entries from yesterday, literally
11:44 AM 01/20/2007
Some Self reflective crap about the current state of my writing:
(If you're the sort of person who doesn't like this sort of topic then either skip to the next entry, or imagine whatever it is you like to think about while going through the motions of reading the following. Don't worry. I do it too.)
Hah! I remembered the old notepad command which posts automatic date/times. Is it geniusmadness or merely mental detritus? Who knows how many other slightly useful facts are stored in this cerebral cortex (if that is where they are stored)? Actually, the scary thing is knowing that there are probably mountain-sized heaps of useless facts absorbed from the mass-mediated society around us.
I could have started off by saying how much this "blog" thing is a relatively new experience for me, but that would be bending the truth a bit. (Not that any one else would ever bend the truth.) One of the first places online I actually spent any significant amount of time, or put any effort/energy into was LiveJournal. That was years ago, before Myspace ever existed. (Strange how time goes by.) I started that "blog" because friends I knew in real life (IRL) had LiveJournals. I remember when it was by invite only and all that jazz and it helped if you knew how to write your own html tags and crap like that. (Nowadays any blog or message generator has all the neat word processing stuff included as little buttons.)
The same could be said about my entrance into the world of Myspace. It was originally because of friends I knew IRL who persuaded and talked me into it. (I am one of those sorts of people who usually hates filling out the sort of forms that go into making up online profiles. I'd rather be distracted by looking out the window. Or reading long articles self-published on people's personal websites.) But, certain people were adamant about it being a convenient way of keeping in touch (as if they never heard of the telephone or doorbell), so I said what-the-hell, bugger-all for a lark, why not?
In the beginning, I had no idea that the whole "blog" thing would start to become a place to include any of my own writings. The old ideas about any of my writing were based on getting up and reading the latest "poem" in front of an audience who usually pretended to listen while they hit on one another or were getting drunk. They'd clap automatically whenever anyone on stage paused long enough. It was quite pavlovian. No. Just kidding. Only sometimes was it like that. Usually there was a connection made. Besides that affair with "poetry," I was used to writing in actual journals or composition books. The usual sorts of things: drafts of essays, personal entries, streams of thoughts, notes, and sometimes written versions of sketches of whatever was going on either in my head or around me at the time. The funny thing about this period is that it lasted for more than several years (until just recently). The odd thing was that I always kept poetry and poetic experiments in seperate books of their own - those blank page hardbound sketch books that artists use...since a long time ago I used to doodle and create my own page borders and other things. Nothing serious really, just whatever popped in as an idea while thinking about words. The oddest thing about the whole period was that when I wrote poetry, my handwriting was in a different script style or "font," if you will, than from my normal run of the mill journal prose. The laptop computer is probably more responsible than any other thing for ending all of that and changing the way I compose anything written.
So the idea of posting stuff online in such a "personal" format as a blog was strange. The idea of posting it for people, even complete strangers to see it, was even stranger. But I don't mean strange as in strangebad, you know, the way most neophobes use the word. I mean it as simply strange, foreign, something different from that experienced before - which can go either way depending on circumstances, causality and whichever fleeting mood I am choosing to wear as a mental pair of goggles at the time. But I got used to it. Besides, it's not as if I would post anything anywhere if I wanted it to remain private or unknown by anyone. That's why writers write after all. (The truly private stuff still goes in the physical journals I still carry around for that purpose, among others. Though the notes are nowadays centered on the impressive transformations that my long affair with meditation practice are causing. Not saying I am good at accurately relating those to words, but it's what's going on so...)
Compared with the hot/cold super fast world of online forums, the blog thing is actually nice. It's slower, less volatile...at least for me. I used to haunt a few forums and post more than regularly. The forums route was stimulating and engaging for a long time and it taught me some valuable lessons. But eventually it just got tiring. Too many times of watching online communities rip themselves apart in half-assumptions and posturing. Too many times of being a part of one side or another as that happened. I suppose that is inevitable among people who don't get out much. The problem with me is that I like to get out a lot. More than is proper if one is to cultivate a unhealthily obsessive online presence. But who wants to really read about that? I did encounter the novel phenomenon of "meeting" people online and actually making friendships with them, some of which became friends IRL as well. That ended up being one of the best parts of online communities. The internet thing has also made it easier to keep in touch with my now far-flung and scattered circle of friends. (Most of which I met IRL, but now including some I met online.)
But back to the train of thought. Myspace is, I guess, really a vast over-community where you just put up a profile. And then they have forums as well. But some of us use it for the blog, or for messaging back and forth. For saying "hi" and sharing pics and videos of everything we think worth sharing. I actually don't know what I use it for yet, except as a place to keep in touch with those I know and get in touch with those I don't know. I never took any of it seriously until recently, though I've had a profile for a while now.
