“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

– John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

__________

“So the equation works like this: the more I learn, the less I know. Yes, more is less. That’s the way it works in my mind. And it applies to all of us, not just me. For me, that’s the secret to a big part of my life and how I became who I am.”

– Georges St Pierre, The Way of the Fight

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The more I read, the more I know, but the less certain I am about what I know.

Like stripping paint: the satisfaction of taking off a layer of ignorance, only to be confronted by a hidden layer. When you strip that, another layer is revealed. The infinite layers of ignorance.

And you also learn that everything is connected, that knowledge in isolation is pretty much worthless. What you know needs to adapt to the demands of the real world which are random and limitless.

The only time knowledge thrives in isolation is during school when we are assessed on individual subjects which never interact. But life is not subject specific. It is rich and interconnected.

My ignorance reveals itself in layers. That is why I try to avoid declarative statements. How can I say something is true, or the best, when it is likely there is information yet to be revealed to me that would have me change my mind.

It’s a nice personal philosophy: to be openly ignorant, counterbalanced with being openly curious.

The only problem is, there’s no end to my ignorance. I cannot set a goal of being fully informed.

The only choice is to keep an open mind and keep moving forward.

“Shame is universal and one of the most primitive human emotions that we experience. The only people who don’t experience shame lack the capacity for empathy and human connection. Here’s your choice: Fess up to experiencing shame or admit that you’re a sociopath. Quick note: This is the only time that shame seems like a good option. We’re all afraid to talk about shame. The less we talk about shame, the more control it has over our lives.”

– Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

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You’re gonna walk on home 
You’re gonna walk alone 
You’re gonna walk so far 
You’re gonna wonder who you are 

Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame 
Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame 
Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame
Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Sh-Shame 
Shame
Shame

Love is good and love is kind 
Love is good and love is blind 
Love is good and love is mine 
Love is good all the time

Hello, goodbye
You know you made us cry…”

– Smashing Pumpkins, Shame

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I thought I’d sent a reply: It remains in my drafts. I feel too ashamed to admit to my mistake, although the alternative is garden variety rudeness.

I sent an email to one of my heroes, not the first. There was a brief correspondence a few years ago. It ended, as all my correspondence does, due to my inattention.

It will be a couple of months now, since his gracious reply to me, inviting me to say hello after an event he was running.

I had to respond, regretfully, that I couldn’t make it. Although I could have made it. I wasn’t prepared to make a big enough effort (here comes shame again).

I need to send a quick email. Apologise. Be gracious. No one wants to hear my soul bared and shared. Do the right thing.

It’s just that admitting to a mistake creates acute shame. It’s painful. Leaving the mistake be is merely a part of a low level of chronic shame. I carry that daily: I’m ashamed of not keeping in touch with anyone.

Shame comes up as a topic of conversation with myself when I want to be especially cruel.

Often the topics and triggers for shame are the same.

Is it a legitimate reflection on my shortcomings? Or is something that I subject myself to unfairly by contrasting my actions with an idealised version of myself?

What I do know, from extensive practice is this: shame is not an action emotion. It keeps me rooted in place. Shame is felt as a full stop. It’s not so easy to start a new sentence, when I have sentenced myself to shame.

So, what’s the conclusion to this peek into my shame?

I think it’s obvious. Better to admit to being imperfect, apologise and move on, rather than hold it in so I slowly become intoxicated with shame.

Is that so hard? Well, for me, yes.

At least now, it’s is not a secret shame. It has been spoken in public.

But the work I need to do to move beyond this soul eating emotion commences in private.

It’s a shame I didn’t start earlier…

“People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage. This is why Paul Tillich speaks of courage as ontological—it is essential to our being.”

– Rollo May, The Courage to Create

__________

“My grandmother instilled in me at an early age the notions of reputation, honor, and dignity. I learned from her, and at school as well, how to distinguish between chakatagir (fate, kismet, or what is written on your forehead) and nkaragir (character, or what is imprinted in you). Over the first, I was told, we had no control, but in the case of nkaragir we were fully responsible and accountable.”

