I'm a Rhythmic Sucker

I'm posting a song I find fun (although her other songs are a bit repetitive). I always liked the unusual but mellow rhythms - when I was listening to KJAZ at LA, I almost shat my pants when I heard a song with a very interesting (I believe it was 7 or 9 beats per measure) coordination between the guitarist, the bassist and the drummer who were all playing on very different beats sequences. Forgive my pathetic musical liguo, but as long as I understand myself, I never feel it necessary to expand.

Also, why did you erase the Deezer links, Daniel? You should leave stuff you're not proud of (although there's really no reason for feeling ashamed of any posts here). Some of mine are (by far) the worst, anyway. Remember, Little Timmy is always behind you!

Discover Abbey Lincoln!

Elephant

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.

No one here has ever seen an elephant. They bring it at night to a dark room.

One by one, we go in the dark and come out saying how we experience the animal.

One of us happens to touch the trunk."A water-pipe kind of creature."
Another, the ear. "A very strong, always moving back and forth, fan-animal."
Another, the leg. "I find it still, like a column on a temple."
Another touches the curved back. "A leathery throne."
Another, the cleverest, feels the tusk. "A rounded sword made of porcelain." He's proud of his description.

Each of us touches one place and understands the whole in that way.

The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.

If each of us held a candle there, and if we went in together, we could see it.

-As told by Rumi
C. Barks translation


All experience is an elephant in the dark.

Our senses and minds touch reality, are immersed in reality, yet cannot grasp reality within their palms.

In complexity, we reduce into simple parts.
In ignorance, we try to know.
For the sake of control, the process of exploration narrows down to an exploration of the parts.

The whole becomes a finite sum of constituents.

Result?

Dissociation from experience.

Diversity

"Alors que près de 7 000 espèces végétales ont été cultivées depuis le début de l'humanité, 15 variétés de plantes et 8 variétés animales seulement fournissent aujourd’hui 90% des ressources alimentaires de la planète. Cette uniformisation pose le problème de la perte des saveurs et de l’appauvrissement culturel, mais également celui de notre dépendance à quelques variétés alimentaires lorsque celles-ci se trouvent menacées par un agent pathogène, un insecte ravageur ou un aléa climatique.

Variez donc autant que possible votre alimentation et vos achats : ce conseil nutritionnel classique est aussi une bonne façon de soutenir la diversité biologique, qui n’a rien à voir la diversité croissante des produits dans les supermarchés, où les produits soi-disants « nouveaux » sont souvent faits avec les mêmes matières premières – du maïs, du blé, du riz et des pommes de terre."

-MesCoursesPourLaPlanete

The Sought

A good word? "Perfect." Such is our sought. We nurture praise and praise the vanished sins. The flow of soul's feelings and ideas are largely blurred by language yet language provides a means to transfer. I seek a life I do not know and am forgetting my own. I want it all or do I need it all?

I often find myself pondering upon the choices I have made. Always, I come to conclude that I would do naught the other way. I often find myself pondering about my future choices. Always, I am afraid.

All in all, it seems to me, support, finances, surroundings and all other possible influences, should not, and must not budge us off our stubborn ideological stances. Overcome your judgmental, and prejudiced minds to gain free thought - prose the feelings and thoughts.

I cry to myself. I know the emptiness, I know its cause, I blame it all on myself. Would I do anything any other way? Always, I come to conclude that I would do naught the other way. Filling voids with shallow aspirations and pastimes depleted of meaning? I can keep gambling. Injecting myself with a temporary miracle cure.

I solely wish to drift but there is nowhere to go. I want to float on the water, but I find myself impulsively flapping my arms as if I had wings. In my world, if I try hard enough, I will take off. In my world, I make the rules. In my world, even I have to struggle.

Bypass the brain. Free the soul. See it fly. Catch it if it falls down. Heal it's wings, don't let it cozy up. Make it fly again. Keep at it. Eventually, you'll free it and yourself as well.

