I look alien
In the mirror
In the instant before
I recognize myself
And my preconceptions
Load
Like a computer file
But in the instant
While the pinwheel
Still spins
And I am seeing
Beneath the veil
Splotchy skin,
Lopsided pectorals,
Crooked jaw
Rectangular prism,
Cylinder,
Cube
Color,
Light,
Dimension
Who am I
When I forget?
July 20, 2021 at 10:00PM
I look at myself too long in the mirror and start to have an identity crisis. But it’s really just like anything else. I read the same word over and over and forget its meaning. I eat the same food over and over and forget its taste. I hear the same noise over and over and it starts to sound like silence.
But with my own face, it’s just slightly different, because when my own face starts to look like nothing, then I start to wonder, who am I? Maybe I identify too much with my physical form. Anyway, all of this is just to remind me that I really shouldn’t be looking at myself in a mirror for longer than ten or fifteen seconds at a time.
Originally written: April 30, 2021 @ 10:59 a.m.
I wonder about the limits of being yourself. They say you have to play by the rules before you can break them. But they also say that just being yourself is the key to success. How much of myself is really me? Not much, I think. Unless, of course, all that we mean by “being yourself” is that you just stood there and let it all happen to you. Well, then everyone would be themselves by default. There’s no way to escape it. From whence does one’s self surge up? I am vaguely remembering Sartre’s essay on existentialism. How can the seed of yourself fall on anything but fertile soil? But then who put the soil down and who pulled you out of their seed bag and dropped you there? And these questions go on ad infinitum. So there is really only one true individual, and they are either the chicken or the egg. But we’re not talking about just any old chicken here. We’re talking about the Chicken with a capital ‘C.’ Or the egg with all the Alpha and Omega-3s you could ever ask for.
But I’m losing my head. Back to being yourself. Let’s depart from the true philosophy of the matter just for a moment and talk in practical terms. I think we can agree there are some actions that can be taken or decisions that can be made by an individual which seem to be willed or otherwise brought about by their own individual selves. In other words, we would not say of said actions or decisions that they were a result of the individual just following the rules or doing what everyone else is doing. In some way or another, an individual is capable of really doing something on their own. Now, I don’t think this claim really holds weight philosophically, especially for determinists, but let’s just hold it as an assumption for now.
Maybe it is an aesthetic argument. Because what I really want to convey is the sense of beauty that I get when I see someone who appears to be beating their own path. And I don’t think we get very many of these. Because the default is to walk the trail already traveled. Before you can even think for yourself, you’re already on that trail. And, if we’re subscribing to determinism, then the inclination to step off the trail might also be determined, which is why this is not an ethical argument. It is not good or bad to be on the trodden trail. But, oh, the aesthetics of the young girl in the dress running off into the tall grass and away from everyone else—oh, I want to chase that girl! I want to finally catch her in a glade and ask her all the questions that the travelers on the trodden trail could not answer for me. Why did you run? Where are you going? What have you found so far? Will you go back? Why? Or why not?
But how beautiful will her answers be? And herein lies the heart of the matter. Because it is beautiful to watch her run away—this much, I can understand. But how alien will she become? And how quickly? See, this is what I mean by the limits of being yourself. Because on the trodden trail, we can all understand each other. We have had relatively similar experiences, we speak the same language, we know the same people—we hold things in common; most importantly, in this context, our methods of communication. This is important for the aesthetic argument because how can something be beautiful if I cannot understand it? Now, don’t rebut too fast. I am not talking about complete understanding. A little bit of the unknown can be tantalizing. But this is different. I am talking here about not even a beginning of understanding. Something so alien that you can do nothing but stand there and gawk. Maybe there is some awe in the gawking. But if there is awe, then there must be some starting foothold into which your understanding has stepped. Otherwise, it is only hollow-minded gawking as your mind tries but fails to fit the experience into an existing neural pathway that isn’t there. This is the limit of being yourself that I speak of. It is the ultimate outer limit, so we now have a scale. The minimum of being yourself is the cookie-cutter human on the trodden trail. The maximum of being yourself is the girl that runs off into the forest who turns out to be a totally non-human alien.
Now, what does this mean for an artist? I think it comes down to appetite for the risk of being an alien. How far out are you willing to venture in order to find something new?
Do I contradict
Myself too often?
