Balanced or not?

I've stepped back from making individual posts on my various blogs in order to gain a larger perspective. My goal is to fill these notebooks with rough drafts I will then use to make a series of blog posts.

The Book of Innocence was originally intended as a nonfiction book, something in between a collection of personal essays, a book of digressions, a journal. I used a basic structure for the first seven chapters, which is "flight" and "descent," and I would like to maintain some pattern for the next section of the book although I don't know yet what my overall subject-matter will be. Flight, descent, then what?

This book is a contemplation on my life, on my experiences, and on life itself. Recently I've come up against the rapid cycle of my emotions; anticipation, excitement, and then disenchantment and frustration, endlessly repeating. Because this experience was so vivid to me I had to investigate it. What I found was that a pattern lurks beneath the surface of my life, a pattern based upon rising and falling emotions, and the ebb and flow of energy.

Balance. Is there an inborn desire for balance in our species? Or is just the opposite true: our nature keeps us forever imbalanced and incomplete?

Within me I feel there is a chemical reaction that carries me away from myself, just as there is a chemical reaction which draws me nearer to myself, closer to my center.

Ever since Tess (my girlfriend) moved in, there has been a dramatic shift in my lifestyle. But of course I don't attribute all of my changes to her moving in. Another major change occurred during this time period. I began blogging . . . like mad.

I stopped meditating. I stopped working out. I grew fat and addicted to caramel-flavored lattes. All of these instances are evidence enough for some sort of imbalance. It is almost impossible for me to have donuts or ice cream in the house without them disappearing in two days.

But in other ways I've grown. That is, I've gained more balance in other areas. Such as working at the hotel. For the first time in my life, I'm working a regular job--with demands I've never had to cope with before--such as pleasing customers. Also, since Tess moved in, I've become less self-focused. I'm learning to be with somebody other than myself. I can recall when I lived by myself and how that felt. Even in my happiest moments I was still utterly alone in life. Sharing my experiences with Tess has definitely brought me closer to a state of balance with others.

Can a person be balanced and imbalanced at the same time? Can one be healthy and unhealthy? Sane and insane? And if so, how do these opposites mutually coexist?

In any given moment, the human essence, that which I call "me", is in flux. For this reason opposites are allowed to mingle and exist side by side one another. The flux of the human essence refuses to be pigeonholed into an absolute state, happiness, for example, or total misery.

Perhaps a suicide commits suicide not because of the certainty of his feelings, but the uncertainty, the flux. Being human means being incompatible with oneself. One is balanced in a certain way and imbalanced in another. We cannot just be this or that. We are all things, contradictory and inconclusive.

The flux involves elements that are both in order and out of order. Nothing will ever be complete. Forget perfection. You are torn at the roots of every moment. Which gives us a chance to renew ourselves if we are looking forward. But also a sense of disappointment and disenchantment if we are looking back.

Maybe I won't write out all of these chapters ahead of time. Maybe I'll just come to the library every day and write a chapter in my notebook. Then I'll return home and transcribe it into a post as I have done today.

Wow, it feels good to be writing again.

Flight: Part Three

Our daily lives have crystallized into routines, patterns, and rituals. I want to hold onto these patterns because they reinforce the sense of a singular life—my life, which has to do with my goals, and my supreme sense of individuality.

But when I scan the content of my dreams, I see that these routines, patterns, and rituals are like man-made barriers built to stop the flow of contradictory desires.

Dreams will dismantle the notions you’ve carried along about yourself. Dreams will deconstruct that seemingly indestructible idea of “me”.

And here I’m not talking about the flying dream. My flying dream has done little to deconstruct me. Why? Because over the years I’ve integrated it into my personality. The flying dream serves a purpose now; it has become a symbol of my destiny. Before I told you that I wouldn't interpret my dream, but flight is also a universal signifier.

Flight connotes the essence of superhuman power. Flight connotes another realm, a realm nearer to the heavens. Flight connotes the privileged position of the sky, the wide-embracing “bird’s eye-view”, the highest point to look down upon the vegetable planet. Flight connotes elegance, quickness, and lightness.

It seems to me that this dream wants to inflate my ego. Could flight be my symbolic compensation? If I can fly over everyone and everything then maybe I'm not the anxious, worried person I feel I am.

Unlike my flying dream, which inflates my ego, I had a particularly disturbing dream this morning which seemed to create a reverse effect.

