December 2024

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December

December 31 God, Save the Bridge

Of course, the bridge in songwriting still lives on, and it has become the marker of real artists. The cash-grabbing, fame-focused musicians bend to the incentive structures created by TikTok: quick to the chorus out of the intro, and an extra run of the pre-chorus and chorus in place of a bridge. The bridge is the antithesis, the counter-theme, the night before the dawn, the depths before the breach, the womb before birth; the bridge is where a song declares its meaning, if you are attentive enough to hear it. We need bridges, lest we fall into dogma and conform art to templates and subordinate the meaning of lyrics to their catchiness. God, save the bridge.

December 29 Growing up, my sister always tended to find hair in her food. My parents would encourage her to send the dish back and have it re-made. This happened so often that we practically expected it, and my sister started to cite it as evidence for her general bad luck in life, because no one else ever seemed to find hair in their food. My sister may have actually been unlucky and could have actually had hair in her food more much more often than other people. But maybe she found the hair because she was looking for it, and the rest of us would just eat it.

It's worth asking yourself: Hours much hair are you willing to eat in life? If your answer is "none," then you'll spend your whole life looking for the hairs. It's probably best to find the hairs, remove them, and eat the meal anyway.

I'm at a breakfast place called Yolk in Indianapolis (Ironworks), and the backs of the employees shirts are hilarious:

Handling your huevos since 2006.

Isn't the phrase "paying customers" redundant?

Some off-the-dome oxymorons:

• "jumbo shrimp"
• "limp rod"
• "honest politician"
• "casual sex"
• "Cold as hell"

And some that I looked up for inspiration:

• bittersweet
• "old news"
• "civil war"
• "terribly good"
• "crash landing"
• "deafening silence"
• "icy hot"
• "original copy"
• "pretty ugly"
• "unbiased opinion"
• "humble brag"

Every year, I'm less excited about holidays, because holidays are full of obligations. The more clearly I define how I want to spend my time, and the more dedicated I become to those activities, the less tolerant I am to spending time according to someone else's decision of what's worthwhile right now.

I have only ever craved Chick Fil-A on a Sunday.

Annie Dillard, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, on the omnipresence of Nature's beauty and our ignorance of it:

Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it.

December 28 Achieving personal freedom is a revolutionary activity. Unless you want to remain shackled to the values and believes that you have inherited, you must rebel.

Grasping and Aversion: How to handle desire

Every indulgence has a different margin of moderation. Some things, like drinking water, have a very wide margin and more room for error. It's very hard to drink water in excess, and it is easy to drink enough. On the other hand, try drinking a gallon of alcohol (or, more to the point: don't). It is easy to drink too much alcohol, which means that it is hard to stay within its narrow margin of moderation.

People complain about how short life is and they complain of how slowly time moves when they have nothing to do. If you want to live longer, let yourself be bored more often.

The most important criterion when choosing an example to illustrate a conceptual point is the whether it is apt. But the best examples go beyond that; the best examples are apt, educational, and entertaining. You either learn more about the author or more about the subject matter by reading the example. There's value in the example beyond explaining the concept.

Seek and you shall find that the seeking is all you need.

There are really two types of hope for the afterlife: either you imagine an afterlife that restores you to your natural state or you imagine an afterlife that is a sort of evolution into a new state of being that you cannot conceive. Either you hope to return to the womb or you hope that this life is a womb and death a new birth. I hope for the latter.

[[Eden Is Hell Too]]

The quality of your sleep and dreams is the measure of your self-honesty. The more you lie to yourself, the more your mind will lash out at you via your unconscious.

I grew up being busy, to the degree that I felt like I had never developed the skill of filling my empty time with activities that I value. I grew up going to private school and playing sports and learning music and seeing family and traveling more than 10 times a year. I have stayed at least one night in 44 states; my sister is a year younger than me, and she had visited all 50 before graduating high school. In college, I remain busy. In the spring semester my freshman year, I had my first season of D3 tennis; I joined a fraternity; I joined one of the two a cappella groups on campus; and during that semester I finish the manuscript of my first book. Sophomore year was worse, because each of my commitments required more of my time and energy for being a leader, and I got a job on campus as a writing consultant. I remember grabbing lunch at noon from the fraternity house's kitchen after my shift at the Writing Center, and I would eat it off a disposable plate that I held in my hand as I walked to my next class.

