The "And Sin Not" Part

2/27/2010 8:05 AM – 8:27 AM

I’m writing almost according to schedule. I woke up at 7:20 this morning. Without sleeping pills, I fell asleep by 11:20 last night. Yesterday, I went to work feeling a little sore from shoveling, by the three hour mark, I felt a lot sore and very tired. But I made it all the way through the work day. I only got pissed a little.

It might be easier, as far as instructions go, if we were told to “be not angry.” But it doesn’t go that way. It goes, “be angry and sin not.” I still don’t know how to do that. It might be easier to simply resign ourselves to the situation and say, “oh well, no point in being angry.” Actually, that is what I do a lot. I find myself mad and, usually not liking the feeling, I try to distract myself and get back to a more resigned state. I might still do that for a while. But there is a point where you realize that you’re not just being pissy for no good reason, something is wrong and some action should be taken.

If it’s my fault, I can look at it and try to figure out how to change. It might take years, but it’s possible to work on it. But when the fault doesn’t lie with me, I have no idea what to do. My boss is not a very good boss. He’s not evil. He just wants to do what little he can and then get the hell home. So do I. The difference is, I’m not paid to manage anyone other than myself. I work hard my whole shift. Do I waste time? Sure. Everyone does. It’s not an excuse. It’s a statement of fact. But I act like my job is my job. I work hard and come home and try to earn my paycheck. For the past 6 years, every job that I’ve had, my boss has appreciated that fact. I’ve gotten good reviews. I don’t at this job. I do not know how to deal with this. I don’t like being angry but I don’t know how to change the situation other than leaving. At first, I thought it was just me. I worked hard to get the extensive list of things that need to get done, done in the eight hours that I’m scheduled to be there. It doesn’t fit. At some point, about six months ago, I said, “fuck it. I do the job and ignore the boss.” So I do. But the boss is still there, being a bad boss and telling me, in a very round-about way that can be denied or asserted depending on the situation, what a horrible job I’m doing. Be angry and sin not. “Sin not” seems to imply that one should act, just not sinfully. This is a tall order, and I do not know how to start. Well, poo.

Ben Writes the Last Part

2/26/2010 12:26 PM – 12:44 PM

I shoveled snow for two hours last night. Shoveled snow and then salted. When I got back to the place where I started, it needed to be shoveled again. I clocked out and went home. When I got home, I did my cool-down routine, stretching. Yesterday was a lifting day. It had just gotten to the point where I could feel only a little tenderness the day after.

My body now is a series of long, broad aches. I am not, however, incapacitated. The achiest bits are my hips which is a result of sleeping in my bed for ten hours. Crappy mattress, but it’s betting than nothing and, provided I don’t sleep more than eight hours, it usually works fine. I woke up about an hour ago. I drank coffee, smoked and went poo. Then I sat and then I was here. The sit went well. I read in one of the billions of Zen books that I used to read about a guy that wasn’t given any instructions. He was just told to sit on the floor, look at the wall and not say anything for thirty minutes.

He ended up being one of those guys that get Zen equivalent of a black belt. I’ve read lots of books by those guys. Don’t think a whole lot of the thing. I don’t know if you really can learn anything by sitting and trying to just sit. Feels good though. Calm and strong. Okay. Okay is good. I keep drifting off here as I’m typing. I have to go to work in an hour and I’m just writing. Ben just came in. I guess I’m done.

Writing a letter to my future self. Your body now is nothing but muscle. That’s the good news. The bad news is: it’s destroyed the world. Everyone is dead. Even you. Unless you’re reading this. Then you’re our only hope. Our fate is in your hands, dude. Our fate is in your hands. End transmission.

The Only Way to Feel Like You’re Running

2/25/2010 10:19 AM – 10:39 AM

It’s snowing outside. Really snowing. It’s a snowday day of snowing. I just sat and I got that weird sit buzz/fuzzy/fluid thing. I think it’s the first time since I started sitting again. My rules are less this time. Sit. Stare at something though half-closed eyes. Count your breaths.

