darkly dreaming

I came to the realization that there is nothing more freeing than ‘no’. It gives you the ability to pack it in, to reach for disillusionment and cut losses. Perhaps to appease your family, your friends, your better judgement. Or worse, you can see it as a statement about yourself; a resolution about your absolute value, a universal statement that for all time describes your worth. That is the power that we allow ‘no’ to have over us, and it is the absolute inauthentic decision to allow it to be at all.

The phenomenological truth is that in that moment you have absolute power. When someone says yes, they are giving you permission, they are in essence taking the power from you into themselves, and it is by their leave that you go forward. This is not inauthentic on principle, but it is not an authentic moment, rather the conclusion of a previous moment. ‘No’ however, is a moment of ultimate reality. It is an abrupt disruption of the normal flow of your life, and it is a truly existential moment. In that ‘no’ you are alone, you are denied access perhaps even existence. Whatever you do going forward will be an authentic choice, or an inauthentic acquiescence to an outside power, and the removal of your freedom.

First, the inauthentic reality of the moment. ‘No’ is not necessarily arrived at by a permissive request, but it is an assumption that one has been made, or should have been made on that point. It is inherently an overt attempt to deny your freedom and to remove your power. From a position of ‘no’ it assumed that a decision has been made for you. Inauthentic existence is one that accepts this presupposition and willingly accedes to its truth as ultimate reality. I will of course refer the matter to Sartre for defense on the point of no choice being a choice. Should you accept ‘no’ on the basis of it being a rejection, on the terms that the rejector has set, you are relieving yourself of responsibility; you are destroying your freedom. Such an inauthentic decision is freeing in relation to the anxiety that responsibility of decision has. It is soothing to pretend that the matter is resolved by the refusal of a power, that the responsibility is no longer yours. Yet, such a position denies your existence as a free individual, and denies your ultimate responsibility in bad faith.

The authentic decision in relation to ‘no’ is simple, pursue or retreat. Sun Tzu is very clear on the power of retreat as an art of war; that in doing so we do not accept defeat, we plan for ultimate victory. Retreat done in an authentic manner is a choice, and an empowerment based on your freedom. ‘No’ allows you the opportunity to evaluate the situation, and take in all factors that have bearing to the situation; giving ample time for pruning where unrelated concerns have grown in the fertile ground of doubt. In fact, there is no greater moment of existential reality than in the denial. There is no way to escape your responsibility to choose in this moment. It cannot be overcome by the force of prior choices, and it will not be solved by inevitable means. Any movement requires choice; responsibility demands it. It is also the situation in which courage is most drastically required to face down the denial of your existence, and the reality of the abyss that surrounds us.

Something denied is power gained. The power to truly make a decision where one may not have existed before. This is the fear and anxiety that we have of rejection in general. It will force us to choose, and we are anxious over the existential reality that we must face in that choice. It is better for us to avoid these moments of rejection; even to run from them in order that we might pursue a lie of existence. When faced, ‘no’ is a clearly defined opportunity to assert your freedom to be. There are only two choices, though variations of each choice may exist. In the face of ‘no’ you must bring yourself to resolution, draw up your courage and march solidly into choice. Willingly or unwillingly, you are given the opportunity to experience your existential reality in full.

Should you press forward, you will do so with no illusions about your resolve, and you will do so without doubt as to your courage. The opportunity to retreat has been given and forsaken in lieu of the advance. One who presses on in the face of ‘no’ does so at her own expense, and without any momentum or power gained from afar. It is a bestowal of power in the situation, absolute power. Tension and anxiety force you to evaluate your position, your character; your very existence. Meaning can only come from you. What you assign to it will be the truth, and no other can take that power from you. Courage to be in the situation must arise from within, and must be fueled by an unencumbered resolution of doubt. Evidence, either factual or affective, must be secure and confident in your mind. You must believe yourself capable of pressing forward, and this same belief will give you the courage to face the reality of non-existence staring you down. In this moment you are the author of your destiny; you are the maker of your existence.

