(no subject)
I can't believe I bother turning stuff like this in.
Zen and the Art of For the past six years I have tried to keep a journal at least semi-regularly. When I was younger, the goal of keeping a diary was to document my history, to chronicle my personal mythology. In more recent years it has been a meditative process, allowing a channel to funnel the frenzy of thoughts that occur in my mind. As well as being a much-needed release, it becomes an exercise on contemplating the different ideas that hide in my cranial cavity. It became a process of re-representing thoughts as conceptual ideas to actual living realities on paper.
I don’t know exactly where I am. I feel like I don’t do enough, like my mind isn’t being used properly. The human spirit, essentially, does not want to be alone. We want to laugh, play, keep our minds busy. The moment we let go, the moment we release, the moment we take time off for a breather, that is when the mind starts working and it wont stop. It’s haunting. (September 16, 2008)
This entry is from around the time of the first self-reflexive paper. This was during the early stages of my current state of developments. As I wrote in the original paper, I had just had a reality-altering experience with psychedelics. I quote an e-mail to my roommate explaining my experience:
Cristy. I saw my life, I saw myself at my truest form - at my absolute naked self. Then I saw the world in front of me and as I looked at all the people in my house I realized that life has no meaning, that it is just an unending cycle with no beginning, no end, just that single instant. It was like I lived in a black room with no windows, no light, just black. And every thought I had came alive. (August 25, 2008)
I struggled with this vision of reality for some time. Such a world-view is a huge opposition to the conventions of American perspective and thus it took me about a month to accept my condition. Late in September I saw myself becoming more positive and excited about the present and future. I saw the formation of many beautiful ideas and of the smooth sails of gliders’ vehicles. I found hope in Taoism, I found cathartic release in meditation and there was a fiery buzz in the air that proclaimed love as the ultimate.
Like a California autumn, my moods changed as frequently and intensely as the temperature in the coming weeks. There were days when I felt myself on top of the balloon and many more days when I felt myself underneath it. There were days when I became the sun and lit the world, but there were many more days when I was simply an automoton, incapable of feeling connected to my environment or even myself.
Last week I felt one with Zen. I was calm, enlightened and beautiful. Within a few days the feeling subsided and I fell into depression, confusion and my “normal” ways. I was annoyed, perturbed at having lost this feeling of enlightenment. What I realize now is that it is just a step in my progression and I must meditate more in order to foster my growth. (September 30, 2008)
Eral and I sat side-by-side with our eyes closed, listening and envisioning the tumult of a waterfall. Our mouths made no movements, but there was an exchange occurring that washed over me like a soft rain across dry flakes of earth. The air was cooler, a bit sweeter and I felt like a snake that just shed his skin.
Just yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine about death. Death has been a common subject in my journals recently, mostly myself making the admission that the looming certainty of death is simply not a concern of mine, rather, it is a welcome image. This is not to say that I am actively looking to end my own life, or that I sit and count the days until I die, but rather that I am willing to go whenever it arrives. I believe that when I die I will be given the chance to start over again, with hopes that I will be able to be happier, more satisfied in the next trial. The idea of starting anew has been a huge desire of mine in the recent months. I have fucked up the past few months of my life. I have stopped doing class work, I have stopped attending class, I have stopped going to work - I have stopped. I have little motivation for anything and everything. At the beginning of the semester I had the highest aspirations for myself, hoping to go to grad school and get my doctorate. Since then I have greatly ruined these prospects through my careless abandonment of my academic responsibilities. To add flames to the fire of discontent, I must say that I have not even done anything important with my re-appropriated leisure time other than to develop my photography hobby. Wandering aimlessly with my camera in hand is the only thing I ever crave.
This past semester has paralleled, or rather has been an agent in the progression of my current state. In this class the ideas of Tao and Zen are very appealing and made a lot of sense. In my literature classes, I also was subjected to the ideas of alternate realities as we covered heavily postmodernism, surrealism and Derrida. We studied the movements that attempted to construct realities more fitting to the individual. The francopohone poet Aimé Cesaire describes this movement perfectly, “We’re not just manipulating words, we’re manipulating the reality that words control.” This idea that man can control and alter his vision of reality has been a common idea in almost everything I did this semester. It was all my friends and I would talk about, the subject was thoroughly covered in every class I took. In Derrida’s terms, my logocentrism was severely upset as I looked for a new transcendental signified as the concepts of “self” and “I” proved to be fleeting representations of someone who is not at all me.