When you realize that you’re not paying attention to counting your breaths, start from one again. Do this until the bell rings. When the bell rings, count your breaths to ten. Say a prayer of whatever comes to mind. Get up. Put your cushion away and go on to what is next. I’m only at ten minutes. Someday, I’ll work it up to a half hour. I should probably do it before I go to bed. This is fine. This is good. Do you get it – it’s really, really snowing. In a few hours, I’ll go to work. In a half hour, I’ll start my lifting session. I didn’t work on editing today. I didn’t work on it yesterday. I did sign up for a doctor’s appointment yesterday and start to fill out the paperwork. I did watch the latest episode of Lost this morning.

I spent some time yesterday reading about getting in shape. One website asked what you wanted to get in shape for, positing that it was good to have a goal. I don’t really have a thing to get in shape for, not a project anyway. Well, other than the whole life project. I want to be a writer. I want to live in a cottage in the woods. I want to read good books and watch good movies. These are things that I know or know some things about. I do know a little of what it feels like to run three miles up a hill and then three miles back down. Your leg muscles hurt on the way up. Your knees hurt on the way down. Between the near constant thoughts of how awesome it would be to stop, there is a subtle ecstasy of doing something as hard as that. I have not yet fully lost myself in a run for the whole run. I’ve lost myself for little parts of it. It is odd how much running can be like sitting. Now to figure out how my whole life can be like running and sitting. Beautiful girls, beautiful girls, somewhere out there, somewhere over the next rise. And maybe the girls aren’t girls. Maybe the girls are only girls. It will be a while before I’m fit enough to even get those little snippets of running being running. When I stop, it’s because I find that I don’t need the running. It’s for a little while only that you can get away with it, but it feels like you can get away with it forever. But one day you wake up and you remember that the only way to feel like you’re running is to be running.

Cheapest, Fastest, Doing Fine

2/24/2010 8:57 AM – 9:17 AM

I’m trying to remember all the things that I have to do today. There aren’t too many. Since I haven’t started running yet, I’ve got an hour and a half of free time. I have to schedule a doctor’s appointment. I guess they ignored the email. Download last night’s episode of Lost. Work on editing the novel. If I finish by the 28th, I get to do Scriptfrenzy.

I sat this morning and considering that I realized halfway through that realized that the volume was turned down on my computer and so I would have to keep looking to see the end instead of having it just jump out with a “ping!” it went well. For some reason, I woke up last night just as my computer was restarting after an update instillation. Not wanting to be startled awake by the start-up sounds, I turned the volume down. Of course, the headphones were plugged in, so I didn’t need to. But I was only half-awake anyway, so it made sense at the time. The novel edit is going weirdly. I am somewhat concerned with the fact that I’ve only noticed two sections that really need work.

For something written so fast, I expected there to be a lot of deep, serious reworking that needed to be done and I am suspicious of the fact that I’m not finding them. Ah, well, this is only the first edit and hopefully, I will find them in the second edit. Or, better, I will discover in the second edit that it’s fine. Now that would be awesome. And suspicious. Very suspicious. Yesterday went well, the kid at work that irks me only managed to do so at the very end of the night. I have discovered that it is important to eat breakfast on the days that I lift. Well, eat breakfast or not wake up until a little bit before it’s time to exercise. My stamina faded after the first four or five sets. And I need to consider re-arranging the order a little more. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to pay off the Houghton loan by sometime in April. It might require the delayed rent thing that Ben said I could do. Then we’ll see. I’m thinking that, at this point, it doesn’t matter what degree I come out with. After I pay off Houghton, just find what credits will transfer and then pick a degree based on that. Cheapest, fastest. In case you were wondering, it’s very gray and a little snowy outside and the trees seem to be doing fine.

Movement in the Lighter Extremities

2/23/2010 12:50 PM – 1:10 PM

So it is later than normal to be writing the instants. I neglected to go to bed as there were pressing matters on the internets to attend to. That would be a joke. There are few pressing matters on the internets. I then neglected to get up on time even with my alarm reset to give me 8 hours of sleep. And then, this morning, there were more pressing matters on the internets.

