstep in it can ruin or take a life; conversely, it can create an opportunity or conjure an idea. every moment of every day, we are confronted with choices we can make, that we usually don't even consider. perhaps you would call those blinders that we put on, 'personality'. it's interesting to hear that word in a negative context, isn't it? but how could we function without some semblance of ourselves? we would completely dissolve into the world and its vast machinery if nothing compelled us to some constancy. there are literally 360 degrees that we can travel in, from any set stance, and once we've taken a step, there our 360 options are again, but they have changed slightly. for ridiculousness' sake we'll leave out non-horizontal travel~ but we situate and we follow paths, wearing down the tracks of our own memory with repetition, like the stairs of hellems. it sort of digs little ditches for our feet, you see, but one supposes that it makes life more intelligible so it remains the standard. you really don't get a fair picture of it if you're already enmeshed...but travel a little, and you really begin to acknowledge what a difference time and place, and the tiniest choices that we make in our lives, have on the whole tapestry.
the sad part about acknowledging this is that you realize, at some point or another, that newness is really what makes the world inspiring, what makes existence creative. people complain as they get older; they complain about the acceleration of their years, and about how those throttling years are no longer 'golden' (a precious metal reference...i doubt that people would admit it, but they may literally feel that the later years are less valuable to them, overall, than those forged of gold). it's all in the paths that we run, or dig ourselves deeper into; it's all in the timing and the actual use of our time. you can say that newness fades because we collect experiences....that there is only so much to do and that it is inevitable that we pass beyond these vivacious times. i just think that, at this juncture, i would respectfully disagree. the choice to work an eight-hour day, a forty-hour week, is not a societal norm in many places. when we do this we are shackling ourselves, or willing it to be done to us by others~ workplaces are efficient; they are well-oiled machines and they tend to treat us like mathematical functions, like specific applications or gears in a project that is ongoing, never-ending and ever-growing in the ideal of the market. we work so that we can live, so that we can have money to explore or dig ourselves deeper if we choose...but we are under the impression that money is life and that we are being sold the means to life~ it's right at our fingertips, no work necessary, but our entire country, our entire world has been designed to make it seem like an absolute necessity, as though one cannot do without it. i have a lot of deep-seated issues with all this, but clearly i'm still in it playing the game. it definitely burns deep down in me sometimes.
and now we pass the time in this manner, and now our days become more and more clustered...our experiences more and more similar to one another, our days adrift and unchanging. i think this is the reason that people report life as 'accelerating'; i think that when you act as a single function, if that is what is expected of you, you spend long portions of time doing the exact. same. thing. every day, every week, year out. when we're youthful, when we're in college or high school or what have you, our moments are constantly fluctuating. new knowledge, new people, new places, new things to do, new music to listen to, new ambitions and hopes. jobs have a way of crushing ambitions, relegating us to the present, and cramming us into it in a way that it is surprising to me so many people put up with. we no longer have the *time* to do different things, to be new selves; if we were able to then it would compromise our current positions~ so our days become more selfsame, and we snowball along with them, rolling up layer upon layer of habit and similarity and convention to block us from experiencing the changes that are, in the end, so essential to the living spirit and to keeping life crisp and new.
i would like for people to put a more genuine effort into finding jobs which they will really enjoy and be rewarded by. i would like for myself to do this as well. i'm working on it, sort of, although not really in an amending-the-current-situation sort of way....i'm trying to explore, and find something which really inspires me to devote my energies to it. all this i'm doing on the side, and trying to stay active about it. in the meantime we do what we have to, i suppose; i'm just tired of seeing people work jobs that they have no affinity for, that they continue on it because it is the path of least resistance on account of their own digging into it. we can literally be worth whatever we put the effort into being worth; all of us.
mind is burnt. matches out~
January 30, 2009
25 things 'bout you
1) i still have a very vivid imagination and, when you're not looking or around me at all, i'm probably ninja-pressing against some wall in an effort to get all cloak-and-dagger with the next person to walk down the wrong hall at the wrong time. an alternative possibility is that there may be magical spells erupting from my fingertips.
2) my #1 favorite food is fruit. my #2 favorite food is sushi.
3) i wouldn't go so far as to call myself obsessive-compulsive, but i'm certainly compulsive-compulsive.
