May 1, 2021 A Mind Like Wax

(Written by hand originally. It took a few days to write this all down. Distractions abound.)

...

It is 4:00pm exactly. I meant to get coffee in Greenwood at Herkimer, but they weren't offering any indoor seating. So, I walked down the main road looking for another cafe along the way and found my way into a beer bottle shop with over a dozen beers on tap. 

I'm having a saison from Holy Mountain. Typically a saison is funky (due to bacterial fermentation that happens alongside the yeast—I think (correction: a saison typically features wild yeast.))This one tastes somewhere between Michelob Ultra and a middle-shelf, dry white wine.followed by a slightly hoppy, slightly bitter finish.

There's a vinyl record playing. It's bluesy, groovy, with heavy electric organ use. 

It's gray and misting. 

The passing cars sound like an intermittent river.

—Quick pivot: today was my first day at my new MMA/Jiu Jitsu Gym. I am currently sporting two bruises; and my right shin hurts because a +200lbs, former army combat medic's knee landed right on it. We warmed up with five minutes of jogging and practiced drills for 45 minutes. Then, for the last 5-10 minutes, we rolled. (Wrestling with each other, which is also known as grappling.)

I am better at grappling than the average person; but that is true because the average—the typical person, rather—has absolutely no experience. John, the former combat medic and I rolled for a few minutes. He won both times, but he was good about letting me fight at my skill level without immediately destroying me. He called it "rolling at half-speed" or something close to that. 

After John and I rolled two or three times, Coach suggested I roll with Spike. 

One of the things that I failed to mention is that of the dozen or so of us at the class, only John and I were adults. Coach was watching us along with his son who is my same age and a semi-pro MMA state champ. But otherwise, all of the other students were under the age of 15 or so. 

I am 6' 0''. 
185 lbs. 
Lean. Muscular. And broad shouldered. 

Spike is a teenage who recently got braces, doesn't have facial hair, and I think he may weigh as much as 120 lbs—maybe.

When we first squared up on the mat, he looked at me with large, calm, gray eyes. He was confident, eager, and curious. I didn't sense a trace of cockiness, which made it that much more humbling when he kicked my ass twice. 

I was still breathing heavily five minutes later as I was walking into the grocery store to pick up ingredients for a late brunch. 

I hope I can kick his ass someday. 

Earlier in the session, I had a moment of reflection and insight. Coach's sun, whose name I can't recall, stepped in to give advice to John and me. —There's something special about having a "master" teach you. A master teaches with their whole...
—not their words alone
—not with their body alone
—not the dogma
—not their emotions
—not their vibe nor their soul. 
A master teaches with their whole being. which is reflected in the student. The reflection—the image or the form—impresses upon the student. It transforms him, likening him to the teacher. 

An impressionable student becomes like the teacher, not the lesson.

I was only really there, learning for the first half, right up until my perception became a blank gray wall of static because I was tired and brain fried. But my last, most-productive moments died and brought me the memory of a philosophy lecture.

It's Spring quarter three years ago, and Hud Hudson, one of contemporary analytic philosophy's most notable metaphysicians (and theists), is giving a lecture. He is a middle aged man, wearing an Under Armor hoodie, cargo shorts,  and keen hiking sandals. His lectures sound like he is reading from a beautiful and lucidly written book. My initial impression is that his style is merely the product of careful repetition, rehearsal, and the memorization of key phrases that inevitably follows. However, he answers questions with the same cathedral-like elegance and detail—shining light where it matters most. 

The class he is teaching is called History of Philosophy: The Empiricists. I almost failed the class. I passed with a C, which may have been charitable on Hudson's part. The lecture was on a particular philosopher: Descartes, Locke, or Hume. (Though maybe it was an Ancient Greek philosophy who said the following:)

The mind is like a soft clay tablet (or perhaps like wax). The world makes impressions upon the clay-like mind through the senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.

In more simple terms, the empiricists believe that all knowledge came from the senses. They left no room for inborn instinct or synthetic a-priori knowledge.)

I struggled with this class because partially because its lessons were to disagreeable to my own ideas and experience. I did find the ideas interesting and valuable, but only as mere abstractions. —until now.

Today, while the coach's champion fighter son teach, I felt an intuitive, subjective sense for what the empiricists meant when they said the mind was like impressionable clay. It was the first time that I felt what they meant when they said the mind was like a clay tablet. 

Subjectively, as the prize fighter was teaching me jiu jitsu by going through the various bodily motions, I felt the lessons sink in. Then, I did my best to repeat the fighter's movements. I felt him mark and his impression. Its form lingered as it sank in. This is different from my other experiences. I tend to overthink lessons, often relying too heavily on language and relating the lesson to as many other lessons as I could, looking for similarities across other domains. But for part of the lesson, my mind was like soft clay. 