The dream involved a sexual experience—that I remember—the rest I recall only vaguely. If I told you some of these loose fragments, these vivid though rootless images, it would be like offering a meal with the food on various plates.

I was disturbed by the dream in the same way that I am shocked to overhear some of my darkest thoughts. I thought to myself, “How could I have ever dreamt that?”

The night embraces inconceivable elements, frightening aspects of our personalities, and lepers of the mind.

If real-life is assigned to day-time hours, then real-life is a cover up. During the day, I struggle to maintain so much damn control. Every hour is anticipated. As if a future moment, which is really just another present moment, will differ vastly from this present moment I am having now.

At night, I’m not thinking about what will come next. After whatever I'm doing, I'm going to bed. The clock drops out of my mind. I'm not governed by time and its mathematical tables. I'm not goaded by self-consciousness.

There are no passing moments, only eternal ones preparing me for flight.

Flight: Part Two

I have had this dream ever since I was a child. The dream has become a sort of refrain in my life, endlessly repeating and replenishing my interest in it.

I am trying to pry into my subconscious; I am trying to decipher one of the many mysteries I hold inside me.

Waking from my flying dream is one of the most pleasant sensations I know. Upon waking I am reminded of my secret powers, and I go about the rest of my day with a foolish grin on my face.

The interpretation of dreams may be a provocative and stimulating pursuit, but one never arrives at a final solution—or the key—to his or her dream.

I suppose I can look up the symbol of “flying” in a dream-encyclopedia and find a generic, albeit satisfactory, explanation to my night-visions. It might even shed some light on the variegated herds of animals that haunt my African savannah . . .

But, on second thought, I don’t care to know the true meaning of this dream. I simply want to carry the sensation of flying. I want to carry it until I die, never knowing what the dream means or why I had it so often . . .

There is no doubt that our dreams are trying to tell us something. If you believe in the subconscious, then you’ll admit to the importance of this crystal bridge between worlds--

The vaguest memory of our dreams suggests we have access to them; a doorway, a brief crack of light. In rare occasions, a person might awake within her dream, which is called lucid dreaming.

Once I had a lucid dream. The world (of the dream) was totally fantastical, and yet I had some control within it, to move around and uncover things. I moved inside the dream as if I were playing a game, like a video game, but there were also some aspects I couldn’t control.

Don’t tell me the meaning of my flying dream. You’ll reduce it to psychological mumbo jumbo. For life is greater than psychology and its theories. And interpretations, like judgments, reduce individuals to abstract concepts. If I were to accept any interpretation of this flying dream, the mystery would be gone instantly, and the dream would lose its power of enchantment.

Sages continually remind us to “enlighten” ourselves. But the language of dreams is darkness and half-light.

What if I prefer my dreams to so-called real-life? What if I’m enjoying this ongoing hallucination, this overflowing stew of desires, dreams, and drives?

Besides, I prefer flying to walking long distances.

I will always vote in favor of dreams and darkness. I feel comfortable in the shade. I’m more likely to wander at night than during the daytime, and to follow my true desires in the wildwood. There are no pretenses at night. In your dreams you are never pretending to be someone; you just are.

During the daytime I feel the burden to be someone. I’m playing a highly-skilled part with expectations to fulfill, and there is always something that must get done. At night, in contrast, time loses its grip on me and my sense of inferiority melts away.

What is commonly called “real-life” is usually a mere trifle. I get worked up about the smallest things. Items I label with greatest importance and greatest consequence turn out to have minor importance and minor consequence.

All of my fears can be summed up: my real-life will fall apart.

What’s beautiful about dreams is that there’s nothing to fall apart because nothing has ever been static or fixed together (as we pretend to make life during the day). In a dream, the pieces are scattered to begin with. Dreams are wild, fitful, mutable, and delirious. Time does not exist, at least not in any ordinary conception of the word. And because of the emptiness and formlessness of this world, we tend to have more freedom.

But really there is no difference between real-life and dreams. Real-life is also wild, fitful, mutable, and delirious. One can even argue that time doesn’t exist here . . .

Flight: Part One

When I dive from the cliff, nobody catches me . . .

I can barely conceal the smile on my face as I glide--

The joy of being able to launch myself at once into a separate sphere, gives me a supreme satisfaction, an indescribable feeling.

Levitation is a consummate thrill. Floating is even wilder and more insane to imagine. And flight is beyond comprehension.

