Category Archives: indecision

On not making any sense

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I think that at times our success-oriented society demands too much rationality and order from all of us. I mean, look, unless you are obsessive compulsive about being neat and orderly, society really frowns on you. I prefer to have a messy desk, a few stacks of books, a pile or two of papers, and a disorderly briefcase. Why? Why wouldn’t everyone prefer to keep things in perfect order all the time? Because the world of thought and imagination is anything but orderly. Too orderly means predictable, and predictable is boring. The human imagination, out of where all of our best creations have emerged, is any extremely unpredictable and messy place, but you have to feed it. If you keep an orderly imagination, it will wither and die from loneliness, feeling abandoned and unkept. Chaos, disorder, fragmentation, non-linearity, and strangeness all feed a healthy imagination which is constantly running away to join the circus. The imagination makes no sense whatsoever, but without it, creativity and the healthy mind are nowhere, boxed and shoved off into whatever closet they have been thrown. Whenever two objects come in contact that never had any business coming into contact, there lurks the opportunity of something new happening, which may be irreverent, irrational, and unintended, but that’s how new ideas come about. The success-oriented society of over-consumerism, abject capitalism, and blind success cannot survive an active imagination that wishes to shed itself of false parameters for success and spurious myths about materialism and money. The creative process, for as nutty and unreasonable that it has to be, is about liberating the spirit, giving flight to dreams, and allowing the individual to shed the heavy yoke of mainstream capitalism and consumerism in favor of spiritual freedom, whatever that might mean to any given individual. We don’t always have to make sense, stay in line, keep our mouths shut, or blindly accept what the powers that be feed us.

On not making any sense

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I think that at times our success-oriented society demands too much rationality and order from all of us. I mean, look, unless you are obsessive compulsive about being neat and orderly, society really frowns on you. I prefer to have a messy desk, a few stacks of books, a pile or two of papers, and a disorderly briefcase. Why? Why wouldn’t everyone prefer to keep things in perfect order all the time? Because the world of thought and imagination is anything but orderly. Too orderly means predictable, and predictable is boring. The human imagination, out of where all of our best creations have emerged, is any extremely unpredictable and messy place, but you have to feed it. If you keep an orderly imagination, it will wither and die from loneliness, feeling abandoned and unkept. Chaos, disorder, fragmentation, non-linearity, and strangeness all feed a healthy imagination which is constantly running away to join the circus. The imagination makes no sense whatsoever, but without it, creativity and the healthy mind are nowhere, boxed and shoved off into whatever closet they have been thrown. Whenever two objects come in contact that never had any business coming into contact, there lurks the opportunity of something new happening, which may be irreverent, irrational, and unintended, but that’s how new ideas come about. The success-oriented society of over-consumerism, abject capitalism, and blind success cannot survive an active imagination that wishes to shed itself of false parameters for success and spurious myths about materialism and money. The creative process, for as nutty and unreasonable that it has to be, is about liberating the spirit, giving flight to dreams, and allowing the individual to shed the heavy yoke of mainstream capitalism and consumerism in favor of spiritual freedom, whatever that might mean to any given individual. We don’t always have to make sense, stay in line, keep our mouths shut, or blindly accept what the powers that be feed us.

On a hot summer night

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Last night I couldn’t get to sleep at all, to coin a phrase. It is summer, course, and this is what summer is about: not sleeping because it’s just too hot–the bed is hot, the room is stifling, and no matter what posture you adopt, it is uncomfortable. Your neck is sweaty and sticky. Your head pounds just enough to keep you awake. You roll onto your side, trying to find that perfect posture that will bring sleep. Nothing. The minutes tick by. Maybe you should get up and read for a bit? Maybe a cold shower? Maybe you should eat something? You ponder all of this and all of a sudden you realize you have been in bed for an hour and you are still awake. The summer insomnia of a hot July night has you in its grasp, and you are helpless to escape. Once you realize what is going on, you not only can’t get to sleep, you now know that you can’t get to sleep. You have become self-aware of the problem, and sleep has sailed away into the night, leaving you on the shore of consciousness with no hope of getting off of that beach anytime soon. You obsess with being awake, which, of course, just aggravates the situation. In the meantime, morning is getting closer and closer, the night is still hot and humid, and now you are the only one still awake except for a few night creatures who wake up after dark. The garbage truck comes by. A few partiers are finally returning home after a long night debauchery and dissidence. You should be asleep. You should be doing your best simulacra of death, but you can’t, and you catch of glimpse of Phoebus nudging up to the horizon.

