September 30, 2020

I laid awake in bed last night for a while just sitting with a feeling of disappointment in myself—wishing I was an artist. I felt deep loss and regret for something I never achieved. Impotence and desire make despair. Swallow it. Move on. Be happy that art and beauty exist elsewhere.

I don't think I will attend Saint John's College. I think I'm going to look into trades—welding, pipefitting, carpentry, or something to that effect. 

Every time I open my damn mouth everything changes.

"Men make plans; God laughs." A Yiddish proverb I read this morning in a new article. 

...

In alchemy, the soul is the philosopher's stone. It is the soul that creates value from base things. It is we who create meaning from worthlessness. 

September 28, 2020

I'm in my apartment wearing jeans and a sweater with my hood over my head and ears. It's 10:40 am. This morning was leg day. Thalo, our building manager, is just outside the window sweeping the roof of a carport, gathering the first of many piles of leaves.

...

I was in Spokane and Boise last week. It was a long way. I listened to Matthew Crawford's book Why We Drive. It sat very well with me. I think he's on the right track. 

I met an army friend in Boise. We haven't seen each other since Ft. Hood in early 2015 He said I haven't changed much, which was shocking at first. He hasn't changed much either. We've both matured. We acknowledged that much.

I rode straight home from Boise which is a long way on my bike. I hit heavy rain on I-90 as I made it into the Cascades. There were four lanes. I was way on the right lane, going 55-60 mph being passed by semi-trucks, closely watching the tires of the vehicle was in front of me for signs of deep water, straining to see through a fogged and mist-and-rain-beaded visor. I haven't hydroplaned on a motorcycle yet, and I didn't want to learn firsthand, yet.

I had to embody truth to give myself the best shot at survival: Relax and focus. Pay attention. See the whole picture at once. 

A motorcycle is a gyroscope and therefore is pretty good at keeping itself stable and upright. I needed to fight my body's tendency to become tense—loose grip, low elbows, deep breaths (slow so that I minimize fogging my helmet). If I were to hydroplane, I would relax and slowly-and-deliberately ease off the throttle—not panic. —If that's not meditation, I'm not sure what is.

When I came home I poured water out of my boots. My hiking boots were water-proof at some point. But they aren't anymore. Caitlin came downstairs to help me unload my bags and locked us out because she forgot to bring the keys. I had to ride up another 15 minutes, one way, to The Barking Dog, to borrow Dani's keys. I love riding, but by then I was past the point of diminishing returns.

...

Thinking about meditation, I am becoming suspicious of mindfulness meditation. I can hear the words as if they were coming from the mouth of a horny college senior frat guy: do not worry; it is what it is; let it happen; it's only passing waves. 

...

I've spent a good portion of this morning wishing I could be productive. But I lack a definition of success and therefore cannot achieve productivity.

Actually, I think I told my therapist that I think success for me would be owning five motorcycles, owning my own house and working for myself. That's a shallow definition. But it's a starting point. 

I am fully aware that I am making no progress. I don't even know where to begin. 

...

The word rest has becoming more meaningful. I'm reading Practical Programming for Strength Training. They offered some very general advice: when the body undergoes stress, it adapts to the stress and supersedes it; this is called supercompensation. When we adapt to a stressor, if it doesn't kill us, and we have enough rest and food, we can survive even greater stress.

I wonder how broadly I can apply this idea to my life. How many situations can I approach like this?

...

Adaptation transforms an organism. Adaptations are not always good. 

...

I've had difficulty resting this weekend. The past two nights I have woken up several times a night, panting, as if startled. 

The night I came home from my ride I couldn't fall asleep because I kept seeing the road in front of me. —I'm not the quickest at adapting.

...

I wonder what would happen if benevolent aliens came to Earth and gave us technology that would rid us of scarcity. I would like to think that most CEOs would be miserable. 

Much of human life is overcoming material scarcity.

September 22, 2020: Motorcycle Voice Transcription 1

I'm just south of Kerry Park right now putting on my gloves, hopping on the bike, putting the kickstand back as I straighten out the front wheel and sit up on the bike—and not precisely in that order. 

To my 11 o'clock there's people, and a dog.

[Engine starts]

There's 23.6 miles on the odometer.

The dog is crossing into my headlights, and he's got a reflective collar. He's shaggy.

[Motorcycle shifts into first and revs into first gear]

I'm making my way down the street. Making a left. A man crosses my bath and hobbles along, as if rushed by me. But he has plenty of space. 

I'm going down hill, somewhat uncomfortably. These hills are steep. But I'm engine braking and feathering the front break and then coming to a complete stop using the rear brake—despite knowing that the rear brake doesn't do much as you near the end of a stop. That is, unless you have a passenger, and there is a disproportionate amount of weight on the rear wheel. 

These streets are rough and bumpy. 

I have a small faux leather bag on my front forks that, when the forks have sufficiently compressed, the bag bumps into the headlight. 

