blog (January, 2002)
a few words i enjoyed
And as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words - We will pass just as quietly through life (passing through, passing through) as the 10th century people of this valley only with a little more noise and a few bridges and dams and bombs that won't even last a million years...
-- Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
Resolute contemplation of the terrifying object is the only possible treatment.
-- Bertrand Russell
You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstacy at your feet..
-- Franz Kafka
pleaces to go, people to see
All my life needed was a sense of some place to go. I don't believe that someone should devote his life to morbid self-attention. I believe that someone should become a person like other people.
-- Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver
eternal joy and never-ending splendor
Last night on my walk home from a friend's house I chose my route along Galway's River Corrib rather than the city centre, avoiding the throngs leaving the pubs and enjoying the rush of water running out into the sea.
A river, a stream, pond, an ocean; all so relaxing, but all so different in meaning and reason for the emotional response they evoke.
I told someone once, while making the same walk, that I like rivers because they are water's example of continuous flow; never ending -- the water doesn't really have a destination -- it won't stop when it gets somewhere -- it's just flowing. And you can think of one small piece of water moving along toward the sea, or you can look at one point in the river and see that different water is continually passing through it.
Where has that piece of water travelled from?
But water doesn't travel in pieces -- not even droplets -- for certain, but is rather one mass constantly changing, molding, fitting. But does it travel in molecules? Has this H2O molecule been to Madrid, to India? But reactions are changing the molecules constantly. What is the normal "lifespan" of a molecule? Of an atom? Do the electrons move from atoms so constantly too? Not only has this electron been to India, but it has been a piece of New Delhi soil, then a part of a young Indian boy's wooden flute, then so quickly danced through air, bird, house, and finger until I see it float by in the Galway river...
How spectacular and dynamic, then, is our world - our universe - our very bodies?
be like water
I've been concentrating a lot on the running lately, but with my peak distance pre-marathon run taken care of yesterday, and my online race entry form submitted today, I'll be easing up on the training and focus and trying to get back to other things, like books and people and Ireland. Nearing raceday is going to cut down my participation in the national pastime, however, though signs like this picture scream out from every other building, and barmen at the pub scowl when I request that my pint glass be filled with water instead o' the black stuff...
I'm learning to cook, and speak a little French, I'm improving my juggling and guitar playing, and I received a very short lesson with a didjeridu the other day, but it's not nearly enough. I want to stretch out and reach out more. I'm nearly done reading Walden, the book I've been quoting here of late -- it has intrigued me, but not captivated me, and I've had difficulty in trudging through to its finish. I now have a Galway Public Library card, though, so maybe I can find a new journey soon. Suggestions welcome (change the (at) in the address.)
On my computer back home I have a list somewhat like this self betterment agenda -- notes on certain habits I want to develop or weed out -- and another on skills I want to learn or perfect. (Unfortunately, I don't have access to a secure shell client here in Ireland to access the home machine, so I can't get to those and various other lists and projects...)
I haven't yet gone as far as Buckminster Fuller, who formulated a credo of self disciplines to live his life by, but it's nice to keep little reminders like "Don't chew on pens that people lend me," to keep me growing in the right direction.
lost in the woods
No time to think out everything flying through my life. Here's someone else's jumble, sorted out a bit:
Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.
-- H.D. Thoreau, Walden
More Walden
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."
-- H.D. Thoreau, Walden
linking threads
"Do you think me a learned, well-read man?"
"Certainly," replied Zi-gong, "Aren't you?"
"Not at all," said Confucius. "I have simply grasped the thread which links up the rest."
Richard Melville Hall
Moby's website holds some essays he wrote included in some of his album liner notes. They're all short and worth reading; he is insightful and straightforward. Essay excerpts:
Bowie: What shall we be excited about tomorrow?
Moby: To see heaven in a grain of sand and eternity in a wildflower. And 'Cops' on Fox.
Bowie's Questions with Moby's Answers
the conservatives want a seemingly neat and compartmentalised society wherein stable appearances are maintained and archaic cultural archetypes are adhered to religiously. i grew up in a world of rigid cultural archetypes. i grew up with white businessmen going to office buildings while their wives stayed at home and their kids went to school. or, more accurately, i grew up with alcoholic, adulterous businessmen who lived culturally insular lives while their wives took sedatives and smoked cigarettes and vented their frustrations on their kids, and these same kids took reams of drugs, got abortions, drove drunk, and victimised the weaklings. i grew up in what most conservatives would consider a utopia; lots of money, prestige, cultural cohesion, and good conservative values. but their values were in fact aesthetics, and maintaining these aesthetics ruled and ruined their lives. almost everyone in this suburban bourgeoisie system hated their lives, but because they had been brought up to worship these aesthetic myths they felt that to question them was an admission of personal failure.
-- Moby, Cultural Conservativism
"being able to quote cleverly"
I'm reading The Flight of the Eagle, by Jiddu Krishnamurti. Excerpts:
The beauty of freedom is that you do not leave a mark. The eagle in its flight does not leave a mark; the scientist does. Inquiring into this question of freedom there must be, not only the scientific observation, but also the flight of the eagle that does not leave a mark at all; both are required; there must be both the verbal explanation and the nonverbal perception--for the description is never the actuality that is described; the explanation is obviously never the thing that is explained; the word is never the thing.
Can the sorrow in daily life end? Unless the mind changes radically our living has very little meaning--going to the office every day, earning a livelihood, reading a few books, being able to quote cleverly, being very well-informed--a life which is empty, a real bourgeois life. And then as one becomes aware of this state of affairs, one begins to invent a meaning to life; find some significance to give to it; one searches out the clever people who will give one the significance, the purpose, of life--which is another escape from living. This kind of living must undergo a radical transformation.
Can one die, psychologically, to all one's past, to all the attachments, fears, to the anxiety, vanity, and pride, so completely that tomorrow you wake up a fresh human being? You will say, 'How is this to be done, what is the method?' There is no method, because 'a method' implies tomorrow; it implies that you will practice and achieve something eventually, tomorrow, after many tomorrows. But can you see immediately the truth of it--see it actually, not theoretically--that the mind cannot be fresh, innocent, young, vital, passionate, unless there is an ending, psychologically, to everything of the past? But we do not want to let the past go because we are the past; all our thoughts are based on the past; all knowledge is the past; so the mind cannot let go; any effort it makes to let go is still part of the past, the past hoping to achieve a different state.
The mind must become extraordinarily quiet, silent; and it does become extraordinarily quiet without any resistance, without any system, when it sees this whole issue. Man has always sought immortality; he paints a picture, puts his name on it, that is a form of immortality; leaving a name behind, man always wants to leave something of himself behind. What has he got to give--apart from technological knowledge--what has he of himself to give? What is he? You and I, what are we, psychologically? You may have a bigger bank account, be cleverer than I am, or this or that; but psychologically, what are we?--a lot of words, memories, experiences, and these we want to hand over to a son, put in a book, or paint in a picture, 'me.' The 'me' becomes extremely important, the 'me' opposed to the community, the 'me' wanting to identify itself, wanting to fulfill itself, wanting to become something great--you know, all the rest of it. When you observe that 'me,' you see that it is a bundle of memories, empty words: that is what we cling to; that is the very essence of the separation between you and me, they and we.