I would like to trace a course from what I call the "pastoral west", which exists in the imagined past of the present (maybe even more so the imagined past of the recent past?) and is largely devoid of historical reality, to what exists today, which, by definition, must consist of reality. And so, I am making two crossings - from past to present, and from what is imagined to what really exists. To me, it is most interesting to me to cross both distances simultaneously, since our sentiments of memory belong to the past, and neither the imagined present nor the real past carries as much aesthetic novelty.
I don't think I could find a better frame of reference to an especially important marker along the way than the subset of Don Stinson's paintings of the west that are intruded upon by the ruins of civilization:
http://www.donstinson.com/oilpaintings.html
See, for instance, "The Spud", "Lone Star and Pool", or "Imagined Ruin at Rifle Gap", along with plenty of others on that page.
In my eyes, the juxtaposition in these paintings carries the sort of sentiment that I mention. I'm not sure exactly how that happens, except that maybe my mind attaches a pastoral illusion to what is NOT shown in the paintings, which is how and when those objects arrived where we now see them, and what is their history?
Indeed, maybe it is all just a trick of placing them within picturesque, pastoral landscapes, which suggests to us an equally pastoral history. In simpler terms, the prettiness of the picture makes us imagine a nice past for these interesting, out-of-place artifacts.
Before going further, I should clarify that when I mention the "pastoral west", I am referring to the illusion of the frontier as a place that embodies naive ideals of freedom and hope. For most people, the frontier was far from wonderful and delivered to them a tenuousness of comfort as well as a tenuousness of survival itself. And yet, this imagined reality has sustained a romance in the social consciousness. This imagined reality is not as homogenous as I make it sound. There is the "Wild West", which owes itself more to the extroverted hero archetype than the pastoral interpretation that I (perhaps naively, as a matter of psychological mirroring?) presume to widely represent a parallel, introverted urge marked by feelings of internal and external lucidity and transcendence.
Having driven through portions of the southwest on a good number of occasions now, I am forced to acknowledge the marked difference between what I imagine such an experience to be like, and what this experience has often been. But before I describe this gap, I want to clarify that I choose driving over hiking or flying because I have spent the most time driving, and because to me it represents the most robust realization available of the simple concept of freedom in the open country of the west.
I always imagine driving through the west to be an experience of fulfillment, as if transcendence is captured through location. For the amount of thought I have put into some topics in my life, I often uncover such remarkably absurd assumptions lurking in innocuous places. My actual experience of driving in the west has been mixed, and perhaps all the more intriguing for both its variety and its nuance.
The most common feeling is the banality of vanilla boredom, as the miles stretch on and on. This is largely independent of the landscape. It is a simple reality of being human and living on this planet that the timing and tempo of the landscapes that we pass through generally will not jibe with our feelings from moment to moment. Thus, from the "base case" of boredom, you can imagine two dimensions of variance: attachment to / detachment from your surroundings, and the quality of those surroundings. As easy as it seems it would be, to be engaged with beautiful surroundings, it is just as easy to be engaged with anonymous desolation, or to be detached from those same beautiful surroundings. All these possible combinations describe, simply, the experience of a day or a week spent anywhere unfamiliar, but certainly the west, which is paradoxically of a single character, and yet endlessly varying.
I have felt intense detachment for miles upon miles, from Moab to Montrose, up through Wolf Creek Pass, or entering Grand Canyon National Park, scenery be damned. I have likewise felt elation driving through the endless, flat New Mexico prairie, across hailstones fallen out of sight yet still littering the roadway, or on a predawn drive east towards Blue Mesa Reservoir.
So what of the reality of today? The west that I imagined does not exist. The frontier, as was noted generations ago, is forever gone. Did it ever exist how I imagined it? Not likely. I think I have finally understood that I cannot find it in a place. In as much time, however, I have discovered that with time and the peace that is still waiting out there, you can cultivate a feeling. Ultimately, like so many things in life, it is not as simple as it first appears. Regardless, I will again go looking for it, and will continue to find peace in unexpected places.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Lessons of the Blue Period
In the depths of the past...
