If every day could be day of leisure, luxury, creation, exploration, and freedom it would be a day like yesterday.
Much needed rest until 10:30 am or so, buttermilk pancakes cooked in bacon fat from homemade bacon, vanilla-sugar-tossed farmers market strawberries and basil. Eat, lounge, luxuriate in the food, sensation, the designer white.
Moss Beach. Ocean waves, fog dance with sunbeams, undersea vestiges, sand-crystalized treasured tumbled over the rocks and shore for us to explore and touch and smell and capture in photographs. Whiskey and paint and discovering hidden spots on hillsides protected by trees to rest, play, create.
Back to the glittering world of Friday-night San Francisco North Beach, drink, and hot ramen steaming into cool night outside. Neon lights and sparkling-lashed girls. Curiosity pulling us out of comfort zones and devilishly delivering deliciousness. The right kind of nourishment to keep up with the vivacity of the night.
Home. White sheets. Settled after high-strung satisfaction, but never leaving that feeling of close to heart because of the company. Just husband and I. Falling asleep to a day so delicious it dangerously tempts more, and Donnie Darko flickering on the screen all piano notes and tricks of sunlight and so comfortingly disturbing it makes me wish I had the power to escape the world by way of daylight hallucinations.
of a moving and beautiful disturbance of the ordinary
which, as an artist, one seeks to the point of obsession
In such a sense, poetry is cheap.
we can imagine ourselves as being made up of moments that move us
the dip of a lash, a mobile army of metaphors, the still secret and tiny dance of evaporated hydrogen and oxygen puffed white and silver above a bay-wrapped city-scape, a blissful hour of the trickery of otherworldly morning light
To live in these moments, a life composed only of them…
In a dangerous and potent combination of moments a year or so ago, I placed faith
in something different
I was reminded of the moments when I was born
when sensation, reflection, the movements of the soul first began to stir
My reaction was realization, that this world is not a pleasant one.
The entire Earth is a screaming place.
If it were only a matter of being unnerved by disagreement, that would be easy.
Just waiting for sobriety to spin away like a wicked dancer, even though I need that core for commitments I've made - to the world, but commitments to the world that relate more to myself than how I spend forty hours per week.
Just sitting in the oil-film over my skin that seeps into my eyes and stimulates the body to think they're tears. Makes my body temperature rise and my soul settle in a false sense of heavy acquiescence. All is not well. This is the thing, in being committed to someone. The lows are eviscerating. Excavating. And they've never been really, fundamentally worth it. They've never made me feel this need to shift everything, shift my thinking, my habits of mind my thought process to work, to wrap around a concept of two. Of harmony, in two as one. My thinking is shifting, because I am allowing it to. I've never been ready. I wasn't when this started, but I knew this one was worth making myself ready. I'll spend longer than he likes, becoming ready. My best is held back by the demands on our time, and more so by my own ignorance. But it wants. It wants to surpass the expectations. It's learning how.
This isn't the only time I've ever said to myself "I've never felt like this" - because every experience is new, every interaction, everything I allow myself to feel, every place I allow myself to go, is new. But this isn't just new. It's the deeply imbedded past, too.
It is hallowed ground.
And even while every relationship has been a certain amount of falling from grace I never belonged there to begin with. And while the flowers at my tips in the height of springtime will wither and fall and die and never come back quite as beautiful as they were before blissful naivety was wiped away, while the branches that support them could rot and grey crumble wetly and die, the ones that support all kinds of even the best ideals and concepts about a being, even them - this all is not just a feeling I've never had before, an amazing experience because of its novelty. This is a life-long reality. And life-long is no small thing to commit. A moment of passion and excitement can sweep one of ones feet make one see the world of possibility more brightly than is real I'm well aware of that. Because I've experienced many. I've known the kind of person it makes sense to follow that wave with and the person that it does not. Very. Few. At the bottom of everything, you always know the truth. I am guilty of denying a lot of those. But I am in touch enough with my heart to know at bottom what commitment is the one of the most important to make and how much it is not a thing to be taken lightly. I have made stupid decisions, but I know that with the big ones stupidity and quixotism are not to be followed - if if quixotism is at times guided by soulful impulses.
