On the Responsibilities of the Artist

This world cannot survive on the concept of the "starving artist", no matter what romantic quality the notion has. We live in a time in which it is necessary that we do what we are most capable of doing (given our interests and talents and inclinations) in order to benefit the world in the way that we feel we, specifically, may best be able to. We need to view this time as an urgent time. We cannot afford the luxury of apathy. We cannot, for example, be content with being a "teacher" just for the sake of being a teacher - for the sake of taking comfort in knowing that we have a specified and defined place in the world - but rather we should be teachers in order to encourage excitement and passion for learning in our children and in the children of others.

There is nothing cutting-edge or revolutionary about being an artist just for the sake of calling yourself an artist. If you choose to dedicate your life to an art, you should know exactly why you have chosen to do so, and you should know what you want to say with your art, and you should dedicate hours of each day or any free moment you have available to your craft or your medium. If an individual only paints or writes or acts or takes photographs or plays his instrument once in a while, yet chooses to be an "artist" by title, so that he can really just be a burger-flipper and make himself more interesting or seemingly-progressive by labeling himself as such, he is running the risk of insulting both his craft and his culture. He is giving the artist a bad name, and god knows the artist already has a bad name.

The artist takes on the role of serving as a conscience: A conscience for technological advancements, a conscience for politics, a conscience for world events, a conscience for societal occurrences, etc. The artist takes it upon himself to serve as a mirror, on which the world may be reflected in a way that is honest. Art is an arena in which facts may be presented as they are, not as they have been chosen to be distorted. Art is feared, because it can expose some of the ugliest aspects of politics or humanity, and it can do so in a way that is able to effect people of all sorts and of all races and of all classes and of all sexual orientations.

This is a huge responsibility and it is a role that should not be taken lightly. To abuse this responsibility is not only to throw away an opportunity for positive influence, but it is also to aid in the death of the artist as a universal concept. True, the desire to create is innate, and cannot be removed from the human soul; but funding for the arts, and peoples' receptiveness to the arts, and space in which art can exist are all things that can be taken away, and they are things that will be taken away. The artist is already viewed as a threat to many corners of society, for the artist questions that which does not like to be questioned. To be a lazy artist is to be what these corners of society want you to be. To be a lazy artist is to deface what art should be and render it something more of a facade; something that is less threatening to political regimes or large-scale consumerist mentalities or giant corporations. This is what they want. Granted, they do not want you to be an artist in the first place, but if you must be an artist, they would quite you to be a lazy one.

If you even suspect that you may not be able to make a living off of your art, then why spend the time that you already know you must devote to work on something that you do not believe in; something that benefits humanity in no way? Sure, some people can't do much more than flip burgers, and that is all well and good because most everybody has to pay rent, but if you think you are capable of more, you should attempt to do more. If you think that you are capable of more, you have an obligation to do more. "More" can be any number of things. If you are personable and think that you can make someone's day better by kindly serving them coffee, then perhaps "more" is something as simple as being a barista. But if you think you could do something bigger, then you should. Even if art is your first priority, it is a given that paying rent is also a priority (albeit a lesser one), so why not make that which pays the rent (if it cannot be the art) something worthwhile and meaningful? There is no reason not to do this, and a fear that there will be no time for art is unjustifiable. Most jobs that are, as I have said, "meaningful", pay somewhat more than jobs of the mundane variety, and thus fewer hours will be required for a larger amount of money: money and time that can be spent on the creating of art.

If you can afford to live without having to work, and if you choose to make art, then this is fine. But if you need to work in order to support yourself and your art, then getting a job that somehow benefits humanity in a more relevant way that renders you a part of something other than a machine whose parts are human beings is very reasonable, and the act of doing so requires no sacrifice at all. If anything, it requires less sacrifice.

We cannot afford to have lazy artists if art is all that they have chosen to do. We cannot afford to have art become something that is commercial and bland. We cannot afford to let art be a route towards social esteem and popularity and nothing else. We cannot let art be pursued only by those who do it in order to achieve some kind of status. We cannot afford to let art be separated from the arena of intellectualism. We cannot allow our art to be uninformed. We cannot use the "artist" label as a means by which to feign progressivism without really doing much of anything for the world except for supplying hungry capitalists with hamburgers. We can't afford to give the artist a bad name. The term "artist" should not be thrown around haphazardly. To be an artist is to take on a series of important responsibilities. We cannot forget this, or we will allow something else entirely to be superimposed over the concept of "art" itself, and the original purpose of art will be forgotten.

On the Search for Understanding

Is it possible to come to understand what it means to be human? It seems that it would take lifetimes to even know which questions to ask, and if an infinite number of subsequent lifetimes might eventually cause us to arrive at some kind of an answer or explanation, it seems likely that this explanation will be as complicated as the question; as complicated as the subject that we begin with. Imagine a huge stadium, with a single pole standing in the center of it, and all the lights shut off. If individual after individual comes to the stadium and throws a stick in an attempt to hit the pole, he will neither know whether he has actually succeeded in hitting it (for it is dark and it is so far away), nor will he know what to do with himself after he has hit it. Furthermore, if an individual thinks to turn on a light, it will most likely be long after many sticks have been thrown into the stadium, obstructing the view of the pole altogether. If the pole symbolizes knowledge, then an attempt to come to know it will result in repeated attempts but confusion as to whether contact has been made. If the pole is exposed, it will be so cluttered in "sticks" thrown at it by humans that its true nature will be veiled anyhow. This is a poor analogy, but to some degree it illustrates the idea. The explanation of what human nature is will thus require another series of explanations, and so on (if you will, a figurative digging through the sticks), and by the time some kind of success is achieved, human nature will have changed so much that the results will not be accurate anyhow, nor will they be representative of human nature (unless there are those constants that remain true from generation to generation, not varying in degree and never shifting). A system as complicated as the system of the human being (mind, body, and soul) cannot be examined or understood except with a system equally complex, and it seems that, even if the desired result were to be achieved by way of millions of human beings working on answering different parts of the question ("What does it mean to be human"), there might not even a mind so advanced as to be able to comprehend and fathom this answer in all its complexities. The answer might be clear, but so complex that it makes no sense to us, although we have aided in reaching it through our work on various aspects of it. It seems likely that all the tools are here for us, and all the necessary answers provided, but it is too much for us to begin to understand the ways in which they all connect to one-another. Perhaps this complexity, and our inability to comprehend it except by the application of equally-complex-procedures or processes, is human nature itself, and perhaps in this way it is simple: Human nature is to be aware of the limits of its scope of understanding and yet to attempt to understand things anyhow; to attempt to break out of the constraints of the self and the constraints of society. This in itself is arguably something that not all humans undertake, for some seem to favor comfortability. And even if an individual does come to understand, perhaps it will be more on an intuitive level than anything else, and thus it will be impossible to express or explain to others. Furthermore, perhaps something about the nature of total and complete understanding leads the individual to be secretive about it; to see that there is no value in sharing the "secret" of existence with others (or even to see fault or danger in doing so). If this is the case, those who achieve ultimate understanding may never share what they know, unless they have conflicted interests that create a want for money and understanding both, but I find it unlikely that such a person with such divided interests will be able to come to understand much of anything at all.

On the Putting to Rest of Previous Pursuits

To make the decision to dedicate one's life and one's time to one thing and one thing only is to systematically kill all prior attachments to every other thing that person has ever loved. It might be argued that: no, every thing that the individual has ever been passionate about is of importance, and these former passions must be honored, for such passions for such energy can be redirected and channeled into the one specific, chosen thing. This is false. Some prior attachments, if not cut off, will haunt the individual in the form of guilt, or in the form of incessant what-if's, sometimes to an increasing degree as the individual strays further and further from that original or former thing. The energy expended in such regrets is equal to or greater than the energy expended in the pursuit of the selected thing itself, and because of this, the individual's ability to pursue his selected end is inhibited; his focus clouded. Such a scattering of energies can lead to an absolute check-mate and standoff: A three-way hold-up in which each has a gun pointed at his head and each holds a gun up to another's head. In order to move forward, two of the three attachments (or however many there are, be they former objects of fixation, or passions, or goals, or ideas) must be gunned down, so that one and only one may remain standing. If none are gunned down, and all remain, each of these will exist in a constant state of fear, and each will vie for dominance over the others, sometimes in a sneaky manner, so that energy may be taken out of the pursuit of one as with a sieve, so that the individual does not even notice that his entire heart fails to devote itself to that thing. The slaughter of former pursuits must be merciless and must leave none standing. The more thorough this spring cleaning process, the more devotion the individual will be able to apply his chosen end.

We see these symbolic deaths in other arenas of our lives that are thought of as being separate from the arena of goal-making. We see this happen in relationships. When a relationship is started with a new individual, and when the self chooses to devote himself to this new person, he makes a conscious decision to one-by-one toss away residual feelings for people from his past so as to make room for love for this new person. This process may happen in several ways: It may be done in a method of reverse chronological order, killing off attachments to the most recent "exes" first, and then in time the exes of a more distant past, and so on. It may be done, alternatively, by order of necessity: That person from the past who is most in the forefront of one's thoughts, more than the others, must be disassociated from first, and then those who are less on one's mind may fall victim to this process of detachment, and so on, in decreasing order of presence-in-the-mind. This is because, in some cases, the most recent past-loves are the most thought of (particularly with individuals who tend to have predominantly long-term relationships); whereas for others there are specific people who are harder to disassociate the self from than others.