I recently salvaged a virtual treasure trove of old email, photos, and writings off an old computer I am getting ready to sell. The pictures, I expected. The email and writings took me by a surprise that was more than pleasant. Indeed, I believed that I had long since lost most of it - spanning roughly from early 2000 until mid-2004 - a span of time that I have long referred to as my Blue Period (overstated, sure, but also appropriate).
In early 2000, I had recently moved out of my parents house for the first time - at least, half-way moved out. I was spending a majority of my nights staying up, watching The X-Files and sleeping in until late afternoon. I was coming out of a break-up (a person's first break-up is never just a break-up, of course - more on this below) and hadn't regained my bearings. With the comfort of home, the safety net of friends, and whatever particular mental predilections I had at the time, "bearings" were scarcely on my radar. I lacked the skill of self-stabilization (and perhaps I still do, in a way). I drifted. (I only recently started to understand that I did this as a characteristic of my personality - I wasn't "damaged"; I was reacting how I was inclined to react, for better or worse.)
A break-up, of course, can always be destabilizing. It is a catalyst, and what it becomes a catalyst towards is a function of the particulars - of the people involved, of the timing in life. A first break-up is only more likely to happen at an intensity and during a time when these catalysts will provide for more volatile trajectories.
My life was full of immense variety and gave me many surprises in those four years, but in at least one way, it was homogenous - I was almost always within the shadow of depression. Perhaps, however, I have forgotten just how much variety I experienced - both externally and internally in that time. I hope that the writing I did during those periods of time help me in that sense. I skimmed it the other night. Some of it came back to me. Some of it blew my mind. Some of it even scared me in at least one way - reading those entries, I realized that I was, at least for a period of time when I was emerging from depression, more conscious, dynamic, creative, and expressive than I am today.
I always worry that I am falling into the grooves - that is, the grooves of ingrained behavior, to use the metaphor Steve Jobs used about people who grow older and get caught and dragged inexorably into habit and away from conscious decision and thought. Getting better at things is NOT an evasion of habit - quite the opposite. Work, then, is a prison to this fate because it predisposes us to the process.
I worry, more than anything, that life seems to be a little too good, at the moment. I have Merry, I have a good job, I have the money to do whatever I want. I have hobbies I enjoy, I get excited by lots of things in my life. I am never bored for long, and when I am, it is more temporary burnout than boredom. The weekends occasionally suffer from the boredom of the privileged - too many choices, and among them the luxury that we choose simply to rest.
What am I missing? Something, I fear, that will only be seen in hindsight. I finally can do anything I want - the curses of poverty (of mind and money) are vanquished. Will time show that I chose wisely, or that I tragically fell into a trap I had trained - and thus baited - myself into?
I recently salvaged a virtual treasure trove of old email, photos, and writings off an old computer I am getting ready to sell. The pictures, I expected. The email and writings took me by a surprise that was more than pleasant. Indeed, I believed that I had long since lost most of it - spanning roughly from early 2000 until mid-2004 - a span of time that I have long referred to as my Blue Period (overstated, sure, but also appropriate).
In early 2000, I had recently moved out of my parents house for the first time - at least, half-way moved out. I was spending a majority of my nights staying up, watching The X-Files and sleeping in until late afternoon. I was coming out of a break-up (a person's first break-up is never just a break-up, of course - more on this below) and hadn't regained my bearings. With the comfort of home, the safety net of friends, and whatever particular mental predilections I had at the time, "bearings" were scarcely on my radar. I lacked the skill of self-stabilization (and perhaps I still do, in a way). I drifted. (I only recently started to understand that I did this as a characteristic of my personality - I wasn't "damaged"; I was reacting how I was inclined to react, for better or worse.)
A break-up, of course, can always be destabilizing. It is a catalyst, and what it becomes a catalyst towards is a function of the particulars - of the people involved, of the timing in life. A first break-up is only more likely to happen at an intensity and during a time when these catalysts will provide for more volatile trajectories.
