January 2025

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January, 2025

January 31 You poor, fortunate soul...

January 30 What happens when a stratovolcano erupts from beneath a glacier? Well, in the case of Eyafetlajökull and Iceland, you get a tourism boom that surges for over a decade and revolutionizes a nation's economy.

January 29 Imagine that you have no other option but to exist as a mortal human. Would you rather have this one imperfect, finite life or not exist at all? If you could live another mortal human life after you die, would you choose to do that or choose non-existence? It's easy to hate this life when you compare it to Eden, heaven, paradise, Nirvana. It's easy to love this life when you compare it to non-existence. What if the most perfect union you could possibly achieve with God is that which you can achieve on Earth, in mortal life? Instead of hoping to be "reunited" with Him in the afterlife, you might do more to connect with Her now, before you die. If I had the option of either living only one life or living many human lives for the entire duration of our species's existence, I would choose the latter. Without the possibility of Nirvana, I would love to be stuck in the cycle of samsara, to continue to have the privilege of living. Make me mortal after mortal for eternity.

The depths of a glacier are the womb of new space, whereas the depths of a volcano are the womb of new mass.

The rigid, impenetrable surface of a glacier is masculine, and its depths are feminine. Erupting, spewing, flowing lava is masculine, but hidden, bubbling magma is feminine.

January 27 Destinations Are Illusory

People say that the journey matters more than the destination. I say, the journey is all there is; all destinations are illusory. Destinations are discontinuous moments outside the flow of time. Destinations are concepts: a graduation, a wedding, retirement, heaven. Walking across the stage to receive your diploma, at what point do you "arrive"? When they call your name? When you hold the folio? When you shake the president's hand? People long to be delivered from this life. I ask, To where? and Why?

Destinations are mere delusions. Living, as I have come to see it, is: sin without salvation, suffering without justification, Samsara without Nirvana, mortality as a gift from God. Why live life hoping to be delivered from it? Why not live life here and now as it is, as best you can, until you die?

She's the type of girl who, when asked what her favorite painting is in the Modern Art gallery at the MET, will say, "I'd hang that one in my house," pointing to Autumn Rhythm Number 30 by Jackson Pollock.

January 26 Example of an oxymoron: "weighted calisthenics"

January 24 Three Main Tenants of My Personal Philosophy

These are three main ideas I have that I am trying to live up to every day. They are important to me, and interesting to others because they aren't conventional, especially in concert.

One has agency over the severity of one's suffering but not over the reality of it. Suffering is a fact of life, and life is how one responds to the fact.
One has the faculties of reason and the divine ability to determine what is true and just, and the will to act accordingly. We are each autonomous moral agents and arbiters.
A life lived in pursuit of Truth is one lived unreconciled. The Absolute is inaccessible to us in life, and any pursuit of the Absolute in the hopes of arrival is not only in vain but is invalid for its conditional motive. Seek and you shall find that the seeking is all you need.

These claims loosely map onto the three main branches of philosophy: Metaphysics, Ethics, and Epistemology.

January 24Harry Mack's appearance on Rick Glassman's Take Your Shoes Off podcast is incredible. They go deep into the craft, connecting freestyle rapping to comedy, and Harry does nine or ten freestyles that are killer. It's such a valuable, in-depth look into the psyche of an artists who strives for greatness and puts in the work to master his craft (and has been rewarded for it).

All the raps are worth watching, but these were the two most impressive to me:

1:26:23: "Meditation Tutorial" – a freestyle in the style of a guided meditation

1:44:08: "Looking Out for Future You" – H-Mack's thoughts on staying focused and following pursuing purpose

Takeaways:

Practice is sacred.
Expectations are dangerous. If you expect yourself to be great always you won't take the risks that help you improve. If your audience expects you to be great, you might fold for the fear of rising to that bar.
There's no way to have fun making art if you're not able to be present while doing it. (For me, this means not editing and judging my writing as I'm drafting. Let myself flow before shaping it into something final.)
Collect data from your audience, but don't let them decide whether what you're doing is good. You must be your own arbiter of quality, and you must find motivation for your art that is independent from praise.

Most particular actions have no moral content, but all actions are, by nature, moral. To act is to be an autonomous agent; to be an agent is to be making moral decisions.