I am at a four-way-intersection, two-way-stop, narrating this. My right blinker is on. I make a right onto a well-lit road—Olympic Place.

[Engine steadily revs]

Behind me, not even a block away, there was a protest—well, not even sure if I can call it a protest. There was maybe fifty people outside a local representative's apartment. —Protesting. 

This is different than the last protest—less heated, less chanting, less people. This time they only brought bikes, no cars. 

(Cars came later in the night while I was gone.)

[Sighs]

Last time they came through, I was scared. I was spooked. I ran down, got my bike, which was ten meters from the route, undid the lock as quickly as I could—which is still pretty slow—and I got the fuck out of there. I rode north through the Queen Anne Suburbs, winding through historic road, ending up just south of Fremont. 

—And I was scared. I was spooked. I was thinking, my god they might tip over my bike. Which that was a little bit of an irrational fear. But it's not like I had anything else going on that evening. ...I was spooked.

Out there, I saw a dragon, marching its way down the street. —Dragons don't march. But they were marching, making a serpentine trail through a quiet neighborhood. Angry young people, calling for revolution, chanting slogans—woke, awake but mindless. 

Today, Caitlin sent me a picture when I was still making my way home from the gym. There were people gathered outside of a house nearby. I figured it was another protest—and it was. I messaged an acquaintance who lives in that building. And he confirmed that there was a local representative in the building. And that they were trying to speak with the representative. 

I was annoyed. I made my way home. Put my stuff upstairs. And I walked down. I walked through the back entrance. I walked around the building to the front and not more than twenty meters they were there. I walked around the group. I made a quick survey of who was there. Mostly young people. A few black people. 

[Wind and engine noises]

I went back upstairs. Mariah was there speaking with Caitlin. She left. I took a shower. I put on pajamas. 

[Engine idling]

I went down. And there was a line of bicycles. they were just starting to back up. I approached the line of bicycles what exactly they were trying to do. Naturally, more articulate people stepped up (from the small crowd) and started talking. 

[Engine engages 1st gear]

I heard just about everything I expected to hear. They wanted to talk to the local representative. They finally dragged him down to his level, and they spoke with him. And um—they spoke with him. And they said, "We weren't able to speak with him under other conditions." 

And it's like, if he's not willing—. I said, "I'm here. I live in this neighborhood." I pointed to the building that they were infront of; rather, the building that was behind them. And it's like, "This is government subsidized housing. There's a lot of people of color here. This a pretty woke neighborhood. I thikn what you're doing here is counterproductive."

And they said, "No we spoke with Andrew"—something. I don't know his last name. (Andrew Lewis) And they said, "Well, we got you down here." 

And I told them, "I feel alienated from your movement because of this."

And one of the half dozen or so people said, "oh we're so sorryyy you feel alienated." 

Obviously they don't. They do not care what I feel. Which I don't expect them to. They're a fuckin group of people; —a group of people generally doesn't care. And I'm not a black person, so obviously they don't care. I'm just another white person to them, anyway. 

[Engine and starts from first gear, revs high. I say, merging issues in response to the high revs.]

There wasn't much of a conversation. I don't think they were really talking to the representative. Like, if he's not talking to them under normal conditions like town halls, etc. etc. —I mean they're challenging his authority. It's a power move. It's not communication. 

[Engine idiling]

I am now at Dick's. The question is do I want to get food, or do I want to keep going? 

I'm going to keep going. I'll get Dick's on the way back. 

So, um...

[Engine revs]

So there's this one girl in particular, a young black girl—well, mixed race. And shew was antagonizing. Young. [20ish] Adolescent. She had adolescent frustration. And she was surrounded by people enabling her, enabling the means by which she is channeling her frustration. And she made some at hominims (at me). She said, "Get out of here with your flip flops." And she kept talking about my flip flops. And I mean, I was wearing them because I was at home. I was ready to go to sleep. 

[Engine idling, visor opens]

I'm not sure what else there is to say other than, I walked away. I remember saying something like...—I don't remember when I said this, if this was the first time I left or the second: I hope you continue to develop. And as I walked away they said, "Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter. Black Lives matter." They wanted me to say Black Lives Matter. It was a power move. —You're with us or you're against us. 

Do black lives matter? Yes. 

Do all lives matter? Yes.

Do I understand the meaning of the phrase—rather—do I understand the meaning of the slogan Black Lives Matter. That's a yes: It is a slogan Colin Kaepernick came up with. Or at least I know it from him. Because black people keep getting shot by the police because there are some fucking serious problems with the police force. I know that. And the entire fucking (Western) world was protesting that for a minute. So I feel like most people know what that means. Or there's just such a political and ideological divide that people don't understand each other at all anymore.

[High wind]

(Unintelligible because of wind) ...this is the final straw for me. BLM is fucking meaningless. It's a fucking slogan that people chant to see which party someone is in. It has nothing to do with black lives anymore. It's just a little fucking political game. It's a little social game. It's not about saving lives. There's a lot of heat and not a lot of light. 