My life was full of immense variety and gave me many surprises in those four years, but in at least one way, it was homogenous - I was almost always within the shadow of depression. Perhaps, however, I have forgotten just how much variety I experienced - both externally and internally in that time. I hope that the writing I did during those periods of time help me in that sense. I skimmed it the other night. Some of it came back to me. Some of it blew my mind. Some of it even scared me in at least one way - reading those entries, I realized that I was, at least for a period of time when I was emerging from depression, more conscious, dynamic, creative, and expressive than I am today.
I always worry that I am falling into the grooves - that is, the grooves of ingrained behavior, to use the metaphor Steve Jobs used about people who grow older and get caught and dragged inexorably into habit and away from conscious decision and thought. Getting better at things is NOT an evasion of habit - quite the opposite. Work, then, is a prison to this fate because it predisposes us to the process.
I worry, more than anything, that life seems to be a little too good, at the moment. I have Merry, I have a good job, I have the money to do whatever I want. I have hobbies I enjoy, I get excited by lots of things in my life. I am never bored for long, and when I am, it is more temporary burnout than boredom. The weekends occasionally suffer from the boredom of the privileged - too many choices, and among them the luxury that we choose simply to rest.
What am I missing? Something, I fear, that will only be seen in hindsight. I finally can do anything I want - the curses of poverty (of mind and money) are vanquished. Will time show that I chose wisely, or that I tragically fell into a trap I had trained - and thus baited - myself into?
Monday, October 29, 2012
Eno on the Jungian "Subjective"
"Could we call this new style 'Interactive Music'?"
"In a blinding flash of inspiration, the other day I realized that 'interactive' anything is the wrong word. Interactive makes you imagine people sitting with their hands on controls, some kind of gamelike thing. The right word is 'unfinished.' Think of cultural products, or art works, or the people who use them even, as being unfinished. Permanently unfinished. We come from a cultural heritage that says things have a 'nature,' and that this nature is fixed and describable. We find more and more that this idea is insupportable - the 'nature' of something is not by any means singular, and depends on where and when you find it, and what you want it for. The functional identity of things is a product of our interaction with them. And our own identities are products of our interaction with everything else. Now a lot of cultures far more 'primitive' than ours take this entirely for granted - surely it is the whole basis of animism that the universe is a living, changing, changeable place."
- "Gossip is Philosophy" (interview with Brian Eno), Wired Magazine, May 1995
"In a blinding flash of inspiration, the other day I realized that 'interactive' anything is the wrong word. Interactive makes you imagine people sitting with their hands on controls, some kind of gamelike thing. The right word is 'unfinished.' Think of cultural products, or art works, or the people who use them even, as being unfinished. Permanently unfinished. We come from a cultural heritage that says things have a 'nature,' and that this nature is fixed and describable. We find more and more that this idea is insupportable - the 'nature' of something is not by any means singular, and depends on where and when you find it, and what you want it for. The functional identity of things is a product of our interaction with them. And our own identities are products of our interaction with everything else. Now a lot of cultures far more 'primitive' than ours take this entirely for granted - surely it is the whole basis of animism that the universe is a living, changing, changeable place."
- "Gossip is Philosophy" (interview with Brian Eno), Wired Magazine, May 1995
Friday, October 5, 2012
A Case of Synchronicity?
"Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul, anyone who fails to go along with life remains suspended, stiff and rigid in mid air. That is why so many people get wooden in old age; they look back and cling to the past, with a secret fear of death in their hearts. They withdraw from the life process, at least psychologically, and consequently remain fixed like nostalgic pillars of salt, with vivid recollections of youth but no living relation to the present."
- Carl Jung, Collected Works
Jung would consider it an episode of synchronicity, I believe, that I should pick up his book and read this paragraph first - a paragraph that seems to address my current and ongoing disillusionment directly and speaks to the core of what I feel and what I find myself going around about, again and again.
For my part, I believe in the phenomenon of synchronicity only to the degree that the world is emphatically not random; even seemingly unrelated things will rarely exhibit no correlation, and so, it should not be surprising that more things coincide, and more things rhyme, than we might perceptively expect to find.
That is not the same phenomenon that Jung was describing, but for my part, I cannot judge what happened today when I picked up his book as a case of his or mine, or something else. Or neither.
