Escape Into Chris - Entry 7

Sketch by Chris Al-Aswad

February 2007 – Normal, IL

“…My mind is a temple of illusion and I am a false god. True, there is something pure and positive in me but it is hidden so deep, under all the layers of illusion. I seem to know my soul exists but I am constantly running from that source. Instead, I obsess over personal problems and my mind resorts to fantasy – to lusts or material desires. The Buddhists are right about one thing – that we can’t trust the mind. The mind is not to be trusted. And yet I listen to the thoughts that run through my head and quickly, I get caught up in my old ways – nervousness, busyness, impatience – never resting in the moment, always rustling. I try to practice awareness but my awareness is not genuine because simultaneously I am giving in to the pleasures of the ego of lusting, of wanting, of fantasizing. I can not be aware without gravitation toward illusion and then my mind becomes more charged with anxiety because now I am self conscious.
The ego has a plan for me everyday. Will I follow it? I usually do – that plan leaves me with little satisfaction and more desire. My desires have many faces but the general urge is to have something else to change how I feel by possessing something.
What is wrong with how I feel? I feel like time is running out. I feel the need to perform. I feel the pressure to maintain an illusion.
My life is mostly an illusion with a grain of the truth. The paradox is that my illusions teach me to become wise. We cannot be led directly to the source, the source is too powerful. We must go by indirection – mistake after mistake we learn to take another route. Once I thought I knew what I wanted. Now I see that I want everything and none of it will help me change the way I feel.
I feel the burden of living. The flux, the rise and fall of hopes, the patience involved. Where am I moving toward? Not more illusion but less – I am moving toward the light. These illusions will not save me more. I am not who I thought I was - my talents, my security, my good sense is not what I thought it was. I must tell myself Chris, you are not so wise. Your life is little more than a petty day dream. Wake up. These illusions you drown yourself in – do not trust them – do not trust your mind.”

Escape Into Chris - Entry 1

Gustave Courbet, self portrait

In tribute to the life and works of Chris Al-Aswad, we, his family, are honoring his memory by posting regular excerpts from his writings here at his website Escapeintolife.com

Summer 2006 - Normal, IL

“… I worry that I won’t have enough time, once work starts, to read and write. But I also know there is always enough time. We just don’t happen to see all the time that is available to us because we are clouded by a fear of death.

My urge to read and write is a defense against death and its anxiety. I feel that I am finite and by reading and writing and by leaving a living record of my self, I believe that I can transcend my own death. I participate in the life that so many people lead without even thinking about it. That is, working a regular job, having a family, or having a wife for me is a burden, because by leading what most would consider a normal life I am “giving up”, in a sense, I am surrendering to my own mortality. By retreating into this world I have created with words and books, I hope to transcend my own death. But I need to make sure I live. I will never be able to transcend death until I fully live.”

Escape Into Chris

The Musician by Fred Aris (1972)

A long, wintry six months has passed since EIL and Blog of Innocence's founder, Chris Al-Aswad, left life behind and stepped into the world of the Spirit. In addition to countless unforgettable memories, Chris also left us with dozens of journals brimming with his deepest thoughts and philosophical ponderings of existence on planet earth. Recently, my Father and I began exploring them in depth, discovering incredible, illuminated passages rife with prophetic, provocative insights and brutal honesty. While the quest to fill the space that Chris’ parting left in us will continue for our lifetimes, we’ve found solace and uplift in the notion of sharing these with the people Chris cared for most, his friends in the EIL community. Clearly, the spirit of Chris lives on in them, as well as in the eternal flow of the creative life-force, and so he would surely approve. We will start by posting one a week and are open and eager to hearing your feedback.

On Genius

Rene Margritte, Clairvoyance (Self-Portrait)

Reading the New York Times Book Review, one frequently comes across assertions like:

But looking at her writing from this perspective misses the most interesting part: her sentences. No one writing in English today produces anything quite like them. Take, for example, the following passage, early in the novel, in which the principal narrator, an authorial stand-in named Mimi, looks east from the track around the Central Park (or, properly speaking, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) Reservoir.

“Windows high above Fifth Avenue flashed the bronze setting of the sun. I will never understand how that brilliant display, mostly blocked by the apartment houses on Central Park West, leaps the reservoir’s expanse. And do not care to understand, demanding magic from this forbidden journey, though the simple refraction of light at end of day may be grammar-school science.”(1)

The reviewer has chosen a specimen, if you will, in order to demonstrate the author's genius. This hardly seems offensive to most of us; this is the critic's job, to make statements like that. But this morning, whether it was because I hadn't slept the night before or because something had finally occurred to me, I found myself questioning the way in which we--I do it too--talk about artists and their work.