Here's a microcosmic anecdote for my busyness: One night during the spring semester of my freshman year, I was coming back from a tennis match with the team on an Academy bus, and I was late to an a cappella performance for a university-wide event. I was late, but in this phase of my life, I Considered it being right on time. The bus was trudging through traffic in Hoboken on Washington Street while I change out of my tennis clothes into the outfit I had packed which was suitable for a collegiate a cappella concert. My socks were still sweaty from the match, and my salty skin stuck to my skinny jeans in the aisle in the back of the bus. I left my tennis bag with my roommate who reluctantly agreed to lug it across campus to our dorm room, and I got out at 8th and Wash, wearing my backpack and carrying my water jug. I ran the three blocks up the hill to Castle point and ran all the way into the gymnasium. I pushed through the doors, and the lights were off; the next act was coming onto the stage. I drop my backpack and kept running through the curtains and up the backstage steps to join Quackappella on stage. The lights went up, and my colleagues are saying better than I did. And it wasn't until after our performance that half of the group even knew I had been on stage with them.

Everything I was involved in college brought me joy and help me develop skills that I value. I thought I was succeeding so well by managing it all and not having to sacrifice any one thing that I wanted to do. But by overcommitting, I made myself so utterly busy that I prevent myself from being fully present anywhere I went, in anything that I was doing. I wasn't joking with my teammates on the bus ride home but scrambling, preparing for my next thing. I wasn't rehearsing with Quackappella and hyping each other up before our performance but running from my previous thing.

So, part of the reason I designed my trip to Iceland the way that I did was to force myself to have nothing at all to do and still find a way to enjoy my life.

[[Feeling Fire and Ice]]

She is the kind of girl who has Sun-sneezes and when she sneezes only ever sneezes once. It's a conscientious sneeze; she does it right the first time.

I can have it all, and that process can be natural rather than effortful.

December 27 Good describes how something is, not how well it is doing. School teachers for decades have been trying to reinforce this irregular-adverb rule with their comments on graded assignments: "Good job!" and "Well done!" From this subliminal instruction, you know not to say "Well job!" or "Good done!" But somehow "I'm doing good" has slipped right on through this rigorous pedagogy and into the lexicon.

December 26 Envoi-Quotes Over Epigraphs

Epigraphs are popular, especially at the start of nonfiction book chapters. They set the mood and hint at the content, but that means that your reader is first influenced by someone else's words. You're literally subordinating your words and ideas to those of someone else. But your reader isn't reading someone else's book; they're reading yours. Let them hear from you first and make their own interpretation of your ideas. Then, give them the same quote you would have used as an epigraph at the very end of your chapter, as a concise or alternative way to render the same message. Give your reader an envoi, not an epigraph. With this approach, both your words and the quote have more weight and a deeper meaning.

Jacqueline types just as fast as anyone you know, but she only uses eight fingers; her pinkies are always hovering over the keyboard. Given less than you, she'll do more than you do.

December 25 It is utterly liberating to accept responsibility for my reality.

Probably the reason I love Camus so much is because he synthesizes Eastern and Western philosophy; his approach is rational and empirical, and his conclusions are paradoxical. He can appeal to the logic of the West and uses lyricism and allegory that carry the energy of the Tao te Ching and the philosophies of the East. This synthesis is why his words feel so true.

There's a common male archetype that is perfectly embodied in the character of Mr. Freeze (Victor Fries), and this is worth an essay: The man who knows he's going to lose his woman and grasps so tightly to her so that he makes that loss a certainty and so that he loses any time he would have had remaining with her. And by doing this, he loses himself too — at least for a while, sometimes irreparably.

(Also research the character of Nora Fries, and use it to reinforce the role of masculine and feminine energies in story: ambition and mystery. And also research her resurrected forms, like the Gillian Lazara.)

December 24 I'm building my business slowly enough that it won't break.

December 23 Potential theme for 2025: Effortless Achievement via Discipline

I liked the pen at Springhill suites, and I wanted to steal it because the pen I've been using to annotate my books is all scratchy and inconsistent. But I could barely bring myself to put the pen in my backpack, because it is theft. I doubt they really care whether I take the pen, but I doubt they want to have a desk in a room that doesn't have a pen, and then it's up to hospitality to identify that a pin is missing and then to replace it. So, I did put the pen in my backpack, but then I went downstairs to fill up my water bottle and told the Woman at the front desk how much I like the pen in the room, and she jumped up and quickly handed me two, saying, "take as many as you like!" I said, "wow, thank you! i'll keep two and leave one in my room." right now, rather than having a single pan and a lingering sense of guilt that I may have caused the next guest in my room to be without a means of pinning a letter to his loved one, I have two pens and no guilt at all.

How to Write Like a Park Ranger:

1. Explore the forest (drafting).
2. Blaze/Mark a trail (revision).
3. Trim the trees (editing).
4. Clear the leaves (proofreading).

As soon as you reach Pittsburgh, westbound, every store employee and gas station clerk politely greets you upon entering. It makes you think that they might actually be happy to have you there.