A goal, or an endeavor, is not so different from a romantic relationship. Many undertakings of the vocational variety are pursued as the result of a conscious choice to do so. The same may be said of romantic pursuits. On the other hand, many vocational goals are forged almost accidentally and subconsciously, mainly in those situations in which the individual finds himself extremely passionate about something, without seeing this passion slowly creep up on him, and finds himself in such a state of passion that he cannot stop himself from pursuing this vocational endeavor because his heart is already too much in it, by no choice of his own. The same happens in romantic relationships, when the individual finds himself already completely swept away by another individual without having premeditated on the notion or without having even predicted the notion.

The process of detaching one's self from former goals and pursuits, vocational or otherwise, is also similar to the process of "getting over" lovers of days long past. Pertaining to the method of this systematic detachment, the order of operations is much the same, and can occur in reverse chronological order or in order of descending importance, or impact on the self.

It would seem that there are healthy and unhealthy means of detachment from these former pursuits. Each detachment must be taken on as a task that must be done thoroughly, yet carefully, so that nothing remains of the desire for the former, and so that the process is clean and smooth. However, it must also be done in a way that pays enough honor to the former pursuit so that the self feels justified in this killing and feels at peace with the notion of moving on. I liken these detachments to death for good reason. Each detachment must be honored with a wake of sorts, so that the self's past interests are respected and laid to rest. If this is not done correctly - for example, if the self is too hasty in his detachments and too thorough in the process - the individual's sense of self will be scattered, and his acquaintance with his former selves will be either nonexistent, or chaotic, or of a hateful nature. The individual must take care not to detach himself from a former endeavor in any way that encourages a harboring of resentment of that prior pursuit or that prior self. This will defeat the purpose of the detachment altogether, for the energy that will be put into this resentment will be as powerful as the energy expended thinking about that past purpose before the process of detachment was undertaken, if not more powerful, and thus the balance of energies will be just as off-kilter (or even more off-kilter) as it was to begin with, when the need for detachment was recognized.

Perhaps there are some attachments that are beneficial and can serve as catalysts for future undertakings, despite the conflict of interests that may manifest. For example, there could be a situation in which the prior pursuit of a career goal was so traumatic that it actually gave the individual a kind of uncontested determination; a determination that the individual chose to apply to a new endeavor. In such instances, perhaps the memory of this previous undertaking should be retained, if it provides fodder for the present or future pursuits. The individual should take care to weigh the balance of the situation, however, and should hold onto a prior attachment such as this one only if it is deemed truly beneficial. In most cases, past attachments to pursuits or endeavors require a lot of energy and may take away from the present regardless of how much the regret of the past may stimulate future progress.

These detachments, or "deaths", should be treated as real deaths, in that that which is lost should be mourned, and should be celebrated. Furthermore, the past undertakings should not be thought of as concepts that must be replaced, but rather as separate entities that served their purpose, and inspired the individual, but are now gone. Just as an individual should not forget a beloved who has passed away, so should he not forget a former aspect of himself that he has buried and put to rest; but conversely, the individual should not dwell on the loss, but should accept it as a natural, albeit sorrowful, occurrence.

If the individual does not put to rest completely the notions of those things which he no longer actively pursues, he will be quite literally haunted by them. They will seek to take up his time and his attention. They will attempt to be prioritized as they once were. They will make him hate them when he acknowledges their existence, especially when he sees how little they resemble what he once did. The individual owes it to the honor of his own self, and to his past, to let them move on and to let them rest. It is common knowledge that the archetypal ghost can take massive amounts of energy from the individual that it haunts, as is well illustrated in the novel "Wuthering Heights", in which Heathcliff is haunted by the ghost of his former love, Cathy. He is haunted by her ghost because he asks to be. He cannot bear to part with her, yet seeing her in her ghostly form torments him because it makes him aware of the dissonance that exists between her form as a ghost and her previous form as a living being. The same thing happens to individuals who try to hold on to their prior career goals, or life goals, or plans. They will be pained to see how pale such undertakings have become due to their neglect, but they will still possess such love for them that they refuse to let them be at peace. Pursuits of the past must be laid to rest, for in doing so they are not forgotten. This process allows for the individual's energies to be applied to new, tangible pursuits: Things that are not tainted with regret or failure, but things very much alive and possessing much potential to flourish for many years to come.

On the Crystalization of Personality and Resulting Patterns of Behavior (unfinished)

The passing of time unveils how the individual comes to know the self. This coming-to-know of the self is visible in the observation of the refinements that come about in certain behaviors of the individual. This means two things: A) In some situations, the individual may be rendered, over time, more likely to act in a specific way in a specific situation repeatedly, with less variation and with more consistency; or B) In some situations, the individual may feel more at liberty to act in a way different from the way he has acted in the past in a similar situation. Neither of these can be the case in and of itself, in the exclusion of the other, but the types of situations in which Phenomenon A will occur, as opposed to those in which Phenomenon B will occur are necessarily different sorts of situations.
The former occurs as a result of individual having become, over time, more familiar with his “personality”; one aspect of which is demonstrated in his predisposition toward forming certain kinds opinions or coming to certain types of conclusions on a whole variety of topics; or his tendency to act in a certain way in a certain type of situation. However, a familiarization with the self eventually can lead to an increase in confidence, which can subsequently render the individual more willing to relinquish the control that he has previously held over himself, free himself of self-imposed or society-imposed constraints, and in this way free himself from his binds.
Phenomenon A usually (although not in all cases) pertains to situations of opinion, whereas Phenomenon B more often pertains to actual situations in which opinions may be put into action. Phenomenon B can be more fluid (that is, the individual’s behaviors may be less predictable) because it has less to do with opinions, which become rather cemented and solid, for the most part, and more to do with situations. Just because an individual has strong, solid opinions does not mean that he or she will necessarily act in a given way in a given context 100 percent of the time. In fact, the stronger one’s opinions, and the greater the individual’s abilities are to connect his opinions in fluid network system, the more he will be able to see the infinitude of outcomes of his actions, leading him to understand that there may be, in some cases, enough variables to render his decision less important, and to render the force of chance more important. With an awareness of such, he may feel more at liberty to act randomly. Because of this phenomenon, the individual with a greater awareness of his self (including an awareness of his opinions and inclinations), and of his self’s interplay with the world surrounding him, may be less likely to act in a specified way in a specified situation, and more likely to act sporadically. My thesis, then, is as follows: A greater understanding of the self is not inextricably linked to a greater tendency toward certain behavior, unless this inextricable linkage is negative relation in which a greater understanding of the self leads to a tendency to act in a less predictable manner in specific kinds of situations.

February 2008

ON VACATION AND CIVILIZATION (2005)

