Hiatus

So, I'm going to be hiking the Pacific Crest Trail for the next several months, leaving this blog on hiatus while I'm out playing in the mountains. I may occasionally update here, but probably not much, or at all. I do have a blog on the hike that I'm going to try to update, found here:

Moccasin's PCT Hike

Moccasin is my trail name, by the way. Don't know how often I'll be able to update, but I sure welcome you to check in now and then.

In the meantime, the old posts here are still there for your reading enjoyment. Below are highlighted a few of my favorites. Also, if you're interested in poetry, I have several poems up, you can read them here.  Otherwise... thanks for reading, for your thoughtful comments, and, until September, farewell!

Mind vs Matter?

Night and Darkness

Why I Meditate

Urban Despair and the Need for Nature

Conservation Chaos

Acceptance

System Fail

On Fighting the System

Create!

Thoughts On Science

Wanting Wisdom

Joining the Green Movement

Socialism, Health Insurance, and Eating the Rich

Faith

Faith in the fog running high,
I discard myself into diffuse light;
delirious and wingless,

abandoning hope, throwing my life
backwards into the question,
the cloud-hidden.

I read my future in the patterns
of a turtle's shell, or tracing the smoky
line trailing across the sky,

until I dilute into the world's solution,
mingled with the drifts of mist
that water the meadow grass,

and so become the spreading field,
home of the fireflies, all at once
and everywhere popping in the night.

What is Worship?

I always wondered what worship really was. Is it just singing songs of praise, burning sacrifices, and giving lip service to your god? No one ever seemed to have a good definition of this, and I never understood what it meant. How do you do it? What am I supposed to be feeling? Finally I heard a good definition of worship: listening.

Worship as listening... yes, this seems more worshipful than anything. To silence the self and all its commotion, to settle into the underlying Silence of... what? Divinity? Reality? Whatever. I remember Kazantzakis wrote something like, of all the angels flying around God, the one named Silence flies the closest, a lovely image.

Every tradition has it's meditative parts. Yet western religion, like western life, focuses almost exclusively on activity: reading the texts, singing, chanting, praying, endless talking about God, and of course, social improvement. All have their place; social improvement through charity and such are good, and we must talk to one another about our shared faiths if we are to sustain a church (one could question the need for organized religion, but as a social species, I'm willing to let that go for now).

A moment of silence at church doesn't get it, either, because no real understanding is ever taught of what that really means. We may pause in the hymns and prayers, but no one ever said it meant internal silence too. The point was never made; for myself I always thought I was supposed to pray silently, that is, "think" to God instead of talking to him. The upshot is we talk to God so much in prayer that no one takes a moment to listen for a response, which is never going to come like a booming voice from the sky.

I really like the story of Elijah on the mountain. He hears a whirlwind, but God isn't in the whirlwind. He hears an earthquake, but God isn't in the earthquake. He beholds a roaring fire, but God is not in the fire. Finally, he hears God as a still, small voice.

Now, the difference between a loud sound and a quiet sound is far less than the difference between any sound and silence. And the passage is pointing to a profound qualitative difference from the tremendous events that he just witnessed and the still small voice. So I think that line would be better understood as referring to Silence than a whisper.

Elijah was listening, he was worshipping.

Lastly, every time I write worship I seem to type whorship, which I think is sort of funny.

Communism's Flaw

I think I just realized the real problem with communism and socialism in this day and age. Under such systems, one is asked to put the group ahead of the individual. This is excellent in theory. It fosters teamwork, cooperation, many good qualities.

But when we are asked to put the group ahead of the individual, that group is no longer the people you live and work with, but an abstract thing called "the state," "the fatherland," "America," etc. I've seen a lot of Americans, seen mountains, farms, rivers, cities, and towns, but I've never seen "America," never encountered "the state." The concept is too abstract, too easily manipulated towards corrupt ends. It isn't real.

No one had to explain communism to the Indians; they either lived for their tribe or band, or they perished, all of them. Now, there is a time for self even among such peoples, but never, or rarely, at the expense of the larger community, which can almost be looked at as the true organism. Man is a social species, no man is an island, etc. Without the tribe, the community, the culture, the greater whole, we are nothing, we die.