On a hot summer night

Posted on by

Last night I couldn’t get to sleep at all, to coin a phrase. It is summer, course, and this is what summer is about: not sleeping because it’s just too hot–the bed is hot, the room is stifling, and no matter what posture you adopt, it is uncomfortable. Your neck is sweaty and sticky. Your head pounds just enough to keep you awake. You roll onto your side, trying to find that perfect posture that will bring sleep. Nothing. The minutes tick by. Maybe you should get up and read for a bit? Maybe a cold shower? Maybe you should eat something? You ponder all of this and all of a sudden you realize you have been in bed for an hour and you are still awake. The summer insomnia of a hot July night has you in its grasp, and you are helpless to escape. Once you realize what is going on, you not only can’t get to sleep, you now know that you can’t get to sleep. You have become self-aware of the problem, and sleep has sailed away into the night, leaving you on the shore of consciousness with no hope of getting off of that beach anytime soon. You obsess with being awake, which, of course, just aggravates the situation. In the meantime, morning is getting closer and closer, the night is still hot and humid, and now you are the only one still awake except for a few night creatures who wake up after dark. The garbage truck comes by. A few partiers are finally returning home after a long night debauchery and dissidence. You should be asleep. You should be doing your best simulacra of death, but you can’t, and you catch of glimpse of Phoebus nudging up to the horizon.

On panic

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Often times, in the middle of a crisis–the planet is about to be destroyed right out from under you, for example–it is too easy to just panic and lose one’s head, do something stupid. One should never let the adrenaline decide anything for you. Panic is the worst thing there is for problem solving because it immediately blinds you to all possible solutions. I find panic is worse when I feel out-of-control, which is most of the time, but panic also encourages you to think that you have control at all. Thinking you are in control is the worst kind of illusion under which you might operate, and panic arises out of the illusion that you can control anything at all. Most all panic can be avoided if we can just keep our whits about us, breath deeply, sip a cold beverage, and, in most cases, just do nothing at all. Decisions made in haste under panic conditions are almost always bad decisions. I would venture to guess that almost anything done in panic should never have been done at all. In fact, most of the time, doing nothing is the best thing to do. Put off your decision, sleep on it, give it some time to mature, let it disappear on its own, or let it resolve itself with no intervention on your part at all. Panicking is for unexperienced amateurs who really don’t understand the wisdom of time and space, and that giving yourself both will often lead to a lucid and less emotional solution that is good for everyone. Most of the things in life that lead to panic are usually the intranscendent trivia that have nothing to do with anything important at all. In fact, most of the stuff that makes us panic can very often be ignored altogether. The second you start to rush things, everything goes badly very quickly.

On panic

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Often times, in the middle of a crisis–the planet is about to be destroyed right out from under you, for example–it is too easy to just panic and lose one’s head, do something stupid. One should never let the adrenaline decide anything for you. Panic is the worst thing there is for problem solving because it immediately blinds you to all possible solutions. I find panic is worse when I feel out-of-control, which is most of the time, but panic also encourages you to think that you have control at all. Thinking you are in control is the worst kind of illusion under which you might operate, and panic arises out of the illusion that you can control anything at all. Most all panic can be avoided if we can just keep our whits about us, breath deeply, sip a cold beverage, and, in most cases, just do nothing at all. Decisions made in haste under panic conditions are almost always bad decisions. I would venture to guess that almost anything done in panic should never have been done at all. In fact, most of the time, doing nothing is the best thing to do. Put off your decision, sleep on it, give it some time to mature, let it disappear on its own, or let it resolve itself with no intervention on your part at all. Panicking is for unexperienced amateurs who really don’t understand the wisdom of time and space, and that giving yourself both will often lead to a lucid and less emotional solution that is good for everyone. Most of the things in life that lead to panic are usually the intranscendent trivia that have nothing to do with anything important at all. In fact, most of the stuff that makes us panic can very often be ignored altogether. The second you start to rush things, everything goes badly very quickly.