We, as members of the human race, are active and willing participants in what we so proudly and lovingly refer to as “civilization”. We speak of it with pride. It is the absolute sum of our ancestors’ toil, tears, premature deaths, and bloodshed. It is the culmination of years and centuries of trial and error, mistake and solution, shame and retribution, and also careful calculation. Thus, silently, we insist that it works. Not only do we stand behind its effectiveness, but we seem to stand behind the notion that it is the only option. Our reasons for this do not seem to have to do with necessity, but rather they seem to be built out of pride and the desire to have some sort of larger whole on which to cling. We seem to seek society and civilization’s support and encouragement and acceptance of our selves in the same way that we seek the same from our own peers and family members. We even fund it, through our tax dollars, and in doing so we put our trust into it. And so why should we not uphold it? Has it not served us well? Most would say yes, but how can this be known when none of us have any knowledge of what our existences might be like were it not present? And, despite the words that seem to show our support for it, do we actually love it as we really should, considering how much we put into it and how much we are a part of it (though perhaps not in the ways that we should be)? Naturally, we like to believe that we do not simply speak well of it because we have to. We like to convince ourselves that we truly are willing to stand behind all the praise that we allot to our society; that we believe it and that this belief is instinctual. Perhaps we need to believe that we do, in fact, think highly of it, because we need to be able to justify our participation in it, our work for its cause, and our lack of retaliation against it. Truly, the fact that it is so instinctual is what scares me a bit. The word “instinct” connotes a lack of premeditation on a topic, a lack of careful thought (or any form of thought at all), and a reliance on tradition without regard to situation or tangible evidence of cause and effect.
Not all of us participate in Civilization in the commonly-recognized way. There are the Amish. There are the Menonites. There are those who choose to live alone in cabins in the mountains, if they are fortunate enough to find property that they can afford in such rustic locales, or if they are sly enough to make their home on public land and somehow avoid the governmental radar and Eviction Man. There are those of us who choose an alternative route, in an attempt to remove ourselves permanently from civilization, but even in the act of refusing to be a part of it, we are further promoting it, for we are strengthening the line between it and that-which-is-not it, and making it more present and apparent simply by giving it something to be in contrast with. There are, too, those of us who leave one civilization in favor of another (or one country in favor of another), but in actuality, this seems to actually help that civilization which is left (and, presumably, despised or disliked) to flourish all the more, for it removes those members who would pose a threat to it (those who might be able to provide balance through their own defiance, or those who would dull the blade of that which they do not support) and it increases the predominance of the sort of mind that supports and creates the very entity that they so loathe. Furthermore, those Creators of the Loathed will have less of an awareness of the fact that their actions or ways are not fully supported, and because this lack of awareness denies them of their very conscience – one allotted to them only to their extreme dismay, but present nonetheless – and as a result of this, there might be less of a moral presence involved in their actions, and they might feel more able to do what they had done before (and what they had done that caused those who left to do so) since they will then face less criticism and anger in doing so.
It seems to me that there is something lacking in our civilization. This conscience, of which I just spoke, is part of this void, and the other part of it seems to be tangible products created by those who compose this conscience (when I speak of a “conscience”, I mean a collection of individuals, emotions, ideas, publications, teachings, etc. that counteract that which is predominant and keep in check the decisions made by those who support this predominant way of being): art, literature, love, philosophy, etc. These things do exist, but their importance seems to be too often ignored, or they seem to be too often turned into commercial objects used to in fact support the economy and, subsequently, the part of civilization that they originally were created in order to counter. Many things could be held responsible for this phenomenon (this commodification): Andy Warhol, because he mastered (and preached to others) just how an artist might turn himself into a brand or a product and make money by doing so, or the media, for blurring the line between entertainment and criticism/news. It is odd that the attachment of money to these armies of the conscience (do excuse) has, in many cases, lessened their influence and effect. It seems that the opposite should be the case. Instead, it seems that the result has been this: some artists, writers, and thinkers make a great deal of money, and get a lot of attention. Because of this, others are ignored, and therefore this conscience is less accurate, for it is representative of a smaller number of individuals/groups. Sickeningly, those of which it is representative must, therefore, also be those who are best at stepping on others to reach the top, those most concerned with money, those most conscious of what the targeted audience wants to see (and therefore much less likely to be controversial in any way), and those most willing to kiss ass. I’m not sure how most of us feel about this, but I certainly do not find this sort of person to be the sort best suited for the job of countering such large establishments/entities as the government or society or lazy, conformist modes of thinking.
What evidence, you ask, do I cite in order to conclude that civilization is lacking in some way? I suppose one primary form of evidence to this fact is this: such a thing exists as a vacation. If we lived in a society in which we were perfectly content, would we still feel the need to get away from it? Vacation seems to not only be an escape from the workplace, for again and again we hear the catch-phrase, “get away from it all”, when people speak of their reasons for vacation. They do not say, “get away from my job,” but “it all”. Unless I am mistaken, this means all of it, nothing excluded: everything! Does this mean that there is not one thing in our lives that we are able to consistently participate in without feeling the need to leave it? Is it simply that we require an outside perspective in order to make sense of the sphere of existence that we normally dwell in? The most likely explanation of the need for vacation seems to be this: we are not comfortable or satisfied with our society or our civilization.
Since we built society (we being the human race), should not we have built it in a way that we might be content with? Since we built it, does that not mean that we have (and have always had) absolute control over its form and its purpose? Why is it not enough then? Or is it too much? I am only able to draw from these questions the suggestion that perhaps we, even when given complete control, are not able to create what we want or need for ourselves. This leads me to assert that we must be unaware of what exactly we do want and need.
Perhaps we are better off creating for ourselves a world that is not comfortable for us anyway, and perhaps, then, my complaints are counterproductive. Additionally, perhaps we know this, and we are subconsciously doing what is best for ourselves as a human race. This could be the result of that concept of the collective unconscious shining through, and the presence of a care and compassion for the human race and for the future of the human race, existing within this collective unconscious. Let me explain myself. A state of discomfort could be a good thing for both the and for humanity as a whole, in quite a few ways. First of all, discomfort keeps humanity active. Think about a chair in a restaurant: If the chair is uncomfortable, we eat faster and leave the restaurant more quickly, or we seek a more comfortable chair with which to exchange the awkward one. If the chair is comfortable, however, we remain in it for long periods of time, even after we have become bored of it or idle in it, as long as we want, sometimes even long enough to fall asleep in it, just because it is more comfortable than most. Using this metaphor, we, as a society, have no other “chairs” to go to (aside from other civilizations or countries, something I already discussed, and many of which are very similar in make to the original), so we simply take breaks from the “chair” that is our society, and return to it again and again. What happens between turns in the chair seems to be essential and important, for we keep doing it. We seem to be sitting in uncomfortable “chairs”, and by my logic this would lead us to believe that we make more progress, and are less stagnant: we “eat faster”. But this metaphor seems to be almost too appropriate, for quick eating also brings to mind something else: poor digestion. We are, perhaps, working harder because we are not comfortable, but we don’t seem to be analyzing or justifying the work that we do. This seems to be a dangerous hypothesis.
Don’t we need to be uncomfortable in order to move forward; in order to progress as a society? Do we intentionally build ourselves a hell, so that we feel the need to leave it, solely because leaving it is the only thing that might keep us moving? Is not the movement out of a place a more desperate form of motion than any other? When we have something we feel strongly to be bad, are we not more motivated to change it? Discomfort makes us aware of the areas that desperately need attention and change, and it does so in a much more effective way than comfort ever could, doesn’t it? If we dwelled in a Utopia, we would see nothing that needed to be changed, and we would become bored, and it seems inevitable that this Utopia would be more of a Hell than Hell ever could be, simply because in Hell (that is, in a place of discomfort), we are able to be optimistic and we are able to have hope. These are two things that may be more important to all of us than the present actually is, and more important to us than comfort. In this so-called Utopia, all we are left with is fear and pessimism: pessimism, which exists due to the fact that the only direction we have to go is downwards (into a more negative, horrible state), and fear, because we have something that is as good as it can be and therefore we fear the loss of it. Any individual, it seems to be true, would rather be consumed by hope and optimism and upward progress than fear and pessimism and a feeling of lack-of-control and inevitable-decline.
But what if stagnancy is a good thing, and not a bad thing? What exactly takes place between turns in the “chair” of society (that is, during vacations), anyhow? Is it something more along the lines of rest and respite, or is it something more along the lines of mobilization: mobilization of thoughts, emotions, and needs, and the putting-into-order of these things? And what if the breaks taken from the “chair” (the vacations) are just turns sitting in other, more comfortable “chairs”? What if mental action requires physical rest? And what if the contrary is true? Do we not, then need both work and vacation, action and idleness; time to sit in a chair and time to be away from it? Perhaps balance is the key, and not a preference towards mobility or immobility? If this is the case, still something is awry, for the time that we spend on vacation is not remotely equal to the time spent laboring.
Furthermore, it seems that the exclusive focus on one kind of labor, or one facet of one specific branch of work, is limiting, and limited. Vacation (I dislike using this term because it implies that what happens during this time consists only of slacking, schmoozing, and wasting time), if participated in for longer periods of time, would lose the stigma that it has of being a time of idleness, for the human mind dislikes idleness, and individuals would fill this free time with work and action, therefore rendering this time not very idle after all. Even better, the work done here would be, perhaps, more meaningful, both to the worker and to the world as whole, for in his relaxation, the vacationer might contemplate where he might best apply his vacation-time work. Because it is entirely up to the vacationer, he is most likely to choose a vacation occupation that is most necessary, fulfilling, applicable, relevant, and useful. I do believe that each member of a society, if respectful of the society, and if optimistic as to the society’s potential, has in him a desire to better this society, and to work for the good of all. We need a break from society in order to possess this respect for it, and we also need a break from it in order to use this respect and apply it to whatever work we might do to fill our time. If the respect is great enough, the work will most likely be something that gives back to the said society, and in this way the exchange between individual and society will continue to flourish and be beneficial to both. If, however, the individual does not have a break from society (or “civilization), and if he is unable to find time to step away from it and see any importance that it has in his life, he will come to loathe it with all his might. My logic runs in parallel lines to a basic psychological principle that states that, when given a reward (such as a vacation), the recipient of the reward will gain respect for the person or thing that bestowed the reward upon him (in this case, society). I suggest that our civilization does not do enough in the way of rewarding the individuals that make up its whole being, and as a result these individuals are somewhat ambivalent towards it or even unappreciative of it, and feel no desire to give back to it or improve it, even though it is something that is truly theirs to use and possess and improve. Even worse, perhaps, they seem to take on the attitude that civilization, as though it were a human being in and of itself with emotions and personality all its own, feels entitled to something that each individual must give to it, as if in payment. The individuals, having not had time to reflect on why it might be respected and why it might actually deserve such payment, are not eager to fulfill this assumed entitlement, or even grow spiteful of the fact that Civilization seems to feel entitled, and they, therefore, do the minimum to give back to Civilization, or do nothing (if they can get away with it). It seems that they do not realize that they are unknowingly making the world in which they must dwell a more miserable and less inspiring/fulfilling place to be, which greater increases their desire for those much-too-short-vacations which are not what they should be and do not allow the individuals time to use them for what they really could be used for and certainly not time to gain a respect for that which they are vacationing from. As a result, this cycle continues, and the loathing of civilization continues, and the workers become more begrudging and irritated, and both Civilization and Individual feel that they are not receiving that which they want and that to which they are entitled. The outcome of such a cycle can only be a drab society, perhaps sprinkled with individuals who feel passionately that they must fight to keep it from being drab, yet these individuals also feel intense frustration, for they are surrounded by other individuals who, instead of sharing this passion, look at it as a weakness, or perhaps look at it as a respect for something that does not deserve respect (because it does not give them enough time of their own).
If we are, as we seem to feel, truly in control, why would we build ourselves something that we must run from? Is it simply because we are bored? Are we masochistic by nature, with innate desire to inflict pain on ourselves, because this pain gives us something to react to (and we react more strongly to pain than to joy)? Is the action of reaction the only way in which we feel truly busy or productive or useful?
Here I bring up another possibility. It seems that we build civilization in the image of ourselves, in order to accurately reflect ourselves. Is this because it is our selves that we most love to gaze lovingly upon, but this is not considered something that we should do, so we transfer the torch-bearer of the Self to that thing which is Society? What does it say about our feelings regarding ourselves if we must escape from that which represents us? It seems to say that we feel we must escape from ourselves, and in fact we do seem to feel this way (hence the use of alcohol and drugs and the existence of irresponsibility, tendency toward accusation and finger-pointing, and other means of escapism). Perhaps we intentionally build a civilization that serves as a reflection of our flaws, that we must escape from, so that we can deal with the acceptance of our own flaws in a way that lets us treat these flaws as something very much removed from ourselves. If this is the case, then it seems logical that we should keep doing so, unless it is healthier for us to deal with the recognition of our own flaws in a more personal way, acknowledging their attachment to our selves and acknowledging the fact that faults are our own. But perhaps we would not deal with these faults at all if we did not build ourselves reflections of them to gaze upon and run from. I suppose the danger lies here: the way we perceive ourselves differs from the way that we are in actuality. Because of this, we might build a society in a false representation of ourselves, and therefore our analysis of this society and its errors, and the relation of this society to the self (whether this happens on a conscious or unconscious level) might turn out to be misleading and also counterproductive. Also dangerous seems to be the fact that, since the conscience of society is impaired (as I said above), we tend to focus on the praise of our society. If we are praising a false representation of ourselves, we are being delusional and ignoring issues that must be addressed. However, if we are praising accurate representations of ourselves, this is just as unhealthy, for we are being entirely narcissistic.
If we do, in fact, create civilization in our own image, do we believe ourselves Gods, or like to think of ourselves as Gods? Just as God created Adam in his image, we create cities and systems in ways that seem to reflect ourselves. We seem to worship society, and in turn worship ourselves, and thus we practice idolization on a daily basis, but not simply idolization: idolization of the self. Nothing can be learned by looking only at the self. Since we do not truly understand the nature of society, nor do we like it (as is confirmed by the concept of vacation), we seem to be basing emotions as strong as those of faith on concepts that are unstable, and we seem to be building our lives and goals and heroes upon concepts that are convoluted.
This brings us to another point. It is apparent that vacation itself is often an escape not only from the social and mental aspects of civilization, but also from the physical manifestations of civilization: tall buildings, crowded streets, traffic light, loud noises, and similar entities. That is, we often go escape to nature. Since vacation seems to exist primarily to supply us with that which we are lacking, at least for a short while, it seems that nature must represent all that civilization lacks. If we build civilization in our own image, it seems that we must like to be surrounded by our own image. What if, then, nature represents or reflects some part of the self that we are unable to fully portray in the part of civilization over which we have control and artistic license (this part being our cities and social, political, or economical networks)?
Perhaps this is wrong and the opposite is true: we go to nature because it does not remind us of ourselves. Perhaps being in a place less like the self allows us to more clearly see the essence of the self, for in seeing what we are not we are able to better understand what we are. Perhaps nature serves as a marker which we are able to examine and with which we are able to measure just how much we have deviated from it; how unlike it we have become. This would explain why vacation often leaves us not rested but instead more depressed than prior to the vacation. Does vacation just remind the individual of how unnatural he has become, and how little he is able to relate to the natural world from which he sprung and from which he was born?
There is a different way to interpret our reasons for escaping to nature. Maybe we escape to the wilderness because something in each of us is aware of the narcissism of society and aware of the falseness of society’s portrayal of the self (existing because of the discrepancy between perception of the self and actuality of the self) and subsequently the convolution of this narcissism. If this is true, and if we are aware of this, it seems likely that we might feel the desire to go to nature in order to see a portrayal or the self that is not created by us, or by one of us, and is therefore completely honest (this is if nature is seen as a reflection of the self), or perhaps simply as something other than narcissism: something entirely unrelated to the self (this is if nature is not viewed as a reflection of the self).
Sometimes, we vacation to places that are not actually more natural than the place from which we come, but simply different from it: sometimes different to a very small degree, but just different enough to make us feel as though there has been a change. Taking into account this, and also taking into account our frequent vacationing into nature itself, it appears that the desired destination for vacation is, above all else, any place that is different. This makes sense, for a place that is different allows us to examine the self in a new way, or to perhaps get back in touch with the self. It is similar to the act of viewing a paper cutout of a certain color against a background of another color (or of the same color, if the surroundings were fashioned to represent the cutout). When the color of the background is changed, the cutout is emphasized and altered because of the now existent contrast where previously the contrast was different.
It is difficult to determine whether civilization or nature might better reflect the self. In both, we see ourselves in parallel form. In both, also, we see something that is not us, and this simple perception and the recognition of this dissonance, in a backwards way, also helps us to better understand the self. It must, therefore, be possible to get to know the self better in either the city or the country; in civilization or in nature. It also seems that an important factor in getting to understand the self is just the change of environment (the frequent instances of getting up from the uncomfortable chair and taking a break from its pain). How might the city man’s way of knowing the self differ from the country or forest man’s way of knowing the self? Are these two types of men able to coexist? What of the man who exists in both the city and the country: does this man understand the self better than either the city man or the country man?
If nature does, in fact, reflect man, by an equal degree to that by which civilization reflects man, then it must be concluded that nature is the most accurate reflection of the human race. I say this because nature is something not created by men, and therefore it is not built upon distorted or inaccurate views of the self or, even, overly-prideful or egotistical views of the self which are extremely inaccurate and cause the “reflection” to be something other than that. It becomes less of a reflection or a parallel and more of a foolish portrayal or twisted lie.
Perhaps we can learn more from nature, whether it reflects us or not, because we learn more, about our selves and about the world around us, when we are not simply gazing at our own reflection, no matter how distorted the reflection might be. What can be gained by looking at only what we are already familiar with (the self)? Nature provokes us to do otherwise.