Someday, when I finally come to be the type of person that gives up things for Lent, wasting time on the internets should be in the list. Ben said that he’s planning on quitting smoking in the next week or so. I’d guess that I should as well. Amy will be gone that weekend and two angry boys hanging about the house might be more than even a Mennonite could handle. And they have a fetish for torture. I lifted weights today. This is the start of week three of strength training. If I had picked up running, it should have started yesterday, so I guess that I’m waiting till March. Perhaps to coincide with the quitting of the smoking. It’s my Monday, and despite the fact that I did very little useful today, aside from lifting, sitting and starting my laundry, I feel good. Probably the poppy seed tea. But I did call my mom yesterday and we talked for an hour and a bit.

I admire people that can charge into life and do it. My brother has three kids and is looking to adopt another few. He has a career in the military and a dream of what he wants to do when he gets out. I sit here and look at statistics. The probability of a marriage surviving until the death of one spouse is one out of two. That’s probably the wrong way to word it, technically. The probability of someone making a living as a writer of books is worse than that. I do not understand. I understand so very little and even less of what I really want to understand. I want to have faith. Faith is generally acknowledged as a key component of a healthy outlook on life. I want to believe. I want to believe but I don’t want to be an asshole to others or dishonest with myself. I don’t see much wrong with being an asshole to myself and dishonest with others. That would be a joke. Mostly. It’s definitely gray outside. The trees are fairly still. Some movement in the lighter extremities. No animals that I can see. But I feel fine. A shower, a change of clothes and then off to work. Tomorrow, I’ll work more on the novel. I’ll go to be on time tonight. Someday this will make sense. There, a crow flew by.

Farm the New Land

2/20/2010 8:54 AM – 9:14 AM

To be able to look at ones actions without judgment and act. Maybe that’s what sitting is about. I don’t know. It’s my Friday. I sat. For some reason, the last couple of minutes went well. To be able to look, and with reason decide the best possible course based on the data available and then do it. That would be good.

The last three days were jarring session of daunting emotions. Wednesday was the day of wrath, I spent nine hours angry. Thursday, I was peppy and upbeat. Yesterday, I was sad. The sadness eventually went away, around six or seven, but still, that was seven or eight hours of being sad. Oddly, it felt comfortable. Or, not oddly at all, it felt comfortable. Sadness was the dominant emotion of my twenties. So far, fear has been the dominant emotion of my thirties. I hope to God that it isn’t for the next seven years. That would make for a miserable decade. Youth is wasted on the young, they say. I can see what they mean, but I don’t think you can truly know what youth is until it goes away. I’m still young, I guess. But I’m not twenty.

And what’s today going to be? It will probably be good. It’s my Friday. I’ll lift today. I’ll have poppy seed tea. All of these things are good indicators that my inclination will be to be in a pleasant mood. I guess that I’ll need to start running next week. I don’t want to try to go through those Wednesday and Fridays without that little extra kick that exercise gives. It will suck. It doesn’t really work the first few times. But I’m in upstate NY. The gray lasts a long, long time. If I enjoyed the gray when I was a kid, there has to be a way for me to learn to enjoy it now. Even when I do give up smoking, there should be a way for me to like it outside on a cold overcast day. Running puts you out there. It lets you be there in the air beneath the sky. Even in February, there is something to see. Sometimes, I do wish I could hibernate the gray January through April, but those are living too. I believe in God, somehow, at the moment. Where that came from, I don’t know. Feels good, Man. Far above, beyond the trees across the street, two birds flew by. When the settlers arrived, they had to have so much more than the needed. The first few years, they had to learn to farm the new land.

Black Crow, Gray Sky

2/19/2010 9:35 AM – 9:54 AM

It’s a solid gray out there today. I feel fine though. I sat. Successful as compared to the rest of my sits. My muscles are a little sore today. Which is good. Hopefully, they won’t be that bad when I’m working tonight. This morning is for filling out forms.