4) i believe that the world is speaking to us, telling us what to do and how to achieve balance, down to even very specific little things. i believe that it is possible to cultivate one's mind such that the whispers which we only catch hints of from time to time become more like a complete and articulate dialogue.
5) while it may not be fashionable to have an amazing, drama-free and well put-together family, i have one that i am so proud to be a part of and wouldn't trade for the world. they give me ground to walk on when everything else is missing.
6) i really like to quantify things, mostly because i think it is an exercise in absurdity. when it comes down to it, the second best coffee i've ever has was really only about 75% as good as the best coffee that i've had.
7) i've always been a sucker for green eyes. when i was little, i wished and wished and wished for green eyes; mine were brown. i wished hard. in high school, my eyes changed colors and now they are 70% green, 30% brown.
that's a funny follow-up to the last point, but these numbers are actually quite verifiable.
8) i aspire to be great at a lot of things, but most poignantly i will be disappointed in myself if i don't end up writing a handful of books that i can be proud of putting out into the world. if i sell out and write gobble-fiction, that might be even worse~
9) my favorite place that i've ever been to is garden of the gods in colorado springs.
10) my most valuable possessions are my old moleskin notebooks, although i rarely ever look back through them. i would be less devastated if my car got stolen.
11) my dreams tend to achieve a balance with my life. when my waking life is extraordinary and exciting, my dreams are mundane. when my life gets repetitive and droll, my dreams unfold thunderous and colorful.
12) i believe in a deeper order of connections between things than just what we can see, and i have one specific personal and surreal experience which i attribute as the anchor of this belief.
13) i've eaten well over 4000 peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in my lifetime.
14) one of the biggest turning points in my life was when i realized that it is okay to feel sad; that we shouldn't always feel the need to grapple for happiness in every moment. that is one of the most liberating perspectives that i have come across.
15) i have a very irregular filing system for my memory. i haven't quite figured it out yet. all i know is that i have an extreme recall of many details, but i need a solid trigger to really unleash them.
16) i tend to judge religions and philosophies on the personalities which they produce.
17) i think of my brain as a tool for making living easier (or more difficult) and more interesting. i come up with strange thought exercises that bend my perception, and i think that they have helped somehow, doing something.
18) at some point in my childhood i founded an assumption that i was going to live for 100 years at minimum. i will probably be disappointed if i don't reach that number, illogical as it may seem to my adult self.
19) a lot of times i am frugal to a point of insanity, and it gets a little out of hand. usually i won't buy things at the supermarket unless they are on sale, and i will rarely get a single drink at a bar. if i'm going to pay for it, then i'm gonna go big or go home, as they say. usually i just get nothing, and am pleased with not paying twelve bucks for a minor buzz.
20) graveyards freak me out a little bit. no, seriously, more than they freak you out. srsly.
21) i love to paint (watercolor), but i have seen what the medium is capable of (wyeth) and i am usually disappointed with what i produce. i was supposed to be an artist at some point.
22) i don't think that i have ever really hated anyone for more than an hour, which has taught me what an immature emotion it is.
23) don't take excessive advantage but, if you're my friend and i can do you a favor at all, i almost always will. i try not to expect anything in return but i might call it in someday~
24) my childhood terror was the banshee from 'darby o'gill and the little people'. i saw the movie when i was 3 or 4 and it scared the bejesus out of me. for something like 10 years.
25) i know that i can fit everything i own inside of my nissan se-r. i bet that i could fit everything i need inside of the glove box.
2) my #1 favorite food is fruit. my #2 favorite food is sushi.
3) i wouldn't go so far as to call myself obsessive-compulsive, but i'm certainly compulsive-compulsive.
4) i believe that the world is speaking to us, telling us what to do and how to achieve balance, down to even very specific little things. i believe that it is possible to cultivate one's mind such that the whispers which we only catch hints of from time to time become more like a complete and articulate dialogue.
5) while it may not be fashionable to have an amazing, drama-free and well put-together family, i have one that i am so proud to be a part of and wouldn't trade for the world. they give me ground to walk on when everything else is missing.
6) i really like to quantify things, mostly because i think it is an exercise in absurdity. when it comes down to it, the second best coffee i've ever has was really only about 75% as good as the best coffee that i've had.