However, that state did not last long. I returned to my typical method of learning, which is in a different direction than the empiricists:

The form sinks in, and it enters a garden (my mind); there it must learn to survive—be it through force, viciousness, cunning, or cooperation. The form is not a mere shape nor a sophisticated blue print. It arrives like a living animal, with a spirit, capable of independent existence.

A master's lesson is both metaphor and spirit. 

And the metaphor-and-spirits—they talk amongst each other. They organize themselves, perhaps like a mandala or perhaps like a social community, like a city. They are each capable of stepping forward to work when they are needed, (or they step forward, by their own compulsion, when they feel they are needed.)

...

Everything that can be talk about, exists. (There is no non-being.) The question is, how does it exist? 

(E.g. A hallucination is a real experience. The problem is that the hallucinator is liable to confuse non-material entities for physical entities.)

It's all real. The question is, how is it real, and how do we relate to it? —whatever it is.

...

To experience is to suffer—among other things.

...

 I'm two or three (moderately heady) beers drunk on an empty stomach. I'm in bed. Ita's about 7pm, and I want to sleep. The Sun in shining through my window slats just perfectly so it hits me in the eye, but I've decided not to move away so that I could write about the light hitting me in the face. 

...

I haven't slept enough this April. I've been busy helping Madeline Owen with a mural in Capitol Hill off of Broadway. We've worked late into the night, and I wake up at 4am for work. 

...

I have a lot to write about work. 

...

ZADurday is coming up. (Zack/Andy/Dan). Birthdays. We're going to get eat oysters and get drunk on beer that cost more than decent wine but also Coors or Budheavy.

...

My 29th birthday is coming up. In theory, I should be panicking (or maybe the panic is supposed to start next year, and I am allowed one more year of denial.) Instead, I feel okay. I feel like I am on the right path. I have panicked enough already. I have looked forward enough—or maybe too much. Now, I'm t/here. 

I am not in love with the beauty and freedom of youth. Beauty and freedom exist independently of youth.

...

I don't know if I have ever been this far behind on sleep and yet felt this okay. (This isn't mania; this is meaningful experience that is keeping me going.)

...

There are many Andy's.

As time goes on, they are becoming more unified.

...

I am becoming more acquainted with the Pantheon. 

Onward, Hermes; guide this wayward soul.

Hello, Aphrodite. 

Aries rises.

Hephaestus nods.

Apollo thinks that...

...

One of these days, many days from now, I am going to re-read Jung, and have a deeper understanding of mythology, and my mind will be absolutely blown. But also I will have a lot of input and corrections for him. Reinterpretations. Additions. 

Mythology isn't over. It is still being. 

I am in Lynwood. Caitlin is driving back to Portland. After several days of work, we are done moving.

Starting over again is like tearing up a garden. 

In my mind I keep seeing burning things. A burning heart. A burning tree. Fire. I have cried a lot today. 

A few minutes ago while unpacking, I picked up a heart-shaped cookie cutter that Caitlin and I bought on Valentine's Day of last year. We used it to make small pastry-puff hand pies with cherry filling. She gave them to her coworkers, and we ate a few. At the time we had been seeing each other (again) for a little over a month. I felt ambivalent about our relationship. I wasn't in good shape at the time—financially, emotionally, or in any other facet of my life, really. Maybe I was in okay shape, but I was lost, very, very lost. I tried occupying myself with writing and reading, which sort of worked. 

When I pulled that cookie cutter out of knife bag—which is another story—I felt my heart sear. (I say sear because when I say I felt heart-burn, it just doesn't sound like what I'm going for.) In that moment the value that she brought to my life last year became bright and clear: 

I saw light and felt flames. It was real. 

Seeing the truth is a matter of perspective—distance, angle, focus, aperture, length of exposure, development, etc. 

I don't know precisely why I separated from her. For a while I had a suspicion that I was only doing it for the wrong reasons. Well, if the end justify the means, I did the right thing: I learned a lot, and I changed a lot, especially over the past few days. Old memories are springing back like forgotten bulbs blooming in unexpected places. This new growth was only possible by starting over. I don't know if Caitlin and I will get back together. We certainly could. 

...

"Time to get these seeds in the cold ground, it takes a while to grow anything."

...

 It's a poetic irony that so much has happened on today, April Fools' day.

To new beginnings.

 It's raining. 

A lot has happened, more than I can really write about: I visited El Paso with Caitlin; I have been doing well with photography; and, starting the day after tomorrow, I will be working with a union electrical contractor as an installer, which I don't really know what that means. 

I don't know if I can drink anymore. It puts me in a depressive mood the next day, or I just get moody. (And a ghost of an old man meticulously berates me telling me that my soul is getting soggy when I drink.)

...

