Well, you know your sleep schedule is a little out of wack when you are making yourself a chicken, avocado, sheep's cheese omelet at a quarter to 2 in the morning. In my defense, I have been attempting to structure my days in a more normal fashion. Saturday was probably my most successful attempt. I got up around 9, took a shower, gave myself a haircut, and went for a long bikeride. But now it is freezing outside again, which has me feeling vaguely angry at the weather, or nature, or some other uncontrollable force, which is very unlike me. It feels like the universe owes me some perfect sunny days, and it had better start coughing them up. Perhaps, after such a bad winter, I just started telling myself that everything would be perfect with the onset of spring and warm weather, which of course is not how things function.
This morning I was trying to think up some cheap and easy meals to help save money. I came up with a 15 minute meal that is quite good, amazingly filling, and costs less than $2. I just cooked some buckwheat and black beans, then added coconut oil, seasoned salt, pepper and garlic powder. It had a wonderfully rich and earthy flavor and kept me full right up until dinner, which is saying a lot, because most of the veggie meals that I eat don't leave me feeling full at all, even after I eat several meals worth of them.
I had to make one of those "where's my money" phonecalls today to an architect who owes me from a job I did a month ago, and he forwarded me to his answering machine, which is not a good sign, hopefully he is just on vacation or something, and I left a long voicemail asking if he had gotten my invoice. I am hoping that since I spent 3 months painting in his sister's house, he will have to pay up eventually knowing that I will have to be doing touchups for her for years to come. Who knows though. I have never understood people.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Warm days ahead
Tomorrow is supposed to be a high of 73! Its been nice to be able to get out on my bike a little finally, and I have been counting on the warm weather and the sun to be what lifts this rather dazed and empty feeling that has settled over the last couple weeks. My brother and I scrubbed the floors of the apartment today, and I organized our paint and tool supply room, which used to be a third bedroom.
My resolve to stick to challenging literature and non-fiction slipped for two days, and I breezed through a couple popular fiction novels whose names I shall not embarrass myself with at the moment. Admittedly, they did more to lift my spirits than than anything else I have been reading lately. In keeping with the spirit of my blog though, I figured it would be best to make note of lost time. I am also going to have to try to break my habit of having my bicycle trips always end up at a cafe, because I am broke. A thermos of iced tea will probably be a good solution.
My resolve to stick to challenging literature and non-fiction slipped for two days, and I breezed through a couple popular fiction novels whose names I shall not embarrass myself with at the moment. Admittedly, they did more to lift my spirits than than anything else I have been reading lately. In keeping with the spirit of my blog though, I figured it would be best to make note of lost time. I am also going to have to try to break my habit of having my bicycle trips always end up at a cafe, because I am broke. A thermos of iced tea will probably be a good solution.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Time without Distractions
I was reading a little about nature artists/writers and I came across some writing by Hannah Hinchman about attention, meditation, and creation. It struck a nerve as I had just been writing to myself last night about how after two weeks of voluntarily depriving myself of my usual distractions and entertainment, being without work, and of course being out of a relationship, time had begun to slide together and leaving me in an odd state of mind. She writes:
"To follow the actual workings of attention when it thinks it isn't being watched, I have been willing to go into dark places... Stepping outside the comfortable padding of books, music, news, movies, magazines, conversations, all the reassuring attention absorbers, is a necessary act of exposure. In fact, removing all the padding must be one of our deepest fears, judging by the enormous amount of ingenuity we've employed over the centuries to keep from doing it. The art of making something from nothing is our greatest virtue, and we can't and shouldn't try to thwart it..."
I am sure there are healthier things I could have passed a couple weeks doing, besides sitting around reading, and she was probably talking more about immersing ones-self in solitary outdoor experience as a form of meditation, but warm times are ahead, and I am sure I will find plenty of time for that.
Another reason the quote popped out was, of course, The term 'making something from nothing' which made me think of Sartre, as this is very close to his definition of consciousness.
Sartre writes:
"Thus the rise of man in the midst of being which "invests" him causes a world to be discovered. But the essential and primordial moment of this rise is the negation. Man is the being through whom nothingness comes into the world."
That is, the universe is not lacking in its being, it simply Is. Man creates nothingness, and only consciousness can bring about nothingness, yet without it, no act of perception/consciousness could take place, for in every object we perceive, there is simultaneously an understanding that the object might otherwise Not exist. So, in a way consciousness simultaneously creates an alternate beingness (the percieved world) and creates nothingness.
As he puts it:
"from the very fact that we presume that an Existent can always be revealed as nothing, every question supposes that we realize a nihilating withdrawal in relation to the given, which becomes a simple presentation, fluctuating between being and nothingness. It is essential therefore that the questioner have the permanent posibility of dissociating himself from the causal series which constitutes being, and which can produce only being... and that he nihilates himself in relation to the thing questioned by wrenching himself from being in order to be able to bring out of himself the possibility of non-being. Thus, in posing a question, a certain negative element is introduced into the world. We see nothingness making the world iridescent, casting a shimmer over things."
