A New New Beginning...?

Another year rolled by. Another symbolic opportunity to reflect, reassess, remember, rethink. OR do none of that.

I am pretty calm about there being no “meaning”, or rather “meaning” is the wrong perspective, the wrong question, the wrong word. There is still plenty to consider and think about in the world, but assigning meaning is essentially assigning worth. And figuring out “worth” of any thing or person requires adopting a host of preconceptions and premises, often without even knowing it.

Not that there aren’t preferences and opinions. I may be fooling myself and talking in circles to myself, in that, how can I think some ways of doing and thinking are better or worse but still think I am not applying value to that. As I write it, I guess we can debate ways of doing things, but any value is tentative or provisional, in that we are just doing the best we can since there is no galactic rule book we can follow..

Yeah, that is it…I am more at peace with the uncertainty of it all.

I am not a rigorous thinker but in trying to figure things out I feel my current world view is this accepting, I still can’t do embrace of, uncertainty. And part of that I credit to my late discovery of Erich Fromm in Escape From Freedom where he outlines how people having trouble dealing with uncertainty (which is a side effect, or maybe and inherent part of Freedom).

Fleeing freedom/uncertainty people dive into the arms of authoritarianism and anything that promises “certainty”. This is why our current melding of religion and authoritarianism meshes so easily. The theology is actually secondary to the certainy of the religion, like political philosophy is secondary to confidence of authoritarians.

Of course why the rich power brokers full of security and confidence go for all that is a whole 'nuther can of crazy worms.

Anyway, those of the kind of thoughts bouncing around my noggin this blog anniversary

And I finish with a quote from another one of my inspirations, Terry Prachett..

“But is all this true?” Said Brutha.
Didactylos shrugged. “Could be. Could be. We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends toward guesswork.”
“You mean you don’t know it’s true?” Said Brutha
I think it might be,” said Didactylos. “I could be wrong. Not being certain is what being a philosopher is all about.” Pg 187

And another quote from another of my sources

Reporter: Professor Habito, what is the meaning of life?
Ruben Habito: …There is no “meaning of life” apart from living it, breath by breath, moment by moment, one day at a time, grateful for the mystery, the miracle, the wonder of it all.
Ruben Habito: By Excellence Reporter on July 16, 2015

https://excellencereporter.com/2015/07/16/ruben-habito-on-the-meaning-of-life/

I Found My Guy!!!

“Free man is by necessity insecure; thinking man by necessity uncertain.”
― Erich Fromm

I mentioned him before but this quote, from "the Sane Society", that I just found today is the fulcrum of all my thinking balances. For how we veiw the world balences on this point all humans live whether they know it or not.

Or rather from this truth flows all human psychology, politics, and love. So one can take this begining and deny it and say there IS certainty or one can live honestly.

The blog post where I try to drain Meaning of MEANING

From my first post form 2007, with some editing...

Tomorrow morning I wake up for the first time as a 50 year old man.
Statistically I have 25 years to live ( more or less). So what do I do with those 25 years? …
And if I don't or can't, does that mean I failed?
Is life about finding meaning?
Is life about not failing?
Must I find meaning?
If not that, then what?

OK. that was 14 years ago. WOW! (meaning now statistically I have 11 years to live)

This is only my third post this year. Which is fine, because I now use it as a place for me to put things I want to put somewhere. And I have not felt the need to say anything to my self, or to any unlikely passerby.

BUT, how would I phrase a new first blog post now?

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

The Red Wheelbarrow
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

You can Google that poem and find all sorts of meaning. And Williams may have had some explicit “meaning” in mind, but I don’t know and don’t care. I take the poem as an a song of experience. It could have been anything, a box and not a wheel barrow, a dog and not chickens...none of that "matters". What matters is accepting the experience, the immediate experience that prompted that poem. A reminder that wherever you are, whatever you see, it ALL “depends so much”

NOT what caused the wheel barrow to be there or what will happen to the chickens….PAY ATTENTION to the world NOW. So much depends because everything in front of us is NOW and we are all part of it NOW. PAY ATTENTION!

What does it mean?
What is the meaning of life?
To diagram a moment or a life like diagraming a sentence looking to find “meaning” is to conceptualize that which cannot fit into a concept. So give thanks that we are all in this together. EVEN if we all irritate the hell out of each other...give thanks. EVEN if we have not been the best version of ourselves, give thanks for this moment we communally experience all over the world. For this moment let go of the past and let thoughts of the future float away, they are fictions that distract us from living this moment.

It came over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once and the tears started into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot....He knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed down a second time
Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky

That is how I would start a new blog.