When I was in El Paso, I took portraits of my mother and my father. They portraits are okay, compositionally. I wish I could have spent at least a few more minutes getting everything set up, but there was traffic, it was terribly windy, and my mother was getting cold. When I looked through the lens at my mother, I felt my heart sink in my chest. I saw her aging, and I saw the pain that I had caused her by being so far away for so long—physically and emotionally distant. The picture is shockingly clear. I intend to get it re-scanned and printed in the near future.

That moment, along with a few other pictures felt more like magic, synchronicity, or psychological-transformation than mere-photography. 

Maybe that's what I should be chasing—that feeling that feels all-too-real or too-real-to-be-real or too-meaningful-to-be-ordinary-reality. Those moments are rare. But through care and cultivation, I think I can find more of those moments (and improve their composition). 

I'm in my kitchen. Chicken is frying in the background. Caitlin is taking a picture of herself in the mostly-empty living room; she's preparing to sell a bright lime-green blazer. 

I've had a bad day, for no real reason other than I have a slight hangover. My body is fine, but my emotions are not. I'm impulsive and brooding. Sensitive in bad ways.

But I'm still present. I'm coping well enough that Caitlin and I haven't fought at all. 

Caitlin had a FaceTime video chat with her new roommates in Portland. They have a lot in common, to the point of it being shocking. (Into vintage clothes, from LA, going through a relationship issue.)

The rice cooker just ruined two cups of rice which is fine, except that we're h[u/a]ngry. 

...

Yesterday, Caitlin and I went to Federal Way to attend Billy's BBQ with his wife and a few of his friends. 

Good conversations were had. But I did that thing where I get way too into my ideas to the point where it's off-putting. [Caitlin says she promises I wasn't offputting.] However, there was one guy there that seemed to enjoy it. We have very similar interests.

This phrase came to mind while I was having conversations: don't let it get too hot. 

When I get too excited, it gets too intense. I get too intense. (Like my father, yuck.) People don't like that level of agitation and intensity. 

So I thought back to a conversation with Caitlin about what it means to be cool. I believe her definition is superior to my own. (I was saying that a cool person is more popular with sophisticated taste.) She says a cool person is someone who is easy to hangout with. While sophistication and popularity have their place, I think she's right about the word cool.

This brings me back to my earlier point about the conversation getting too hot. A cool person can dissipate the heat of a conversation; they're good at keeping their cool (and helping others keep their cool). A cool person knows what to do with the heat that comes from the scorching spotlight of awareness and the friction that comes with social interaction.

...

I look down at popculture and "basic people" because I don't stand a chance at competing against them for attention. I should stop that. Who am I to say what is worthy of being paid attention to?

Under the Thin Film

(It's the morning after. I'm here to edit. I wrote this without thinking, just before passing out on the couch (sober). I'm not sure what to expect. I don't remember what I wrote. —hey that was pretty good!)

...

I've been moody lately. That's what I get for not taking my own advice. (Too much coffee, too much alcohol, not enough sleep, not enough time relaxing, too much time multitasking). But also, sometimes my emotional weather is just bad. My brain has a mind of its own.

In the material world, it was sunny but cold. This is one of many "fake spring" days to come. The weather is teasing that it is going to start getting warmer, but we know it isn't. I rode to Greenlake. I had a mediocre americano by the lake. At the cafe there was a person whose face was perfectly lit by the harsh sun reflecting off the smooth concrete floor and onto their face. I don't remember if it was a man or a woman or their age or anything. I just remember that they were the best lit person in the cafe out of two dozen others.

Outside there was one young woman who was painfully beautiful; she had the kind of beauty that gives me the same recurring feeling of of burning jealousy. As a young man I would have merely experienced this ugly burning and then unfairly projected a negative trait onto her, telling myself she was shallow or stupid, so that I could protect myself from feeling hopelessly attracted and totally inadequate. I still feel the same attraction to her. And her type of beauty still elicits feelings of inadequacy, but it doesn't have the same sting that it used to. The inadequacy is impersonal now. I guess beauty feels like a force in the world (like gravity); it's not just about her and me; beauty, to me now, is a natural force. And that beauty isn't really hers; her beauty is only a shadow of what beauty really is. I feel small in comparison to the beauty that she represents—in the way that standing on a beach with massive driftwood trees implies the existence of tremendous and terrible waves; it speaks of a force that has passed and left its mark.

I also edited pictures today. I built up a queue of pictures to post on Instagram. I've added a few followers; I am slowly making progress to getting 1000 (active) followers. We're a long way away. I'm not sure I can do it without being more gratuitous (boobs and butts).

How does one build an audience? How does one play to an audience? Do I even want to make that compromise? Well, for the time being, I think I would benefit from growing an audience. I couldn't sell-out if I tried.

....

