12/28/2021

as each day passes, the dreaded approach of work gets closer... i enjoy this idyllic time away from those hard responsibilities... abundant food. but nothing to do except what i want to do. i get to explore my interests. i get to relax into myself.

last night, i had a pretty freaky dream. it was mainly freaky because i spoke (shouted) out loud in my sleep (according to my wife). there was this room and i saw a screen or something, and a shadow across it. i had a sense that there was a great evil that had possessed the screen. so i and two other people, i believe my wife was one of them, were about to enter the room. i told them that we had to say this prayer or something, in order to exorcise the evil spirits. so when i walked into the room, i was full of fear, but i was trying to shout the words of this prayer. and i could feel my voice get muted by the shadows, so i struggled to say things louder... and just as i was about to repeat everything, i guess i woke up- or maybe was woken up. my wife was saying that i had shouted in my sleep...

i just finished watching salman rushdie's masterclass. he had a lot of great insights. one thing he said was that you should decide whether you are a minimalist or maximalist. i guess i would class myself as a minimalist. he also said that you should decide whether or not you're a planner, or whether you like to improvise. i would say that i rather like knowing where i'm going, as long as it doesn't deaden the journey, if you get my drift. another thing that he said was that you should get close to the bull. i suppose he got this line from ernest hemingway, who used to watch a lot of bull fights. what he meant was that, when you write, you should do something dangerous. dangerous in terms of subject matter, or maybe artistic danger, meaning you are attempting to do something highly incongrous or challenging... and finally, he said something about how you should just get rid of things that aren't working. don't really try to fix things. just get rid of them...

maybe that last would be helpful, if only it didn't lead to me just ditching projects...

*****

i still hate my brother. i'm trying to meditate on it. but it's not like it leads to any sort of solution, in that there's no way for me to "feel good" about it. it's the same way with republicans in general, i suppose. i mean, perhaps at one time in the past, there was a way to appreciate their views, their conservatism, their stances on freedom of business, etc. but now, it's simply wrongheaded, and dangerous, and there is no reasoning with them. so i can't just "feel good" about them, or let it go. i mean, i can refuse to take responsibility for everyone, and i can simply focus on my little corner of the universe- and being good and kind to those "under my watch." but somehow, the hatred has a way of insinuating itself into everything, polluting everything. i can hold the feelings, and my reactions to them, in a dispassionate way... and when i focus on the "moment," i can sometimes divorce myself from the "meanings" that people and ideas are supposed to hold... i think, at times, that that is the relativistic versus the absolute understanding in buddhism (and the nondual understanding that they are not in opposition to each other)... i worry at times that going too far in blanking my feelings will make me lose touch with people. i worry that i am just not compassionate or caring, and that i do things out of an idea of caring, but not out of genuine feeling. i worry at times that i don't feel much of anything any more. and that becomes problematic for writing, because if you don't feel, then you can't write and make anyone else feel. you'd be faking it all the time.

*****

maybe i am faking it all the time.

*****

from the absolute perspective, there is no point to life... in that there is nothing that i can do that will really have lasting (eternal) significance. but i do them anyway. it's like that line from the soul asylum: "you can't believe in yourself. you can't believe in anyone else. so why sit and wait for the new world to begin?"

*****

for me, perfection comes in feeling the current of life run through you. it comes in isolated moments, in blind tasks, that i can imbue myself into. there must be a tension, or rather, a pressure, in the flow. in order to feel it, there has to be that pressure/tension. if you withdraw the goalposts, and make the end interminable, and you eliminate the simple point, then things go slack, and there is this feeling that "anything goes." i don't like that. i distrust it. i find it messy. some people might say that there is liberation in that, but i guess i'm a planner, and i guess i like to know where it is i'm going... despite my longing and wish that i were a romantic individual, i really am not. my only strength is i like to please people, and will immerse myself in the pleasure of the moment- the blindness of it, the feel of the skin of another's soul... the current of a dance... and maybe i am that way with life as well, when i can feel it.

i like- or i idealize- the moment when i can make someone happy. unquestionably happy. but i don't necessarily think about "what's best" for someone...