Does the name
That you used to call me
No longer apply?
Did I not stay
In the same place
For long enough
To be someone?
Did the waves
Wash away
What I wrote
In the sand?
Where can I possibly be
If not right where
You say that I am?
How can I possibly
Gain identity
All by myself?
Who will call me
By my true name?
I am searching for You.
When they find me, when I make it, when I get lucky—they’ll box me in right then and there. So maybe it won’t be so lucky. Maybe I never want to be found. They’ll take me as I am, and then thereafter, I’ll have to work very hard to break out and become anything else. I might even have to work harder than I did to become something in the first place. Because to become something in the first place is just that—become it, and that’s it. But to become something else when you are something already requires an extra step—you must first break free of what you are already, and only then can you start to become something else. At first, I thought only of the social problem: what “they” will call you, what “they” will say you are. But the other, more subtle, and probably more dangerous part is what I call myself and what I say that I am. Because then I will build up an internal identity for myself and start to behave that way, just the same as society would build up an identity for me externally. And I think this matters for my writing. Because I don’t want to be boxed in. I don’t want to write just one way, from just one perspective. I want to write it all. And, of course, I know that I can’t. But I still want to try to get as much of it down as I can. And in order to do that, it seems that I need to stay loose and alone, being nothing more than a vessel through which experiences can pass and in their passing be quickly recorded before they shoot out the other end. I needn’t retain any of their details as parts of my own identity. I need only to study them like a scientist, let my senses record their findings, and then avoid them like snakes in the grass.
Lying safe and alone, I am unindividuated and idle. My mind swims in the stream of dreams that is ever less loosely connected to experiences from my own lifetime. There are added elements from movies, books, and my own imagination, scenes I have only seen or heard about secondhand. I pass through these scenes, sometimes as myself, other times as someone else. Sometimes I am no one, I am only observing what transpires without participating myself. In this way, dreaming teaches me how not to be myself. Such that I awake surprised, when I find myself back within my own body and mind. At first, I feel contained. I feel that my wide-open dream perception has been narrowed into a limited point of view. I can still close my eyes and imagine, but it is less powerful, tethered to awareness of being in my own body, tied down by the constant reminders from my senses that I am connected to a singular body in a certain location in a physical world—hearing the traffic noise outside, feeling the bed beneath my back. I cannot lift off and separate as completely as I am allowed in the dream world. For one, there is less ability, but I also experience less need. I am not yet completely myself, in the groggy moment between dream and waking life, I have not fully remembered who I am. It would seem just as natural for me to close my eyes again and slip back into the dream world, if not for hunger or the need to get up and go to the bathroom. At the same time, I am happy, having returned to the land of the living, as I know it. Able again to say good morning and have breakfast and go about the work which I left unfinished last night.
Does it really matter
Who
Exactly
If the shape is the same
I mean
Aren’t our powers
Of perceiving
Those small differences
At the margins
Fairly weak
Anyway?
So rather than one
Why not be
A mass-produced
Mold
Of that one?
There will still be
Some difference
Say ten molds
Total
And the differences
Between
But does each
And every person
Really need
Their own individual mold?
A mold to be
A mold to love
Just one
In the whole wide world
Just one to love
And just one to be
Really?
Or can we fit
More snugly
On the conveyor belt
Than we care
To admit
I close my eyes, interlace my fingers behind my head, and forget who I am. I forget when I am, to be more exact. And as a result, I forget where as well. I can’t remember if I am young again, laying in my childhood bed. I can’t remember if I have laid down to sleep in any of the many cities I have visited. I can’t remember if I’m back in college, laying on the shitty mattress in my dorm room. I seriously can’t remember, for a split second. And my mind searches through all these memories, trying to find an identity to assume. And in this split second, I am free, unattached to myself; a soul searching for a body to inhabit in some time. Searching, for a split second, I am free.