And that's the problem. We don't have community anymore, not really. I don't depend on my neighbors, I don't even know their names. I work far from where I live, with people who don't live near me or have anything to do with me outside of work. Even when there's somewhat more connection than that, in cases where my coworkers have become my friends, it's never been anything deep like a tribe.

Communism, communalism, these things would work if they arose organically, out of the actual need, the actual fact of interdependance. The interdependance now known by modern societies is a twisted one, in that it is impersonal. We depend on the systems of waste removal, food delivery, consumerism, etc; people are involved in these things, but it doesn't matter who, it doesn't matter if I never know them as people. Cogs in a machine, really. None of us probably know our garbage collectors, but we depend on them all the same.

But communism and socialism can't thrive in such a milleau. How can one care about someone they don't know or love? I would work hard, even kill, for my family, but would I do that for the guy next door, with whom I have no interaction? Same problem crops up in environmentalism, by the way. Who will defend lands they have no connection to? Easy for the hillbillie back in the hollers to care about mountaintop removal mining, but for everyone else, it's abstract, and thus their concern is shallow. Plus, we get electricity from it.

I guess this is why both environmentalism/conservation, and communism are both largely failures. We are too isolated for others to matter anymore, everything is about self, or maybe the few souls we know very well. No one else matters, much. And so, we get to watch society unravel slowly.

Ice

As it pours itself backwards
up the slumping mountains--
U-shaped valley-rock glistening
in a newly remembered sun,
continents undressing in the wind,
water washing silty or clearest-blue
and braiding through the vestiges
of mountainsides, now crumbled
gravels and slag cast in dense moraines
on the dead-flat floor of the vale--
the ice is screaming that it can never die.

It lives within us now, as we melt
away the external remains
of the age of ice that gave us birth
and cradled us as we grew strong.
Too strong. Now we throw fire
at those mothering arms,
laughing, laughing as we watch
the glaciers melting into— what? The future,
hard rock, blowing dust, nothing.

Nothing. Yet still in our deeper hearts
we crouch around a fire, half-naked
and afraid, while outside, the mountain
of ice is screaming in the darkness,
groaning, shattering internally in the night,
a shadow in the deeper shadows,
a shadow in our minds. It can never die.

Random Acts of Kindness

Ever done something totally random for a stranger? It's kind of fun. I've always liked those stories of the car ahead of you paying your toll on highways, or at parking lots, but I've never done that myself, nor been on the recieving end.

But once, I did do something like that. I had at the time decided I would never talk about it, but it was long enough ago that I think the egoism is gone from it, and I can feel comfortable sharing it.

I was coming out of the library back to the parking lot and my truck, when I looked over and saw that someone's meter had run out and they had a ticket on their window. Spur of the moment, I dug out my wallet and pulled a five dollar bill out, knowing that to be the cost of the fine from, ahem, past experience. Feeling like I was getting away with something, I quickly looked around, then stuffed the money into the envelope stuck under their windshield wiper.

I'll never know the person I helped, never see their amazed face or recieve their gratitude. But what a thrill, to think about their reaction, to imagine their dumbstruck, half-believing smile at finding money where they'd only expected irritation and cost. I still think of it sometimes and smile myself; not out of self-righteousness or personal pride, but at the thought of this random person's reaction. It's a small thing, a tiny little ripple of positivity added to the world, but it's something. To brighten a random person's day just a little bit, with nothing really in it for you, yeah, I highly recommend it.

Laughter

It's hard to laugh when you're alone. For me it is, anyways. Harder, anyways. Occasionally I see things that are funny enough to bring a laugh, but somehow, sharing a comical event with others makes the laughter rise more easily, more fully. I love to laugh; so I think this is largely why I find myself drawn to others.

Yet, often I fight my loneliness. I know it's weird, but when I feel lonely, I don't ask myself how I can better integrate with other people, I ask myself what is wrong with me that I am not comfortable being alone. Strange. Humans are, of course, a social species, it's only natural to want companionship. Yet I am not just human, I'm a philosopher. We all are, of course. It's a condition of thinking. So, I think, why is it I can't find the humor and zest of life but under certain conditions, those being social conditions? Is life really a serious thing, where we only find safe harbor and relief in the huddled warmth of the social sphere? I don't believe that at all.