7) i've always been a sucker for green eyes. when i was little, i wished and wished and wished for green eyes; mine were brown. i wished hard. in high school, my eyes changed colors and now they are 70% green, 30% brown.
that's a funny follow-up to the last point, but these numbers are actually quite verifiable.
8) i aspire to be great at a lot of things, but most poignantly i will be disappointed in myself if i don't end up writing a handful of books that i can be proud of putting out into the world. if i sell out and write gobble-fiction, that might be even worse~
9) my favorite place that i've ever been to is garden of the gods in colorado springs.
10) my most valuable possessions are my old moleskin notebooks, although i rarely ever look back through them. i would be less devastated if my car got stolen.
11) my dreams tend to achieve a balance with my life. when my waking life is extraordinary and exciting, my dreams are mundane. when my life gets repetitive and droll, my dreams unfold thunderous and colorful.
12) i believe in a deeper order of connections between things than just what we can see, and i have one specific personal and surreal experience which i attribute as the anchor of this belief.
13) i've eaten well over 4000 peanut butter & jelly sandwiches in my lifetime.
14) one of the biggest turning points in my life was when i realized that it is okay to feel sad; that we shouldn't always feel the need to grapple for happiness in every moment. that is one of the most liberating perspectives that i have come across.
15) i have a very irregular filing system for my memory. i haven't quite figured it out yet. all i know is that i have an extreme recall of many details, but i need a solid trigger to really unleash them.
16) i tend to judge religions and philosophies on the personalities which they produce.
17) i think of my brain as a tool for making living easier (or more difficult) and more interesting. i come up with strange thought exercises that bend my perception, and i think that they have helped somehow, doing something.
18) at some point in my childhood i founded an assumption that i was going to live for 100 years at minimum. i will probably be disappointed if i don't reach that number, illogical as it may seem to my adult self.
19) a lot of times i am frugal to a point of insanity, and it gets a little out of hand. usually i won't buy things at the supermarket unless they are on sale, and i will rarely get a single drink at a bar. if i'm going to pay for it, then i'm gonna go big or go home, as they say. usually i just get nothing, and am pleased with not paying twelve bucks for a minor buzz.
20) graveyards freak me out a little bit. no, seriously, more than they freak you out. srsly.
21) i love to paint (watercolor), but i have seen what the medium is capable of (wyeth) and i am usually disappointed with what i produce. i was supposed to be an artist at some point.
22) i don't think that i have ever really hated anyone for more than an hour, which has taught me what an immature emotion it is.
23) don't take excessive advantage but, if you're my friend and i can do you a favor at all, i almost always will. i try not to expect anything in return but i might call it in someday~
24) my childhood terror was the banshee from 'darby o'gill and the little people'. i saw the movie when i was 3 or 4 and it scared the bejesus out of me. for something like 10 years.
25) i know that i can fit everything i own inside of my nissan se-r. i bet that i could fit everything i need inside of the glove box.
January 24, 2009
pocketful of spare change
we hear so much about how limitless the human is
the indomitable spirit
but indomitable is measured by degree of dominance
nothing more
it could extend only just barely past all history,
we slipping gradually towards that breaking wave
of intensity
which will bring us down
will best us
but can we springboard off of each other,
you and i
devise some infinite sonic-the-hedgehog gravity cheat
some method, overlooked,
whereby we can keep rising, *sproinnng!*
we can access the secret areas
and even places beyond them,
beyond borders, limits
beyond plans
if there is such a thing
beyond ourselves
perhaps what so many seek
in nobility, spirit, the like
is succeeding in surpassing limits.
but how we aim now, bumbling
it would be no great honor to make it beyond ourselves
by some oddity of chance
some shortcut; wormhole
we would probably shatter in the higher frequencies
the mind broken
cyclical, like a record.
if we really want to bring ourselves there
and achieve, and feel that achievement justified
irises flaring
it must be slow and steady
we have to know the pain of trying, failing;
the real motivator in learning.
the indomitable spirit
but indomitable is measured by degree of dominance
nothing more
it could extend only just barely past all history,
we slipping gradually towards that breaking wave
of intensity
which will bring us down
will best us
but can we springboard off of each other,
you and i
devise some infinite sonic-the-hedgehog gravity cheat
some method, overlooked,
whereby we can keep rising, *sproinnng!*
we can access the secret areas
and even places beyond them,
beyond borders, limits
beyond plans
if there is such a thing
beyond ourselves
perhaps what so many seek
in nobility, spirit, the like
is succeeding in surpassing limits.
but how we aim now, bumbling
it would be no great honor to make it beyond ourselves
by some oddity of chance
some shortcut; wormhole
we would probably shatter in the higher frequencies
the mind broken
cyclical, like a record.
if we really want to bring ourselves there
and achieve, and feel that achievement justified
irises flaring
it must be slow and steady
we have to know the pain of trying, failing;
the real motivator in learning.