Specifically, their finest work.

We read, "No one writing in English today produces anything quite like them." And then, a passage that illustrates the reviewer's claim.

The passage is beautiful; I was certainly moved by it. But let me challenge you to another point of view, a point of view which is provisional and openly philosophical . . .

What we think of as a writer's unique and individual gifts, those sparkling sentences that critics extol--in my present understanding--are really the effervescence of language itself.

What I mean to say by that is, art in poetry or prose is language in its purest, most accessible, most fluid form, nearly on a separate wavelength. It's on a wavelength most of us can hear, just not all of the time. When we hear it, our hearts swoon, our minds expand.

This is a language that is common to all, a language that resonates with large numbers of people. My immediate reaction, like the critic of the New York Times Book Review, is to elevate the artist who created these lines, to point to the individual. But there is something behind this reaction that bothers me.

It seems we like to pick out the gifted as if they were our own shiny fruit. We like to exclaim, "Ah, this is genius!" It gratifies us to make these declarations, and it somehow serves us.

A critic will point to a work of art, or a beautiful sentence, as if it were possible to isolate perfection--to sever the part from the whole, the text from the context. I am doubtful of this ability to zero in on transcendence.

I believe the magical passage, the stunning work of art, is not the watermark of individual genius, but instead the reflection of a higher state of mind. The artwork is evidence of some journey. Art criticism flattens the journey, however, by making it into a vacation. Now it's as if the artist went on a vacation and brought us back a souvenir. We grab for the souvenir at our first chance because it really is magnificent to have such a beautiful thing in our hands. Blinded by the act of possession, having stamped our names across the material object, we see no further--

In this mode of appreciating art, the furthest I can see is not far enough. Fixated on the individual and her gifts, I lose sight of the deeper meaning or beauty in the work of art. By reducing art to the individual, and setting a spotlight on the hand that wrought perfection, I mistakenly short-circuit the whole enterprise of art.

The author's passages, or the artist's brushstrokes, should be signaling the opposite reaction. Art is a universal language, not an individual one. What if we approached the appreciation of art from the other side, from the side closest to the collective "we"? Do we even have a universal language to praise art? Or is our criticism and praise decidedly individualistic?

Furthermore, all art is in flux, even after its creation. This makes it hard to pin down exact marks of genius; evidence for genius seems to move around a lot and vacillate. After all, the concept "art" is in our minds.

In sum, there is no permanent, eternal art. Art wavers between a radiant work of genius, an emblem of culture, a historical artifact, and a hundred other possibilities. Art can be or mean almost anything, as recent -isms have shown. Culture will continue to see it differently as it passes through the kaleidoscope of history.

Artists have in fact done themselves a great disservice by allowing others to praise their works. (I expect you to disagree with me here.) But, suspend disbelief for a moment, what if we attributed an author's sparkling sentences to a state of mind rather than an individual person?

What if we looked upon great works of art, looking beyond the individual creator, and toward something common to all--the underlying language that makes this art so moving in the first place.

Prior to these insights, I trumpeted individualism. I trumpeted individualism because I felt a strong sense of being an individual myself, and I felt a strong sense of being able to identify other individuals. I saw the enterprise of art as essentially individualistic. The artist works alone, the works are understood alone. Art is the conversation between two individuals, one real and one imaginary (the author's ideal reader, or artist's ideal viewer).

But now I'm coming to believe that individualism in art is not what makes it special. Individualism is the coat an artist sheds over time, growing closer to the patterns of her art as she moves further and further away from her individual sense of self. And those moments of greatness, the superb execution, exists outside of the artist. What we point to when we declare, "What genius!" is the second space the artist has created between herself and her work, the plane onto which the universal occurs. Exquisite sentences arise here, but so do many other things, such as wisdom and love and a profound synthesis of mankind and nature.

Could it be that the beauty we perceive in art is not the mark of an individual genius, but instead evidence of a higher consciousness, evidence of a God I don't believe in, or simply the invisible rails between two people who have never met?

More Essays by the author at Escape into Life

Escape Artist

These last couple days I've found myself pondering the idea of "escape". I've been thinking of the various ways in which I use the term "escape" and how I apply it to my life.