Finally, the decision to retreat is not so much retreat as it is adherence to a different direction. It too requires courage, and because it is so closely guarded by inauthenticity, may require even more courage. Rage, revenge, rebellion; these feelings can encourage advance in an authentic manner. However, doubt, despair, decay; these feelings do not fuel authentic retreat, instead, the must be overcome if retreat is to be authentic. This is the power found in ‘no’. Every movement is power to choose. Understood, responsibility accepted; the moment of rejection is the peak moment for our existential existence.

I love Sartre right now. Let’s start with him here.

Everything takes place, in fact, as if our essential and immediate behavior with respect to anguish is flight. Psychological determinism, before being a theoretical conception, is first an attitude of excuse, or if you prefer, the basis of all attitudes of excuse. It is reflective conduct with respect to anguish; it asserts that there are within us antagonistic forces whose type of existence is comparable to that of things. It attempts to fill the void which encircles us, to re-establish the links between past and present, between present and future. It provides us with a nature productive of our acts, and these very acts it makes transcendent; it assigns to them a foundation in something other than themselves by endowing them with an inertia and externality eminently reassuring because they constitute a permanent game of excuses.

I’m having some existential dilemmas when it comes to integration right now, and I got to thinking about the helpfulness of psychology toward authenticity.

Sartre captures the very problem that I am having with psychology, or I should say therapeutic advice, in my present circumstance. It’s the creation of an independent self, an entity that has actions of its own, and therefore controls our freedom. Sartre is right there to smack it down, and it’s the same thing that Zen talks about. It jazzed me up when I first read that excerpt the other day, and sparked a new campaign of writing, however, today it became even more clear to me realistically.

The presentation of reality to us causes fear and our natural reaction flight. That kind of encounter with existence is easy to keep away from by distraction and denial. I love doing those things, but now I find myself tired of it. I feel like I have to stop all the distractions and sit down for a while, and face it. I hate emotions, and I hate being emotional. My latest crisis is how to do what I feel to be authentic when there is no one around to do it with. This is where I really need Sartre, or some Zen master, to sit down with for like five minutes.

That’s more of a side rant to the bigger issue, and that is where do I find truth in the milieu I exist in? I’ve told my friends that coping is okay, that it’s natural to do it. But I also believe that at some point that coping has to come to account. I am an existentialist in my psychology, and I know that eventually all of these things will only keep you away from the root issue for a time. I think that it’s imperative to meet that root issue, and that it’s okay to have it destroy you at times. When you are secure enough to start recognizing your coping, you are secure enough to start working past the coping.

And that’s where I think that I’m having my current conflict. I get sage advice from friends about dealing with life, finding ways to be happy. And then one friend asked me, what makes you truly happy? It was rhetorical in context, but I chose not to take it that way. What makes me happy is not all the distracting coping mechanisms. Those aren’t real, and as soon as I know that, they are more hinderance than help. But what is the path to follow?

In a cognitive behavioral sense, we would just identify the behavior, and consciously change it to something that we want. I see this as trading one thing for another. It doesn’t really do anything about the basic level of whether we live for ourselves, or for our fear. What part of psychology is actually moving us toward authenticity? It seems that anything which strengths the idea of an independent self is really a move toward bad faith and away from enlightenment. ‘Do not mistake your finger for the moon.’ I may be an existential hedonist, that we should undergo as much pain as it takes to obtain the ultimate pleasure. It annoys me when people will not.

I suppose it annoys me more when people tell me not to do what I’m doing. Because I trust them, but I don’t think they’re right. I think they might be falling prey to bad faith themselves. ‘Don’t think, just go out and do.’ But even Zen recognizes that you have to ponder the idea of not thinking. You have to let the mind settle as it will. For me, part of the settling is recognizing all that which clouds my root issue. It’s like a simple exercise of noticing and letting go. I notice these things, these coping things, and then I let them go. (At least that’s what I really want to end up doing.)

It seems that ultimately, all actions that merely affirm the self as an independent entity, one that Sartre would see as the root of all excuses, and one that gives to the self our freedom, would be a move toward bad faith, inauthenticity. Yet, I know that I have received psychological comfort from the teachings of psychology, and given some in return. I suppose that is why they call it an existential crisis. Dilemma may be more appropriate in my case, ironic sense that is the root of the problem from Zen’s perspective, and perhaps this is my duality which must be transcended. But it looks like not today. I am puzzled as ever, but feeling deeply on account of it. Perhaps when I meet my zen master, she will rap me on the head and I won’t think so much.