I went to Iceland subconsciously hoping that it would help me figure out what to do with my life, but I knew that I wouldn't figure it out if I set that as my expectation for the trip. So, instead, I focused on other things that I thought might lead me there. Similarly, I did not set goals like "See the northern lights" or "Hike to the top of Kirkjufell" or "Draft the first chapter of my next book." And because I didn't set those outcomes as expectations, almost all of them came to be, and they required a method that I could not have possibly foreseen.

December 22 It's hard for me to empathize with what labor pains must feel like for women, because I imagine those pains are even more severe than what I feel trying to deliver a first draft of an essay, and anything more than that for me would be just about unbearable.

Give me the power, sense, and experience to write sentences like David Foster Wallace, paragraphs like Joan Didion, and essays like Emerson.

The telescope-person says, "I'm going to summit that mountain via the best route I can find." The compass-person says, "I need to go due West by any route that keeps me on track, even if it requires me to summit that mountain."

It's hard to love an adolescent, and it is hard for the adolescent to love himself. The adolescent is by nature between what she was and what she wants to be and is at the moment more aware than she ever has been of how far she is from who she wants to be. This applies to the insectial development stage of the pupa, between caterpillar and butterfly, and to any human in any sort of transition at any stage of life.

But there is something otherworldly and incredible and mysterious about the adolescent. Their rapid growth and transition reminds us of what is possible in life. (And, if you've ever used an Everstone on a Wartortle because of how dope the sprite is, you know that those middle-moments can be quite special.)

Writers would benefit from thinking of revision and editing in separate processes. Revision — literally "to see again, to see anew" — is about reshaping the form of your piece so that it communicates something different or communicates the same thing from a different angle or with a different strategy. Editing is more granular, particular; it is the part of sculpting when you reach for the small chisel and a brush rather than for a pickax. If you change your short story from past tense to present tense or from third person to first person, or if you add dialogue to a short story that had none, or if you restructure your essay around a new thesis, that is revision. If you make changes to the dialogue that's already in your draft, or if you edit one part of a flashback to be told in present tense or in first person, or if you rephrase your main claim in an essay, then you are editing. You need both of these skills, and they will each produce the best effects if you treat them as separate processes.

As long as you eventually become who you aim to be, all of your mistakes will eventually become re-orienting steps that you are grateful for.

I just passed a billboard for Garrett Limestone Quarry. Apparently, the quarry is under new ownership, and apparently that news is relevant enough to the interstate-driving public for the quarry to pay to announce that via billboard. The background color of the billboard is the tan of lime stone – not too far off from the color of the model dead grass and wheat lining the highway. I am westbound east of Pittsburgh on Dec 21.

I have love for just about everyone except for murderers and rapists — still working on that.

A microcosm of hypocrisy: roadside billboards that say "distracted driving kills." or "Game over. Distracted driving is not a game." If the owners of these billboards believe their message, they would purchase the add space and leave the billboard blank, so that the thousands or millions of drivers who would see it would not be distracted by it and could focus on the road.

(This was inspired by doing a double-take at the second billboard quoted above (sic) while driving through Pennsylvania.)

The work of revision is the work of blazing a trail for your reader.

[[Park-Ranger Revision]]

Profit is an essential metric to qualify a business as good. Growth is a superfluous metric that has the potential to amplify the good work of the business and also the potential to completely distract the owners and operators of the business from doing the good work that originally made them profitable. To succeed as a business, you have to become profitable and remain profitable. You don't always have to grow. (This is especially the case if you don’t have investors.)

The Newark International Airport is aptly named, for it grants you the freedom to get the hell out of here.

Logging my first NJ Devils game: Dec 21, 2024

We arrived 5–10 minutes after “kickoff” (?), following a 1.5hr drive from just-across-the-Delaware, PA, and the whole gang had to use the restroom — the "gang" being me and my girlfriend's family: her parents, younger sister, and younger brother. The boys went in to tinkle together. There was no line, and 35 of the approx. 37 urinals were open. I chose the first in one the two long anti-parallel rows. And of the 34 urinals available, my girlfriend's father chose the one right next to me. That's either a power-move or because he didn't want to go it on his own. Either way, it made my pee-shy and completely distracted, and I had to wait for him to finish and leave before I could force out a trickle.