I’m getting antsy for running to start. The doctor’s office hasn’t called me back. I’ll need to get in touch with them soon. There is always that thin, reoccurring nag that I want to be left alone. It isn’t really true. Sometimes it is. There’s a bit of stupid within me that demand that the universe roll according to his whims. I suppose that one good thing about being poor is that it beats that fellow down quite a bit. Hell, I’ve only called into work due to being sick once since I started working there. And that was because I actually was sick. Maybe I have figured out how to work, finally. I don’t know. I was thinking about how if I went back to Houghton to finish my degree, I’d have to fill out that form and write those essays. I’ve written two novels. It shouldn’t be hard. But it seems daunting.

I haven’t worked on the novel this week. I’m have the odd sensation that I don’t really care about it that much. Which is crap. I get into it once I’m there. And If I could actually sell the thing, I might be able to pay some bills. Problem is, I’m not really sure how good it is. I like it, but I’m not excited to get back to it. Which doesn’t really prove anything. I’m not excited about much since I stopped having anxiety attacks. That’s the tradeoff. Doesn’t matter. How I feel about existence doesn’t change existence. It was more fun when I would have a soul-changing epiphany once or twice a week. But they didn’t actually change much. Going to work and getting paid. That changes things. Paying bills. That changes things. Lifting weights regularly. Running regular. They change things. Daydreams don’t change things. Exquisite visions of what it means to be human don’t change things. Washing dishes does. I’m afraid that I was right when I put on my cynics mask and proclaimed that, given multiple possible choices, the most boring one is probably right. Boring is what you make of it, some say. There’s truth in that. Lots of crap too. We seem to be around 85% machine. People that can change their attitude talk about changing your attitude. People that can’t don’t. A black crow flew across the gray sky in my window. It breaks up the monotony.

Hit with Rock Repeatedly

2/18/2010 1:22 PM – 1:42 PM

Is it a matter of stochastic probability or subconscious impulse? I’ve been thinking about it and all the girls that I have been genuinely attracted to have come prepackaged with live-in boyfriends. I know randomness and I’d put the weight in its corner. But I’m not ruling out the other.

I just finished lifting and had my first meal of the day. I’m jittery and typing faster than I normally would. I spent nine miserable hours at work last night and now I’m set for another eight or nine in a half hour. This is aggravating. I’m paying my student loans and it’s taking a chunk of my paycheck. Now I’m paying for medical insurance and it’s taking a bigger chunk. I have to pay another student loan back to Houghton itself that I haven’t paid anything towards in eight years. It just keeps getting bigger. If I want to be able to go back to college, I have to have a better job. If I want to get a better job, I have to go back to college. Fucking dilemmas. At least the Pixies just came on Pandora. I’ll thumbs up this track when I finish this little bit of writing. There has to be a way out of this. I don’t want to be thinking about this for the next nine hours.

Fuck bunnies. I’m getting old. I keep telling myself that you’re never too old to start over, but it’s different. Lord, I want to hit something. That’s just the testosterone and sudden influx of sugar talking, but still, here I am, fucking caught and not sure how to proceed. Oh. Another angry post. At least it’s not mopy. Well, it’s not mopy as I’m writing. Mopy has a soft, pliable quality. I just want to hit something. If my luck had been excellent, I would be in my cottage by now. If my luck had been better, maybe I would have forgotten about that dream. Maybe I would have never had it. Maybe I’d be taking pictures of the little fishies around the Great Barrier Reef right now, praising Jesus and bemoaning the destruction of the environment. I end up with self-loathing honesty instead. A dishwasher in an upstate New York college town. Fuck. If I knew how the fuck to sell out, I’d do it. Some nice, boring, speaking-in-tongues girl that mom would like. Some collar and tie office job where I get home at a real time of day and can pay for a goddamn car and mortgage. Bible studies on Wednesday, Sunday school every Sunday from 9 to 10. No swears. No beer. No smart books. No honest movies. Brain-dead and happy. Just drop the fucking bomb down the mine shaft and hit with rock repeatedly.

