Lord Henry says : "Do Everything"

Philosophy in Literature. That's one of my summer courses. In The Picture of Dorian Gray Lord Henry attempts to convince Dorian of the value of his youth. He explains that Dorian should realize his nature perfectly, put all thoughts to form, express all dreams and so on because when it's over, it's over.

Even now as I'm recalled to battle at Summoner's Rift I wonder about the mess of desires I have and if it's possible to entertain every plan of mine. It seems just as likely that I will sit idly between them all till the day I die. That's a horrible thought. I'm sure Lord Henry had the best intentions, that he believed in man and the self-correction in our species to carry out increasingly greater wills. But it's just as true that a host of our people get lost along the way to that pinnacle . . . I was going to continue on that line but it's too depressing. Rather I'll reconsider the other warning about the poison of desires not attended to, or temptations not yielded to. That the mine festers with the things we deny ourselves and we are left aggrandizing them in their darkest forms because of it. It's as if a secondary life is lived in the potential, in the subconscious and this greatly affects our behavior since the mind is interpreting information from everywhere at once. So what happens when duty and desire come into conflict? Ideally you kill 2 birds with one stone but if its the choice between the varying forms of indulgence - what Lord Henry never distinguishes from self-development but rather seems wrapped up in it - the obvious danger is the idea that all people will fall to base rather than evolved forms of inclination. At least that's my reading of it. So does that mean I've somehow come to accept the weakness over the strength of man as a truth? Am I one of these fatalists that believe man's nature is something to be located, battled and defeated?

For all the stories scattered in my head and in my library of worn notebooks that were never worked out, revised and displayed, for all the insights into organization and initiative for businesses I've been apart of but never were expressed, for all the good people have seen in me but the little I've actually applied for the revolution it might inspire, yeah my experiences have reinforced the idea that self-control is important. Maybe that's the point of accepting all aspects of the leaning motive. Maybe following natural inclination creates the experiences needed to learn lessons you wouldn't have accepted anywhere else. But at what price? Time? Decades? And then with the random finality of tomorrow looming over us all I find it jarring how easy it is to be petty. Humans do not own as a race the complete perspective of life and effort as values in themselves. These things are only useful to a cause for acquisition of some thing or another. I probably wouldn't be so stressed out about investment in my own creativity if it didn't represent such a huge course change in my existence. I've built up this drama around it that is more overwhelming than the joy of it. So now I truly wonder about the impartiality or non-existence sought after in the meditation practiced in various belief systems. Perhaps it is easier to accomplish things when they no longer serve the ego or the individual nature and it's base purposes. But how can anything truly be blessed by the highest energy of a human being if he is not partial to it, not passionate at all? What can we or should we sacrifice for the power needed to do what we truly want or intend to do?

Proven capability is a big deal to me. Beyond writing or making films I'd like to have a family one day. But I don't see the point in fathering a child I can't provide accurate guidance to. I know the future is always in question but still experience counts for a lot if it's positive; an affirmation of practice toward a universally desirable outcome. But it almost means like I have to force certain things and then nothing comes naturally and I've probably made it a crime for myself to demand moderation to the point where moderation itself is this ghastly grail of self-remonstrance: WRITE FOREVER TILL YOU DIE! DO NOT SLEEP! NOT LOVE ANYTHING ELSE! CREATE! IT IS YOUR SOUL PURPOSE! YOUR DUTY TO THE UNIVERSE! NOTHING ELSE MATTERS! IT IS THE KEY TO ITSELF AND A VALIDATION OF YOUR EXISTANCE!

Yikes. On some level I believe these things too but going with this adds an awful lot of fright to putting the video games away. It's like I'm going up on the cross. I've dug a nasty pit for myself that turned writing and the investment of this very personal time into something nasty. But I'm starting to imagine a way for it not to be. If this experience justifies the causality that comes as a result of yielding to impulses then perhaps Lord Henry was right. That makes me wonder though, especially since its such a huge topic in class right now, what freedom really is. It seems like the only thing we are free to do is trust ourselves. The rest is a roller coaster ride.

I continued a story today . . .

I wrote about a page. I still dealt with distraction and veered off. But I'm pleased to say I spent about 3 hours with the process and though it wasn't a significant amount of work, for me it was nice to know that once I got started I could achieve some momentum. The hardest part really is just starting. For now I have to be happy with the small steps. There's so much work to do. But it's enjoyable for that awe I feel in the world where make-believe becomes reality.

I've been watching Game of Thrones. The production from the opening credits to the fight coordination, wardrobe, set design and the actors and story of course, all of it is so meticulous and grand and inspiring and it all came from pages of this one vision.