Running list of sponsors:

• Prudential Center (venue)
• M&M Tower (cylindrical part of venue, featuring one of the ticketing gates)
• JAG Youngsters game between periods 1 & 2
• Citizens banners outside on the lampposts
• Sponsored desserts in the animated race (which is usually a race among condiments)
• Hyundai Penalty Kill
• "Window Seat" upgrade by United
• "Heroes Among US", presented by Prudential
• Delta Dental Selfie Cam
• Million Dollar Replay (sic) — NJ Lottery (slogan: "Anything can happen in New Jersey.")
• Calandra's bakery Birthday Wishes
• Citizens Puck Shuffle (3-card monte)
• Hyundai T-Shirt Toss

Notes:

• Crowd chants after Devils score a goal: "You suck."
• The Dad-band that played after Periods 1 & 2 is called Mushmouth.
• Track list for ^: "Rock Your Body," [Fankie Valley song], "Shake It Off," "Freak Out"
• One gay singer, one straight — both Dad's. One only dreams of being the top for the other, but he definitely has a wife and college-age daughters who are now numb to embarrassment. Wait... the other singer might also be gay. He just put on a disco-ball helmet to sing "Freak Out."
• Stadium-wide flashlight dance, following the off-beat Devils mascot's waving of a massive foam phone — of our group, only Mr. W. participated, off-beat in his own way to the tune of the EDM song "Tremor" ("3, 2, 1, Go!" Da da da da, dudududu Daaaa!)
• Prudential insurance —> Chose to build this arena for hockey because it is one of the most injurious sports, to remind people of their mortality (and their need for health insurance)
• "Sweet Caroline" (Whole crowd: "Bap, bap, bah!")
• Danny DaVito endorsement on the big screen before Period 3
• Ric Flair montage (WWE wrestler / personality, who is the real mascot), and the crowd quoted it like singing lyrics to a pop song ("Whoo!") right before the start of the final period
• Citizens Tower on the opposite side of the long edge of the rectangle from the M&M Tower
• "Whoo!"s echo up the spiral staircase of the resonant cylinder that is the Citizens Tower, after a 3–0 Devils victory
• Imagine rooting for the devil. What do you call such fanbase? Is there any more accurate word than satanists?

December 21 "It's a long story" is a euphemism for "It's a boring story."

Entrepreneurial wisdom from Derek Sivers from Chapter 9 of Anything You Want:

"Anytime you think you know what your new business will be doing, remember: No plan survives first contact with the customer."

December 19 I'm fasting today, which I may start doing every Thursday (from Wednesday's dinner to Thursday's dinner), and my sense of smell has never been more acute or intrusive. I'm working from a coffee shop that has a kitchen, and each new order that goes into the rice-cooker, the oven, or onto the stove I can practically taste with my nostrils. The reason I want to fast once per week is to keep my gut healthy, my sugar cravings absent, and to remain aware of the more subtle indicators of fullness, and finally to feel the not subtle sensation of physical hunger. I want that hunger to motivate me and move me to earn my daily bread, to keep me alert throughout the day. But I've learned today that by fasting I risk being distracted by the sensation of hunger itself and by my other senses searching for any food nearby.

Codie Sanchez on the drug of creating, the human need to create (via Tahsin Khan's essay "Why I Write"):

"Bliss isn't found in drugs or excess, in sex, in escaping...it's found in creating. Once you've tasted that drug, nothing else will satisfy you. You'll be a hunter in search of your prey. Everything else is a shiny distraction."

The Modern Plague of Paragraphing

Online writers need to be more intentional with paragraph-breaks. Rather than using breaks for emphasis or pacing, use them to govern the logical flow of your ideas. Group related ides together, such that each paragraph only has one main idea and such that any single idea is contained within one paragraph. The effect of senseless paragraph-breaks is that it reduces the writing to choppy, sensational moreish morsels. Essay-writing and essay-reading happens at the unit of the paragraph, which makes the paragraph-break foundational. It serves a mechanical function.

The only time I feel shame for my alma mater is when I see Stevens's print ads on the PATH and the Hudson–Bergen Light Rail. Their copy is atrocious — viz.:

Exceptional research drives exceptional learning.

Original Sin was the fruition of our creation. Before that ecstatic event, we were merely in the womb of Eden, alive but unborn.

[[Eden Is Hell Too]]

An introvert needs time in solitude to recharge her social battery. An extrovert needs time in company to recharge his solo battery.

December 18 I no longer cry when I'm with someone I love who is in devastating emotional pain and crying. I am merely a witness, not a participant in their sorrow. How do I know whether that is a healthy detachment and a sign of autonomy or an unhealthy apathy? Regardless, it is productive. Since I am not fueling the sorrow, I am better able to guide them through it, out the other side of it.

My favorite word to hear British and Aussie people say is awe (with the R-sounding vowel), as in "That place gave me a sense of awe."

An insight from Andrew Holecek on why the dream world is feminine and does not contend with our conventional, worldly, masculine, conquest-oriented rules:

Sacred mountains — you don't climb them, you don't conquer them; you circumambulate them.