*****

what is it i'd like to say? i'm not sure...

12/21/2021

it has been quite a year... i feel tired and overwhelmed. i just want to drown in the simplicity of every day life. there are always things to take care of. there are always things to worry about... lately, i've begun to feel the weight of time... like, i recall thinking of investing in the start of a project, and then worrying about the regret i would feel in a year, or two years, or more, years wasted of a life rushing to its end. somehow as i get older, the activities that i partake in have more weight. or perhaps they should. or perhaps they shouldn't. but in any case, the question has arisen. when you've got less gas in the tank, then you really start to think about where you're going, and whether it really is worth going there.

in my last writing, i wrote about how my heart is incremental. and i think it is... i long for a quick stroke of brilliance, like writing in some luminescent, silvery ink, a wound across space and time that would be immediately recognizable and palpable. but i am not like that, i don't write like that... and yet, i was thinking that art is not life, and that if i am not like that, then perhaps i need to really meditate and peruse my thoughts, and distill them to a heightened purity that can then be expressed... that's the idea, anyway. to be honest, i haven't really worked that hard on my writing. there have been so many- SO MANY- other things to worry about...

i think- as i often do nowadays- about sexuality and intimacy. it is a funny thing. it's an analog to life in general, i feel. if you don't feel it, if you don't feel turned on, then you simply can't play. you aren't interested in playing... if the river of life doesn't fill you with its current, if you don't get pulled and pushed and tossed by it, then... in a sense, you aren't alive. and anything you say or do- well, your words will be "dead in the water" so to speak, heavy stones that aren't moved, and do not move... you can't turn someone else on, if you aren't already as well... i also thought about that aspect. to sit apart, uninvolved, to feel a kind of quiescence and peace and stability- these are things that are desired, in this chaotic world- but at the same time, that sort of stance would negate the possibility of participating in life... at least in a way that is authentic.

and as i get older, i realize the futility of that, the sexuality of it all (which, as i said, is an analog for other things). it is a dying light, the last flickering of a flame in the winds of winter. and yet, i cling to it. for what alternative is there? i know, there will come a time when it will all snuff out. and then it will only be the pale shifting insipid light of memories, the ignus fatuus, that will glow about and above me like the stinking false fires of the dead... but in this moment, i will live. and i will help others to live. to feel life, to feel alive... i am still on this side of the divide, and i will burn it up with all the passion that i can muster...

*****

i have been thinking again about amphibians. creatures with "two lives," that can live in water and out of water. but instead of being an advantage, these creatures are half alive. they are never master of their element, but captives of it. they can never leave water fully behind. and instead of dominating both realms, they are prey in both realms. true, their life cycle embodies a complexity that is absent in other species. but what gain is there in that complexity?

in the same sense, we have words like "ambiguity" or "ambivalence." to be two is not to be better. if anything, these result in a cancellation of motion. a lack of clarity.

when i speak of my heart, i understand that i am, like a frog, an amphibian. i understand two realms. i feel two currents. but instead of gaining anything from this, it always makes of me an insubstantial being... i cannot be purposive without questioning purpose; i cannot "simply be" without feeling i am wasting my time and life. there is no simplicity of being in me, there is always, always, always, a relentless questioning and mockery...

i wish i could convey this in a way that would be understandable and "clear," but in every expression there is that ambiguity that both is an expression and betrayal of the message.

