My name is Bob and I’m a brain crack addict. All the proof I need can be found on the pages of my journals, which reach back to the early nineties, chronicling every grand realization and bold intention I did dare profess. So many big ideas, so little follow through. Like those books that I never got around to writing. There was “The Radical I Experiment,” which was to be a cross between “Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and “Tropic of Capricorn.” Then there was my magnum opus, “The Embodiment of Freedom,” which would outline my basic life philosophy. I was saving the more academic inquiry for the follow-up, “The Principles of Personal Transformation.” That one was going to get me an honorary PhD from Integral University and an open invitation to drop by Ken Wilber’s loft anytime. And I still haven’t taught myself Spanish, or learned those hundred cover tunes, earned that black belt. Hec, I haven’t even called my sister in six months.
There is some good news, though. I did marry Mary Alice. And I set up my own website. And I did, just like I said I would, buy some recording equipment off eBay and start creating my own music. So nyaah.
Today I thought it would be fun to go back through the Augusts of yore to see if there’s a discernable pattern connecting my thoughts from year to year, any relationship between planetary alignments and personal preoccupations, any brain crack left to be smoked. Well, let’s start at the beginning, shall we. 1993, the year I said I was “Going to California!” No one back in NY thought I would go through with it, but on August 19th I boarded a train in Albany that was headed for San Francisco:
[8-21-93] Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’, don’t know where the fuck I’m going. It’s 7am and I just enjoyed an unexpected kick-ass sleep. The guy sitting next to me just plain stinks, so I laid out across some adjacent seats in the observation car. There doesn’t seem to be any young, beautiful women on board. Oh well, I’ll just have to wait till Cali.
[8-3-94] It’s amazing where your life can go when you decide to take it somewhere, instead of just going along for the ride. Just walked through Buena Vista park at 8pm after an orientation meeting at CIIS. It’s a beautiful, clear evening, and the view of the city and bay is absolutely amazing. Life is good. [Started reading Ken Wilber's "No Boundary"]
[8-29-95] “All knowledge of other is simply a different degree of self-knowledge, since self and other are of the same fabric, and speak softly to each other at any moment that one listens.” –Ken Wilber, (Sex, Ecology, Spirituality)
I realized last night while taking a walk that I am in this “self-knowledge thing” for the long haul. I’m going all the way, baby. It’s not a choice. Who the hell would choose all the shit I’ve gone though. It’s just me. It’s all me.
Come to me
oh giver of love
and lend me your embrace
so that I might be held together
on this darkest of days.
[8-16-96] Denise and I are moving in together. Honestly, I’m too tired to write now, but I hope to use this journal in the coming weeks and months. Exercise, guitar, music, writing, reading–these things fall away when I get crazy. For now, these things are my practice and I would like to start things from ground zero in my new home.
[8-1-97] 33,000 feet above the jagged peaks of the Rockies. I peer out the window and think to myself just how dramatically in contrast these bold lines are compared to the perfect squares of the towns and cities. I’d like to reach down with a giant pencil and erase all those perfect grids, and blow a hurricane of eraser dust in that wake, and watch the ant-like humans scurry around aimlessly. That’s what the people in the airport reminded me of–overblown insects bumping antennae on the their way to and from a giant smear of jelly donut jizz. The children were the exception. The contrast between rocky ridges and squared off suburbia is nothing compared to the difference of expression between parent and child. This difference is more chilling the closer the familial resemblance. A sparkling eight year-old girl need only look closely into her jaded mother’s eyes to see what lies in store. And then there’s me, the raving hypocrite wagging his finger at the walking zombies, ultimately unable to hold himself above the jelly donut box of the world.
[8-14-98] I consist of a convoluted series of knots upon knots within knots of contraction, conflict, resistance, confusion, indecision, ineffectuality–in short, I’m a fucking mess. [8-29-98] The outline of a plan begins to emerge, I get excited, enthusiastic, then I balk at the first sign of struggle. I guess I still need to learn a lot about transformation.
[8-99] [No journal entries, emails, poems--nothing. In a dark depression, mourning the end of a five year relationship with Denise]
[8-7-00] Taking a moment before launching into a phrase, before looking for an exit. My god, I’ve spent most of life in flight. Flapping my arms in a frenzy of futility. Sinking down into the act, I feel myself growing tired, growing sad. So much wasted effort. Unless 29 years of running in circles was needed to induce this state of sickness, this vertigo, this aching desire to fall down and watch it all spin into oblivion. Love. Where might it lead me? Following, desperately following.
[8-24-00] Plunging into the flow of the inexhaustible present. I forget about this place time and time again, but now I return, humbled and wracked beyond idle hope. “How are you?” I’m always asked; “What’s going on?” Delivered as platitudes, what we actually have here are opportunities, invitations, points of entry. Yet we serve them up as cues to set the insidious routines in motion. Another mindless twitch and grunt as the walls of the status quo are shored up. Night after night we shuffle into the kitchen like zombies, devouring slice after slice of processed american cheese, only to spend our days helplessly lamenting how fucking fat we are!
