the weekend

sometimes i experience a void in my life, an emptiness that stems from desiring a deeper connection with people. i just moved to DC a couple months ago and my social circle is slow to build. saturday my roomy was out of town, and the girls i was going out with bailed, so i went out alone. i ran into a friend at the place i went, but after he left it left me feeling just extremely alone.

so these feelings persisted, and last night [sunday] i went to cafe saint ex because i was lonely. i went to have a beer and to just sit and think and open myself up to the possibility of having a conversation with a stranger though i am paralyzed at the thought of starting that conversation.

after sitting in an enjoyable peace for a while a gentleman approached me and started making conversation. and he wasn't hitting on me. turns out this man, Primo, is an extremely smart philosopher/scientist and we traded words for quite a while. or should i say he absolutely schooled me on all things. and even as i would begin to counter a point he had made he would already have a mind blowing counter-counter argument to sway my thoughts. incredible. i've only ever encountered such genius a few times in my life. and to find this type of intellectual connection of which i've been desperately desiring at my exact time of loneliness/need is incredible. he was a european who had lived in nyc for the past 17 years and now lived in dc. phd in neuroscience. extremely well read. articulate and informative, i feel as if i was blessed with more information in one night than if i read 7 different books.

recently i've been listening to the band the books, and one line that really sticks with me in one of their songs is "if we have no expectations, we have nothing to be upset about", and indeed, last night was a prime example of such a worldview. i forced myself out of the apartment, biked downtown, and had only one intention which was to drink a good beer. the rest played itself out as i could only have hoped. 

there is no where i feel more fulfilled than when i am out surfing or on a trail snaking up a ridge, miles from humanity.

specifically, this past weekend i tried my hand at 'fastpacking' which is the slang for trail running and backpacking. you basically run with all your gear. i packed everything i needed including a hatched strapped to my chest and set off into the cold blue ridge mountains in preparation for an even colder night (15-18 degrees fahrenheit at 1450' where i met my mother and sister and set up camp). at first the weight seemed like it would force me to move extremely slow for most of the trail, but it turns out my body quickly adjusted and i was soon navigating the rocky appalachian trail as fleetly as if i was carrying no gear.

i had everything i needed to survive - tools, fire, first aid kit, light, food, water and warmth. with these essentials i could survive up to a week without resupply (i was only gone 2 days so no need to bring more food and water). i was completely self-sustainable, relying on my own strength and agility to carry me over the trail and my intellect and (limited) experience to survive. it was freeing, simple, and exhilarating.

this adventure is in stark contrast to my new life. i wake up, eat, fuck around on the internet, run, and go to work for 8-10 hours. while i sit at my computer i literally feel as if my life is being sucked out of me. i live a privileged life that makes everything i say sound as if i'm whining, but circumstance and personal happiness are intricate things. many people jump at a chance to have any job, let alone a full time job with full benefits. but i've never measured my success traditionally. success for me is personal happiness.

i'll spare any potential readers anymore of this journal-like entry, and save that for my journal. rather, i think some important issues are brought to light in these times, and it's important to highlight them even if it's just as a seemingly simple short story, so as to implant them in the memory for future rumination. 

"does yor hart no longer receive me? you giv me nothing, no semblance of desire(s), not even the brea(d)th of yor voice, and above all else i am refused then taunted"

message of man

a baby cries in floors above

||          |(her effort is the catalyst of a quick release back into dream)

broken but emphatically alive

|          ||(you have no reason to be upset, and your lament no longer lulls you into sleep)

a man sobs in shadow

to woman

dreams of unspeakable horror
unknowable terror

i'm working on it...

Move me to live
to leap from my place of dormancy with untamed adventure in my eyes
to shed a thousand tears
or to laugh until my insides cramp
but until then do not utter a word

ruminations

If consumed long enough with any task or activity a thoughtful person will eventually start to question meaning and purpose, even if consumed by free choice, that is to say, even if the activity is engaged in by a person in times of leisure or 'free time'. While under investigation, there can be a reaffirmation of the intrinsic value of the activity and meaning is successfully perceived or the opposite can be revealed - an emptiness will be sensed, and a confused unrest will start to grow within. This may not even be a conscious process, I have oft times experienced it vaguely and subconsciously, which furthermore leads to a general discontent and (again) vague unrest in my being. Further investigation of these 'vaguenesses' will lead to the realization of the emptiness. It is one thing to say "I am happy" and "I am fulfilled" but it is another altogether to actually be happy and fulfilled. Pressure from exterior forces (jobs, people, perceived expectations, a want or desire to be something other than we are, etc.), our own personal motives, and dishonesty within ourselves to ourselves can lead us to feel confused as to how we actually feel.