It is also possible the paragraph means less to me than I may suspect.
- Carl Jung, Collected Works
Jung would consider it an episode of synchronicity, I believe, that I should pick up his book and read this paragraph first - a paragraph that seems to address my current and ongoing disillusionment directly and speaks to the core of what I feel and what I find myself going around about, again and again.
For my part, I believe in the phenomenon of synchronicity only to the degree that the world is emphatically not random; even seemingly unrelated things will rarely exhibit no correlation, and so, it should not be surprising that more things coincide, and more things rhyme, than we might perceptively expect to find.
That is not the same phenomenon that Jung was describing, but for my part, I cannot judge what happened today when I picked up his book as a case of his or mine, or something else. Or neither.
It is also possible the paragraph means less to me than I may suspect.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Lifecycle of an Illusion
When I was twenty-two I was depressed (still) and bored and drunk, most of the time. There was a stage where I realized how badly I needed to stop drinking and start trying exciting things and start expressing myself in some way that amounted to something. I was certain, in my painfully shortsighted way, that what I needed was essentially a reset.
Now, there is another illusion beneath the one I am after, but about it, I will only say: I have often had thoughts that suggest I am the sort of person that believes that we are products of our environment, expressly. I would never consciously assume such a thing - nor do I think it today - but in subscribing to a lazy potential solution to my problem, I was suggesting as much. I will say, for the record, that such a theory can hardly even sustain illusion, it is so weak.
The idea of a reset is really the idea of escape in disguise, or a slightly practical manifestation of the idea of escape. Deep in the human genome lay the secret of our desires - when we are faced with a difficulty, our deeply-felt preference is for it to simply go away. It takes significant conditioning to abject reality to obstruct such a desire from interfering with day-to-day life. And, the degree to which each of us EVER produces such obstruction varies immensely. Typically, modern difficulties require methods of dispatch that are not impelled by instinct or the natural order of things.
When I was twenty-two, I wanted to reset all of it, and I was certain that the way to do that was to move away, certainly from familiarity and likely from people altogether, or to a place where my interaction with people was limited to my own discretion, which I would of course "want" to limit prudently, because I would have been reset into perfection.
Of all the quick "solutions" to the escape problem that people come up with time and again, moving away is one of the easiest, most absurd, and finally, funniest. Funny, that is, in extreme retrospect. The absurdity, for its part, is breathtaking. In these reactions, it betrays itself. The desire to simply change locations as a solution to life's problems is almost always nothing more than an emotional expression. There is little logic capable of supporting such a notion.
Why do I spend so much time pulling this apart now? Because what I have done recently, when I have chosen to spend my vacation alone, hidden from view, is just an evolutionary descendant of such a silly initial desire. I have found little of what I desired and expected to find. I have even now, in retrospect, identified the disconnect - which, in such a simple formula, cannot have been very many things, so I should not be especially proud of figuring it out. I am guilty of believing that what is desired can ever be expected without the complete understanding that comes from nothing so ordinary as taking the time to ask exhaustive questions and objectify reality.
There is a word for that rare feeling that comes when you get what you want, in practice, without the effort: serendipity. It is never something you earn, any more than anyone ever earns the random vicissitudes they are granted.
Now, there is another illusion beneath the one I am after, but about it, I will only say: I have often had thoughts that suggest I am the sort of person that believes that we are products of our environment, expressly. I would never consciously assume such a thing - nor do I think it today - but in subscribing to a lazy potential solution to my problem, I was suggesting as much. I will say, for the record, that such a theory can hardly even sustain illusion, it is so weak.
The idea of a reset is really the idea of escape in disguise, or a slightly practical manifestation of the idea of escape. Deep in the human genome lay the secret of our desires - when we are faced with a difficulty, our deeply-felt preference is for it to simply go away. It takes significant conditioning to abject reality to obstruct such a desire from interfering with day-to-day life. And, the degree to which each of us EVER produces such obstruction varies immensely. Typically, modern difficulties require methods of dispatch that are not impelled by instinct or the natural order of things.