An escape is a break from the usual routine. Often the word is used with travel, vacation or adventure. It therefore connotes something outside the boundaries of daily existence. We escape from life's duties, life's routines; we break from the mundane world to take a vacation.

And yet have you noticed how many aspects of our culture are masquerading as escapes? The shadow side to a hyper-capitalist culture with a Protestant work-ethic is a profusion of escapes. Our escapist culture seeks solace in virtual worlds, food and drug addictions and sexual fantasies. I am a product of this culture and in many ways a poster child for it.

An escape doesn't have to be mindless. I consider my books an escape, my writing an escape. Perhaps there are healthy escapes and unhealthy ones, but they all seem to follow the same logic: I wish to be somewhere else right now, take me there.

It's true that I fear boredom and listlessness and thrive on work and productivity. It's true that I'm frequently restless and impatient with the slightest things, such as making a meal or preparing the coffee in the morning.

The churn of daily stuff--jobs and activities that consume me--begins to feel like an escape in itself. I ignore myself, how I feel, and my surroundings, the weather outside, the air. My mind is focused on one thing, sadly; what I have to do. Beyond this, I am aware of how time is passing. Recall Charles Van Doren's marvelous essay, "If We Loved Time,":

The fear of time -- of time lost, of time wasted -- is a mortal disease. It shortens a life to an instant -- this instant -- which will be followed by other instants that are equally fleeting. There can be no joy in moments that are carefully measured and doled out.

This creates a perpetually unsettled feeling inside of me. Always under the assault of fear and haste, my first impulse is to seek out an escape. I've put myself into a prison and now I'm craving release.

I retreat to Borders where I can grab a book off the shelves and buy a tall Vanilla latte. This atmosphere immediately calms me down while at the same time I'm aware that it too is not static. I will finish my latte, read a couple pages and have to return home where I will give myself another job to do. Even my moments of rest begin to feel rushed. But that's not the ironic part of this "mortal disease". I'll get to the irony in a minute.

I also escape into fattening, easy-to-find or easy-to-make meals. My girlfriend and I go out to Chipotle or Thai food instead of cooking at home. Instant gratification is a first cousin of escapism.

I escape into the dizzying vortex of consumerism. There is always some item, some product, some material thing bobbing on the horizon of my ever-expanding sea of desire. Recently I bought a new Mac computer. Shame on me! One week later I wanted to buy a video game to go with it. I haven't played video games in fifteen years. But the thrill of my usual escapes seems to fade with time. I'm constantly on the look out for fresh, new escapes, more immediate and easier to obtain. I seek to colonize new worlds (of pleasure).

My girlfriend and I watch the Daily Show almost every night. Another escape; nothing wrong in itself; but compared to the vast amounts of escapes we partake in, our lives seem to be strung together by numberless incidences of the same thing. I was getting bored with watching the same show with her every night so I suggested video games. We had played a car-racing game in a movie theater once and had a ball together, so when I purchased the computer I thought it might be fun to try something new.

The new Mac computer provided an enormous escape. Twenty-four inch LCD screen, superb graphics, lots of cool software, crystal-clear photos and video, you name it. And then with the Internet, I was so buried in possible escapes that purchasing a video game on top of it seemed on the verge of profligacy.

When I finally got the video game, it was more like an escape from my escape. I'd waited two weeks to receive an extra controller for the car-racing game. When the controller arrived I was ready to play.

That night my girlfriend and I sat in front of the computer, helplessly trying to figure out how to make the game two-player mode. Nothing on the menu of options (or the back of the box) suggested this was possible. We spent an hour clicking buttons until I realized that the game only allowed one person to play at a time.

Computers are solo vehicles. I forgot that part.

But when I played the video game myself, I wondered why I had bought it in the first place. I don't even enjoy video games. I'm a writer, an intellectual. Video games are anti-intellectual, anti-creative. How far I had drifted from my original desires!



Escapes can become addictive as well. My addiction to the Internet is unprecedented. I check my email on average eight times a day. I check my six blogs three or four times a day. I loiter in cyberspace, I wander, I get lost on purpose.

Not that there's anything wrong with wasting time. But I'm so driven to accomplish things that in an ironic reversal I find myself escaping more and more into a cloud of petty aggravation. What I'm saying is after a certain point, the escape blurs. You're no longer moving from routine to escape, from normal life to fantasy, from mundane to dream. Soon the routine becomes the escape and vice versa.