January 23 Self-Oughts Only: You are not subject to my morality

I have many ideas of what I ought and to do, and I have very few ideas about what you ought to do. My personal morality is deontological; I have many positive moral expectations of myself, and I am obligated to adhere to many rules. But my morality is not something that I would ever impose upon you. The moral expectations I have for others are few, and they are negative expectations: rules of non-action.

Here are just some of the moral expectations I have for myself:

Treat all humans as autonomous moral agents and ends in themselves, never merely as means.
Meet everyone with compassion.
Regard my attention as sacred, and do not waste it by seeking distraction.
Always be honest.
Regard sex as sacred, and use it as a way to deepen connection with myself, my partner, and with God.
Say what I know is unsaid.
Serve as my loved ones' counsel when they request it.
Do not consume mind-altering substances (drugs, alcohol, excessive caffeine), for they violate the sanctity of consciousness.
Treat Nature with the utmost respect and reverence (which includes never littering).

And the moral expectations I have of others reduce to these:

Do not harm others (with the exception of self-defense).
Do not violate another's dignity, freedom, or autonomy.
Do not willfully act against your own idea of the moral Good.

You are free to have casual sex; I will not condemn. You are free to lie to yourself, to insult people, to ignore loved ones in need, to litter; I will not condemn. My morality is a standard I have set for myself, based on what I deem to be valuable and what I think will bring my actions closer to the Good. But my values and my specific conception of the Good are not universal. The few expectations I have of others are the few moral dictums that I deem as close to universal as possible, without violating each person's autonomy as a moral agent.

I will consider your actions immoral if you assault me, spit in my face unprovoked, or cheat on your spouse (assuming a vow of monogamy). But I will not consider you evil. I would still consider you capable of aligning your future actions with the moral Good.

New personal rule: Either work out before 10 am or right before and during sunset.

January 23 Instead of asking people "What do you do for fun?" or "What are your hobbies?" I'm going to start asking, "What is your current project?"

January 22 Important Facts About the Midnight Sun

Strictly speaking, the midnight sun is a phenomenon that only happens within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, either north or south of the latitude 66.5ºN/S. All of Iceland, with the exception of Grímsey Island, is just shy of the Arctic Circle. That means that there is never a true midnight sun in Iceland except for on Grímsey, which is at a latitude of 66.55ºN. Even on the summer solstice, the bottom of the Sun dips below the horizon. This is known as a "midnight twilight" or "polar twilight" or "white nights." This is what I experienced in Iceland.

I thought that the definition of "midnight Sun" included a sunset where it didn't fully dip below the horizon during sunset. But, in fact, it is a Sun path that never dips at all below the horizon. At exactly 66.5º, the true Midnight Sun happens once per year, on the summer solstice; for the rest of the year, at least a sliver of the Sun dips below the horizon. And, at that exact latitude, on the winter solstice, there is 24 hours of complete darkness, during which no part of the Sun crests over the horizon.

This is a much more detailed understanding than I've ever had of this phenomenon, and it's important that I get these details right for my book. During my summer in Iceland, the Sun was always setting, but for most of my time, it never fully set. All summer, I saw the Sun bounce off the horizon, until it didn't and dipped below.

Someday, I should make a pilgrimage to Grímsey Island for the summer solstice, and/or for the winter solstice, to cross into the Arctic Circle and witness the uninterrupted daylight/darkness.

January 22These web-apps from University of Nebraska are incredible, and I'm going to be playing in them to learn more about astronomy:

The Four-Season Story

Almost every story starts in the (metaphorical) summer. The call to adventure is the brief, bright, and colorful part of fall. Most of a story happens in winter, where it gradually gets colder and darker until turning to become brighter and warmer again (after the grand ordeal, the winter solstice). And a story ends with the hero's rebirth and return: spring.

January 22 Everything that's good requires effort. Everything worthwhile is difficult. The trick is to give it enough effort and take on enough challenges so that the good starts to come naturally (not easily).

January 20 Contrary to popular dogma, sex may be the only thing we have in common with God: procreative power.

January 20 How are you today?

What would your soul say about your body-mind today?

A Brief Exploration of Dingbats

The New Yorker has this black square at the end of all their articles to denote the end of an article. When I first saw it, I found it redundant or, rather, obvious. But I just read another article that had one, and I found it satisfying, like a "The End" or "Fin" title screen during the pan-out shot of a film. I should consider finding a typographic symbol that I might like to use as my own end-of-essay mark.

