Musing 1

As described below…”Musing 1″ contains portions from the 2006-07 website; first compiled Jul 14, 2007; published on this site Nov 30, 2007
(Not so much ‘published’ as much ‘dumped’ – there’s a shitload of formatting and separating that’s currently missing from this page.  Consider it a thing to do on my list…)

After the “Human, Being” piece completed, I retained my old website and kept a running narrative going (I would never call it a blog) for a good portion of 2006 and 2007.
The narrative included a large amount of self-exploration and introspection, and a good number of paragraphs where I would lament my situation and feelings of despondency.
….not the biggest pick-me-ups you’ve ever come across……
But amidst all that tripe were little pearls of thought…..that’s what you have here.
There’s no real structure, no order, no dates, no purpose – but the ideas and thoughts are enough for me to want to include here. And, as always, your comment on this or any other portion of the site are encouraged.
Thanks for listening.
Philip
It’s easy to be idealistic. Trusting everyone you meet is as simple as not bothering to distrust. And it screws with me because I like the nobility of feeling that way, but I don’t believe I achieve it through virtue. It’s more like “virtue through disinclination.” That, and it’s easy to kill an ego that’s already dead…
It leaves me somewhat vexed.
And gosh, what a surprise.
…that cynical voice is always around the corner, waiting to be expressed. The ‘observer’ of my moments, the rational, detached, objective, judgemental thing that is the essence of me…and the thing most might call a ‘mind’…and the thing in me that you cannot point to because it does not seem to physically exist except in combination of myriad cells, chemicals, etc….the thing in each of us that cannot be grasped and thus gets labeled as a SOUL…that which is the absolute root of the selfishness in all of us, the fear that drives our every action, the underlying desire to move away from suffering and towards happiness…this THING that we each have is, in fact, HERE. And it beats the living fuck out of the alternative……..
That’s what It’s good to be here is all about….but it’s incomplete in that structure.
There exists in philosophy a debate between realism and idealism – the realist would say (w/ apologies to all who can state this better than I) ‘it exists, then I observe its existence’ where an idealist would say, ‘it cannot exist without my observation & acknowledgement; I observe it, & it exists.
So, in that context, it’s not just good to be here, because if you were alone, being here would suck. So…It’s good to be here with you.
“It’s good to be here with you” unfortunately implies that here is part of what is good. But I believe there is merit to the essence of the idea, location notwithstanding. So, in order to emphasize that the good part is the being, then we need to add commas.
It’s good to be, here, with you.
Because the reason you can say that, the reason you want to say it…
is because that very essence, that thing that has no shape but defines YOU is a most very special thing to have…a gift for which you did absolutely nothing, a grace, a spirit, an opportunity bestowed upon you…because there was this moment where two others chose to be intimate.
Next
I danced last night, and there was a portion where I let it all out. I enjoy these moments very much, for they are a celebration. And I’ve grown now to understand you dance like no one’s watching, but you don’t dance with yourself.
Look up. Look in the faces of those dancing with you. Are you all smiling, all for each other? Or do you dance for yourself? When I let it all out, I dance with everyone, and no longer think about how I’m dancing, except that it feels wonderful. And I look up, and I can’t seem to engage, for no one else is looking up and dancing and enjoying the moment of the community. (Unless, of course, they define “the community” as the environment where they’re able to dance for themselves as they wish, where they can ‘be free’ – ok, fine, who am I to argue?).
But what ultimately vexed me at that moment, precisely at that moment when I’m dancing my ass off and celebrating, I’m also AWARE of what’s happening and debating the efficacy of these very thoughts that I’m sharing with you now…and I start to get a little pissed off at myself last night because I could seem to let it all go 100%, that this THING that in me can’t stop.
Next Next
And I listen.
I have people coming up to me and talking, and we engage, and if you simply make the choice to listen, people will speak about themselves to no end. I have found over the course of the past months account after account where I am engaged with the person and 90-some-odd percent of the conversation is them telling me about themselves. When you listen because you ask a question and are keen to the answer and folks get all the verbals and nonverbals that indicate that you are fully engaged and curious about their answer – and I’m the kind of guy that can not only do that, but also be aware and detached from it while it’s happening….
Next #3
“I could never do what you did.”
Ridiculous. Say instead, “I could not imagine myself making that choice.”
So my integrity lies in making that choice? Creating the piece?
How would you have me take credit for that and acknowledge the accomplishment?
I understand how you might say that from the outside-in perspective, seeing only a person who says the thing they’ve done.
“I was a piece of art. I was in one spot, outside, 12 hours a day, every day, for one year.”