Okay, that may not make a bit of sense, but it’s certainly true that we’re all in it together. “Hey, I’m just acknowledging your existence a little. I don’t want to hear your life’s story.” But that’s just the miracle of it! That one’s life story can come gushing forth from the simplest reflection of any moment. It seems so clear to me, in this moment, that today is the perfect day to begin my life as an artist. Which is just to say my life as a full human being. Wrapped up inside of me, within knot upon knot upon knot, is the juice that cleanses all, that burns all, that strips away all and returns all to the all. Alright, so maybe there’s nothing but a little gas wrapped up in there but hey, it always feels good to let one loose. I’ve spent half the year (and most of my life) holding this bitch in, so back the fuck up. Henry Miller wanted to leave a scar on the world, and he did. Me, I’d settle for stinking the place up a little.
[8-27-00] “In the humblest object we can find what we seek–beauty, truth, reality, divinity. The artist does not create these attributes, he discovers them in the process of [creating].” (Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, p.41)
[8-28-00] 4am… grind another spider into the pastiest of remains… lonely, slowly, slipping into the misty murk of memory… slipping into the bittersweet sludge of regret… slipping into the languid lull of lost hope… the stink of wet ink intoxicates, exacerbates, perpetuates the swell of hollowness–the empty world inside… release me oh great grandmother from the tomb of your withered womb… into the sparkling sea of destiny…
Seems all I really needed was a bowl of raisin bran.
From Henry Miller: “Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is. If you can get it down on paper, words, notes, or color, so much the better. The great artists don’t even bother to put it down on paper: they live with it silently, they become it.” (page 44, Stand Still the Hummingbird)
“Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.” Alan Watts, In My Own Way–1972–p.60
[8-1-01]
I don’t believe it
This isn’t real
All that I hide from
has finally found me
I reach for the light switch
but I never find it
Forever I’m blinded
Forever reminded
Forever reminded.
[8-7-02] Miller in Sexus: “That extra last-minute fuck had done wonders for me too. Always, when one digs down into the reservoir, when one summons the last ounce, so to speak, one is amazed to discover that there is a boundless source of energy to be drawn on. It happened to me before, but I had never given it serious attention. Staying up all night and going to work without sleep had a similar effect upon me; or the converse, staying in bed long past the period of recuperation, forcing myself to rest when I no longer needed rest. To break a habit, establish a new rhythm–simple devices, long known to the ancients. It never failed. Break down the old pattern, the worn-out connections, and the spirit breaks loose, establishes new polarities, creates new tensions, bequeaths new vitality.
Yes, I observed with the keenest pleasure now how my mind was sparking, how it radiated in every direction. This was the sort of ebullience and elan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen–not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pell-mell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche–and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a piece of paper in my pocket. Sometimes I would start for the house on the trot, not running too fast because then it would peter out, but easy-like, just as in fucking–when you tell yourself to take it easy, don’t think about it, that’s it, in and out, cool detached, trying to pretend to yourself that it’s your prick that’s fucking and not you. Exactly the same procedure. Jog along, steady, hold it, don’t think about the typewriter or how far it is to the house, just easy, steady-like, that’s it…” p.243-4
[8-2-03] When everything is dubious and put to the test, Little fingers forget, little fingers forget. Tied up and tedious, and dragged from the bed, Little fingers forget, little fingers forget. Surrounded by memories and lingering limbs, Little fingers forget, little fingers forget. Wandering, restless, and made of mistakes, Little fingers forget, little fingers forget. Heavy and heavenly, this weight on my chest, Little fingers forget, little fingers forget. Half-hearted melody; fragmented phrase, Little fingers forget, little fingers forget. Battered and Beautiful, like flickering flames, Little fingers forget, little fingers forget.
[8-11-03] Learning to hang out in unknown psychic or somatic territory is like letting ones children solve their own conflicts and problems. However much they flounder, it is only through this floundering that they will learn. I’m learning to seek out the places in my life where I flounder, and to keep focused on the floundering itself. I can inhibit my tendency to step in and resolve the floundering with previously established patterns of functioning. I can let the new develop. I can support the growth of the unknown into the known, and do so without depriving myself of a learning opportunity by taking over too much when the going gets tough. This is what meditation is all about. Contemplation. The principles of personal transformation, of somatic growth. This is also what lies at the heart of the creative process.
[8-18-03] “The squirming, gurgling, swinging, musical, boundlessly energetic bodies of the young are squeezed into Procrustean desks, long periods of stillness, and geometric time where they will be molded for the next 16 or 20 or more years until they emerge as full-blown members of the dimwitted community we now have, drained of the imagination, vitality, ingenuity, and resilience needed to resolve the many horrible crises that face us as a species.” Don Hanlon Johnson, “Sitting, Writing, Listening”
[8-04] [No journaling. Bought some musical equipment off eBay and was immersed in recording music.]
[8-21-05] From Caldwell’s “Getting our bodies back”: “Feelings are intended to move us, and until they move us toward a higher level of organization, they will persist. So that which you keep feeling is that which you haven’t let yourself feel completely.” (p. 119)
