June 2, 2020

I'm in my room. Caitlin is beside me. We're both on our computers. She's working from home; she left work early without getting full permission because protestors are expected to march from Westlake to the Seattle Opera House which is right next to where she works.

I'm having a difficult time. I feel guilty for writing something that isn't going to contribute to positive change or fight injustice. But this is my journal. And I need to organize my thoughts. So here we are...

I gave my parents and little sister the middle finger today, not literally, just figuratively. I told them that I don't want to talk to them anymore. I feel a lot of hate right now. And my parents are the easiest target. I hate that I am this way, but here I am. I can't stand my parents—as if I were an angry teenager.

I am disgusted with my own character.

I wish I were respectful and less impulsive.

But I can't keep my head on straight. 

May 31, 2020

It's shortly before 8:00am. I've been up since 3am. I woke up from a dream in which I was laying in bed next to my girlfriend and I tell her, youtube is haunted. The idea sounds funny at first, but the deep worry in my gut says that this is something to be considered seriously. The internet is full of hungry ghosts, spooks, and trolls; and there are other spirits, some malevolent, some not. I begin to consider this, lying in bed. But my mind wanders elsewhere.

I hear a familiar chanting and the beating of a skull drum.

I hear a woman's voice. But I will not repeat here what she said. Then I saw the face of the ram-horned man, Aries.

May 29, 2020: Two Voices

I'm sitting at my desk. It's early in the afternoon. My room is hot. I'm trying to read Sophist by Plato. I cannot concentrate. The voice in my head is too loud.

The voice berates me. He is exceptionally belligerent today. He hurls any insults that he thinks will stick. But I know his game. I have decided to call him Aries, but I get the feeling that he goes by some other name which I will learn in the future. Aries has some part to play in my life, but I'm not sure what yet. I offer him my pen and paper, and he begins to write insults in all capital letters—EAT MY SHIT YOU COWARD...YOU ARE TOO WEAK TO CARRY THE SIMPLE BURDEN OF YOUR OWN LIFE... That's enough, I say. You're a disembodied voice with nothing to contribute. 

But he refuses to leave. So, I decide that I will dismiss him through brute focus. I sit down on the floor in my room. I sit in a quasi-lotus position and stare at a point on the carpet. My jeans are heavy and do not stretch; they restrict my movement. There is a river of cars outside. A truck at the grocery store around the corner is noisily deloading supplies. 

Good, I think to myself. There is no such thing as distraction—not in this moment. 

I continue to stare at the the same point in my carpet. There is nothing special about this particular point, but my eyes fall there naturally. I can feel my heart pulsing through my entire body. I can feel my nerve endings tingling through my arms and legs. I can see my thoughts rising; I watch them arrive and pass. I sense the presence of the disembodied voice. The voice and its unique texture seems to melt into one thing—me. My vision is nearly blacked out despite the fact that my eyes are open. Color momentarily returns when I blink.

I stand up. Twelve minutes have passed.

I do not believe in mindfulness, but what I am doing here works for me. Pragmatism requires no faith or belief—only theory and application.

I return to reading Plato. I loudly say "Fuck you," and give a sincere belly laugh when I finally understand his point that I have been mulling over for half an hour; Plato is often as profound as he is tedious.

An hour passes. A different ghost whispers, "You're a diamond in the rough."

I thank the ghost, but I find the complement hard to accept. I am worried that the ghost is merely a fragment of myself congratulating myself with onanistic intent. But I do my best to cherish the kind words the ghost brought me. I wish him well, and I ask him if there is anything I can do for him.

The ghost says, "Think of the most beautiful rose." 

So, I think of a rose—blood-red petals, lush and thick leaves that are saturated with green, thorns that are unforgivingly sharp, and as a surprise, the rose smells of bergamont. I give the ghost the rose as a gift, which seems harmless;—I can always think up another.

May 21, 2020: The Quest for the DIPA—the Grail

Dan is my friend, and Dan searching for the quintessential Pacific Northwest Double IPA (PNW DIPA).

This was inspired by his/our love affair with Pliny the Elder by Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, CA. Within our circle of friends, this beer is held in reverence, made only more intense by the fact that the closest place that we can find it bottled or on tap is three hours away in Portland. One member of the inner circle has never even had it; he has only seen the rest of us nodding in silent ecstasy as we recall the last time we had a Pliny.