I was about to make a comment about Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents and as I’m looking through my notes I realize that I have followed his digressions. Early in the semester I highlighted a passage in the essay in which I felt was profoundly important and a bit empowering - and this was Freud’s explanation that the better way to deal with the difficulty of Life is through “becoming a member of the human community” (Freud 730). I connected this with the idea of the ultimate compassion that the Zen teachers speak about within the stories of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones; as such that it was necessary to espouse love to all of those around me. My journal entries of the same time also reflect these ideas; on 10/13 I write: “I want to synthesize myself to have no personality, no identity, just a breeze blowing over the earth transmitting love and compassion.” Eventually, this feeling wore off and at the present I find much more familiarity in the sentence immediately before the last Freud passage I quoted: “Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself” (730) . And this is exactly what I have done the past two months of my life. I have shyed away from “the external world” by focusing upon time spent with friends or pursuing my own hobbies and passions. Ultimately I turned my back to the greatest construct of human society: responsibility. I have not turned in a single paper on time and more not at all - even though I have drafts for them. I call in sick to work about once a week. I’ve neglected all bills that affect only me - I continue to pay rent and utilities as I don’t want to negatively affect those around me. I’m a mess.
In writing this, I am being extremely honest and open about the inner workings of my mind, but I am reminded by what Andre Breton writes in Nadja: “Life is other than what one writes.” This writing that I have done does not fully represent me and my journey, it is only a single frame within the context of the greater composition. According to environmental factors, who I am is constantly changing as I respond or adapt to different scenarios. Not one, not two, but infinite. Today is a new day and a new shot at enlightenment. I sit here sipping tea, feeling the throb of hunger; and as soon as I end this sentence, my mind will forget the tea, forget hunger, forget this sentence, forget the breathing and see - become - nothing.
Zen and the Art of For the past six years I have tried to keep a journal at least semi-regularly. When I was younger, the goal of keeping a diary was to document my history, to chronicle my personal mythology. In more recent years it has been a meditative process, allowing a channel to funnel the frenzy of thoughts that occur in my mind. As well as being a much-needed release, it becomes an exercise on contemplating the different ideas that hide in my cranial cavity. It became a process of re-representing thoughts as conceptual ideas to actual living realities on paper.
I don’t know exactly where I am. I feel like I don’t do enough, like my mind isn’t being used properly. The human spirit, essentially, does not want to be alone. We want to laugh, play, keep our minds busy. The moment we let go, the moment we release, the moment we take time off for a breather, that is when the mind starts working and it wont stop. It’s haunting. (September 16, 2008)
This entry is from around the time of the first self-reflexive paper. This was during the early stages of my current state of developments. As I wrote in the original paper, I had just had a reality-altering experience with psychedelics. I quote an e-mail to my roommate explaining my experience:
Cristy. I saw my life, I saw myself at my truest form - at my absolute naked self. Then I saw the world in front of me and as I looked at all the people in my house I realized that life has no meaning, that it is just an unending cycle with no beginning, no end, just that single instant. It was like I lived in a black room with no windows, no light, just black. And every thought I had came alive. (August 25, 2008)
I struggled with this vision of reality for some time. Such a world-view is a huge opposition to the conventions of American perspective and thus it took me about a month to accept my condition. Late in September I saw myself becoming more positive and excited about the present and future. I saw the formation of many beautiful ideas and of the smooth sails of gliders’ vehicles. I found hope in Taoism, I found cathartic release in meditation and there was a fiery buzz in the air that proclaimed love as the ultimate.
Like a California autumn, my moods changed as frequently and intensely as the temperature in the coming weeks. There were days when I felt myself on top of the balloon and many more days when I felt myself underneath it. There were days when I became the sun and lit the world, but there were many more days when I was simply an automoton, incapable of feeling connected to my environment or even myself.