Thus, we are not only active participants in the human race, but also in a long-standing tradition known as escapism, which is perhaps becoming less infrequent and more essential.

ON THE APPLICATION OF ONE'S ENERGIES

If one devotes his life to a cause, must he choose between: a) living body and soul in a way that allows him to move toward his goal with every action he undertakes (if this is even possible), or b) divide his energies and live his life with an awareness of his tendency to repeatedly distract himself from his goal, and thus live with the guilt that he inflicts upon himself as a result of the faltering nature of his attention and work-ethic, or c) recognizing that even those actions that are seemingly ineffective - with regard to the attainment of his goal - may actually cause him to work more effectively when he is working directly toward his goal, because such "distractions" improve his mind, by supplying it with a diversity of stimulus on which to fixate, and refresh his attention-span by way of providing his mind with breaks that may keep the information and thoughts required in the process of working towards his specific end from becoming dull and from being abandoned altogether.

If the latter is the case (that is, if distraction is actually beneficial), then should distraction be sought out in extremes, or in ways that are purely mental, or in small quantities? Would huge distractions lead to huge amounts of mental rejuvenation, or must a balance be sought? Should distraction only be sought in the mind, and should every kinetic or tactual activity pertain only to the desired end? Or do activities and undertakings that extend beyond the mind, and subsequently to the body and one's actions, provide the mind with more inadvertent inspiration than thoughts alone? Can any of this be known, or must it be guessed at? And is trial-and-error even an option here, or will it create a pattern that may or may not allow for the greatest amount of productivity and may or may not be able to be altered or broken? As with most things, it seems that balance is probably best, although I must admit that I constantly wonder whether I should eliminate friendships that do not directly inspire me or aid in my work, even if the notion of doing so seems brutal and unkind.

Furthermore, if one's goals may (potentially) do any good for large numbers of people, or have any kind of positive effect on the world that might be more beneficial than friendship itself in some way, then doesn't one owe it to the world to pursue these goals instead of fleeting friendships, just because of the chance that they may be able to, in achieving or pursuing their goals, maximize their potential for positive influence on the world? Is the risk worth it? What if one fails in one's goals and also isolates his or her self? Then he or she has had no influence on others in a positive way at all.

Perhaps some people don't have much of a choice, and can only be pleasant company beyond a certain casual degree if they are simultaneously pursuing larger goals with potentially larger influence on mankind, because their disposition is such that they are unhappy or grumpy when not pursuing such things.

On an (almost) unrelated note, does prejudice stifle or feed the human will to produce or create? In a Darwinian sense, it seems that those who are persecuted are likely to want to reproduce in abundance (sometimes regardless of whether they can realistically support their children). Does the same happen with regard to ideas or creative/mental/philosophical endeavors, or does biology overshadow such "luxuries" as art and thought? Also, if injustice does encourage mental and creative progress, which in turn encourages cultural and political progress, then perhaps it is a positive thing in some way. I'm not saying that huge injustices or prejudices should be condoned or even tolerated, but this is still interesting to consider.

ON THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE, POSSIBLE WORLDS, AND IDEAL WORLDS

Might the attainment of knowledge be potentially precluded by the search itself? It seems possible to me that knowledge - true knowledge - can only be arrived at by way of accident (although accident of the kind that has probability on its side and will most likely occur, unless it is actively sought out). It seems likely, too, that this knowledge, which is stumbled upon by the non-seeker, can only be stumbled upon as such if information uncovered by those who do seek is made available to them. Then another question surfaces: Must this knowledge be presented in a disguised form? I ask this because it is a known fact that the degree to which human pride keeps the common individual from being receptive to knowledge attained from others is quite extensive.