A day in the monotonous life of a Taxi driver

So. Previous post sucked. But I'm not going to erase it nonetheless. This one doesn't seem promising either but we'll see where it goes. My posts, conversations and many thoughts, in general, seem to be momentarily-biased impulses anyway ("you're extroverted", Daniel would say). As a matter of fact, if I had the chance to relive my life from another point of view, I would chose to only feel and hear my thoughts and nothing else. Based on that, I would entertain myself by trying to guess the immediate situations and expand the thoughts evermore (as a matter of fact that could be an interesting concept for a book). Didn't make sense? Too bad - I'm writing this for me.

So, I took up the job of driving people from one place to another for money - I became a cabby. An interesting experience - that turned out to be. I met a few successful businessmen that supported me in my business efforts (emotionally). Met a great many maladjusted women (brought out some theories I may mention later). Even met a girl, that in any other lifetime (and possibly a little in this one) would have been a dream and a love (- turned out to be engaged and 27).

Overall, this job provided me with a temporary purpose, financial independence, an abundance of optional social interaction and so much free time to think (in the car) that a normal person would go mad. As I said before, when most of the humanly-necessary criteria are filled, we feel happy. - sorta,

---

Women. Fragile, subtle and bonded to society, they are. Place it in her head that she is neither fragile nor subtle; take away her longing for beauty and break away her loving bond - she will fall and futilely live a life of sought out desperation.

"They dance with ghosts" (to completely misquote Sting).

Unfortunately, America has no culture. At the very least, none that is strong enough to bond a people together. Enough to produce controllable mob-like behavior but not enough to provide three hundred million people with a purpose. As a species (and this is particularly true for women), must feel a purpose and a belonging, which, for the most part, is provided for us during our childhood; by our surroundings; by our culture. A culture is a mass-psychology engendered by strong engrained ideals and morals (something sociology ineffectively attempts to quantify). It is something that can only be generated through thousands of years of search and fruitless wars, not a few (admittedly efficient and revolutionary) centuries.

Well, anyway, my point is that, being the keepers of the culture, women are, seemingly, more affected by this void than men. But that which is characteristically American is vastly a due to a cultural void.

...fuck...

I haven't written here in a while. Perhaps it's because there was nothing to write about.
Life seemed almost too easy. Simple. But easy.

Much like our muscles, or anything else in life for that matter, if we do not strain, our intellects wither and lose that determination and concentration. We lose that which gives us the right to brand ourselves "intelligent" and "conscious", that which some of us struggle so greatly to acquire, that which, in my opinion, gave us the right to brand ourselves "human".

I have, for some time now, taken the path that such a great many people our age and generation advocate. I went for simplicity - perhaps in a different understanding than that of Mr. Substance or Mr. Alex, but I simply stopped caring about my possessions and started reevaluating my ideals. I packed my things, threw them in a trailer and moved in with my friend; thinking to myself, as I earn a little cash, I'll give him some sort of honorary rent.
Slowly, but surely, I began to not only accept, but live those morals which I had now, for some time, preached to myself. Materialism disappeared. Hate left. Prejudice was gone. And with prejudice went my egotism. I became simple. All that was left was a happy go-lucky person. The one that enjoys his life at the very moment he lives it - not the one that thinks it.

So, I went to parties, had fun. Enjoyed the superficial and flirtatious interactions of everyday life. Dropped the current idea of creating a business and found a simple little job to keep myself from worrying about finances. At the job, I enjoyed the company of simpler people. Did not strive to meet those who stimulate me intellectually - there was no prejudice pushing me - there were no expectations. I settled. I lived my daily routine, and found interest in the moment being. Even my parents seemed to stop bothering me - or maybe I just stopped noticing.

I became that which I respected in others, but that which I never thought I would become. I became blissfully simple.

Even now, as I am writing this, words don’t flow. Thoughts don’t lineup and organize – they vanish instants after they surface. I feel dumber. I feel stupid.

Maybe I lost at this game which I undertook. I came to conquer, but I was slain somewhere along the way.