Another Marker is Passed

Birthday yesterday

Now 63
Wow 63
Take stock? Maybe sell stock?

I will try to throw out my half-assed world view in posts to come. If anybody makes a virtual stumble and lands here, these thoughts are only worth the virtual paper they are written on.

To everybody, Be Well

Time Again for a New New Beginning

Well, another birthday and another year closer to death. Now on the 11th year of this erratic blog. I suppose there are still other blogs out there but you just don’t hear that much about them anymore. So much easier just to tweet I guess.

Here is my 11th year status check...

So I’ve been reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari after listening to him interviewed on Russell Brand’s podcast. Between the podcast and what I have read so far I gather one of his main points is that the thing that makes us homo sapiens so successful is that humanity can take collective actions because all the things that motivate such cooperation is the use for “fictions”. Like a legal fiction, as in corporations are people, to the very notion of nations and states and corporations, and a bunch more. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20873740-sapiens

I don’t want to go into what may be wrong or right about his thoughts, but just provisionally accept it as true. Interestingly it echos the stuff Nathan Gill was saying with his “non duality” stuff. Like the bit where there is no history or future, only “NOW” only “being” (https://youtu.be/9Wo99sa8C4Q). Even though we spend so much time thinking about what we did wrong, or good, in the past, or so much worrying about what we will do and what we might do, those are all just stories we tell ourselves as we live..NOW. We carry all of that with us at each present moment. But really we are already living in the NOW! We are already enlightened and it would be clear if we could just drop the stories that drown out our true vision. Really it is these stories that are the internal Virtual Reality goggles that we wear in our brain.

So both past and future are fictions of a sort. Yes stuff happened and will happen and there are consequences to actions and karma is a bitch, what goes around comes around, all that kind of thing. BUT...LIFE LIVED happens now! And it is only because we carry these stories along with us to each present moment that these fictions (stories) have such power. If we could let go of these stories, assholes could stop being assholes at once, but those stories overpower us.

So the thing that makes us modern humans are the stories we tell ourselves. The good and the bad of it is that we live by and cannot escape this story telling, it is what makes us human (and that is not an all good thing).

Some of the stories are horrible and enduring, as exemplified by Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2059048703

Or how we as a people can’t deal with Climate Change… explained in Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1350742534 where basically climate deniers have more effective stories that take advantage of humans natural short shortsightedness.

How financial wizardry rules and ruins the world as told in I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1721638422 it only works because of the stories bankers tell themselves.

And of course our our brains are wired to react to stories and not actual evidence…

But against all this negativity is the idea that there is also a strain of compassion and empathy buried in our DNA. Part of which I get from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans de Waal. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1481801657 Like there are situations that draw out empathy in the great apes and we humans can also be drawn into compassion IF we work to encourage those situation in our society. IF we did that of course.

AND there is science behind it like in studies of Vagus nerve where compassion starts BEFORE the brain so we feel compassion first and the impulse is then sent to the brain after that. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/forget-survival-of-the-fittest/ .

Sooooo...humans have both an impulse to disorder but also a tendency toward cooperation and compassion and it is up to ourselves to construct a society that encourages the good over bad...IF we wanted to, but mostly we don’t.

But the galling thing is that all the suffering is simply driven by dumb stories.

End part 1.

10 Years of Beginning

10 years of blogging. 10 years of thinking of what to do in the remaining years I have.

So is it a failure if all the time spent in your later living is just "thinking about" how to spend your later life?

My current reasoning is that no, but not because thinking about what to do is just as ok as doing. But rather the whole concept of "failure" and "success" are arbitrary, decided either by cultural norms or individual opinions. There is no database of usefulness to consult in assaying the success or failure of a person or a life. In fact doing nothing is more pure than doing something dictated by some outside conception. So it is honestly I value more than results.

Granted, nobody else may agree that what I see as honest is actually true, especially since I doubt the very idea of certainty, even thought this notion implies I am certain about it. Nonetheless I trudge on one absurd step after another.

Will there be more posts?

Yet another new beginning

Another birthday. That makes it seven years of blogging. And I saw on the internet that blogging is dead now, so I hope it doesn’t apply to me.

So what does it mean? You know I may be old enough that I will chuck the whole “meaning” thing anyway. For some reason now the meaning of "meaning" just doesn't seem as important as it once did.

I guess I decided to go back to my roots, so tonight I went back to Aikido after being away for more than a year and a half. Sort of a birthday gift to myself.

It physically took a lot out of me, since I am older, fatter and lazier than ever. But if you excuse a short break I took, I made it through the class. As of now I am planning to return.

