OH

OH, I'm reminded.
In the previous post I wrote "OH".

Today this happened:

B. What's that on your hand?
J. I wrote "OH" as a pneumonic device. (in patronizing tone) Do you know what pneumonic devices are??
B. (in a patronizing tone) Are you condescending to me?
J. (still patronizing) No, I'm patronizing you!

then the other J&B laughed and extolled my name.

The "OH" on my hand stood for "office hours".
It also stood for the death penalty and higher wages and PROP187 and liberty and justice and the american way.

OHIO!

music.

listening to daniel's new mix cd. love it. going to go get medicine and food and then camp out at biola until rehearsal. rehearsal for THE READ INSPECTOR HOUND, in which I play the role of a man named Birdboot. not, unfortunately, rehearsal for MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM in which I play the role of Puck. going to that rehearsal would be a category error on my part. I love the way I can make the action of going someplace into a category error, by manipulating language.


OH.

which reminds me of class the other day when a student asked me, in reference to a phone call i'd just finished, "was that your girlfriend?" to which I said, quickly, "empty set."

I then explained sets to them. Centaurs were involved.

spiritual comfort. points.

I used to be hesitant to use the word "spiritual". It seemed to denote something I was skeptical/ignorant about. Since I have refined my understanding of the term, and use it with less fear. I understand vaguely what it is to have a spirit in non-philosophical terms; that is, to be in low spirits, for instance. I use spiritual to refer to this part of life, as a catch-all for emotional/psychological/intellectual. Spiritual refers, for me, to that facet of things having to do with consciousness, or more broadly, non-materiality.
Some statements:

1. I receive spiritual comfort from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", for reason to do with aesthetics, narrative, and all-around ethos.
2. I received, today, spiritual comfort from my reading group. Though I am amazed now, hours later, by the transiency of my resolve when it comes to spiritual issues. This morning I was determined on taking a particular posture towards work and hardship, and already seem to have backslid.
3. Today, the first class of Aikido. The instructor is this woman who looks like (and I say this without malice or judgmentalism) she lives in a louisiana trailer park and eats macaroni tv dinners. She said today, "If you're looking for the spiritual side of aikido, you're not going to get it here. I like to deal with the pain part."
4. More on Aikido. Before I got to class, I seriously imagined a woman (why a woman I don't know) who would teach the class and would be eerily spiritually adept. I imagined she would be able to intuit my spiritual state in an instant and even be able to affect my physical state (particularly in the case of my current sickness) via spiritual methods. I thought her first item of business would be to heal my by touching my forehead with her thumb. I imagined her surrounded by an aura of chi, with jedi-like serenity, with special powers--I imagined, I wanted no less, a bona fide sense, a guru, a certified Bodhisattva.
When I beheld what is in fact my aikido instructor, I couldn't not grin, as if pleased.
5. That my position concerning the word "spiritual" has morphed to be less charged from what it was, I feel like I've charged it with my own punch. I treat it with a certain degree of care; it carries for me a degree of sanctity--though now I'm not afraid or ashamed of using it like I was. My estimation of simple, folk-psychological, "spirits" has come to gather its own weight. I may or may not think more of the spiritual forces surrounding the stereotypical mom's home-made soup than I do of, say, the Sacrament.
6. My thoughts on the spiritual can, I think, be explained adequately by any number of positions within the philosophy of mind. The phenomena are what I'm concerned with, not with whether they're cashed out as having to do with souls or brain-states. I have trouble motivating myself to think that much hangs on their description. I'm willing to be motivated from without...louis?
7. I want spiritual powers.

afternoon, excellently gloomy weather.

today at the supermarket there was this very congenial woman at the register. i was watching her, happy she was so nice to customers. and then i thought of what i would say when she would nicely ask me how i was. i thought to myself that i wanted to say something like this: "you know, i am doing really well. i'm young, i'm bright, i have two jobs that support me, i have friends that like me, a family that loves me, a good amount of personal time, i have plenty of freedoms and responsibilities. it's so good to be alive. thank you for asking. how are you?" but when she did ask me i just said "great! how are you!?" with enough enthusiasm to communicate all of the above. i bought cream soda and halloween cookies.
well. i'm going to go back to grading, since idle hands are the devil's playground. i'm trying to avoid having demonic jungle gyms crop up all over my knuckles.

i wish you could see me right now. i'm lip-syncing and contorting my body.

i am wearing a dark blue striped dress shirt with a black paisley tie, sitting in a darkness tinged by incadescent light. i have book of fiction by borges open at my chest, a difficult and beautiful book to my left, an unopened bottle of dr. pepper. my laptop. i'm listening to that kinks song on repeat. my consciousness is dear to me.

who can stop and go to rehearsal at a time like this.

i'd love to write a blog arguing for my eternal celibacy here, but won't,
i'd love to quote borges here at length, but won't,
i'd love to write my sincere thoughts and impressions, but won't,
i'd love to feign sincere thoughts and impression here in writing, but won't,
i'd love to write anything here that would cause me pleasure to look back on later, but won't,
because i have to go to rehearsal.