That's what happened to me. With all my escapes, I trapped myself in the very thing I was trying to break free from.

Just as a prison is mental, so is an escape. The two can easily switch on you when you're not paying attention. The desire for escape intensifies the prison.

I guess this leaves me with the hope that I can distinguish things from now on. My escape is supposed to be fun. My work might not always be. More importantly, I would like to return to those original escapes that once gave me a sense of fulfillment. Reading and writing are escapes that don't dull my mind. Reading and writing make me sharper. They are difficult pleasures that also happen to be magnificent escapes.

Or perhaps I don't need an escape at all. Maybe I just need to look around and check into reality once in a while--rather than longing for someplace else.

Stumble It!

By Way of Introduction: Part One

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.

Preface to the Blog of Innocence

I like to think of myself as someone who is drafting and re-drafting his life until it makes sense. Life, being irrational, never fully makes sense and so I am continually making up new stories about myself in a creative and naive way.

But this is how children think. Nothing is absolute. Everything is provisional for a child. Tell the child one story, she will believe it, because any story to a child has the possibility of being true.

Adults on the other hand conform to a rigid set of beliefs, true or untrue only according to their own reality.

I write because it is a door I once opened and I continue to go back and forth through that door. I explore the byways and the tunnels of myself.

Whatever I write always has the possibility of being true--at least to me--and to write down my reality is satisfying.

The question of whether what I do is art or not. Sometimes I am intentionally creating art and sometimes I am just writing. The best writing comes out when I am not intentionally doing anything--in fact the best writing comes out when I don't know what I'm doing or saying. But I think I like to write because it feels like someone is listening. It feels like what I am saying is not only true to me but true to others as well.

In a way, I am a compulsive writer. I will write because it's a drive.

Maybe I should stop.

Sometimes I do. But when I stop writing, I read a lot and reading activates my imagination and soon I am writing again.

Whatever I've been saying in the last few paragraphs, I'm not aiming at anything. I'm circling around the mood and the moment of my experience, gladly touching the borders and playing with the edges.

Everyone has their own secret life. We all have minds which are islands--between those islands flow the rivers of our hearts, but the mind itself is lonely. Which is strange, because we retreat into our minds so often. We retreat into our thoughts, our ideas, our beliefs, and we find solace in them even though they are ridiculous.

But there is safety in one's private mind, the thoughts of which no one can read. Because they are private entertainments of the self.

If you have pets, then you know the comforts of having non-human company. The human-animal connection is unique, and for obvious reasons, animals are incredibly loved by humans.

Ultimately, I think what we are stuck with is habit. Whatever habits you cultivate within your lifetime, those are the heavens and hells of your existence. Many habits fall between these two extremes and that's why our lives are pretty mundane.

Most of our habits are mundane in the everyday sense. We go to work, we eat meals, we tend to our homes and our families, we do chores. Perhaps that's why novelty is so interesting and stimulating.

I seek novelty. If I am not seeking novelty in dramatic and bizarre ways, I am seeking novelty in the miniature sense.

I do appreciate a well-ordered life, everything manageable and in its right place. This stems from the pure gratification of a sense of control. But as far as I can tell, control is something that most people try to exert over themselves and their environments.

My habits are deeply fulfilling mundane rituals that I carry out, such as going to Borders every morning to have my coffee and read the New York Times. To me, the Times is my mainstay to a normal, functioning adulthood. I am not saying the specific paper has the same magical effect on everyone. But for me reading the paper is very soothing and it reaffirms my sense of self.

I admire the quality of the writing in the Times and I believe it improves my own writing. But there is something else about the ritual which stabilizes me.

And yet, I seek novelty.

Women provide men with an immediate burst of novelty and distraction. If you are ever bored, start a romantic relationship and you will find how interesting your life gets.

But I believe that I ultimately retreat back into my own private mind, and that shared space between me and another person gradually lessens or dries up and dies.

I believe in long-term relationships, I am cynical towards permanent ones.

Right now I don't know where I am in terms of the opposite sex. Do I want to get married? Do I want to have children? Would I prefer to stay single?

The opposite sex is delightful. Loving can also be a doorway to a higher potential for one's being, but in most cases, we are not mature in love for long enough. We stop loving and I cannot explain or understand that.

Love gets degraded over time, diminished, and terribly distorted until it is not even love but something representing its opposite: hate.