[Engine idling]

I'm still going to do my best to respect people who do the whole Black Lives Matter thing. 

[Engine revs]

—Because there are good people who mean well. unfortunately that phrase "good people who mean well" is universal to a fault—well, no that's not... There are good people who say BLM and think about what it means. And I'm sure they (only) use it in appropriate places. I think the main thing is that BLM is (generally) bullshit and kind-of-fucking-meaningless. 

And they killed it. And by they I mean—that's it—they, all of them, all of us. It just got overused. That's just the lifetime of that sort of thing. These things come and go like animals in a forest. That's what it is as far as I am concerned. 

So, I try walking away—frustrated.

[Engine idling then revving]

Frustrated. 

An angry young black woman insults me as I am walking away. —That's personal. That's personal. That's personal. 

(Sighs)

And so I said, and I felt my voice shaking and my tongue getting in the way, and I said, in anger and fear, tempered by sadness and suffering, "Do you want to make this personal?" And I turned around and made a beeline for her, saying, "Do you want to make this personal?"

A black man—not particularly athletic, somewhere between 220 and 250 pounds,—stepped forward with great energy. I stopped advancing. I stood there. We stood there somewhere on Olympic Place. I looked at him, sizing him up. Sizing the fight.

One beer and the right insult and, hell, all that would have been fair fucking game. He was not particularly scary.

He said, "yeah, I'll make it personal. I'll make it personal right here." He brought a lot of energy

[Engine idling, visor opens]

I have been wanting to fight.

[engine idling, sighs]

I have been wanting to fight. 

[Engine revs, wind]

It's dark out. I'm on Aurora. Someone had their fucking lights out. I tried waving like a madman at them, flashing my high beams at them trying to get them to turn on their fucking headlights. They did not get the message. —There's a metaphor.

So, yeah but uh. 

[Engine idling]

I think if it was just the fight, I think it would have been fun. —Nothing ideological. Not business. Just violence. That's what it would have been. Fuckin' good old fashioned violence.

I'm on Aurora and N 192nd street. It is unremarkable. The air is cold—and suddenly smells like smores, and it's gone. Yeah.

Out of some strange habit I often try to go from fifth gear to an imaginary sixth gear. —I only have five gears.

[Engine idling, then revving.]

Anyway, fighting him would have been for the wrong reasons. I would have fought him because an adolescent black woman wanted to start a fight, one that she could not finish. That man might have done her a disservice. 

Anyway, it was immaturity on her part. So...

[Engine idling then reving.]

Violence feels good.

Sometimes violence is necessary.

As far as the species is concerned, violence itself might be good. 

Somewhere Plato says, "Not even Achilles could have fought to men at the same time." 

There were a lot more than two men. 

Maybe I could have been any one of their asses. Maybe even a few pairs of asses. There were some small people there too. But it wouldn't have done much good for me. 

What did WWII do for the human race?

I'm on Aurora and 212th. I wonder how high these numbers go. 

I hope this is a phase. I hope these people grow past this.

They asked me what I am doing. I didn't have a satisfying answer for them. I said that I am voting and educating myself. What else is there to do?

I said, "I might be having no effect. But you're having a negative effect."

I do actually think we're doomed. Revolution is not the answer. Revolution ain't the answer. That ain't it chief. These people out there are very good with slogans, but they aren't good with guns. 

[Engine idling]

Yeah—[engine revs]

Now, I'm at 196th St SW. Looks like the numbers start going down now. There's a Sherry's. It's like Denny's but somehow not Denny's, which is IHOP but somehow not IHOP. 

[Engine calmly revving as wind blows. Engine idles and revs again.]

I think that there's a good chance that uh these people and the movement they represent will not really amount to very much. Granted it's not something that you can prove or disprove.

(As I type this the following day, they are marching outside again at 1:28pm)

I'm making a left at 176th, just because.

I made an illegal u-turn, so that's fun.

I have yet to see a prostitute on the side of the road. I can only imagine approaching one on a prostitute and saying, sorry I can't let you on without a helmet, that's illegal, maybe next time.

I'm passing the Sherry's again. 

I think it's important to confront these things. I mean, I also feel like I don't have that much of a choice. My spirit won't let me rest; there's a dragon outside. Maybe I'm dramatic. But some part of me thinks there's a dragon outside. 

I passed a police officer. I am going the speed limit. But that own't stop me from experiencing mild and fleeting panic for a brief moment of self awareness, a self illuminating spotlight of consciousness that is the experience of being alerted to the possibility of being found out. 

I wonder if that man, the one who stepped forward to fight, I wonder if he's been to jail. I have no idea.

But I bet most of those people haven't been to jail. 

I've been to jail. 

[Engine idles]

It was a rough weekend. 

It was worse than the psych ward, even though it was shorter. When I went to jail, my soul was still... [engine revs] recovering from the psych ward. 