For me, it was sudden. One day, you’re young and pushing the limits, and the next, your back hurts and you’re trying to keep your job. I don’t think it was actually sudden. Looking back now, it seems to have happened over time. First, you’re so young that you don’t know what it means to be young. Then, around the time you start to rebel against your parents, then you’re young and you know it. Finally, five or ten years further down the road (even later for some), you start to understand what your parents were talking about—this is the mind growing old. The nail in your no-longer-too-distant coffin is when your body starts to ache. That’s when it all really slows down. You can’t drink like you used to. You’re less confident you would win a fight. If you need to bend over to pick something up or put on your socks, you have to do it real slow to avoid hurting yourself. From this point on, there is a certain amount of deliberation that goes into every one of your physical actions, which causes you to think twice before listening to what your raging free spirit is telling you to do. It is scary, seeing death as near as you ever have, and growing nearer all the while. But it is the way of things, and a lot more makes sense now.
My soul, having since ceased to be mine, jockeys for bodily position in the pool of purgatory where all souls queue en masse. Seeking flesh destined for another set of spacetime events not all too dissimilar from the physical life which preceded its most recent death, my soul searches. Hoping, as all souls do, to live again in individual form. It is a vague hope, to which not all souls are privy, in the ocean ether of all souls joined together, mingling and meanwhile forgetting having forgotten belonging to the One. It is the same problem on either side of the divine line—forgetting what is was like to belong to the One on the earth side, and forgetting what it was like to be an individual on the heaven side. Until the ethereal ocean lifts out of itself and prepares to precipitate all of its divine life into tiny ignorant droplets, all of which will once again fail to remember their former divine lives immediately upon impact with another life on earth.
I step away from my desk to stretch. I lean over to touch my toes. The sun from the window behind me shows my shadow on the hardwood floor. I see that my hair is disheveled. Previously unaware of my appearance, I am now self-conscious of my appearance. What if I go to see people later? What if someone comes into the study? My hair should look kempt. I fuss over it, using my shadow as a mirror.
I keep returning to the idea of focus. In order to be successful you must focus.
With art, the artist must focus in order to establish a consistent theme. This is not only for the audience, but also for this artist, because without this consistency it’s not possible to gain the deep observations from focusing in one area.
With a career it is the same. You cannot do many jobs and be successful. You must choose one job and focus. It is only with this focus in your career that you can achieve the knowledge and experience to be successful professionally. If you try to do Many jobs you’ll be mediocre at all of them. If you focus on one job you have a greater chance of success.
It is the same with your identity. If you try to live many lives, you will be mediocre at all of them. In order to be successful you must choose one life to live. It is only by focusing on one identity that you can achieve the deep insights of that one life.
If you try to live many lives at once it would be like walking into a movie and walking out after the first 10 minutes never getting to see the middle or the end or how the characters develop. It will be like only reading the introduction of the book or only listening to the preamble of a symphony. Or when meeting someone it would be like only talking to them for one minute and then never seeing them again.
I do not need to persist in my own ways any longer
If I am to do this thing that is outside of me
And lives according to its own principles—
Such is the way to become anything other than what you already are
And to become is the only way to be, in a time-sensitive world
So that trying to bring forward in time, any part of you from the past, would be a fool’s errand
But we must not forget, that you too, are a part of what there is
So to say, that this is itself and you are yourself, ceases to be true upon you entering into it
And some people enter in so big that they end up accounting for more than half of what was already there
So the real question turns out to be, how big do you really think you are?
Are you big enough to enter in and bend to your young will what was already there and old before you?
Or are you small so that your only hope is to learn as fast as you can what it’s about and assimilate as best you can, even if that means losing whatever you were before.
In some cases, it is perceiving yourself as such which makes you big or small.
So if you walk in with your chest puffed out, you might just make it that way.
Or if you walk in with your shoulders slumped, then it’s already done, and there you are small.
In most cases, it seems a newcomer is proud enough for his first few entries to walk in with his chest puffed out.
Until he is beaten down, and his shoulders slump.
There is no right or wrong way, viewing it all at once, from the outside, from no particular set of eyes.
It is all there, in one form or another, changing sometimes, but it is all still there.
Regardless of the point of view of one seeing from his own perspective, wanting to be the one with his chest puffed out.
But forgetting this mist necessarily mean that there are others with there shoulders slumped.
And if you can start to see that point of view from the outside, then maybe you start to realize that it doesn’t matter much either way.
