Originally published on this site Feb 27, 2008
Crafted from previously written little missives, then continued…
And I write these things, and I don’t look back and change much. What’s going to come out will come out, and I figure it best unvarnished…whatever the hell “best” means…
A Wednesday Show (mid-February)
The pen has might.
Right?
A writer writes.
Right?
Then a writing writer writes with might.
A right might, you might say…
So the right writer might write a right right might.
And there’s that.
And Honest to God, I’ve spent the past thirty minutes convincing myself to set the computer out and write some of what I WANT to write, some of what has to come out, as they say. Therapy? Catharsis? Rubbish? Not for me to say, but they’re there…there, there, there (Mustn’t! Start! Again!) And yet, after all the fanfare of actually getting it done and actually pounding the keyboards (there was fanfare, trust me) the first thing I do is wordplay. Wasn’t anywhere before I started, then I said in my head (!) “A writer writes.” And something happened. Well…that happened. But I’m over it now.
And then, instantaneously, when I finish all my little introductory qualifying and narrative and yadda, I think, “OK, now I’ll write!” all the stuff that was wincing its way through those same past thirty minutes while I was convincing myself to write – the stuff I was GOING to write – vanishes. (It was s’posed to be “winding” but it came out “wincing” – I kept it.)
I feel the press (no pun intended) of my website not having a recent post, and recently everything that’s been bubbling to the surface – those bubbles I’ve been forcing out of myself, my little bathroom farts of long agoo – also not a typo – has been going to Bolton and the Panzee Press. I had a tough time with this last one, but I knew I was taking a chance with myself and think I might have done something at least credible with it.
But it goes way too fast in my head to ever capture writing down.
But it’s always something I can hear myself saying out loud
More crud. More crap. Anything that’s just me talking to me is crap. Anything I write when I’m just thinking off the top of my head that I’ll write about all the stuff that comes off the top of my head, well, it never seems to come out. It’s only when I imagine SAYING IT OUT LOUD that the conversation really comes out – but it’s never really even coming close to saying it out loud. There is no pursuit of anything right now. And Pascal’s quote eludes me at the moment and what makes me think I could memorize something as long as something from Symposium? For as much as Chile has shown his kindness in letting me share his home, the notion of being in someone else’s home because you’re not able to maintain your own, and to some degree have chosen not to place high import or value in establishing the means to do so – well, I’ll tell ya, it just rubs against that little Capricornian nut I’ve got about things making sense enall.
Being in this place is no good for me. But it’s more than simply removing opportunity. It…it…it was…soap poisoning.
YES, WELL THAT’S ALL WELL AND GOOD NOW, ISN’T IT?!?! SO THEN, YOU’RE WONDERING, WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
Hope this is what you wanted
Hope this is what you had in mind
‘Cause this is what you’re getting
3:30 in the morning, and another night of restless sleep, myriad minor maladies making the mind mitigate the matter…of the body. And enough reading for the day, and no fiction to lure me into some other story being told, so I write.
Been a while since a blog entry, and if I can retain enough interest in what’s leaping to the page at this moment I might just have something worth posting.
The thing is, and this has always been the challenge with me, if I’ve nothing I’m compelled to say then ‘writing’ as an exercise becomes frightfully dull. And if it’s dull to write, I can only suspect it would be equally as dull to read…to you, the small contingent of people who have designs to read what I might place on this site.
Here’s something I’d contemplated doing for some time but I’ve never known whether it would translate itself well to something written. Given my woeful lack of inspiring topics at the moment, it will suffice – at least for me…:
“The Mandala of Being” speaks to the “now” in as much a fashion as Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now,” both speaking to the realization of each new moment and being fully in it, versus meandering through the experiences of your past or speculating on possible experiences in the future. They both speak of BREATHING as a manner of finding that ‘now’ moment – for you breathe whether you’re conscious of it or not – your existence requires your breathing even if your mind does not actively engage in the practice. If you’re not in the moment and wish to be, find your breathing and focus on it, and only it, as much as you can.
So the experts say. I wonder, though, about the idea of experts. I’m reading a book now titled, “The Ideology of the Aesthetic” by Terry Eagleton, he of numerous titles and positions and apparently someone who believes himself capable of speaking votuperously on the subject (I’m not 100% sure ‘votuperous’ is a word, but we’ll run with it). What bothers me about the book is not the subject matter or even the points to be made about it within the text, but the nature of the text itself – it is quite maddeningly difficult to read. Not the first philosophy book I’ve picked up whose lexicon demands a very high concentration and re-reading of most every passage because of the words that are used, their combination in sentences, and the complex constructions the author chooses to make at least appear to me are somewhat simple points. I mean, geez…can’t you just say the same thing simpler?
