The Monster 

Yesterday I made an important discovery.

I finally faced the pain that is in the center of my being.

I have felt this pain before, countless times. I don't think a day has gone by in my life without it. But my response has always been: "I can't deal with this now. I will never be able to. This is too much for me. I need someone to help me. I can't look at this..." This response has always been so quick, so automatic and obvious and self-justified to me--as if there were no other possible responses--that I…

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The Tightrope 

All at once I am on a tightrope. I no longer have feet next to one another, walking side by side. Instead, one foot ahead, one foot behind. The eyes turn toward infinity, where full seeing power coincides with blindness. The body is light, floating in doubtlessness. The breath, always, the breath. The body is warm, it sweats. One foot… Other foot… The arms waggle gracefully, dancing to faith. 

This is life now. I have forgotten even that I have forgotten what doubt is. I am on this tightrope and I walk…

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The Army 

Hume says: "There is nothing which is not the subject of debate, and in which men of learning are not of contrary opinions (...) Amidst all this bustle 'tis not reason, which carries the prize, but eloquence (...) The victory is not gained by the men at arms, who manage the pike and the sword; but by the trumpeters, drummers, and musicians of the army." But what if the army band is all there is to the army? Even those we see at first as soldiers are carrying, instead of guns, drum sticks. They pose as… Read more

The Web 

...that there isn't a destiny. Instead, things acquire meaning through accumulation, repetition. You see it once; you see it a second time. Now it is a sign. Now you will look for it a third, a fourth time. Now when it is absent you will miss it. And when it is substituted by a new cycle of accumulations you will think it was not supposed to have been. What are we to do with this randomness, with this authority over what repeats and what disappears? There is nothing to do with it. It isn't sad. It does not…

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Spotlight 

When I remember I have no one, I am essentially absolutely irremediably alone, I create.

When I remember it isn't a matter of meeting or not meeting someone, that such person does not exist, and that I am only and have only ever been in love with the world and that the world is me.

I must step away to a place where I cannot be seen. There in that dark alley, in that hidden little bench, behind that wall over there, I will meet with the world, and the world is me. It is the only real meeting. The only…

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Change 

The difficulty in changing the world is that we must at the same time find a way to survive in it as it is. We must accept the current situation while saying no to it.

Any change has to begin with acceptance. The impulse to jump out of "what is" will most likely die out otherwise. 

I am this. This is how things are. 

Yet I must also scream: I am not this! This is not how things are! 

To accept too much is to cowardly resign. To accept too little is to float away in dreams. 

What can be changed now? What…

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Silence 

I have written more than I have read and I have been silent more than I have written. Of the three activities, the first two have been meager, almost insignificant; only the third has been vast. 

The vastness of my silence. 

My silence is vast. 

Silence is my work. If I write, it is to produce fragile rafts that allow me to lie down on that vast sea. But it is the sea, not the rafts, I want beneath me. If I read, it is to find, hidden behind clumsy scribbles, the mute voice of my only friend. It stares at…

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Types 

 

 

 

Here are some notes I wrote a couple of days ago about forms of relationship people have with culture. 

 

                                                         ---Before reading---

 

-What I mean by "culture" here is a bit vague. It's something like the sum total of cultural production (art, philosophy, etc.). 

-Each of the "types" described below can be embodied by any of us at different times and there is a lot of breeding between types, but most of us live predominantly within one of the…

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Ignorance 

Being irremediably ignorant is bad enough, but there is the additional problem of being unable to live up to what we do know. Something is lost in the space between our minds and our speech, our imagination and our limbs. We betray ourselves. As soon as we are in someone else’s field of vision, our knowledge creeps under the couch like a frightened dog. In the presence of another we are another to ourselves. And the other too is another. Something dies, and something is born. And all that is left is that…

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Time III 

Instead of depending on these coincidences, we can come up with a method for at least becoming aware of whether we are acting through externally imposed systems. We must doubt all of our thoughts and actions until we come to a thought or action that is self-evident. That is, we must doubt while there is reason for doubting... And when we reach that unquestionable truth... It is the source, our voice. We usually substitute for this self-evident reason a fear of what society will think if we choose to…

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