January 13, 2009
oh dear me
dear future self,
do not be whittled, do not submit. be a channel, a conduit; do not be swept. focus, burn it into your memory, focus, use your memory as your bridge to yourself, rickety, earthen, swaying. breathe in colors, sounds, let your mechanisms dismantle them and amorphously absorb them, then breathe them out in positive geometries, vectors, transpositions; planes like photographs, which originally are sharded from a singular moment, now tidally wrapping the contours of everything that you experience, newness stemming from the old, mycelial, hieroglyphic. burst forth with being.
do not be whittled, do not submit. be a channel, a conduit; do not be swept. focus, burn it into your memory, focus, use your memory as your bridge to yourself, rickety, earthen, swaying. breathe in colors, sounds, let your mechanisms dismantle them and amorphously absorb them, then breathe them out in positive geometries, vectors, transpositions; planes like photographs, which originally are sharded from a singular moment, now tidally wrapping the contours of everything that you experience, newness stemming from the old, mycelial, hieroglyphic. burst forth with being.
January 11, 2009
maintenance
one of the most frustrating aspects of adult life, for me, has to be the incessant maintenance required of us in just about everything that we do. this is an inescapable facet, i believe, but i still feel the need to make note of it. it just took me two hours to swap out all the music on my ipod, and replace it with various tunes which i had hunted and gathered like a tribal warrior with a flash-drive spear. there is the endless question of what will and won't make the cut onto my portable music player, because there has to be a delicate balance there....a good amount of organic, fresh produce, which spurs the mind and body in quite a different way than the processed and already-digested music which we have incorporated and cycled into our personalities already. then too, there is the consideration of leveling and balancing the recipe overall, such that you don't end up genre-heavy because you didn't take the time to level off your spoons correctly. nothing worse than a playlist with too much nutmeg in it; it will throw off the whole flavor of your month. then of course one has selected 20 gigs instead of the required 16, and you must go back to pare down the whole thing.
but the point is that this maintenance, constant, is deadening, dulling; it robs us of such vital and diminishing time in our lives. i know some people who relish kneading their fingers into this, but personally i just can't understand it. i want to do, not prepare. probably an immature perspective for me to adopt, but what really is immaturity but an unwillingness to accept the way things are? a healthy idealism has its positive sides, as well. one should struggle to not become to sheepish in their allowances for the intrusion of life's harshness. we probably often put up with much more than we should.
this is only accentuated by the fact that i work at a medical device company, which requires the most stringent of all possible documentation regarding anything that happens in the process of developing and/or selling a product. you can perhaps imagine how frustrating it is to have to do something, anything, and then record it in a particular format.....also involved is knowledge of the format, the medium, the jargon, and keeping an eye out for how to describe something that you would normally just DO, and forget about afterwards.
maintenance creeps into my life from all fronts...there is the keeping up with cleaning, hygiene, paperwork (bank, phone, insurance, taxes, junk mail, real mail, the mail that is kind of real and kind of junk), exercise, diet. these are the realities which are not told to you when you are growing up; they are the chisels of operable society which eventually wear people down into little lumps of their original potential. i know people so involved that they could go for weeks, viably months, perhaps years, of nothing but such maintenance. maintenance and life become inextricable. friends get offended, consciously or subconsciously, if they are not kept up with every so often; i feel it in myself and can infer from that. having many friends becomes a whole system of its own, an solar system in which planets cannot swing too far from your star before they start to drain warmth, before the flora and fauna which grows between two people begin to die off and begin to be brushed away for different climates. a comfort: there are exceptions to this.