Reflections of Wabi-sabi (侘寂)*

Well, that only lasted a week (See previous posting).

But the upside is instead of lethargy, indulgence and general apathy, I only suffer from excessive laziness.

The photo is from a Kodak Brownie Bull's-Eye Camera dated from the mid 1950's it seems sunlight manages to seep in from some undetermined part in the camera. I should have known the missing screws on the front faceplate might cause a problem.

But I embrace this world of non-perfection even as I try to seek out the best, the most beautiful (or ugly) or just interesting photo, book, adventure...So that said, here is me reflected in the window while taking a picture of a cat. Notice the light leaks at top and the odd bowed nature of the window frame. I don't know if that is the cameras or the way I scanned the negative. But in this case I think the imperfections make it a much more interesting image.

If I were a film maker I would end up in the Ed Wood camp rather than the Martin Scorsese club. But honestly I am OK with that, just as long as I don't end up in the Stephen Spielberg zone.

---

*Wabi-sabi (侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. I think I have used this point before, but it seems even more relevant now.


More pics

A New, Newer, Newest Beginning

I hear-by declare a new, newer, newest beginning. I will reverse this trend of lethargy, indulgence and general apathy. Yes the world is doomed. I am sure it will end badly. But hey, what are you going to do.

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that existence is suffering, a sort of Asian version of original sin. And I kind of agree with both east and west versions.

But an answer by way of an analogy may be the advice for practitioners of Zen meditation. You are told that while sitting there following your breath, or breathing a phrase, mantra or simply “just sitting”, if a thought arises, don't worry that your mind wondered into concepts. Just note it and go back to your breath. Neither seek these diversions out, nor chase after them, just breathe.

So too, as we see ample examples of the ineluctable flawed nature of the world, neither freak out at its obviousness and focus on it, nor be pulled into intelectual despair. Return to the breathe. Return to the now.

My hope is that by trying to pursue a sort of walking, driving, eating, meditation, this mindfulness will result in less food, drink and laziness. Well that is the plan.

I started this newest way by riding around the lake this morning and taking some pictures with a possibly flawed old camera. Basically I will take whatever flawed tools I have (physical or psychological) and just do what I can at the moment.

I didn't note the anniversary of this blog at the beginning of the month, so I guess this is a belated recognition. 6 years older and maybe none the wiser, but as with the coming apocalypse, hey what are you gonna do?

A Quiet New Beginning or Did Johnny Cash Have A Bucket List?

A quiet birthday and noting I am at 4 years of blogging. No bucket list this time, although I can think of things I'd like to do, but no lists.

Alone after work just some bread, goat cheese, tomatoes and olive oil, all with some Sicilian wine. Then I watched The Man Who Wasn't There . After that, surf the net while listening to Beethoven piano sonatas (prompted by a plot point in the movie)

In once sense the movie is cliched, like Stewie on Family talkng to Brian about writing his novel

How you uh, how you comin' on that novel you're working on? Huh?
Gotta a big, uh, big stack of papers there? Gotta, gotta nice litte story you're working on there? Your big novel you've been working on for 3 years? Huh?
Gotta, gotta compelling protaganist? Yeah?
Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh?
Gotta story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh?...
Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative?
Beginning, middle, and end?
Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends?
At the end your main character is richer from the experience?
Yeah? Yeah?

OK not that cliched...but still after the early character setup you could kinda see how it would end, at least emotionally...however it all works,

The thing is...is it a sad ending? Or is the peace he feels at the end a validation of his life? Maybe that is the way we will all be at the end, an uncertain matter of debate.

I've been listening to A Bridge Over Troubled Waters, this past week and I just found this Johnny Cash version of the Title song which I think was recorded with Fiona Apple the year before he died. And he sounds like its near the end. Powerful, but near the end.

Did Johnny Cash Have A Bucket List?

A New New Beginning

Another Blog Anniversary

I started in June of 2007, and three years later it is still here if a little more condensed and infrequent.

I thought of offering up my latests hair-brained scheme of a one year plan to learn Italian and a my strategy of contained gluttony. But the motivation cycle is in a downturn so I'll not mention either of those.

I had a blog post in mind from Aikido class last night, but the power seemed to short out of that grid.

Instead all I have now is an attraction to depressing quotes...

“Religious fundamentalists see themselves as having remedies for the maladies of the modern world. In reality they are symptoms of the disease they pretend to cure. They hope to recover the unreflective faith of traditional cultures, but this is a peculiarly modern fantasy. We cannot believe as we please; our beliefs are traces left by our unchosen lives. A view of the world is not something that can be conjured up as and when we please.”