Funny enough, it's hard to say that Pliny is the best tasting beer out there. Pliny isn't tasty: it's not like a frosting slathered, fruit-topped cake, nor does it offer the satisfaction of a rack of ribs falling off the bone, nor does it have the happy-stomach feeling of a pina colada. Pliny is best in class. Pliny is appreciated only after one has made his way through hundreds of beers. —And I mean hundreds; I stopped logging beers several years ago when I hit 395 unique beers, which is a modest number among my wider circle of friends.

Pliny the Elder is quintessential. It captures the most important parts of a West Coast IPA. I don't know how Russian River did it, but they did it. And the result of their magic is a heady beer that is drinkable and especially satisfying. Unfortunately, drinkable and satisfying are marketing cliches, but I think that's the best explanation I have. If you want an expert take on what Pliny tastes like, there's hundreds of beer blogs and thousands of reviews out there.

So, Dan is looking for a quintessential beer in the Pacific Northwest. He's turned it into a quest. And the weird thing is that the rest of us are inspired by him. Together, I think, we can see what he's aiming at. There's a grail hiding in gas station refrigerators, supermarket shelves, and liquor store displays. And he has us convinced it's out there. It's not going to be the best beer; no, it's much more important than that. We're looking for a new legend, an icon. 

There's a lot of hangovers and hop-headaches in our future. But the cause is noble, and the cause is just. 

May 20, 2020: The idea that Lightning Lightning Strikes Root Through Everything

I'm sitting on the porch, and my feet are cold. For no good reason, I've gone out of my way to treat myself to a good beer, a summer ale by Kulshan Brewing. I was going to buy a cheap tallboy of Modelo or Bud-Heavy, but I felt a sense of nostalgia when I saw Kulshan; it (quite vaguely) reminded me of my time in Bellingham.

I started this blog with the intention of being candid—'cause this is an online journal/diary. And I knew it was only a matter of time before I would end up writing about drama with someone I know; I just didn't think it would be so soon. This is going to be a challenge. But the challenge is important because that's where character is built. I need to accurately and fairly describing what happened, and then come to a reasonable conclusion that I would be comfortable openly sharing.

First off, I need to hedge my position here before I start accusing friends: I handled things poorly, even if what I said was accurate. A lot of frustration could have been saved if I wasn't impulsive. Allright, here we go:

A friend invited me and my girlfriend for dinner, and then once we agreed to the invite, he sarcastically remarked that we should invite any single friends if we have any. By itself this remark is a little bit off, but it isn't a faux pas. And he's not a slimy creep; he's actually an especially friendly, good looking, successful guy whose single-status is either a result of his homebody-personality or bad karma from a previous lifetime. My problem was that he has made this remark every single time that we have hung out; I should have addressed my discomfort earlier, but I let it build. 

So, when I woke up on the day that we had dinner plans, I sent him a nasty text:

I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m going to call off dinner tonight.

I don’t think you realize that it’s insulting and just like plain wrong that you think I’m a guy that can get you laid because I have connections. My friends, and the friends of my friends aren’t your fuck-toys. I suggest you reevaluate your attitude towards women.

Within ten minutes of waking up, I sent that exact message. And I want to slap myself in the damn face for it. Logically, I think my message was sound-enough. But sound-enough isn't reason-enough to say something like that. And sure enough, he quickly sent a well-worded and reasonable response explaining his position. 

We're both reasonable guys, and this ended reasonably. I apologized, and he accepted my apology. And we didn't have dinner. And that was that—a dramatic tuesday.

But it got me thinking about previous times that I was similarly impulsive, and I wanted to frame it symbolically. And I wound up thinking about lightning. Lightning builds up, and then it discharges, suddenly and violently. Lightning is a really important symbol for me, and it's interesting that I finally get to apply it to my life in a way that helps me organize my being.

Heraclitus, an ancient Greek says, in two different translations:

Lightning strikes root through everything. 

and 

Thunderbolt steers all things.

(Relevant entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Heraclitus thinks that the fundamental nature of reality is fire, and by fire, he means change. Everything is in flux. But the world is not just merely flux and change. He says it's guided by the thunderbolt, lightning. What this means exactly is up for debate, because the guy was really vague. But here's what I think it means.

I think that nature has a violent way of reordering the world—revolutions, mass extinctions, plagues of locusts, war, famines, economic crashes, etc. all lead to a new emerging order . A thunderbolt is an apt symbol for that phenomenon. It's a natural build-up and sudden burst of energy—a river of energy—that follows a particular path(s) to its target(s), and then it sets its target on fire, which is transformational.  

