May 12, 2020: Zen and the Art of Not Dying on a Motorcycle

For the first time in my life, I took a motorcycle on the freeway, and it was the most fun I've had since I dropped acid a few years back during my Hunter-S.-Thompson-meets-The-Archetypes-and-the-Collective-Unconscious phase.

Oh but if I knew then what I knew now.

This story starts almost exactly one year ago. I was four months out of college, and I had just started working Amazon Web Services as a contract specialist. I was awarded a $15k signing bonus which I quickly transmuted into hiking equipment, plates of oysters, generous tips, and drinks, and drinks, and drinks for friends. I had spent well-over half of my bonus before I received it with my first paycheck, not that that seemed like a problem at the time since I was receiving around 4k every months after taxes and 401k contributions, which I thought was quite good for someone who studied the humanities in school and didn't have any "real skills."

I was making good money, but I was spending better money. So, you can guess how the story goes when I tell you a lot of bad things happened at once when I "was fired/quit" seven months later and simultaneously lost a quasi-legal battle with my landlord. And things continued to get worse—financially speaking. 

This isn't a plea for help or another woe is me story. I'm not poor. I'm not starving. I just have debt and limited income. All of this is happening during COVID-19 which just the icing on the cake. Anyway, that's enough of a pity party. Here's the point:

When things are slow and shitty—when life is below the norm—, what really really matters to you becomes much more obvious and shining: you learn to appreciate things more, but only if you have the courage to look past your own misery. And I learned that I didn't value money; I valued spending money, and the way I was spending money was actually a miserable affair. After my time at AWS, I became a barista who had to pinch pennies, but my well-being improved. 

Anyway, this weekend I had the opportunity to ride a motorcycle. I'll save you the descriptive details about how riding a motorcycle is a metaphor for life; if you want that then read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (Or my future blog posts, probably)

I learned that I value riding a motorcycle for its own sake. It is an end in itself.

Nearly everything I do, including this blog, is aimed at accomplishing something, bettering myself. And I know my "self-development" has paid dividends. But getting on the highway and pulling the throttle open on an R3 was life changing. 

While I was on the freeway, I was focused and in the moment: my body found a meaningful metaphor, and that metaphor happened to be incarnated in this physical world in the form of a motorcycle. Philosophy be damned; I found a new itch that great minds and books can't scratch.

In hindsight, I didn't even enjoy acid for its own sake. I was on an enlightenment quest, taking increasingly heroic doses on a journey to find the solution to (my) suffering, which I might add, ended terribly. I suppose the same thing could be done on a motorcycle, and I think that's how a lot of young guys die: they're chasing a moving threshold rather than enjoying the ride—however fast or slow that ride may be.

Maybe, if I get a motorcycle, I'll devolve into a speed chasing junkie. But for the time being, saving up for a motorcycle seems like the right thing for me to do, because I want to ride.

May 6, 2020 Coffee with a daemon

It's wednesday, and it's a little after 10am. I have a still-warm 25oz cup of black coffee from Cafe Ladro in Queen Anne sitting with me at my desk at home. 

Earlier, when was hiking up  Queen Anne hill back to my car, I caught a woman driving a large fire engine checking me out. I found this kind of reckless given the size of the truck and the steep grade of the hill; but I'm sure those machines have excellent brakes. I mention this because the driver stared at me during a funny time. I had just worked myself out of a bad mood, and I was feeling stoic. If I hadn't worked myself out of the bad mood, I would have either not have noticed that I was being looked at (with respect/desire), or I would not have been looked at because my posture would have been poor (which people instinctively notice).

While I was waiting in line for coffee, I asked myself, "Who is a winner?" (As in, "What kind of person always wins.) I didn't have an answer because I wasn't sure what the game was. To me it sounds like an insipid question, likely asked (with quasi-ironic enthusiasm) by a mid-level manager of a call center giving a motivational speech to his sales team. But why was I asking myself the question? Because I felt like a loser, which happens often; and it has nothing to do with how well I am doing in the moment.

I learned something about this feeling. This feeling is a daemon, and it has a whim-and-will of its own, and he sneakily shows up when he finds a way in; there is no keeping him out. And this daemon told me: you're a loser. And it's true: there are many ways in which I am a loser, but that goes for everyone because we all (eventually) fail. Even the most perfect human will one day be a corpse, and the dead don't win at anything.

When I told the daemon that we're all losers in some regard, he changed his approach. But he didn't leave me alone. He was upset. He intended to say something, so he stayed with me, voicelessly bothering me, interrupting my morning. So, I helped him out. After I got my coffee, I sat on a park bench and pulled out a pen and paper, and we wrote. We concluded that what he really wanted to ask me was more along the lines of, how can I be better adapted to my environment? That did the trick. That was the appropriate question. And the daemon was satisfied. The question—and perhaps the daemon too—still lingers, but it is not a painful question, and the daemon is now helpful. The question is a reminder that no matter how well or poor I am doing, I can improve my being.

