August 10, 2020: a lot

 I am sitting at a beautiful but cold table made from metal and wood outside of a cafe in Queen Anne on the corner of Boston and Queen Anne drinking one of the best lattes I have had in a long time. I am sore and sunburnt, more sunburnt that I have ever been.

Caitlin and I are at odds, especially since last night but this doesn't seem like the right place to share that argument; I think she would disapprove. But no one takes the time to read these things, so it's not like it really matters one way or the other. ...one way the other, I feel the need to write it down.

...

A man walked by in a pineapple print tshirt. I think that trend is now collectively agreed upon as passe. But he didn't look like he was trying too hard which redeems him.

...

While walking up here I flipped off a fat, middle-aged bum who was bitching at an exceptionally beautiful, super-fit, interracial couple. A part of me was ready to put my watch in my pocket and confront him. The fact that I was concerned about my watch says a lot about who and what I am.

Wasting my time and effort on that sort of thing is a dangerous game with no discernable payoff that I can see. But the extent to which I engaged that piece of shit felt good.

Fuck that guy.

...

Mariah, Caitlin, and I took her sail boat to Blake Island. There was no wind, so we had to use her tiny 5hp engine. That little engine was a champ, even though it died a few times, but we got it up and running each time. We suspect that the fuel line jiggled loose more than once. 

The only occupied building on the tiny island was a small tourist-trap restaurant/bar, which we hiked to. We spent a lot of money to get drunk, but it was some of the best binge drinking we have done in a long time.

We had fun. Sailing-with-a-motor was an experience I had never planned on having.

I hope we take next weekend off and relax. 

...

I am having recurring fantasies of slamming that guys head into the ground; he dies or is severely injured, and I am sitting in a jail cell trying to figure out how to pay for a lawyer.

...

I guess at some point in the development of a self, there is no more room for reasoning. There is only an assertion of will. I can't but help think of my father. I had tried to reason with him in the past. But every time I did, I felt like I had to step onto his field and play his game. 

At some point I am going to need to tell my father that I hate him, and that I hate his beliefs, and that I hate who he is and how he raised me.

None of that has anything to do with reason. I have no "good reason" to hate him. Other people are much worse off and love their parents. As far as bad parents go, he wasn't all that bad, but I guess that doesn't matter. 

I can't help but think that my hate for my father (and now more recently my mother) is a flaw in my character. Whether or not that feeling of hate is a flaw in my character, it is a real part of my character. I am not proud of it. I'm not sure what I am supposed to do with this.

Matthew 10:35

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Well, they wanted Jesus, and this is what Jesus has to offer. I'm not sure how Jesus, the Prince of Peace, can also say, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword," but that is what he said.

So, do I tell me parents I hate them? Or do I act on my hate through silence? Lying to my parents and telling them that I love them seems out of the question.

Do I express my hate? Or do I let it simmer in silence.

Someone who thinks they are reasonable, or perhaps even wise, would probably tell me at this point, "Don't say anything that you're going to regret. Your parents will be dead some day, and you will miss them." 

Well, wise guy, there is no right answer. In a Kierkegaard-like phrase: Tell them, and you will regret it. Don't tell them, and you will regret it. I won't lie though. I won't lie about my feelings. I used to lie about my feelings; that created alienation and numbness in me, and I became detached from who I was and what I felt. 

...

Life given to us by our (mass) culture is fucking meaningless. 

Life isn't meaningless. But the life our (popular) culture has to offer is meaningless.

Meaning without culture is madness.

Culture without meaning is death. 

...

Last Friday, a man approached me at the base of Kerry Park while I was exercising using resistance bands. He was short, lean, with a short ponytail, likely in his mid twenties with two very-blond toddlers.

He approached me and he said, "Hey you look like you know what you're doing."

I said, "Yeah, I did a little bit of powerlifting and strength training while I was in college."

He said, "I work out with a group of guys at Gas Works Park. I'd like to invite you to join us."

"Sure what's the name? Does the group have a website or an Instagram?" I asked with sincere interest.