what is frustrating about the whole thing is that you can't really understand all the intricacies of something until you dig into it yourself. this makes these mundane preparations and adjustments necessary, to avoid being coddled into a general sense of luxurious ignorance. nobody likes someone who can't do any footwork for themselves, or won't. i recently heard about a service, a help-desk secretary sort of thing, and people are now contracting out this service who aren't busy professionals....some are just average people who don't want to deal with contesting a visa charge, or haggling over a doctor's bill, or going out to buy argyle socks. instead they pay a modest fee to have someone else take care of their busy-work. this sounds fantastic, but also ridiculous to a degree. like trying to buy back time wasted at a different market price. i suppose the real question is, does busy-work really constitute wasted time? so much that i write on here is a direct refuting of typical value systems, which so many people seem to have such an easy time with. i'm not sure what is different about myself, such that i was not able to adopt many of the same systems as the average person. many people would be completely content living on a ranch in a small town, doing work for the day, taking care of children until the night, sleeping in the liminal spaces between. or a law firm; pick your flavor. there's a good chance that i myself could be completely content with this storybook farmhand lifestyle. these are just things to be threshed out, combed for, well, really, whatever i can find of myself in them. what else could i be searching for? there does seem to be a genuine, good, productive feeling that emerges from accomplishing little tasks, or big tasks, which have nothing to do with some transcendental truth or existential realization. certainly those little tasks provide more concreteness, a more solid realization of something than that other, which is a constantly fluctuating field and wavers along with me from hour to hour. but am i conditioned to feel good, to feel justified after a day of errands? have i moved myself any closer to some goal; have i oiled some machinery which aids in that other?
is there a point?
can i develop something, some logic pattern, a cerebral independence, such that it eliminates the need for this? can i exist in two places at the same time?
but the point is that this maintenance, constant, is deadening, dulling; it robs us of such vital and diminishing time in our lives. i know some people who relish kneading their fingers into this, but personally i just can't understand it. i want to do, not prepare. probably an immature perspective for me to adopt, but what really is immaturity but an unwillingness to accept the way things are? a healthy idealism has its positive sides, as well. one should struggle to not become to sheepish in their allowances for the intrusion of life's harshness. we probably often put up with much more than we should.
this is only accentuated by the fact that i work at a medical device company, which requires the most stringent of all possible documentation regarding anything that happens in the process of developing and/or selling a product. you can perhaps imagine how frustrating it is to have to do something, anything, and then record it in a particular format.....also involved is knowledge of the format, the medium, the jargon, and keeping an eye out for how to describe something that you would normally just DO, and forget about afterwards.
maintenance creeps into my life from all fronts...there is the keeping up with cleaning, hygiene, paperwork (bank, phone, insurance, taxes, junk mail, real mail, the mail that is kind of real and kind of junk), exercise, diet. these are the realities which are not told to you when you are growing up; they are the chisels of operable society which eventually wear people down into little lumps of their original potential. i know people so involved that they could go for weeks, viably months, perhaps years, of nothing but such maintenance. maintenance and life become inextricable. friends get offended, consciously or subconsciously, if they are not kept up with every so often; i feel it in myself and can infer from that. having many friends becomes a whole system of its own, an solar system in which planets cannot swing too far from your star before they start to drain warmth, before the flora and fauna which grows between two people begin to die off and begin to be brushed away for different climates. a comfort: there are exceptions to this.
what is frustrating about the whole thing is that you can't really understand all the intricacies of something until you dig into it yourself. this makes these mundane preparations and adjustments necessary, to avoid being coddled into a general sense of luxurious ignorance. nobody likes someone who can't do any footwork for themselves, or won't. i recently heard about a service, a help-desk secretary sort of thing, and people are now contracting out this service who aren't busy professionals....some are just average people who don't want to deal with contesting a visa charge, or haggling over a doctor's bill, or going out to buy argyle socks. instead they pay a modest fee to have someone else take care of their busy-work. this sounds fantastic, but also ridiculous to a degree. like trying to buy back time wasted at a different market price. i suppose the real question is, does busy-work really constitute wasted time? so much that i write on here is a direct refuting of typical value systems, which so many people seem to have such an easy time with. i'm not sure what is different about myself, such that i was not able to adopt many of the same systems as the average person. many people would be completely content living on a ranch in a small town, doing work for the day, taking care of children until the night, sleeping in the liminal spaces between. or a law firm; pick your flavor. there's a good chance that i myself could be completely content with this storybook farmhand lifestyle. these are just things to be threshed out, combed for, well, really, whatever i can find of myself in them. what else could i be searching for? there does seem to be a genuine, good, productive feeling that emerges from accomplishing little tasks, or big tasks, which have nothing to do with some transcendental truth or existential realization. certainly those little tasks provide more concreteness, a more solid realization of something than that other, which is a constantly fluctuating field and wavers along with me from hour to hour. but am i conditioned to feel good, to feel justified after a day of errands? have i moved myself any closer to some goal; have i oiled some machinery which aids in that other?
