I had pretty much done with A Wayfarer’s Notes, actually, didn’t feel loyalty to it any more, only a certain nostalgia, as when you pass a house where you once lived. You see it now owned by someone else, and realize that the fabric of the building, the bricks and mortar, are not what made it precious, only the experiences you had living there, which dwell still in your memory. So I can look at the words I wrote, and remember, and wish I had written better. I can forgive myself the foolishness, especially as it’s still with me, just in different forms.
I couldn’t even bother with writing a farewell post there, or leaving a forwarding address. Since old habits die hard, I found it hard to give up writing in this medium, so worked on it somewhere else, somewhere more secluded, with a sense of liberation. I asked myself why I’m working on “The Cycle of Imperfection”: certainly not for fame or fortune. I feel there’s a task I’ve been called upon to do, and it’s not finished. I’m never sure of what this task is. This might sound like a nightmare from Kafka, but is actually a liberation.
I’ve spoken many times about being at home with not-knowing, or at any rate uncertainty. Perhaps it’s built-in, a kind of brain-signature. Its most negative aspect is not knowing who I am, and consequently spending most of my life blundering, as a long-winded kind of learning. The most positive aspect of not-knowing is to gaze in wonder, as if newborn with all faculties fully functioning.
Other people want to be organized, have a plan. Thus they establish their identity. I remember in the mid-Eighties the Yuppie craze for Filofax organizers, essentially a way to define yourself as a go-getter achiever via loose-leaf pages in a stylish leather binder. A little browsing found me on My Purpley Life (see above pic) which has the following:
I knew that I had to share my ideas with the world. Thus, I started a blog and a YouTube channel, known as ‘My Purpley Life’. I found that by showing everyone how I decorate my pages and how I use my organiser, I gave inspiration to others who had long forgotten about their organisers and have now been able to bring them back to life. I inspired others to use their organiser in a creative yet functional and effective manner. This is what I have found to help me be more organised and still allow me to keep my creative juices flowing. Now, I don’t know how I could ever live without my Filofax personal organiser.
A wonder to behold, of course, and admirable in its way. Obviously not for me, rather the complete opposite. I need infinite spaces to breathe. My notebooks are formless illegible scribbles. To capture in words the exquisite nature of life is forever beyond my grasp. Anything worth saying cannot be said, which makes all the more reason to keep on trying.
And unwilling as I am to define myself, I yet observe various unchanging characteristics in my makeup. For example, I’ve never found excitement in any sporting contest, such as tennis, football, cricket, whether as player or spectator. I can appreciate the skills or grace or performance without caring who wins, for nothing is affected by the result.
I’ve only ever gambled for the highest stakes—my life, and the future of civilization. From a lifetime of following hunches and suffering the consequences, I may be getting better at it. And so of course I voted for Brexit. Shocked of course by the invective before and since, but surely that will die down, and those with discernment will see how it has opened a window to let in fresh air. Or better still, to step outside to look at the sky and feel the oneness, outside that stifling cage.
So, Britain is starting again too, renewing its own cycle of imperfection. The only thing which makes us distinct as a nation (apart from the geography & history) is a sense of identity. What is this identity? A narrow majority in secret ballot felt there’s something distinct worth saving—not static, but living, interacting, giving, absorbing. Person, family, street, village, county, region; each has its beauty, its identity. This narrow majority felt the threat in its bones, took the bull by the horns, bravely voted, never mind the cost.
What is it that we feel in our bones? Trump and his supporters in America. Corbyn and his in England. Sturgeon and hers in Scotland. Terrorists here, there and (God forbid) everywhere. Our civilization has gone rancid, that is why all these things are happening to destabilize it. Rancid and full of bubbles that can only burst—lies and false hopes, false everything. Consumer society is fake but there is nothing we can do about it, neither through democracy or dictatorship; not through God-believing nor atheism. It’s rancid with unpleasant jobs to buy things we have to be persuaded to desire. Vanity, all is vanity. Self-delusion reigns. Different delusions fighting one another to the death. Only accident and disaster can save us now, as they have throughout the evolution of physics and biology, ever since the Big Bang. Some would say divine intervention—never mind the words, it comes to exactly the same thing. Enlightened civilization has stopped believing in the ineffable—God being a popular term for it—and stumbles naked into the abyss of ignorant materialism. Ignorant because mostly obedient to blind forces. Whereas we could look inside ourselves and find wisdom, if only we knew it is there and trusted it. We are unconsciously drawn to catastrophe, somehow knowing that nothing else can save us.
“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
My wife thinks I should start a blog called “The B.M. Movement”; she got a big kick out of that. I told her that that would be a tad redundant, like “ATM machine.” I may be bringing back “Strangers Call Me Sunny” after this fall and I'm done with school and not as swamped with schoolwork and other things as I am now. I have it set up at a new address, but there's no posts yet, at the moment.