I don't remember the exact name he used, but he something like, "Yeah, so we have a website, look up 3-F, Faith, Fellowship, and Fitness."

"Oh. I see. That's not really my thing. I'm sorry. I grew up really religious. And then I joined the army, and then I studied philosophy in college. And now my beliefs are kind of complicated. I know what this is about. No thanks," is what I tried to say, but I'm not sure how much of that I successfully communicated. I know I sounded really disappointed. 

"Well, we still would like you to join us. We're not about religion. It's about being a part of something bigger than yourself," he said. And as he said that, I feel like I better understood the stupid look on his face.

He had a placid look on his face, as if he was slightly mesmerized by looking up at something beautiful. —Heaven, the love of a perfect father, communion, grace-and-forgiveness, the comfort of a knowable and ordered and rational reality, freedom from the fear of death, I imagine. I do not doubt his internal state of surety, stability, fullness, comfort... And being a part of that group would, in fact, lead you to become a part of something bigger than yourself. They lose themselves and join the hivemind.

I think ponytail guy is blinded by light. When he looks up at heaven like that, he is blind, which is probably not all that different from being too stoned while being surrounded by stoners; it works when everyone is in on the same program, but that doesn't mean they're not stupid and full of shit (i.e. not paying attention or unconscious in the Jungian sense).

Am I any better?

If that christian guy is blinded by the light, then I am in the darkness: we are both likely to stumble. Now, I might be stretching this metaphor too thin, but I think that I would rather be in the dark because I think I would be more sensitive to subtle changes in light. You can't see stars if you're staring at the sun; stare too long at the sun, and you won't see anything at all ever again.

The Ghost Speaks:

Stand in the light, and you will see that which casts a shadow.

Stand in the darkness, and you will see that which shines. 

...

"The truth with set you free. But not until it is finished with you."

The thing that I have learned about truth is that it is never finished with you. It always has more to say.

...

The truth is infinite. We may grow too tired of the truth, or we may set our foot down and say that is the most truth that I can abide. I almost wish I could know it all, but I would be destroyed in the process; we are simple, temporal, limited creatures.

...

The details of how this came up are not important and they are many. 

Early last evening Caitlin looked up to me and said something like, "I think I'm getting chubby."

I nodded yes. She is. She's put on over 20 pounds in the past six months since we started dating. It's not subtle. 

She cried for a long time, and then I rushed her out the door, and we went out with friends for a ride. Things have been tense since then.

I'm not sure what the right thing to do is. I want her to live her best life. Maybe her best life is full of activity and self-development. Or maybe it's sitting around watching TV, drinking beer and over-eating unhealthy food. 

That isn't my best life. I want to stay in good shape. I want to be active. 

Or, at least, I know I'm miserable if I let myself get out of shape and don't do anything.

Complacency seems worse than death.

Mere action is not the answer. I guess the easy answer is saying virtuous action is the answer—whatever that means.

...

I'm in a bad mood...

Everything is self-perpetuating bullshit. But the lines between Selfs are blurry. Much of what we feel and desire are not us. We are the tools and playthings of greater powers and those powers are subject to greater powers.

And The Ghost says that it all rolls up to ABRAXAS. These are the ghost's words, not mine. 

Me? I'm not sure what to think. Every time I open the news it seems totally removed from truth. It's the words of a great beast; it is information running through his synapses. The words are not false; they command and organize groups of people. Those words create an order. They're doing something; they're just not describing reality, like people expect them to.

The words of the beast/demiurge/collective-man appear to be a truth that describes the world around us. They do not. Those words are either a call to action; or they mold and shape the collective values.

There is, however, sometimes, a kernel of information regarding physical happenings in the world: events—deaths, births, killings.

Those words send out the will of a god.

Much, if not most, of what we feel is not our own.

Is any of it our own?

...

Reading Educated:

It is the story about a woman who was raised to think that she is stupid and worthless, but she discovers that she is so much more—an exceptional scholar who overcame ignorance and poverty.

When I compare myself to that book, I feel like I was raised to think I was so much more, but I am discovering that I am a piece of shit.

I am continually disappointed in myself.