Can you ever really get to know someone by reading their blog? Or by reading their profile and viewing their pics and videos. Well, no silly. You only get to know the parts they write for you to read, or what pics or videos they post. But do you ever really get to completely know another by seeing what they post? You have to see their face, hear their voice, see their mannerisms and all those other odds and ends from a face to face angle. And even then, you may become a close friend, but complete knowledge of another is impossible. Not even if you knew each other for eighty years and could finish each other's sentences. The human "soul" is deeper than any of us could ever imagine. Perhaps this is why we choose to distract ourselves instead of settling into our "souls" more often than not. We are used to everything being easy to understand, or able to be quickly categorized. We don't like the ambiguous or that which may take effort to get to understand. Except for me. I like the ambiguous, the difficult, the complex, the challenging parts of life. I like those because I made a pact with myself to choose happiness and since those things make up in truth about 75 percent of life, this increases my happiness quotient far beyond the normal. And this happiness can then be shared with anyone I come into contact with. So it's win win for all concerned. (Or at least that's what I tell myself.)
With people, I actually like the fact that upon first meeting, I may know little and that it takes time to get to know someone. Friendships take time to grow. This is amazing to me and I wouldn't have it any other way. So I started out wishing to be self-reflective and bloggish. I ended up with something that probably should have been written out by hand in a journal.
Okay. I think I have about had it with this self-reflection thing so this entry is here with over with.
5:31 PM 01/20/2007
Did I mention I like disappearing? I like going off from time to time and doing whatever it is I feel like doing. Sometimes it's after a friend drops me off after a night of fun or bars or a movie...and instead of walking straight in, I'll wave them off and walk to the lake. (Note: this lake is actually an inland freshwater sea and it is basically across the street.) Sometimes it can be at someone's party. I'll either sneak off to the back porch or slip out the door and just find a place to sit. Then there are the other disappearances where I don't actually go anywhere, I just become hard to get a hold of. Messages (phone or email) go unanswered. Invitations out, the "how-are-yous," or "I'll be at so-and-so at such-and-such" and permutations of the same register in my mind somewhere. But either I'm off meditating or I am in the mood for going out alone. Why do I do this sort of thing? (Actually, it's more interesting that anyone would care why.) It's because sometimes the chatter gets too much for me. And I just want to experience things without either my own running commentary upstairs or anyone else's. That's what I tell myself. I don't really know. I do know that where other people seek distractions or to find people to hang out with when they feel lonely or sad, I am less inclined to do that. First off, I don't have problems with being alone or that "lonely" feeling. Second, I think I don't feel the same way about sadness nor relate to it in the same way as many others. I take it in stride I suppose. Of course I prefer to be happy, but I also appreciate the beauty of life even in sadness. (Well....doesn't that sound just like the right proper appropriately spiritual thing to say?) Ah, screw it. Maybe the entire last so-called paragraph should be deleted after the first sentence. It sounds much more interesting left that way.
10:23 AM 01/21/2007
Some more self-reflective crap:
(If you don't like it, go google something instead.)
Does the blog thing simply mean I have a way to pretend that others read what I write? Is it simply another ruse in a large inventory of ruses I've collected over the years to procrastinate sharing anything. Instead of sharing when someone asks about anything new, I can now imagine telling them to just look for it on my Myspace blog. Maybe I got tired of telling people to wait until "next time." Whatever. But I know that I'll even procrastinate with blog entries and updates. Don't be deceived by this current string of multiple entries.
All things disintegrate. Even procrastination.
I used to procrastinate with meditation, until I got a glimpse of the mind's nature. A real glimpse. Now it's ingrained like brushing teeth or showering. The one snag with this is that sometimes I go on retreat. Not the usual weekend seminar-type that most people are used to, but like the traditional approach, off on my own to some place where I won't be disturbed or distracted. I like the structured seminar as much as anyone else, but I know where the "work" of meditation is really done, so I do it. Retreat can be a snag because it means I appear to pop in and out of social life. But this is less a problem as time passes and everyone along with me grows older.
All things come to an end. Good or bad. And I am looking for the happiness that comes from being free of that. Actually, I have found that happiness. I am just looking to stabilize it or strengthen it. Or bring it to its fullest expression. Or something. (I already warned that I can't adequately express the transformations meditation is causing in my life.)
Sunday morning. Most people around me are either in church or sleeping off whatever they did last night. Me...already meditated. Actually, I am not sure I slept since last night I stayed in the gap between thoughts/emotions for a long time...only time was not an issue. Who can really say?
I usually take care of my "fun" on friday nights. And I wake myself up Saturday mornings, regardless of what state I am in, because whatever I feel like is my own responsibility. Sometimes I wonder where it all goes or what it all adds up to. But then I remember the line I wrote back in December of 2003, after the death of a good friend's father. I asked "what is the measure of a person's life?" My good friend responded with "our relationships." That has stayed with me ever since, much as the awareness of death has become an indelible part of my worldview.
