Feb 2002

-I feel like I'm being too honest, that I'm revealing too much. I want to go back to fiction and fictionalize my life, disguise it so that my real self cannot be seen.

-I feel like I'm being repetitious (actually, I am), but I feel like this is a fault, instead of a mere reporting of my feelings, the state of my being: this is my attempt, on this Website, and in my journals and writing in general, to report on the state of my being as it reflects the world, and vice versa. There is a cyclic nature to my work that is too broad to fix on and define in my own mind. I'd have to study it far more closely to see the patterns, which means I'd have to slow down the current input in order to enable an accurate purview of the past, as a form of analysis, and I don't want to do that. I wouldn't mind doing the analysis per se, but not if it took time away from the current reporting and the attempt to catch up the past. I've been hoping that trying to catch up the old journals (an almost impossible task, a lifetime of work) would afford me this analytical overview, but I don't think this is going to work. The overview will have to be done by someone else, my readers maybe, if there ever are any.

-I feel like I'm weird. (I am, but usually I don't feel this way; to me, I'm normal, and everyone else is weird. It's a weird, weird world, and I am the only normal person in it.) Last night, before I fell asleep, I was thinking how I will be perceived, through my work, as crazy. But, I thought, they think I'm crazy anyway. I've had this thought so many times before. It doesn't matter any more, except that I keep having it. Anyway, everyone's like this, but most people don't allow it to be seen, or even to allow themselves to see it. All people are crazy, in a deep center of their being, but not quite deep enough to be integrated again, in the deepest center where everything comes back together. (I need to find that place more often. I've been drifting away from it too much. I don't meditate so effectively in the winter.)

-from old notes that I'm trying to process (I threw these away, and now I dig them out of the trash, because they appear to pertain to what I'm feeling/writing now): wanting to hide away v. "performing" (i.e., publishing on the Website. But this is an "absent" performance. I'm a writer because it affords me the best--or the worst--of both worlds. // Revelation of self leading to the perception of being an amateur, whereas, if I keep myself hidden and write only fiction, I can be seen as a professional. // "displaying" myself via a Website and "promoting" myself via making an effort to direct traffic my way v. wanting to hide away and be anonymous.

*There. Those demons are (temporarily) exorcized. I now feel somewhat freer, ready to push on to newer things.

2-27-2

I'm sitting at the computer, working, waiting for Joyce to show up to pick up her paper on her way home from work. So, every time I hear a noise out on the street, I stand up to look out to see if it's her. One time I'm looking out, I see a guy walking into the house across the street. A few minutes later I hear some loud voices outside. I get up just in time to see Steve and Dave yelling at that guy, following him up Steve's walk. The only words I hear clearly is Steve shouting, "You come into my house and . . ." Dave is out ahead of Steve, pursuing the guy as he walks to his truck, obviously ready for a fight. Dave is the son of Tim, a postal worker who lives in the duplex next to Steve's duplex. He hasn't been around for several years, having moved away for parts unknown with his girlfriend. I saw him yesterday for the first time in a while, talking to the mailperson. He has shocking red hair and a quick temper and it seemed appropriate that he would be leading the way in a pending fight. He's a nice guy though, don't get me wrong. After the incident, Steve went straight inside and Dave went straight to his own house, so I couldn't figure out if Dave had been visiting Steve when the guy arrived or if he just heard the commotion outside and took advantage of the opportunity to go over and join in.

2-28-2

This morning I officially became an old man. Because I always forget where I lay my glasses, I tied a long piece of string to them and hung them around my neck, and then, a few minutes later, I forgot where they were and went looking for them. (Sigh.)

I stop in the middle of the day and take a few minutes to listen to the silence. I used to do this a lot when I was recovering from the effects of chronic stress, but lately I've forgotten all about it. Living alone, the house is always quiet, but my internal dialogue makes it seem occupied and noisy. Add to that the television or the radio, and you have a "normal" household.

But even when the quiet does threaten to break through, little sounds like the goldfish digging through the gravel scavenging for bits of food, wood crackling in the woodstove, and street noise break the silence, so that it seems like something's always happening. Small tokens of activity serve to prevent a perception of the reality of eternal stillness.

T.E. Lawrence went into a trance-like state where inner silence prevailed. Or did he? Was it only a pose, like I will want to do when I feel like I must perform for myself? There is a reality to silence, but often I don't want to know it, only imagining I am meditating, when instead I am carrying out an elaborate pretense, to delude myself into a spiritual perception.

True silence is deafening. It's easy to want to avoid it. It speaks to you in a loud voice when you will allow yourself to listen. It tells you things about yourself you would rather not know. It indicates how alone you are, no matter how many people are in your presence. It's easy to feel alone, in silence, when no one is around. It's more difficult with others near.

But even when others are near, you can hear the silence, if you listen. First, most people do not say anything worthwhile. Most talk is idle chat. But more importantly, even in the depths of communion, the most fundamental state is isolation. Communion only reminds you that you are a separate entity. Without separation, there is no need to commune.

[That's a tautology.]

Unless you give up all attachment to the physical plane of existence, you are alone, isolated. And even if you manage to loose the tight grasp with which physicality holds onto you, still there is the ego that must be transcended. Unless you manage to negate what you think of as yourself, you will always be alone and engaging in self-deception.

We walk among spirits, continually, being unaware of their existence, because they do not separate themselves out from the cosmos. Our spaces are filled with presence that silence comprehends. Silence transcends the physical plane and ego personalities. A meditator, looking inward, can miss the reality that exists here and now, alone or with others.

We all have to venture out of our garages now and again if we want to make a career out of music (or, indeed, not die of scurvy). Ivy at Garagband.com

Spring's a long time comin' this far north. Will Geer, Jeremiah Johnson

We all have to venture out of our garages now and again if we want to make a career out of music (or, indeed, not die of scurvy).

Ivy at Garagband.com

Spring's a long time comin' this far north.

Will Geer, Jeremiah Johnson