Sometimes, of course, the laughter comes when I'm on my own. Watch a funny movie, or watch animals behave as they do, it's comical, it's hard to not smile, it's a matter of simply seeing. But, mostly there's just a sort of anxiety, an emptiness, a feeling of disconnectedness. It is that feeling of being cut off that I focus on when I persue this question. How to open oneself up, to find the joy and bliss in common experience? How to be a laughing Buddha myself, hmm...

I know it has something to do with relaxing, somehow. But I just don't quite get it.

The Answer

The sun, as we would expect,
knows the light
very well.

And so he spreads himself out
like a gift, to us,
his dark universe;
though he himself sees nothing
but light,
knows nothing of shadow.

It is a mystery to him,
these places hidden
on the backsides of planets
and moonless nights;
these caves, these inner rooms
where his light can never go.

This, friend,
is where you must go;
you who are fallen
sun-dust
who long ago decided
you’d had enough of light,

who still remembers
the original darkness:
probe deeper the shadow
of the dark night.

You will be the answer
to the sun’s question.

* * * * *
This follows on my previous post. Knowledge has limits, and that is where wisdom and intuition come in, though it looks like ignorance and corruption. The allusion to the Dark Night of the Soul is purposeful, as well.

Night and Darkness

As a poet, I've long been an advocate for night, darkness, silence, etc. Darkness in our culture is associated with evil; an unfortunate development, and untrue. Night represents ignorance, confusion, corruption, the time of terrors, demons, death. But it is also a very spiritual time. You may lie awake in bed thinking about the things that matter most; there is time and space, few distractions, you are able to center yourself. It is the place of intuition, reflection, thought. Lovers meet, philosophers dream, and all things can rest.

Darkness, silence, emptiness, and stasis all seem negative. They ARE negative, in that, to use a phrase out of art, they are a sort of negative space to the positive space of light, sound, form, and movement. But clearly both are necessary.

Even where there is light, darkness remains. Light is a wave, and contains within it the "off" part of the pulse, the trough of the wave. Sound is the same way. I like to think of all existence as being a vibration. Matter is basically energy, in packets called quanta. Such is one theory at least. Another is, "we work with being, but non-being is what we use." (TTC 11)

Lao Tzu is always talking about the feminine (or yin) as the base, saying "know the male, but keep to the female" (TTC 28). And yin was, I read, originally associated with the north side of a hill (the darker, shaded side). It is the dark side of the Tai Chi symbol. (Yang of course being the male, and the south, sunny side of the hill.)

The fact that light contains darkness in its very form, as a necessary condition of existence reminds me of something that Jesus said in Matthew 6, as he spoke about the lilies of the field. After talking about having to serve either God or money, he goes on to say, do not worry about what you will eat, what you will wear. If you serve God above all, the rest will follow naturally.

In Taoist terms, return to the Tao, and the worldly things take care of themselves. Nothing is done, but nothing is left undone. Be at peace with the emptiness, the darkness. Because money, material things, even spiritual things, like aping the morality of a saint or sage, are all part of the busy-ness of life. They come and go, on and off. But the emptiness, the space, the Tao, exist everywhere, foundationally. The infinite surrounds and infuses the finite; darkness dwells within the light, poverty within the wealth.

Colors blind the eye.
Sounds deafen the ear.
Flavors numb the taste.
Thoughts weaken the mind.
Desires wither the heart.

The Master observes the world
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is open as the sky.
(TTC 12)

So you see I'm not just trying to be iconoclastic in talking about darkness. Or maybe I'm being iconoclastic, but in a much different and bigger way. In the stillness is born the true moral stance. As I said, poverty within the wealth: one in that mode will not use wealth as a weapon, but as a blessing. If you go for the money, the light, first, and only afterwards go for God and darkness, you're too late. Light sees only light, never darkness, which sees both.

If you start from ego, everything you do is going to have failure in it. If you start from God, from Tao, from darkness and stillness, what you do and what you are will be pure. Which is why I loved the line in Kazantzakis' book The Last Temptation of Christ:

When what is clean touches what is unclean, the unclean becomes clean!

What I Want

I want not just to find the door,
but more, to tear this to the floor.
My feet would whisper "walk away,"
but fists and muscles want their way.

To leave could never be enough
to quench this rage that runs me rough
and ragged; I'd as soon employ
these fists that chant, "destroy, destroy."