It seems to be a fundamental affliction of the human condition that it is so easy to forget that a lifetime, is all we have. Who we choose to spend it with, as far as a human partner who we commit ourselves to, is, I would venture to say, the most important decision we could make, as people who only live on this Earth for such a very, very short time.
The Tribulations of Having Time In One's Life Only to Dedicate to Learning a Few Things:
"A man can only think over what he knows, therefore he should learn something; but a man only knows what he has pondered. " - Schopenhauer
And this, I think has something to do with being inescapably afflicted with Philosophical/Artistic temperament - to which today's world in the society I live in is not very kind. "You, the bold seekers and tempters, and whoever embarks with cunning sails on terrible seas - you, drunk with riddles, glad of the twilight, whose soul flutes lure astray to every whirl-pool, because you do not want to grope along a threat with cowardly hand; and where you can guess, you hate to deduce." - Heidegger
It's a chill day - in pajamas-that-function-as-work-appropriate pants - my favorite. Muscles worked from even a short run yesterday, dinner with laid back family, Dad's Birthday, finally building the golden tendrils in those relationships. Listening to Lush Pandora and looking at photographs of Los Angeles sun light.
"Writing is not, for us, an art, but breathing." - Anais
I want
to get in a car
with boy, sunglasses, banana boat sun screen, long hair, torn t shirts, boots, and silt,
and drive to palm trees, desert rocks, to balconies and bridges, to water
and take photographs of the curve of our eyelashes,
of our silhouettes
under the haze of white sunbursts
sun-lit drunk
and stay there for years tasting
the life inside
salt in hair
water in palm
silt in kisses
En route to work, in a rain-wet world, barely lit by a sun not-yet-risen, clean-aired wind dancing with me, the city streets shining like vinyl and stop lights and neon casting preternatural color-saturated shadows, my mind full of the beautiful words I spent the entire day with yesterday. I listen to the groan of buses and the uniform patter of rain drops behind Lush serenading through my headphones, making the world just a little more enchanted; visions of a pale-skinned, mess-haired, angel-faced, and sleepy-eyed boy whispering wrapping long arms around me goodbyes. If only I could spend every day reading Anais Nin all day while my husband plays scientist in the kitchen. Because now, there is wonder in my world again.
I am always torn between reading and writing, input and output, inspiration and creation. But I know very well they're connected and despite my strong desire to write in response to what I was taking in yesterday, I resisted (for the most part), trusted the cycle of creation of which inspiration and example are necessary, and today I all full (not nearly enough; I've been suffering a drought, but this has been my first drink of cold, clean water in a long time), my writing is inspired, but more important than that, my world is illuminated, alive, worth living in again.
Ornate boxes. Used bookstores. Candle holders. Novalis. Magic shops. David Lynch Movies. Farmer's Markets. My husband's eyes, lips, skin, breath, voice. Rain with candles burning inside and open windows. Snow and Bjork - together. Violin music. Piano keys. My Nana. Yuzu. Dill. Cilantro. Jelly Fish. Darwin. Old scientific artwork. Hand-written labels. Jagged coastlines. Anais Nin. Cold champagne on stormy nights. Heater blasting with windows open. Perfume. New stockings. Eyeliner in pots. Goethe. Old science books. The sound of waves. Honey whiskey and Haribo Peaches. Painting in the rain. Saturated colors. When the paint runs together. Crying in the rain. Crying during Savasana while it's raining outside. Lightening. Pan's Labyrinth. Fairy tales. San Quentin. Full body tattoos. Uncommon piercings. Vladimir Nabokov. Talking to old people about family. Talking to artists about anything. Laboratory equipment. Gardens. Hound's tooth. Leather jackets. Parachute pants. Magnet poetry. Doc Martens. Honeysuckle. Kierkegaard. Gustave Moreau. Red curtains. Basking in emotions. Walking down the street alone on Friday and Saturday nights listening to Tool.