A dingbat is a typographical glyph that may be used for many purposes, among them: in a superscript to mark a note (often ✝), to denote section-break (sometimes ⋆ ⋆ ⋆), or as an end mark (most often ■). When used as a section-break, a dingbat or set of dingbats (as in ⋆ ⋆ ⋆) is called a dinkus. A dinkus is a use case for dingbats.

Below are some options of dingbats, and sets of dingbats, for my personal end-of-essay mark. All of these have [their own Unicode values](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingbats_(Unicode_block) and should be valid and consistent across all print digital and print typography.

(Note: There's a choice to make of whether to set these end marks with a preceding space, after the final period, or if there should be no space between the end of the piece and this mark. There should definitely be no line-break. *The New Yorker* seems to have no space, but my preference is to have one.)

These are my favorites, in a rough order of preference. These are real candidates:

❚ : Heavy pipe
❛❜ : Yin-Yang quotes (con: it looks like 69)
❍ : Eclipsing circle // Hole-punch
❚❙❘ : Barcode

These are other options/ideas:

● : Heavy point
❚ ❙ ❘ : Fade-out
❘ ❙ ❚ : Dominoes
●❍ : Binary stars
❝❞: Empty string
⁂ : Triangle-asterisk
■ : The New Yorker's square

Hare are samples of the top three options currently:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. ❛❜

If I decide to start doing this, and whatever end mark I decide, it must have a discrete symbolism that I can easily articulate and justify. That's why the Yin-Yang Single Quotes is currently my top pick; it's philosophically aligned with me.

January 20 Oh, you must not understand. I have subordinated everything to the practices and perspectives that support my personal growth and evolution. So, unless your text message or email contains revolutionary, soul-expanding content worthy of my undivided and immediate attention, I doubt I'll feel much urgency to reply to it today.

January 19 Some people require you to be God, for no amount of grace you give them is sufficient; they do some thing and then another thing that requires evermore grace from you, if you are to accept and forgive them. Some people require that your grace be infinite.

January 19 The smell of winter air is clean, dry, and homogenous. It's as if the vapor is not water droplets but microscopic snowflakes.

January 18 I wouldn't have expressed it in these words if you had asked me on June 1, 2022, but the question I was asking myself and secretly hoping to answer in Iceland was this: What is worth doing with my time before I die?

[[Feeling Fire and Ice]]

January 18 "See reality as a dream" means "let your living be unlimited."

The most severe case of acute metaphysical whiplash I have ever felt was the first time I drove to the grocery store back in Hoboken, New Jersey, after returning from Iceland. I had become more of myself, and this place was reflecting back that lesser part of me that I was.

[[Feeling Fire and Ice]]

January 18 Eating dried fish throughout my hike on that rainy day, my prune, soaked fingertips were rehydrating the cod fillets. If I didn't scarf a whole pack down, the 300 grams protein, it would get moldy and be unfit to eat the next day, I thought.

[["Stillness & Ambition"]]

The shoulder seasons have sight-solstices, whereas Summer and Winter have smelling-solstices. In Autumn, you see the leaves turn and fall. In Spring, you see the color return and trees' fruits in widening bloom. But once all the leaves have fallen, how do you detect the start of Winter? Once every branch is adorned with healthy green again, how do decide that it has become Summer? I submit that you do so with your smelling sense.

[["Stillness & Ambition"]]

January 16 I have never thought of this until just now, upon hearing Kim Anami reference spooky action at a distance as an analogy for a couple feeling connection instantaneously across space, but Yin and Yang are represented at the quantum level.

There are two options for the orientation of a subatomic particle: spin-up or spin-down. And those two polarized, complementary, attracting orientations create a third thing which is the relationship between the two particles. This is also represented in binary stars and in the motions of the Sun and Moon relative to the Earth. These are all manifestations of the two primordial energies: masculine and feminine, Yin and Yang. These are all manifestations of two forces creating a third thing between them, by the force of their duality.

[[Live in The Third]]

January 15 There will be a total solar eclipse on August 12, 2026 with a narrow band of totality that includes most of western Iceland (see this article from Perlan). I need to be there to see it, probably in Ísafjöður, maybe from the Troll's Throne. I should plan this far in advance and invite many important people from my life to experience it with me.

Or, if I'm really ambitious, I could climb to the top of Snæfellsjökull and watch the eclipse from the summit. While I'm there, in that moment, maybe I collect a vile of snow, while it is cast in the shade of the moon during totality. I would seal that vile and have it with me until I die.