When I was twenty-two, I wanted to reset all of it, and I was certain that the way to do that was to move away, certainly from familiarity and likely from people altogether, or to a place where my interaction with people was limited to my own discretion, which I would of course "want" to limit prudently, because I would have been reset into perfection.
Of all the quick "solutions" to the escape problem that people come up with time and again, moving away is one of the easiest, most absurd, and finally, funniest. Funny, that is, in extreme retrospect. The absurdity, for its part, is breathtaking. In these reactions, it betrays itself. The desire to simply change locations as a solution to life's problems is almost always nothing more than an emotional expression. There is little logic capable of supporting such a notion.
Why do I spend so much time pulling this apart now? Because what I have done recently, when I have chosen to spend my vacation alone, hidden from view, is just an evolutionary descendant of such a silly initial desire. I have found little of what I desired and expected to find. I have even now, in retrospect, identified the disconnect - which, in such a simple formula, cannot have been very many things, so I should not be especially proud of figuring it out. I am guilty of believing that what is desired can ever be expected without the complete understanding that comes from nothing so ordinary as taking the time to ask exhaustive questions and objectify reality.
There is a word for that rare feeling that comes when you get what you want, in practice, without the effort: serendipity. It is never something you earn, any more than anyone ever earns the random vicissitudes they are granted.
A Fog
I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about psychological and praxeological constructs. Where has that taken me? A couple places, lately:
1) Thinking about a single hierarchy of mental functional models. Since these span disciplines and do not follow any systematic conventions, the precise format of a "hierarchy" is in question; perhaps it is multi-dimensional. It must necessarily begin with neurochemistry, proceed through neurobiology to mental reflex, to basic behavioral theories (i.e. Pavlov), development of emergent behaviorism (exceptionally diverse just by itself; i.e. Kahneman's "System 1"), up through Freudian constructs (id, ego, etc...), Jungian "Collective Unconscious", and formal cognition (Kahneman's "System 2"), including cognitive biases that may emerge from below, as well. As I said, clearly these can be identified along multiple dimensions and I would be the last to know what the correct organization of such diverse concepts would be. Even a linear order seems quite hard to establish.
2) Where the hell am I at, mentally and emotionally? Usually I know, quite well. Today, I do not. I am in a fog. I have been wanting to rock this very boat, so there is no justification for me to complain. But what lay ahead of me, I cannot say. I will try to have faith in the reality the world has given me. I am having trouble sleeping, having trouble calming my mind. I am having, perhaps, mental fatigue caused by a change in physical activity over the last few days. The most important thing here is that I cut through the fog and figure out which pieces I wish to hold onto, because every day that I go back to undesirable old habits is an opportunity lost.
1) Thinking about a single hierarchy of mental functional models. Since these span disciplines and do not follow any systematic conventions, the precise format of a "hierarchy" is in question; perhaps it is multi-dimensional. It must necessarily begin with neurochemistry, proceed through neurobiology to mental reflex, to basic behavioral theories (i.e. Pavlov), development of emergent behaviorism (exceptionally diverse just by itself; i.e. Kahneman's "System 1"), up through Freudian constructs (id, ego, etc...), Jungian "Collective Unconscious", and formal cognition (Kahneman's "System 2"), including cognitive biases that may emerge from below, as well. As I said, clearly these can be identified along multiple dimensions and I would be the last to know what the correct organization of such diverse concepts would be. Even a linear order seems quite hard to establish.
2) Where the hell am I at, mentally and emotionally? Usually I know, quite well. Today, I do not. I am in a fog. I have been wanting to rock this very boat, so there is no justification for me to complain. But what lay ahead of me, I cannot say. I will try to have faith in the reality the world has given me. I am having trouble sleeping, having trouble calming my mind. I am having, perhaps, mental fatigue caused by a change in physical activity over the last few days. The most important thing here is that I cut through the fog and figure out which pieces I wish to hold onto, because every day that I go back to undesirable old habits is an opportunity lost.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
What Have I Failed to Record?