Maybe not. I am noticing this for a reason. It’s my intellect putting up a fight – and I’m not going to let it die. I am not that kind of person. I will not awaken in 10 years only to cry for help. I will take myself by what is left of my most basic instincts and start hating. Start judging. I will start loathing that which stands in my way. I will detest that which my crisp and blazing thoughts brand as arid and useless. I will live again.

PS: Ha! – granted this isn’t my greatest work or the most intelligent thing I wrote, but I have to say that the change in my thinking and writing style was not deliberate and “just happened”. I think this is why the concept of blogs and journals is so successful.

Pss: As a matter of fact, I think my best bet for strengthening myself is to just avoid useless conversation and stay as close as possible to my natural hateful and/or judgmental thoughts as possible. What I think I mean by this post is that seeking what the Buddha and so many others refer to as enlightenment is wrong as it takes us away from our natural identities – or maybe it’s just wrong for those of us who wish to think.

To Be and to Become

Learn what you are and be such - Pindar (BC522-BC443).

The Greek poet gave this redundant advice.

How can you learn to be what you are? Is it about finding our dharma - our calling? Aren't you you simply by being alive? Why become something we already are? Is it a koan-like aphorism, setting the wheels of inquiry in motion without giving practical information?

However mystical or poetic it seems, I will interpret Pindar's line as if it veridically was a concrete set of instructions to bring about progress in our self-development.

River VS Sphere

In Philosophy, it can be useful to divide ontology - What is to be? - in two main traditions:
The River and the Sphere.