is there a point?
can i develop something, some logic pattern, a cerebral independence, such that it eliminates the need for this? can i exist in two places at the same time?
January 8, 2009
boards of canada
i am getting my ideas in line and i feel more and more, with what i am learning about writing, that a large project is right on my horizon. my plan currently is to busy myself as much as possible....not only with scribbles, but with music, with language, with art, with exploration (just probably not of an outwardly social nature; had a lot of that already and need to recess a little into my own worlds). is it too much to expect yourself to be able to branch out over multiple projects? i hope not....someone once said to me that if you want to get something accomplished, give it to a busy person. the mind somehow just aligns itself with intention, and piggybacks onto so many other factors involved in motivation. have you ever been bowling, and stared down one of the marks on the lane while you were winding up for a toss? really zoomed your focus down onto it? somehow the ball just finds its way there, as though the ball understands. and it does, in a way; it follows your body which understands intention much better and more precisely than we do. if there is one distinct thing that i have learned from meditation, it is that there is a cleverness to silence, to the absence of thought in its streaming form...silence is a variation on the theme of nature, and its transmission does a lot more good in terms of communication, it seems, than screaming obscenities into the emerald sides of a forest.
silence and writing, though...these two things are seemingly poles of a spectrum. it's impossible to be a silent writer....or at least, if it is possible, i haven't yet been made aware of a method towards achieving it, and wouldn't be certain of wanting it in the first place. the silence is what a writes rallies against and battles, even though really he can be trying to do nothing more than describe it in a glorified manner, if the situation calls for it. thoughts are different for everybody. perhaps silences are one of the great unifiers. at any rate, things seems to be set up in such a way that writing is an immense complexity: it involves finding your center, your calm eye of the storm, and maintaining in it such that you can obtain the perspective that you need to really possess a story instead of being consumed by it, by all the possibilities; to play master instead of minion. jeff expressed it to me quite succinctly the other day...that artistic inclinations are a like a djinn flying free from a lamp. you have to be able to contain them, or they will trick you with their cleverness; they will spin you round and round until you are completely disoriented. they can destroy you as a functional person; look to history if you need any semblance of evidence. but, if you can reign them in, if you can chain them and train them, have them do your bidding without letting them get the upper hand (which their explosive nature is apt to do; dizzying, damaging), then you can accomplish great things and amaze with your originality, with the spells of an unencumbered mind loosed upon the world.
one must know their own limits. it seems that possibility has none, and that it will balloon and balloon, fuming fiery generative on the inside. letting these thoughts pass through consciousness is an amazing and enlightening experience, but training them, focusing them, controlling them, is where one must know themselves or risk more than would be assumed to be at risk in most human endeavors.
it would be easy to write something trite, something book laced with consumption. it would probably be relatively easy to bend towards a casablanca style, a plot-and-drama spurring hollywood locked in verbs. people would read, it wouldn't challenge them very much; this would probably please them, or trick them into thinking they were pleased. but to actually come up with something inspired, something which forays into privately or publicly unexplored territory...this would leave a scorch-mark, and should be treated as such (with caution). it takes great personal fury, and not the angry kind, to be able to spin such a dynamo off of the fingertips. it takes knowing your brain as one knows an instrument. feeling it in the hands, as though it is an extension of you and a clear palate for expression. knowing what keys and chords to hit, and what, in particular, those effects have upon you. how you would steer it, with the wheel endlessly in your hands alone, as it should be.
"life is a blast when you know what you're doing
best to know what you're doing
'fore your life get ruined
life is a thrill when your skill is developed
if you ain't got a skill or trade,
then shut the hell up."