Anything that starts out
With I as the object
To which the attention
Of my poetic diction
Has turned
Is bound to be
More subjective
Than an actual object
Outside of myself
(Like a cloud or a car)
To which readers can
More easily relate
Unless I can make myself
Objective enough
For readers to see me
As themselves
you change
you don’t think so
but you do
a thin string
ties it all together
loosely
loose enough
that new you
might mistake
a stranger
in a lineup
for old you
there is a feedback loop
between what you say about me
and what i want you to say
so i adjust my internal switches and levers
to get you to say
and when it is not
what i would prefer
i will twist a dial
and pull a lever
then look back out through
my windshield eyes
and listen
going back to adjusting
until what you say
is what i’d like to hear said about me
and then i stay
mostly the same
until someone says something else
(sometimes myself)
that i don’t like to hear
coming into myself
like an icicle
freezing into form
once fluid
and dripping along itself
now believing
what others think of me
and agreeing
to go in this direction
settling into the mold
like sculpture clay
hardening in the oven
formed by the artist’s
left nurturing hand
and right natural hand
then set into stone
by the fires of time
now staying the same
as what others walk by
in the museum and say
reading the placard
and seeing other
statues nearby
this is a statue
of such time and place
you can see clearly
because of this and that
we bend ourselves
into places
shapes
i wonder
what a human
can do
with some space
an argument
to exist,
to take up space,
to even be there
for you to read;
and numbers
and other symbols
like on a clock
or the brand names
on clothing
or equipment
constantly telling you
what is what
and this is that;
people
have them too
on placards
outside
their office door,
not to mention
their names
and the acronyms after
all this information
looking around
which is why
i think i like
so much
to be in nature
where nothing is named
except
the occasional trailhead
i was doing all this
to appear
to be
one of these
and at some point
ended up
becoming one
sometimes we say
about ourselves
what others once
said about us
thinking we
are now
as they say
like seeing yourself in a mirror, not knowing it’s yourself, and judging your appearance objectively, thinking i am beautiful or i am not, and then realizing it is yourself, and also realizing what you truly are
so long as you are yourself you must be that you cannot release completely just like the universe cannot you maybe part of it and wishing to melt into it but the same principle applied to one individual knowing that the universe at large is also an individual and some cents would cause everything to unravel so you must hold together as a building block of everythingIf everything is to remain built and not let loose and subtly destroyed
everyone looks the same like the same person
wanting my trip to be the trip and so not write just to stay here and be with moment …
being in this moment everything melted together so that I can barely feel my feet touch the ground in the sense of my stats as well as my fingertips skipping the phone as I talk to it or less potent or not even there so that whatever drives me my mind on my soul is more the focus just driving and no focus on the appendages that result from the driving just the soul moving through and seeing people inspiring a face to smile but it’s really the Saul doing all of this in the body just listens to the commands of the soul and so now it should be the commands of the soul and more clear the commands of the soul and my clear waiting on my friends thinking it’s funny that I’m talking to my phone off away from them and they’re waiting to walk back to the party so I should really go with them now baby looking so cute tying up her hair and all these people around so many people here in the music in the distance and the fog rolling in over the trees in Golden Gate Park really looking amazing not knowing whether it’s just the nature on its own or whether it’s me tripping do you need to go back now but still looking at my friends laughing and having so much fun just being together making it so happy the baby my new girl is talking to John and Krys my old friends and they getting along so long everything is good right now we need to start writing to be more in the moment and not really being the crux of this having to stop writing or having to stop being I mean not being able to be in the moment while riding and having to step away in order to talk to myself so people don’t look at me weird
Picked a good part of the forest wondering what thoughts I have a worth writing and what sites should be wet just pass so meeting in the middle by writing everything later but having this theory that it’s all good
Feeling good and great directions like for the trip now fully in it past the turbulence of the come up so just soaring and even taking more needing really just focus and be at it does pass just talking because I’m trying to write
Realizing so much more and more that it’s the self-consciousness that affects the art even just now talking to John realize the conversation we were having his art it self and so not necessarily the consciousness of the self the gist of art be created a fax with whatever not oh my god this