It all goes somewhere, the time spent in these fantasies. And to be there you must first be here at the prime conception, the moment where all possibility exists and the roads for such possibility are as tangible as the keys struck in this blog.

I want to do that. I want to be on set for that creation where the stories of heroes are held and supported in highest regard... Belief that I'll get there has become a sort of faith. I mean it has to be similar to that faith in the ideal of heaven: do this duty now and receive reward later. But I'd be happier with achievement. How much of each moment should be committed when nothing is OK unless you are accomplishing that dream . . . these escapes of mine are the only means of forgetting this internal pressure. It's temporary but it stops the confusion for a while between my nature and bad habits and this other investment towards a grander destiny. That road has to be built from scratch and almost a disregard for experience. It's not something your parents give you or a message prescribed by commercials it's just you embracing the power of free will.

I daresay it isn't natural tho. That's gotta be the reason why this gets so hard to commit to. Obsession with dreams outside the natural law of feed, sleep, keep warm require a will beyond natural inclination and how does one accept this will to be more valid than the base one?

People do it all the time tho. Look at Game of Thrones or any other film or TV show that absolutely must be a labor of love somewhere. Or at least it would be for me. Tomorrow I will go for p. 3. May will lie well.

Morality, Truth, and Freedom

and Nature apparently!

To do what is right is an acquired taste. Happiness is weird that way - you can be happy at anything you choose to be happy with (practically this may require a nervous breakdown). But there's only one form of right and our definition of it is evolving every generation.

For myself, the duty is here in creation. But being a pure consumer is its own joy. Taking life as it comes, rather than planning it and shaping it, is quite a luxury. It means I can depend on other leaders to pave the way. But I couldn't call myself free then. I'd be a slave to survival, to obligations, to institutions, to the nature of beasts and possibly to guilt and regret.

What one does from the moment he wakes up is naturally leaning toward the inclinations of habit. Breaking that cycle, when the false attempt is actually part of the cycle is something like purgatory. Give me another season of world of warcraft and I'll give you another year of idle banter about possibilities.

It sucks but I'm holding onto this awareness like a life preserver in a storm. I'm nowhere near driving the ship yet. It's more because I don't recognize that I know where to go, I might by the time I get there but right now there are so many initiatives I need to manage that I can't help feeling like I'm full of it: be a writer, be a film maker, write shorts and scripts and shot lists and story-boards and poetry and learn to perform it and learn to sing and learn the piano and learn to draw and read lots more and exercise and be a socialite and learn about theatre and listen to more music and start my own business and entertain thousands and make lots of money and live everywhere and start out with a mustang until I can get that bentley and live like a shaman until I can bring the new prophecy and start an underground special forces team of super-hippies like "men who stare at goats" and buy an island and have and support dozens of children all over the world like zeus and teach them all to command their destinies and get them a nasty kung fu master to train them and I can die quietly after eating heavy portions of spanish food with my family safe and happy and a brazilian dream in the shower and knowledge of all the world's warmth in my heart . . .

: )


I'm convinced half of that can't happen without being attributed to some causality inherited from the moments I control every now that passes. Today I started writing plot summaries on what I hope to be a decent horrific supernatural short story. I could have pushed it and wrote the actual story up to where I knew it was going but instead I played like 6 games of league of legends. I also did critique a script and a short film for some colleagues but there's nothing quite like getting your own work done. It's a scary thing to realize you are an adult before you were ready to entertain that duty and come to find that you have yet to prove that your decisions for yourself are absolute. Maybe its much to think that most functioning adults are fine with discipline and commitment and I'm the odd one out, but I generally feel this way and making the change is rough business because to me being an adult means trying to change the world for the better every moment your a given to try. It means the pressure is on, you're on stage and held accountable for the fate of your corner of the universe and your actions ripple out consequences to the lives around you and there is no doubt as to the mischief chaos will command if you remain idle. And this sucks, cause ignorance is the most favorable kind of evil - in it the slavery is disguised as complacency and the world continues on in its erratic way cause you/I didn't play the part meant to be played.

That's what being adult means to me . . . being free, choosing right, and not bending to the convenience of lies or the shadow of innocence long gone. It means waking up for a purpose and performing it till you've got nothing left and boy what a bar I've set for myself . . .

Sleepy time.