I met some bad people. 

[Engine idles]

I mean, who am I to judge a man's soul?  But I sure as fuck wouldn't call them good people, though there may have been good people among them.

Yup.

[Engine revs]

224th street SW and Aurora. West Coast Auto Works, used cars, vans trucks. 76 Gas Station. Cash, Regular Gas: 2.74, plus 10 cents for credit. 

[Engine idles]

This bike takes premium. I wonder what that's running. 

228th: Miller Rent-All. [Engine revs] I wonder if they have prostitutes. No. Only heavy machinery. And chainsaws.

The individual is always the exception. But the law of averages is a force to be reckoned with. It is not fate, but my god, it is close to it.

I am unremarkable. You are probably unremarkable, especially if you're reading this. I mean this, objectively...statistically... 

[Wind]

I'm not set up to do anything great—whatever that means. I'm beginning to realize the extent of this. Much of the past two years, especially the past year, has been a realization of my irrelevance to the world. (Unintelligible)

The smell of smores is back. Nice dry logs. Fragrant. —not quite smores, it's a beautiful smell of wood.

I don't even know where I was...

[Egnine idles]

The past year...

[Engine revs hard]

The past year...

[Wind]

I don't know why I ever thought differently. I've always hoped for something more. For purpose. For a unified narrative. For something for it to all make sense—a final moment of achievement, a label, something to say this is it. But that ain't' it, chief. This ain't it, chief. 

I get the sense that the universe—the real big universe— is all possible worlds.

[Engine idles and then revs]

Then, in relation to all possible worlds, our absolute size because meaningless. —At least it does for me. 

It's like comparing yourself to infinity. 

[Engine idles]

It just doesn't make sense. 

North 152nd Street and Aurora: McDonald's, a bus stop, a pot shop, a Korean Calamari place. —A Korean Calamari Place—with an open sign. I don't image they will be open, but my god I will find out. I don't know if this u-turn is legal...

[Engine revs]

Oh, it's by Tandy Leather. That's where I get my leather. Haha. 

Is this it? Nope. [Engine revs] Next block.

I missed the exit. Time to make another u-turn.

Maybe it's a prostitution front. I don't think Caitlin will be happy if I take a prostitute home. I definitely can't afford a hotel and a prostitute. Damn. Maybe next time.

[Engine revs momentarily]

Hae-Nam Kalbi & Calamari, open quite late on a Monday, let's see what this is about.

"Is it open?"

"I think they're open till ten."

"Okay thank you."

I guess that's it—

....

There was no space for reason. There was only power. 

You must grab the beast by the head. 

There is no reason, only will. 

Approach and behold the magnificent terror of the crowd.

...

I do not matter to them.

A voice—no—my voice says, "Get the fuck out of my neighborhood."

I have no reason to say it. I do not need a reason to say it.

September 20, 2020

Over-the-phone job interview tomorrow for a position as a construction laborer at $18.00 an hour. —Not sure if giving up my unemployment a few months early is noble or foolish; unemployment pays just a bit over what I would be making if I worked full-time.

...

It's Sunday. Caitlin and I started going to the gym on Saturday. My entire body is sore. It is a good feeling. I need to eat more.

I'm trying to teach her what I know. I am not a good teacher. I am overbearing and take everything personally. 

...

It's looking like I'll postpone graduate school at SJC till next Fall. 

But right now my current thought is that I might just be better off reading Plato on my own if I should ever feel like getting back to it in spite of my flakiness. The world doesn't need to me to achieve anything. The world doesn't need me to know anything or write anything. The world doesn't need another academic. The world doesn't need me to do anything in particular; —though I could lower my carbon footprint. Maybe if I had a special talent, then I would be called somewhere or be needed somewhere. But I don't have anything like that to offer. 

I've done everything—within reason and sometimes beyond reason—I could to make myself useful in a noble, authentic way; it didn't amount to much . I have developed my own values. I'm not a slave or a drone. I am an individual. I have value, and I can see that, and my friends can see that; and I think that is enough for now.

There's nothing I can do to change the world or move the tide. I have two hands, a body, a mouth, and too much on my mind. 

...

I'm dreaming of a brand new Yamaha Tracer 900 or a Honda Africa Twin and a long ride down to Oaxaca.

...

I don't like Seattle. 

...

 It is all so meaningless and pointless today that I am writing this in bad faith. I shouldn't be writing anything at all. What a waste.

September 12, 2020: Camus' Rebel

 It's 10:30am. The light outside is the brown-yellow of a cigarette stained wall because of this season's wildfires. Denis Villeneuve released a trailer for his movie Dune yesterday and there's a joke circulating around the internet asking, "How big is Dune's marketing budget?" because the West Coast looks like a balmy morning on Mars (or in this case, Arrakis). 

...