Hah, Hannah also had a great quote about her cats:
A room without a couple of cats would be a deadly room. Cats produce soothing brain-waves, in much the same way that plants give off oxygen.
"To follow the actual workings of attention when it thinks it isn't being watched, I have been willing to go into dark places... Stepping outside the comfortable padding of books, music, news, movies, magazines, conversations, all the reassuring attention absorbers, is a necessary act of exposure. In fact, removing all the padding must be one of our deepest fears, judging by the enormous amount of ingenuity we've employed over the centuries to keep from doing it. The art of making something from nothing is our greatest virtue, and we can't and shouldn't try to thwart it..."
I am sure there are healthier things I could have passed a couple weeks doing, besides sitting around reading, and she was probably talking more about immersing ones-self in solitary outdoor experience as a form of meditation, but warm times are ahead, and I am sure I will find plenty of time for that.
Another reason the quote popped out was, of course, The term 'making something from nothing' which made me think of Sartre, as this is very close to his definition of consciousness.
Sartre writes:
"Thus the rise of man in the midst of being which "invests" him causes a world to be discovered. But the essential and primordial moment of this rise is the negation. Man is the being through whom nothingness comes into the world."
That is, the universe is not lacking in its being, it simply Is. Man creates nothingness, and only consciousness can bring about nothingness, yet without it, no act of perception/consciousness could take place, for in every object we perceive, there is simultaneously an understanding that the object might otherwise Not exist. So, in a way consciousness simultaneously creates an alternate beingness (the percieved world) and creates nothingness.
As he puts it:
"from the very fact that we presume that an Existent can always be revealed as nothing, every question supposes that we realize a nihilating withdrawal in relation to the given, which becomes a simple presentation, fluctuating between being and nothingness. It is essential therefore that the questioner have the permanent posibility of dissociating himself from the causal series which constitutes being, and which can produce only being... and that he nihilates himself in relation to the thing questioned by wrenching himself from being in order to be able to bring out of himself the possibility of non-being. Thus, in posing a question, a certain negative element is introduced into the world. We see nothingness making the world iridescent, casting a shimmer over things."
Hah, Hannah also had a great quote about her cats:
A room without a couple of cats would be a deadly room. Cats produce soothing brain-waves, in much the same way that plants give off oxygen.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Sartre
Ok, I seriously love Sartre. I haven't been able to put him down. I had been put off of philosophy for some time because from what I have read about many of the key authors, we just wouldn't get along... but I absolutely LOVE Sartre. He is a very strict rational atheist, but somehow his writing crosses over into the realm of transcendental mysticism.
From what I have tried to understand so far, consciousness is nothingness, just past and present perceptions of our own being and that which is around us, but our 'Self' itself is nothingness and each human strives to reconcile the true void within themselves (i.e. the fact that the moment is only the act of perception, and the future is made up of the unattainable need to become one with a reality which is foreign to our consciousness). We want to become Something, to become Real, but consciousness is "Translucent" and ever changing. We will never know our true selves, just our ego at any given time, which is the nexus between all our past and present conscious perceptions. We choose to be a slave to this ego we have created, even though we know our consciousness is completely free from the constraints that the ego places upon it, we are capable of any action, but we confine ourselves in the hopes of better knowing ourselves. Knowing our ego is not knowing ourselves though, and when we delve deeper, we will never encounter consciousness, the nothingness, because it exists outside of ourselves, it is simply an act of perception. We can feel our own foreignness whenever someone looks at us, and we are forced to acknowledge ourselves as an "other."
In short Sartre says that humankind's search of an unreachable goal is hardwired into our existence. Consciousness creates a void and we feel that emptiness within ourselves. We forever search for the Self that we will never truly possess.
From what I have tried to understand so far, consciousness is nothingness, just past and present perceptions of our own being and that which is around us, but our 'Self' itself is nothingness and each human strives to reconcile the true void within themselves (i.e. the fact that the moment is only the act of perception, and the future is made up of the unattainable need to become one with a reality which is foreign to our consciousness). We want to become Something, to become Real, but consciousness is "Translucent" and ever changing. We will never know our true selves, just our ego at any given time, which is the nexus between all our past and present conscious perceptions. We choose to be a slave to this ego we have created, even though we know our consciousness is completely free from the constraints that the ego places upon it, we are capable of any action, but we confine ourselves in the hopes of better knowing ourselves. Knowing our ego is not knowing ourselves though, and when we delve deeper, we will never encounter consciousness, the nothingness, because it exists outside of ourselves, it is simply an act of perception. We can feel our own foreignness whenever someone looks at us, and we are forced to acknowledge ourselves as an "other."