02/17/10

2/17/2010 9:58 AM – 10:18 AM

I did sit today and my muscles don’t feel too sore from lifting yesterday. I overslept which is weird because I actually woke up before my alarm clock went off and turned on the coffee. Then, two and a half hours later I finally got out of bed and started my day. I sort of want to start running today, but I’m not going to. March, I guess.

I’m thinking about marathons again. Of course, I’m not actually running, so it’s easy to think about them. If I started running in March, I’d have about eight months to build up to it. Maybe the Wineglass. It’s home. It’s mostly flat. That’d be nice. My life would be seriously abbreviated if I started to train for a marathon. Well, it would be in the two months leading up to the race. I have many things going through my mind since yesterday morning. After this, I’m going to go look up college degree programs again. Daydream a little. I need to get a hold of the student loan people. They didn’t with-draw my payment last month. I’ll have to set that up again, I guess. I need to call my mom. I need to eat less crap food.

It’s cold outside and the sky is a light gray. It makes the trees look darker. I’m not to the point where I’m insisting that it become spring tomorrow. I’ve actually been enjoying the winter days. Part of it is that the days are finally getting noticeably longer, despite the cold and snow. No word back yet from the doctor’s office. I hope it’s not like it was in Buffalo, where they simply never responded. But this time I’ve got insurance and I’m going to get a check-up, damn it. I’m almost coming to peace with the fact that aside from the new guy on the morning crew, I’m the only person that busts his ass at work. I need a new job. I say that and yet I don’t apply for any. I look, but I don’t apply. So much effort to be told: “we like your enthusiasm but we’ve decided to go with someone who has experience.” Sometimes, I’m startled by how much I loathe the efficiency of a system that I consider most desirable because of the products of its efficiency. There is an odd contradictory set of ideas in my head – I want a better job, but if I start to look for a better job, it feels as if I’m giving up on the idea of being a writer. But a better job wouldn’t necessarily take up more time. Might take up less. And I might finally be able to afford a car which would finally free me from the whims of those with cars. Or, rather, let me participate more freely in the activities of those who do have cars and still be free to leave when I wish. Or cruel reality. Trees are moving. Think they’re planning to attack.

It's My Monday

2/16/2010 9:17 AM – 9:39 AM

It’s snowing and it’s my Monday. I failed miserably at keeping to my new weekend schedule. I’ll try something else. Switch the lifting days to Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. When March comes, I’ll try to add running. I didn’t sit today. I overslept. I didn’t call my mother. I didn’t clean.

But if there’s anything to learn from sitting that applies to everyday life, it’s that, know what you should be doing and finding yourself not doing it, you simply return to what you were doing without expending to much energy on self-recriminations. Self-recrimination is simply another way of not doing the thing that you are supposed to be doing. Every day. For the rest of your life. That writer that started running when he was 33 and is still running almost 30 years later, he probably failed, at first. And maybe this is what the Jesus Year is supposed to mean for those of us that aren’t God incarnate. We have figured out what we’re supposed to be doing and the rest of our lives is trying, every day, to do it.

Sit, write, exercise, work, study, read, socialize – that’s what I’ve got for a daily plan so far. As I was falling asleep last night, I was thinking about the things that I don’t have that I could have. House, wife, real job, truck – these things, I want but don’t have. Is it in the waiting and doing? Or is it in the doing more? I don’t know yet. I just know that if I want at the end of the day to feel as if I haven’t wasted the day, I have a certain bare minimum of requirements that need to be done. And yet I so rarely get them done. And yet I’ve known that I need to do them for a long time. A few are new. New in the sense that I didn’t figure them out until at least two years ago. Here I am, wrestling with the questions of being, not really fully being. But how many are aware of being? Is there any need for it? It doesn’t necessarily help in finding out how to live. I’ve come to doubt much of psychology – it’s too much a smart atheist’s religion. But how many philosophers had fathers die when they were young? But that’s a cartoon. Good for a giggle, hard to draw meaning from. So after this, editing. And then lifting. And then work. No wife yet. No house. No truck. No real job. But hope that this all adds up to something.

