August 2021.

Things have changed, but that is the nature of "things" in this context. This is a test. This is a test to see whether or not these letters stick to this virtual landscape. If they do, then I'll continue to post letters here. If they do not, then I've wasted thirty seconds by typing these letters. 

Boredom

Considering a popular notion of Despair:

That it is born out of an unwillingness,

an unwillingness to be a self without,

a self coping with a loss, (or coping with a negative gain).

So: Despair comes from an unwillingness of becoming,

becoming the person who is specifically and inevitably without.

Example: Mourning a loss, (either by death or distraction).

The person who has lost someone significant despairs at being,

he or she despairs at being the person who is now inexorably without.

Despair is the unwillingness to accept the altered state of absence.

Despair is ‘amartia 1], and is hauntingly similar to Boredom, the deadliest of all inadequacies:

     People with experience maintain that proceeding from a basic principle is                     supposed to be very reasonable; I yield to them and proceed from the basic principle                 that all people are boring. Or is there anyone who would be boring enough to                             contradict me in this regard?...Boredom is the root of all evil.

     This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were                   bored; therefore they created human beings. Adam was bored because he was alone;                 therefore Eve was created. Since that moment, boredom entered the world and grew                 in quantity in exact proportion to the growth of population. Adam was bored alone;                   then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel                         were bored en famille. After that, the population of the world increased and the                           nations were bored en masse. –SØren Kierkegaard

We get into all kinds of trouble when we think that we are bored, and this will without the slightest doubt lead to despair*.

*Written for one person in particular.

                               

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[i] Literally “missing the mark,” often translated as sin.

Roses are red

Violets are blue...

wait just a cotton picking moment,

Violets are violet.

Real Estate

We’ve driven by several memorials on this trip. Many of them were on the interstates. Others were on back highways and a few on country roads. Some had crucifixes. Others had wreathes. Sometimes notes were attached, though I couldn’t read them while moving.

I remember one memorial very well: We took a detour on one of the varicose turn-offs while campsite hunting on Last Dollar Road. Tucked away about a tenth of a mile was this tiny makeshift memorial. I crouched next to it. A man had lost his lifelong companion: a woman who lived between forty and fifty years. A small votive, some plastic flowers, and a pewter statue of St. Peter were all bound together with a small flowered garland. 

I read the note and it made me sad. 

I wish I could remember exactly what it said. 

It had something to do with the man’s soul now missing a piece. 

I just remember that the lady died in 2011. 

Everything struck me at once: the beauty of mountain we were on, the isolation, the cold wind whipping through the Aspen and Pine. I stared at the engraved and hyphenated dates, dates which were now bound by parentheses; two finite points on a seemingly infinite line. It was then that I felt this man’s grief. I felt compassion for a man whom I had never even met; I felt the weight of his loss and I felt it immediately.

We climbed back into the car and I was silent for a moment. “This is a very specific place” I thought.

And I continued to think about it.

“Place becomes specific when a memory is involved,” I thought to myself. This place is specific because this man placed his memorial here. Even if we don’t know the people or the stories involved we still understand the symbol here. I understand that this place has been specified by many memories.

I also understand that this place has been specified by one final memory, and I understand the symbols within this symbol, too. The votive for light, the saint for guidance and favor, the dates for linear time when this person existed, the flowers for youth, life, respect, beauty, comfort, rest, and so on. I also understand the parentheses. But why here? Why tucked away into the side of this particularly remote mountain? Why here at this very spot?

Maybe this is where they met, on a backcountry excursion through sheer coincidence.

Maybe this is where they would sneak off as teenagers to figure out the world and to make love.

Maybe this is where he realized that the two of them undoubtedly shared one soul.

Maybe this is where they decided that they truly loved one another.

Maybe this is where they decided to get married.

                                                or,

Maybe this is where she told him that she was sick.

And I thought about this for a while.

But the drive down was beautiful: full of twists, turns, switchbacks, and overlooks. Exponentially pastoral, idyllic, bucolic, and so on. Vistas and views that a person couldn’t quantify. And back there, tucked away on the side of a mountain was this place were gravity felt a little stronger just for a second.

Yeah, we’ve seen lots of memorials on this trip, but this one was very specific.

..

The Gentle Art of Selfishness

Realistic anxiety strikes us as something very rational and intelligible. We may say of it that it is a reaction to the perception of an external danger—that is, of an injury which is expected and foreseen. It is connected with the flight reflex and it may be regarded as a manifestation of the self-preservative instinct. On what occasions anxiety appears—that is to say, in the face of what objects and in what situations—will of course depend to a large extent on the state of a person’s knowledge and on his sense of power vis-à-vis the external world. We can quite understand how a savage is afraid of a cannon and frightened by an eclipse of the sun, while a white man, who knows how to handle the instrument and can foretell the eclipse, remains without anxiety in these circumstances. On other occasions it is actually superior knowledge that promotes anxiety, because it makes an early recognition of the danger possible. Thus the savage will be terrified at a trail in the jungle that tells an uninformed person nothing, because it warns him of the proximity of a wild animal; and an experienced sailor will look with terror at a small cloud in the sky that seems trivial to a passenger, because it tells him of an approaching hurricane.

-Sigmund Freud.

Consider the tiny cloud.

Consider the storm in its infancy.

Consider that those who have seen and recognized the nascent storm have a compelling anxiety for its inevitable landfall. Superior knowledge, then, means superior burden, depression; oppression; forces too potent for any human to resist and overcome.

“Take therefore not a thought for tomorrow; for tomorrow will look upon itself.”