Bertrand Russell is the philosophical enemy of one of my favorite thinkers, William James. However, a wonderful thing about Philosophy is that it seems by its nature, to unite individuals of very different persuasions insofar as their thoughts on what Philosophy is fundamentally for. In preparation for the class I am teaching in April, I have been navigating several 'What is Philosophy?'-type essays, and I have found in Russell some deep articulations of some of what I find most frustrating about ordinary, unexamined life, consumption of concern with worldly things. I have found in him a new friend (I forget, too, that one of the things I always liked about Russell despite my distaste for the staunch Analytic Philosophy he practiced especially earlier in his career (of which he was a pioneer), was when I learned that toward the end of his life he published collections of short stories - at first anonymously. Maybe because he was embarrassed? I don't know...) :
“The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin to philosophize…we find…that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny f custom Thus, while diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of those have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing us familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect...
The life of the instinctive man is shut up within the circle of his private interests: family and friends may be included, but the outer world is not regarded except as it may help or hinder what comes within the circle of instinctive wishes. In such a life there is something feverish and confined...The private world of instinctive interest is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay our private worlds in ruin. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife."
"In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will."
If that doesn't sound like just what I have been feeling especially violently as of late...
Something especially frustrating about the dilemma is how a part of this confinement is the unconscious certainty we feel that one of the only ways to escape this dilemma, is on society's terms. If we want a life that is "great and free" one sure way is to somehow liberate oneself from the constraints of having to be employed,working a nine to five, by become independently ridiculously wealthy. This thought frustrates me endlessly. It's a product of the very trap we're in, to think that the only way out is on terms not our own. Granted, there are certain obstacles that cannot be overcome without certain means, many of which are obtained financially. There are two problems with this thought: 1) Being able to afford not to work is not the only way to live a life that is 'great and free'. I have seen people work very, very hard, and exercise great amounts of dedication and will toward creating a life for themselves where they have room for greatness and freedom, mostly by attaining jobs that foster creativity - where they have room to create, to learn, to lose themselves, to be inspired, to teach, to challenge and be challenged, to enjoy. More importantly though, sometimes those experiences that allow to us be inspired, to learn, to grow, etc - experiences such as traveling or getting a degree - are perfectly obtainable without being extravagantly expensive, it just requires some crafty thinking, some connections, and often times a willingness to be just a little uncomfortable. See more on this below*. 2) Having enough money so that one has the luxury of not having to go to work every day, from what I have observed, brings with it its own arsenal of pressures, expectations, assumptions, that rob that luxury of its very nature of being a luxury. Even being in a position of making more money that I have made, myself, I feel the weight of what that 'luxury brings with it.
*On being willing to be uncomfortable: One of the most enlightening, challenging, enlightening, enlivening, memorable experiences I ever had was when I spent a year living in a 10 x 20 shack in a 'garden' in Paris in an entirely jury rigged dwelling of old ship parts, duct tape, plastic and metal sheets and wires, with an insane painter and a group of random international students. I had to repair my own roof when after the first night rain dripped through it onto my face while I was sleeping; hot water was not in guarantee supply, I slept on a mat on the floor and had to maintain three walkie-talkies in my room at all times (read; see). It would've been worth it for the sheer absurdity of it all, and the chance to live and work in Paris, but what made it much more than a ridiculous, wonderful experience, was the fact that this was an environment which fostered creativity to the utmost degree. The most bizarre, complex, beautiful associations of ideas and images were given space to foster and grow wildly. Writing and creations and of many other kind emerged from me at that time. I would be very happy to find an environment that allowed for that sort of free flow of creative imagination to run wild in me again.
There is more than one way out of this, but I'm much better at thinking about it than navigating the world and its demands. This, I suppose, is where a little savvy in the way of worldly things might do me some good. But I could do with a lucky accident instead.