Yesterday I met up with a fellow redditor from /r/PNWriders. We rode for over seven hours: down I-90 to Ellensburg, then Yakima, 410, down 123,  and most importantly through Stevens Canyon. The views weren't as good because of the smoke. But it was still the most beautiful ride I have been on. 

Kris was going to come with us but he was afraid that it was going to get too smoky. But irony won in our favor, and our trip was less smoky than Seattle.  

I also finally bought a in-helmet mic/speaker system. —Total game changer. 

 When I went to sleep, I spent what felt like an hour laying in bed, restless, thinking of all the different ways I could have crashed yesterday. —Visions of The Sausage Creature. 

...

This morning I finally finished The Rebel. Here is my GoodReads review: 

For me, The Rebel was life changing and exceedingly relevant, a cornerstone to build my future on. A warning to those who would worship a virtue (see: justice) or sacrifice the present for the future. A call to respect the dignity and suffering of every person.

Camus makes an important distinction between a Rebel and a Revolutionary. The Revolutionary is a nihilist willing to use any means at their disposal. The Revolutionary thinks they will, once and for all, bring an end to suffering—to end injustice, oppression, disparity, inequality, scarcity. But the revolution does not stop because, how can it? For the perfect future has not arrived. So, the revolution must use any means at its disposal (namely violence and oppression) to achieve its vision.

It is as if the Revolutionary Leader says, "It is our turn to oppress."

The Rebel knows that the world will always be imperfect, but he does not become complacent. He bears the tension and suffering that this knowledge brings. He looks at both the oppressor and oppressed in the eye and thereby fights for all humanity, humanizing both master and slave. The Rebel changes the world in the ways that he can. He brings light and then suffers like Prometheus. And, like Sisyphus, he knows that his work is never done.

This was written in response to 20th Century Communism and Marxism, but it is much more than that. Camus touches on a philosophical problem in our collective human heart: our desire to unify our fragmented world into a totalizing unity and our tendency to sacrifice human life in the name of a perfect future.

The Rebel is saturated with brilliant paragraphs and one-liners. This is one of my most underlined and annotated books.

Quotes:

"Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is." p.11

"...the rebel's aim is to defend what he is. He does not merely claim some good that he does not possess or of which he was deprived." p.17 (Here, C compares Rebellion to Resentment, which he thinks is a motivating factor of Revolution.)

"The metaphysical rebel declares that he is frustrated by the universe." p.23

"From the moment that man submits God to moral judgement, he kills Him in his own heart." p.62

"There is only one religion that exists throughout all history, the belief in eternity. This belief is a deception." p.64 (Camus says this in reference to both religion and the aims of Marxist revolution.)

"For Marx, nature is to be subjugated in order to obey history; for Nietzsche, nature is to be obeyed in order to subjugate history." p.79

"Rebellion is, by nature, limited in scope. It is no more than an incoherent pronouncement. Revolution, on the contrary, originates in the realm of ideas. Specifically, it is the injection of ideas into historical experience, while rebellion is only the movement that leads from individual experience into the realm of ideas." p.106

"The insurgent rejects slavery and affirms his equality with his master. he wants to be master in his turn." p.109

"To kills men leads to nothing but killing more men." p.109

"...the terrorists were born, disillusioned with love, united against the crimes of their master, but alone in their despair, and face to face with their contradictions, which they could resolve only in their double sacrifice of their innocence and their life." p.164

"The future is the only transcendental value for men without God." p.166 (Not an argument for belief in God, rather an argument against building a life based on transcendental principles.)

"All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State." p.177 (Of slightly dubious veracity but meaningful and relevant.)

"...the negation of everything is in itself a form of servitude and that real freedom is an inner submission to a value which defies history and its successes." p.186

On Marxism: "Prophecy functions on a very long-term basis and has as one of its properties a characteristic that is the very source of strength of all religions: the impossibility of proof. When [Marx's] predictions failed to come true, the prophecies remained the only hope..." p.189

"That is the mission of the proletariat: to bring from supreme dignity from supreme humiliation. Through its suffering and its struggles, it is Christ in human form redeeming the collective sin of [the Marxist concept of] alienation." p.206

"Power cannot be looked forward to or else it is looked forward to indefinitely." p.206

On the good in Marx: "...[Marx] reminded the privileged that their privileges were not divine and that property was not an eternal right. He gave a bad conscience to those who had no right to a clear conscience. ... To him we owe the idea which is the despair of our times—but here despair is worth more than any hope—that when work is a degradation, it is not lif, even though it occupies every moment of a life." p.2019

"[Marx's] desire to systematize made him oversimplify everything." p. 213

"Poverty and degeneration have never ceased to be what they were before Marx's time, and what he did not want to admit they were despite all his observations: factors contributing to servitite not to revolution." p.214

"The authoritarian socialists deemed that history was going too slowly and that it was necessary, in order to hurry it on, to entrust the mission of the proletariat to a handful of doctrinaires." p.217

