From Up On Frederick's Stone

Hello, World!—and what on Earth am I doing here?

I return to you from a period of some distance. Something was lying dormant in winter soil. Now it is high time to bring the sunshine of my blog back. In this post, I hope to give you some context for what to expect from me here.

As you may have noticed, the name of my blog is From Up On Frederick’s Stone. If you haven’t read Frederick the Mouse, you should—it’s a lovely children’s story. I named my page after Frederick for three main reasons: (1) I love Frederick the mouse, and I emulate with him; (2) I lived on top of a hill with a street named Frederick Street; (3) it sounded fitting for the vibe I was going for.

As to the first point, I’ll give you a recap of why I started this blog. It was March of 2020. COVID was kicking off, and my life was going well. All of my depression and isolation and existential angst had prepared me for global unrest. The chaos of the world gave me comfort, because for once in my life a consumerist society’s bickering over mediocrities was hushed, bickerings which had in large part driven me into isolation and depression through grad school. I felt vindicated, resilient, alive, free. I had fallen in love with a woman, and, at the time, it was a wonderful relationship, a period of tremendous joy, a sense of triumph. I was ready to share the joy within my heart with the world.

COVID dragged on. My prediction since the summer of 2020 was that the pandemic (at least in the mass-mask-wearing) would go through April 2022. Go figure. COVID dragged on, and my life dragged back down into the pit. The romance soured in a frog-in-slow-boiling-water kind of way. My values were being dragged away from me through a loving partner’s incessant condemnations that only occasionally broke through silent lips. So much for that.

And yet, I was learning great lessons. (And I was holding on in that relationship for increasingly inertial reasons). I was keeping myself alive on scraps of money. The thrill of being motivated by survival instincts was at once lifegiving and stressful. Discovering how to deal with work schedules and not be a slave. Learning how to live off the land. Learning to fish. Learning how to face other people imposing their will. How to spend a weekend cheaply. Customer service taught me a lot. I had fun at the same time as I was bogged down. My ex-girlfriend gave me diversion from my internalization of depressive forces. She taught me how people who are inverses of my disposition work. For the first time in my life, I was up close and personal with people shutting off and controlling stimuli. It can be summed up as the difference between one person who tightly restrains their sneezes and another who just sneezes.

In that vice, I was trying to finish my master’s thesis—a monumental work. “Cultivating Creativity in Aerospace Systems Engineering to Manage Complexity.” From the outside, it sounds unique, an interesting attempt at bringing together different topics, like engineering, psychology, and organizational science. From the inside, I was trying to heal the juncture between myself and the world. I found that we (the world and I) shared in common a form of depression. We were being hurt by the same forces. We were wrestling with the same forces. The things that hurt the world hurt me, the things that hurt me were the kinds of things that hurt the world.

At stake in my day-to-day concerns was: how do we stabilize a state of consciousness that resolves the tension between blind industrialism—controlling, divisive, warlike, greedy, unempathetic—and natural harmony? To bring together aerospace weapon design with creative spirituality is a sort of nuclear reaction. Those forces are intense opposites in many regards. Every moment I was striving to hold that state of mind together in myself, in hopes that I could connect the existing data points together with theory and methods. I was trying to hybridize those forces. By facilitating creative behavior in specific areas, I argued, large aerospace organizations could actually save a bunch of money (like billions of dollars) and get way more efficient (on the order of years faster). And I didn’t leave the reader with a suggestion. I actually offered practical steps. It was a grand experiment in human consciousness. And it worked. Nature and industry are not inherently opposed. After much toil, I passed with flying colors.

Immediately thereafter, I found my consciousness streaming into the Santa Lucia mountains. I was enamored with them. Several friends and I took trips up Highway 1 to visit areas in Big Sur’s backcountry. Aesthetic arrest (however partial) allowed me to separate from my girlfriend, after a year or so of dating. I took our relationship into the border of sea and sand and left it there. That was the only way I, being such an affectionately attached person (the relationship was classically codependent, i.e., one insensitive user and one sensitive giver), could separate from a person who harbored black-and-white thinking. Otherwise, she would have taken charge over my motives, and I would have never felt respect and resolution. I went into the gray so that there would be a healthy and lasting separation in the long run.

After that ensued a period of intense internal darkness. I think a lot of people aren’t as reflective, and as such they can tolerate greater amounts of internal suffering than I can. How lost from myself I felt compared to how connected I felt previously was hellish. I lost my desires. I was plotting a dramatic suicide that would definitively catch the attention of millions and send a powerful message to all California, America, the world. (Btw, I had no intention of harming anyone other than myself. I don’t believe in projecting suffering outwardly.)

Glossing over details, fast forward to today. I live in Big Sur now, I have a loving girlfriend, I quit a shitty job, etc. What am I doing here?

As the world is dipping into another unusual low (notwithstanding COVID and climate change), I have the fragrant gift of living in Big Sur. The literal end of a continent, the literal end of westward expansion. No matter how many tourists come here, there is still the backcountry, and the mountains shrug off one of the planet’s busiest highways and vacation-stops like a dust mote. I live here singing for triumphant joy, for life. This is a rich garden.