If you are willing to play with and open to and surrender to a new set of rules, you will be embraced by a magical, rewarding dimension that will truly wake you up.

Prediction: Maya Rae, from Tiny Habits, is going to start a solo career shortly after their band becomes mainstream — before the end of 2026. There won't be any animosity, and maybe the three of them will still perform together now and then, but she'll be picked up faster than Juda and Cinya (who could each have their own successful solo careers or bring on another band mate and continue as Tiny Habits). Maya has the most unique tone, the most vocal control (including pitch and dynamics), and generally shines a bit brighter than the other two. (She also fits right into the mold of current alt-pop female stars like Lizzy McAlpine and Gracie Abrams. This could change, but that's how I feel after being a fan of theirs for a couple years, and after watching this live performance. To be clear, though, I would much rather listen to a Tiny Habits album than a Maya Rae album.

The Ailments of Modern Conversation Culture

• Too much small talk
• Too much trepidation and a lack of ingenuity in our questions
• Unclear intentions for our interactions
• And not enough ambition (about what transformative effects a single conversation could have).

One of the best examples in film of a man's ambition being motivated by a feminine mystery is The Truman Show. Truman is oblivious of his captivity and the oddities of his existence until Sylvia enters his life, captures his heart, and tells him the truth. The only reason Truman wants to go anywhere is to see her again, to go to Fiji. And that's the inciting event of his whole adventure.

Random Memory: The first time I saw Caroline Polachek was on the back of a male barista's T-Shirt in the cafe on the grounds of the National Cathedral in D.C. He was wearing Desire T-shirt (which merch, I have discovered, was limited edition) featuring Caroline's backside, namely a fake tattoo-via-sunburn (relief) and her butt crack with a belt bending above her bottom, barely holding up low-hanging, black jeans. I kept sneaking glances when the barista would turn around to work at the latte machine. She was captivating, and I hadn't yet seen her face or heard her sing. Who is that? It was frustrating how hard the font was to read from a distance. I looked her up and a few days later discovered her Tiny Desk Concert. I have since been a stan.

This memory was triggered by me browsing her merch store, from which I long ago ordered a cassette-tape version of Desire I Want to Turn Into You (yes, without having a way to play it — just to have a physical thing and to bring her energy in my space), a store from which today I am about to purchase the vinyl version of that same album.

December 17 “You make your own luck” is both completely true and utter bullshit. Have you ever seen a group of eight-year-olds playing basketball? Well, imagine that there are all these uncoordinated, overconfident little people who can barely lift the ball with both legs and two hands, much less heave it four feet in the air — and with accuracy — to put the ball in the basket. Imagine these little people fumbling and struggling, and imagine that you’re the hoop. You only get so many opportunities in life. This isn’t like an NBA game where both teams might score a hundred points. You want to receive as many scored baskets as possible, because those are your opportunities. And you’re the basket, not the coach or the referee. So, you can’t make the kids taller or stronger or leave to coach an older, more skillful bunch; and you can’t change the rules to make the ball smaller or lighter either. You have to take what you can get. With this analogy established, “making your own luck” means making yourself — the rim — lower and wider. There’s luck and opportunity all around you, like all those airballs by the eight-year-olds. Most of us rims are unaware that those opportunities are available. Lower yourself; humble yourself. Do not be entitled. The high and mighty do not invite opportunity yet demand it. Widen yourself; open yourself to possibility. The contracted and closed-off are unapproachable and dispassionate yet wonder why others aren’t offering to help them. You can’t make your own luck, but you can make yourself humble and open enough to receive it.

Some people are born as the hoop in Allen Field House, others as the hoop at your local YMCA. Regardless of your arena, you would receive more opportunities for making yourself lower and more open. And that's the key, because any one of those opportunities could be your lucky break.

December 16 Random Memory: When I first learned to whistle, I could only do it by inhaling, and I successfully did that for the first time in Branson Missouri and I was probably about seven.

Feeling Fire & Ice is a work of narrative nonfiction, using the adventures of one summer to communicate timeless lessons.

The pupa is disgusted by caterpillars, yet adult butterflies embrace caterpillars. The pupa is running away from what it was and is necessarily repulsed by what it was, but the butterfly becomes grateful for what it was, but only after it finally loves itself for what it is.

[[The Metaphysics of Metamorphosis]]

December 15 Rule #1 of personal finance: Don't spend money you don't have. If you follow this rule without fail, you will rank in the top five percentile for least financial stress, and your wealth will likely grow to the top five percentile of Americans. The big killer here is personal debt, namely credit cards.

What is sleep if not the analog of death, and if so, why would the afterlife not be analogous to a dream?

The Bear knows it's brand, and it never deviates from it: show people the scenes they know happen but never see, and make it fucking captivating. What must have been the writers' motto? "Every second counts."