And in a really mundane way, that's what happened to me when I was impulsive: I let energy build up, and then it was violently released, and it transformed my environment; because of my violence, I reached a new state of equilibrium.

As much as I love Heraclitus, he doesn't have the final word. I/we don't have to let a thunderbolt organize our lives. And so I've been thinking about a counterbalancing symbol. The first thing that came to mind was a lightning rod, and the second thing that came to mind was a particular kind of bell.

May 17, 2020

It's mid afternoon. I'm with my girlfriend at her apartment in Lower Queen Anne sitting on her living room couch while a her roommate's tiny tuxedo cat, Grr, is trying to make her way onto my lap. Grr normally gets a seat between my thighs while we watch TV, but she has now reluctantly settled for a bony spot on my crossed calves while I type this post on my laptop.

Today we slept in until noon. I can't remember the last time I slept in so late. This implies a victory on two fronts: (1) I have been successfully waking up early for the sake of being a well-adapted human being in spite of shit circumstances, and (2) we've been meaning to sleep in one morning and we've finally done it.

Around noon we walked to Seattle Center Park and stopped for coffee at Caffe Zingaro on the way. There were two baristas, both of whom were sharing a cigarette outside the entrance. I asked what drip coffee they served, and the barista said was, "We serve a medium-dark roast, nothing special." It felt like an intentionally-anti-snoot response that gave off a too-cool-to-care vibe. This was appropriate. The barista didn't oversell the coffee, which is good because the coffee sucked. Managing expectations is an important skill in the service industry:

A ghost says: Woo them with magic where you can; otherwise, candor is king.

In the cafe there were a dozen or or so 1'x1' oil/acrylic paintings hung up in the cafe which I thought sucked. And it's fine to showcase mediocre art, but they were trying to sell it at a steep price, which is, in my book, a faux pas. Maybe I'm missing something, and the featured artist has a meaningful backstory or a talent that I lack the perspective to appreciate. But I'd bet good money it was done by an amateur because I saw a lack of three-dimensional form, and there was no real expression of color values, meaning that I think that the artist heavily relied too heavily on colors that came fresh out of the paint tube. —Not that I could do any better.

We spent around an hour reading at Seattle Center Park. She is reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and I was finishing VALIS by PKD. Despite COVID-19 there were still plenty of people walking through the park, but they were doing a good job of keeping their distance. I guess one of the biggest changes is that it's not okay to pet strangers' dogs anymore, which is tragic because we saw two of the most AKC-perfect French bulldogs being walked by their gay-couple owners wearing matching outfits made of well-fitting light-blue denim jeans, and well-tailored spring-season patterned button up long sleeve collared shirts—quite dressed up for Seattle.

We came home and make a late brunch. I simultaneously burned/charred and undercooked diced sweet potatoes. In order to protect my growing-and-delicate chef's persona, I charitably interpret this as a sign that I have been chosen to be imbued with culinary greatness: I have squared the circle by creating a paradox in the kitchen by having unified two opposites, the overcooked and the undercooked—may my pan and spatula navigate these two poles. 

May 14, 2020: A list of thoughts and regrets keeping me up tonight.

Someone once said that writers write to forget.

It's after midnight. These are the thoughts running through my head right now:

• Being in middle school and having the wherewithal to realize my mother was getting fleeced by a Mexican naturopath doctor selling “electrically charged water”
  
  
• Getting fired; walking out of a building in downtown Seattle carrying my office plant, keyboard, books, and misc office supplies in a penguin themed Christmas gift bag. 
  
  
• Fantasizing about punching my former manager in the face. 
• Fantasizing about suffering in jail for a long time for punching my former manager in the face.
  
  
• Remembering telling the property manager at my apartment that I could no longer afford to live there after just having moved in two months prior. 
• Getting broken up with by my girlfriend on the last day in my apartment, and then laying in a stuffy room, on a mattress placed on the floor, surrounded by all of my belongings in messy piles, and then (against my better judgement) checking my email to find out I was denied unemployment benefits. 
  
  
• Regretting a facebook post I made when I was 19 where I wrote “fuck your Prius” on the back of my Jeep that I had for a few months before selling it and buying a Honda Fit.
  