What survives death? We have theories and ideas. We can make inferences. But what we can see right now is the fact that our relationships and how we have interacted is what survives our personal deaths. The long story is never ended, but the chapters do conclude. And whatever pieces of identity that we have so strongly centered on or grasped at...all that disintegrates. It actually happens all the time in our lives, we just get tricked by the continuity that appears, like when we watch a film - really just a series of still frames that pass by quickly enough to give the illusion of continuous motion. I suppose physicists have some sort of mathematical formulae for all this. The difference is that in life, everything is in constant motion and flux, and the illusion for us is one of permanence and fixed identities. But it's nothing until you actually realize it for yourself.
So I don't care about being certain with who I am anymore.
11:27 AM 01/21/2007
Not that anyone really reads this stuff I post but...
The Effigies song about living in a body bag is stuck in my head right now. Actually, along with the Naked Raygun song "Wonder Beer." I wonder how many songs could be stuck on at the same time. And whyever would I need an IPod when I already have so many songs in my head. Do I really need another device that would only further my excuses for distraction? Actually, most of you (since I am under the pretense that people actually read this) have probably never heard of either the Effigies or Naked Raygun, but they were pretty big in the local Chicago rock scene back in the cultural wasteland of the 80's. I was pretty much of a kid back then. Chicago still has a lot of local rock bands that get passed over for whatever happens in New York or LA. So what? (Well, except for that Smashing Pumpkins outfit....but I never got into them.) Everyone thinks of Chicago as this place of "Blues" and "Jazz" which I like, but local rock gets passed up more often than not. When I was younger, Chicago, my home "town," was a place of punk and post-punk...but I guess that was the sort of lake I was swimming in. (Well, there was Slayer but they're from out West where all those metal bands seem to come from.)
Living in a body bag? I guess we all get to that point sooner or later. Then again it's not living in any conventional sense, is it? Whatever. I have been thinking a lot lately about those days when I was a fresh faced kid starting in high-school, measuring the time from show to show, sneaking forties under my coat, and thinking that getting spun and knocked around in the pit was a highlight. Well, you knock them and spin them back too, but this is why you always go with friends. I remember this city before the rise of the sooper condos which have sprouted everywhere like mushrooms pricing people like me out of neighborhoods...the replacement of greasy hot-dog and burger joints with fancy Fratalian-named fru-fru "eateries" where people can pay a lot of money to convince themselves they are cultured. All right, so not all of these eateries have fratalian names. Some of them pose as Japanese restaurants. I don't know about all of this. I can't really knock the businesses for trying to cash in. Hell, if I ran a restaurant, I'd make it obnoxiously pretentious too. I mean if people WANT to spend fifty bucks on something that would normally cost ten, who am I to say no? There is a lot of good in change. It has gotten a lot more convenient to buy used books and cheap beer. And falafel (!!!!) is pretty much only a block away, whichever way I walk. But even though the city used to look crappier and more run-down, there was more soul. And it seems that the city is changing in a way that consciously excludes those who don't belong to the latest version of "pretty" or "hip." (Or "shallow.")
You can probably guess how old I am when I tell you that I remember when the "Alley" store was actually in the alley just before the Dunkin Donuts on Belmont and Clark. A friend of mine used to call the Dunkin Donuts, Punkin Donuts, on account of the sort of people who always hung around the parking lot. If you were broke, you could always get a cigarette or a swig because someone always had a new pack or had just bought a forty or a little vodka. If I had a dollar for evey time the manager of Punkin Donuts called the cops on everyone, I'd have more than enough to buy one of the new condos on Clark street. That was back before the "Alley" bought the whole block and became the unofficial Walmart of the so-called "alternative" scene (whatever the hell "alternative" is supposed to mean). Don't get me started about what the changes have done to Wicker Park. I could go on about those days, but I'll say that they weren't all roses and peaches. There were fights. Cons. And junk. Too many people got on junk and paid the price for it. Chicago is a tricky thing. If you give it half a chance, it will devour you, but in the end it's because you devour yourself.
It saddens me that most of these "new" people in this city look down on all that is soulful here. Like the man who used to play his trumpet by the Berwyn station of the Red Line (which used to be called the Howard-Dan Ryan, back when they had A and B stations and the trains actually didn't stall between stations). I used to love that. Most of the time, he was off and sounded like someone strangling a goose, but he had his moments. And the idea that someone would just sit down on the sidewalk and play a horn. That is Chicago if anything could be called that. All I can say now is that the only other thing the gentrification has done, besides making pretty streets and new condos and boutiques and restaurants selling 12 dollar burritos, is in making the rate of foreclosures so high. Half a million bucks for a shoebox apartment? Yeah, so what if the counter tops are marble? Tell that to the bank when you default.