Not everything I write you will like. At moments, I’m of a scientific, meticulous style. At other moments, I’m calling someone pathetic. At some moments, I’m appealing to Christians. At other moments, I’m musing on how octopuses are the best buddhists. At some moments, I’m talking about the imports of mathematical ontologies. At other moments, the language is immersive, rich, insightful, relatable, profound. There is something for everyone here, but I’m not going to spend time catering to keep a coherent image. This is going to be a pretty wild garden of thoughts, as it has been and always will be. My views might change. I might even explore tendrils for a while, even if they’re hard to follow. If you can’t tolerate me presenting imperfection, then go look in a mirror.

I will refrain from designating a purpose or reason for this blog. That’s a stressful discussion.

I enjoy creating good works, and so I’m going to do that. You are welcome to enjoy it too. The best fruits are somewhere in the fringe between wild and cultivated.

And now I resume.


Big Sur, California
March 10, 2022

Why do people do things? What does it mean to do something for something else? Why do I have this blog, and why I am I writing on it? Why have I designed it this way? What am I doing this for?

The debate between intent and outcome is divided along the same lines as the separations between mental health and ecological balance, individual and society, self and other, technology and nature, mind and body. Everything is a process. It makes little difference whether you focus inwardly or outwardly—the problems we face are both within and without, subjective and objective. Lasting, effective solutions to our problems address internal and external processes as two of a kind. The world is not our enemy, and we are not the enemy of the world. Our real enemy is the enmity itself.

Happy Independence Day! May freedom for all be forever magnified, whether through major moments of long-fought triumph or through the unsung litanies of minor obstinations. May our efforts for freedom not devolve into unconscious oppression; may our yearnings tend toward the light. May we not overshadow the search for an equivalent liberation by our political rivals. May we honor the common yearnings for freedom in the human soul and in all life on this planet. May our independences from each other be preserved even at the expense of a felt interdependence; and may the recognition of our interdependencies gradually realize the original aim of our independence.

Back in the summer of 2018, I had returned from a wonderful roadtrip with a dear friend of mine and experienced sharp schism between an amorous friendship. I was jaded and despondent. A year had passed since living in the Bay Area, which sucked me dry. The redwood forests of the Santa Cruz mountains were tantalizingly silent on my pain then. I had hoped that a change of pace in my life, in becoming a grad student on a mission to save the world, and a hop over the street to a church that made me feel at home, would give me respite. I had hoped that friendships would sprout and heal me. The world was callous toward me then, for no apparent reason. The lovestruck charisma I had cultivated in such a sweet short time had walloped into obsidian shards. Shear-shorn in asymmetrically broken swashes of elegant continuity. Life was hard. An area I found hope was writing for a journal contest for students. It was put on by Comment magazine, a thoughtful and not-heterodox Christian journal for English-speakers in North America. One of the prompts was to respond to minimalism. Along with editing help from my fellow journal editor, Katie, here is my essay. It relies heavily on Olympia.

(This piece is the first installation of a series on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.)

Love this. Thank you Glenn Gould, a man with the image of an eccentric genius and the heart of northern countryside. Watched a documentary today on him. His interpretations of Bach have significantly influenced me the last few years. Portions of Vespers were written with Gould’s vision of Bach’s fugues in mind. I can’t say his Goldberg Variations are my ideal recording, but they are the closest to how I desire to hear them played. What Gould accomplishes is a palpable touching of the sound quality of Bach. That’s not how I would play Bach (if I could do as I imagine), but I feel it’s very near to Bach’s heart.

If you do not touch this fire,
If you do not seek to touch this fire
With a fire that burns to burn
Even in the cold
Even when the light itself is cold
As the distant stars,
Then how can you find the heart
To let this fire into your hearth
And feed it nothing till it dies?
Yet even in fading to a smudge
And passing on to stillness,
This silent dying of the light
Burned like a fire
That will never be forgotten


                ~~~

So I believe Jesus went to India. There is an 18-year period of Jesus’ life that was not recorded in written history. There have been rumors circulated about Jesus travelling to India. Of course, many of these stories are fueled by a reactionary desire for the New Age movement to accurately explain everything over-against conventional religious teachings. In a much similar fashion, many devout Christians are not open to understanding Jesus’ life in new ways, ironically; their interests pertain mostly to finding new content within their already existing theological boundaries. Both approaches are warped around appeals to control, to expectation, to mere paradigms of authority. I’m seeking something rooted in truth. I’m willing to believe the orthodox and/or the new agers insofar as they are correct or even simply believable, which often puts me in a position of paradox and, subsequently, double-sided rejection. However, my reasoning for belief in Jesus’ journey to India is not based in the stories of the likes of Novovich, but in the very words and actions of Jesus preserved through history.

Well, it’s almost been a year since I started this blog. I was in a much better spot enthusiasm-speaking. (“Enthusiasm” = possessed by a god’s essence) This year I feel groggy and confused and stressed. My insight has not left me, but old problems have come to haunt me. I have returned to my home country that I left so long ago, the land of restlessness. Now armed with new skills, I understand that venturing into displeasant sectors of the mind for some time is not doom. Neuroplasticity can change me back. I know how to effect change in my own mind, I have memories of the monuments, the cairns I placed so that I know the way back. Sometimes it is a wilderness. However, unlike a year ago, I’m not quite as chronically disposed to depression. I can laugh some things off. Strongly contrary to popular opinion, the act of laughing toward pain is not what makes the Dalai Lama and Christ giggle about human folly. To arrive at that point requires such great depth, many inner chasms to be crossed. They are common to man, to humanity. I’ve come into the territory of the laughter-filled ones.