The door may gape and roads may run
to shorelines peaceful in the sun
but I'll be busy with my hate
berserk against the world I've made.

Thoughts on Science

I like it. It appears to give good explanations of the world. But of course they seem reasonable and True to us, living in contemporary times. People always think they have the truth in current times. Once, it was known that women were irrational, emotional creatures subject to hysteria, incapable of understanding politics or business.

Some say science destroys wonder. I say it increaces it by many orders of magnitude. It magnifies everything, exploding our perspectives to previously unknown scales-- while at the same time massively increacing the detail and fineness of everything. We can now not only wonder at the beauty of the human form, but also know the trillions of cells living therein, with their own amazing architecture; also the ecological supports to our lives on the larger scale. We can now look at threads running everywhere, even to the stars, and temporally through natural history. An excellent book that reflects this is Annie Dillards Pilgrim At Tinker Creek, a favorite book of mine. It's deeply poetic, full of awe at the world around us, but based in science, in fact. It's close to what Richard Dawkins wanted when he wrote Unweaving the Rainbow, his answer to Keat's accusation that science destroys wonder.  



The microscope and the telescope have done more for the cause of wonder than any theology in history, for those who are paying any attention and sensitive to their implications. 



What I like most about science is that it is empirical. It looks first, then thinks. It doesn't read the dogma, then go looking for evidence to support it-- not in it's pure form. Instead it is simply open to the real. In this way science is very, dare I say it, spiritual. In a Zen way, at least. It encounters the world with attention and concentration, to see what is really there, what is actually happening. This is the prefect starting point for accurate knowledge.

Temples of the new age

The problem is that, in the end, science tears the world to pieces, so they can reassemble them; like a kid trying to fix the lamp he broke playing football in the house, to try and pass it off to us as truth, the glue running down the side, tape hanging off, and half the pieces missing.

What I mean is, science leaves us with only a model, a framework of ideas. I'm not saying there's no place for analysis, study, investigation; truly I'm all for it. But paying too much attention to mental models, be they religious or scientific, keeps us seperated from the real. They are sketches, rough estimates. They are useful, especially science which I admire in principle, but it's best not to be too attached to it.

Example: take a hundred data points and throw them on a graph; science will draw a line through them to show their average, and that average is what he holds on to. But that's not real. The reality is the hundred seperate points. The Law, the theory, the description, comes after, and is only a rough approximation of those points. There's no Law of Gravity, there's just things moving in space. We later came along and described the happenings, which, while seemingly consistent, do not actually obey our law. That is a Judeo-Christian notion with the Judeo-Christian removed; that is, the idea of laws of nature is a historical holdover from when it was thought science was discovering the laws of God. We're not discovering anything; we're just describing.

Science is provisional. Science admits this, many scientists do not; there is a reason that a scientist is far more likely to be an atheist or agnostic. Science has become their faith, though they'll call if hard truth, ignoring the many assumptions and fudge factors (such "constants" in their equations). Certainly most media reports treat science as holy dogma, absolute truth handed down by the men in white robes lab coats.

Finally, a quote: "The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of mystery" --Mary B. Yates. Kinda sums it up, eh?

Pax Americana?

Today I was thinking about war and the USA. When, I wondered, was the last year of peace we've had? I knew we've been fighting in Afghanistan since 2001, and then of course we've been in Iraq since 1990, with our No Fly Zones and near-daily sorties. I knew we'd had things like Panama and Grenada in the '80s, but didn't know when they happened.

From 1776 to 2011, that's 235 years of existence as a country. My question was what years have gone by without a military action. It's a bit muddy and uncertain, but it looks like, all told, we have had just 39 years of peace, counting occupations, by using a combination of this list and this list:

1796-7
1811
1820-21
1826
1827-31
1833-4
1843-5
1859
1880-89
1891-92
1894-7
1935-40

We haven't had a year of peace since 1940! Many of these wars, incidents, conflicts and occupations I'd never heard of. All the things in the Carribean and Central American banana republics are not taught in school. I admit, I'm counting the entire Cold War as a war. But if you only count actual military actions like Grenada and Panama, and proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam, we still haven't had a year without US military action since 1988, just before Panama... though even that is pretty debatable as being a "peace" year.