On bookstores

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I’m always up for going into the next bookstore. I’ve been addicted to books my whole life, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. I don’t necessarily need to be looking for any particular book. I am always content with just browsing through the novels, perusing the non-fiction, rejecting any and all self-help books (none of them work anyway). Hard cover, soft cover, trade paperbacks, I don’t particularly care as long as the whole book is there. Old, new, books are always a new adventure, even when they are old. I can read titles, leaf through random volumes, dawdle over a well-written preface, linger over an undiscovered novel that I had no idea existed at all. I am capricious, following no line of logic or organized pattern of searching. Real discovery occurs when you break-out of pre-established lines of thought or prejudice, adopting a chaotic, non-linear anti-process for discovering new titles. Bookstores, especially independent bookstores, or even better, used bookstores, are a savage jungle of titles, authors, and narratives, meta and other. Upon entering a bookstore I don’t always have an objective in mind, and I have no problem with walking out empty-handed. At this point in my life, I have enough books to serve me for a good long time, and some books need to be left behind for future reading endeavors. Yet, you never know when you might come across something new (or old) that really speaks to you. You have to be open to everything when you walk into a bookstore.

On bookstores

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I’m always up for going into the next bookstore. I’ve been addicted to books my whole life, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. I don’t necessarily need to be looking for any particular book. I am always content with just browsing through the novels, perusing the non-fiction, rejecting any and all self-help books (none of them work anyway). Hard cover, soft cover, trade paperbacks, I don’t particularly care as long as the whole book is there. Old, new, books are always a new adventure, even when they are old. I can read titles, leaf through random volumes, dawdle over a well-written preface, linger over an undiscovered novel that I had no idea existed at all. I am capricious, following no line of logic or organized pattern of searching. Real discovery occurs when you break-out of pre-established lines of thought or prejudice, adopting a chaotic, non-linear anti-process for discovering new titles. Bookstores, especially independent bookstores, or even better, used bookstores, are a savage jungle of titles, authors, and narratives, meta and other. Upon entering a bookstore I don’t always have an objective in mind, and I have no problem with walking out empty-handed. At this point in my life, I have enough books to serve me for a good long time, and some books need to be left behind for future reading endeavors. Yet, you never know when you might come across something new (or old) that really speaks to you. You have to be open to everything when you walk into a bookstore.