And I have to put it that way because that’s succinct, that’s the description. I can’t relate it to any conventional thing for people, so I have to describe it succinctly. And phrased in that manner? Hell, if someone said that to me it would sound pretty darned impressive. So I understand & appreciate the reaction.
What don’t I say, for brevity’s sake?
“Well, the idea was to be a piece of art and be outside 12 hours a day every day for one year…but it turns out I don’t really think I was all that committed to it, because I fell WAY behind and there were frequent times that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be and I was doing okay for a little while but then I started justifying leaving for one reason or another and then it all started to snowball a bit and I was leaving for entire chunks of time and all those people who might have been initially impressed were all eventually let down for they saw the sham that the effort was and really in fact it all WAS a sham because I had no clue what I was going to do with my life or this thing I call myself because it’s entirely without definition all I saw was that I was sitting and thinking and I had this idea a long time ago that someone could be a piece of art if they did that but instead of doing it inside all day do it outside all day I could do that I could be that guy and I could do what it seems is the only thing I’m able to do which is sit around & think so I may have crafted this noble notion surrounding it but in the end all it was was a way to do what I was already doing which was nothing and just do it outside in front of everyone because I’m really just reaching out because I’m incredibly lonely and cannot define any sense of worth without the acknowledgement of someone else and that’s why the whole passive engagement thing is HUGE for me because that way I know going in that you want to be with me that you want to talk to me and I need to know that first because I’m a difficult person to know even though I don’t really know why but I have SO MUCH LOVE AND HOPE AND JOY for every one of us that in fact as the year went on I would get stretched and stretched and stretched with all the different people with whom I’d created friendships and relationships with that I couldn’t spend as much time as the import of all those relationships would ask of me because there were too many other things and all I was trying to do was be true to myself.”
Something like that. You can see how that description might be prohibitive…
And I would still stand before you with the conviction I hold now & have held true from those first moments in public & private
And honor all life by trying to embrace the joy of the ride (advice from some very good friends) and offer what I can and add to the world instead of subtract. I have thought enough. It is time to do.
If I can be me, I can be everyone.
If I am me, I am everyone.
…and another thing…
Embrace & accept who you are…
I’m easily distracted, prone to move from one item that grabs my focus to another. I am seemingly incapable of easily staying focused on a single task.
That means it’s unlikely I will wash, iron, & hand four sets of curtain at one time.
And that’s okay. (Can’t you picture Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley now, just a little bit?)
We reach our affirmations as we will…
And I’ve as much a need for affirmations as anyone…
For I’ve as strong a desire for happiness as each of us…
And happiness is a choice.
And I have my mantras…my little reminders that I say to myself when I find myself distracted, woeful, daydreaming, lost, creating wishful moment after wishful moment as I exist in whatever is my perception of my reality at each moment in my life and interject that which I wish would happen – and each time following it immediately up with the certainty that is the unlikeness of that wishful moment actually happening, and my mantras remind me…
…in the morning, in the car, when I’m in, when I’m out, as I shop, as I walk, as I laugh, as I gesture, when I catch a moment with some other person where their enthusiasm sparks for whatever reason and their eyes open just a little wider and their speech passes through what is now upturned lips…
A person moves through life with some integrity, perhaps, if they can be said to be seeking “the truth.” So if I seek what I believe to be true, and wish for that, do I live with integrity?
Or am I delusional and incapable of grasping what the truth is?
I’m sure I don’t know the answer to that. But I allow for the possibility that it could be the latter…
What if you were confronting your reality but your perception was so screwed up you were way off-base in even identifying what your reality IS.
Ouch.
That’s why I have my mantras. They’re delusion-free (and only one calorie, too!) – they’re short, simple, and slice through those wishes quickly, surgically, and bring me hurtling back to my reality.
Lateralus
lyrics by Maynard James Keenan
Over-thinking, over-analyzing
Separate the body from the mind
Withering my intuition
Missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel this moment drawing
Way outside the line
With my feet upon the ground
I lose myself between the sound
And open wide to suck it in
I feel it move across my skin
I’m reaching up, I’m reaching for
I’m reaching for the random or
Whatever will bewilder me
Whatever will bewilder me
Following the will and wind
It amy just go where no one’s been
And ride the spiral to the end
It may just go where no one’s been
Spiral out
Keep going
aspirations
Lots of dots for this one because I’m still not too sure about it………
…but it’s from the part of me that chose to do “Human, Being.” There’s things I see, things I believe, and because I got to believing them in the manner & method I did, I think I may have an opportunity. I’m trying to find my way to doing that, and following through on that spirit…
I wonder how many of you have ever thought you could be like Jesus Christ…
…I wonder how many of you find that disturbing.