Maybe after Soup

2/14/2010 12:16 PM – 12:39 PM

I suppose that it’s late now for writing. I like to have it done before noon. Before eleven preferably. But it is a Sunday (which is my Saturday) and I like to do so very little on my first day off. I have one day a week when I don’t feel particularly guilty for wasting a morning and I should revel in it. I began the day right. Up at 9. Sit for ten minutes. Drink coffee. And then the internet…

I wasted time on the internet, looking up this and that, but then I did actual work for a bit. I looked up my insurance company’s web site and found a local doctor. Actually, what I ended up finding was a local association of doctor. I emailed them requesting an appointment for a general physical. I was hoping to have quit smoking for at least two weeks before doing that, but I’ve been paying for this insurance for a month now and seeing the gouge it’s left in my paycheck without seeing any reason for having it. So, off to the doctor’s I will go and he (or she) will tell me what I already know: quit smoking, lose weight, exercise regularly, eat healthier. I’m only 33. I’ve got time to fix things.

I finally figured out a good weight-lifting schedule. In a few weeks, I’ll take the first run of the new season. Every day for the rest of your life. That is a large statement. Well, I hope it is. No more smokes. Every day. Exercise. Every day. Sleep enough. Every day. Write. Every day. Sit. Every day. There are a lot of Every Days left. I hope. There is falsehood in the dictum to live every day as your last. Truth as well, but falsehood dominates. There are a lot more Every Days than there are Last Days. It’s cold and cloudy and there is snow on the ground and I wish I wasn’t such a coward. I wish I could go for a long walk. Or a long run. I wish I didn’t need an excuse to go outside and look and smell. But it is warm in here and there are many things that need doing. But perhaps I shall anyway. Maybe after a nap. Maybe after some soup. The trees across the street, their branches touch. They get more physical contact than I do. They don’t care, of course. They’re trees. This isn’t Avatar. The planet doesn’t give two shits about who walks upon it or what they do to it. We’re the weirdoes. Projecting ourselves into the rocks and calling them brothers. We’ll be brothers when we’re as dead as they will never be. But the thought is comforting. Maybe out into the cold. Maybe on a long walk. Maybe after soup.

Any Number of Old Ladies

2/12/2010 8:12 AM – 8:32 AM

It’s reminding me of the old days back in Buffalo. I’m tired and waking up is something that someone else should do. But it’s me and my life, left alone, I’m still in my own company. I sat, which is good, but I’m fuzzy and I didn’t make it to a solid three count.

I guess it’s just walking. I guess it’s just getting up and doing the list of things that you know that you should do and doing it every day and hoping that eventually it adds up to something. It’s cold today and the sun is shining and that means the sky is blue as blue. My body is a vaguely connected series of aches and I keep thinking about girls and how old I’m getting. No worries, which is great, just a curiosity of some unspecified sort. There are so many things to do and not enough time to do them all and still get enough sleep. I haven’t been watching TV for a few days. Well, not since my days off. Even if I follow my list and do all the things that I need to, well, maybe if I did that, I wouldn’t feel bad about watching TV.

“I keep thinking about,” is a good phrase to write. It means that I’ve been thinking. I’m always thinking, but thinking doesn’t mean as much to me as it once did. I’m curious if this would make me a better or a worse philosophy major. I was always in a state of ambivalence when I saw people that found their school work interesting but not particularly meaningful. If it wasn’t meaningful, why would I put any effort in it? If it doesn’t actually contribute the project that is being a human being, why give it more than a cursory glance? But they did their homework and didn’t struggle over every little bit on minutia at the question’s core and they handed in their papers and got good grades and worked as TAs and went on to grad school and I washed dishes and doubted the meaningfulness of everything and didn’t have enough money to buy more than crackers at the dollar store for lunch for a week. “I don’t think it’s worth it,” I would tell my younger self, “but I don’t know for sure. I haven’t died yet.” And after I’ve died, who knows? Holden’s creator is dead now. Holden doesn’t give a goddamn. Holden is a bag of bones. Holden is worth any number of old ladies.

