scraps of poetry and madness

“I feel very strong to do it.”

Quotes from Steinbeck's journals:

never temper a word to a reader’s prejudice, but bend it like putty for his understanding.

...and:

I have tried to keep diaries before but they don’t work out because of the necessity to be honest.

Source: How Steinbeck Used the Diary as a Tool of Discipline, a Hedge Against Self-Doubt, and a Pacemaker for the Heartbeat of Creative Work via The Marginalian

#morncomp #quotes #windkeeper

When you deeply love someone, you can look at them and see the difference between their true nature and a behaviour that’s an expression of suffering.

from: ‘The Limited Story of Yourself is Actually Quite Fictional’: An Interview with William Brewer by Julie Mannell on HazLitt

#morncomp #ambitiousnumbering #quote

I go through the RSS feeds and newsletters, and compose a morningcomputer post here to condense what I’ve learned that morning that I consider worth retaining and processing. So some days there isn’t one.

source: Warren Ellis in Morning Routine And Work Day

Dang. That's a great idea. Okay, count me in.

#morncomp #about

In my last post here, I was so worried about the precedent numbered entries in a series would set, I didn't define the scope of the series itself well enough. Or if I did, I don't remember.

Isn't everything I write here a “process log”? This is a web log after all (since I am, for some reason, so set on using that particular antiquated phrase...)

So here I am! Making progress on my process and uh... logging it!

I've updated Homo Monstrosus, in both style and content. And the site has been on my mind more and more – as a tool, a project, a hobby, but also as a shelter, a record, a showcase. Creating and building in general has been on my mind more too, but the front, active part of it, rather than the back(burner), “sigh, one day...” part. I am almost building a creative practice. Or rather, I am building a creative practice, it's just wobbly like a baby deer. Spooks easily like one too.

I am still iterating over exactly how I want to exist on the web. Still trying to crystalize and differentiate the ways one can publish web content. I'm not talking on a global, capitalism scale, or about being a Content Creator on a social media website or anything like that. I'm talking about one person, making (mostly) words and publishing them using the networked tools they have access to.

I'm thinking about the difference between pages that are designed to be dynamic and updated, versus static and time-locked. The blogging revolution brought web publishing to the masses, but it also came with this subconscious implication that the only valid content on the web was the newest, most current, whatever was at the top of the blog. And with that came the idea that “old” content was somehow less-than. Or that unchanging content, whether by design or as an artifact didn't have a place on the web. Couldn't be trusted. Or maybe those are just implications I wrestled with.

What do I want to make? Why? Who is it for? When is it for?

These are much more potent and healthy questions than the ones I'd traditionally ask like, Can I even make anything? Who do I think I am? Why haven't I done more? Should I just stop kidding myself?

There's other stuff on my mind. World stuff, obviously. But World-level internet stuff too. It seems very popular these last few months to acknowledge that the web and capitalism appear to be inexorably linked, and that the coupling is killing us, leading us and the planet herself to doom. And that's not wrong, of course, but the situation was incredibly apparent well before Elon Musk said he wanted to buy Twitter (though that event, at least to me, seems to have kicked off the lastest wave of these kind of think pieces... and again, that's not an inappropriate response.)

But as much as I generally agree with the sentiment – that's not where I want to live right now. The internet hasn't been what I've wanted it to be in a long time, well before I realized it. I can't dismantle those systems.

I can chip away at my little site. Plod around this blog. Build my little chicken coop as the cathedrals fall to the shelling.

So that's what I'm going to do.

Numbering entries is a naïve and optimistic dice-roll... but here goes

The work of my life, at the moment, appears to be centered around living and acting deliberately. I say “appears” because the more I try to do the Work of Life the more I realize I am discovering it rather than creating it. And like all white male explorers, “discovering” means “finding and realizing things that people who don't look like me embraced and celebrated long, long ago.”

Right now, this work is manifesting in:

“The Path”

Daily reading and study into spiritual systems, paths, and modes of thought, from a perch somewhere between skeptic and seeker. I am just starting this practice, mainly stemming from a desire to spend some daily(ish) time on “matters of the soul” – whatever that may mean. Right now that means re-reading one of my favorite nonfiction books, Huston Smith's “The World's Religions”. I read an utterly beleaguered, decades old, mass market copy of “The Religions of Man” as the book was known in the 70's, and inspired in me some spiritual exploration. I think I am hoping it does it again...