I’m on a kick, I can’t seem to help it. I have this new obsession with understanding love more, or better, or perhaps offensively, more better. That’s half the problem, and I know it. You can’t understand something that is feeling. You can approximate it, or represent it with word pictures. But you can’t really ever understand it, I suppose. There’s a couple things that have me hung up right now, and they are the words we use for people that we love.

So I have family, and I’m allowed to love them. In fact, I’m expected to love them. Then I have friends, and I love them, but in this kind of amorphous way that if you say it wrong, or to the wrong person then you’re weird and psycho. Chemistry is a word I’ve been using lately because it seems half way between love: I want to jump your bones, and love: Yeah, I’d bail you out of jail. But there’s the catch isn’t it. We can’t love without being in love, but then again we can.

I always think back to the Greek when english gets hairy. (I’m pretty sure that’s the wrong spelling, but I like the word anyway, it makes me think of gorillas picking fleas out of each other’s fur and eating them.) In Greek there were three words for Love. And it’s a preachers favorite thing to take them and make them this all powerful triad of meaning. But still, it is kind of nice having more options. Philos, as in love of knowledge, but also gives its root the english friend. Except it could also mean lover. And the Greeks had their share of friends with benefits. There was Eros of course, the dirty book isle. And the beloved Agape of christians. So their meanings were far more gray than preachers would like, but still three different options would be cool.

The reason I’m on the meaning kick in the first place is due to this great article in a book I’m too lazy to get down right now. It’s about language and narrative in cognitive science. One of the authors, Allen I hope, talks about how things like evolution can never be understood, because they can’t be narrated. First of all, that’s huge to me; it makes my belief in the power of metaphors take root. Then it’s kind of scary too. Especially since the one consensus I get is that you can’t describe love. Anything that I can’t understand scares the shit out of me. So I begin this wandering wonder, hoping that somewhere a grasp will appear.

Now I move over to Zen, (yes it pops up everywhere I am,) which talks about universal human compasion, which is I’m pretty sure a very english translation of love. Love of everyone, unrestricted, just because they are. We are okay with this in general though, usually. I love humanity, I love my friends. I love this friend in particular, ah there’s the rub. Every time I hear friends with benefits, I get this internal giggle. We have no way to describe people that don’t fit into the dichotomous categories of our language. I wonder if the church is responsible for that development in western language? It does seem like a church thing, you’re either married or celebate. So it’s okay to love everyone in a particular category, (’The Gays’ as my friend Wendy, and Kathy Griffin would say,) but loving one person in that group causes such a confusion.

So, being the wonderful linguists that we are, we came up with ‘in love’ to describe that change of state from the one thing we can’t explain to the other thing that we can’t explain, all so that we don’t get freaked out every time someone says ‘I love you.’ Where’s the line? Not there in most cases, hence friends with benefits. Too little attachement to be in love, but too much to be ‘just friends.’ But, you say, what about the white elephant, sex?

You could turn everything around and look at it as dealing and refering to sex. Friends niether have sex, nor want to have sex with each other. (Fantasizing about it is on a case by case basis.) Friends with benefits have sex, but aren’t magically in love with each other. Or more acurately accept that it’s nice when you can get it, but you’re not fussed about being the only one. Then you have the ‘couple’ or ‘partners’ that are in love. Meaning they have sex, exclusively (for the most part), and are totally jazzed about that. I have to ask then, what about our new division between having sex, and making love?

Yes, we talk about seperating love and sex. So we can hookup without any emotional attachment what so ever, and that’s slightly different than friends with benefits because at least they care about each other to a degree, and are willing to talk to each other with the lights on, and use more words than ‘oh’ and ‘god.’ So now we have ‘in love’, and we have ‘making love.’ I suppose it would be people in love make love. But it’s pretty arogant to say that you can make something you don’t understand and can’t explain. Maybe it’s a nice way of saying banging my wife, or maybe it’s really a seperate meaning. I’ll have to refer this matter to couples who are ‘in love’ and ‘make love’ to try and sort out.