Now my cats are quiet. The heater has stopped humming and the only sound in the room is of my keys clicking.

I think about my past life, my life in Spain and Las Vegas. I think of the adventures I once had and now being here in this moment of early, untainted adulthood.

I'm making the right choices now. Thank God. I am rational about things. I am aware of habit and how it has the power to lull me into a state of unconsciousness.

We grow ourselves. We grow our personalities and our behaviors. Like a garden, we grow ourselves--and once we were sick gardens but now we are growing healthier. Once we were patches of weeds over a dusty mound of dirt, but now we are seeking wholeness and fruit.

We want to bear fruit. For ourselves, for others.

We learn in time to survive, and even better, we learn to thrive.

It is the unfortunate fact of being human that we are constantly working against ourselves. We like to be our own enemies. And I think it is better that we just accept this as a matter of fact, that we accept the demons inside of us which want to destroy us, even if that destruction is a slow-going poison.

Because, ultimately, we must die and we know we must die. So the destructive force inside each one of us is familiar and close. We know the destructive side as much as we know the creative side. We know when we do good to ourselves and our bodies, and we know when we do bad.

Good and bad are only relative to our own individual experiences. Doing wrong to others is doing wrong to oneself.

But it is almost impossible to escape the cloud of unconsciousness that hovers over each one of us. And in an ironic display, we can see everyone else's flaws but not our own.

It is like the inability to smell one's own scent. The smell is palpable to others, but not to yourself.

I don't repress the mystery about myself; I form it.

I also celebrate it.

I have been called naive before, and after all, this blog is called The Blog of Innocence.

We are all innocent in life. We are innocent to the radical mystery of it.

No matter what we do, what errors we make, what horrors befall us, we are all human, we are all innocent.

Read a recent essay, "Loving Her" . . .

Descent: Part Three

Life presents a paradoxical situation to each of us. Life asks us to both care and not care at the same time. My flight embraces one end of the spectrum: the extreme of caring. My descent embraces the other: supreme not-caring.

How to engage both at the same time? Maintaining a balance seems contradictory and impossible.

The closed circle of flight and descent forms the essence of what it means to be human. That swing is life propelling itself forward and back through triumph and hardship, success and failure, gladness and sadness. Without this primordial movement, we would not know joy from misery, or pleasure from pain.

The cycle is so familiar to me, and yet I hardly recognize it. Like spring, summer, fall, and winter, I relive the drama of every new season. With fervor I jump from the cliff and soon find myself soaring through the clouds. “Life is really this good . . .”

What I never pay attention to is the subtle shift. If I knew that I was descending then perhaps I could prepare myself better, modulate my speed, extend my wings, maneuver my body, or look where I’m going—to ensure a safe landing.

But I plummet, as I’ve always plummeted.

So this is the true character of life and I must accept it. The rhythm is bound to rise and fall. I’m impulsive about flying and I want to live there, up in the clouds.

But the descent is pulling me down, bringing me into closer harmony with the earth and her seasons, and I will be wiser for it.

Descent: Part Two

Despair comes when I feel like my work has no purpose. Despair comes from feelings of naught, I am naught, my work is naught, the world is naught . . .

But what is despair?

Despair is the conviction of the futility of life.

Despair is all efforts signifying nothing.

Despair is the abortion of possibility.

Despair is a yoke that reads “Carry Me or Die.”

My despair feels like the abrupt end to a good movie. I wish I could return to those beginning parts and relive the experience, feel those powerful emotions. I regret having felt joy; it seems like a cruel reality, something that was given and taken away.

Despair is my grandfather’s overcoat hung on the door when he comes back from drinking and gambling. The house is silent. My grandmother is crying up in her bedroom.

My despair is a pit of solitude the town bullies throw me into so they can piss on me and shout jibes.

My despair is the convincing reality that I am stuck forever.

My despair is the inability to stay in one place, physical or otherwise.

My despair is the absence of wanting to do anything. Nothing interests me anymore.

My despair is a shopkeeper who scowls at me when I enter his store.

I used to be a drug addict. I am still seeking respite.

The Internet promises fulfillment. The type of person you are depends on what that fulfillment might be.

One moment, I feel like a king surveying his realms on a map of the world.

The next, I feel like the king’s fool, making jokes about the king’s empty possessions.

For three days, I am gliding through existence—every sensation a lubricant to positive emotion, every thought an expansive, intelligent connection.