“The Roles”

Abstracting my goals, desires, and pulls into the concept of “roles” I want to embody. I plan to write about this more at length soon. I'm not sure how much I'll get into the personal side of this, but the general idea is that rather than looking at my life as a list of tasks I want to do, or accomplishments I want to rack up, it has helped me to instead envision the archetypal (if only to me) roles, personas or... something close to a D&D class, that I want to embody and explore in my own context. Sounds weird – and it is – but it has also unlocked my brain in certain ways, giving me new and flexible ways to view my life and the things I want to do, and how that informs “the person I want to be”.

This way of looking at my life has also lent itself very well to other projects like...

“The Planner”

Developing and iterating over a personal organization system. I learned long ago I will likely not succeed in a system created by someone else, but for a long time I thought that let me off the hook of having to put the work in to make one myself. I was wrong. I call this project The Planner, though it is not really a “planner” or “datebook” or “organizer” in the traditional sense. The Planner is the tool, or set of tools, I use to organize and manage my time, and to help me catalogue and prioritize what I want to focus on. When those things happen in concert, the Planner turns “time” from a vague, ephemeral substance to a finite, consumable resource, a fuel.

The difference between trying to Do Things without the Planner and with it is the difference between trying to get a Delorean up to 88 MPH in 1885 vs 2015. Without the Planner, to Do Things requires crazy contraptions, mad thinking, and completely impractical and ridiculously inefficient methods of propulsion best suited for singular, Hail Mary moments. With the Planner? I can throw any old junk in my reactor and jet around through time and space causing trouble all I want. AND I get a hover conversion.

(Wow this post has gone off the rails and right into Clint Eastwood Ravine...)

Or rather, this would all be true, if the Planner was actually a thing. Now it only exists as the platonic idea of the system I aspire too. But the working prototype I'm up to now is the best, most flexible version I've had yet. Integrating the “roles” concept above adds a narrative element to something usually heavy with charts, lists and flow charts. And lucky for me I love narrative elements AND flow charts.

“The Work”

Developing a practice of making/reflecting/recording...stuff. And things. Most of my life, I have wanted to create and communicate creatively with the world. I started out in theatre. In my adult life I have settled more into written expression, but that description feels... limiting. In fact for a long time my byline was “I like making things with words.” Which is true! Fiction, poetry, but also plays, and code, and zines, and essays, and letters, and... and...

These are things I would like to create, and I have an inconsistent archive (at best) of various attempts over the years. I have made a few Things I am quite proud of; but what I've never made is a practice of creating them. I can rise to the occasion of an assignment and deadline like nobody's business, but I've never been able to create those stakes for myself. In lieu of someone else's gun to my head, I need to find away to hold my own...

Nope. Not even going to go there.

“The Lexicon”

Building the language and grammar to describe everything above. All of these projects I'm working on fit together and interact in ways that I'm not going to describe here, in part because I'm still discovering it myself. The questions I'm trying to answer, the practices I'm trying to start, they all swirl around the larger work of finding my place, my way – a project so big it has multiple times swallowed me up deep into its void only to toss my lightyears away, alone and disoriented. It's hard enough to keep my head above water when I can't even talk things through to myself without tripping over the words.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple

I've decided to stop waiting and make that day now. I need the right buckets to sort thoughts and meanings into and finding those buckets is so much harder than it sounds. But having that right word, it's not just a bucket, it's a handle, to pick up an idea and turn it into a tool.

And so part of this particular project is giving names to... all the projects. Which I did! Helpful!

***

At a high level, these are the things I am most excited about, the things – in a certain context – I want to invest my time and energy in, and the things that I believe will give my life meaning. So, I hope to keep a log of how all of these projects are going, what new projects they spawn, and any notable results from the lot of them.

I hope that this space can evolve to be so much more than a process log, but I would also be ecstatic if I maintain it even as just that for any length of time. A process log, perhaps more than anything I could do here, would embody my philosophy for this place, best summed up as:

What I write here is not my teaching, but my study; it is not a lesson for others, but for me. And yet it should not be held against me if I publish what I write. What is useful to me may also by accident be useful to another. Moreover, I am not spoiling anything, I am only using what is mine. And if I play the fool, it is at my expense and without harm to anyone. For it is a folly that will die with me, and will have no consequences.

— Montaigne, by way of Warren Ellis

Here's to no consequences...

#ambitiousnumbering

It is, of course, a cardinal sin to blog about blogging, but it might be even more disrespectful of one's time to use tools without thought and deliberate intention. And this place is a tool, among other things.