...

There's a lot of people who really want to make a difference and do something meaningful. I think we can call this gainful employment. It's hard to find gainful employment. There's no good collective myth to translate labor into meaning. We're all running around on our own, spinning in circles lacking unity.

Did I say we? I meant me. I don't know what to do with myself. Having a family and settling down into a career doesn't seem like the solution

...

The past—especially our individual history and genealogy—is a gamble, a roll of many dice. How can we blame anyone for who-they-are-and-where-they-are?

...

The words of the gods move through matter and rearrange it. We have little to do with it all. We can hardly understand what is being said.

August 6, 2020

It's noon. I'm a little hungover and sleepy. I read Camus for a few hours. It is raining and gray; it feels like fall. The living room was lit by warm light. I was cozy and caffeinated.

I feel lazy and like a bum. I feel like I am growing soft. I am afraid to enjoy this comfortable as an end in itself.

My hands and feet are cold. I want to huddle under blankets. A part of me is disappointed in my softness. 

But maybe there is something to be learned in this softness and stillness. Maybe there is something subtle to be revealed. I hope I can find something of future value in this moment. Or perhaps I die tomorrow and I should enjoy the day however I see fit. 

...

The conditions of life do not seem good. I mean this in the most general sense.  

August 5, 2020

We (Danni, Caitlin, and I) need to get a copy of our lease notarized, but the cat, Rockstar, (affectionately named Pukestar) puked on our copy, so we might need to print another one. I woke up this morning. Caitlin made coffee. I dialed Washington ESD non-stop from 7:55 to 8:10. I only dialed 87 times today, down from ~200 attempts on monday. I need to call every week to receive benefits because my account is fucked and I need someone with sufficient admin privileges to grant me access.

...

I'm listening to Educated by Tara Westover. I envy her success in spite of her circumstances. She had it worse than I did, and she did more with it than I could.

...

All is void.

...

I guess a bad mood is coming over me again.

...

I think I finally learned how to sharpen knives. I have gotten two of our kitchen knives sharp enough to very easily shave with. I cut a chicken thigh yesterday, and it was like cutting through semi-cold butter with an average kitchen knife. 

I don't know how old I was when Shawn Sather tried to teach me how to sharpen a knife. I must have been fourteen. We sat in his kitchen, and he told me everything. He just kind of left me with with a knife and a whetstone. I didn't get it. It didn't click. I remember not feeling present when he was trying to teach me. I was in that headspace where I was really detached and alienated from myself; I couldn't really feel my body; my vision was hazy; my legs felt weak.

I think I still have the whetstone he gave me wrapped in a leather sleeve he made for it. I also remember lines that he said:

"This whetstone is particularly hard. It's from a hard rock vein. There's not much of this particular stone."

"When I was your age I sharpened shurikens for hours and hours. I tried throwing them at a neighborhood cat with a friend of mine. We never got the cat."

"This [knife sharpening] is a dying art." He said that with a deep sense of sadness.

I'm surprised I could only pull up three lines. It felt as if there was a lot more floating around my head. But there it is. 

I've been wanting to learn this for a long time now. I tried learning sometime in 2018. I bought my stones in a frantic, impulsive Amazon purchase while I was still in school. But I couldn't get it back then for some reason. Then I tried again when I was at Kris' former house in Index, and I fixed the edge on a Benchmade that Shawn gave me back then. Then I really got the hang of it this week. It must have taken less than a total of twenty hours of practice to get here—a satisfying place.

Why now? Why was I able to learn now? Was it just time and effort? Did I just need to let those lessons sit on the back burner?

There is a mystical side of me that says that it has something to do with my relationship to matter. I have learned to approach matter in a way that I can work with it in useful ways.

What is matter? How do I make it better?

...

I went on a walk this morning from Lower Queen Anne to Upper Queen Anne. I struggled with a familiar feeling of being inferior—a useless misfit, a sentient piece of slag, a failed permutation.

I tried to wear the feeling like a crown, an excess, a flourish.

...