If this is the case, then a) knowledge, as an end-product, must be comprised of parts, and that b) these parts must be supplied by those who actively seek knowledge (perhaps aware of the futility of this search) and presented perhaps in a disguised form, and that these parts must be stumbled upon by someone who is inactive in the search for knowledge and subsequently, only by accident, and only by those who do not seek it out, can knowledge be obtained.

Another question that might be raised as an aside: If the seeker does not seek knowledge, per se, but rather scattered information, can he come to attain knowledge? My answer would be no, for if the seeker takes the time to think, "Why, I will not attain knowledge by looking for it, so I will look for it in pieces," then he is still consciously searching for knowledge and only succeeds in redirecting this process and, in doing so, masking his ultimate end. The seeker cannot work backwards: If he has begun his searching with a desire for knowledge, then he has already affirmed the fact that every action taken thereafter, however disguised, is in some way an effort meant to actualize this goal. These pieces, from which the mentally lazy may accidentally benefit, can only be produced as excrement forged in the process of seeking knowledge: Not knowledge as may be found in small pieces, but the grandiose, ever-discussed Knowledge, with a capital K.

The seeker, then, is able to continue this process of seeking only by telling himself one of two things (and if he does not, he will have a hard time justifying to himself the seemingly-pointless way in which he passes his time, and will, in finding that he cannot shut off his mind and halt its progress - however slow or misdirected this progress may be - wish himself peace in the form of mental quietude, or death, but will likely choose neither): a) that he will defy the odds presented by case-studies of brooders from the past, and be the first to come to some kind of end-point in this quest for knowledge, not through managing to stop his thoughts, but rather through the process of cognising itself, or b) that it is noble and altruistic to seek out knowledge and produce information that may subsequently be useful to those who do not yearn for the attainment of what it may give them (that is, some kind of epiphany), and that it is either his contribution to society and culture, or his obligation, or his destiny. It is almost impossible for a thinker in the truest sense (that is, the thinker who makes not only habit but also past-time or career out of such mental searching) to be ambivalent regarding the fate of his world, for it is only natural for one who spends so much time thinking about the intricacies of his surroundings to become inextricably attached, emotionally and mentally, to said surroundings. Furthermore, the thinker, through the process of considering all possible worlds, cannot help but imagine the best-possible-world of all of these, and he will make it his task to figure out how to make this world exist. Furthermore, he will be unable to imagine that this best-possible-world might only benefit himself (i.e., a tropical paradise in which food is plentiful and work is unnecessary, but only for him) because his thought-processes will inform him that the potential for the absence of guilt is, in itself, enough reason for him to wish such a paradise on all of his peers and cohorts, inferior or superior (or obliterating such concepts altogether) and thus he will idealize a world that is best for all, even if such a world might be possible only in lowering its perfection for him as an individual (for it seems there must be some limits on happiness for one if happiness must be had for all, just due to personal differences that exist between people and the need for compromise that such differences presents).

The philosopher may be further pained in realizing that the best possible world is not one that provides maximum happiness to everybody, and that the concept of love alone (and the subjectivity of its nature) is enough to keep the highest degrees of happiness from ever coming to exist, and furthermore he may be pained in coming to realize that the only recipe for an ideal worlds seem to be either: a) A world in which everyone has an equal level of happiness and responsibility, in which this level of happiness is as high as it can possibly be without infringing upon the happiness levels of others, or b) a world in which everyone reaches their peaks of happiness at different times, in perfect increments, so that the same number of individuals are happy all the time, and happy to the highest degree, and then later becoming less joyous so as to allow others to be their happiest for some time, in a cyclical manner. It is human nature to need some kind of occasional dominance or superiority to be happy, especially if they see others with power or superiority. Since we are already aware of such a concept as superiority, we as individuals will crave it, and we will not be content never experiencing it, and thus the second possibility for an ideal world (that supplies maximum happiness to individuals in various increments) most likely and realistic and applicable.

If we could all wake up in our respective time-zones one day and have no concept of inferiority or superiority, then we would never crave to experience the latter, but since the presence of human memory keeps this from being possible, we are left with no possible utopia except one that allows for rotating shifts of inferiority/superiority or dominance/submission, or we must create a world in which people truly feel that their lives are more meaningful if they are the underdog in either of these realms.

ON BEING A GHOST

I watched a movie in my old bedroom on my laptop. A black and white movie. Black and white, but not old. New. I watched it, and my mind wandered from it as I tried to discern whether I was hearing raindrops or heavy footsteps behind the soundtrack to the film. Heavy clumps of rain, or the heavy clop of feet on cement. I couldn’t be sure, but as I looked out the window, half-anticipating the image of a man of some sort heading down the driveway in the dark, I imagined that I needn’t be afraid, because I no doubt looked like a ghost from outside that window, to someone looking in on me. I no doubt looked like a ghost, sitting there in the dark, lit up by the white glow of my computer, perhaps flickering a bit due to the movement of the film, sitting very still and looking very solemn as I did. It is comforting to realize that you look like a ghost to whoever might be looking in on you. It is comforting to appear frightening. It is comforting to appear unreal. It is comforting to be illuminated and fearsome.

ON THE METAPHORICAL DRAGON

in a world where man has long since gone, or where man has never existed, a dragon stands alone on a stone cliff overlooking a valley of lush falling waters, and ferns that open and close with the sun in a symbiotic dance, and scurrying animals that cannot be discerned from bits of brush blown by the wind from such a great height. the dragon is silent, and it is proud, and it lays its weary head on its talons and turns its head to scare away butterflies that greet its snout. it is weary of killing, and it is weary of hunting. it is weary of chasing down its food. 

the dragon refuses to move. it lies still for hours, which turn into days and eventually into weeks. it's eyes become dry from lack of water, save that which falls on its glistening scales during midnight rainstorms. it cannot reconcile its soul with its ferocious body, and when it rains, the dragon is able to cry, because its tears are disguised by the rain. only the insects that swarm around the dragon's thinning body can tell the difference between the salty dragon tears and the fresh rainwater, and they bathe in the tears of the dragon and swim in it and when they leave they have absorbed some kind of blessing and fierceness that they will forever retain.

the dragon has never seen another dragon like itself. it has seen other scaled beasts, and other dragons, but none that it can fully relate to. the dragon has spent its life killing, as is expected of a dragon, but in each kill the dragon has difficulty coming to terms with the scope of his own power. how can it be that he, red-scaled ugly majestic beauty of a being, has the power within him to take the life of another? the days of taking lives in order to fuel his own, without finding anyone to give life to, take their toll on this dragon's swelling heart, and the more he killed and the more he sat alone and the more he contemplated, the more his heart felt too large for his body. 

the dragon became unable to cry. he hoped for rainstorms so that he might again be able to weep, but the rainstorms did not come, and the tears did not come. he was hungry, but he did not notice, because there was a hunger in his soul far greater, and he knew he could not move until he was able to discern how this hunger might be fed. he watched lightning stretch from the eye of the sky down to the cracks in the earth, and it created more cracks in the earth, and it split trees into hundreds of pieces. the dragon, from his great height, watched the great trees fall, and the dragon watched an entire valley below him catch fire. it seemed that nature, too, had an ability to take life from the forest, and so in this way the dragon found an alibi in the lightning, and his growling belly found an alibi in the rumble of the dry nights.

as hard as it was for the dragon to watch his kingdom burn, it gave him a sense that he was a part of things. there was something bigger than him that could do more destruction than he ever could, and for some reason this convinced him that he should honor his own life and, in doing so, honor this bigger thing. honor the lightning and the mightiness of the earth and the earths temperaments. he crawled on his belly down into the valley, his wings too weak for him to fly, and he rested his long neck and nose in a swampy bit of water, his teeth catching grasses on them that he would have to untangle himself from. he drank the cool water of the stream there, and just across the stream was a wall of fire. it had burnt everything, all the way to the river's edge, and this river, that encircled what had been his kingdom - his jungle - was now a domain of fire, encircled all the way around by a river, and thus isolated to this specific area. the dragon drank from the stream, and blinked his eyes against the heat of the fire, and he could feel the water grow warmer even as he drank it. frightened fish swam below him, and he lifted his neck to the heavens that were lit up by flame and exhaled a long, mournful wail to the night. 

the dragon caught some fish with his talons, and after eating until he could eat no more, he curled up near the fire and slept by the stream, knowing that the water near him would keep him safe from that which the lightning had ignited, so near to him. 

at dawn, he awoke. the fire had died down, and remaining were smoking trunks of trees, and a few lone vultures screaming high above his tail, and a bit of pink visible through the smoke above. invigorated, he lifted his body and stretched. he was determined to live. but the only land he had ever known was burnt, and it was gone, and it was transformed. he did not know where else to go. and he did not know what he would do when he got there. and so he picked a direction, randomly, and lifted his tail proudly, and marched away from the dwindling flames out onto a vast playa, not sure whether he would ever reach water or food or nourishment. his pace was slow due to days of weariness and lack of sleep, and he lumbered on, empowered, toward an empty horizon in search of something that might remind him of the self that he had not yet been acquainted with. he lumbered off, and the sun burnt his scales and dulled them over their gleam, and he blinked his heavy lids and continued walking: the only dragon in the world to walk forever, somehow resilient and somehow determined to cover the whole world with his steps, not in order to find anything but more in order to make sure that he was right in thinking that he had nothing left to find now that his kingdom had been turned to ash, and coal, and one day into diamonds.

and what mattered was that he had some will to roam, even if he did not have any hope of finding something. perhaps this was why the quest was beautiful, because it meant that anything that he might find would be so startling and shocking in its existence that he would be rendered all-the-more delighted to find it, all-the-more awestruck, and all-the-more grateful. and what mattered was that he sensed that there might be something there. the evidence rolled off of his back like rain and did not matter to him, because what he felt inside was a discovery in itself, and perhaps he only wandered in order to create musings about his own internal discoveries, letting things find him if they would but never expecting much from anything other than his own self.