“Darwinian theory tells us that an interest in truth is not needed for survival or reproduction. More often it is a disadvantage.”

“Science has been used to support the conceit that humans are unlike all other animals in their ability to understand th world. In fact, its supreme value maybe in showing that the world humans are programmed to perceive is a chimera.”

from Straw Dogs by John Gray (not the men are from mars John Gray)

A Hazy Shade

Time, time, time, see whats become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
-P. Simon

Well...it has been two years since I started blogging and I have no conclusions about the whole affair.

I feel the premise is still appropriate in that we have a finite time alive and one might reasonably think it appropriate to ponder how to spend the remaining time one has. Especially if the odds are that you are already well past the the midpoint of life and maybe into the last quarter.

That said, I look back on those halcyon days just after my 50th birthday and wonder how I could be so naive. How strange I thought I could find the answers to life by simply getting some new hobbies. Even though I may continue on in these interests I'm taking them off the mast head of this publication

But even now I must admit I don't know that it is such a bad idea to spend your time investigating things you are interested in. BUT interests wane and energy fades so you are left with nothing. I am like a ping pong game, for suddenly I'm on the other side of the table and thing “you enjoy a good book and a nice glass of wine, why not simply uncork, read a book and relax."

In the depths of my mind, my western view of time ticks its way toward me...time..time, time...see what's become of me.



Maybe we will meet again some sunny day; Like tomorrow perhaps.

A New New Beginning

Scenes from a mall
-------------
Tomorrow is another birthday, my one year blog anniversary.

A year ago tonight I blogged…

“Statistically I have 25 years to live ( more or less). So what do I do with those 25 years?”

Then the next day I posted…

… I earlier decided to consciously focus on 3 parts of my life and if I don't set actual goals at least try to track my progress as I pursue these interest.

1. Practice Aikido
2. Make a 2D computer animation short
3. Learn Spanish with Spanish Language software

Ok, the animation has pretty much stopped and may be usurped by my new motorcycle obsession. I still have not given up on Spanish, but strangely after getting back from Spain where I loved any opportunity to speak a little Spanish (“Café con leche por favor”) I have not studied once.

Aikido, I’m still at and still plan to keep at, with a Zen like acceptance of my own ineptitude. If I say it that way incompetence has a much better spin.

So, where do I stand? I am keeping to my crude statistic of dying at 75, which I will gladly ignore if I turn 76+.

Even though I know it means nothing, the pressure is on. What to do with the remaining 24 years? I’ll ponder it a bit more and post any results I discover.

By the way, I’m in Bellevue, WA tonight and DAMN this is a beautiful place. Trees and hills, here they are as common as dirt.

The picture doesn’t show the mountains but it has some trees that are more impressive in person. This was the view as I went into a shopping mall to get to a Starbucks.

A New Beginning?

I did in fact wake up this morning, so I have now lived half of a century.

In anticipation of this somewhat arbitrary milestone I earlier decided to consciously focus on 3 parts of my life and if I don't set actual goals at least try to track my progress as I pursue these interest.

1. Practice Aikido
2. Make a 2D computer animation short
3. Learn Spanish with Spanish Language software

1. I have been practicing Aikido for not quite 1 and 1/2 years and passed my first test (5th Kyu). I am NOT a natural and I think in my 50 years I've become a little uptight and have a problem relaxing. Being relaxed is important to Aikido techniques so that is a struggle

2. After my disappointment with Toon Boom Studio Express I purchased Anime Studio Pro and so far I think it is the application that matches my animation goals and skills. But it will be a long haul and I can only hope that in less than a year I will have the video on YouTube that I now see in my head.

3. I've studied Spanish a bit before over the last 30 years and even spent 2 months in a language school in Mexico. but that was over 25 years ago and IF I had really used Spanish back in 1990 when I returned to Texas, I might have actually developed some ability.

But I did not and now I am practically back to "square one". (I wonder what the Spanish equivalent to that is?)

I spent the money and purchased Level 1 and 2 of Rosseta Stone Spanish Latin America Edition.

I don't know it that was a wise decision, but I do know I don't have to the time to take classes.

---

I hope to use this blog to motivate myself and not simply sit back and drink wonderful cheap wine and watch TV for the next 25 years.

A Virtual Weltanschauung

Tomorrow morning I wake up for the first time as a 50 year old man.

Statistically I have 25 years to live ( more or less). So what do I do with those 25 years?

Do I make a list? Is that what this business of living is about?

Do I study philosophy or dive into religion? Must I find meaning?

And if I don't or can't, does that mean I failed? Is life about finding meaning? Is life about not failing?

If not that, then what?