I am worried that I am becoming useless. I feel like I am growing away from the standard culture. But I don't know where I am growing. Am I growing up? Am I branching off only to be plucked off and cast away into an abandoned scrap heap? Am I the vanguard, leading the charge in cultural change? Am I a piece of shit?

Better to ask—Am I living the good life?

July 27, 2020 on the feeling of freedom

I'm in Queen Anne, sitting in the living room with a cup of coffee made from a moka pot that I haven't used since last November. Like most Americans I started drinking coffee from a drip machine, then I used a French press for a while. But then I wanted to get more adventurous without buying an espresso machine, so I bought my moka pot. I then switched to pour overs because they offer the most precise extraction with the least amount of work, and they're the best way to enjoy small batch coffee; but then I wasn't able to afford expensive coffee anymore, so it hardly mattered. Then I moved in with Caitlin, and now we're using her French press because it makes enough coffee for us to have two cups each. Caitlin isn't here today, so I'm using my moka pot for the first time in a while, and it's perfect for the cheap, bitter, over-roasted, big-batch coffee that I have been paying too much for.

Saying all of that is making me think about how our environments, especially the objects/tools of our everyday environment are shaped by our fluctuating circumstances.

I think the best things, namely tools, are born out of necessity. When a void/vacuum/negative-charge is created, something eventually comes to fill in the gap. When something is out of tune, my mind quietly says, "There must be a better way," and then it silently stands watch until something comes along. The price of this process is that it requires me/us to consciously reflect on imperfection and incompleteness.

The wrong thing to do is to go out and buy the nicest espresso machine with mere desire and no true need.

Clutter is born from the acquisition of needless tools. 

...

I feel good, quite good. I'm not sure what to make of it. 

I wish I were a productive member of society, but I'm the happiest I've ever been.

...

Last week when I went to Chelan, I spoke with a man at a gas station in Cle Elum. He was a self-proclaimed Harley guy who was driving an mid-2000's Mazda. He was short, wrinkled, and with white hair, but he was in good shape, with disproportionately large biceps that suited him well. 

While I was gearing up he said he really enjoyed the "freedom" of riding without a helmet. That word usage struck me as odd. Riding without a helmet isn't freedom; but the option to ride without a helmet is freedom. He should feel free if he has the choice to ride with or without a helmet. (In Washington, motorcycle riders are required to wear helmets.)

I think this man is describing something else—a romantic, unrestricted connection with his environment.

I think he made a peculiarly American mistake by confusing freedom with romanticism.

The only time that we can feel freedom is when we open up a new world with tools (e.g. buying a motorcycle or acquiring some other skill) or when we break chains (leaving jail/military). But then the existentialists spend a lot of time describing freedom as nausea and dizziness. I think this is because freedom is possibility, unactualized potential that can leave us overwhelmed and lost.

It is my suspicion that freedom does not feel good except for during its early states. But freedom is good.

The relationship between doing and being is a mystery to me.  I don't really have the words for why I am perplexed. Maybe my confusion and wonder is self-imposed.

Suppose you want to be a better person. You might start by doing the right things. But how can you do the right things without first being a better person? (How can an evil man do good? How can a fool act wisely without first becoming wise?)

When I am caught between the poles of being and doing I feel like I am not capable of willing anything. My being becomes a reflection of itself, and my action is the act of reflecting.

I reflect myself: I am being myself, perhaps?. Is this a union of being and doing? Whatever it is, it feels like annihilation.

Stupid words. Strange loops. It—whatever it is—doesn't make sense, and I feel powerless and stupid when I reflect on this at a distance. —whatever this thought is, I don't have a good grasp of it. 

July 20, 2020

It's Monday. I must have put 700 miles on my bike since Thursday. My thumbs hurt, and my body has been sore every day. I've had a few relatively close calls. I had to slam on my brakes on the freeway going 70mph, which is one of the scariest things that has happened to me. And I dropped my bike once in sand and once in gravel while going downhill on a forest service road. The bike is fine, but my pride was not. And I actually found it more difficult to turn and brake when I got back on the road because my confidence melted a bit. I am slowly regaining my confidence. Afterwards I learned from Kris that you're not supposed to use your front brake while offroad, especially when you're on a heavy bike with street tires.