Signed,
One to Talk
WHEW! AND IF THAT WEREN’T ENOUGH…
Maybe if I write I can exert greater control over the moment, for the moment now is the endless narrative accompanying my life – a life that stands again in judgment of itself, wondering what you’re making of the moments of your life, whether you’re pitched in some righteous pursuit or simply running scared, breathing sighs of relief with each moment passed where you kept yourself alive and kept yourself from exerting too much pain into the lives of others – another moment when you’ve saved the world from yourself.
How noble.
The writing of which bores me and for which I am already cynical. I am unclean and unworthy of the pursuit which dogs me.
I had an exercise last year that led me to “Hey, it ain’t up to ME to deem myself unworthy.” And it was an epiphany and it helped. But my logic and my objectivity have now won over that point, telling me that the judgment of myself as unworthy and unclean stems not from my projecting others’ thoughts and judgments about me, but instead from the simple point of reasonability; it is not unreasonable to consider the notion that this man, who despite [positive qualities] nevertheless cannot be reasonably expected to [perform actions] because [negative qualities]. A person’s not saying that – IT is saying that.
There’s a very high likelihood that by the time I actually sit in front of a keyboard four or so thoughts “to write about” have already flashed through my head, and some attempt at composition has been made.
My writing is also very in the moment. There’s not just the writing of the thing but also “the act that I’m writing this thing” and “the choice that I’m writing this thing” which rest next to the thing itself, and it muddies the thing.
Today, a snowy Friday, and I’ve a mind to write about The Idea. But I already know that my “writing about The Idea” will, if acted upon impulsively, also include the idea about writing about The Idea, and the moment surrounding the current choice to write about The Idea, and the other things that I could write – the letter, the request…the reading I could do, the reading I’ve been doing, and not the least of which, the list of the reasons why The Idea is not The Thing…yet.
Yet. HAH!
No, really. HA HA HA!
Yeah so…and by the time all THAT gets out, the cynic’s wormed his way into the mindset, disregarding the ideas around The Idea, and the writing of it ‘cause what’s the fuckin’ point, ya know?
So what do I do? Well, I figure the cynic is born from recalling memory and weighing the most recent memory among all the others, reaching some conclusion and rendering judgment, so the trick is to stay ahead of the cynic…don’t let the memory linger too long…move away from the past and the recollection of it – keep your “memory mind” out of the game so stay in the moment…that’s part of the “Power of Now/Mandala of Being” thing…which leads us to the consideration of the moment, and the conclusion that the NOW is already gone from our perception and therein lies the duality, yet again.
Surrounding the idea of writing about The Idea are the ideas that would come out – so I like to fantasize – with the implementation of The Idea. Because the real idea about The Idea is to get out all the little ideas surrounding The Idea and agreeing that there’s an interconnection somewhere between all these little ideas, a way of seeing the constellation they create that we can all agree to…
In fact, what I think we most all kind of already, internally and individually, already agree to…or if not agree then I’ve my idealist’s certainty that we’ve each reached the same conclusion and hope/pray that most all of us have reached that same conclusion. And we don’t all talk about it because….
…it’s just REALLY FUCKING SCARY to be talking about it. Which to me says that we really should be talking about it.
So when I want to write about The Idea, do I write about the doing of The Idea? The avoiding of The Idea? The little ideas that make The Idea?
Shouldn’t I instead be implementing The Idea? Working to bring it to fruition? Am I not to be invigorated by the possibility of its creation, its realization, and have that stoke my motivation and conduct my behavior accordingly? I’m to be a “man on a mission” and sally forth for I would so love The Idea as to take steps to breathe it life.
A depression borne from objectivity, from unblinking realism. A certainty of insignificance, a perspective that brooks no trumpeting of self. The trumpet stands no chance against the litany of all that has come, all that has transpired, the time already vested, current positions, inclinations and fears that stand as testimony to the contrary. I eat such tiny cookies, I fall so far short, I absolve myself of so much responsibility, make efforts to minimize my dependency on others.
So there’s this NOW thing…and Being, and Becoming, which I think was something they came up with a long time ago…which pauses, ironically, and waits until
now, Tuesday evening, Feb 27, suffering from a cold and lack of money I don’t venture out, and I’m awake now and for the first time in many a moment inclined to write. So I must leap, I must seize the moment, because somehow now, even though I still don’t feel I have anything to say, I’m at least motivated to say that I don’t have anything to say, if that makes any sense.