"Fret for your figure and fret for your latte and fret for your lawsuit and fret for your hairpiece and fret for your Prozac and fret for your pilot and fret for your contract and fret for your car. It's a bull-shit, three-ring Circus sideshow of freaks"
I've been listening to a lot of Tool lately and appreciating them more than ever. Old Tool. I think one really falls in love with the articulate anger of this band's music and lyrics and Maynard's strangely soothing voice when one xhas hit the wall as far as being fed up with "normal" society. My head feels bloody from bumping myself up against it.
I realized tonight walking the city streets watching all the glittering assholes out for their Friday night insipid drinking-touting-mating-dance routine, that the only people sharing the streets with me toward whom I didn't feel immediate animosity, were the abject, the desolate, the lost, forlorn, homeless people also out and about tonight. My favorite group of people I've interacted with in large numbers has without a single doubt been my students at the college inside San Quentin to whom I taught Philosophy. Granted, inmates who are interested in taking a college Philosophy class are naturally an unlikely cross section of people. But what I appreciated was their history of rebellion against what's conventionally accepted in society (though, unfortunately for many of them, they were simply going along with the only actions that would enable them to be accepted, and that's what landed them here - mostly having to do with gangs), coupled with their current sense of determined retribution - whether that retribution was to be given to the world or to themselves (in most cases, it was a matter of them having the desire to redeem themselves and acquiesce to the world, realizing what was worth having in it), their tremendous gratitude, their genuine curiosity about this convention of a 'college education'. It's okay in my book to have a desire to embrace the 'normal' as long as you've been on the other side, experiencing, making mistakes, dying, regretting, learning. There were so many other things about these individuals that I appreciated, not just as a population to work with but as human beings, a specific subculture of human beings who took 'ordinary' life, conventions, values, standards, practices with a grain of salt at the same time as they took none of it for granted - tremendously grateful to get whatever of it they could.
I have been struggling lately with my problem of being interested in too many things, having too many possible avenues down which I might start looking for different, more fulfilling work (vocation). Struggling is a tremendous understatement. I hit the wall the day I started, and I've been knocking my head against it every day. If I'm going to extend the metaphor to my emotional state in response - the blood is running down my face, and the skin on my forehead is meaty and raw. The person who gets to see the most of the results of this - my complaints, my frustration, my un-channeled need to create and dream gone so awry that I'm not even a pleasure to be around to myself anymore is the one person with whom I want to share the best of me, especially because in return for all this bullshit I dish out, he takes ridiculously good care of me. And at the end of the day when my head has been filled with receipts, checks, taxes, forms, spreadsheets, budgets, policies, ledgers, balances, payroll calculations - in essence, aside from things like torture in Baba Amr or words out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth, to me, some of the most unpleasant things a person with even the smallest need to save room for imagining and dreaming can experience. Not because they are so awful in and of themselves - they're a part of life for anyone living today - but because they inspire no creativity, no inspiring thoughts, no dreams. Where if I could choose between never being able to freely associate beautiful images, words, concepts, dreamscapes again, and starving to death, I would dream and imagine and create until catabolysis robbed the last fiber of tissue from my last vital organ. My best has been absent for a good while now, and more tired than I am of the actual work - a recent acquisition since being committed romantically and nuptially - is the fact that at the end of the day, after all the receipts, checks,forms, spreadsheets, budgets, policies, ledgers, balances, payroll calculations, I am spiritually, psychologically, and (weirdly enough since I sit at a desk all day) physically drained of the ability to do almost any care-taking. I can't stand it.
But in between all the frustration and anger tonight, and the much finer feeling of having just worked my body very hard, strained and sweated, and had a long walk home to alchemize and breathe in the night air, and AEnema lullabying all of it - I caught a glimpse of something, a sense of direction. I hate convention and I hate normalcy and the average (I'm mostly talking about culture here, Western culture, people in America in large groups) more than a lot of things (which is why I love Nietzsche so much), and more than I heretofore realized until I've recently become more exposed to it, which seems to have happened just by virtue of being an adult. I am going to look for a way to work in an environment where I am surrounded by people who are not that, who have lived hard, have a sense of what they want and don't want, and hope that maybe I have something to give them. Here's to my new sense of direction.