Mattew 6:34

To totally decontextualize the above is to reiterate a cliché that had been, up until this point, swimming around in the minds of many, many humans. The cliché still swims; knowledge has the capacity to overturn exponentially overstated “truths,” but we’ve eaten that fruit already and thus learned that knowledge is cruel, for it can undo the most stoic of individuals. I look to the clouds and I see water vapor in multiform. My mind shapes the clouds into recognizable objects depending upon what mood I’m in, what anxieties I have.

We gaze upon that oncoming storm and if we haven’t any anxiety, then we haven’t any idea what moves towards us. If we do know, and we choose to ignore it, then we lie to ourselves. We listen as the waves begin to crash. We hear the thunder begin its low, unearthly growl, and we can feel ourselves moved by potential, yet all we see are clouds.

If we are honest, truly, truly honest, then all we can do is make ourselves comfortable and brace for impact. There is only a certain amount of comfort one can achieve, and often such comfort is short-lived and fleeting. This is anxiety, and sometimes it looks like selfishness.

Some Brief Nonsense on Being and Becoming

The equation is simple:

(joey) + (notion) = (joey-and-notion-becoming-a-new-being/type-of-being). 

A + B = C.

Easy as pie.

So, my wife is pregnant.

Let's think about this for a moment before we move on.

(Think Here)

This means that I’m going to be a father.

This is very complicated.

Much like the concept of being itself is also very complicated.

Here’s what I mean:

(joey) + (going-to-be-a-father) = (New notion of joey-who-is-going-to-be-a-father)

I told you it was complicated. To use sort of Heideggerian lingo, the “entities” within each of the above parentheses are separate entities in and of themselves. I would say that each one is its own individual “being,” but this cannot be the case for the notion of going-to-be-a-father, such an entity hasn’t any actual being itself, (though many beings certainly have it!).

So, to simplify, just consider the parenthetical ingredients as what they truly are: variables.

Now, since the concepts of “joey” and “going-to-be-a-father” are two separate concepts, (concepts that I thought might be exclusive for much, much longer than it appears to be, well, happening) so it must follow that the result is also variable, though not a variable. You see, the result “joey-who-is-going-to-be-a-father” has to be a new being; a more responsible being, a more considerate being, a being who can forgive and forget, a being who can act as pillow or punching bag, a being who can offer comfort, support, and an occasional ass-whooping, a being who can negotiate, interrogate, and turn an occasional blind eye to a dumb choice or poor decision, arts of which I, this present joey, have mastered. This new being will have to consider a whole new universe of information, a universe that doesn't revolve around lil' ol' me. And this is where it gets complicated: Me is all I know.

New “entities” in their infancy tend toward and are prone to severe existential contemplation.

* * * * * * * * *

It will be interesting to reflect on these few words when my son or daughter is old, or old-er, or old enough, or whatever the hell. I can see myself now, pining to be the “me” I was however long ago, remembering how good it was or how different it was. Yet I can also see this new aged version of myself mocking the me of yesteryear for being so green, so damned naïve, (which sounds like something older me would say). I can pine and pine and pine, but the notion of joey-who-is-going-to-be-a-father will be old hat by then, for the joey-who-is-a-father will be an entity in and of himself.

Couching the Concept of "Laziness"

I like to think about a lot of things. I think a large number of people are the same, and though I often feel as if no one thinks at all, this is only my perspective.

So, I was thinking the other day about the concept of laziness. I started thinking about what can be perceived as laziness could be a misinterpretation of an individual’s formula for existence. A formula for existence is part of the complex structure that one uses (either willingly or not) to construct his or her worldview. Understand what I’m getting at here? In other words, perception is based upon one’s worldview, so laziness, much like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

But, then I read the penultimate sentence and stopped for a second. I thought, “is it grammatically correct to have the words can and could arranged such a way?” Then I start thinking, “what do these words have to do with grammar at all?” I start to think that maybe it would be better if I wrote instead “what might be perceived as laziness might also be a misinterpretation of an individual’s formula for existence.” I come to the conclusion that my concerns probably lie in the alliterative quality of the words can and could rather than their arrangement. So my concern is more an aesthetic one than it is a grammatical one. But wait, isn’t grammar itself an aesthetic? Yep, I mean, I think it is. An aesthetic is, after all, a set of principles. Then again, I don’t really know right now; I’m too lazy to think too hard on it at the moment, and I know that I’m not thinking about grammar while writing this; it’s reflectively  linear more than meticulously and surgically precise. Besides, I’m in the middle of something; I’m philosophizing. Wait, the words can and could have to do with tense and temporality, and who gives a crap about grammar right now except prescriptive grammar snobs, anyway? Or is it descriptive? Who cares? AHHH. I AM EASILY DISTRACTED.

Nevertheless, laziness is a perception. In other words, “laziness” is a judgment; it is a juxtaposition of life-formulas, a comparison of one’s preconceived notions of mental and physical action and inaction over another’s[1], but it is still a judgment, and we should never forget that it is a judgment based upon the “judge’s” very own standard of measurement, that is, his or her perspective.

Example: what one person might perceive as me lying on my couch, staring at a muted-television, eating a handful of grapes, crackers, and cheese, crumbs scattered around my general area, half-watching Sportscenter, half-contemplating what it means to exist, that is “working out the formula,” another person might perceive as me being, well, lazy. What a person might perceive as me just spending a lot of time on my couch over the years thinking (hundreds of hours perhaps) another person might perceive as sheer and utter laziness. That’s just a perspective. I’m not being lazy. But, then again, maybe I am. 

I’m a philosopher, I’m just being.

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[1] And, when I write “preconceived” I mean “existed before as a quality established by the culture in which a person was raised.”