On the cosmic spiritual scale, cruelty and
sentimentality compensate for each other.
As with all dualities, it is the responsibility of those who contain
them and wish to evolve beyond the puerility of their opposition, of their
typical unevolved opposition in society, to choreograph a perfect dance, an
aesthetic dance, between them. In other
words, it is passionate knowledge we seek, that we must seek. Four states:
passion with ignorance (the classic brute), knowledge without passion
(the classic scholar), neither passion nor knowledge (the classic couch potato,
the bourgeoisie, the mandarin), passion with knowledge (the classic poet). But I taxonomize.
These recent days my weeks follow a path
something like this:
· - three schizoid days
in the jungle
· - a day of chaos
· - a day of recovering
from chaos
· - a day of writing
prep (aesthetic mining)
· - a day of writing
(aesthetic production)
Curious routine. I’m reminded of Louis Aragon’s lines from his poem, Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux (There’s no happiness in love):
What it takes in regrets to repay one small thrill
What it takes in sorrow to pen the slightest song
What it takes in sad tears for one tune on a guitar
Risking when one’s older is far more
interesting than risking when one’s young.
Yet the trajectory of most lives these days is oriented toward the
minimization of risk as one ages (the rise of risk management as a discipline). Increasing prosthetics and the securing of
them (whether cottages, spouses, jobs and careers, friends, rrsps, social
standing) are seen as signs of maturity, responsibility, adulthood. This imbalance—this distribution of risk
throughout time instead of throughout psyche or soul (which is collapsed time)—is
embedded through our society and is a strategic social mistake. Our definitions of maturity and sanity occur
within a context of immaturity and imbecility.
Marijuana remains a Delphic oracle for me,
pointing to murky inarticulate truths, which I must then mine myself, with tangential
support and attempted sabotage from others.
Of course, weed is also a delightful accompaniment to sex and partying; but
in those instances, while valuable, its function feels little different than the
pleasant utilities of coffee or alcohol—a kind of boost to achieve a temporary
social or physical transcendence. When
pot loses its resonance as a temporary transcendence or mining tool, it has
nowhere to go, has no object to unite with but itself, and one becomes, in
colloquial terms, a pothead, a stone.
The diminishment of pot as an entheogen, its rise as a lifestyle.
The cycle of productive pot mining during
crises: it first brings emotional
warnings (I wander emotionally through potential problems, dangers), then
brings clarity as the elements of the crisis are ready to coalesce. I feel before I cognate. Pot works its way from body through heart to
mind to action, back to itself—at best, a guided tour of the present state of
the soul. One has to cocktail, of
course: to find a judicious mix of substances
(preferably organic, non-toxic, non-addictive) over time, with the right mix of
solitude/otherness, in the right moments and phases. One has to learn to exploit the drug (not the
drug exploit you): but of course this is
too techno-, too formulaic, too easy and unidirectional: rather, one has to develop symbiosis with the
drug (or substance, most unfortunate
words, as both have been usurped by the desperate and fearful technocratic,
legal, and political class), to find one’s place in it as it find its place in
you.
Business strategy is just a specialty of
philosophy … of conceptualizing world. I
experience little difference in the way I process a strategy problem in a
business (pragmatic) setting and the way I process a problem of language, time,
or nothingness. Fortinbras meets Hamlet.
As a philosophical Taoist, my management style
is aligned with the Tao Te Ching but my lifestyle is aligned with the Chuang
Tzu. I unite these two primary Taoist streams
through the dualistic passion of Christianity.
Christ as welder.
One is frequently warned before going to India
for the first time: expect a nervous breakdown at least every two weeks. Perhaps the same warning should be given
about the Bain.
Even when I’m having a breakdown, I’m
marvelous—the experience just the sector of marvelous called breakdown. Breakdown
is simply a desire, a reminder, of the necessity for adaptation, even as
physical hunger is a desire for food, a reminder that we need to orient our
present activities to the cupboard or fridge.
Breakdown is a hunger, reminding
us we need to orient our present activities to soul.
To the West:
Your troubled mind emerges from your viewing
the rational as rational. The rational
in itself is not rational, but the shadow of the irrational and so a subversion
of itself. Only in cooperation with the
irrational does the rational effectively display itself and prove to be capable
of any dignity, intelligence.
I must assert and defend the way I feel—the way I feel (not what I feel)
is who I am. People mistake what I think
for what I am; they mistakenly identify the opinions I spout with identity. But this is somewhat like mistaking a
dandelion seed floating through the air with the dandelion in its entirety—its flower,
leaves, roots. Yet, even worse—it’s like
identifying the seed with the DNA. The
way I feel—the way I process myself in relation to the world—is my spiritual
DNA. What might the discipline be called
that maps the two? It surely is not
academic. It surely doesn’t belong to
psychology, philosophy, or genetics. We
might say it is the poetic discipline.
We might say it is the human one.
The difference between Taoism and Christianity: the murky way as identity vs. the solid nails
on a cross.
The curious thing about my present crisis is
that it’s my first that feels as if it’s largely happening/existing outside me
or a “relationship.” Like how a fungus
digests externally, I’m beginning to crisis externally. Maybe I’m turning into a mushroom.
i will go to the end of time
and there find the source of the sun
i will destroy myself
to discover myself
i will question everything
to reveal nothing
i will deconstruct the city
to find the nature that’s hiding in me
i will resurrect god in a bathtub vigil
for no reason whatsoever
i will be celibate
because no one else is
i will confuse myself
to reveal myself
i will become bankrupt
to become rich
i will give myself over to the infinite paths
of darkness
to live