For two more days, I am shedding my charisma and beginning to walk in a growing fog of self-delusion.

By the end of the week, lethargy and despair pour in through the levees.

Cycles are part of nature right? The seasons are cycles, the day is a cycle, life is a cycle . . .

I yearn for a place outside my constant seeking. I yearn for repose at the end of the wheel’s turning.

For the first time, I am conscious of my despair.

I am conscious of the cycle that drives me to act, or not to act. For the first time, I am interrogating my sadness.

I restrain myself from becoming too indulgent in my feelings of intoxication. This is the beginning of learning detachment.

My tendency is to grasp positive emotion. Like a cunning alchemist, I will try to make joy into a fountain of ecstasy or happiness into glowing euphoria.

Now I can see the problem with that. After euphoria, there is emptiness and only emptiness; after ecstasy there is pain.

Flights of grandeur. Flights of poetic inspiration. Flights of high emotion.

Nothing lasts. The water returns to the sea. The flight I expect to go on forever will at once make its sharp descent.

Whatever is holding me, will let go.

Descent: Part One

Flights of grandeur. Flights of poetic inspiration.

I’ve depended on flights for so long.

The truth is I’ve never wanted to be where I was physically located. As a teenager, I recall spending vast lengths of time by myself. My parents were not around. My mother was busy painting or cleaning the house; my father worked in a hospital and didn’t get home until late.

The house I grew up in was all white and we were forbidden to touch the walls. The first floor hallway extended the width of a soccer field, and the floors were marble. The living room had a fireplace, a white baby grand piano, and silver curios filled with figurines and crystals in the shapes of animals.

The house had a vacant quality which lent itself to dreaming. I used to look up at the sky light in my parents’ bathroom and watch the clouds sail over the house. At the foot of the Jacuzzi was a copper planter with bright red azaleas. Each side of the bathroom had a wall-length mirror with a marble counter. I came in there to dream and to be alone in the cold sunlight.

Or I would plant myself in the living room, curled over an art notebook I stole from my mother’s studio. She kept dozens of notebooks and journals in the bottom drawer of an antique desk. I would sneak the fresh white pages up to the living room, where I would draw and daydream until she came home.

The living room was always the most pristine and secluded room in the house, despite being at the center of it. The room gave the impression of a museum-like display or a drawing-room held in suspension. Like the moment before a party begins and the guests funnel in with smiling faces.

The cushions on the couches were firm. It was not easy to fall asleep on them. With the light coming into the room, one couldn’t fall asleep anyways. I would open the notebook and pause before writing anything. It gave me such pleasure to begin a clean notebook. I usually began with some arcane idea for my creation, as if I were a medievalist or a magician. I sketched the grotesque faces of the creatures of my imagination. I wrote scribbles of poetry. I brooded over the markings.

By my side I would have The Three Musketeers, a book I didn’t read as much as I carried it along with me like a reference guide or a Torah. Occasionally I flipped through the pages and glanced at the stories I could hardly decipher and only imagine.

There was a bubble of alienation surrounding me—and I needed a place to go.

My flights were often when I felt most connected to the world.

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.

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.

More Thoughts on Building

Since my last essay I've done some thinking about the questions I've raised.


A friend also helped me to understand what I was trying to articulate.


She suggested that my point was:


To create something, a building, a work of art, we need sufficient space; without space, nothing can be built upon.


Another way of putting this: openness yields creativity.


With a strong desire to create, and to reflect on creating in the process, I am interested in the notion of "building" as a metaphor for life and art.


In my essay I wanted to join the metaphorical idea of building with the literal one.


Recently I have re-discovered an interview I read in Tricycle Magazine (Spring 2008), which deals with a similar topic.


The magazine interviews Christopher Alexander, a renowned architect and author of the book, A Pattern Language.


Here are some original tidbits from that interview:


"It had to do with the Whole and whether things can be aligned with the Whole and unfolded from it. At Harvard, when I was doing research for my Ph.D., I spent a lot of time in the anthropology department, simply trying to find out what it was that people in all the so-called primitive societies had been doing when they built their buildings. Most of these buildings were, at their best, beautiful, and at the very least, harmless. They were building in a way that helped what I call unfolding--that was almost a given. People wanted to revere the earth, revere God, and maintain the Whole. And that is not the motive now."


