Proceed

There was a backpacking trip that I went on once during which we trudged through several days of cold, wet, and wind.

While we hiked, I walked forward to the evening when we would stop and drink warmed water. When we stopped, I stepped through the tasks of pitching camp, preparing food, and other useful manners of stalling myself until the darkened evening when we would retire and I would shed my weathered clothes for the drier shell of a sleeping bag and a more comfortable subconsciousness. As the evening progressed, I awaited the dawn through closed eyelids, since then I could remove myself from a stale and stiffened sleep and proceed again through another day, to another night. Each stage less-than-ideal, anticipation of change the only relief.

Sometimes there is no situation I would choose to have, but to continue proceeding from one to the next. I remind myself that the only solution I know is to endure, to proceed, to keep moving forward in consideration that the things at hand are temporary, and anticipation of something both better and distant.
前途是光明的 道路是曲折的.

On the last day of our hike, the wind and rain departed and we slept beneath a tent of stars.

Limits of Articulation

In the sense of consciousness as articulate and self-conscious reflection, an emotion can become conscious only if one has ( at the minimum) a language with which to 'label' it and articulate its constituent judgments.

-Emotions and Philosophy,

quoted on Kitten-Flinging Good

Progress

(Content is difficult to phrase, so I imagine I will return and revise the words from time to time)

One day in mid-May, I realized that I was in Hell and that I wanted out at any cost.

I began again the struggle to believe that if I committed myself to small changes,
that in the unforeseeable future, I would eventually be somewhere different.

I imagined the abstract day in which I would make it far enough to look back from somewhere different.

And I did progress in increments, the website happier.com and the book Reality Therapy both being instrumental in giving me particular thoughts and direction.

I tried to practice discipline of intention.
I followed the exercises, hoping to practice recognition of my own positive traits until I believed them myself, trusting in the claims of the exercises because they were my only map, consisting of an arrow pointing forward and away.

I noticed something that I think a friend recently called 'dignity' coming from within, apparently having been summoned by a vacuum, and by a realization that not only I would never acquire it from anything or anyone else, but without it, I would not make it very far.

May wasn't all that long ago.



Recently, a friend of mine - who had previously brought up ideas of hell and getting used to it - noticed some 'unhealthy looking people' near a bus stop and mentioned that it reminded him of some dark years of his own life.
made me remember too.

He presented his wonder at the small miracle of waking up each day and still recognizing himself as himself.

Today, I talked with a philosophy friend of mine - with whom I walked a strikingly similar terrain, though through different paths in the darker parts of the cave - and we still recognize each other.

We came through in increments, tiny struggling increments, but are far enough to look back on where we were before, as well as who we were before. But we still recognize ourselves.

I have made it to the days I imagined - to a future that is different than the past I hoped to leave.

I have made it to the person I thought I was and that I wanted to be, and I am grateful for the friends who have been patient and who recognize me.

The three of us all are conscious of the depths of our personal hells,
and of managing ourselves and our environments positively and carefully so as to never return, now that we are far enough to see where the pits we recognize begin.

.. therefore, our lives will be awesome

Dreamed

I know it's been out for a while, but I still really like this video.

The Senate

I heard them play once, years ago at Reed, and spontaneously bought their then-recent first CD (These Cold Winds).
Sadly, it never worked out to have them return to play at Reed and I never ventured to Seattle to find them.

The Senate has claimed themselves as Seattle's Rock and Roll String band and defined the phrase "Face-melting acoustic riffage."
(Harmonopticon)

And soon, they will perform their last foreseeable concert at the Triple Door in Seattle on Aug 30th.
No way I am going to miss it.
(Pied Piper)

Made of

Sunday Hootenanny at the Big Pink



We are not made from mud, my darling

but impossible,
impossible longing

- Hazel (and the Once and Always CoOp)

Death to my deathbed

A while back, in March? or so,
over the dinner I owed him at Lili's in exchange for prior talk, 牛肺, and 水具鱼,...

We'd been talking about various philosophies and different useful texts,

I explained about the characters in the Conference of the Birds and though he hadn't read it, as I listed off some represented traits he added '... and the bird that wants to understand why this particular route is being chosen and what the significance to flying over this river is...' which I identified with all too clearly.

Later, we spoke of choices and motivations.

I really don't want to have regrets, I told him,

Sometimes I try to think of myself on my deathbed looking back,
and try to anticipate whether I will regret something.
I really don't want to feel like I would.
Sometimes living for no regrets seems like a lot of pressure.


Well,
he said, after a pause.
You know what I think you should do to the self on your deathbed?

... kill her?

kill her.


We both took a drink from our water.

memento photos

In the movie Memento, the main character suffers short-term memory loss, and so has developed a few ways of allowing himself to function in the real world.

One of these methods is to take photos of people he interacts with. He keeps the photos and writes a few words of description on the photo. When he meets a person, or if a person seems to know him, he consults his photos to see if he should know the person, how he can expect the person to treat him, and whether he can trust the person.


Of the people you know,

Who would you take photos of?
What would you want to remember of them?
What description would you write on the photo as a preface to any future interactions?

Seems accurate

Leaning back from NetHack, he stated (and I paraphrase):

I died because I did something stupid. Which is surprisingly unavoidable.

It seemed to me, very true of bad things in general.

YourWorldofText

I followed an away-message link to a page full of black and gray blocks.
Zoomed out slightly and found:



Thus was my introduction to yourworldoftext.com/proggit


More adventures to follow...

What is Love?

The answer is to keep asking.

(Inspired by rumination over Fleetwood Mac's Landslide)

This song has been a subject of interest, thought, and variation for others, too, including the Dixie Chix.
She and Stevie were 27. I was 22. The lyrics of this song have mystified me since high school, but lately it continues to make more sense. Perhaps I do not understand in the same way, because I wouldn't have put the emphasis on feeling older, but on reflections, landslides, changes,

... and on contemplation of the great reflection of the mirror in the sky.

Good things come in Pink Boxes

... representing quite possibly one of the more amazing 24 hours ever, grand finale made possible by VQ and Voodoo Donuts, and Alex's cell phone.

The Blues is Survival Music

...The blues takes joy and tragedy and plays them both the same. It affirms by saying I WILL sing and dance my life, and make what hurts feel good by acceptance in transcendence. It makes what feels good even better.

-Wynton Marsalis, Commencement Speech at Northwestern
Full text of intended speech

Soak up this rain even if it's rainin'.

How it Works

Some things and processes are inevitable.
There are ways to modify, prolong, or moderate, but I have yet to find a way around.

This is how it works

the greatest fairytale

It's the greatest fairytale ever told, he comforted me regarding romantic relationships, that things will go easily.

A different friend had expressed something similar when her brother and his girlfriend broke up. It's like he just assumes that things will work out. Regarding her stance toward her own relationship with her boyfriend she said, it's my most important friendship.

And from Trackers Northwest,
that great thinktank of human wholeness:
When I first read Martín Prechtel's The Toe Bone and Tooth (now aptly retitled Stealing Benefacio's Roses) I experienced a different story of what's possible with a people, family and a Mayan village living close to the land. These tales were epic, the line between reality and myth justly blurred. All throughout the stories within stories was a thread of people courting one another and the world about them. That was the great revelation for me: eloquence and art is not about talent, its about survival. Its only by the great effort, attention and sincerity do we maintain healthy and beautiful relationships.

choices

It is not that I didn't have the patience, the will, the capacity.

it is that I can choose this out of my life