In short Sartre says that humankind's search of an unreachable goal is hardwired into our existence. Consciousness creates a void and we feel that emptiness within ourselves. We forever search for the Self that we will never truly possess.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Serendipity
Well, I just decided to dive into a personal study of philosophy that I had always wanted to find the time to get around to. A friend suggested that I start with Sartre's Being and Nothingness, and that it had really changed their life... now here is the strange little piece of serendipity... I walked to my bookshelf thinking, "I will have to order this book," and I reached for what I thought was a book about Sartre and understanding his writings, but instead, what I was holding in my hand was Sartre, Being and Nothingness. Now, I only have about 20 books on my to-read shelf, so one would think that I would know what those books were. It took me a while to remember that one of Anna's roommates let us go through her goodwill-book box and that was my choice, not knowing what it was. Anyhow, it was VERY strange.
So far it is extremely dense reading. I had to read the intro 3 times and look up a couple latin words just to understand the part about consciousness not being the same as the process of rational contemplation, and how the ego lies at the intersection of all the things that the consciousness perceives, and doesn't really exist statically, but only when one tries to examine it.... or something along those lines? It reminds me of the book The "Spell of the Sensuous" that Anna lent me, which must have been heavily influenced by existentialism. It talks a lot about how the self really exists outside of the body, within all the interactions with other animate and inanimate things, and how when we put ourselves in these sterile constructed environments and no longer interact with the natural world, we lose a good portion of what used to make us human.
Anyhow, I am excited to try and make heads of it.
So far it is extremely dense reading. I had to read the intro 3 times and look up a couple latin words just to understand the part about consciousness not being the same as the process of rational contemplation, and how the ego lies at the intersection of all the things that the consciousness perceives, and doesn't really exist statically, but only when one tries to examine it.... or something along those lines? It reminds me of the book The "Spell of the Sensuous" that Anna lent me, which must have been heavily influenced by existentialism. It talks a lot about how the self really exists outside of the body, within all the interactions with other animate and inanimate things, and how when we put ourselves in these sterile constructed environments and no longer interact with the natural world, we lose a good portion of what used to make us human.
Anyhow, I am excited to try and make heads of it.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Simple Meals to Remember
I was just looking on the Whole Approach forum for Candida sufferers tonight (My source for all food choices since I was afflicted with malicious gut yeast last summer) trying to find out if there is even the remotest chance of my bringing an occasional glass of wine back into my diet; Life just seems so much less romantic if I can't have a glass with dinner every now and then. Sadly, the answer seemed to be a resounding No. Gin (rank tree sap) seemed to be the only alcohol anyone could tolerate.
I did however come across a couple simple meals to round out my evenings... The first was Garlic sautéed Shrimp with Basil, tomatoes and snow peas served over Quinoa, and the second consisted of browned Hamburger, Onions and Cabbage with diced Tomatoes and Seasoning. I haven't added red meat into my diet, and this choice pre-dates my current dietary problems by 6 years, but maybe as an occasional treat it wouldn't hurt... especially if there were to be avocado, sautéed onions, and perhaps some mushrooms involved.
I did however come across a couple simple meals to round out my evenings... The first was Garlic sautéed Shrimp with Basil, tomatoes and snow peas served over Quinoa, and the second consisted of browned Hamburger, Onions and Cabbage with diced Tomatoes and Seasoning. I haven't added red meat into my diet, and this choice pre-dates my current dietary problems by 6 years, but maybe as an occasional treat it wouldn't hurt... especially if there were to be avocado, sautéed onions, and perhaps some mushrooms involved.
Monday, April 6, 2009
So it Begins, with an End and a Beginning
I suppose I should say something to mark the opening of this journal. As with most of my creative endeavors, it has sprung up as a response to an upheaval; one of those strange occasions in life where you find yourself pushed off a precipice, not knowing how far down you will fall or where you will land. For some reason, there is no impetus to motion like that which accompanies a romantic loss. Whether the passion and pain bubbling to the surface are the perfect stress factor for change and movement, or whether it is simply the need to re-invent one's self in response to a complete breakdown in self-confidence, such events have always brought forth a sudden outpouring of creativity.
Additionally, I must confess I had grown too cozy over the past two years. A shakeup on the grand level was imminent, and perhaps by recording my newest attempt to re-define my life, I will feel somewhat more accountable, and hold myself to all of my resolutions for this coming summer. So, let these pages catalog my successes and failures at becoming the most productive and creative man that I can be.
Additionally, I must confess I had grown too cozy over the past two years. A shakeup on the grand level was imminent, and perhaps by recording my newest attempt to re-define my life, I will feel somewhat more accountable, and hold myself to all of my resolutions for this coming summer. So, let these pages catalog my successes and failures at becoming the most productive and creative man that I can be.
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