– Vartan Gregorian, The Road to Home: My Life and Times

__________

Possibly the most important human characteristic.

Dignity.

Dignity allows us to move forward, toward something.

It lets us hold our head high. Not from arrogance but because of something good pushing out from within.

Dignity values our place in the world, and because we do means we can celebrate and encourage others to do the same.

Dignity is not a selfish emotion. It starts with the self but expands to connect us with others.

Dignity is not mysterious. It may feel elusive sometimes, but through actions and practices we can create a dignified self.

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

– William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style

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“It’s almost more like I join a band when I produce a record. But, I’m unlike all the other members of the band, who each have their own personal agenda. The bass player is concerned about the bass part; everyone is concerned about their own part. I’m the only member of the band that doesn’t care about any of those particulars. I just care that the whole thing is as good as it can be.”

– Rick Rubin, quoted in Rick Rubin in the Studio by Jake Brown

__________

What do I have to do to make this the best that I can do?

My writing has its own personality: I don’t want to stifle it with harsh editing. I am not interested in perfect grammar. My sentences don’t need perfect pitch to speak.

Perhaps one could type some prompts into Chat GPT to create a daily blog that selects two quotes and some commentary. My creative work could be outsourced. But my source cannot be replicated. All the things I have ingested over my life give my mind it’s unique fingerprint.

I want to convey how I think and feel. What I see. Stream of conscious observation would become pretty tiresome, so I also need to be an editor.

I must focus on making this the best it can be. I need a part of myself who can be objective: only concerned with making the best sentence; not keeping all the seemingly wonderful ideas and turns of phrase that can crowd in.

A goal: to write like I’m climbing a mountain. Tight sentences, like the methodical steps taken to reach the top. But at any time I can pause to take in the view. There must be space around the words. And there is a purpose to this: a summit to lead the reader to.

Can I honestly say this is as good as it gets?

Perhaps it is for today. And that is all that matters.

Whatever I have achieved here, it is good training for tomorrow’s climb.

“Not infrequently a marching soldier might be seen to halt, take his writing utensils from his belt, and compose an ode—and such papers were found afterward in the helmets or the breast-plates, when these were removed from their lifeless wearers.”

– Inazo Nitobe, Bushido

__________

“Some youthful enthusiasts of karate believe that it can be learned only from instructors in a dõjõ, but such men are mere technicians, not true karateka. There is a Buddhist saying that “any place can be a dõjõ.””

– Gichin Funakoshi, Karate-Dō: My Way of Life

__________

There’s never a wrong time to write.

There is never a wrong place to stop and think.

I can write where I stand (or slump on the sofa).

It’s all practice.

Sometimes the best stuff gets made when we are on the way to doing something else.

“I hardly know how to write about myself. Any style you pick seems to unpick itself before a paragraph is done. I will just go for it, I think to myself, I’ll hold out my hands and say, c’est moi, get used to it. I’ll trust the reader. This is what I recommend to people who ask me how to get published. Trust your reader, stop spoon-feeding your reader, stop patronising your reader, give your reader credit for being as smart as you at least, and stop being so bloody beguiling: you in the back row, will you turn off that charm! Plain words on plain paper.”

– Hilary Mantel, Giving Up the Ghost

__________

“We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.”

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

__________

The best way to discover who you are is to write it out.

It’s cheaper than shopping for new outfits every day.

If I write without really thinking about what I will say, it feels… better. Better than straining for the right word or a clever turn of phrase.

I like to write like I am having a chat. We don’t make the other person wait for us to rummage through our bag of tricks when talking in person.

I won’t make you wait.

I’ve almost finished.

I am not hiding behind an abstraction. No theories to hide behind.

Just trying to be myself.

But who is that?

Good question.

I’ll have to get back to you on that one.