While I’m flying over giant clusters of people just as if they were pixels on a vast screen, I realize that my secret ability to fly has come to me in the time of an emergency.

Flying is not a part of my daily routine, you see.

I realize that something was threatening me on the ground, and that’s why I suddenly took flight. An impression of the primal scene still haunts me, vague pictures floating restlessly in the back of my mind, distant as memories.

The crowds on the ground are trying to keep up with me. They’re running after me as if they too might bolt into the air. They don’t look like pixels anymore. More like gazelles, running in loose herds; the undulant rhythm of their hind-legs beats like a drum on the African plain.

The beasts of the savanna are chasing me with delight.

For the rest of the dream, I soar over the majestic sweeping continent. Thorny acacias and palm trees spread throughout the vast swathes of grassland and marshes. I look down at the elephants which appear pensive and sad. They are monuments of sadness. Grey lugubrious figures with heavy-thick skin, brooding eternally over the land.

Then: long-necked giraffes carrying messages to the tall trees, whispering all sorts of secrets to the leafy vegetation; they chew in serene self-possession. White rhinos are transfigured into kingly creatures who command respect from the tribes.

The striking zebras graze indolently on the pastures. From my birds-eye, their vivid stripes evoke a mesmerizing contrast to the dry, parched lands.

Flying seems to be the simplest thing in the world.

Preface (old version)

I enjoy the reflective essay. But there are many voices and mine is only one of them.

When I began blogging I wanted to create a site where I could publish lengthy quotations from the books I read. Without being in graduate school, I live the life of the interdisciplinary scholar, always sifting through a different book and taking notes. Although these books have little to do with each other, I draw connections.

I draw connections because I see connections. Many think I am mad. The art of linking is a mad art. Linkages can be found anywhere.

Linkages between life and art, linkages between science and religion, linkages between architecture and writing.

Because I do a lot of reading I’m constantly discovering tidbits of wisdom; and that’s what I had originally called this website, “The Philosopher’s Tidbits.”

Since then, things have changed.

The first changes began to show themselves when I added to the pages my own ideas. It began with a short essay, and then a longer one.

I continued to publish lengthy quotations in between my essays. The purpose was twofold. By typing the quotes into my computer, I learned the material of these great thinkers. And two, I suspected that I could increase my page views if I published a famous quote on the Net every couple days.

I also have a long history of copying and recopying.

My earliest memory of obsessive copying is during my sophomore year in high school. I was taking an AP European History class and it was impossible for me to remember anything without copying it down in small print. I was very meticulous and neat. My handwriting drew the attention of my classmates. Before the AP test, I had two stacks of ink-covered pages.

And then in college I remember one of my professors gave us an assignment to keep a “literary theory journal". While she only meant for us to jot down a couple definitions, I set about the Sisyphean task of collecting two volumes of notes and quotations on literary theory. These journals epitomized my habit of overachievement; labors so absolutely unnecessary that they became marvels in their own right.

Therefore: I have a tendency to write things down, especially the thoughts of others.

The line between graphomania and reverence is a thin one. At times I copied down the thoughts of others because they inspired me. At other times I copied them down because I needed words to explain things about life. And there were also times when the physical act of copying satisfied a deep urge inside of me.

Could I have been using the words of others to form a wall around myself?

I am a writer.

I am also afraid to write.

Reaching for ready-made sentences relieves the terror of having to say something original.

And the words great thinkers used seemed different from my own. Their words were more permanent. Their aphorisms like pieces of jade.

I am an idealist. I will always look for the best, and try to achieve my best potential.

The pitfall of this thinking is that I am often mesmerized by what is esteemed “great”. And by fixing a perpetual gaze on others, I undermine my own abilities.

Sometimes I’m just lazy and would rather quote somebody else instead of writing an original sentence.

Whatever the value and greatness of another’s words, nothing compares to the freshness and originality of my own tongue.

I have taken refuge in the words of others for too long; now I am ready to speak.

I no longer want to be afraid.

At a certain age, a person’s identity and purpose gains momentum—

Until the direction cannot be easily averted.

We are—one day we realize—exactly who we have longed to be.

Whatever posturing we did in our youth blends indistinguishably into an essential personality and person—

This is then a symbolic and literal transition from the words of others into our own.

Our own language.

A prelude to the knowledge of our own being.