On Fear and Heat and Me

I am 27 now. I believe I'm very scared. The dream has always been to write and be good at it. Indeed the idea is to journey inward for a living. But along this path I have come across some insidious obstacles. One is the forced slumber that accompanies any contemplation on the matter of this discipline. Even now I am battling to stay awake. I shake my head like a mad man. I breathe hard to keep going. But at the center of my forehead I feel an amazing weight that droops onto my eyelids and makes my arms sag and my eyes roll back. The obstacle isn't circumstantial. It's something on the inside and it is most terrible in its persuasion. After another long stretch I've returned to battle it again.

Break.

I started that around 8pm. It's now 2am. I had to lay down.

I don't know what it is. I can spend 12 hours straight in front of a TV catching up on a good show or playing a video game straight through to completion. But this one practice; an effort of my love of life, of humanity, and the future, the golden ticket not to prosperity but at least happiness - my real soul investment in this world - and I fall asleep!

But at least temporarily I'm awake. The heat of the summer has woken me up in a sweat. I'm angry. I want more than nothing to turn the tables and mount an incredible response to save my own life.

Things happen. I'm living with my mom again. I'll be turning 28 in a little over a month. It's tough on the ego to have to start over but in contrast to the man I was becoming, I suppose it was necessary. I was believing that unhappiness was a mark of duty and that doing your duty could be your greatest sign of valor, of consideration and integrity and respect for life and circumstances and the random. However the alternative consideration is that it's perhaps all true but that the duty must be to oneself, not to the image afforded by others of uncontrollable intent.

I loathe to do harm. I only want to protect, preserve, and uplift. However that desire has made my heart and mind shrivel and it is a sad irony to value strength but never attain it in your justification for sacrifice.

By no means am I a saint. I should probably clarify that. And talking in generalities wouldn't help the average reader understand. I'm not yet ready to be frank except on this issue: I am supposed to write and write a lot at that. I haven't been doing that. It has presented a painful surface to break through each time, like skin healed over a wound improperly that must be torn and redressed to stop an infection (if that even happens).

The process of willpower is thought - choice - attempt. It's this muscle I need to grow and I can't afford to have some weird chemical process get in the way. I am seeking now the industry within me. I am an American. There is a lot of wrong to right here, there are a lot of advantages I have ignored, there is a legacy that is my responsibility to construct and time . . . I guess time is only an aid in its coldness; its unrelenting hunt. Perhaps that is the nature of discipline, to match the discipline of time's passing, to keep us alert to our mortality and to make the brave leaps that much more heroic.

On Quantum Activism

I was surprised to see the daily ritual of indecisiveness spoke in the terms of a physicist in a very special documentary I watched between the hours of 4am and 6am last night.

Quite simply, the bad habits are constructed from experience on the level of the ego. The dreams and wishes also contained on such a level do not manifest if the intent is solely held within local consciousness because of its narrow set or resources. Non-local consciousness, and discontinuous thought is where reality is manifested, just as the vital, mental, and supramental are manifested possibilities of such non-local consciousness. Change therefore comes in the acceptance that materialism itself is a dead-end. There are too many paradoxes that erupt from it as a ground up source of reality; for instance the duality of the subtle and the shared experiences, the subjective and objective perspective that force an alienation and frustration in our ability to effect real change.

I'm likely butchering this. The documentary is called the Quantum Activist. It follows a path of a renowned thinker who's name I must learn to recall properly. He is Indian, self-aware, vastly intelligent and a professor now who is doing absolutely what is needed to be done; he is explaining our shared responsibility to each other and our planet. He is showing scientific reasoning that supports our effect upon our reality and the nature of God. The conversation is a requisite for those who feel stuck.

I've been struggling with what should be a mild challenge. I must write a number of essays for class. However each paragraph has been a grueling experience. My willpower is locked up in ways I can't explain. And for all the reasoning behind the necessity of this act, my emotional self is abstaining from commitment. It is peculiar this form of rebellion. It is completely self-destructive. I even like the class I have (19th century novel). I've had the great benefit of being introduced to Dickens, Pearce, Austen and more. The stories are ripe for analysis. And yet in the great mess of appreciation I found myself without the map to wade through to the execution of a proper response. All I have felt is doubt and wonder. I fear this weekend is all I have. I am very close to fulfilling the requirement for my creative writing degree but if I fail this class, not only is that money wasted but possibly a threat to loan qualification that will go to finishing film school. I cannot to have my GPA fall by any great degree.