Heraclites (The River) and Parmenides (The Sphere) were two "pre-Socratic" philosophers holding two different conceptions of reality represented by two different allegories.

~~~~~~ The River ~~~~~~

Heraclites's River implies an ever changing reality. The water you see in the riverbed at one instant is not the same as the water you are seeing a split second later. The river is in constant motion. Reality is flowing, never exactly twice the same - it is impermanent as a Buddhist might say. The river is slower one day, warmer, darker, fuller others. In the same way, all reality is motion. Transcendence does not exist. It is physical energy, natural science which govern a world of infinite complexity, filled with matter and energy.
The River represents materialism

ooooooo The Sphere ooooooo

Parmenides's Sphere on the other hand implies transcendence. What we experience in our lives is the imperfect manifestation of eternal, perfect designs. There is a world of perfection where pure Ideas exist: Love, Circle, Tree... The tree we see is a physical occurence of a pre-created, perfect model. In the same way, it is the transcendental notion of Love which is ultimately is real whereas love we experience is a happening of something pre-existent.
The Sphere represents Idealism.

The River, the Sphere, and becoming who you are

If we look at things from the Sphere perspective, you cannot become who you are, because who you are already an imperfect manifestation of your own perfect design.

From the River perspective however, you are your body and you are caught in the natural chain of events. You have physical needs, pleasures, aversions, sufferings. You also have an infinity of elements interacting with you from your environment. You cannot change that predicament. You must learn to accept it; and to accept it you must first be conscious of it. Therefore, Pindar's aphorism makes a lot of sense under Heraclites's light.

As the River, you are always changing, yet obeying some physical laws. Learn what you are by methodically examining your physical reality, your transient desires, fears and pleasures. Acknowledge them and do not reject them. You do not have control over their occurring, since you obey laws of nature and the interaction with the natural world, through the channel of your body.

A practical sample of ways of "learning what you are" looks like this.

• Examine your position in the natural world. For example like all living objects you have drives to sustain yourself. You do so with the means of eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping. You probably also have the need to replicate yourself and your species. You also are sensitive to reward with pleasure, and punishment with pain.


• Bring your awareness empirically events as they occur. Look at your ways of handling situations, your physiology, your behavioral patterns, your cultural background.
  
• Practice mindfulness. Observe the natural world to see how it is changing, how it is working. By being mindful of all that arises you learn about your environment, your responses and ultimately about human nature and your own nature.

After all this objective examination, you will have greater notion of what you cannot control and what you intrinsically are. The second is step is to become who you are.

From the knowledge of what you are, all it takes is acceptance.

To become what you are you must ultimately learn to accept what you have witnessed about yourself and live in this physical body and this physical mind without resistance.

MY House! Um, well...ok, YOUR house anyway.

The One!

Putin's comments drive company's stock down $6 billion...

In Praise of an Egotistic Philosophy

ego·tism
1 a: excessive use of the first person singular personal pronoun b: the practice of talking about oneself too much
2: an exaggerated sense of self-importance : conceit — compare egoism Merriam-Webster online dictionary

In other words, me, me, me, me, me!

Yes, so why an egotistic philosophy?

How can egotism - the practice of talking about oneself too much - be of value as a philosophy to a person and to mankind?

I remember my philosophy teacher five years ago saying how the "moi" can be despairingly irksome to others. Who can stand a person who breaks in every conversation - be it about the weather or a complicated relationship - by saying "I think that", "In my opinion", "in my case" or "it has been my experience"?

The "moi" becomes a threat to the harmony of a community as it pulls to much energy inwardly instead of productively using that energy externally. This is beautifully represented in Orwell's 1984 which brings forth a form of groupthink one must adhere to if one does not want to raise suspicion from the authorities and break social cohesion. As a side note, we can notice the "moi" is a threat as long as we are not in a capitalist society where knowing what a "me" wants can mean profit! ;)

I listened to a lecture given by French philosopher Michel Onfray about the XIXth century as the Century of the Moi. I found his ideas worth exploring.

He analyzes the XIXth century as being a time where two different - almost opposite - approaches to life existed.

• Social eudaimonism.
• To develop and contribute to a socio-economic system enabling the happiness of all is the ultimate project.
• Stuart Mill's social liberalism, Bentham's Panoptic capitalism, Owen's communist community, William Godwin's anarchist Protestantism, Bakounin's anarchist United States of Europe.
  
• Capitalism, liberalism, socialism, communism, anarchism.
• Plato's Republic. Social order is for the general interest, for the good of the people.