It seems a conclusion ought to be coming soon, I apologize for the pun, but I can’t help myself. What I know is that I love a few people, and that love is strong and grows quickly. If I had to define love it would be: I will do anything you need at three o’clock in the morning, no questions asked. I see this as covering a lot of things, from my dog just died I need a hug, to my dog just died and for some reason it made me horny. The problem is that I don’t know what ‘in love’ is in that context, and it seems to get me into trouble. I hate the ‘I like you’ precursor to will you go out/hookup/date me question. We could be honest and say, ‘I think I could love you forever in a romantic physical way, want to hang out and see?’ Wouldn’t that be easier than wondering around linguistic wastelands trying to decypher a text message that turned out to be a typo. ‘I like you, as a friend,’ ‘I like that shirt on you,’ ‘I like that shirt off of you.’ But it’s not so, we just can’t stand that word, love.

I’ve never seen any word cause more stir than love. I think I could drop the word ‘cunt’ around a group of women and recieve less suprise and shock than spring the word love on one of them unexpectedly. (I hate the word ‘cunt’ with a passion, in case you needed to know.) That sad look in their eyes, the oh, poor boy, you are deluded but I don’t want to say it that way. The ‘L’ word seems to divide us so quickly, even though we’re okay with it in other circumstances. I could ramble and rant for much longer, but I’ll wrap up instead. We are afraid of love, and we are afraid of what it means to love. We’ve lost our way. When there are thousands of ways to qualify what I mean when I say love, there’s something wrong with our understanding of it. It seems to me that if you can’t define love, you don’t get to decide when it’s used improprerly. What if we all just talked openly about it instead of hiding behind different phrases designed to cloud the message?

You can see why I’ll most likely grow old with cats, but maybe I’ll feel okay about that once erectile dysfunction settles in.

I’ve had a moment of satori; a little one to be sure, but still satori. I need to collect my thoughts some more, and make them a little more clear to myself even, but I also wanted to put something out there while it’s still fresh. Sartre has about four pages on the view of psychology as it relates to the self, and he calls it the root of all excuses for ignoring the existential anguish. He even uses some of the same Zen language about ridding the idea of Self. God it was amazing. The same thing that I was searching for only twenty pages earlier just popped up.

Just a quick sketch then. To Zen I understand that the arising of the Self is a denial of our true nature which is free. Sartre speaks of how this Self is pushed into a translucent other within ourselves, and we give up our freedom to it, viewing it as an object, and treating it like it has inertia. Then it becomes us, this Self. So that we have this series of actions both past and future that are done for us because it is who we are, our Self, our personality. There it is right there, the Zen no mind, the passing of the Self into the nothingness from which we brought it. I can’t really go any further tonight, but I needed to announce my little piece of enlightenment. I feels like I should call for a celebration. I’m going to start a seperate page where I am going to develop a new understanding of psychology and consciousness from that perspective. It just might be my dissertation.

Cheers!

I was watching Transformers, and my friend mentioned to me how epic the score was. I had really like it since the first time I saw the movie in theaters, it was just a perfect fit for a summer blockbuster, but also inventive in its own way. When my friend made the comment, I retorted that I wish they would put out the score more often, and as much as I love the soundtrack from the movie, I also like the motifs and background tracks as well; Star Wars, Indiana Jones, E.T. etc. So I’m cruising through Amazon and there it is. The cover art drew me in too. It’s the same picture as they used for a promo poster at Borders, that I now happen to own. I had to buy it of course. So glad that I did too, it is amazing as ever. There is some repetition, but most of it is the small suite of motifs that the composer put together for each of the main moods of the film. After that it’s the tracks that underscore each of the epic scenes. I used it to meditate the other night, I used it while I was brainstorming, and I used it to just relax and read philosophy. Totally amazing, totally recommended. 