"...Capitalism becomes oppressive through the phenomenon of accumulation. [Capitalism] is oppressive through being what it is, it accumulates in order to increase what it is, to exploit it all the more, and accordingly to accumulate still more. [...] ...the revolution, in its turn, becomes industrialized and realizes that, when accumulation is an attribute of technology itself, and not of capitalism, the machine finally conjures up the machine. Every form of collectivity, fighting for survival, is forced to accumulate instead of distributing its revenues. It accumulates in order to increase in size and so to increase in power." p.219

"The end of history is not an exemplary or perfectionist value; it is an arbitrary and terroristic principle." p.224

"Lenin believes only in the revolution and in the virtue of expediency." p.226

"Pseudo-regulutionary mystification has now acquired a formula: all freedom must be crushed in order to conquer the empire, and one day the empire will be the equivalent of freedom. And so the way to unity passes through totality." p.233

"The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude." p.234

"Those who reject the agony of living and dying wish to dominate." p.248

"Rebellion, in man, is the refusal to be treated as an object and to be reduced to simple historical terms." p.250

"Rebellion's demand is unity; historical revolution's demand is totality." p.251

"To create beauty, he must simultaneously reject reality and exalt certain of its aspects. Art disputes reality, but does not hide from it." p.258

"...perhaps there is a living transcendence of which beauty carries the promise, which can make this mortal and limited world preferable to and more appealing than any other. Art thus leads us back to the origins of rebellion." p.258

"In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary." p.272

"A creative period in art is determined by the order of a particular style applied to the disorder of a particular time." p.274

"And for those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, through the centuries, to the greatness of humanity." p.276

***"Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature. For him, the great god Pan is not dead."*** p.276

***"The procedure of beauty, which is to contest reality while endowing it with unity, is also the procedure of rebellion."*** p.276

"The mutual understanding and communication discovered by rebellion can survive only in the free exchange of conversation. Every ambiguity, every misunderstanding, leads to death; clear language and simple words are the only salvation from this death. Plato is right and not Moses and Nietzsche. Dialogue on the level of mankind is less costly than the gospel preached by totalitarian regimes in the form of a monologue dictated from the top of a lonely mountain." p. 283-284

"...the rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value that supports him is never given to him once and for all; he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly. [...] His only virtue will lie in never yielding to the impulse to allow himself to be engulfed in the shadows that surround him and in obstinately dragging the chains of evil, with which he is bound, toward the light of good." p.285-286

"Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction: therefore it destroys freedom." p.288

"...it is time to forsake our age and its adolescent furies. " p.306

September 9, 2020: LA? More like Hell-A (you lizard scum)

It has been quite the week. 

It's nearly 8:00 am as I being to write this. I'm listening to XTC. I have had the song Complicated Game stuck in my head all day; the lyrics are almost too relevant. 

I dropped Caitlin off at the airport at 6am; I missed an exit, which led me to drive the most agressively I have ever driven. Weaving through traffic with my pedal on the floor in my slow car is, in comparison, about as scary as moderate traffic on I-5 on a motorcycle. 

Right now I'm in the mood to fight. I told-off a college friend who I was once close with but disagreed with. (We were close enough so that I joined her for Thanksgiving in Eastern Washington a few years ago.) I sent her an agressive-passive-agressive message, waited for a response and blocked her. —Petty but not wrong. Despite our history, it was time to cut the baggage.

This past week I have been looking for for excuses to delete people off of my Instagram friends list. It feels relieving despite how petty it is. As much as I would like to think that social media doesn't matter, it is actually a big part of my life. It wouldn't be right to throw my phone in the blender, so I best make due with what I have.

I realized that I have been hanging too tightly onto internet friends/connections. I also didn't realize how many acquaintances that I regularly checked up on don't follow me back, which makes me feel like a fucking idiot; I don't like giving my attention away for free like that. I've maintained a falsely inflated sense of social connection for too long.

...

I broke up with my therapist over email. She sent me this email:

Dear Andy,
 
Of course, you can end your therapy with me at any time and for any reason. However, I wonder if you would agree to one more session to bring our work to a thoughtful end. The abruptness we both experienced last week can leave you feeling that what you’ve accomplished over the past months amounted to little rather than giving dignity to your accumulated efforts.
 
You may also help me to understand where I disappointed you so that you needed to cut the work short.
 
Warmly,

L 

She wanted to know where things went wrong, and the evidence is right there in the email she sent. She used the word disappointed. Why the fuck does a therapist need my approval? I'm not disappointed. But the fact that that is how she worded it is a red flag; yes, maybe she meant something else, but the phrasing is a real red flag. Plus, therapy is literally never over. There is never a good time to stop going into analysis; the drama of human life is infinite—always an open end left to tie off. Stories and art offer a sense of completion, and many of the most excellent works are left open.

I'm curious what this will look like in hindsight. Was my therapist getting too close to the root of a problem when my defenses kicked in? Or was our rapport problematic? No one knows—not even the shadow because he's too involved. I hope time will make things clearer. 