But, the thoughtful and intelligent human (perhaps even spiritual?) will always, eventually, be brought to critical thought even if never conscious of any unrest or even if in a state of consistent 'vagueness'. It can happen when 'zoning out' - washing dishes, standing in line somewhere, walking, running, or any activity in which the active mind is subdued and the always constant background thought takes over, as if in daydream. This is, seemingly, how insight occurs. Thought seems to come to us from 'beyond', but in reality we have been thinking, unaware, the entire time. Lonergan, in his tome "Insight" would have much more to say on that and the human condition of thought in general, though I am afraid my feeble memory does not recall his thoughts offhand (it has been 4 years).

Now, a human can either embrace this emptiness and continue on, now aware of the vague unhappiness, which in it's realization can become solid, or, perhaps even realize the emptiness and continue in a masturbatory manner, with pleasurable manic highs followed by depressive lows. Still, disillusionment pervades.

However, if the activity truly brings no intrinsic joy there is eventually a recoil from the emptiness and a shift towards meaning. Whether a person is capable of making this shift (ie if the source of unhappiness/that which is inherently empty/that which is devoid of meaning is a task or activity which one is not forced to complete) is an issue, and if they are forced to continue (eg: at a job) then we have the makings of intense despair. 

Though, it seems as if the truly 'freed' person (a phrase of which deserves it's own book to explain) would say that no man is "forced" to do any-thing. Which is true (idealistically, in the modern sense). However, when one falls into certain conditions and finds himself in a specific situation, it becomes very hard to break out of that conditioning. Jobs, for example. It is hard to leave any position that upon hard work was earned and simply seek out a new one, especially in a new field. There are, as mentioned before, these pressures. Parents pressure us to get an education, spouses to make money, society to succeed. But what seems to truly matter is personal happiness, which is not as self-serving and selfish as it sounds (radically different from Randian objectivism).

Personal happiness then, briefly (because I have to get ready for this day) seems to involve feeling fulfilled. (This word is not thrown around with levity, and if given the infinite time and peace of a life unconcerned with money and computers and girls and work I would certainly read and write at great lengths about it and many other things as the philosophers of old). Personal happiness is not just about being selfish; doing just what pleases yourself. Quite the contrary, and if one's life is modeled around selfishness then the very things I have just written would plague you. Emptiness indeed! Rather, personal happiness seems to involve feeling as if you've benefitted someone or something, made a connection to something, perhaps even aided the common good, or improved the human condition. These seem to be things that encourage feelings of fulfillment. 

And I don't believe this is a utilitarian version of doing things to feel good. I believe in the truest good that actually comes out of them, and as a result makes one feel fulfilled, which is to say, fills one with a sense of meaning.

I'd like to work out the thoughts in the final paragraph more, regarding personal happiness, because it isn't just about fulfillment and the common good, though that is certainly an aspect. However, I need to go (time, cursed time, always time).

today is one of those days

pretzel folded legs
looks expectantly to the future
hoping for the best
but demanding the better
little does he see, silly marbled eyes
all glass, long ago unfocused

heroic rivers marched through mountains
carving them down to hills
now dried creek beds meander slowly through the waste
with every rain they surge with strength
they bide their time, they only have an eternity

the flaws are in every-thing
that he can see
it makes them beautiful
demands are as empty as the bed he has made
and with rainy eyes that blink back to focus
the river will cover him up

12/7/2011

did you want to be

when you sit in the hushed lights of the gas stove dreaming of a thought you had last week you will lose yourself in another thought, a different thought that is not better just different. it will consume you and you will lose your focus as the shadows lick your face with their orange-blue forked tongues. visions of reality will blur and stand still as you look into the moment and soon see through it as it freezes in front of you. your mind will be freed for this eternity or moment or year or lifetime and the thought will become a realization and an insight will creep over you as you turn entirely inward, traveling through time while rooted in the illusion of space. and here you stand a physical being completely outside of that existence. your mind is somewhere else. you have left and neither past nor future have any need for your attention, nor you for theirs. it is this that you live for, it is in this you are aware of your awareness.

cats
photographed with lasers
in their eyes
taking over the world
soon