thinking that: an addiction-prone personality is one that is very good at creating narrow justifications & avoiding personal responsibility.

- measured self-control. but also: the ability to release that control.

- long-term planning & discipline. the capacity to delay instant gratification, even suffer, in the short-term, to reap richer & deeper rewards in the future. but also: the capacity to experience & immerse oneself within the living breathing moment.

- a sense of self that extends beyond the self. we may all be 'selfish', but for some, the boundaries of what is the 'self' has a broader circumference. i want to blur the lines between me & you & him & her & us & them & the dirt & the stars & the sea, and yet still retain my own sense of identity.



and they said:
the center is everywhere and circumference nowhere
the center is everywhere and circumference nowhere
your center is everywhere and circumference nowhere

It's the self that blinds the self.

To Do:

- Resist entangling myself with another person, or persons, romantically. Enough with the relationship jumping. Stabilize self, first and foremost. Stop and reflect.
- Find a healthier balance between personal life and work. The pendulum has swung in both directions; find the middle ground.
- Figure out my living situation, and a new car. (You know what I miss about having a car? Being able to offer other people rides.)
- Go camping in the woods, if only for a few days.
- Keep taking capoeira. This is a good time to learn something new.
- Give myself more alone time. I've been rather over-social in recent months, and I've realized it's often been more of a calculated distraction than an actual social impulse. (Time with closest friends can count as alone time.)
- Take time to appreciate friends, old and new.
- Research grad school options. Study for GRE.
- Get more involved with local community action.
- Allow myself to grieve honestly.
- Take ownership of my contribution in the disintegration of my marriage; let go of the rest. Hope for, as they say, 'the wisdom to know the difference.'
- Appreciate the growth it/he did spark - no matter whether intentionally or accidentally. No matter the damage done; I did grow wiser and stronger from this.

Date:	2009-06-11 13:53
Subject:	That's how the light gets in.
Security:	Public
Mood:	peaceful

The birds they sang at the break of day.
Start again, I heard them say.
Don't dwell on what has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars, they will be fought again.
The holy dove, she will be caught again,
bought and sold and bought again.
The dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs; the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed, the marriage spent,
Yeah the widowhood of every government -
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud,
and they're going to hear from me.

You can add up the parts, but you won't have the sum.
You can strike up the march, there is no drum.
Every heart, every heart
to love will come,
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything -
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything -
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

-leonard cohen, "anthem"

There's a Buddhist story I read as a teen that resonates with me on many an occasion. I can't recall where I read it, but reconstructed in at least approximate form from memory, it goes something like this. (And there may be other versions.)

A student monk is bid by his master to sit and meditate. After a long while, he gets up and runs to his master in sheer terror. "Master!" he cries out, "While I was meditating, demons descended upon me and visited me with the most terrible temptations and frights! It was awful, what should I do?"

The master hits him upside the head and says, "Go back and meditate."

The student monk returns to his meditation. After a long while, he gets up and runs to his master once more, beaming with happiness. "Master!" he cries out, "While I was meditating, angels descended upon me, I felt the light of the world, all was full of wonder and joy!"

The master hits him upside the head and says, "Go back and meditate."

Sometimes I wonder if people in other countries are learning English grammar from internet memes like lolcats.

I just got a piece of spam trying to get me to click on a link with this subject line: "Barack Obama can lost President's Chair".

remind me again - together we
trace our strange journey, find
each other, come on laughing.
some time we'll cross where life
ends. we'll both look back
as far as forever, that first day.
i'll touch you - a new world then.
stars will move a different way.
we'll both end. we'll both begin.
remind me again.

What and how we frame it. An art to taking things out of context. Place in new, or simply place focus upon it. A photograph, a snatch of conversation or tune, a moment, a fragment. A sleight of cognition: nothing is ordinary.

Infinite: the capacity of the human mind for self-justification.

patience: "the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like"
- derived from Latin pat, to suffer. (some of its cousins: passion, passive)

suffer: from Latin ferre, to carry, to bear. (a few cousins: fertile, birth, burden, metaphor)


If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now. - The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. by George Long.

tension

&

transgression

I read this poem in baranoouji's LJ some months ago, and it's haunted me since, like some poems will do.

"Quarantine", from Against Love Poetry by Eavan Boland

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking-they were both walking-north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and a woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Fell asleep on the beach at Sauvie, Saturday. The sun did a number on me, but I can't blame it. I'm just happy it's out.