Makeup is masculine when it is used to compete for attention.

December 14 S4 E8 of The Bear is incredible. The entire 40-minute runtime is dedicated to a secondary and a tertiary character: Sugar and her Mom D.D. The arc of the episode begins after Sugar's water breaks, which happened at the end of the previous episode, and it ends before she gives birth. The entire episode is about her reunion with her mom and them coming together. It's some of the best writing of the entire show so far. And it's evidence for the fantastic writing across every other episode of the show — the fact that you care enough about these characters to be engrossed in an episode that has nothing at all to do with our main characters or the restaurant.

To have received unconditional love is to have the permission to do whatever you please with your life.

December 13 Have you ever noticed that the rubber handrail on an escalator advances ever so slightly faster than the escalator itself? This is true for every escalator I can recall.

Virginia Woolf on essayists speaking as human to humans (from Michael Dean):

“Thus, some time in the nineties, it must have surprised readers accustomed to exhortation, information, and denunciation to find themselves familiarly addressed by a voice which seemed to belong to a man no larger than themselves. He was affected by private joys and sorrows, and … (had no gospel to preach and no learning to impart).... He was himself, simply and directly, and himself he has remained.”

To be unflappable

Right now, I'm riding the Long Island Railroad for the first time, and all I can think about are Joel and Clem and the gratitude I have for how frequently the sun shines in my spotted mind.

December 12 David Foster Wallace on the essay's primary purpose being to entertain and engage a reader:

Whether it honors them well or not, an essay's fundamental obligations are supposed to be to the reader. The reader, on however unconscious a level, understands this, and thus tends to approach an essay with a relatively high level of openness and credulity. – David Foster Wallace, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again"

Maybe use this quote in [[The Self-Editor's Survival Guide]] or in some other of my writing coaching resources.

December 11 I saw this painting shared on Substack, and it feels true, depicting the sexes's vices: feminine deference, masculine grasping. It's by Vincent Proce, who has an elegant personal site and many credits for design work on films.

Books to read as research for Feeling Fire & Ice:

• Into the Wild – John Krakauer
• Under the Glacier – Haldór Laxness
• Teaching a Stone to Talk – Annie Dillard

On the interior of this corporate park in Weehawken, NJ, is a convenience store with two prominent green signs reading "New Jersey Lottery," directly cross from the exit to the 20-story UBS office building.

To say "I'm doing well" and mean it every time you say it

We must imagine Sisyphus happy and the willful Eden-bound Eve as miserable.

December 10 Nature is a meritocracy, where the objective is to provide for, protect, and propagate your genes. Today, the objective is both exactly the same and completely unclear. We've abstracted everything, even hunger. Are you providing for and protecting your genes by buying a fancy air fryer? Since everything is abstracted, we've mistaken material success for survival. But you can't be literally hungry for more money.

December 9 The least illusory part of reality is other people. They affirm that I am experiencing something other than the worlds in my mind.

[[Solitude & Company]]

Do you have an acquiescing will or one agentic?

The only way to lie by omission is to deceive someone into thinking that you are not omitting anything, which is, in fact, lying about omission. So, there is no way to lie by omission, as long as you have made your omission apparent (or if you were never asked to reveal the truth).

December 8 What is the only way to hold water? With two crescent palms. You can't grip it in your fists.

Confinement has its own set of symptoms, and those are exacerbated in solitude: solitary confinement. Freedom has its own set of symptoms, though mostly positive, and those are exacerbated in solitude. What you might not notice when you feel free with company are the negative symptoms of freedom: disassociation from reality, delusions about your own mortality, and the feeling that there is no need for you to do anything more before you die. These are the symptoms of solitary freedom.

Every romantic relationship requires that there be the roles of the masculine and feminine. These are not gender roles but roles of primordial energies. At times, a man can play the role of the feminine and a woman the masculine. Staying at home for full-time childcare is inherently feminine, whether it's a man or woman who does it. But what we're losing with "gender equality" is the nuances of duality and interdependence. It's nurture triumphing over nature and wreaking havoc on homes and communities.

[[Propagating/Perpetuating the Patriarchy]]

December 7 Over Thanksgiving, my family recovered some old home videos. One of them features my first ever (and only[?]) poetry reading, in fifth grade at PHS. I read three poems, the first co-written and co-read with my friend Ethan A. They are all short.

"The Fright of Halloween"

Monsters loom on Halloween nightAnd wolves how, oh what a fright.Ghost and ghouls are stealing candyWhile witches on their brooms are feeling dandy.Bats fly.Skeletons cry.Halloween night is coming to an end.I think your costume has started a new trend.