• Politics need to be there first for Ethics to develop
  
• Existential radicalism.
  
• The pragmatic concern of living a philosophical life is the priority. Universal solutions can only be found by first examining ourselves.
  
• Nietzsche, Thoreau, Emerson, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer.
• Individualistic, Egotistic.
• Socrates's "know thyself",
  
• Ethics need to be there first for Politics to develop.
  

There undeniably exists an egotistic philosophical tradition. This is most obvious with the diary medium for expressing ideas. Marcus Aurelius - a favorite of mine - jots down his thoughts in his emperor's tent late at night during a military campaign. The result: beautiful meditations about life, ruling and virtue. Augustine, almost single-handedly founds Christian theology by writing his Confessions. Schopenhauer, at the age of 19, travels across Europe with his parents and writes a diary which contains almost the totality of ideas found in the rest of his work. One cannot forget Montaigne's and Francis Bacon's essays which seem to reveal truths about ourselves with each reading. Thoreau, the philosopher and "ecosopher"; his only company was himself, and he lyrically writes about individualism, society and nature, after a day of chopping kindle near Walden Pond. Sitting down to express our thoughts means we formulate them, give them structure and coherence so they can be written down. Insight about ourselves and the world follow.

More generally than writing a diary, egotism almost always precedes constructive thought. In Maieutics - the Socratic method of investigation - Socrates often encourages people to explore themselves, to face their inconsistencies and reveal perhaps a lack of integrity. By not running away from ourselves, we face painful reality and can mature our thought on our way to uncovering Truth.

Self-examination! How can anyone have a philosophical life without self-examination?

It is when we take the time to examine our suffering, our behavior, our responses, our feelings, that we can learn to develop empathy and a sensitivity to others by perceiving what is universal. Art is usually the result of self-examination. Philosophy is primarily meant to be lived not theorized. Analyzing the day gone by and sorting the information ("that was nice, that was bad"), improves who we will be tomorrow if we have the discipline. This is what philosophy as a daily practice is. It gives us awareness of what we do and whether it is good and bad for us and others, it gets us out of destructive ruts to create room for self-improvement.

I often clash with people who believe that it is a waste of time to try to create a change in the world by egotistically first focusing on ourselves. Sculpting a lifestyle as an embodiment of values seems ridiculous to them.

How can we know what to do for the general good, if we don't even take the time to learn about what is good for us? Know thyself, learn, grow and adjust. Be egotistical in that sense, make your main concern you.

Cultivate your lifestyle - with the same zeal as the dandy -, be brave enough to become congruent with your self.

Pee-Wee's Morning

The Bicycling Horticulturalist

To all skeptics! Horticulture without a driver's license is possible!

"Ryan Nassichuk builds food gardens for people. His bicycle and trailer are the sole transport for himself, tools, and materials - including soil and plants! This horticulturist also builds container gardens and composters. Tour a backyard garden in which a 6-week class of students filled raised beds with soil, compost and fertilizer, did succession planting, and built a low-cost composter. Recently Ryan has added free seed-sharing to his wisdom-sharing, while continuing to propagate food gardens throughout Vancouver. This man has a low ecological footprint — or should we say bike tire tread? [www.ryansgarden.com]"
-Peak Moment TV

Just sayin'...

Wwoof wwoof!

Dunno if Dan already told me about this or not...here it is anyway ---> organic farming meets couchsurfing :)

http://www.wwoof.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWOOF

super cool! I saw a brief segment about it on arte or france televisions (not sure) and I thought it looked pretty cool, especially 'cause you walk away with whatever knowledge the farmer imparted; in the case they showed the guy explained les vignes et puis s'en est suivi bien evidemment une seance de degustation :)

definitely something to be looked into! :)

oh, and dan what was that herbie hancock song i listened to at your place? chameleon?

(gonna have to edit this thing at some point, but i'm putting it up as is for now :)

Discover Herbie Hancock!

Dare to be Naïve! Discovering Buckminster Fuller

I must confess that until today, I knew almost nothing about Buckminster Fuller.

I briefly read about him months ago while trying to figure out what Unitarian theology was about. I learned that he was some sort of genial modern polymath - à la Benjamin Franklin - who could, to those familiar with Jungian typology, easily epitomize the "extraverted intuition + introverted thinking" type. I imagined him as a man who needed to understand everything with a rational approach while being guided by an internal compass pointing to a certain universalism. He was an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, philosopher and visionary. [*] The rest, I discovered today thanks to my lunch meal.