On being

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Sometimes just being seems so simple, but there other times when being seems paradoxically hard. I find that daily heat of summer in Texas to be both simple and complex: one really doesn’t need to do much more than drink water and stay in the shade in order to get by, but is there more to life than just getting by? The question that poets and philosophers have wrestled with since there have been poets and philosophers is both complex and simple, but it also might be irrelevant. Life often has the meaning that we are willing to give it. Most of the universe seems to be dedicated to the simplification of complex systems, of dissipating energy, of searching for equilibrium, all of which seems to run contrary to the hopes and dreams of most people, who are busy building castles in the air, planning for the future, stashing away a pile of nuts for winter, hoping that things will get better, all the while forgetting about the importance of being in the here and now. Perhaps being is more a state of mind than it is a physical action or a series of objects. As Voyager 1 drifts out of the Terran solar system, one wonders about both the expanse that makes up our universe and the loneliness of an ancient computer that continues to power the middle-aged satellite, which still listens to radio commands that take over seventeen hours to reach it. Sometime in the future, around 2024, its nuclear power will run out of fuel and the lights will go out, but it will continue to drift, quietly through the vast black vacuum of space. The satellites mission was simple, and its very existence unquestioned. It has no fear of its end, no consciousness or self-awareness to complicate its mission. People are not satellites, fairly unaware of their futures, completely clueless about whether anything they are doing is right or correct. We second guess or plans, misunderstand our motives, trapped by ambiguity, confused by chaos, blinded by prejudice, bias, and relativism. Yet, that is the paradox of being. The world is not simple or easy to understand. Multiple correct answers to simple questions make navigating life a much more complex proposition than just a simple walk through a park. Medieval writers often compared life to a pilgrim’s journey to some holy site. I think that this was just so much wishful thinking on their part while they tried to ignore the fragmented, chaotic, non-linear nature of daily life. We wish our lives could be a simple as Voyager 1, but we all know deep down in our hearts that our dreams and desires complicate our lives in ways which are too innumerable to list here. Happiness seems elusive, solitude clings to us like an errant shadow, and we often fail to live up to any of our own expectations. We have met the enemy and he is us, as Pogo once said. Yet the human heart has a stamina that often appears superhuman. Even in the most mind-boggling disasters and tragedy, people are often shown, tears on their faces, explaining how they are going to start over, rebuild, keep going, even when their dreams have been destroyed by a raging flood or catastrophic storm. Where does this capacity for optimism come from? When the simple act of being seems nigh on impossible, people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and begin again. Seems simple enough.

On being

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Sometimes just being seems so simple, but there other times when being seems paradoxically hard. I find that daily heat of summer in Texas to be both simple and complex: one really doesn’t need to do much more than drink water and stay in the shade in order to get by, but is there more to life than just getting by? The question that poets and philosophers have wrestled with since there have been poets and philosophers is both complex and simple, but it also might be irrelevant. Life often has the meaning that we are willing to give it. Most of the universe seems to be dedicated to the simplification of complex systems, of dissipating energy, of searching for equilibrium, all of which seems to run contrary to the hopes and dreams of most people, who are busy building castles in the air, planning for the future, stashing away a pile of nuts for winter, hoping that things will get better, all the while forgetting about the importance of being in the here and now. Perhaps being is more a state of mind than it is a physical action or a series of objects. As Voyager 1 drifts out of the Terran solar system, one wonders about both the expanse that makes up our universe and the loneliness of an ancient computer that continues to power the middle-aged satellite, which still listens to radio commands that take over seventeen hours to reach it. Sometime in the future, around 2024, its nuclear power will run out of fuel and the lights will go out, but it will continue to drift, quietly through the vast black vacuum of space. The satellites mission was simple, and its very existence unquestioned. It has no fear of its end, no consciousness or self-awareness to complicate its mission. People are not satellites, fairly unaware of their futures, completely clueless about whether anything they are doing is right or correct. We second guess or plans, misunderstand our motives, trapped by ambiguity, confused by chaos, blinded by prejudice, bias, and relativism. Yet, that is the paradox of being. The world is not simple or easy to understand. Multiple correct answers to simple questions make navigating life a much more complex proposition than just a simple walk through a park. Medieval writers often compared life to a pilgrim’s journey to some holy site. I think that this was just so much wishful thinking on their part while they tried to ignore the fragmented, chaotic, non-linear nature of daily life. We wish our lives could be a simple as Voyager 1, but we all know deep down in our hearts that our dreams and desires complicate our lives in ways which are too innumerable to list here. Happiness seems elusive, solitude clings to us like an errant shadow, and we often fail to live up to any of our own expectations. We have met the enemy and he is us, as Pogo once said. Yet the human heart has a stamina that often appears superhuman. Even in the most mind-boggling disasters and tragedy, people are often shown, tears on their faces, explaining how they are going to start over, rebuild, keep going, even when their dreams have been destroyed by a raging flood or catastrophic storm. Where does this capacity for optimism come from? When the simple act of being seems nigh on impossible, people pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and begin again. Seems simple enough.