"Not the Mall"

No, Mom, I don't need anymore shirts. I already have enough.No shoes or socks, gloves or hatsI have them, in fact.No shorts for the Spring, no jeans for the FallI absolutely dread shopping at the mall.

"A Day's Work"

I am a lightbulbFull of spirit and ideasAlways thinking and burningWith a filament ablaze.Then, it is time to rest..

An un-uttered reply that remains my private fantasy:

"Man, it's cold."

"No shit — welcome to winter," I say. "Wear a coat."

Observe how people use their phones. Today, in the theater between acts, I watched a woman patiently read long blocks of small text on Reddit, but as she read, her thumb hovered over the bottom third of her screen, slowly bending at both joints in a rhythm, up and down, phantom-flicking, because (I assume) that's what her thumb is trained to do.

Yesterday, on the bus, I watched a man switch between apps at a whirlwind pace — scrolling on LinkedIn, responding to a text, archiving emails his inbox, skipping a song — and whenever he had a moment's respite on his home screen, both his thumbs kept frantically jumping all over the screen like the nose of a squirrel in Fall, begging for a thought of what icon or button to touch next, without really having anywhere worth going.

Observe how people use their phones and tell me that we aren't addicted to our phones. We twitch, tweak, like addicts. And what are the withdrawal symptoms? Greater presence, abundant gratitude, and clarity.

The Diminishing Utility of Devices: Multi-Purpose Tools

Devices are, by my definition, multi-tools. And almost all devices fail to serve all of their purposes perfectly. Only single-purpose tools can do that, like a hammer. An iPhone, for instance, is a camera and a phone and a word processor and a pager, but how many of its functions does it serve with complete craftsmanship? One? None? Even the Swiss Army Knife side subject to this law of split purposes. Sure, it's a marvel of engineering and unparalleled in convenience, but have you ever reached for a Swiss Army Knife to use its scissors? Would you even if all you needed to do were to was open an envelope? No, you'd rather have a letter-opener.

Live in the low places were all is abundant. You can drink from the mountain tops by living in the valley, for that is where their fruits freely flow.

The first ride I got from strangers in Iceland was when I was in desperate need for a spot to camp and surrounded by private land. What I thought was a campsite was, in fact, a private plot full of remote-cabin vacation rentals. It was late; the Sun had been setting for hours. I saw one couple outside in their hot tub, and I had to bother them. I had to ask for permission to camp here. I didn't want to trespass (I'd already done do twice earlier that day), so I yelled at them from a few yards of their front stoop of their cabin, just after they'd gone in from the hot tub on their deck: "Hellooo!" But didn't want to wake anyone.

I had seen them earlier but didn't want to interrupt their romantic soaking time. I would have done well to wait a little longer, because I glimpsed the wife topless as they were going inside. I lied to myself to convince myself that I felt sorry rather than lucky.

They were kind and accompanying and Australian, so they respected my jaunt into the Skandanavian Outback. The husband had spent two years backpacking when he was my age, and, as he said, he benefited from the generosity of many and was happy to return the favor.

The city doesn't have anything more to teach me.

What have I yet to learn from the city?

December 6 The Third is by nature where we live; we neither live in Heaven nor in Hell but on Earth; we neither live as gods or as animals but as Man. We only fall to one side or another when we delude ourselves into dichotomous thinking.

Read this issue of Reason mag: "Abolish Everything.

The Mardi Gras moment in your story is when your protagonist accepts their journey, after some resistance, and crosses the threshold into an unfamiliar world (Departure). This is merely a heuristic for pacing your story. Mardi Gras can happen as early as Feb 3rd and as late as Mar 9th. So, if you were to map the duration of your story onto a year's calendar, your Mardi Gras Moment should happen between 10% and 20% of the way through your story.

The Truman Show Mapped onto My Story Structure Framework

Act I: Into the Dark

1. Disturbance: Sylvia tells him the truth, but he doesn't understand it.
2. Resistance: Sylvia's "father" storms onto the beach and takes her off the set, saying they're moving to Fiji. And Marlon tells him he's crazy, dismisses his concerns as "one of his fantasies."
3. Acceptance & Departure: Truman tells his best friend, Marlon, "between you and me, I'm going away for a while." And when he's "blocked at every turn,"(can't go to Fiji), he settles for anywhere else and forces Meryl to drive them over the bridge, off the island for the first time in his life.

Act II: Out of the Dark

4. Commitment: Truman reaffirms the truth that he's uncovering, telling Marlon "The whole world revolves around me."

5. Triumph/Tragedy: Truman's father appears, and they have an emotional reunion. Truman supposedly forgets what he's learned and dismisses it as fantasy.