It is so strange how much there is going on in the mind, just outside of our awareness. It is possible to try to break that nearly-invisible surface-tension-like film. But when that thin layer is broken, the thing beneath the surface isn't the same.  There are tricky and clever ways to see the machinations that are working down below. (This is self-knowledge and the study of psychology.) 

—there’s this motorcycle enduro rider, Graham Jarvis. He’s a poet and a dancer with his dirtbike. He’s one of those high-performing athletes that just blows my mind. When Jarvis—or any Motogp racer really—is working, they're on another level, far above our pathetic, vulgar, Earthly lives. But then they come back.

After a race they’ll sit down with their coach and discuss what they were doing. And then, somehow, their discussion will just automagically sink in and have an effect on their future performance. —how that works is a mastery that blows my fucking mind.

Somewhere, somehow there is a back-and-forth transition—a transformation—of language (propositional knowledge) to tacit knowledge (being physically able to do the cool thing).That transformation is a mystery. I’m not sure if we mere-humans have the ability to to have a theoretical understanding of that process, but we can do it.

I think that the most productive thing that we can do is to separate these two modes. —Do the thing, or think about the thing; you can’t both both at the same time. When we're nervous or overly self-aware (like in a job interview) is an example of when we're crossing the streams. Keep the streams—the modes—separate. (If there is a way to combine them, I know nothing about it.)

I would I could tell my younger self: Quit thinking. Take notes if you have the time. Examine the outcome after it's over. Reflect on it. Then, get back to doing it. Obviously, this isn't about forethought and impulse. This is about performance. 

On a Particular Feeling of Discomfort

I'm in bed, typing. Caitlin is working beside me. We're listening to Jefferson Airplane. We had a busy weekend dog sitting Missy-Misdemeanor, visiting the Olympic Peninsula, and attending a greyhound meetup at Discovery Park.

I had a long conversation with Mariah on her boat after I dropped Missy off. We talked about future plan and how we both go through cycles—moments of restlessness that push us to pack up everything, move, and start over. These cycles range in scale. Sometimes it's just switching from one hobby to another; other times it's moving to another part of the country. 

However, there is another type of cycle, closely related to the above cycle. It's like a more-stable, non-pathological version of bipolar disorder—periods of hypomania followed by minor depression. Mini-obsessions followed by a period of disillusionment. Over and over again (in increasingly larger concentric circles, it seems). I have cultivated this cycle, made it more stable—tempered it. 

I would like a name for these cycles, this inhalation and exhalation, this creation and fall. 

Toward the end of a cycle, I experience a particular, uncomfortable feeling. I also want a name for this feeling; that way, I can identify it more easily when it comes up. (This feeling also presents itself somewhat at random.) Here we go:

After a period of creativity, I begin to experience a feeling. The feeling tells me that I must, must, must do something, for stillness is complacency, and complacency is death. But this feeling becomes toxic and soul crushing; as if it were the inevitable corruption a creative urge. I begin to lose focus and inspiration. Yet, I still feel the desperate need to continue working. But as time goes on (hours, day, or weeks), the work, the project, the creation becomes less and less fulfilling, and the feeling becomes more desperate and painful. Then the creative urge runs the risk of shattering, a painful experience.

I have found a simple, effective, yet extremely frustrating solution to this problem. The solution is to rest. The challenge here is that the solution is the opposite of the feeling/impulse. The impulse is to work, but the solution is to rest.

In times like these, one must fight to rest.

Here, resting is not relaxing. Here, rest is a fight to pause—to forcefully compel the mind, soul, and body to stillness.

This stillness is uncomfortable, painful. It carries somewhat-pure, rather-distilled, elements of human suffering and the tragedy of life; (these feelings are often times not grounded in one's life and seem to have a life of their own). (Pick your religious metaphor—Christ on the Cross, Buddha under the Tree, Odin Hanging, Prometheus having his liver plucked out by vultures, Sisyphus watching his boulder roll down the hill once again.)

...

How much time have a wasted trying to be better than I really am?

How many times have I taken my picture and tried to be more beautiful by straining and contorting my face?

How many times have I say at the keyboard and internally begged, why, why, why can I not write more clearly, more cleverly, more wittily, and more swiftly?

When are we at our (pathetic) best? When?

...

When there is an unresolvable conflict, a tension of opposites (e.g. an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, or a Catch-22), one of two things happens: the forces cancel each other, or there is transcendence, the creation of a third, greater thing. The nature of the latter is life's most precious mystery, the stuff of alchemy, and the false hope of religion. 

There are many things that can be said whose opposite is also true; these paradoxes mark the edge of one paradigm and the beginning of another.

...

What I was as a young man, that is, who I was, was totally disconnected from what I felt I was. It's such a broad thing to say. Useless without elaboration. I don't have the heart to go into detail right now.