4/13/2020

i believe this is a new day, and i'm not double-posting. but if i am, i apologize.

this morning, there were a few meetings (some of which i failed to remember). those meetings are like faint calls of that other world, the world of responsibility and duty. i hearken to them on occasion. but there is also a kind of helplessness to the situation, and i sometimes capitulate to that helplessness. i lack the firm resolve of youth, i suppose. now, i have other concerns. concerns about what? about maintaining. about meaning. i don't know.

i liked the post by miles maeda, accompanied by the picture of some itinerant zen master in zazen. something about advice to a practitioner. something about how the times of solitude are for getting your affairs in order. in real and practical ways. it's not necessarily of some spiritual quest, you see. it's facing life, in all its boring and terrifying reality. those are the true "demons."

i have demons too, you see. so many of them. the predilection for- i don't know- an ecstatic existence far removed from my own. the obligations that i fail to live up to. the notion of death, and of wasted potential. memories. and an emptiness that i carry about with me. maybe i should speak of the kappa in that sense, that he is an emptiness made aware. you're hollow too, you just don't have it on the top of your head at every moment. people like me, creatures like me, we are painfully aware of such things, of the danger of drying up, or evaporating, or pouring out. we never bow. unless it is worth it.

i worry about my stories, about whether they are any good. i worry about where they are going. whether they are just tiresome stories. or whether they have much of any point. what's the point of my lamentations regarding my brother? is there any real resolution to it, or is it just- i don't know- whyning?

***

death is coming for us all.

***

and before that, old age. well, not true, necessarily. because some die young and beautiful, before the fall. before the decrepitude.

i worry about that. about losing a point. about dulling. once you lose a purpose, you lose a reason to exist. that's what i have thought about. life is best when you can somehow maintain that pressure, even if it is fictitious. for life, in itself, does not often compel us to do much of anything. we are like water that wishes to maintain its "motive force" (i don't know where i get that idea of "motive force"; sounds like a physics or even electronics sort of thing) but is confronted by the resistance of the quiescent water. or even the wayward currents. you want to push towards something, but life is always, if not completely dismissive and ignorant of your wishes, then seemingly active in its resistance...

and so we make up a purpose, over and over and over. life always resists. we always have to come up with the fight to make our control and our intention "real." that is the problem. and it grows so tiring. it wears upon one. it makes one think, "what's the point?" (like again, a dulled needle. where's my point? where's my point?)

sometimes there are feelings that seem to compel one to live. feelings that seem real. but as i grow older, maybe hormonally deficient or something, sometimes even those feelings just seem less compelling. and if that wellspring truly dries up, if all feeling becomes bland and insipid and lifeless, then, well, where is the life? what is the reason? then we live for principle or for the benefit of others or something dry-boned as a zen master.

i like the image of zen masters, because they seem to posit a life beyond what we would normally consider life. i mean, for one thing, they're monks. i mean, duh, how could you exist without sexuality? especially as a younger man, i would always gripe about that, even as i sought that life. i was still entranced by women, and believed they held some secret key to truth, or at least happiness. now, i'm not so sure. women are definitely a draw, but they are just ordinary people too. they haven't any particular monopoly on wisdom... so if you come looking for it, for an "answer," you're bound to be as disappointed as anything or anyone. and maybe it's true of the zen master too. in the end, the truth you own is the one you must work for. i guess that's the only real thing i've learned.