I’m reading through some essays by Sartre because my friend is having me read Man and Superman by Shaw. I always get really interested in background material every-time I start reading any book that includes the development of these kind of ideas. I suppose it might also be my way of putting off completing anything. While I am enjoying the play, I did find myself again in the debate between Zen and Existentialism. Reading Sartre again has been kind of enlightening though. In his first essay he is rebutting some arguments placed against him by Marxists among others. He looks to the example of morality as preceding existence, and the absence of this to cause what he terms anguish. The way of phrasing this is not too unfamiliar in the context of Zen, based on the idea of universal suffering.

It was more just a feeling that I got as reading through it, and I wanted to journal a little bit of that process to have a developmental log as I went. Existence precedes essence is a fundamental concept to Sartre. This is opposed to the a priori methods of earlier moral systems. (Tangential to this, I love that everything always seems to come down to the moral system, the very literal how should we act, what ought we to do.) Sartre laments the absence of God, the anguish that this causes because there is no good to look to. No esscence that is given, man is free, completely. It did get me to think about the main objection to God in this moral development, the lack of choice that God would represent.

I read through a good deal of the Oxford Handbook of Free Will, which was lent me by a friend, and of course is out of print. (I don’t particularly like used books in certain genres.) Universally thought; in order for an action to be free it must be unknown, even by some extra system being. If I know what you are going to do, the future is determined, and you are therefore not free to act of your own will, but by the predetermined course that I know of. (Bear with this for a moment, I will hopefully return to the original inquest shortly.) What always strikes me is the use of dogma as truth in religion, especially whenever refuting it. Shaw helped me to see that most clearly, in that Don Juan points clearly to the lack of evidence to support the truth that Ana supposes in her arguments. The concept of God foreordaining things is not truly stated to my knowledge, in that I can’t recall a specific reference to God stating that he knows the outcome of a particular persons actions. Job, the oldest source for biblical narrative, is actually fraught with quite the opposite. God and Satan discuss what Job is capable of doing, not what he will do. It seems clearer that God has faith in Job, then that he knows what Job will do. Essentially, I wonder at the very start of what we know to be contemporary “human nature,” which began with the apple.

It was the representation of the fruit of knowledge, the knowledge of good and evil. That phrase has always bothered me, as defiance of God - either in the form of commandment breaking or renunciation - is the definition of evil. If Adam and Eve did not know evil until they bit the apple, how was it that they could commit it, and even more, that they could be punished for doing so. Rather, it has been my suspicion that it was not simple knowledge that they gained, but that they gained the possibility of will, choice. In defying the ordinance against the fruit of that tree, they chose will over determination. (Which also allows me to better reconcile the concept of predetermination, or more accurately in my sense the problem of evil.) Thus, I do not hold to the idea that God knows the fate of man to the extent that he limits our will in the determination of it.

All of which is a side inquiry to the original topic I started with. The intersection of Existential anguish and Zen universal suffering. (I realize that the concept is perhaps better preserved in Tibetan Buddhism, but I identify most readily with Zen, including its lack of emphasis on metaphysics.) The anguish over freedom is not necessarily found in the absence of God, but in the absence of a determined existence by God. Thus I find that the discussion that Sartre makes is to absolve ourselves of the dogma posited by the church, and not disillusionment of the deity. (I realize that until now I have done a horrible job at gender inclusive language, and were this a formal paper such a wanton display of reckless male domination would be corrected. However, for the moment I am more lazy than correct.)Now for the intersection of the two concepts. In Zen the role of Karma is less applicable from my study of it. (And I will readily admit greater ignorance here than in my biblical studies, and council is more than welcomed.) In many koans I see rather that action produces satori, or at least the visible evidence of it. The other day I had trouble seeing the connection between the two concepts - existential authenticity and Zen - yet now find them nearly synonymous. For even should our actions have a metaphysical outcome, or even a metaphysical moral ought, it is only through action that the truth of them is realized. So where the Existentialist begs we act to show our authenticity rather than choosing to disregard our freedom in lieu of a verisimilitude, Zen would also urge us to act rather than contemplate the Buddha in inaction. I am perhaps heretically referring to killing the Buddha should you meet him.