“Once photographed, whatever you had “really seen” would never be seen by the eye of memory again. It would forever be cut from the continuum of being, a mere sliver, a slight, translucent paring from the fat life of time; elegiac, onedimensional, immediately assuming the amber quality of nostalgia: an instantaneous memento mori. Photography would seem to preserve our past and make it invulnerable to the distortions of repeated memorial superimpositions, but I think that is a fallacy: photographs supplant and corrupt the past, all the while creating their own memories.”

– Sally Mann, Hold Still

__________

“When it comes as a memory, it dictates to you, it controls you. After I wrote that story about the breaking glass, I would hear a glass breaking but it never came back that way. I mean, I would remember what happened, but it was never as before.”

– Pacifique Irankunda, quoted in Good Prose by Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd

__________

I have a poster in my kitchen of the film Cliffhanger. It is dominated by the phrase “Hang On”.

I feel that this poster is philosophical art: what a wonderful message, a reminder that sometimes all you need to do is maintain a secure grip, things will pass.

I bought the poster because I had a very strong memory of seeing it in my local video shop, circa 1993. I must have been 9 or 10- too young to have watched the film or to want to.

The poster was all.

It was so striking, dominated by that phrase, size A2, stuck on the wall, an advertisement, but also art.

Periodically, I’d recall that poster. There was no rational reason for the memory to be so entrenched and vivid. But it stood out amongst mostly blurred memories of my life at that age.

Why does one thing strike us and not another? Why did that poster choose me or I it for something special?

I believe the best art is that which is encountered with as little preamble as possible. I don’t want to read about or discuss something I have yet to experience.

My subconscious makes the decision of what is important or not. Or so I guess. Because I don’t know how I curate my experiences. I cannot force a picture to be special.

What was it about that poster in a small town video rental store over 30 years ago?

I have that picture now. I own it. I love having it to see on a daily basis. I concur with my 9 year old self. We share the same taste.

But because the poster exists now, in my kitchen, it no longer exists then, in the video store. I don’t have the image in my mind’s eye. By possessing it I have effectively erased the memory.

Did my subconscious bring out that image from time to time as a way of preserving the memory? An unfelt anxiety of losing something that should be remembered? It was out of my control. It still is.

What is better? The image in the mind or the image in the world?

I prefer to see my words in the world than jumbled in my head. But only once they are edited for public consumption.

Some things are happy to stay enclosed.

Once again, I proffer no definitive statement.

Perhaps one of the wisest and honest answers to a direct question: it depends.

“Here’s one firm law of history: Truth is known at precisely that point in time when nobody gives a shit.”

– Charles Simic, The Monster Loves His Labyrinth

__________

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Philip K Dick, quoted in The Ashtray by Errol Morris

__________

What is the correct protocol for proclaiming a truth?

Is it the volume of evidence to hand?

Does it depend on the depth of experience of the proclaimer?

Does it rely on cold mathematical logic?

Is truth provable?

Is it even probable?

I’m happy to be ignorant of absolute truth.

I can live with ambiguity.

It’s a survival mechanism.

I cannot imagine being a dogged investigator of what really happened or what is actually true.

I don’t have the temperament for defimitive statements.

I can muster a tepid, “this is what I think.”

I try to avoid “this is what I know.”

I don’t need to be right.

I can be negligent of reality, secure in the knowledge that it will carry on regardless of my level of engagement.

It’s comforting to know that the world is not dependent on my vigilance.

It seems I am more interested in creating my own realities. I enjoy my imagination. I have an inclination to be entertained, I’m not one for debate. But if someone writes what they think and believe in a compelling way I am liable to have a read and, perhaps, readjust my ideas of truth and reality.

It’s likely I am not an engaged citizen. Maybe the world doesn’t need 8 billion people pursuing the truth. It’s improbable that we will all agree on the same answer. And likely, and proven by history, that the defense of one truth against another creates serious problems.

So what is left after this avoiding of the truth?

An acceptance of reality, but with plenty of mental capacity for the pursuit of the imagination.