feeling the fear of experiencing it while not writing and then it’s gone and I wasn’t recording and I can’t get back that exact feeling that led to what could’ve been written and even now even now my phone is having difficulty recording what I’m saying with all the people on their voices around so the moment is harder and harder to capture which makes me wonder about moments that must be captured presently yet or out of reach of art forms that can’t be capturing in that moment feeling the same fear of forgetting or missing out in general but specifically applied to the art that would’ve been created in that moment and really wanting to survive and get down to it to have life be created and recorded and not lost or forgotten being the driving force of life and the driving force of art in the drive
So overwhelmed with it all feeling what is all here always but unable to live like this with so much overwhelming just becoming exhausted all the sensory inputs and empathy for others and looking at someone in the face and not knowing them but feel exact with the feeling
The same feeling I feel for something written down and then lost as I feel for life lost in life really just being time but time needing something to pass in order to be itself so life big time and space
I forget who is who falling behind in the crowd with my group it’s in the back of one head and it being a difference the back of another the trip so that everyone is the same
Looking at people and being there and not wanting to interrupt that with being myself
So much going on if I’m to be the one I’ve learned you can’t write it all at once you just can’t write it all at once it takes time life has to play out overtime even if you feel it all at once you can’t write it all once at least not with words you by feeling that one moment so much do you want to explode in that moment obliterates with Human and you but you just can’t write it on the moment
And being with the moment thinking that I want to be here but what about myself I came before that I want to keep being before or not thanks so much and see you baby far away laughing and really realizing now that I stepped out of the moment and seeing all these people that know that I’m tripping look like the same people I see your face and looks like a face from my past but really all the faces are the same and I feel more connected and more caring and more easily able to find excuses for the fault of others just like I find excuses for my own faults
looking at
what was
a mirror image
of myself
that now
looking too long
has become
un-
identified
and broken into
constituent
crooked teeth
and an un-
recognizable
smile
everything
is done for me
because i’ve lived
the same life
the same day
many times before
—so my shirts
are form fitted
from having been
washed and worn
on the same body
and the same people
i already know
just say hello
and less
nice to meet you’s
and i still
remember
the way to where
i usually go
so less looking
at a map
and trying
to figure it out
and i know
what i like to eat
so i push my cart
in the same path
at the store
and only stop
when something
is out of stock
why crunched so much into a form that has passed for fear mostly of being formless so holding on without realizing that it is all still there and a brief detour won’t erase the whole map as long as the journeys traced with your finger are taken at some point or another or even that tracing itself is a location or event on a higher order of maps
why crunched so much
into a form that has passed
for fear mostly
of being formless
so holding on without realizing
that it is all still there
and a brief detour won’t erase
the whole map
as long as the journeys traced
with your finger
are taken at some point or another
or even that tracing itself
is a location or event
on a higher order of maps
tip toe tag along
prancing praying
you don’t get caught
doing exactly what
everyone else does
when you realize
looking last
that nothing
in the past
kept same enough
for an identity
that holds together
but instead
rubbed off
and ran through
all other parts
of the big whole
every time
i walk by
another
on the other side
just like me
going
the opposite direction
walking
with a brown
grocery bag
in my right hand
i see another
of about
similar
height and build
and a grocery bag
also brown
in their right
i wonder
is there a mirror
up there
at the intersection
seeing
my reflection
walking by
glass
storefront
windows
wondering
who is that
just staying
the same
for long enough
is enough
to be great
sometimes
some time ago
seemed like
things wouldn’t
ever change
like knowing someone
that looks different
over time
but you knew them
all along
so they look the same
i dip in and out
dancing over lines
that separate
trying to be
two people at once
caught up and moved along like a pebble on the ocean floor stopped being myself for so long and just went with the waves that are my emotions and the luck of circumstance and the demands on me from others and ended up here now as a product of all that which is also what some people call the self and not really sure if what i was trying to do before being myself apart from everything else was any different or superior in any way or just unnatural and spinning my wheels against the way things are
you’re not really living
left to the devices of systems
that move without you or not
and take your humanity
and cram it into inanimate processes
of production and eventually calcify
your joints to move in certain
mechanical ways you get out
and stretch and remember
what a human can do with
some open space and time
and now on the weekend wishing this
would remain and the week
and its system wouldn’t come again
keep with what exists already
wanting after not so many other
derivatives and replicas and slight variations
that may seem to please marginally for a second
but really just bleed a strong self into boundless life
either of which works well enough
unless you planned to do something by way of “I”
and risk forgetting you are part
of everything like a colony ant
while having a higher chance