ON BEING ALL AT ONCE

Suddenly, I am all things. I am an old woman running naked from a burning hut, carrying a child that is not mine but which I have found. I am an old woman with weathered skin, and I am crying for the child's loss of mother and father, not because I knew them and not because I am afraid, but because I am that child, and I have lost my parents simply by growing up. I am the child, crying too, not for the loss of my parents because I am too young to know, but because I am seeing flames for the first time. I am a neighboring villager who has forgotten how to cry, and instead of crying I am beating the dirt with my firsts and screaming, not because of the fire, but because the land is barren and the crops will not grow this year. I am beating the ground because the earth has failed me, or as is more the case, I have failed the earth in asking for it to provide that which it cannot. I am the earth, crying in the form of rivers that shoot over stone faces of rocks and fall recklessly on the rocks below. I am the rocks, and I am older than I know, and I have no hands on which to count my age, nor eyes with which to watch the sun come and go. Yet I feel the water on my back, and it reminds me that this - this is life, in every form, and so long as the redwoods die I will not forget that life exists. I am the redwoods, and when I was young I was surrounded by the others, but now I have grown so tall that I am alone up here in the air, and my years are passed by watching the birds come and go, and feed one-another, and flap their wings at one-another in attempted declaration of dominance of the sky, a realm unable to be dominated by any one being because it is all-encompassing. Most of all, I am vastness, and space, and something that is able to exist only in the absence of other things: something that fills space up with its presence and because the clouds make room for it, we know it is there. I am tiny, and I am humble, and yet I feel surrounded by things so much bigger than myself, and it is this state of being surrounded by things that have a sense to them, and an energy to them, that reminds me of the preciousness of everything that surrounds me. Not only stones come in the precious variety, but also experiences, and also people. And this gift is worth more than ten-thousand lifetimes of accumulated gold and riches because it is something that can be transferred to the rest of the world and to the people around me, not through trade or economy but through love.

ON THE INDIVIDUAL'S RELATION TO THE WHOLE

if universal change happens by way of internal revolution in each individual who makes up this universe, then it would follow that universal regression happens by way of fearful backtracking within each individual. if the world is to be changed for the better, each of us will have to let go of our fears not by dismissing them, but by looking them face-to-face and using the understanding of what they are to fight them and to strengthen our ardency in those areas in which we have no fear. imagine what could be if each of us embraced absolute honesty and compassion, and created something every time we felt inspired to do so? what if there were no schedules to keep us from leaving classrooms and lying on the grass every time we felt the need to breath in some sunlight? we created things like schedules in order to maximize our cultural freedom by working together to accomplish shared goals. instead, our shared goals have become contorted, and although this perhaps makes us realize our individual goals with more intensity due to the obviousness of human desires for freedom, we forget the simple fact that individual life-cycles are the same as global life-cycles, just broken down in to smaller, more easily-examined segments. our individual goals are held back by the hours of work, but perhaps this is a good thing because it forces us to realize the importance of those things that are our own (and thus everybody's) that exist beyond the arena of scheduling: art, and conversation, and vision, and dancing. every interaction that an individual has with any one thing is an interaction with the entire world, because the way one interacts with one thing will affect the way that thing interacts with other things, even those things that the individual first mentioned will never ever see or know or witness. in this way, we are far more connected than we realize, and if we are able to let go as individuals of the need to witness first-hand exactly how and in what ways we are able to affect the world, then we will be able to focus that energy into our crafts and our words and our love and our selves, instead of into the act of grasping for footholds on cliffs that have none, because they are ever-changing. a foothold that exists one day will not exist the next, due to our own influence on everything and the subsequent influence that everything else has on each other thing. each of us creates the reality of our world, and sometimes we forget that. perhaps each person in the world and each being in the world is like one tiny cell in a larger organism, except the difference is that each of us cells is conscious and soulful, and thus the larger organism is conscious and soulful and as complex as the product of every mind and spirit in the world multiplied by every other mind and spirit in the world, and then put through a giant machine of circumstance and storm and seasons to render a result that changes as soon as it is manifested. the very act of something being created changes everything that came before, and changes the creators. just as that which is examined is necessarily changed due to its being examined, everything truth or thought that is spoken is, by nature, transformed upon its becoming a part of the world. people do not necessarily speak things in order to help others think about things that they have never cognized. instead, people, in speaking things to others, only make others reexamine or put into new words or recognize something that is already somewhere within their soul or psyche, and similarly the person who is spoken to may change the speaker's notion of that specific thought because his association with it and his idea of it is different than the speakers, and may come from the opposite direction of a line of reasoning, yet end up in the exact same place. and yet this place, too, is transient and is no longer the same place once the thought is spoken and heard. all of our thoughts and ideas are like some large swelling ocean whose shore is constantly being altered by the rearrangement of stones and sand and the decomposition of stones into sand (things broken down into parts) and the re-forming of stones over a much, much longer period of time. our sea is simultaneously boiling and freezing over, and for good or for bad it is as alive as it has ever been, because no individual can help but be a part of every other individual no matter how hard he tries to be insular. we are constantly and accidentally and purposefully reshaping one-another's minds and hearts, and in this way our selves and our beings are fluid and absolutely connected to one-another. each of us is one note on a violin string in a neverending symphony, and even if some notes are more noticeable than others, the symphony itself would not be the same with any one note missing, and the importance of every other note is affected or diminished or heightened when any one note is lacking. it is obvious, but it is important.

(October 2007)

ON DEJA-VU

the most intense feeling of deja vu that i've ever experienced was, as is fitting, a kind that happened again and again throughout my life. i still experience it occasionally, and it's always so familiar that it throws me off for a moment. the paradigm that i know of what is real and what is life is shaken and i am, for a moment, in some in-between realm, where time is irrelevant and where logical thought cannot enter. it's not a deja vu of a place, or of a person, or any kind of sensory experience. it's a deja vu of a feeling, and of an inner murmuring that is so tangible and yet unrecognizable all at once. it is a feeling that is very-much there, but as soon as i notice it, it vanishes, like a deer that has been spotted by a hunter and decided to run. as soon as i focus the inner-dialogue of my mind on it, it flees to some earthy cave where it cannot be seen. but somehow its presence echoes after it is gone. like the sound of perpetually-moving hooves.

the strangest part of the feeling which i speak of is that it is something living and breathing and seemingly organic, existing within my mind but not created by my mind. it enters via its own will and leaves when i recognize its presence. the best way i can describe it would be to compare it to some kind of rambling series of sentences, overlapping one-another, in a language that i do not know but which is somehow familiar to me. words that are almost discernable, but which are just out of reach, like a word that one tries to grasp in order to make a point but cannot manage to summon from one's mental dictionary. imagine standing in a crowded room with walls that cause the words of the people to echo, unable to make out what they are saying, but able to recognize that they are not speaking english... it's something like that. 

this feeling has come to me only at times when my mind is very relaxed and somewhat detached; in my most deeply meditative states of being. the most apparent time was when i had a canvas set down on the floor of my old livingroom at my mom's house in nevada city, some time in the cold of winter, on an afternoon when i was home alone. i had been painting for longer than i had in a while, hours for certain, and i had stopped thinking in sentences or thinking about my past or even thinking directly about what i was doing. i think my mind was absolutely clear, and my painting was directed not by my thoughts, but i swear by my soul. i've reached that sort of empty-yet-full place many other times, while playing guitar, or more often by composing piano pieces. i have one memory of writing a song at a point in my life when i was close to tears, on the piano, hitting the keys so hard that the joints of my fingers hurt, and whilst playing glancing out the window on the front door to see orange and gold leaves falling from the tree outside in a diagonal dance toward the earth. 

yet i have not experienced that FEELING during all the times that i've been in that place or state of mind. it occurs rarely. it's as if i am turning a radio dial in my brain to a station that picks up the sounds of everything going on the world, ever, at any point in time, all at once. or it's as if i'm hearing some language long forgotten that was used to talk about things that we can't possibly talk about in any language utilized today. i think the deja vu comes from the fact that i seem to remember hearing similar sounds in certain meditative states long ago, when i was a little child, as i was drifting in to sleep or as i was waking. i've experienced it since while waking or dozing off, and the stark familiarity of it is so apparent and certain that it shakes me awake entirely in its total lack of foreign-ness. 

i used to think a lot about how art is a more direct form of language that can be used as a filler for that which conversation lacks in its capacities. as if a child, before learning to speak, does not separate inspiration from love from thought from expression from emotion, but instead ties them all together and experiences them as one. perhaps if we did not categorize such things as expression and emotion and feel the need to either apply language to them or separate them from language, our actions would be truer to our earthly insincts or feelings. or perhaps our creations would be more directly linked to their inspiration, and would more directly affect the viewers or listeners or participants in whatever is being created or formed. 