Here’s what I have, to the few of you still inclined to take a glance at my page and maybe even delve into the reading thereof…what I have is the life I have, and as uncomplicated as I can make it so I can handle it. The fundamentals of living a complex life elude me – either that, or I’ve decided that what is gained from adding levels of complexity lacks insufficient profit to invest the complexity. What I also have is a distance from that life, a lack of connection to it. There is simply that which happens, and it so happens that it happens to me. I choose very little, I do very, very little.
My mind, though, races. Always. Except, of course, when it doesn’t. And I take many moments to stop my mind from racing because having a racing mind during every moment of your life becomes, well, a bit too much to bear. So I turn it off. And in other cases, I simply remove the concern from me because it’s one more thing to muddy up my mind.
My mind……….sigh. A sigh of the mind. (He relishes his own shallow pithiness)
I continue to read. A few thoughts about that:
First, I can’t help but allow a portion of me to think about the pointlessness of reading. Which I immediately counter, yes – and I’ll offer that up in a sec. But Terrence said he spent a lot of time reading a lot of things and he spoke of it as though it were lost time (though my saying that to his face would cause immediate statement to the contrary). But the hint was DEFINITELY there – don’t chalk up a whole bunch to what you read.
But, as librarian and I Chris spoke last time I was there, he’d said to me after I commented on my need for light fiction to give myself a break from all this transformational knowledge crap, “Few people recognize that fiction has its place.” I replied spontaneously, “Well, it does offer practice in empathy, for in hearing a story one must consider a perspective other than one’s own.” So reading and empathy DO have their place. He neglected, I s’pose we could argue, the entertainment component to it, the part to which it turns our minds off and lets us go away with out imagination to a world other than our own (because life is suffering, remember?) So we take these stories – not just books, but EVERYTHING else that you could rattle off in your head that would fall into the same category – as we avoid our own reality. Don’t know necessarily what place that has, but that’s certainly what’s happening. Which is also, in a large extent, besides the point (or is it? The questions never end – and books just raise more questions, right Terrence?)
So, next about reading…I recently finished Terri Cheney’s memoir, “Manic.” Reading parts of it scared me – she put herself through things SCADS more intense experientially and consequentially than I, but ofttimes the mindset was familiar. It was very personal, very titillating for me, which also scared me. She spoke with of loving the gusto with a nod and a wink, knowing its dangers. It extends in me the knowledge of what I do, of how I am, of what I present. The part of the “saving the world from myself” stuff that, past the cynic, has an actual grain of truth.
I have a boundless energy. I frightening, intimidating energy. It, unfortunately, is wholly unapplied.
I have capabilities. There are things I am able to do. I am motivated, for my own reasons and my own desires, to none of them…meaning I possess no motivation, no drive, no desire, no intent to see anything to fruition for myself, for the simple reason that I want to see it exist.
You see, what I want for myself is a totally meaningless question for me.
“What do you WANT, Philip?” Hell, might as well ask me who I am. The answer in both cases is pure Jesse Jackson: The point is moot.
THAT perspective I see in Terri Cheney as she nears or reaches the pinnacle (if such a word can be used) of her depression.
You see, it’s as though (and God help him) there’s this ant, you see……
I would actually allow for the possibility that this has happened…..
There’s this ant, you see, and he & all his mates are trudging across whatever expanse lay before them (they do a lot of trudging, you know)…and for all his tiny little life he’s been trudging, eating, working, etc. and not caring a tinker’s cuss that he lacks self-awareness. He’s simply unaware, right?
And then, somehow, some way, this one ant crosses the barrier and reaches self-awareness. This ant now has a sense of self, a sense of identity, a sense of himself and the world in which he resides, and he knows his mortality, his distinction among the other flora and fauna on the planet, and he’s an INDIVIDUAL.
Then, as he’s trudging along, he gets to the crest of what (he would call) a hill, and he gets his first glimpse of the colony to which he, this individual ant, belongs…
Well, “BIG FUCKING DEAL!” he says to himself. “So WHAT that I’m me – there’s a gazillion of us!”
Something like that. I have to end this post here now, though – I wrote Terri and told her I talked about her book on my latest post, and that it was near the end. If I keep prattling on, it’ll end up in the middle. Can’t have that, can we?
And off we go. Send an e-mail or call if you want to know more.
Will anything else happen? Who knows? Ain’t up to me…
Thanks for listening,
Philip
One Perspective 
thank you next