I had to prepare my meal early this morning before going to work since I do not have the opportunity to leave for lunch. Going through an Ayurvedic cooking phase, I've been experimenting with Indian recipes which inevitably include clarified butter: ghee. I have been amazed preparation after preparation by the richness in taste and texture it provides and the way it releases the aroma of spices. Today's meal included ghee and quickly after eating, I felt that the ghee itself was somehow responsible for an unusual sense of calm across my body. Curious to learn about the presumed benefits of the elixir, I searched for information online and stumbled upon an article written by a fellow called Peter Malakoff. After finishing the article - and being converted to the use of ghee forever :) - the author intrigued me, and so wanting to learn more about him, I visited his website where I read his biography.

It turns out this man's life is nothing short of incredible! For the sake of comparison, I would say it is what Into the Wild's Chris McCandless's life could have been had he lived earlier, but just a little crazier. To return to the subject of this post, Peter Malakoff after writing a paper was granted a scholarship to spend a month with Buckminster Fuller. This is how the meal lead to learning about the man!

"That night Bucky spoke of the world of sailing and the world as seen by a man at sea. Indeed, much of Fullers terminology, the very words he used and the principles they represented, came from the nautical world. Think of the famous term he coined- 'Spaceship Earth'. He likened the world to a ship, which, he pointed out, is a closed and limited environment, not an unlimited one and always in motion. He pointed out how important it was to grasp and understand this.

He told us of many years ago he had spoken to a group of architects in New York City and had asked the assembled group if any of them knew how much the huge, many storied building they were sitting in weighed. None of them had any idea. Fuller found this to be a major oversight and a serious fault on their part. How could they maximize the potential that could come from building materials and structures if they were not thinking 'ecologically', if they did not know what the building weighed? How could they build something in accord with the operating principles of life, of spaceship earth?

Fuller, who had captained many a boat, said that 'On a ship, one always had to know how much weight was to be carried. It was important to know this if the ship was to be able to perform well on the water. It was this 'closed' or limited environment, similar to the nature of the world as a ship, that gave rise to the very concept of ecology. The very word 'ecos' comes from the Greek word for house or home. Ecology', he said, 'begins with the recognition of the closed or limited environment of the world. It is born of the realization that you cannot just dump your trash or waste into a river or an ocean and that it will just be washed away. We are on a ship, a spaceship and absolutely everything is and needs to be recycled, we need to know how much things 'weigh' and how they 'work'.

He spoke about 'cybernetics' which Bucky defined as the 'science of self-regulating mechanisms'. (Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the 'cyborg' or the self regulating organism. Think of 'cyberspace' as self regulating space). Bucky said that the word, cybernos, comes from the Greek word for the 'helmsman' of a boat. Bucky then made a startling statement, "A drunk cybernos makes less mistakes than a sober cybernos". I asked him how that could be . . . I didn't want to be in a boat or a car driven or steered by a drunk. He shook his head in agreement. I felt completely lost. Then he made his point, "Unless you make a mistake, you do not correct your course. Because a drunk does not make so many mistakes, he does less correction of his course and so his course is mistaken, he weaves his way down the road, or he hits something with deadly results. A sober man is constantly correcting his many little mistakes before they get big and his course is thereby true"

He spoke of 'synergetics', what Fuller called the behavior of a whole system not predicated on the behavior of its parts. He told us of chrome-nickel steel and how its strength is over 50% greater than the sum of the strength of its component metals. He spoke of gravity and how there was nothing in all the stuff of the universe that would predict it would be mutually attracted to another thing.

He spoke of the principle of 'precession'. Bucky told us how precession is the relationship that occurs between objects that are in motion. 'Imagine a top', he said. 'When it is set spinning, if you push it, it will go at right angles to the direction of your push. This is the same as the earth spinning around the sun. The suns greater gravitational attraction would pull the earth directly into itself, but since the earth is spinning it goes in a great elliptical circle around the sun'. Fuller said that the principle of precession is how life 'works'- A honeybee goes to a flower in pursuit of honey. The bee only wants the honey, but at right angles to the intention or drive of the bee, flowers are pollinated. The honeybee is not concerned with pollinating flowers. Bucky proposed that 'life happens at right angles or in a precessional manner to the 180degree straight ahead intentions of the bee'. He went on to say that it was exactly the same with a human seeking money or sex or pleasure or power. Life is happening at right angles to our desires. By recognition of this, he said, we can begin to design our lives to take into account precession and thus work with the nature of nature.