I would leave therapy very angry and in a bad mood more often than not over the past month or so. That too is enough. My decision to cut ties was correct.

...

I met up with Billy last week. We had a beer and caught up. We were both with the 3-2 General Support Aviation Battalion at Camp Humphreys. We only hung out once or twice maybe. But that one time we hung out I gave him an excessively large Mexican hat while I wore a poncho and a sharpie mustache, and we went around the barracks and the 'Ville just outside the base. I played guitar, and he played percussion (a trashcan). He says that while we were out in the 'Ville there was a general coming through and some officers were scouting areas beforehand and they needed us to leave. Supposedly we ran into that general that night; that's how he tells the story, and he tells it well. I don't remember details of that night. I might have been drinking too much that night. Those were strange times.

So, Billy and I caught up after six years, and he invited me to join him on a roadtrip to LA four days later. Caitlin asked me if I was prepared to spend a long time in the car with someone I don't know well. But I told her that we were both in the army, and he deployed. Military people know how to deal with each other in confined spaces for long periods of time. We have a certain kind of stoic social-awareness that says, "we're both suffering, so let's do whatever it takes to make this suck less." If someone left the military under honorable conditions, chances are they know how to behave reasonably enough.

This weekend was the worst weekend to go. The area experienced record breaking heat, and there were massive forest fires along the way that made a 9am trip down I-5 look like a 9pm trip through a reasonable-sinner's rural neighborhood in hell: the sky was totally dark, gray, thick blanket of smoke, but there was an orange glow on the horizon which gave a sense of dubious hope.

Billy didn't say where exactly where we were going. I just assumed we were going to be visiting friends that he had met in the army. —Nope. We met his VRChat friends. Before we arrived I had never heard of VRChat. VRChat is...interesting, worth a google. So it turns out that the people we were staying with are also interesting.

We stayed with B and Ela. B is an entrepreneurial mid-twenty-something. Ela—Ela Darling—is a pornstar (probably one of the better educated porn stars by a significant margin)—a legit porn star whose level of success and fame I only began to realize when Billy and I left their house and I saw that she had 30k Instagram followers. And then seeing this Rolling Stone article after a quick google really made the gravity of her reach sink in. —Not that she's particularly famous, but still, it's more than I had expected on this trip. I mean, I don't know anyone else who gets invited to the AVN Awards.

Ela and I had a multi-hour long conversation on Saturday. I took a few notes on my phone. Here they are:

"First learn how to direct your own focus. But then a big part of conversations is learning to direct others' focus."

"My default mode is dialogue."

"Mask Maker"

The majority of our conversation revolved around the topic of persona, which was a particularly apt conversation because actresses, especially those in porn need serious persona management. They need to create distinct boundaries within their lives, dividing between fans and friends, nearly-never letting their fans slip too close.

I won't be able to recreate our conversation. But I'm going to write what I got out of it. 

Persona is the mask we put on whenever we're in a social setting; (I could argue that we always use a persona to interface with our environment). It's our interface. It's our filter. It is our face. It directs our focus. Our self is too complex, too multifaceted, too nebulous, too paradoxical, and too liable to injury to rawdog the things of this world.

Learn to Direct Your Focus
The persona is a lens that focuses on what matters—that is, on what it presumes matters. When you're driving, you're focusing the road. When you're talking to someone you're looking at body language, or if you're like me, you direct your spotlight-of-consciousness on yourself (creating a feedback loop of anxiety) even though it would be better to focus on common interest.

Learn to Direct Their Focus
There is a wrong way of approaching this idea that goes something like "manipulate people into focusing on what matters to you." Rather, we ought to comport ourselves in a way that reflects what we are trying to do. This is why people wear suits at work and sexy clothes in clubs. And there are more subtle ways of managing this, both positive and negative. Every conversation involves a dance of illumination and censorship, for we all are Legion. 

When two people are talking, it's like their both trying to reference a similar point a space—a shared subject or a goal. An effective persona drives forward the conversation by highlighting certain things and dimming others. Sometimes deep emotions need the spotlight, and other times they don't.

We are all responsible for comporting ourselves. 

The Mask Maker
This came as a vivid fantasy. I saw my nebulous self—an unknowable mass from which my consciousness was arising, and I saw from the mass, many arms growing in various directions and at the end of each was a mask. And I heard a soft voice ask, "where is the mask maker?" After this I saw three things: The Self, the Mask Maker, and the Masks. 

Personas arise without effort—just like trees and weeds. Also like trees and weeds, they can be cultivated. Most people allow nature to do all of the work; sometimes this works perfectly, for there are many great trees in the forest. 

I think that acting is the highest form of persona management. It is the deliberate formation of a persona according to the needs of the situation—whether on a stage or not. My intuition says that actors know how to manage a social situation effectively using their persona. They are mask makers. 