But breaking down the Cold War into actual military actions, of troops-on-the-ground, gets muddy. How do you define when we got involved in the Vietnam war? We had "advisors" there since 1955... but what's an advisor? The date on the list says the war started (for America, that is) in 1959. And while we aren't really occupying South Korea, we have troops there, and technically the war never ended. Of course I didn't count CIA missions, which opens up a whole 'nother can of worms.

I didn't count the many, many instances of troops (usually marines) being sent to this or that country to protect American lives and interests while said country is in a rebellion or whatever, nor did I count "displays of force" which struck me as naval exercises. They're both kinda borderline, so I opted to only include times when the troops were really used for war. If I had counted them, hardly a year passed where it didn't happen somewhere.

Most of the wars and actions that I did counnt were to support American business: anti-pirate actions, support for banana/fruit companies, and so on. Oil, of course. This isn't to say none of our actions were justified. The raids on the African coast against the slavers, after a law banning slave trading was passed, sounds alright to me; but still, many seem greed-influenced. That, or genocidal. We were fighting Native Americans for the entire first half our existence.

Many questions arise: Has there been a president who hasn't ordered troops somewhere? Can a country that is so devoid of peace really understand or support democracy? Why have we been so militant from the beginning? Is there hope for us to become a peaceful, truly prosperous country, without the use of force to ensure said prosperity? Can we ever leave this sick sort of economic terrorism behind?

Aliens

I believe in aliens.

I don't figure they've visited us. No human can keep a secret, not really, and certainly not one that big, and certainly not a group of people. Someone's gonna leak it. Anyways, you don't travel the light years of space to sneak around anally probing rednecks and hillbillies. I think it's more likely to be top secret military jets and spy craft, or natural phenomena.

The universe is... unutterably, unfathomably, ineffably huge. The number of stars in our galaxy alone staggers the mind, but there are as many galaxies in the universe as stars in our galaxy. Many of those stars have planets. How can we be the only planet with life on it? Any life, intelligent or not.

But here's the thing. What I just said may not be true. The things we know, are not actually things we know. People used to know that the sky was a hard firmament upon which moved the sun and stars, the Earth in the center. People used to know the Earth was flat. People used to know that flies came from spoiled meat. Science changes often. Sometimes radically, major paradigm shifts. Science is relative, not absolute, and could be a laughable myth that will some day be the butt of a future society's jokes.

Conditions conducive to life are pretty narrow and specific. I'll admit we only have Earth life to study, and maybe it could take other forms. But we don't know that. Maybe the universe is not actually so ineffably big, maybe we have it wrong. Or, maybe it is big, but the dice were thrown and somehow only came up sevens here. Good ol' Earth. Possible.

So, belief or not, the belief is empty. Doesn't matter. We know very few things, really, one of which being that we are alive. We don't know about the stars or even what live is. Only that we are alive. We will probably never know of any other life. We could truly be the miracle of the universe. I guess I'm saying, let's take some care of it.

No, say not "it." Say rather, "us." We are one Life, after all.

Anger

Lately, I've seen in a few places where people have said anger is an unhealthy or negative emotion. I care to disagree.

Anger is, like every human emotion, healthy. But I do make a distinction. For me, there are two forms of anger. The first I call righteous anger. This is when someone has done an injustice upon you; and I'm using "you" in its broadest sense. It can apply to nations. Say what you want about nationalism, the anger felt by us Americans after 9-11 was normal and healthy. It'd be inhuman to not feel angry, and I doubt even Jesus, the Buddha, or Lao Tzu would be so heartless. Anger is the fire that drives action towards justice. Very useful.

Then there is when things don't go your way, when people don't do what you want them to or don't live up to your expectations. This is ego-anger. The anger of the little king or queen we all feel ourselves to be not having the world bow down to their whims. This some might call unhealthy, and maybe it is (but I think it's really the ego that's unhealthy).

In fact, I'm kind of tired of people denigrating sadness too. It's normal to feel that way at times. I heard a while back they were adding grief to the DSM IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of mental disorders, the Holy Bible of psychiatry. I was majoring in psychology before I quit school, and hearing shit like that makes me glad I got out of the field. As if there's a time limit on what constitutes healthy grieving a dead child, and after that you're sick. Sadness in it's basic sense is normal too. People aren't cheery all the damn time, and telling them their sick for being down in the dumps is itself sick and wrong.