it's not so bad that there is a dissonance between feeling and word, or feeling and art, or feeling and thought; because we attempt to amend that dissonance, and in this act of attempting, we form beautiful connections and we create amazing things. or in this act of attempting, we come up with ideas, or express ideas, and these things in and of themselves are catalysts for positive change, and connectedness, and for making sense of the self and its place with - and not separate from - nature, and other individuals, and energy and love itself.

i used to talk a lot about how good i am at missing people, and missing places, and missing towns or forests or hillsides or moments. i think "missing" is the wrong word, because it has such a negative connotation. it is because of the amazing people i have known that i am able to recognize amazing qualities in the new people that i meet. and it is because of the amazing experiences i have had that i am able to know what is possible in the world, and know what humanity is capable of, and not settle for losing that idealism that i think is the fuel for change and progress. and i think progress is too often linked to a forward-motion, when perhaps more often it should involve a process of recognizing what really matters, and what really is meaningful, and sweeping away that which is not meaningful to make way for the new, or to seek further inspiration, or to seek exchange of ideas.

i'm not looking so much any more for understanding, or for certainty, or for peace of mind. i'm looking to fully delve and jump into the confusion of everything around me and let it take me under like violent ocean torrents and spit me out where it will, because any place that the tide takes me seems to be a place that has something to show me or something for me to experience. i don't want to hold fast to anything in my life: a place, or a person, or a notion of who i am. i want to be able to adapt as a bird does to new climates, and yet i want to fully be in and experience every place where i dwell or where my feet leave marks in the dirt. i want to learn a kind of respect for things around me that respects them for being comrades in this big circus that we are all a part of. and i want to encourage growth in others as much as i encourage growth in my self, even if that means cutting the cord and freeing myself from some safe womb in which i find myself. i don't want to fly from something once it starts to feel comfortable, but i don't want to use feeling comfortable as a reason to cease adventuring and growing and being in an absolute state of awe.

laughter has become a daily ritual for me, and in this i find a lot of peace. strangely enough, the thing that brings me the most peace of mind as of late is just the realization that things will happen to me that i cannot anticipate, and that however my story will be written will be honest and real in a way that it could not be if i attempted to direct its course. a river that takes its own route is far more beautiful than one shaped by man in order to be more condusive to bridges or roads or towns, for reasons that cannot be understood. there is no exact quality about that which is natural that makes it any better than that which is unnatural. but there is a certain beauty to chaos itself, and randomness, and uncertainty. and finding familiarity everywhere in this uncertainty makes uncertainty not an unwelcome thing, but something more like a necessary and comforting thing, as if every swell of a river is speaking in an ancient tongue and saying, "i told you so."

(October 2007)

ON EXISTENCE

To feel and experience the past, present, and future in every second of every day, all at once... To slay time itself with an iron sword and lay the sword down in the moss by bare feet: a moss that will never cover the blade itself because it would take time to do that. And were has time gone? It is slain. It never was. It bleeds. And yet it always was; and always it will abide. I'm dreaming, these days, of vines and ferns, and wet soil that smells that way it tends to... Soil rich with worms and insects and whispering its secret to those who roam on it: Below it, deep below it, there is fresh water. I'm dreaming of loud birds breaking precious-yet-soon-forgotten silence with the beat of double-wings. Frightened animals running for cover and then forgetting that they are afraid and stopping to drink from a brook. Taking a second. Gazing off into the middle of space just to make room for a thought or a song. Dreaming of a hunger, and a thirst, and a silence and a calmness. Animals attacking other animals. Animals attacking men. Men fleeing and forgetting they are afraid and then stopping; making art and making poems and making love. Mud huts and raw sweat and fluid words and fluid tongues. The gritty, and the earthen, and the bark-laden, and the sorts of souls who look much like gnarled trees when standing, silhouetted, in a darkened forest of oaks.

AN ODE TO AN IMAGINARY WOODSTOVE

my dreams take on many forms, and few of them are compatible to their full extent with one-another, but most of them embody concepts that i try to incorporate into my life in some fashion or other. usually i try to learn from the wisdom behind such dreams, and i try to grasp why it is that such things sound appealing, and then i try to apply this in a conscientious manner to my life and my actions and decisions.

one such dream is that of the hermit. the individual living alone in the woods, in some remote yet beautiful setting; choosing to be alone not as a last resort, and not as a knee-jerk reaction to the negative aspects of society, but rather for the sake of cultivating silence and introspection and other such things that aid in the process of creation. in this dream, i am in a small and humble cabin, in which stove and shower share a wall and in which my bed is a mat that i roll under my table during the day: a table that serves both as desk for a typewriter and table for my oatmeal.

i dream of singing at the top of my lungs at all hours of the night; of staying up by lamp-light reading philosophy and writing in the margins until the pages are wet; of writing out my thoughts and ideas and organizing them in some way that makes sense. i dream of long walks to nearby bodies of water, with a stick in my hand, drawing in the dirt at the shore of said lake or stream, and gathering pine cones in a sack as i make my way home. i dream of a loft, with pillows, and a window outside of which birds roost and perch. 

it's not really so sad to think that this couldn't be shared with anyone. it would be shared with the self, who (so it has been said) contains multitudes. and it would be shared with the past selves, and the future selves, and the wind and reeds and cattails and rainfall. and, if in my seclusion i could muster up some recordings and writings and diagrams and pictures, it would be shared with whomever might come across such things after i am gone. furthermore, i would be able to entirely focus my mind on exactly which questions i deemed most important, and explore them as i so desired.

but here is the beautiful thing about this: it doesn't take absolute isolation to create such an environment or such levels of focus. it can happen amongst people, if inspiration is selected wisely and time alone selected similarly. besides, interaction with other human beings brings to mind notions that could not be mustered in thirty years of isolated thought. and when interacting with others, such notions can be shared and explored, and excitement can gain momentum, and emotions can be shared. what good is love if put only into one's work? that is a form of self-love, and although it is selfless in many ways, it does not bring the kind of laughter to one's face that can gain passion with every reciprocated laugh. the kind of laughter that exists as a response to another's laughter. the perpetual back-and-forth of such laughter, or joy, or pondering, or love, or curiosity, or excitement, is something that requires multiple souls.

let all of us be loving, social individuals; with hermit-like ardency, and hermit-like capacities for contemplation and imagination. then perhaps each member of the human race would love each other member more, and would love its own self more, and would have a better idea regarding where and why and from whence ideas spring, and, more importantly, toward what end they are collectively working.

ON THE DOORS TO THE SELF

there are lots of little rickety doors into my head and my heart and even my sleeping thoughts. they're hard to get into. some have peepholes, by way of which i can predict one's entry, and some do not. some people open them without effort. others cant seem to find the knobs. some knock and then turn to walk away. some don't knock at all and open the doors with ease and stroll right on in. i hand out keys, and then i change the locks. sometimes i hand out keys to which there are no corresponding doors. the doors can be kicked down, and sometimes i'm so impressed with the sheer gall of the kickers that i don't bother to put the doors back up. i don't mind so much that some kick down the doors and only stay for a time. curiosity is a powerful thing and some of the most interesting rooms or buildings that i've been inside of haven't necessarily been buildings that i want to stay in. sometimes people have other buildings or rooms that call them back. sometimes people are looking for a room they will never find. sometimes people can't decide on a room. and sometimes people want to see every room in the world before they decide what they like. some people don't like any of it.

it's none of my business how long someone stays. i'm glad to have people and friends in my life regardless of the outcome of anything. things are as they are, and will be as they will be. and it is, and will always be, the way of things.

as much as i'm coming to accept surprise visits and brief stays, from friends or lovers or those that resist definition, i'd love to meet someone who would kick down a door, or kick down all of the doors, and refuse to leave. or someone who would give me reason to ask them to stay. or reason to block their exit. someone who finds another way in besides the front door. someone who doesn't need a door to get in because they are already there.

i'm not worried that it will never happen. maybe i used to be, not so long ago. a few years ago, even. but as of now i look forward to life and i enjoy the uncertainty of things. uncertainty is the only certainty i can count on. and i'm eager to see the rest of my days unfold.