Lastly, I realized that I was really really really bad at persona management in the army, at school, and at AWS. The professional world that I had entered was extremely impersonal and collective, while I acted like a lost child with a bleeding heart in my shirt pocket, in search of praise, desperately promising to do my very best.

My Default Mode is Dialogue
While Ela and I were talking I noticed that we were talking in a very different way than Billy and B. Ela and I were going back and forth discussing ideas while Billy and B were very laughing while providing commentary. This is when I realized that there are different styles of conversation, and I default to dialogue (and monologue). I try to get people to speak with me in a Socratic way where we discuss topics to arrive at true (truer) conclusions.

• Debate
• Dialogue
• Monologue
• Flirtation
• Storytelling
• Lecture
• Bullshitting 
• misc.
• etc.

Each mode requires its own persona. When in a conversation, both peoples' personas have to match up. (Not everyone wants to or is capable of engaging in socratic dialogue.)

...

If you can help it, don't be star struck—especially pornstar star struck. It is a fetter to good conversation.

...

I just bought an app that is going to help me unfollow my non-followers. I need my daily greyhounds-and-memes fix, but I have reddit for that sort of thing.

...

Guess I'll have to unfollow Ela on Instagram since she doesn't follow me back. Oh well.

...

Paraphrasing a bit from The Art Spirit: 

"The class of free men is small: so many of them are ground to dust by the wheel of poverty while many others are in prison. They have an idea that they live by, and they are true to it, for it is the only way they know."

A voice spoke this morning:
Would you rather follow your soul into hell, or would you die an unwitting slave?

...

Dune trailer just dropped. I am hyped.

"The hype must flow," said a redditor. 

...

Current earworm: 

A little girl asked me should she part her hair upon the left
A little girl asked me should she part her hair upon the right, no
I said it really doesn't matter where you part your hair
For someone else will come along and move it
And it's always been the same
It's just a complicated game
It's just a complicated game

—Complicated Game by XTC 

...

Ambivalence—ambiguous valence.

...

Two enemies and a third thing—star on the horizon, transcending our petty lives.

...

I just realized that becoming a published in a philosophy journal isn't as cool as writing a good reddit post and communicating with peers in a democratic fashion. More people will read a reddit post, as will younger people. Writing on reddit isn't as sexy (i.e. formally respected) as getting published in a real journal. But I'll be damned if it isn't quite meaningful. 

September 3, 2020

 I feel like shit today.

...

I spoke with my therapist, and I felt like shit. 

In that creative part of my mind I saw an oozing, slimy, black substance, slipping out of a vagina or a massive womb-cave. Mind says that's not good.

I don't think I will see my therapist again. Either she does not understand me, or I don't understand myself. When she repeats back what she thinks I mean it seems way off, and it is immensely frustrating.

...

I have sent an email cancelling my future appointments, ending our relationship.

...

I've reached a tipping point. I don't want to waste any energy on anyone who uses the slogan ACAB (All Cops are Bastards) or Blue Lives Matter. My life is too short and to waste my energy on those things. I wish I didn't care. But I do care. So I have to fight to get my resources back from these warring ideologies.

ACAB is stupid and short sighted.

Blue Lives Matter is closer to being reasonable, but it's just another slogan. It is the seemingly inevitable counter-counter-movement to the counter-movement.

BLM (Black Lives Matter) has lost its way. It has become meaningless. It has run its course. But the problems remain.

If there is a revolution, I will likely die a coward and a traitor by the hands of whichever side pulls me out of the gutter first. 

...

So much heat and no light in my world.

Better to find a new way.

...

I finished At the Existentialist Cafe. I've been meaning to read it for a few years now. I couldn't get around to actually reading my physical copy, so I listened to it as an audiobook, mostly during my semi-regular morning walks. I learned a lot. I cured me of my fascination with existentialism. I like Sartre and Heidegger much much less. I like de Beauvoir a little less on a personal level, but my respect for her work remains the same. Meanwhile my love and respect for Camus has grown. (I'm working on his book The Rebel, and it is life affirming.)

I may need to look further into the less known existentialists like Merleau Ponty. It's hard to keep track of all of the other less famous names because I'm using an audiobook. (This little clip of Hubert Dreyfus discussing Ponty is promising.)

...

Studying philosophy and misc. intellectual ideas has been a long and unfolding drama. Sometimes it feels like nothing more than words—woven air. Other times it's brilliant. Today it feels like one or the other from hour to hour. At the moment, intellectual pursuits feel like bullshit. 

I know I can't quit reading. I sort of wish I could. But that would be death. 

I used to think that reading would make me great. It made me greater. But I am not great. I'm starting to get diminishing returns. I'm not an intellectual like Camus or any of my other heros. I am unusual but in an unremarkable way. 

...

I miss the gym. I miss lifting weights. I hope I can return to it someday. I feel weak without it. I would be sad to see my body continue to go in the direction that it is going at its current rate. —Feels like death.