What have I failed to record in the last two months? So, so many things. Writing belongs to and further begets a cycle; introspection, feeling, articulation, writing (the crudest step), introspection, and so on. Interestingly - in the way so much of life surprises us just when we think we are coming to know it - though writing has not improved my writing nearly as I thought it would, it has improved my introspection, my feeling, and my articulation.
All of life feels all around me at any moment, as it seldom has in my life. How is that for fluff? Or: where does it leave me?
It leaves me with a bravery I would normally not express, to go find whatever I do not have. Thank goodness for randomness, because something has convinced me to go looking. I took a week off of work on short notice to drive. I have loose, incomplete plans for this time. I will spend the first few days in eastern Utah, at Canyonlands and thereabout. I hope to get lost over the next few days, and hike, write, and roam as I wish. I hope that this is for itself - as all such acts should be - but it is also, in a more primitive way, about a notion in my head.
My dreams at night are like looking over a fence that I cannot cross; what is over there? And how are we made, that we can desire something new so often - and be revealed those desires in our sleep every night - and seemingly never run out? Jung believed dreams expressed imbalance. What does my consciousness tell me? That although I have the hardest time putting words to them (as is simply part of the same mystery), I do have some intuitive sense of them. It is faint (for their nature), but it is there.
-----------------------------------------------------
While we are at it, what else have I failed to record - or to save record of - in the last ten years?
- Countless story ideas and fragments
- Many melodies, lyrics, songs
- Ton upon ton of old photos, digital and print
- Any consequential record of my thoughts
- Any meditation on my memories, or reference from which to later judge the way they change
- Any record of what it has felt like to be me
How are these things accomplished? Certainly, I could have learned to back up my hard drive before we lost audio we had recorded for the fifteenth time; but by the time you get to the bottom of the list, the problem has long ceased to be technology. The difficulty to transcend the barriers of self is singularly astounding. I can read this own blog - from whatever period of time I was posting with reasonable frequency - and still my conclusion is that I have captured the merest trifle of what it felt like to be me, at that time. If that weren't bad enough, the times when I have captured it have been the shallowest times - those where the experience of being me was simple enough that even I, with my own talent for writing, could capture it. For the moments I most wish to remember, there is simply no substitute to cherishing the memories.
All of life feels all around me at any moment, as it seldom has in my life. How is that for fluff? Or: where does it leave me?
It leaves me with a bravery I would normally not express, to go find whatever I do not have. Thank goodness for randomness, because something has convinced me to go looking. I took a week off of work on short notice to drive. I have loose, incomplete plans for this time. I will spend the first few days in eastern Utah, at Canyonlands and thereabout. I hope to get lost over the next few days, and hike, write, and roam as I wish. I hope that this is for itself - as all such acts should be - but it is also, in a more primitive way, about a notion in my head.
My dreams at night are like looking over a fence that I cannot cross; what is over there? And how are we made, that we can desire something new so often - and be revealed those desires in our sleep every night - and seemingly never run out? Jung believed dreams expressed imbalance. What does my consciousness tell me? That although I have the hardest time putting words to them (as is simply part of the same mystery), I do have some intuitive sense of them. It is faint (for their nature), but it is there.
-----------------------------------------------------
While we are at it, what else have I failed to record - or to save record of - in the last ten years?
- Countless story ideas and fragments
- Many melodies, lyrics, songs
- Ton upon ton of old photos, digital and print
- Any consequential record of my thoughts
- Any meditation on my memories, or reference from which to later judge the way they change
- Any record of what it has felt like to be me
How are these things accomplished? Certainly, I could have learned to back up my hard drive before we lost audio we had recorded for the fifteenth time; but by the time you get to the bottom of the list, the problem has long ceased to be technology. The difficulty to transcend the barriers of self is singularly astounding. I can read this own blog - from whatever period of time I was posting with reasonable frequency - and still my conclusion is that I have captured the merest trifle of what it felt like to be me, at that time. If that weren't bad enough, the times when I have captured it have been the shallowest times - those where the experience of being me was simple enough that even I, with my own talent for writing, could capture it. For the moments I most wish to remember, there is simply no substitute to cherishing the memories.
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