Headed out in a couple days for SE Oregon for camping with mutants, gone till Sunday. Incidentally, looks like where we're headed this year is the same as where the '97 rainbow nationals were, a forest east of Prineville where I hitchhiked with Jane up from southern California in late June when we were 18 year old vagabonds. It was a beautiful place, and I'll be glad to revisit, exactly 11 years later.

A toast to timing. In my last post, I described a place we visited last Sunday called Never Never Land in Tacoma, WA. Today, we heard that this forgotten little park is scheduled to be demolished this Thursday. Goodbye, Neverland.

A few more pictures in memoriam:

All aboard the pirate ship:


( Read more... )

PS. Two lucky finds today... I wandered by chance into a magic shop while at the hardware store picking up more pipe for hoops, and I walked out with a set of juggling balls. P. went to pick up a guitar off Craigslist on behalf of his mother and ended up getting a deal on a lovely Chinese hammered dulcimer called a yangqin. Our toy chest grows.

Quick photo post. Some words.

P. and I were up in Tacoma and Seattle over this weekend. Sunday, before we left, we dropped by a huge, gorgeous forested park in Tacoma: Point Defiance Park with P.'s young nieces and nephew. Within its depths is a small and forgotten pocket called Never Never Land, populated with child-sized houses and figures from fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The houses are separated by narrow walking trails through the woods.

Built in the 60s and many of its previous structures lost over time, Never Never Land feels dilapidated and abandoned, but this I liked. This gives the place a wonderfully eerie Grimm ambience, as if the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood could truly leap out and devour you as you walk down the pathways. ("I'm scared!" P.'s 3-year old niece Anora cried out at one point. P. assured her that he was a monster who would eat any other monsters we came across, so she was safe.) Peeling paint, rusty nails, penned graffiti inside the tiny ramshackle houses from what I'd guess are teens who go there at night to drink and make out. From what P. says, it's similar to Enchanted Village closer to Seattle (and Enchanted Forest in southern Oregon), but Enchanted Village is much larger. We plan to take his nieces & nephew there sometime this summer, since neither they nor I have ever been there.

Playing with my hoop inside the entrance:


( Never Never Land & more on hoops )

I will be in Seattle Thurs-Sun. Paul is playing a show at Fuel in Seattle on Thursday night, and another show somewhere in Tacoma on Sunday night. I will likely be guest spotting on keyboards for one or both shows.

We're staying with his sister up there, and I'll be working from my laptop - any recommendations for good free wifi spots in Seattle or Tacoma?

Also, heads up people, Four Tet is playing a Portland show in June at Holocene!

P. is a latecomer and entered the Radiohead 'Nude' remix contest with only a week of voting left. Voting ends May 1st. There's no prize other than exposure.

Please listen to his remix if you have some time and vote if you like it. Here's why I like it: he took the 'stems' that were provided and used them to craft a new song from the pieces. He didn't listen to the original while he was remaking it. If you listen to a lot of the other remixes that have been posted, you'll notice that many of them sound very much like the original, with just a few tweaks here and there. There aren't many that took the approach of, "Here are some sounds. What can I make from them?" But anyway, that's just my take. Listen and vote if you like.



PS. P. is playing a show at Fuel in Seattle on Thursday May 8th, and some other place in Tacoma on that Sunday. Hence, I will be up in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

At Rererato, an art space in NE, Alberta district. All-ages early show, P.'s project Sad Music for Happy Humans plays at 7pm. Details here. Stop by, say hi. Dancing after, but where?

pre-judgment: the illusion of thought. the abandonment of self-responsibility, a betrayal of self.

for example, as related to conversation and honesty: every time you think, "i can't talk to X about this because X would react in such-and-such a way/i can't be honest to X because X wouldn't understand" whether because X has not understood in the past, or because no one in a larger subset that X appears to be in has understood in the past, you have pre-judged qualities of X and have made that a part of a static worldview.

you have mistaken the map for the terrain.

the terrain is ever-changing, so wake up, look up, look at what's in front of you before you stumble into the abyss or get eaten by the lions or fail to realize you've been walking in circles for days and you're about to get sunstroke. the terrain does change, but not when you're walking in the same damn circles. your map has an expiration date of yesterday.

don't rob yourself of the chance to perceive for yourself, rather than dancing with ghosts of perceptions past. don't rob others of the chance to be perceived as they are now, not as ghosts. no, change isn't easy for anyone, so maybe you've become jaded to the thought that it ever truly happens, but when it does, you don't want to miss it for the world.