“Nobody can teach you anything. This is the first truth. We teach ourselves. All my life I have lived in books, in libraries. I remember every library in my life as I remember my lovers, their smells, the texture of their skin, the taste, even the brightness in the air around them. Or the darkness. Yes, every library is for me like a woman, erotic, a creature of the dark, full of smells and textures, tastes.”

– Jorge Luis Borges, quoted in Borges and Me: An Encounter, Jay Parini

__________

“lust /Inst/ n. & v. • n. 1 strong sexual desire. 2 a (usu. foll. by for, of) a passionate desire for (a lust for power). b (usu. foll. by of) a passionate enjoyment of (the lust of battle). 3 (usu. in pl.) a sensuous appetite regarded as sinful (the lusts of the flesh). • v.intr. (usu. foll. by after, for) have a strong or excessive (esp. sexual) desire.”

– Della Thompson (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, Ninth Edition

__________

What is it to describe the effect books have on me?

I need them. I need to read. I need the adventure of being lost in the page.

I am not brave, but my curiosity is strong. It expresses itself in the narrow confines of printed text.

I can say I have book lust, plain and simple. I certainly have a strong and excessive desire to acquire and consume books.

I can zoom out, look down at myself with pity at this desire and addiction.

It can’t be helped. But it won’t be the ruin of me. How can reading destroy a man? I like to look at this mania as my mid life crisis. I still haven’t figured out where I belong in the world. I think the next book could offer me an answer.

It’s a fool’s errand but I am a happy fool. And I have modest tastes.

I don’t hunger for the immaculate first edition. I simply want to read. Give me any old edition. However my heart breaks a little when I receive a print on demand copy. It is sterile and devoid of romance. But it’s words I want so I read on regardless.

I make books my own by marking their pages with annotations. Each book I own is transfigured by my hand. This is the conversation I have with the book. As an introvert, I am happiest with these silent conversations.

There is no end in sight. This will be a lifetimes pursuit. There are an infinite number of books for me to read in the years I have.

Books will never run out. What a joyful, marvelous and reassuring thought.

Lucky me!

“When none appeared, he finally admitted that he hadn’t written anything in months. “But I’m thinking about it,” he said. Consider that comment in another context. “You said you were training for the Olympics—how’s that going?” “I’m working on the training.” “But are you actually training?” “No, I haven’t trained in months, but I’m thinking about it.” An athlete doesn’t just train the night before the big game. S/he does the work every day, making it a habit as regular as breathing. You get it done, period. This means actually writing, not sitting at a coffee shop with your laptop open to the same page you’ve been staring at for the last month, waiting for someone to see what’s on the screen and say, “So, are you a writer?” (You know who you are.”

– J. Michael Straczynski, Becoming a Writer, Staying a Writer

__________

“Inevitably, the conversation turns to how far ahead I work. When they learn about the six-week daily-strip deadline and the 12-week Sunday-page deadline, a visitor almost never fails to remark: “Gee, you could work real hard, couldn’t you, and get several months ahead and then take the time off?” Being, as I said, a slow learner, it took me until last year to realize what an odd statement that really is. You don’t work all of your life to do something so you don’t have to do it.”

– Charles M. Schulz, My Life With Charlie Brown

__________

Why write? Because it’s better than talking about it.

What other activity do you have where rank amateurs starting from zero, have hopes and expectations of one day becoming a paid professional?

Because it is so deceptively simple to pick up pen and peck on keyboard it seems as if anyone can do it. And we can.

But there are rewards far beyond the rewards from others.

As an introvert, I am happier communicating from behind barriers. Lengthy phone calls are not a strong point. I’m liable to share little of what’s on my mind.

But amongst friends like Charles and J. Michael, I happily converse.

How lovely it is not to batch cook my writing. It’s a thread of seemingly infinite length that I unravel day by day. I don’t want to get to the end of it. Then what?

But unravelling is work. No one pays me. No meetings are held. I let down only myself by not turning up to the job.

I aim to be the best boss in the world. This company of one, I never want to leave.

What compensation is greater than doing what you love?