From Up On Frederick's Stone

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.

I have started reading Ishmael, after several years of being recommended to read it. Some initial critiques:

–Takers vs. Leavers is a narrative founded on a paradigm held by the Takers.
–Nature is not some uncontrolling state. Humans are only doing the atrocities of what nature did but better.
–Trial-and-error is how all learning happens. Yes, trial-and-error with civilization leads to disastrous consequences, but is there really another way?
–The sin of man is not order but control.
–Man is a part of nature and so is technological advancement. No, it is not necessary for us to destroy and conquer, but
–Misanthropy is still an anthropic narrative because a human conceived of it. We have no way of positively knowing what it’s like to not be a human.


Do not give me chrismatic promises of freedom upon death; let the pangs of starvation riddle through me. For then I would be honest.

Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Lack and living converge at their farthest reaches.

Extreme wealth is a poverty, extreme poverty is a wealth.
Sleep deprivation turns waking into dreaming, narcolepsy turns dreaming into waking.
Extreme formality becomes a vanity, extreme vanity becomes a formality.

Becoming polarized, you polarize another.
Becoming polarized, you become its opposite.

What is it that binds opposites together? Why do they become each other? Why do they perpetuate each other? Is this codependent regeneration cyclical, metamorphical, necessary? Is it that the two are one? Is it that there is something that binds the two together? Is it that the middle neutral is the ground? When you tend toward an extreme, do you simply become aware of its opposite because of forces pulling in that direction? Does extreme wealth feel like poverty because you’ve slated your reality so far from a natural state that the memory of lack asserts itself continually? Is it the striving for more, the greed that feels like a poverty? Is it the desiring or the opposition that perpetuates these cycles?

Focus does not determine causality. I am not the self.
An anger which is cool, reactive and nonreactive. A piercing silently and affirmation. Angry for myself.