Finally, I remember that Bucky spoke of the word 'trimtab', what it was and what it represented. Fuller told us of how a large boat like the Queen Mary has a very large, many tonned rudder at the the very back of the ship. At the back end of that very large rudder is a very small rudder. When the captain wants to turn the huge main rudder in one direction, he turns the small rudder in the opposite direction. This creates a difference of water pressure or lower pressure vacuum on one side of the large rudder and the main rudder can now be moved with almost no effort; It is literally 'drawn' in that direction. Bucky said this represented the power of the individual to change the direction of the 'ship of state', doing what government and corporations cannot, by applying design science, by doing the 'right' intelligent action. Further, he pointed out how the action of the trimtab is applied when the bulk of the ship has passed, when it seems to have gone past the point of any change. Fuller died in 1983 and the epitaph carved on his tombstone says: "Call me Trimtab""

Concepts like these are precisely what drew me to physics - a chance to increase the focus of my metaphysical observation lens. Knowledge of natural phenomena should give general epistemic tools by the improvement of intuition. Ideas like precession and the trimtab are very poetic and reveal the richness scientific knowledge can bring to philosophy. Many of his ideas may not be new today, but were visionary then.

The Purpose

I am on the fourth floor of USC’s Levey Library. I look out the window to my right; I face the south – I see the Aerospace Museum, MacArthur Quad and much of the USC campus with its summer-school students - they look like ants at this distance.

I look again, and this time, I see a world devout of meaning but with a purpose – a utilitarian purpose. I see that every atom that we lay our hands on is put to use. The trees are planted, aligned and trimmed to efficiently provide greenery to the campus, oxygen to the city and shade for the students. The grass lawns are cut and watered daily to remove the feeling of claustrophobia in an urban environment. The red rock of a San Diego query has been cut into identically shaped blocks and placed on the ground with a repetitive pattern to soothe our obsessive compulsive personalities.

Granted, this is not actually bad, I at times enjoy the look of my campus – it really does remove the feeling of claustrophobia brought out by the city. But it’s the omnipresence of this feeling that bothers me. Everywhere, nature is harvested and given a purpose to serve us humans. National parks are no longer just “nature” – they are locations for people to escape the stressful urban environment in a “pseudo-natural” manner. Fruits, vegetables, and animals are no longer creatures that roam this land, they are our nutritional requirements – we farm them – we use them. And now, humans are taught in schools, colleges and academies to further our evolution – to be used as machines.

All of this is done by man and none of it is done the way nature intended it to be.

Before, there was an anarchic beauty to the world, things that were needed, existed, things that were not, did not.

Is this wrong? I honestly don’t know.

The Consciousness of the Subconscious

I am a shepherd with a growing flock. That young mongrel mutt of mine, the one I’ve spent so long training, he’s ran away. I find myself alone with the little that belongs to me using all my power to keep it. I know he’s just sitting at a distance beaming at me – laughing. He will come back when he’ll be ready, I won’t push him or punish him when he returns.

I herd these sheep – I love my doing. I love that I have nowhere to come home to. Am I lying to myself? Sleeping amongst the stars, the recurring dream wakes me often. It seldom varies in its ambiance. It’s always same, the realization, the feelings; they all surge at me when I wake. Why can’t I think in my dream? Dreams are thoughts after all. I suppose what makes a dream so beautiful is the absence of our obscene associations – that obscene consciousness that is created by society – that which we are born without.

I float on a raft on foggy waters. I paddle hard with my hands. All to naught. I move slowly – no worries of hitting an unseen object – this is the void. The fog is comforting – almost cozy. Sometimes, the fog may disappear entirely in the blink of an eye, and in such, all I see is more stagnant waters. I learn I am in a calm, stale sea with no land in sight – just water, all else is mirages I think to myself. I sometimes see more fog ahead, perhaps it hides another raft... perhaps these waters are infested with wondering souls. An illusion? Perhaps this is a world of likely beings all floating on a desolate planet of pure water. Perhaps we aren’t even beings. Perhaps I’m one of the few that has no cozy fog. Perhaps I know nothing.

Accepting the world outside the fog is not comforting, and worst of all, each time the fog returns, it becomes denser and the coziness weakens. What of a life of such? It’s simple. Every human being will find a niche in any world. They will either meet another raft (continuing to drift, but now in company) or they will find a part of the fog that satisfies them for some absurd reason only logical to them. Some may manage to emerge, close their eyes and drift forever in hopelessness for every rafter knows in his soul the promise of unseen land. That is why we paddle and do not dive off.

Only those who are mad enough to seek land underwater find it – bliss awaits them.

And here I am, just sitting waiting for my dog...

The Gull

Overt your eyes, you gazing flock, for I despise and dread you.
Deceiving eyes attempt to mock the lackings of your stale brew

A fish, a bird, a sea, a dive, you live a seagull’s life
And little interests is to me the sound of your small fife.