~heiroglyphics - at the helm
silence and writing, though...these two things are seemingly poles of a spectrum. it's impossible to be a silent writer....or at least, if it is possible, i haven't yet been made aware of a method towards achieving it, and wouldn't be certain of wanting it in the first place. the silence is what a writes rallies against and battles, even though really he can be trying to do nothing more than describe it in a glorified manner, if the situation calls for it. thoughts are different for everybody. perhaps silences are one of the great unifiers. at any rate, things seems to be set up in such a way that writing is an immense complexity: it involves finding your center, your calm eye of the storm, and maintaining in it such that you can obtain the perspective that you need to really possess a story instead of being consumed by it, by all the possibilities; to play master instead of minion. jeff expressed it to me quite succinctly the other day...that artistic inclinations are a like a djinn flying free from a lamp. you have to be able to contain them, or they will trick you with their cleverness; they will spin you round and round until you are completely disoriented. they can destroy you as a functional person; look to history if you need any semblance of evidence. but, if you can reign them in, if you can chain them and train them, have them do your bidding without letting them get the upper hand (which their explosive nature is apt to do; dizzying, damaging), then you can accomplish great things and amaze with your originality, with the spells of an unencumbered mind loosed upon the world.
one must know their own limits. it seems that possibility has none, and that it will balloon and balloon, fuming fiery generative on the inside. letting these thoughts pass through consciousness is an amazing and enlightening experience, but training them, focusing them, controlling them, is where one must know themselves or risk more than would be assumed to be at risk in most human endeavors.
it would be easy to write something trite, something book laced with consumption. it would probably be relatively easy to bend towards a casablanca style, a plot-and-drama spurring hollywood locked in verbs. people would read, it wouldn't challenge them very much; this would probably please them, or trick them into thinking they were pleased. but to actually come up with something inspired, something which forays into privately or publicly unexplored territory...this would leave a scorch-mark, and should be treated as such (with caution). it takes great personal fury, and not the angry kind, to be able to spin such a dynamo off of the fingertips. it takes knowing your brain as one knows an instrument. feeling it in the hands, as though it is an extension of you and a clear palate for expression. knowing what keys and chords to hit, and what, in particular, those effects have upon you. how you would steer it, with the wheel endlessly in your hands alone, as it should be.
"life is a blast when you know what you're doing
best to know what you're doing
'fore your life get ruined
life is a thrill when your skill is developed
if you ain't got a skill or trade,
then shut the hell up."
~heiroglyphics - at the helm
January 1, 2009
colorado
consuming, my time.
well it has been quite an eventful trip out here, with many good peoples and conversations. it's the new year now and, frankly, i'm not sure i have been as excited for a year, ever, as i am currently for this one. and i'm not sure that there is anything specific holding it together, in expectation, or setting it distinctly apart from any other. for one, i have started playing more guitar, getting more confident about writing (and myself as a person, for that matter), exploring, and have just acquired the french version of rosetta stone and a multitude of potential avenues of explosion in the form of Reason 4. who could ask for more in terms of potential? my time is, as of now, spoken for. and i think it is likely that i shall emerge much improved (and finally have some things to show for it) after the next twelve months. which is kind of an arbitrary timeline, to be sure, but it seems to be a line that people mentally associate with crossings for obvious reasons, though perhaps it might be more appropriate sometimes if transposed a month or two in rewind or fast-forward~
ducks are in rows. targets are set up.
well it has been quite an eventful trip out here, with many good peoples and conversations. it's the new year now and, frankly, i'm not sure i have been as excited for a year, ever, as i am currently for this one. and i'm not sure that there is anything specific holding it together, in expectation, or setting it distinctly apart from any other. for one, i have started playing more guitar, getting more confident about writing (and myself as a person, for that matter), exploring, and have just acquired the french version of rosetta stone and a multitude of potential avenues of explosion in the form of Reason 4. who could ask for more in terms of potential? my time is, as of now, spoken for. and i think it is likely that i shall emerge much improved (and finally have some things to show for it) after the next twelve months. which is kind of an arbitrary timeline, to be sure, but it seems to be a line that people mentally associate with crossings for obvious reasons, though perhaps it might be more appropriate sometimes if transposed a month or two in rewind or fast-forward~
ducks are in rows. targets are set up.
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