  
• Regretting logging into my sister’s facebook account while I was in high school and messaging one of her friends to tell her that her makeup made her look like a whore. I had a crush on her, and I knew I wasn’t good enough to date her. I really wasn’t, in part due to my sense of inferiority.
  
  
• Regretting shaving my eyebrows in high school because I craved attention—even if it meant totally humiliating myself.
  
  
• Remembering getting black out drunk multiple times a week while I was stationed in Korea because I couldn’t stand the pain of consciousness; it was better to slip away than suffer my miserable life there.
  
  
• Picturing what I looked like from an outsider’s perspective when I was high on mushrooms, sitting in a friend's backyard, on a bucket, under a small awning, muttering to myself as I crossed back-and-forth over the threshold of drug induced psychosis and being merely hallucinating 
• Remembering the panic attacks that followed during the following months.
  
  
• Remembering waking up in jail with no memories of the night before.
• Remembering trading my socks in jail for a book that I never read and now realizing that I still owe a violent criminal a pair of cotton underwear.
  
  
• Wondering how I managed to get two corneal abrasions that sent me to the ER within three years.
  
  
• Regretting wasting my time grinding away hours in Runescape in middle school.
  
  
• Wondering what stopped me from being a better guitar player in high school. (Video games.)
  
  
• Wondering how many other people I went to high school with that might have shared my same anxiety and the sense of being detached from their body.
  
  
• Being frustrated with my dad for doing nothing to prepare me for the workforce.
  
  
• Fantasizing about punching my dad in the face for being enamored with Ken Ham. 
  
  
• Fantasizing about throwing a knife in my dad’s TV that I bought him with every time he says something positive about the Trump presidency. 
  
  
• Fantasizing about slapping my mother for one time expressing a naive, childish, fantasy about how she wished she could do homemaker duties for Tump in the White House, organizing his desk and dusting.
  
  
• Regretting fantasizing about slapping my mother.
  
  
• Regretting not taking high school math seriously. 
  
  
• Regretting not having the guts to have studied more math in college. 
  
  
• Regretting not valuing education earlier in life. 
  
  
• Realizing that other people have faced greater adversity than me and have achieved much more while both complaining and worrying much less.
  
  
• Pondering the fact that there are other people much worse off than me that don’t complain and worry as much as I do. 
  
  
• Thinking about how happiness has little to do with being a good person or developing good character. (For there are many happy bad people)
  
  
• Remembering that time my dad almost punched me in the face while I was brushing my teeth after came home from church on a Wednesday because I called him a “jerk”. 
  
  
• Remembering being a Christian and thinking that God wanted me to marry a particular girl; remembering how badly I wanted it to happen despite how unlikely it seemed at that time.
• Being thankful that I did not marry that girl. 
  
  
• Remembering being in early high school and repeatedly recommending the Halo soundtrack to a middle-age adult mentor who was a skilled musician and not taking the hint that what I was doing was actually really lame.
  
  
• Remembering skinning a bull-snake that was killed on the road and watching parasites squirm their way out of its intestines; being surprised at how quickly flies congregated.
  
  
• Regretting setting a large (and illegal) firework in what I thought was a teacher’s front yard as a prank but actually placing it in the wrong yard.
• being thankful the fuse broke and the firework never went off. 
  
  
• Feeling a sense of panic when I think of numerous times that I could have been caught with drugs and ruined my life.
  
  
• Remembering holding up my hand in front of my face pleading with my sister not to shoot me with a BB gun; remembering  at the pain of being shot and the blood blister that formed on my palm.
  
  
• Regretting spending too much time regretting and not enough time learning to change my behavior. 
  
  
• Remembering a close army friend who fell off the wagon and is probably addicted to opiates.
• Remembering the time we dropped acid and we acted like we had discovered the profoundest secrets of the universe and, for a while, really believing it. 
  
  
• Regretting trying to “save” friends, wasting energy lecturing them. 
  
  
• Beholding the tragedy of how much anxiety I regularly carry and yet fail to properly acknowledge. 
  
  
• Comparing my worst internal states of being with self-generated ideal caricatures of supposedly perfect people. —all so many ghosts. 
  
  
• Feeling that I am unremarkable and that my life would be better if I stopped pretending I was better than i really am. 
  
  
• Wishing I could live life with less thinking. 
  
  
• Regretting not starting this list sooner and getting all of this off my mind so I could go to bed at an earlier time.