I wonder if you might know me well enough to know precisely what I mean when I say something as potentially disturbing as someone “being like Jesus Christ.” I wonder if you know it well enough to recognize that, yes, in fact, any of us could be like Jesus Christ.
I wonder if you all knew that a long time ago and I’m just catching up.
But I wonder about the realizations I have, the connections I see, the possibilities that are a mere choice away for any of us, for all of us…
…and I wish to convey them somehow, but I’m so very scared of failing…
…mostly because I don’t even know yet what I would be attempting, and why…
…and what it is that makes me so presumptuous to think that I could convey them, that anyone even wants to hear someone convey them.
I mean, just who in the holy hell do I think I am, Jesus Christ?
Not by a longshot. I do not possess the will and strength in me to make the continual volume of choices it would require to walk that road. Ultimately, I am disinclined to do so because I AM scared and I AM selfish.
Which is what keeps us all from that path…
This thought JUST NOW popped into my head. I’ll use it as a closer. You may think it tangential and part of a “scattered and disconnected” train of thought. But for me, this hypothetical arose in my head as I was thinking about the very sentence I was writing above, as you were considering them while reading them. It is relevant, in my head, to share this idea with you now. Then, shower, eat, blah, blah, blah, work…
That day on the “loaves and the fishes” deal, where Jesus performed a miracle…
Maybe, just maybe……
A few folks coming to the sermon were smart enough to being along something to eat – they were going to be there a while, after all – but these folks who HAD food were keeping it on the sly because there were also a LOT of very hungry people there, and they didn’t want to get mobbed just because they had a loaf of bread.
And Jesus, being an intelligent and reasonable man, believed this to be very likely. And he also believed that he could have a profound enough impact on those that were his followers that if he simply loved them and trusted them and asked them to recognize in their heart was the right thing to do in that situation was, then Jesus could simply believe that loaves and fishes would come forward because he placed that much trust and love in those people with food. And those laden with loaves & fishes brought their goods forward for all.
Happy New Year – Astrology
It’s now 2007, the New Year is around 17 hours old.
Cosmically speaking, not much has happened in the past 17 hours. Most of the planets & other large bodies that surround the Earth and exert their influence over its molecules really haven’t moved all that much, in the grandest sense of things.
And 365 some-odd days ago, we – being the Earth – were in pretty much the same place we’re in now. And so it goes, back and back, until the year of Dec 1961/Jan 1962, when the Earth & all those other exerting heavenly bodies were in pretty much the same place they’re in now. When, about a week prior, a new distinct collection of cells began his life’s journey. Me.
That’s the part that allows me to think the coincidence of astrology is built on physical forces and thus becomes a capable predictor of human behavior. When I gestate and am borne into being while the Earth is over HERE in its orbit versus when it’s over THERE, and I’m so tiny then that all those heavenly bodies in a different proximity to me over HERE that they have a chance to exert their influence and pull my little DNA molecules over in this direction to make me behave a particular way…..
My Brain and the Star Trek Metaphor
The head has all the awareness…the head has the endless conversation, the endless “state of the nation” and “state of the doing” and the head tamps me down and the head has its own little town crier who doesn’t even seem inclined to stroll about anymore being perfectly content to stand rigid and somehow with an endless scroll pronounce my inadequacies, my failures, my missed opportunities (and part of the reason the scroll is endless is because those ‘missed opportunities’ just keep rollin’ along) and the head cannot be convinced and the head has the controls and the head…
My heart – which, for the purpose of stating such to those people who believe I don’t give myself enough credit – I will tell you I believe is the heart of a good person. I would grant you & agree with anything you might say of me as positive and virtuous. These components that make me “me” and the fun, interesting person I’m capable of being, rest in my heart.
My life – day to day, living, breathing (smoke, mostly), thinking, doing – might be seen as a ship traveling through space, perhaps the Starship Enterprise. Our intrepid hero captain Kirk can run this ship solely on his own, with the help of the on-board computer. Captain Kirk, of course, is of the highest virtues, so he is my heart, and steers the ship with integrity and virtue, and all is well for the Enterprise…
Well, except for the bug…
There’s a bug in the on-board computer (Check here [ ] if you already saw this as “my head”)…Every now and again it reviews the captain’s log and decides that Kirk and the ship have failed in their mission and disables Kirk’s ability to control the ship. Sometimes it takes over the controls, but more often than not it simply shuts down all the systems and lets the ship drift…and no distress signal had been sent…(say that with a Scottish accent and it’s a movie reference)
…and the computer even fauxly replies to passing ships that all is well, powering up enough systems to maintain the ruse of normal functionality…and Kirk is powerless…and these days, the ship is drifting near the gravitational pull of a star; the further it drifts, the more thrust it will need to pull itself away…and the point of no return is now in range, situationally speaking…and still, Kirk is powerless and the computer refuses to cooperate, having logically convinced itself that the ship is incapable of fulfilling its mission effectively.