of accolades for being something like a lion king
just so they
can put their finger on you
is part of being remembered
or commended
otherwise they see once what they like
and then go back looking
but even when they find you there
standing in the same place
if you’re saying something different
it’s not the same to them
and you might say well look
a new crowd has gathered
but for them too
it will not be the same
when they return
so part of being remembered
or commended
is just staying the same
i look around for data
for something to process
to let me know i am
where i should be
catching a glimpse
of the driver’s clock
on the dashboard
and looking out the window
at street signs
to make sure i’ll get to
where i’m going
or putting
my hands together
for one to tell the other
that they’re both
still there
or waking up
and looking around
to make sure
i’m in the same bed
i went to sleep in
or answering a question
with another question
to make sure my friend
is still here with me
wonder what day it is
and how old i am
to make sure that i am
behaving appropriately
looking at my
business cards
(that i never use)
to check my title
and see if i am
in the right office
trying to remember
a memory to see
if it was mine
or just a dream
or something else entirely
being myself
staying
more or less
the same
so pitted down
and normalized
so small steps
make pivotal sense
in place of
large leaps
you get drilled down into who you are in the winter overcast cold dark fog and keep your head down to add to the world and build up with what stays together and the same so you can make sense and move forward though a structure can only stand still and so focused for so long before forced to change so might as well start to change it anyway by your own hot hand in the summer as a heat wave burns off the fog and lets out all that stayed locked down and into the sky letting go some that didn’t belong anyway and only spoiled by having stayed so long and pulling down other forces and stars from beyond the infinite sky and sun that mixes new moving pieces in the open blue cloudless warm until the clouds return and lock in what the summer has newly brought down and allows to focus like a pot of only certain ingredients from a whole grocery store and letting some identity and certainty be beautiful amidst a world of never-ending other interesting and beautiful moreness
building up
and tearing down
are two
sides of life
to construct
an ego
or destroy
a construction
to build and build
or let it all go
on a quarter tab
laying on the beach
the ocean called me
taking off my jeans,
flannel, shirt, socks,
and shoes
there were other people
on the beach;
lots of people actually.
it was a nice day.
i took off my clothes
and walked toward the water.
tripping, not conscious
of other people
watching me.
in the water, freezing,
didn’t bother me.
out to waist high
a wave came
i dove in and
under the water
everything ceased to exist. the ego already disassociates on acid. the body can still remain lightly with a subdued awareness of the senses. under freezing water, however, that awareness is obliterated.
there is only the freezing all over. and the roar of water forever. waves crashing above like the world is falling apart.
forgetting to breathe because the art of being underwater takes precedence for my attention. even when my lungs shout, return to the surface, i cannot hear them.
the art of nature at large overwhelming my individual need to survive. it making no difference whether my body, a small part of all this, will rise to the surface and swim back to the beach, or drown here and sink and become one with the ocean that i am part of in one way alive or dead in another.
i am what i am.
i am human.
of all things, ideas and intellect are highly human.
language is our tool for communicating ideas and intellect.
writing is the art of language.
i am a writer.
in a pinch
i am nothing
in a spread
i am all
in a bed
i’ll sleep
in a desk
i’ll learn
in a field
i’ll run
for you
i love
for them
i fight
for ours
i sacrifice
for now
is enough
for when
it’s over
for this
i pray
part of having an identity is constantly choosing to forego other identities. the same goes for success; succeeding in one opportunity is largely dependent on committing and therefore passing up on other opportunities. successful people often say, just be yourself. it takes time to learn yourself and improve at being yourself. the same as any skill or profession. if you started with piano, then switched to flute after six months, and then picked up violin after a year of the flute, and so on—then you’ll never be the best at any instrument. you’ll just be mediocre at a few. the same goes for being yourself. if you are constantly seeing other la and saying, oh, i want to be like that. and starting to model that person until you see another person that you want to be like. then you’ll never be the best at being yourself. you’ll just be mediocre at being like other people.
the more i mature, the more i see the value of commitment. at its core, i think this is a deep issue. there is a competing duality between being ourselves and losing ourselves. we read self-help books and meditate to be ourselves and then get drunk or have an empathetic conversation to lose ourselves.
I feel good and want more of it, more and more until I’m fat and gluttonous and only looking for the next thing to satisfy me, so I start to slim down and focus and delete excess until I’m thin as a stick and hold a lamppost to not blow away in the wind, and hold there and look for something to weigh me down and add one thing and then catch again the fever for adding and forgetting why I ever wanted to take away anything and so again start adding.