I cleaned out and pulled down the previous iteration of this blog. Didn't throw anything away, never do. In fact, someday I'd really like to create one, consolidated (final?) repository of all of my online writing attempts from across the years and frameworks and services. (#TODO) A single archive could inadvertently make all of this look intentional. Despite how much time I obsess over places like this, I am often a long way from being deliberate with them.

In such an archive, you would also see just how much of my online writing chases its own tail, compelled to try and justify its existence. Trying and failing, because if you worry about that, you've missed the point. it's too late.

And so, I will aim to avoid that here. There's no need to over-complicate this. This is a web log after all, so I am going to try to bring the medium back to its roots: this is a log of what I am doing in and around the web. That's a good place to start. Or, how about this? this is a log of my life, on the web. Even better. Ambiguity intentional.

this blog is part of a larger system I am building to catalog and engage with my life in creative and interesting ways. the desire to create, hone, and theoretically master these kinds of systems is maybe the great pursuit of my life.

this writing does not need to justify its own existence. But there is power in defining terms, in naming names, and stating intentions. I have learned that saying things out loud can make real. It activates them, in a way for me. it gives me permission to say and believe them myself.

Much of the work I've been doing lately is to settle on an internal vocabulary and grammar to guide my experiences. I am not surprised that work shows up here. But it is a process I don't want to obsess over. I need language to help me move more freely, not to slow me down. I should hope to have a similar relationship with this blog.

one way to look at this blog is as a tool. another is as a medium. For me the two meanings can kind of blend together. a painting is the painter's tool (to do what? #comeback) and their media. one can consider this blog from a similar place.

right now, my list of tools has been whittled down to what I hope are the essentials:

• this blog: a public living document. a process log. a workshop. a testing ground. an open mic. a bulletin board.

• my website: a library. a showcase. a temple. a garden. a workshop. and a graveyard. or it could be those things, one day. also: a white whale

• notebooks: a variety of interconnected journals that are private, analog, but otherwise not that ideologically different than my digital projects – that is – they seek to interestingly and beautifully organize and communicate information

that last point is significant. Much of what I do is about trying to organize and express information in interesting and attractive ways. I also want to create engaging and impressive information. These two drives are related, but are not the same pull.

these are my current tools of expression. or modes. they are not the end results as much as the vehicles. And like many vehicles, they are as fun to tinker with as they are to pilot.

my goals are to use them efficiently and effectively, but also to enjoy them. one role of this blog is to catalog that journey, along with being an artifact of it, in itself.

This is the first step on a road I've been on many many times. This time, the log is running. May it be of use to someone.

posted: 5 jul 22 tagged: #about

Well, I'm 39 now. Have been for almost 30 hours. So far, so good (all things considered).

And boy oh boy, do I consider ALL the things.

In fact, it feels like I've done nothing for the last 2+ years but consider all the things. In my defense, there's been a lot to consider. But, as is my custom, I've become fed up with considering and need to do... something. And this is about the place that I never get past. The precipice of Something. It's always the same. Some arbitrary 'new beginning'. Seizing the supposed energy that comes with a new week, a new month, a new pen, a new notebook, a new year. Because, 'this time' it will be different. However by 'this time' + two weeks it will be basically the same as it ever was.

Even this, the wry but frustrated observation of past cycles, the 'first post in months' that is destined to be come 'the last update in weeks', the soft 'but maybe...' whispering in the back of my head. The sad sigh that follows. I've done it all before.

And so, I am embarrassed. So often have I tried to jump start something that isn't a car engine. So often have I postured, trying on the costume of the person I want to become, standing in front of the mirror going, “wouldn't it just be wild if I just wore this?”

Wouldn't it?

“This time will be different.”

Well, things are certainly... different. Pandemic. War. And the careening, bucking, lurching, drunken networked, polarized society we live in just throwing itself against the walls of its cage. I can honestly say that life at 39 is different than I expected. I don't know that I ever actually sat down and considered what it would be like to be 39. But I do know I wouldn't have ever considered it would be... like this.

So I guess that means it can be anything, that I can be anything.

It means I don't actually have to come out here and pay my dues by bleeding all over the blogpost, by being just self-deprecating enough, by noting for the record how stupid or privileged or pointless this whole endeavor is, by winkingly insulting myself to wrestle the privilege away from anyone else.

It means that I can just... do what I want. Type what I want. Take pictures of what I want. Post what I want, build what I want. Perhaps more importantly, it means I don't have to do... any of it. I can just be.

I am sick of death. Lately that is the dense, gaping black hole that lives in the back of my head and perpetually and eventually tugs at all of my thoughts. I can't lose any more down that drain. I need to do... anything else.

And so, I am.