Our hero flails around the bridge causing self-injury out of frustration, a rage of powerlessness surging through and causing untold wreckage to the bridge systems of the ship. Should he ever regain controls, Kirk still has a LOT of repairs to make ’cause the only thing HE’S able to do is, out of frustration, fuck the ship up…)
Expectations, Hope, and Faith
What do people give themselves to create “expectations?”
What have they decided about whatever that empowers them to suggest something should be so and unacceptable that it be not so?
I think the act of defining an expectation rises from self-empowerment, created by the ego, and thus reveals a position of selfishness. I do not use “selfish” as accusatory or derogatory, however. A person who behaves selfishly at any moment believes either their survival or their happiness to be in jeopardy, thus they are operating at that moment from aposition of fear. Many times being selfish is fine (I would never suggest removing fear) but there are instances where “being selfish” comes from unreasonably defining your happiness – or your fears – at the expense of others, directly or indirectly.
I think there’s a big difference between “expecting” something and “hoping for” something. And I think it goes directly to fear. When you fear, you begin to think about yourself and worry about your happiness or survival, and you do selfish things. And you begin to expect things. If you expect something, you fear something.
When you hope for something, you are wishing it to be so and would like it to be so and know that it would augment your happiness, but you do not fear that your happiness or survival would suffer were it not to happen. You have no fear, and you are able to remain happy regardless of that for which you hoped.
Some of you might already know this as “not being attached to outcome.” If I am attached to an outcome, then I am expecting an outcome. But enough about expectations – let’s get back to hope. Hope’s nice.
So if I’m going to advocate “hopes and wishes” over expectations, then instead of creating expectations, people would need to create hope. So then, let’s ask the same questions again…
What do people give themselves to create “hope?”
What have they decided about whatever that empowers them to suggest something could be so, and acceptable that it could be not so?
I believe we all already have that answer in our heads. If not our heads, then in our hearts. Take your time if you don’t know. I’ll ask differently…then I’ll tell you the answer.
What is the engine of hope?
Faith is the engine of hope.
SOOOOOOO – we started with expectations, moved into selfishness and fear, then talked about hope and now faith. I’ll tell you this one time – I am not, by any stretch of your imagination or definition, a religious man.
This does not mean I do not have faith.
I have faith.
I have faith that we all knew, in our heads or our hearts, that faith is the engine of hope.
What is faith? Is it just a belief in something?
Well, there’s obviously more, but it’s late. I must stop.
Miles to go before I sleep. In my case, after I sleep. And “miles” is a metaphor….
Talk to you soon, I hope…
…and we acknowledge all that is my perception of my reality, my interpretation of my reality, my mind’s interpretation of itself and its surroundings…and we acknowledge that to be a precipitous place, certainly. And I wake up tomorrow and do not have to fear for my life…(and I could walk down that road and bestow upon myself the blessings of my good fortune and how that lifts me higher and distinguishes me into this particular…well…thing, I guess. But I do not, for it can be acknowledged in its entirety simply, gracefully, wholly, without droning on as though your motivation is in fact to reveal and brag…)

A Most Loathsome Person – 2006
One selection from The 50 Most Loathsome People in America – 2006
Taken from the Buffalo Beast website (my last check the link was disabled)
29. Jesus Christ.
Charges: May not have existed, and if he did, probably wasn’t even American, but more of a dark-hued Jewish dwarf. A hygienically challenged hairball who rarely bathed or brushed his teeth. If alive today, he’d appropriately be branded as schizophrenic and disregarded by society. Sermon on the Mount was the very definition of socialism, and subsequently an affront to the self-regulating benevolence of the free market. An appeasing, cheek-turning pussy like this would never cut the mustard in America today.
Exhibit A: Contrary to prevailing pop theology, absolutely everyone, including the sheepishly devout, will be “left behind” at the apocalypse and forced to endure what biblical scholars estimate to be from 3 to 7 years of “hell on earth” before scoring that golden bus ticket to the gated community in the sky. Kind of a dick move, no?
Sentence: Second coming completely ignored, as it happens to coincide with Brangelina’s wedding.

Thanks for listening.

Philip