Do not build your self with glue from a world that does not hold together—ideas of who you are, how you look, what people think of you, how much money you make. All this will pass and often be beyond your control. Build yourself with a stable foundation like your breath and unconditional gratitude and love. For as long as you live you will have your breath. You can always be happy and grateful if you choose to. These are the stable tenants of the self.
sleeping, doing drugs, dancing in a crowded room, looking deep into someone else’s eyes, meditating on nothing, meditating on one thing, dreaming a dream I don’t remember,Slipping and falling accidentally into a daydream, or otherwise not being myself, even if only for a short while.
i could just as easily be a beat as i am a sellout
Sometimes I think I’ve done something, made it different than it otherwise would’ve been. Like I have some control over small things that aren’t quite set. Other times I think no matter what, it would’ve ended up here in the same spot.
On a sunny afternoon in March, on a bench in South Park between second and third street in downtown San Francisco, this occurs to me. That it is never in the middle of a season that I can discern its identity. In the middle of a season it seems to be just the way things are. But in between, when two seasons are still deciding whose turn it is to play, playing tug of war, winter and spring, so that the days before this were all rainy, dark, and dreary, and the weatherman said this morning that the days after today will go back to the same. In this back and forth it is clear to see what the seasons are like. On a sunny day like today, I am open. I can see more. Like shower water, hot opens up and cold closes in. In the open hot sun, the brightness shows to me finer features that are hidden in the dark, as parts of general dark masses or concealed in ambiguous shadows. In the light it all seems open. More to take in, overwhelming almost. Also more to keep your attention outside of yourself. Whereas in the dark, like at night with your eyes closed before bed, you think inward into yourself, with lack of senses outside to keep your attention selfless. Hibernating in the winter, adding to and bolstering your ego, to warm up in the spring and let it all go in the summer.
empathy is the key to seeing more of the world. not just seeing through human eyes, but seeing from a door knob’s perspective, from the sun’s eyes looking down, feeling what it’s like to be a sound wave. loving with the dying heart of a soldier, thinking with the desperate mind of a prisoner breaking out. hundreds and thousands and millions of viewpoints. why just live inside your one?
i look at others and say, wait, is that me? my empathy stretches that far. when my ego explodes. everyone, everything even, becomes myself, so that i want to flex with my tree branch arms and kiss with my lover mouths outside the cafe across the street. i loose and flow like a river and crumple like a chip bag, anthropomorphisg—without any need, i might mention. if i truly become “every” thing, i can drop the anthro- prefix.
There are two forces. One that wants me to dissolve, and one that wants me to stay glued together. Both have bearing on how I am to understand that word “me.” My metaphysics are either that I am an individual, in some way distinct and apart from everything else, or that I am a dynamic part, my molecules intermingling and only temporarily belonging to the body and mind that I call my own.
You can see how each of these metaphysical views have great bearing on how we behave as individuals as well as in society. For example, a capitalist model makes more sense if we are actually individuals and our gains are the losses of someone else, and vice-versa. On the other hand, a more socialist model makes sense if we consider that we all partake in the same Source and all gains and losses are counted only as part of the net for all humans (or all beings, depending on who you consider to belong to the Source) such that actions taken for personal gain are simply irrational if they result in a net loss for the whole.
I believe that we are each separate, physically. But we are motivated by the same universal Will, share in the same One soul, or have a fragment of one God like Brahman.
This is either spiritually true in ways that we can’t yet verify certainly, or it is physically true in the sense that there was a beginning that set everything into motion and we are now just sharing in the causal aftermath of that beginning, linked to it and part of it.
They pull me apart piece me and pick what they prefer; she for how I like and he for my mind, boss for my obedience and stranger just for me being there, brother for our past and mother for my being hers; but none of them, not even myself, get me for my whole.
I was selfish before and they told me I was selfish but I was still reading Rand and my metaphysics were such that I believed our souls are actually individuated and we are ourselves, no matter what, maybe even after death—as I learned in Church school.
Now, my metaphysics being that of a unified soul. I am just a fragment of Will, subjected to a slice of space-time. I am less attached to myself. I am understanding, motivated even, to let my fragment of the Will widen, and work for the good of other space-time slices—other people, motivated by the same unified Will. It is all the same. We are all the same.