Last week I felt one with Zen. I was calm, enlightened and beautiful. Within a few days the feeling subsided and I fell into depression, confusion and my “normal” ways. I was annoyed, perturbed at having lost this feeling of enlightenment. What I realize now is that it is just a step in my progression and I must meditate more in order to foster my growth. (September 30, 2008)
Eral and I sat side-by-side with our eyes closed, listening and envisioning the tumult of a waterfall. Our mouths made no movements, but there was an exchange occurring that washed over me like a soft rain across dry flakes of earth. The air was cooler, a bit sweeter and I felt like a snake that just shed his skin.
Just yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine about death. Death has been a common subject in my journals recently, mostly myself making the admission that the looming certainty of death is simply not a concern of mine, rather, it is a welcome image. This is not to say that I am actively looking to end my own life, or that I sit and count the days until I die, but rather that I am willing to go whenever it arrives. I believe that when I die I will be given the chance to start over again, with hopes that I will be able to be happier, more satisfied in the next trial. The idea of starting anew has been a huge desire of mine in the recent months. I have fucked up the past few months of my life. I have stopped doing class work, I have stopped attending class, I have stopped going to work - I have stopped. I have little motivation for anything and everything. At the beginning of the semester I had the highest aspirations for myself, hoping to go to grad school and get my doctorate. Since then I have greatly ruined these prospects through my careless abandonment of my academic responsibilities. To add flames to the fire of discontent, I must say that I have not even done anything important with my re-appropriated leisure time other than to develop my photography hobby. Wandering aimlessly with my camera in hand is the only thing I ever crave.
This past semester has paralleled, or rather has been an agent in the progression of my current state. In this class the ideas of Tao and Zen are very appealing and made a lot of sense. In my literature classes, I also was subjected to the ideas of alternate realities as we covered heavily postmodernism, surrealism and Derrida. We studied the movements that attempted to construct realities more fitting to the individual. The francopohone poet Aimé Cesaire describes this movement perfectly, “We’re not just manipulating words, we’re manipulating the reality that words control.” This idea that man can control and alter his vision of reality has been a common idea in almost everything I did this semester. It was all my friends and I would talk about, the subject was thoroughly covered in every class I took. In Derrida’s terms, my logocentrism was severely upset as I looked for a new transcendental signified as the concepts of “self” and “I” proved to be fleeting representations of someone who is not at all me.
I was about to make a comment about Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents and as I’m looking through my notes I realize that I have followed his digressions. Early in the semester I highlighted a passage in the essay in which I felt was profoundly important and a bit empowering - and this was Freud’s explanation that the better way to deal with the difficulty of Life is through “becoming a member of the human community” (Freud 730). I connected this with the idea of the ultimate compassion that the Zen teachers speak about within the stories of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones; as such that it was necessary to espouse love to all of those around me. My journal entries of the same time also reflect these ideas; on 10/13 I write: “I want to synthesize myself to have no personality, no identity, just a breeze blowing over the earth transmitting love and compassion.” Eventually, this feeling wore off and at the present I find much more familiarity in the sentence immediately before the last Freud passage I quoted: “Against the dreaded external world one can only defend oneself by some kind of turning away from it, if one intends to solve the task by oneself” (730) . And this is exactly what I have done the past two months of my life. I have shyed away from “the external world” by focusing upon time spent with friends or pursuing my own hobbies and passions. Ultimately I turned my back to the greatest construct of human society: responsibility. I have not turned in a single paper on time and more not at all - even though I have drafts for them. I call in sick to work about once a week. I’ve neglected all bills that affect only me - I continue to pay rent and utilities as I don’t want to negatively affect those around me. I’m a mess.
In writing this, I am being extremely honest and open about the inner workings of my mind, but I am reminded by what Andre Breton writes in Nadja: “Life is other than what one writes.” This writing that I have done does not fully represent me and my journey, it is only a single frame within the context of the greater composition. According to environmental factors, who I am is constantly changing as I respond or adapt to different scenarios. Not one, not two, but infinite. Today is a new day and a new shot at enlightenment. I sit here sipping tea, feeling the throb of hunger; and as soon as I end this sentence, my mind will forget the tea, forget hunger, forget this sentence, forget the breathing and see - become - nothing.