My intellect may speak to me but eyes can see, can feel.
Alas I may not prove myself to freedom that I will

And so, today, I gaze at you as you may spread your wings
A flap, another, off you soar to see what morrow brings.

A Voice in the Crowd

The true free living human-being is the one that achieves his dream without depending on someone. -Lao Tzu

This somewhat Nietzschean quote justly expresses my highest aspirations and gives good clues as to why I want to become a permaculture designer and horticulturist - as well as to what my stance about relationships is. Although autonomy is an illusion, developing understanding and control makes me feel alive and whole.

The various musings that have punctuated my waking hours for the last couple years have brought along gentle change. Like Anemoi slowly sculpting a dune, gusts of different intensities have given shape to my worldview, my sense of identity, and a sense of connection with my intuitions. The dune remains at the mercy of yet stronger winds in the future, collecting grains of sand from other dunes, but its body is essentially formed. An everlasting work-in-progress with boundaries in flux but boundaries nonetheless.

My exploration of personality theories, Yoga, Buddhism, a plethora of novels, the works and teachings of various philosophers and spiritual guides, social psychology and the world of pick up artists, as well as plenty of experiences with friends, strangers and family, abroad or home, have given me a sense of what is my "natural mode of interaction" with my environment. I have developed a certain capacity to isolate and listen to my voice within the sounds of the choir.

Despite embracing the concept of an "interrelatedness of all things" and knowing the crucial importance of learning lessons through a wide variety of experiences in order to grow, - many including other people - I am decidedly not a man of dogma, shunning "belonging for the sake of belonging" and prizing autonomy above everything else. I am one of Thoreau's men who hears a different drummer. Schopenhauer's self-heating porcupine. An arrogant prick who nonetheless holds compassion as the ultimate standard. A man doomed to be an apostate, who needs to create his own reality, who runs away from isms, knowing that even when he might be on his own, he will always belong to some abstract community. The somewhat moderate ascetic who shares the Stoicist's suspicion that overindulgence bogs down while peace of mind frees.

No, I do not wish to escape society by seeking refuge in a garden. There is too much to learn from others and to share. What I do wish is a livelihood which is compassionate, wholesome, demanding, frugal, solitary, within nature but where I have a certain amount of control over my environment and can satisfy my desire to constantly learn and grow good sense while playing with variables on a macroscopic scale (variables less dramatic than those of the shepherd Tim). If I do take "the one seat", permaculture horticulture would be a great one.

On the Edge - Climbing in the Alpilles

Allez Daniel ! Encore deux dégaines et t'y es !

The sun is scorching, the limestone scalding the fingertips. The mind is struggling not to overheat and the legs are riddled with prickling scratches, the shoulders frying.

The index and middle fingers are bleeding. Who knew a single phalanx structure could develop so much strength through training? Countless times locking in chalked tiny holds, these worn precious tools had to compensate too often for weaknesses in the rest of the body - for the not always calibrated sense of unwavering balance yoga should bring. The time is now. The body is what it is, the mind is itself - a monkey mind. In the present there is little choice, the veteran phalanges and the powerful arms go back to work.

Five meters above the last quickdraw, there is no room for hesitation. A single mistake and the fall will only be stopped by the ground 10 meters below. Dammit! I thought safety was always complete on a climbing route. What an idiot. Past a certain level threshold it is assumed that you are either an agile daredevil or very experienced.

Too much training indoors and none on cliffs leads to this kind of frightening realization. The physical capacity to comfortably complete 5.11 routes should mean a near-zero risk of falling on easier sections. Because of this, bolts can be spaced up to six or seven meters apart during simpler parts of the route. If you fall while trying to pass the rope through the quickdraw seven meters above the last bolt, you will descend at least 14 meters in full inertia. Unfortunately, you may not be more than 14 meters above the ground when you fail to pass the rope.

Once the third bolt is passed, you are generally "safe". This is when performance peaks. A fall could mean rope burns, cuts, contusions, or worse, a fracture - maybe even traumatic brain injury, but very rarely irreversible damage. Enough fear to remain 100% alert, enough security to express yourself on the rock. What a rush!

The sling is attached to the anchor. Looking down 35 meters, elation and pride are savored. A village in the distance, olive groves, voices from below, fellow climbers like ants climbing on other routes. Time to let go and enjoy a long descent.

Get in my belly! $200 burger?

"The burger's ingredients include the following: Japanese wagyu beef, white truffles, onions fried in Cristal champagne, topped with pink Himalayan rock salt. The burger's ingredients include the following: Japanese wagyu beef, white truffles, onions fried in Cristal champagne, topped with pink Himalayan rock salt. "

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