I used to throw out what wouldn’t fit, until it became a wide enough work that there was a place for everything.
I live these lives that all of a sudden pick up their own Will. From the new place and people, their motivations and the motivations of nature take over. The weather will do what it will do. The molecules in the air will do what they will. My friends will gently and kindly push me along in the direction that the group is already moving. So I get picked up like a leaf in the wind and it requires nothing of me at all expect that I do not resist. before I know it I’m part of the mob that moves on its own; the universal Will is supplanted in place of my own.
The social man, seen to be with people. I wonder why they love him. Why they hang on his arms and laugh at his jokes. whether it is superficial or genuine; either is good enough reason apparently. The lights get bright and conversation gets louder when he walks into the room; they either want to impress him subtly or to get his attention outright. The social man is attractive, if only by virtue of being attractive to others. If seen alone, it would ruin his whole persona.
Frictions define me. In the smoothness I hurtle fast along, not noticing much. It is in the transitions—changes in direction, slowing or speeding up the pace, transporting to somewhere or something else. This is where the friction comes from. Travel is never instantaneous. And I can never stay doing one thing in one place forever, so the frictions are inevitable.
Growing up, it was all about where you were from. Your friends, your tastes for food, your sports teams, your religion. Everything was largely homogenous with the people you grew up with.
Now that I’m grown up and out into the world, people ask me questions about who I am and what I like and where I’m from and I’m less sure of how to answer. I try to talk to any of my experiences based on I’m with and what they’re most familiar with.
So much chaos inside my soul, had I not been born into the basic, safe life of the plains and homogeneity, I might have lost it too soon. With my Kansan base, I can lose it carefully, consistently, and still always return afterwards to a static set of rules and sense of identity, then set up to take off again.
I remember right after we graduated we were most of us on the fence with our decisions. We could have done one thing just as easily as several others. Some decided right away and started. Others took a couple months. But almost everyone I know decided on something eventually.
And now, almost a couple years later, a lot of us are doing those things we decided on, and they’ve now taken up big parts of our lives. Seeing as most of us are in our early twenties, then what we’ve done since graduation is a tenth of each of us.
It makes me think of how important those decisions are. In the moment they seem just like waking up and having breakfast. What’s subtle is they change the course of everything for really no good reason at all in the sense that we could have picked something else and it would have been just the same now.
Writing to myself, I used to feel dissonance when deciding whether to refer to myself as “you” or “I.” Now I’m more comfortable referring to myself with different pronouns. I think because I feel more a part of everything.
When it wasn’t what was wanted by the violent crowd my knees began to tremble and wonder who I was. For if not love does garner, what I wish to say, where my words fall on fertile ears, an alien home I do not know.
Do we change until we become someone that somebody will love?
The Will has to be individuated into an ego in order for effects to be realized in space and time.
The Self could not get to a goal as it was, because it is not the nature of the Self to act. The Self just was and nothing necessarily needed to be done.
The creation story begins when all of a sudden there was something to be done. And the Self created mankind, beings capable of doing. He gifted unto them fragments of the Will subjected to time and space—thus mankind is striving after what the Self needed us to achieve but couldn’t on His own.
Humans, even perfect ones, are not like diamonds. We are more than just stone. We are tree trunks and flowing water and open space. We are sounds and light. If compressed we only become more unintelligible.
If an immense pressure all of a sudden squished the earth into a ball the size of a marble, it would not be like a beautiful diamond. It would be a black ball indistinguishable from an actual black marble, other than its planetary weight.
Like earth, we are not designed to be specific. We need space and time to spread out, maybe even more space and time than the whole universe is physically allotted, certainly more than one lifetime in one body.
If you refine me down into one-pointedness, like a cog in a gear, then yes of course I am limited. But the things I am are many. They are spread wide. They don’t mix, like oil and water. To refine me down to one-pointedness is like cutting off a piece of me, as small as the edge of my fingernail, smaller even. Not even I can appreciate all of me at once.
I don’t like to over-identify myself. I am dynamic and changing. The only time I like permanence is with my art. I want to permanently achieve in the sense that I have written something down and I want it to last forever. It is what it is and I don’t have to think about it anymore.
I don’t remember what changed about me, but’s it been who I am ever since.