"Yet it is the Wholeness that binds things together. My own experience as a builder is that you cannot do this unfolding unless you do it as an act of worship. Craftspeople, ancient and modern, know a tremendous about about this. If you're not steeped in that entity, if you really don't think about it or don't believe in a version of it, then when somebody says, Okay, now build me this motel, you've got absolutely nothing to go on."


"If people think something ought to be a certain shape and then they start making it that shape instead of doing what the unfolding tells them to do, they will royally screw it up. Because of concepts! Concepts interfere with this process--indeed, this is the teaching of Zen, isn't it? You can only act appropriately according to Zen teachings, if you are free of concepts. Because human concepts, no matter how cleverly conceived they are, almost always work against the Whole. And that's what we've been witnessing in architecture now for about one hundred years. The world is now prevented from unfolding."


Later in the interview, discussing universal design principles, he says:


"So why are these forms appearing again and again in different ways? That's what essentially led me to believe that the unfolding we're witnessing is a more fundamental process. The space unfolds to form these configurations, and the particular force that we say are responsible are really just examples of a much more general process that's going on."


"The Whole is always taking shape by differentiating itself in a way that is harmonious with what has come before."


Now I'm going to quote my own essay and bring the two ideas together.


Here is what I said in my essay:


"I want to erect buildings. Not concrete ones. But I believe in the architecture of ideas. I believe there is a harmony to life and a harmony to our relations with others. There is perhaps no secret to discover but only a monument that we have been creating for the longest time. The monument contains our history, our meanings, our vast disconnected thoughts and it connects them all through this great edifice of time."


Revisiting Alexander's interview, I wish to make a slight revision to those words of mine.


Alexander would agree with me about the invisible structures, about the harmony of our relations with others, about the Wholeness of our lives, our lives as spiritual edifices, and our individual accomplishments as personal buildings.


But he would also add that we, as individuals, do not create this Wholeness.


As individuals we perhaps allow the Wholeness to unfold. We can build in a way that "helps" the unfolding.


And this is something that Heidegger never thought of because he was too entrenched in concepts, even though he was trying to point to something beyond them.


The history of Western Philosophy is all the same in this sense: conceptual and abstract.


Hear what Lin Yutang has to say about Western Philosophy:


"Philosophy in the Western sense seems to the Chinese eminently idle. In its preoccupation with logic, which concerns itself with the method of arrival at knowledge, and epistemology, which poses the question of the possibility of knowledge, it has forgotten to deal with the knowledge of life itself."


He concludes, using a prodigious metaphor:


"The German philosophers are the most frivolous of all; they court truth like ardent lovers, but seldom propose to marry her."


Perhaps I descended somewhat into abstraction in my first essay, but my purpose wasn't to put forth a single idea so much as to allow the unfolding of my mind.


If I can merely touch the Wholeness in my writing that Alexander talks about in relation to buildings, I will be satisfied.

Lin Yutang on the "Histrionic Instinct"

Consciously or unconsciously, we are all actors in this life playing to the audience in a part and style approved by them.


This histrionic talent, together with the related talent for imitation, which is a part of it, are the most outstanding traits of our simian inheritance. There are undoubted advantages to be derived from this showmanship, the most obvious being the plaudits of the audience. But then the greater the plaudits, the greater also are the flutterings of heart back stage. And it also helps one to make a living, so that no one is quite to blame for playing his part in a fashion approved by the gallery.


The only objection is that the actor may replace the man and take entire possession of him. There are a few select souls who can wear their reputation and a high position with a smile and remain their natural selves; they are the ones who know they are acting when they are acting, who do not share the artificial illusions of rank, title, property and wealth, and who accept these things with a tolerant smile when they come their way, but refuse to believe that they themselves are thereby different from ordinary human beings. It is this class of men, the truly great in spirit, who remain essentially simple in their personal lives. It is because they do not entertain these illusions that simplicity is always the mark of the truly great. Nothing shows more conclusively a small mind than a little government bureaucrat suffering from illusions of his own grandeur, or a social upstart displaying her jewels, or a half-baked writer imagining himself to belong to the company of the immortals and immediately becoming a less simple and less natural human being.


So deep is our histrionic instinct that we often forget that we have real lives to live off stage. And so we sweat and labor and go through life, living not for ourselves in accordance with our true instincts, but for the approval of society, like "old spinsters working with their needles to make wedding dresses for other women," as the Chinese saying goes.


Lin Yutang, from The Importance of Living