January 14 What's so bad about banking on an eternal afterlife? Well, it's the single best way to justify being miserable in mortal life.

[[Eden Is Hell Too]]

January 13 Dreams are hard to share, because they are incoherent; it's hard to know what's important.

January 13 Skiing is turning. If you're not working on your turns, you're not improving as a skier. And if you're not turning at all, you are simply falling. To stop falling, start turning.

The difficulty ratings of the runs at ski resorts are a great example of the Pathetic Appeal of rhetoric:

Green: "Easier"
Blue: "More Difficult"
Black: "Most Difficult"
Double-Black: "Experts Only"

The key here is that the difficulty ratings are defined as relative to one another. A green for a beginner is difficult, so it would be discouraging to see a sign that with a green circle that says "Easy." This is a more objective way to define the difficulty, language without judgment. And this is important, because this language is meant for an audience that consists of all levels of skier/rider.

These labels are also encouraging. It will take a while for a beginner to consider themselves "intermediate," but if the barrier to entry is simply that blue runs are "more difficult," a beginner is likely to feel more confident to try a blue. And the double-black label is the odd one out; they use the label of "expert" to discourage anyone who is not competent and confident enough to self-identify as an expert, because double-blacks are the most dangerous runs, if you don't know what you're doing or don't understand what you're getting yourself into.

I saw the above labels at Copper Mountain in CO. There are other versions at other mountains that aren't quite as effective, viz.:

Green: "Easiest"
Blue: "Intermediate"
Black: "Advanced"
Double-Black: "Expert"

This version makes a skier's identity the barrier to entry to the next level of difficulty. They are not defined relative to each other but relative to a skier's self-proclaimed skill level.

January 8 The craft-journey of a writer is continually making your first drafts better over time, which you accomplish by becoming a better self-editor. The quality of your shitty first draft disproportionally affects the quality of your final draft. You know you're improving when the mistakes and habits you used to have in final drafts no longer show up in your first drafts.

Descartes figured something out: Cogito ergo sum. But he failed to specify — "I think, therefore I am…" What?! Am I awake or dreaming? I still cogito in my dreams. So, do I exist the same way in the dreamworld as I do in the waking world?

[[Somnio, ergo sum homo. Homo sum, ergo somnio.]]

January 7 My attention is under siege, and the last bastion is the power of my will to abstain from distraction.

Aphoristic sex-wisdom from Kim Anami:

The sexiest thing a man can do is exactly what he says he's going to do.

Source: "The 5 Sexiest Things a Man Can Do

January 7 Asking for help is a form of helping yourself.

Wouldn't it be nice to know that all you ever had to do, all you were ever designed to do, was to slice or to occasionally stab? Everyone wants to be knife, for what a sense of purpose a knife must have! — a tool designed for a use. But every knife wants to be a piece of wood, a ball bearing, a nut, or a nail—a tool designed to be used in whatever one might imagine to build.

January 6 Increasingly, I consider language to be a primitive form of communication. There's so much more happening all the time, emanating from us and being received by us that is unconscious and automatic (though we can intervene in this process and influence it). We communicate primarily and most powerfully with energy.

Deliver Yourself

My version of Matthew 7:7–8:

Ask, and you become open to receive it; knock until can you hear music in your fist-pounding; seek, and you shall find that the seeking is all you need. For everyone who asks discovers more questions, and those who never stop knocking never stop dancing.

Matthew 7:7–8 (ESV):

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

[[From what do you wish to be saved? From what do you long to be delivered? From this beautiful life?]]
[[No one can deliver you from here, from anywhere. You must deliver yourself to wherever you hope to go.]]

January 6 A book is analogous to an album, and a chapter is like a track. Most of my favorite albums — e.g. OMAM's My Head Is an Animal, Caroline Polachek's Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, KALEO's Surface Sounds, and Fleetwood Mac's Rumors— have either 11 or 12 tracks. And that is the number of chapters that my next book will have. It's a length where you know you've cut enough.

January 4 I want to know what happens in the afterdeath.

January 4 If I want any hope of arriving at Truth after death, in life I must never settle on any of the many Islands of Conditional Truths.

Having freedom from it all does not give you the freedom to have it all.

January 2 A good example of riffing on cliches: Stephen King's "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs."

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