11/30/2021

i've been reflecting on why i tend to be so incremental about things. it's like my heart doesn't have the capacity for grand emotions. i can only capture fragmented moments, little vignettes. sometimes they pretend at greatness, sometimes they can be evocative, but they are like the broken fragments of a mirror, capturing only a tiny portion of some larger, unguessed image. i can't see things whole. i can't feel things whole. in narratives, as well, i cannot envision the entire arc of the story. i can only capture brief snapshots of things, snippets of conversations, etc.

i have wondered why my heart is like this. i have often spoken before about how different i feel. or rather, how i don't have the capacity to feel. how my impressions are like these muffled vibrations... i am guessing at a message whispered through a concrete, unfeeling wall.

i have blamed people, like my brother, for this. i have said that my brother took the "high path" of feeling, the place where he is allowed to complete the circuit of his desires, and express his thoughts in arcs of neon, impossible to deny, impossible to ignore... whereas i am like a morning fog... if i act, it is without apparent intention, a molecule here and there, until i obscure vision...

yasunari kawabata wrote a book called the "master of go." in my mind, i envisioned it as the conflict between my brother, who is forceful and violent in his assertion of his desires, and the "master," who is inscrutable, ordinary, and who works "in increments" that are hard to read. the book chronicled the loss of the master to the "new way of playing," the style of logic and "strategy" (in a derogatory sense). i have always liked to believe in the master's style, of living in a way that was at once both natural and simple, and intuitive and impossible to read or defend against... again, like the morning fog... before you know it, formations have arisen from the mist... i have longed to be that sort of way. the way of intention, it has always stunk of my brother... i have always claimed that my brother "stole" that pathway from me. he was the "king of the hill" with regards to his desires, so i had to learn to walk a different path. i blame him, but at the same time, i wouldn't want to, or perhaps, i wasn't capable of, being like him...

i blame him, because my way of being, of living, of conceiving, of communicating, is likely frustrating to those around me, and to myself. my own desires are always muted, or unsynchronized. there are times when i wish i could have been like me, when i could feel my own desire clearly like a broad river of light, connecting me with the world... i wish feelings could flow from me with the force of their own pressure. but the current within me is weak, meandering, mysterious... sometimes stagnant. but mostly subtle to the point of dissolution... and i hate that at times.

this makes me kind. in the sense of harmless. but i am not the "bold" kindness, the kind of kindness that demands gratitude. i have always preferred to help people and disappear in the helping. because frankly, any sort of praise stinks of my brother's way of being, of him interposing himself between the sun and the earth, as though it were he that was the blessing that kept the fucking universe alive. i HATE that. i don't know exactly why i hate it so much, especially because i long for myself to be like that in certain moments to free me...

because i am the way that i am, i have always looked to others to "free" me... to "read" the subtle inscrutable feelings that i myself have a hard time feeling and freeing, and to thence translate me into some clear message of love. it was always good intentions, after all... and i felt that if only someone could feel my signal, then i would be understood, and a circuit could be closed... but no one has the time or capacity to do this. angels, maybe... but no one real, no one human. and to be honest, i'm not sure if they would be reading something within me, or actually rewriting me into some sort of figure that i really wasn't. that's the thing about fog and clouds. it's all subject to interpretation... maybe only a reflection of the shape of the observer's mind... maybe that's all i am, is a shapeless, formless thing that just longs to be solid, held... but which is only a transitory phenomena between falling water and rising water...

i don't know how to write any more. most of the time, purposive writing, writing to complete a play or a story, it just seems to "lose its steam." again, i think i'm not meant for long form (or even short form) narrative. it isn't how i live my life, or experience time. i am fragmentary... and i don't know how to accurately capture that in narrative form of any length... i have ideas of how to write with my heart in it, but most of the time, i have a hard time even feeling if i have a heart. it is so distant. it is so frustrating...

it would be easier if i really didn't have a heart, but i do have something, something with inertia and weight, that resists all efforts to move indiscriminately... it is like a heavy bear tied to a chain or something. i can't speak to it, and it could kill me or eat me, but it mostly just sleeps, and keeps me from moving forward... it is my burden, my weight. yes, that's what my heart is like sometimes, a grumbling mass, sleeping and reluctant and indecipherable.