None of that shit matters now right? Since the new gen is on Myspace or facebook or whatever the next new online thing is. But they are missing out on the shows and the hanging out in parking lots or cafes, sneaking vodka or malt liquor, daring your friend to spike his mohawk and getting chased out by the cops. Hell, I am getting older. Some of my friends are now cops or the managers who'd call them. Maybe it's all for the best. Or at least it's good in some ways.
Okay, I just wrote an entire entry about the past. That's worrisome.
I need to go do laundry. Jack Kornfield can go screw himself.
3:04 PM 01/21/2007
Third entry today. What the hell is wrong with me? I need to get out more today.
Laundry done. Now back to the ecstasy. Perhaps I shouldn't be so upset with Jack Kornfield. He is after all, a famous Buddhist writer. But his latest work "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry" seemed to be nothing more than a set of excuses for a long time meditation practitioner to remain on a solipsistic plateau. I think overall that the book is an gigantic excuse for giving up on the goal, the fruition, of Buddhism. And that's sad. It is also too bad, considering the latest turn in American Buddhism where some people seem to think that strict rational materialism and Buddhism have a lot in common.
It is delusion to think that it's only "being human" to give up on the goal of Awakening, or to think that any Buddhist who aspires to Awaken is only fooling themselves. I think that American Buddhists who believe that Awakening is impossible or that it is not the profound transformation that it really is, are kidding themselves so they can pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves for their intelligent-sounding spiritual materialism. Suckers. I wish Trungpa Rinpoche were alive today to see this happening. (Actually, I gather he witnessed the same sort of thing back in his day, since he taught about the same sort of delusion and how to avoid it. His book "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism" is one of my favorites and I have read it over about umpteen times.)
Thanks to the likes of what Jack Kornfield wrote, now we are going to have a bunch of people who think that silent sitting practice is all there is too it. No view. No aspiration. And, because of people like Kornfield finding out that Enlightenment is more difficult than he thought when he started out, not even talk about such a goal as Buddhahood. What the ring tailed rambling hell is Buddhism, unless we take refuge in (or rely on the safe direction of) Buddha?
Is Buddhism surviving the West? Yes. Is it surviving the transition into certain people's minds? Obviously not. Especially not some of the more popular authors. (Like Kornfield or Batchelor.) I am not saying I have all the answers, but I do know that I don't want my Buddhism watered-down. In fact I want no spirituality watered down. No watered down Buddhism. No watered down New Age. No watered down Yoga. None of that. And those who try to water it down to make it fit into their addiction to skepticism and doubt because they haven't yet learned compassion, are hereby notified that they have some explaining to do.
Stephen Batchelor's book "Buddhism Beyond Beliefs" is actually in the middle of this sort of spiritual plateau-ism. Most of the book is all right, but I do take issue with his suggestion that Buddhists jettison karma, rebirth, and other things. I can do without the attempt to fit Buddhism into modern day dogmatic materialist skepticism. It's a surprise that the writer who brought us a beautiful version of Nagarjuna's "Root Verses on the Middle" would suggest such a thing.
Come on, people. The historical Buddha, Shakyamuni took six years of doing nothing else but aspiring and practicing for Awakening before he Awoke. And this after coming from a position in society where he was highly educated, physically trained, and had access to an amazing variety of spiritual practices and traditions. How many years did Milarepa stay in solitary retreat? Many of today's Nyingma and Kagyu lamas have gone on 3-year retreats. To do anything well requires effort, learning, and skill. And yet some of us Americans who do nothing but meditate twenty minutes or an hour a day and go to the occasional retreat, all the while struggling to maintain a middle-class or middle-class looking lifestyle, get discouraged after a few years of trying...discouraged to the point where they start to think that Awakening is nothing special? I suspect that some people are trying to turn the Middle Way into the Middle Class Way. And that was NOT Siddartha's intention at all.
To all those people, I have this to say: Get over yourselves. Yes, even your meditation practice can become a prop in your project of spiritual materialism. You don't become something or someone other than who you are now when you open up to Awakening, but on the other hand you also don't excuse your ego's foibles or your laziness. Having compassion for your failings and misunderstandings does not mean you must enable them. Growth, a willingness to grow, and uncompromising openness is necessary for Buddhist practice. I would also like to add that devotion is necessary but I can imagine many people would think that devotion is some superstitious holdover from the past. Too bad they don't know that devotion is a source of endless inspiration and energy. It is okay to commit yourself to a goal and to carry out what is needed. But I guess in today's point-and-click world, a lot of people would rather not deal with anything that might entail effort. That's cool. Just don't go off writing books about how failing to realize any fruition in Buddhist practice is "humility" and that such a thing is what Buddhism is all about.
Enough of this spiel. I need to go outside.