I'm in Queen Anne. I'm nearly moved in with Caitlin. It's 10am and she is making breakfast while she 'works' from home; things are slow at the office. Rockstar, Danni's cat is in my lap, purring heavily and repeatedly wiping his drool on the whale tattoo on my forearm while I type this. I'm drinking the last silty cup of coffee from a french press filled with Raven's Brew coffee, a favorite from my college days. 

My thumbs really hurt from holding the throttle and brake open for so long.

...

My plan was to write about sophistication. But I think I already wrote what I meant to in my previous post:

Sophistication is the virtue by which we perceive Quality or excellence (ἀρετή), especially where the material and social world intersect: food, drink, clothes, and machines, but also art.

...

There is a parallel between punctuated equilibrium and Heraclitus' lightning.

July 14, 2020

I'm sitting cross-legged on goose-shit covered grass under a tree by Lake Washington in Lakeview by Seward Park. The skies are blue, save for a few wispy cirrus clouds. I am surrounded by families. There are a few ducks and ducklings floating in the lake by the shore. There are speedboats and paddleboards. The air has that funky lake smell. My motorcycle is parked within sight on a residential street 50 meters behind me. 

A duck has waddled within five feet of me. It's walking towards an older middle aged couple eating, hoping for food. She has denied its request for food, but her partner in a fedora and goatee is obliging the duck. The duck is almost touching the man's foot.

Nine geese have come ashore ten meters away. They are gaggling, intermittently pecking at the ground, lacking any sense of urgency, caring only not to stray too far from each other.

Earlier I was in Bellevue, at the park in the city center, lounging in a hammock. I wrote a few paragraphs and read a little bit of Camus' The Rebel.

I have recently realized that what I am doing now is a type of leisure that I had once aspired to. It wasn't long ago that this is what I wanted to do—meaningful nothingness. I think the only thing that I would wish to change is to open the gyms and the cafes again; but that would mean forgoing my more than generous unemployment benefits, so I'll avoid complaining.

My current leisure comes with a sense of guilt. This is because I know that my pleasure is built on top of someone else's work. This is okay from a big picture perspective: utility is being maximized. 

What is the point of work if not to spend time enjoying ourselves meaningfully? Unfortunately, in my case, the person who is working is not the same person who is enjoying leisure. This has often been the case; historically it was the aristocracy. This time, it happens to be me, and my purchases, especially those at small businesses are good for the global economy. Moreover, this is only temporary; I won't die a rich duke. The worst that could happen is that I slip into complacency.

My sense of guilt comes from a narrow perspective: I am not working, so why should I deserve the fruits of the labor of others? Others are suffering, and I am enjoying myself. How can that be right? Therefor I should make an effort to not be/look so happy.

No, that doesn't seem right. I believe this feeling of guilt of guilt has something important to show me.

Don't brag. That's what it says: Don't brag, because if you do, that will be your reward; you shall forego your sense of leisure, and it will be replaced with a mere spectacle.

There is something mystical about this. It reminds me of a line that I have previously quoted from the Tao Te Ching: 

The work is done, but how no one can see;

'Tis this that makes the power not cease to be.

Additionally, while I was packing boxes, I read a diary entry from late 2014. My quasi-Jungian fantasies were concerned with "secrets". —And I have always been bad about not keeping my damn mouth shut. Somehow I feel like I must always open my mouth and destroy something subtle with language. It's easy to kill the vibe (like a good, sophisticated mood) with words—especially self-conscious words. 

...

Sophistication. 

Sophistication is something that I have not thought much about lately, but I think it is something that I have been living. I think that sophistication is one of my guiding principles, one of my more developed virtues.

If I were to die today, my ghost would regret not having written all I have to write about sophistication. It might be one of my tasks to do here on Earth. No one seems to have gotten it right quite yet.

Random thought: in relation to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Sophistication is the virtue by which we perceive Quality or excellence (ἀρετή), especially where the material and social world intersect: food, drink, clothes, and machines, but also art.