ON PREFERRING SOLITUDE

i'm so used to being alone these days that sometimes i wonder if would acclimate well at all to the alternative. i've turned people away who wanted to be a part of my life, as friends of lovers, by throwing the "i really want to be alone right now so that i can be productive and stay focused and get a lot of work done and really figure out what i'm all about" card at them, and when i throw such a card i know full well that i mean it. but at the same time i have an inkling of suspicion that some kind of golden and glimmering balance does exist between the solitary kind of productivity and the kind of productivity found in camadaderie. i know that i can't go without the former (solitary productivity) for very long without jumping right out of my skin, but i have only several times found a good kind of productive camaraderie in any kind of a relationship other than in a friendship. which i think is why i tend to choose singledom over coupledom ninety-nine times out of one-hundred. i place my own work and goals too high on the ladder of priorities. and i think maybe that's a flaw or a sign of an overactive sense of pride.

despite this, i boil over with excitement when i think about the possibility of there existing some kind of relationship that is mutually inspiring, and that also includes mutually inspiring sex and mutually inspiring conversation; and yet allots time for mutually valuable solitude for both parties. 

there's something to be said not only for using time alone in a productive manner, but also for wasting time alone (by way of reading or listening to music or taking walks or getting lost or stuffing feathers into pinecones); and similarly there is something quite wonderful to be said of wasting time with someone else (by way of watching films or telling stories or walking around or getting lost or making out or scratching each others' scalps or what-have-you). in fact, the latter (time wasted with another) is one of my favorite things in the world. 

and so it seems that, when given the options of time spent alone hard at work, time spent alone spacing out, time spent with someone else hard at work, or time spent with someone else spacing out, nothing is a waste. i think the best combination, though, includes an increased amount of time spent alone working hard, a decreased amount of time spent alone spacing out, and an increased amount of time spent with another (or others), perhaps split pretty evenly between that which may qualify as the space-out and that which might qualify as hard work.

so, i've often concluded that solitude used well is anything but a waste of time; and i've just as often speculated that camaraderie, given a specific spin, has the ability to inspire the diligence needed to move mountains or build pyramids. maybe it actually has more inspirational force than the solitary mind, because Love or Affection is standing around saying, "hey, man, i've got your back. don't think about it. don't question it. move mountains, baby"...

despite all of this, i still tend to choose to be alone a lot of the time, and yet i still tend to seek out individuals who inspire in me a will to be diligent, both when i am around them and when i am not; both in the areas of recreation and in the areas of work (what the fuck does this word "work" mean? when i use it, i like to think that it applies to that which is meaningful but requiring of effort, and not that which is a pain in the ass and requiring of a cubicle. but my definition conflicts with that of many).

i've learned something interesting about myself. in the mornings, before i have my coffee, i'm generally grumpy. in the mornings, before i have some breakfast, i'm almost necessarily grouchy. perhaps undetectably so, but nonetheless apparent to me. but if someone is in my bed, and if that someone is someone that i don't regret finding next to me when i wake, then i don't need coffee or food right away, and i am not grouchy or grumpy at all, either detectably or otherwise. perhaps that means that i'd do okay if one day someone were to wander into my life. it's a nice thing to ponder.

friends and people in my life bring me joy, as does the act of working hard on things that matter to me (music, writing, art, my education, etc.). the kinds of joy are different, and cannot exist without one another, and inspire and feed into each other. to live alone for a whole life by choice is to be a fool; and to forget the importance of spending quiet nights with only the murmur of one's own thoughts is to forget what it is to exist. which is abominable. so there it is. friends, lovers, and space to be alone. wonderful and non-opposing forces in life. thank god, no?

because really, i want to roll around things in my own mind and roll them onto the plates of other minds, and roll things out of other peoples' heads and turn them over in my hands.

SCIENCE FICTION

the world's bigger than i sometimes realize. it's so big, in fact, that its size is irrelevant. and so in that way it becomes small again. just imagine that. like one of those shitty science programs from the early nineties, a camera zooms in on a view of the globe, zooms in up close, and then zooms out, this time further than before, until the world is so small that it cannot be seen.

i can't stop listening to this brian eno song called "dead finks don't talk." i can't stop staying awake all night. i can't stop yearning for adventure. i can't stop feeling extremely pissy and anxious, and yet at the same time extremely warm and awestruck. i want to throw myself into the kind of world that is perceived as far too big, and then, square foot by square foot, make it smaller and smaller until my years and days are up.

sometimes i want to be done thinking about love. love is something bigger than any person and bigger than the very globe whose size we have already pondered. it's huge, and yet it's so huge that it cannot be seen. we know it exists all around us, and yet the frustration found in trying to tangibly feel it or trying to point it out and say, "hey, that there... that there is love... i knew it was here somewhere," causes us to create things that attempt, or momentarily succeed in, the obliteration of it. violence and anger and rage and numbness and what-have-you. 

the moments of greatest awareness and love that i have experienced have been in the most vile of situations. men dying and oozing pus and coughing up shit on sidewalks somehow make me aware of a kind of love that isn't situationally bound, or bound by any kind of prejudice. that, right there, is a love that doesn't care about physical beauty. it's a kind of love that pays attention to that which is ugly. we hate seeing these things, maybe because we hate realizing that these things incite a feeling of love in us. we hate to love that which is vile.

perhaps the most noble thing in the world would be to refuse to let your love be bound by any one person. this kind of love would be huge, and would be spread out evenly amongst all people and all things. and yet for the people in one's life, this kind of love would be so minute that they wouldn't be able to feel it. is it better to isolate love to specific areas, or to have it be an all-encompassing blanket-like entity, free of discrimination, and blind to wrongs or rights? i want to find something specific in this world that i might feel deserves my fully-focused love, but the entities that i like the most are also the most free with their own love. or they are the things that are hardest to see the love within, because they don't speak of it. people can be like this. or huge fucking glorious deserts can be like this. they don't speak of love, so it's kept sacred, and something in the silence of these entities keeps the power of love itself fully intact. you can sense it, but it is not yours, and you can trust it more than the love of any other, but only with the knowledge that it will not be yours. perhaps you trust it BECAUSE OF the knowledge that it will not be yours, or at least not yours alone. in fact, it will only belong to a specific individual if that individual represents, in the eyes of the lover, the entire world. maybe we trust this kind of love the most because we are aware that love, even our own, cannot be given to one person alone. we can be faithful in action, but love itself seems something that is wild and cannot be held within any kind of boundaries.

maybe this is the kind of love we are, societally, growing towards. the irony is that, if fully manifested in everything, this kind of love would result in the altogether absence of any kind of preference. so would we sleep with everyone around us, or with no one at all? imagine a situation where the latter were the case. the human race would die out, because we would love each other so equally that we would be unable to decide who to sleep with.

ON AN AUDITORIUM

i feel like life is kind of like a big auditorium, into which randomly selected people have been shoved, and not told why... and so for a while they try to figure it out, and for a while they kind of freak out about it, and then eventually they decide to make the best of it. they start to talk to one another, and they form connections with each others, and sometimes they sit in groups in the corners of the auditorium at night and light candles while poking each other in the ribs and laughing about it. they sneak off to make out under the bleachers. and sometimes the room is shaken as if by some unanticipated earthquake, and new people are let in, and new people are born, and the people get curious about what is outside and they start digging... their varying styles of escape-attempts are mimetic of what we might call "religion", perhaps. they walk away from one another, and eventually they walk back, just because the auditorium is so small... maybe they won't walk back while looking each other in the eye, but they will at least pass each other on the way to other people, and sometimes they will high-five and other times they will smile, and still other times they will not look at each other but they will think of each other and slews of memories regarding each other as they pass.

ON THE STRENGTH OF THE CREATIVE FORCE

something surges out of the self, but really more out of the world... and it's such a wild child that you don't really want to guide it, but feel you should........... if for no reason other than to get the other mothers off your back about the matter... but in guiding it you don't want to stop its dance (so barefoot and naked that it's almost crude). a torrent of energy emerges. it comes from nowhere for it has always been there, but it is a change in form from what it used to be.... once the body no longer grows upward, the self must grow inside, and the heart must grow and the mind must grow and because the space is so limited there, they must grow together.... and then the guitar abilities must be expanded; the fingers stretched; the rules broken; the strings bent; and the brushes/words/thoughts/connections spun all up together where they are wont to be, and then dragged apart like two siamese twins who only want to look at one-another, but can't, because they're adjoined at the head. because there's nowhere to put that energy except for everywhere, and this realm must grow to accomodate. it'll grow and stretch but cannot break because the boundaries of this realm also accomodate reality. i don't want to waste a wind...

A THINKING-BACK

the hours and minutes run parallel to my thoughts of you and i think of them as train tracks upon which maybe someday some train will reach some destination - a destination with an essence not glorified or saturated in expectation but simply fitting and true and lined in trees whose armor is the most amazing-smelling bark the world has ever had to wrap its nose around in order to sniff. i'd hang every notion i've ever contrived about the world from its branches and would have to tell you nothing of these things, for you would not ask, and the colors of these things would change along with the light of the morning and the setting glow that would relent and make way for the dominion of night. i would line up my reasons and toss them at you with no intent of harm just because all of them and all the reason i possess tells me they are yours to somehow understand. i've been to this place and in it, the train silences its whistle, and the tracks have no need for grease, and the conductor at last is able to rest his legs on soil instead of on machinery. i've been to this place because i have chosen it, and because i can fathom nothing preferable to it, and because it is the only place in which my self as a child might be just as content as my self as an old woman with birch-bark hair at last grey. i've been to this place because i want it to be a place that you, too, might want to dwell, and i've sewn flowers to the ground and i've tied stars up to the night and i've wrapped birds around the trees because the place i picture you most at home in is one containing all of these things and all of everything. you are all of everything to me and i only hope that my silence does not speak otherwise.

i can bring all the mountains to the banks of this place if some shelter is required; raise the elevation if some snow is desired, yet only in my will and only in my intent and not in anything tangible enough to stand above all in the world that is tangible. this is because the world is so piercing to the tongue that it humbles me, and i am just a representative of it. i want to represent all that i love in the world, and i want to give you all that i love in the world even if i am only a carrier of this. if needs be i will walk back down the tracks alone, but at least i will have taken you to such a place. 

you would find this place on your own, and this place is a mindset and a peace and a calmness and nothing that can be chopped or divided or written of because to write of it would be to write of all things. to write of you would be to write of every angle of the world. and yet all i have written about the world is all i have written about you, because the face of every mountain that hits my eye in a way to cause it to blink is the face of every encounter with you i have had. i would adorn the world to make it further remind me of your beautiful precious adorned soul. the river adorns my mind with santity and in sanctity i want the weave of your arms.