Experiments in Being

2/10/2010 8:58 AM – 9:18 AM

So everything went wrong this morning but it was all fine. I am occasionally shocked by how much my life revolves around this computer. One little install and restart that didn’t go smoothly and I’m lost for an hour, trying to get my day back on track.

I sat today for the first time in months. It went badly in that I couldn’t hold my thoughts for more than a beginner’s three-count, but it went well in that I felt calm and the sitting didn’t give rise to any anxiety attacks. I hope, oh how I hope, that the worst of the fear is behind me. I don’t know that I’ll ever risk smoking the weed again, but that was never my favorite drug anyway. Sleep is still the best drug. It’s snowing out. Really snowing. Not blizzard, just steady and thick. At some point, I’ll go to work. Before that, I’ll work on the detective story and I’ll lift some weights. Maybe I’ll actually do some housework other than laundry.

I’m getting old. I know that if I pushed it, I could risk another ten years of unhealthy living before the risk of heart attacks really started. But that isn’t what I wanted. This style of living was supposed to have been concluded, at the latest, by 32. I’m 33 and I’ll be 34 in less than two months. I rarely look at the marks of where I was supposed to be anymore. It doesn’t help and it usually makes me saddened with my own ineptness at being. But I know where I hope to be. I know that there is a mismatch between what we feel and what we think, but that mismatch doesn’t require that we become enfeebled in our being. You have to acknowledge it and find the tricks that let you progress. Quit smoking. Lose weight. Exercise daily. Eat healthy. Those are the four cornerstones to what I hope comes next. I’m acting selectively on those things at the moment, but they’re there. I know them. I have some idea of how to experiment. Experimenting takes up so much time, but it’s more reliable. Each of us is our own little science project, what works for one may not hold for the next. Probably won’t. But we can see the experiments of others and try them on ourselves. Even with my shredded faith, I can sometimes see the stuffed tiger on a snowy day.

Unfortunately Absurd

2/9/2010 8:38 AM – 8:59 AM

It’s a Tuesday which is my Monday. I haven’t been writing these things. Laziness is part of it. Another part is simply that I don’t really want to write about the things that I have been thinking about. They’ve been either petty or depressing. I’m trying to be good, but I don’t even know what that really means.

I’ve been thinking about the things that one reads on Wikipedia, how they seem to drift away. But not everything. Most things, but not everything. They had a chart up that compared and contrasted the four schools of thought that emerged from Kierkegaard’s ruminations. He ended up with Theistic Existentialism. Which Camus considered a kind of philosophical suicide. There was also Atheistic Existentialism, Absurdism and Nihilism. I’d been thinking that my leanings have been towards Nihilism lately, but, according to that chart, I’m closer to Absurdism. Absurdism’s response to the great questions is “maybe.” That’s about as far as I’ve been able to take it lately.

I wish I could go as Kierkegaard did to a belief in the goodness of the Divine. A goodness that is not our goodness, as our goodness is rooted in the genes and experiences of the mind that resulted from those genes. Our mind, amazing as it is, cannot even begin to imagine the experience of the Divine mind. But the starting point of accepting the unknowing of the Divine requires a leap of faith that is to acknowledge the existence of the Divine. There cannot be rational arguments for or against the Divine because reason is bound to and emerges from this existence. We don’t have those colors in our crayon box. I don’t have enough faith for that leap. And so, again and again, I find myself slapped back down to the Absurd. Which, for noobs, is not the normal use of the word. It’s a philosophy term after all. They never are. Maybe. I’m tired of that word. But that word is the only thing that I can use. Maybe.