As for the coffee, I'm satisfied. It's not sour. And it follows in the Seattle/American tradition of being on the light side of dark. Also, it's better than anything Cafe Vita roasts, which is better than Starbucks. Now, if only I could afford to drink coffee like this a little more regularly...

May 3, 2020: Plato and the nature of this blog

What is this blog?

This my open journal. I aim to be candid. I won't share everything. There's too much stuff that goes on in my head that just doesn't make sense in this format. (e.g. my current prevailing deep-fantasy is the interplay between two symbols, vividly projected somewhere in my skull: a large, red, roaring sun; and a brilliant, white point that emanates sharp rays of white light. Those fantasies don't really have a place here. I have another blog that those might go.)

I want to make this blog a place to cultivate my public persona. This is where I can begin writing my stories that I will share with other people during conversations at bars, coffee shops, and on airplanes. This is where I can develop my opinions on the things that I find interesting or important. Another thing this blog will do is publicly record a significant portion of my thought process.

There's a danger to this: I have never felt perfectly comfortable with a group—evangelicals, feminists, soldiers, college students, progressives, conservatives, Americans, whites, hispanics, and so on. I tend to alienate myself from groups. I shy away from labels and categories. I can barely stand calling myself an existentialist, (but I am certainly a half-closeted Jungian). I have a frustrating relationship with labels because I think I'm special and unique; this is not a virtue, but it is who I am. I feel like the easy way of explaining this away is saying that I grew up in between too many cultures; despite appearances, I am half-Mexican, whatever that means.

[...]

I would mark today as a big day: I received my copy of Plato: The Complete Works. It was one of life's cruel ironies that I received this book overnight, while I have been waiting over two weeks to receive a box of cloth face masks (to prevent spreading COVID-19), which has been sitting in a FedEx warehouse somewhere in Tennessee. I'm not complaining. Honestly, I'd rather have the book.

Plato is a big deal.

I feel that it's a mark of intellectual maturity that I am excited to study his complete works—1800 pages cover to cover—on my own. A little over five years ago, I was reading CG Jung. I had no formal intellectual education besides a third rate high school diploma, but I quickly read and finished The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious and Psychological Types... I had no idea what was going with his books. I followed a lot of rabbit trails trying to decipher CG Jung's work; his work is a labyrinthine puzzle that led me to philosophy.

Anyway, as far as I am concerned, Plato might as well be the foundation of Western Civilization.

(And Heraclitus is the dry ground that Plato's foundation rests on.)

I feel that Plato is real and legitimate—that once I have finished reading this, my ideas will have a better foundation. I don't think that's an overstatement. However, I'm not saying that in order to have well-founded, legitimate ideas, one must have read Plato. But the man's work had such a big impact and covered so much ground that it would be a mistake to dismiss him, namely because one would risk unknowingly borrowing his ideas.

Ideas are important; they shape our world. I'm an ideas guy. I like tracing ideas to their supposed origins. I like seeing how ideas, ideologies, and symbols evolve over time.

May 2, 2020: First Post

It's Saturday in the late afternoon. The weather outside is mostly cloudy. It is too cold for how late in spring it is. The sun comes out for one minute and hides for twenty. I'm sitting up in my bed at home in the Beacon Hill neighborhood south of Seattle. My girlfriend is curled up asleep next to me. We made a mutual promise an hour ago to not let each other fall asleep during the day; I have failed her. But there isn't much else to do. We've spent the better part of the day reading. She's reading The Last Book on the Left. And I'm reading VALIS by PKD and Symbols of Transformation by CG Jung, both of which are books that deal with a special brand of fringe theology, which will be a topic for future discussion.

[...]

Gossip:
While writing this, in bed, I can look out of my window to see my neighbors across the street. They're a young couple, and their defining feature is a combination of their trendy tight-fitting clothes and the bajillion cigarettes they smoke. This very moment, I am looking at what must be their living room window, which is open; a shiny Christmas-green velvet couch is placed in front of the window, partially blocking the window, and there is white doily placed on the green couch; during one half of the day, there is a disembodied arm, hanging over the couch, ashing a cigarette out of the window, and during the other half of the day the two of them are lounging outside, smoking. I don't have enough information to really judge their character, but their best and most-redeeming quality is their dog which is a german shepard mix who never barks at strangers and regularly wears a sharp-looking bandana. To be honest, I'm pretty intimidated by their swagger (and of anyone who can afford rent in Seattle, not work, and also smoke that many cigarettes).

[...]

Passing thought: Money is the shadow of value. Value is a platonic form. Money is a congealed shadow.