The relationship suggested in the Quantum Activist was an alternating one where an individual affects local and non-local consciousness in tandem - where action is supplemented by presence of being. The incubation period that follows familiarity of a subject is an important part of eventually harnessing the subject for one own purpose. The focus upon activity, being goal oriented is a natural urgency for us, but greater challenges require discontinuous leaps in thought to provide the perspective enhancing suitability and capability. We have to go out of our minds a little to adapt to new challenges. Specifically this non-local consciousness is the one where we resonate with the cosmic. It is there the possibilities are chose and the manifestation occurs for us to perceive.

By restating the nutshell of what I have come to appreciate in this documentary I hope to have internalized it in such a way that will aid me in my immediate commitments and become a greater aid to myself and those I care about in the future.

A Mountaineer Once Told Me "Just 50 Words a Day . . ."

This was when I worked at a gym as a personal trainer. I was perhaps initially too shy for the gig but was just about to hit quota when I was fired officially for being non-productive and unofficially for not filling out paper work on time and being tardy. It's one of the few positions in life that I compare to others and realize what a great opportunity it was to work with people.

Working with people can often be a mixed bag. But for this entry I'll say that it eventually becomes clear that it is all we were meant for. Even the loneliest or most isolated job is something that others rely upon. We are meant to affect each other's lives and I've come to appreciate the chance inspirations that happens when other's see a chance potential in me.

"50 words a day," he said. "It doesn't matter what it is. Stream of consciousness, poetry, prose. Just write it and you will find after a month or two or three, when you go back and read it over, that all your themes, characters, motivations, revelations are all there." In essence, writing a book can't be hard if you are simply doing it. It's the actual doing that is paramount.

For a while my great endeavor was just to be up early, but I'd get up and wonder what to accomplish first and usually be lost in the mire. Video games, going back to sleep, or investing time in some other distraction was the easies way to approach that limbo of time that I gathered for myself without an action I could commend to it. By writing early, I can reassert my claim on the process and my future. I can begin to accomplish the dream by instituting a new habit during a time where idleness would have its way.

What's odd is how a truth can exist with you for years but until you state it, record it, accept it, promise it to yourself, see its connection with everything you are, you may let it go. It's similar to how I've dealt with voting in the past. It's a responsibility to place upon yourself and it's one aimed at declaring yourself continually into the presence and future simultaneously. It is also one equally dismissed by an off-track perspective, left to be accomplished "later." Tomorrow does not technically exist as a thing we can confirm upon.

There is no easy or simple way to live well. You are either true with yourself and vigilant to observe that truth and respond to it, or you become a house of chaos. I have an inkling that 50 words a day may be all I need to light the way.

Almost always from the top . . . with feeling

Half-starts; seems to be the way with things. With me. I can perceive a momentum but cannot note a measure of its force. I'm constantly reminded of a dwindling landscape, a shortening potential, and the huge opportunities afforded in the moments regardless. It can be overwhelming to juggle the causes for life with living itself. All romance can do is amplify despondence as the will rises to take its place.

I'm talking of course about what is so easy to talk about and do little else. Destiny. The more steps I take the more risks I must be willing to accept. It may indicate a clue that I am on the path I need to be on. I've had several epiphanies though I cannot remember them all in order:

1) The hero grows weak when the villain does not avail itself. Conviction is grown from adversity. So if the adversity is subtle or seemingly absent, we should understand that as an opportunity to flourish, instead of becoming complacent and tragic.

2) In the end, there is no greater purpose in the pursuit of completeness than myself (this may seem simply ego-centric, but when the passions cannot be summoned for the external and fickle entities we are relationed to, we must ask the questions if we are enough in the end, or will the outward lack of inspiration be enough to damn us).

3)I sleep best when I take forward steps.


Developing a relationship with the self, which means learning to keep promises to the self is the first step in dealing with the world. You must have your own confidence before others can follow your lead, let alone trust you. You must know yourself as if from the outside as well as from the innermost core. I have no more lies, just adamant failures to comply, but I'd like to think my eyes are open.

The world might end if not for the hope we can carry to such a magnitude within our singular forms. Together, dreams weave together and can knit the universe in patterns not yet intended by what greater consciousness that saw to the timing of our creation. It's good to believe in something, better to let it move you if that movement is meant to build or repair. I suppose what I'm reaffirming for myself is the responsibility we have here.

I thought I would write here about being American, but the closest I can come to is acknowledging what meaning I seek in a country that is so abundant and corrupted. There is little we need to do now save dream and create - the means of survival requiring less and less, or more and more of our spirit than our instinct to survive.

I would read on political and environmental issues, would find ways to teach and commit myself to great endeavors but I am half-cooked, not yet ripe. I am still master of nothing and so can be depended on for little. I'm scared of this lack of definition and once more rally to work at reversing this condition here and everywhere.