I find for the moment that the greater crisis is the idea of heaven; more appropriately the idea of eternal reward for subjugation to an ought foreordained by the deity. In such a case it is most appropriate to question, as Sartre does, the veracity of our claim to this ought. In what way may we claim that it has truth beyond our own interpretation of it. Such a thing is nearly impossible to prove without a prior belief that such a thing is possible to prove. To she who refuses such an assumption, no amount of argument will provide agreement. Actions done in search of heaven are not authentic, and are not Zen (again in my current understanding.)

Giving up our choice to pursue what others have determined we ought to do is our choice not to choose. Do not seek the Buddha. An ought that is not determined by our own will is not authentic to our will. If I move in the direction that an ought tells me I should, then it must be done of my own will or it is meaningless. Sartre seems to be saying as much, that the action is the definition of the truth. That we make truth for ourselves in each action. Zen seems to also focus on this matter of action. How can one contemplate the way and yet lie in his heart.

For the moment, there is no real conclusion to this meditation. Merely the continuing development of this crisis I find myself in, between the mind and the spirit, both of which pursue their own paths, but a faith seems to well up within me that both are not separate, and that in them there is a truth to be found, and a convergence to be made. 

Just a small note really. This is the piece I usually think of as the Halloween piece. Actually what got me thinking about it was the use of the Organ in Pirates of the Caribbean II, which I didn’t particularly like as a movie, but I did love the Gothic theme making an emergence for the character of Davy Jones. It brings back the original Phantom of the Opera, playing away at the steaming organ with some sinister yet macabre love tune floating away from it. Naturally I wanted to see how the soundtrack had played it out, and I have only caught glimpses of it at my previous employer, Borders. iTunes is of course very unhelpful since it only focuses on the music box part of the theme, rather than giving me any inclination as to the full nature of the organ itself.

Alas. And that’s when I remembered my favorite piece for Halloween. The introduction to which I was given by an acquaintance of mine from La Canada Presbyterian Church, and organist by the name of Kemp. Strictly speaking this Toccata is not for Halloween, but does of course seem to fit nicely with the role that the organ has taken in American consciousness.

I love the organ, and currently I play at the Lake Hills Church in Lake Forest, Ca; where Martin Gershwitz is our organist. Every Sunday he improvises the postlude. It is really awesome to behold. I love him dearly, but was just talking to my best friend earlier and realized that I missed Kemp in that he played pieces, and I always felt like I got a bit of a musical education whenever I heard him play.

It seems a rather odd mixture, but when the handbells are combined with the Organ, the effect is quite amazing. There is something about the raging overtones that creates an odd effect. Most instruments are limited in their series. More pure in a way, such as the brass choir’s ability to tune instinctively abandoning the constraints of tempered tuning all together. Yet, when you get the bells and their extreme series of over tones together with massively vibrating columns of air, it is quite exhilarating.

The odd part is that I despise playing with organ when I am on trombone. The tendency of the instrument to tune as it plays is annoying. I don’t have perfect pitch, but I do have a very definite sense of relative pitch. When I listen to the radio, I can hear the dramatic shift in keys between songs. Often when a song begins very softly, without much tonal centering, I receive a shock when the key is made evident through a resolution. Which is somewhat beside the point.

At some point in all of this I meant to recommend listening to this piece. I am somewhat horrible about liking only particular movements of pieces, absent their whole work. But my eclectic tastes satisfy my soul, and I shall not take much abuse for it. I looked over the iTunes availabilities, and wasn’t extremely impressed with the selection from a sound point of view. I don’t like halls that swallow the bass or the treble. And particular instruments don’t have a pleasing tone. I am still debating which recording to buy, but all the same, this french development of the toccata idea is worth a listen. 

I was talking with a friend, and I realized that we are our secrets. If you look at it from an existential point of view, the thing that we use to define ourselves is what separates us from everyone else; especially in a milieu where so very little separates us anymore. The things that are entirely our own are those things that we do not share with anyone else. We call it our inner lives, our self, our person or soul. Sharing secrets is like sharing the very essence of who we are. If we are in denial about our existential existence, then the violation of a secret is like an instant bath in the instability of existential isolation. At once it is the realization that we are alone because we have this secret, and then the treachery at being exposed in such a way, naked and isolated. This a rough idea at best, but it was a strong feeling that I had. The results however was a new perspective on the revolution against duality, and the progress toward enlightenment.