The real issue is what we do with these emotions. Bottling it up, supressing it, this is not healthy; expressing the emotion is obviously better. Yet what's unhealthy about anger is usually the way it is expressed. The expression is the release, the way through it; ignoring it isn't going to work, nor is drugging it away. The nuance is this: you have every right to be angry, even to be hateful; you do not have a right to hit your spouse or kick your dog, and you do not have the right to strap on dynamite and blow up a bus.

It gets tricky, though. How do you safely express your anger when your boss does something stupid that is going to cost you hours of tedium? Do you bury the feeling and keep your job, or tell him what you really think? Part of the solution might be to express, somehow, the emotion in the very moment it rises. Let it rush in, and out, like a passing storm. Or maybe expression in the exact moment isn't necessary; but get it out soon. I find anger and exercise go together great: do some push ups, or run a mile or two. Anger is energy. Hold it too long and it turns to hate.

As for sadness, crying is fine, or listening to sad music, writing a poem or journal, or whatever works for you. I think Freud called this sublimation, the turning a "negative" emotion into some kind of positive. I guess depression is sort of the negetive side of sadness, that of dwelling too long on it, from not expressing it and letting it go. Like hate, it is a trap. We have the right to feel these ways, but they aren't good for us and are the sign of neglected emotions.

I do know one thing. Psychology/psychiatry should be focusing not on pathologizing these natural emotions, but on helping us deal with them in productive ways.

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

One of my supervisors at work asked me the other day if, five years ago, I ever would have dreamed I'd be living in Texas. I thought a minute, and said, "a thousand times, no." We both laughed.

Not that it's so bad here, really. All I mean is that five years ago I never would have dreamed what directions my life would take. Back in 2006, I was living a hopeless life. Stagnant. College dropout, just working at a dead end job which wasn't terrible, but wasn't great by any means. No goals. I had an online journal back in my late teens early 20s, which I'll never post here, but I look at it sometimes, and try to remember what it was like then. I always find it amazing how depressed I was.

That spring, I embarked on a cross-country bicycle trip, my first hope of breaking out of my doldrums, with no plan but to make for the coast. On the ninth morning of the trip, I was creamed by an 83 year old lady driving a Buick in New Ulm, Minnesota, breaking my bike and very nearly me. I wore no helmet, but was lucky; I survived with only some bad contusions and road rash, but had to limp on back home via America's favorite traveling option: a Greyhound bus. Truth is I wasn't enjoying the trip that much anyways. I was trying, and naturally failing, to run from my demons.

After that little changed for a while. I got a second job to fill my hours up, moved out of my parents' house. Tried returning to college, lasted about two weeks. Finally in the winter of 07 I finally decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, which in 2008 would prove to be the catalyst to finally change my life, to teach me what happiness was and to rekindle my spirit. Since then I've been travelling a lot, working seasonally, three times in jobs involving hiking or trails.

I look back at myself, and at myself now. When I was 17 I would have laughed if you said 10 years from now I'd be some kind of hippie-ish*, hiker-trash guy, living in Texas of all places, hiking these long distance trails, working occasionally, and, the kicker, writing a spirituality-laced blog. I was a pure, strict athiest back then, looking towards graduation and college, assuming I'd have a career someday, a stable, normal life. No one would have said I had it in me for living this way. While I've always loved the outdoors, I was the shy kid who didn't go out much, never the risk taker, the adventurer, and certainly don't conform to the "adventure sports guy" persona. I'm not even very athletic, never was the "physical" type. I'm not the type at all to be living this way.

Yet here I am about to go hike the Pacific Crest Trail. And I don't know where I'm going after that. It's a little scary. I find it amazing that a reserved and cautious person like me is at the same time living this totally unsecure life. Very curious.

But it all just goes to show that you never know where life will take you, what it will make of you. Look back 5 or 10 years in your own life, and ask yourself if the path you've since taken was at all obvious back then. It probably wasn't. The raw material of us, our deep-seated loves and likes, those few core personality traits, can find very unforseen expressions as life plays out; the interplay of variables shuffles your life in a new and unexpected arrangement.

Whatever there is to be said of life, at least we can say it's very interesting.

(*I am NOT a hippie.)