a mantra observed.

here's the idea. i am going to write a word over and over here, each time thinking carefully about its meaning, meditating on it. from you, reader, i solicit an imaginative effort: try to imagine the state of my consciousness at different tokens of the word in this post. so, pick one in the middle of the paragraph, say, and then think about what i might have been thinking as i wrote it, how much or how little, how deep or how shallow. okay. here goes.

clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity. clarity.




now, let this jog your imagination. it was after the fifth one that i started writing quickly, and then around the third row when i first said the word aloud to myself. around half-way through i finally decided to look up a clear definition of the word on the internet. a few after this one i was interrupted by a girl walking by. throughout most of the tokens the pain of my tooth was present to me, and i was listening to a kinks song on repeat the whole damn time. sometimes i thought on the word critically, sometimes i thought on the word with spiritual desire.
now imagine to your hearts content. bask in the unknown minutia of my thought-life. the inaccessibility of my consciousness. the daunting realm of cognitive possibility.

and now, having experienced the reading of my writing of all that, wrap your imagination around these suckers:

clarity. clarity.

and softly,
clarity.

good afternoon after church. thoughts.

There is this part of me, probably located in my forearm, or my index finger, or my heart of hearts, or somewhere....that wants to be a kind of designer. I want to design tables and chairs and bookcases and book cover-art and websites and shoes and wine glasses and cars and gardens and buildings and the rest.

I want to design my behavior. I want to predetermine the tone of my voice for all strata and genres of conversation. I want to design templates for the angle of my head and the direction of my eyes for all occasions: for when I am impudent or caring or insightful.

Maybe. Maybe, just maybe. Maybe maybe maybe......maybe. Maybe....
Maybe free will has to be activated. Materialistic determinism holds in some trivial way, say, unless recognized and worked against. (This sounds either trivially true or profoundly false, but I'm on a roll now, don't stop me, get back in the car.) Maybe my behavior is out of my control insofar as it's not consciously scrutinized and decided upon in a cerebral, propositional way. I need to speak mentalese to myself, saying, "do this". Only then am I, lets pretend, doing whatever I'm doing; otherwise its all due to the neurological fireworks going off in my brain, for which any number of precise biological descriptions could be doctored up.
Okay okay okay, it doesn't make sense. We can recur to those few, those happy few, firing synapses responsible for my decision to decide on D&G sunglasses, say, thereby nixing my free will. But lets just go fuzzy on the logic for a bit for the sake of the picture. The idea that, on some vague level, one's behavior isn't normally under one's control, but could be somehow someway if one but exerted some good-ole nondescript willpower and elbow grease--this is a winning idea for me.

Simply said, I'd like to live in a fastidious, self-conscious and meticulously decisive way. The mental clarity of "THE" analytical philosopher that exists in Plato's heaven, the physical focus and specificity of movement of "THE" samurai master up there with him, the active taste and keen eye of "THE" IKEA designer/GQ editor who completes the heavenly crew.

That said, I think I am now going to inventory all my physical and spiritual assets and liabilities, settling on a program for the activation of my free will as it pertains to all facets of my existence. Of course, I will lose my drive half-way through the project and end up abandoning it, distracted and dazzled by the spectacular pyrotechnic display of effects carrying on in and about my grey matter. But I'm on a roll now, don't stop me, get back in the car.

a moment.

from the DARJEELING LIMITED.
When the indian train-keeper runs into the brothers train compartment to capture a poisonous snake. It reminded me viscerally of when Kambei runs into the hut to save the child from the kidnapper in seven samurai.

my life's zenith.

darjeeling limited tonight.
i kid you not i woke up this morning and thought about what i was going to wear, worried of what wes anderson would think of me.

in other news:
i want nothing more than for this homework i have to grade to spontaneously combust. "i'm sorry kiddos, but your homework spontaneously combusted. there's nothing i can do about it. to be fair, i'm giving everybody full credit." works best for everybody invovled. i can meditate on d.l., they get more points than they would, and i accrue some lovey-loos from my students.

i have taken to calling each student by their last name. not just "mr. carstairs", but "carstairs" or "atkins". Krissy Atkins was taken aback by it. she had no idea that she'd signed up for a varsity sport.

i just graded all the homework. not too painful. I just pinned each assignment up on the wall, and assigned different grade-values to each of my darts. Whichever assignment I hit with a 100% dart got an A, 80% darts Bs, etc. I strangely have more 60% darts than anything else.
i also tidied up my room and car. being organized is such an artform. after having spent time in discussion with Ten Elshof, my understanding of art is so much more saturated. it means so much more to call something art than it previously did to me.


Organization--is this a virtue of literary work? Is an organized blog better than an unorganized blog? An organized novel? I'm going to think about organization and then blog about it. But I want my blog about organization to exemplify the characteristic, not just address it. so there.

to conclude:
I heart Darjeeling Limited.