I totally agree with not caring about who wins at sports. People get so excited about someone winning a game and inside I think, “This is going to change my life … how???”
As for the blogging thing, we've talked about all that before. The only thing is that feeling that you're leaving a mess behind you. I've got an alt account where I stash my inactive blogs. Some of it I feel like it's good stuff that's just sitting and I wish I had some way of “repackaging” it or something, and then a lot of it, I'm just like, “This can stay buried. Ugghhhh.” But in the end, I guess all you can do is clear the past away and try to move on.
I want to add too that my Encyclopedia of Counted Sheep blog has been kind of an anchor for me. I'm glad that I've resisted any temptation to drop it or make any real radical alterations to it over the years (other than restarting it back in 2011, which I think has proved to be a good decision.) I don't expect it to be the blog that will ever really “take off”, mostly because I don't know how accessible the material is for anyone else. I imagine someone just stumbling in and going, “What is this? Why is this guy going on about shaving his head and tattooing clocks on his back?” And half the time, I know that I'm not even abiding by the rules of telling a decent and fully formed story. They're more like rough sketches. I try to make them bloom into something, but more often than not, they just don't quite come off. But I leave them up. It's a place to practice, to run through the scales. And I like having a place to remember my dreams and even polish them up a little. And I know that I won't “run out” of dreams, so I don't have to worry about running out of stuff to write about there. And even when it starts to feel stale, dreams themselves have a way of making a fresh impact on you that revitalizes the whole enterprise. I like to have it for me. It works out well. If you've guys get something out of it, that's even better.
Anyway, I had a point when I started saying all this, but I seemed to have lost it. I guess I'm just sharing an experience, for what it's worth.
Okay, I know what I want to say. Third times the charm.
I was thinking about your Wayfarer blog the other day. I was thinking about how I tried to do a Wayfarer “type” blog a few years back and how I failed at it and what I learned from it. I always had this kind of fantasy of keeping a journal where I put down all my interesting little thoughts and interesting little things that might happen in my day to day life. I had an image in my mind of a journal as this colorful mosaic of days. But the fact is, my life isn't all that interesting and when my mind isn't actively engaged in some subject, it tends to run in pretty mundane circles. I just don't have the kind of fertile life that gives me stuff to write about. I wish it did. That's what I loved about your blog. It WAS that kind of journal. It WAS this sublime world of musings and experiences. For me, I have to have some point of focus. To write a blog (or anything) I have to know THIS is the kind of material I need to come up with ideas for, and I have to be actively thinking and coming up with those kinds of ideas. Left to my own devices, I think about things like whether it's safe to eat the cheese that melted to the plate in the microwave or what pocket I should put my change in when the cashier hands it back to me.
So this ties in with your theme of organization (I think.) Some people are just kind of wired that way. I need that concept or point of focus to engage my creative energies. Otherwise, all my mental energy just trickles down through the laziest channels imaginable. That's why I described it once as being like a trapdoor in the sky. It gets me out of that funk. My mind and my imagination need some place to go away from all of this, and I need SOMETHING that points me in the right direction. And I think other people are wired that way too. It may be ancient Greek poets. It may be a art gallery that they wander through in their minds. It may be a fluffy purple trapper keeper.
Oh, the uncertainties of politics. I do hope all works out for the GB and the UK. For me I need to decide which evil person is the least evil for my vote in November and hope the best for the States.
Before there was anything to see, there was light.
Before there was anything to feel, there was love.
Before there was any before, there was eternity.
Before there was a molecule, there was an idea.
Before there were any parts, there was all.
Before there was any body, there was that which occupies the body.
There are necessities and there are substitutes which obscure, distort and overwhelm.
Now, I don’t know how I could ever live without my Filofax personal organiser.
‘When all else fails – there will always be pencil and paper’. Um, rethinks .. A stick in the sand? Ochre on a rock?
The US Constitution is a false god and a bad dictator.
O, very clever.
The American ‘second amendment’ – United States Constitution reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”.
So where is the “well regulated militia” – and always bear in mind that this was “written” the ‘arms’ referred to were flintlock..
Very little is “written in stone” – and one of the interesting things that i understand about the “Australian” written ‘constitution’ – is that it is ‘nebulous’, inconclusive.. Written with the future in mind. Allows “lawmakers'” (AKA politicians – aka the voting plebeans) to adjust local ‘laws’.- as time, and circumstance, permits.
The future, however, makes itself as we speak, out of all our moments, all Nature’s moments, combined in one great orchestra. Is there a conductor?
Deep thought .. Yep, agree; an astonishing orchestration; beyond our understanding …
However, most people only see horizons. ‘Tis difficult to comprehend the notions of ‘eternity’ and ‘infinity’.