It became a little clearer to me how the self is created and indicated to us. Our very knowledge may in a way work against us, creating this world of pain that we endure daily. In our zeal to be seperate, to be a self, we horde things unto ourselves, just us and not anyone else. Perhaps it is most viceral with our homes, the feeling that someone was among our place of self, and worse took things from that place of self. The reaction seems to be universal. What’s more, once that violation occurs, it seems as though we have lost our self, lost the thing that made us feel separate. I think this is where the paths of existentialism and zen tend to diverge for me. At least, in that I have not seen them merge. Isolation is our natural state, and so to feel that we have lost that is somehow impossible, and against our path toward authentic action. Yet, to attain enlightenment it would be a positive step. Letting go of attachments and cravings.

Perhaps they are one in the same. Taking of our secrets, the violation of the boundary we have set out as self makes us feel our own true isolation. We have created a link, an anchor to the world through these physical structures, and to the people that inhabit them. When we are forced to see how variable and inconsistent that boundary can be, we revert to a state of existential realization, that we are far more separate and alone than we thought. The comfortable barrier that we have created is in fact an illusion in our attempt to delude ourselves from the reality of death, of ending.

So also it is a step toward releasing the self. Though we usually react by gripping even more tightly to the things that we have used to create a self. Physical objects are replaced, and security systems installed. But the taking of a secret is physical. My friend used the phrase “physically violated.” It’s a visceral feeling because it is the removal of the self by a forcible measure. But it can be used as a method for seeing the illusions of the self through these horded secrets, that these really are not a thing in themselves, but our attempt to be separate from everyone else.

The divergence however is even more apparent the more that I think about it. To take a path toward authenticity, I would accept my self in isolation, but to step toward enlightenment, I would look toward the removal of this illusion. It is odd to me that at times these two idea are synchronous, though now that I feel a little bit closer toward understanding the illusion of the self, they are so divergent as to cause me even greater confusion. It may of course be that one or the other, or lamentably both, are incorrect at best, and delusional at worst. But these things are often the province of thought and reason which are the worst offenders in this line of inquiry.

I suppose the most visceral part for me is that I horde my short list of secrets very tightly. I cannot imagine the violation of them. So much that I will freely give away what others might think secret. All is a rouse to hold on even more tightly to my self. That was the greatest understanding that I gained from this little experience. I can feel that tightness in me even now. Lastly, I began to wonder, what of the person that I tell all my secrets to? Is that a healthy step, a positive growth. Or perhaps is that the greatest secret of all? (And also the most hypocritical seeing as I’m about to post this into public space, but the literary whore in me won the day.)

I have been writing my book, and as always, spending time with my beloved Chicago Manual of Style. I remember falling in love with this style guide through the lovely work of Kate Turabian, who thankfully took the dense and often overwhelming manual and made it usable for college students. Oddly enough it was footnotes that drew me in. I absolutely hate endnotes, and in line citations make be gag, (literally.) Now I return to my beloved tome when I am feeling the need to focus on incredibly precise modes of English expression. (I am odd enough that I am fascinated by the difference between British and American methods of terminal punctuation. [Specifically that it can occur within a parenthetical statement unless absolutely necessary for clarity in American writing. Whereas the British always place it outside of parenthetical elements.]) Thus I began a ten page exploration of the semicolon; a method of writing that suits my needs quite well, but one which I had never been taught in school. The diabolic attempt to rid ourselves of this precious punctuation was uncovered as I read my other lovely book, Spunk and Bite.

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I have been journaling lately about the whole speed of light barrier to travel and Einstein relativity issue. I like to dabble with physics and find the philosophy of science to be fascinating. Or rather the epistemology of it. So here’s the basic problem that I have been wrestling with. To every observer, no matter how fast they are traveling, the speed of light is a constant 300,000 km/h. It is also impossible for one to accelerate to the speed of light, because doing so would require an infinite amount of energy, hence the impossibility. The hitch comes from the fact that no matter how fast I am going, the speed of light will always be 300,000 km/h faster.
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