6. Reprieve: Truman tricks everyone into thinking he's "back to his normal self," preparing for his escape.

7. Do or Die: Truman faces his fears, for truth and for his freedom, and he sets sail.

Act III: Into the Light

8. Fruition Truman literally weathers the storm and crashes into the horizon at the threshold of the real world. He tells Christoph, "In case I don't see ya', good afternoon, good evening, and goodnight." (And of course the only thing that pulls him through is Sylvia, the feminine, mystery.)

The most potent form of freedom is not a freedom from commitments but the freedom in commitment.

//

The strongest freedom is not freedom from commitment but the freedom to commit.

December 5 The dead are wiser than any of us and their wisdom inaccessible to us living.

My fearsharing list, inspired by Alex Dobrenko's post:

I’m afraid:

1. That I won’t fully accept the fact of death before I die
2. That I’m not actually as compassionate as people say I am
3. That other people’s opinions of me influence me more than I think they do
4. That I might actually live alone in the mountains
5. That maybe I should live alone in the mountains
6. That I’ll get stuck sitting and writing and editing all day and someday stop experiencing adventures that are worth writing about
7. That I’ll get stuck in my head
8. That I’ll get my head stuck in
9. That I’ll delude myself and cling to comfort instead of seeking Truth.

December 4 The opposite of clarity is delusion — most commonly self-delusion, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ego Incorporated.

Coordinate vs. Subornate Clauses

Coordinate clauses are equal in importance, like the arm-in-arm groomsman and bridesmaid strutting between the pews. A subordinate clause is like the Bride's little cousin who complains about the number of nuggies he receives and who, at best, could be cast as the ring bearer.

[[Against Punctuation as Pacing]]

No one fuses literal and figurative language better than David Foster Wallace.

New genre to aspire to: not "narrative philosophy" but "literary philosophy"

I'm a pedophile; I love long walks on the beach.

Is gravity feminine? It's literally grounding. It's the imperative of commitment, an obstacle to flight, which is masculine. Maybe the state of being in orbit –- weightlessness –- is masculine and the force of gravity is feminine. A waterfall is merely gravity acting on water: the fundamental element of life subject to the fundamental force of the universe. The same is true for glaciers; the water is just colder and heavier. It feels true. Gravity is feminine, and anything that defies gravity is masculine: a rocket ship ejecting gas, the pulse of a birds wings in flight, an athlete in mid-air. The masculine energy is ungrounding, and the feminine energy is grounding. With only the masculine, you'd float away; and with only the feminine, you'd get buried.

December 3 There are two kinds of stories:

1. A big story about something small (small via big)
2. A small story about something big (big via small)

(Paraphrased from Nick Bilton's HIW episode)

Transformation is a solitary process. Leave the pupa alone.

The Metaphysics of Metamorphosis

You hear talk and see so much imagery about dying little deaths to be reborn anew, evolved: Jesus, the phoenix, trees in the Fall and Spring, butterflies emerging to take their first flight. It's true; you must go under to overcome yourself. But there's an intermediate stage — after going under, before overcoming — that is more painful and more important to transformation than the events of death and rebirth. This is the post-larval stage, when you're wrapped, trapped inside the chrysalis. It's lonely, quiet, uncomfortable, risky. You're vulnerable to predators, parasites, and disastrous weather. It's Jesus facing temptations in the desert, not the event of His baptism or the Sermon on the Mount; it's the phoenix gathering aromatic wood and assembling its own funeral pyre, not when it sets the wood on fire; it's a tree in dormancy, after all its leaves have fallen; it's the caterpillar disintegrating and reorganizing itself from imaginal cells. This is the most dire stage of any transformation. If you can commit to a change and manage not to lose yourself within the chrysalis, you will complete metamorphosis and emerge with the newfound ability to fly.

If you know someone who is undergoing metamorphosis, especially someone you love,

1. Do not rush their process; do not expect them to be a butterfly already.
2. And don't cause them to doubt their commitment to this change; reassure them that they're on the right path.

Do not interfere. Do nothing except protect the delicate chrysalis.

Only a couple hours after writing the above, I serendipitously stumbled upon this post by Tom White on change and rest, within which he quotes this from the Scientific American describing metamorphosis:

Butterflies are often viewed as a cheery symbol of transformation. Interestingly, their complete metamorphosis from caterpillar is neither bright nor easy.It is gruesome.Inside the enclosed chrysalis, all of the caterpillar’s internal organs melt. It becomes a living soup, completely unrecognizable from the creature it was, except for a few tiny cells known as “imaginal cells.” This macabre process activates a few tiny, powerful cells that remember what it is and what it is supposed to become. These cells initiate just the right DNA sequences in order to turn the wreckage of the caterpillar into the beautiful resurrection that is the butterfly.None of this happens unless the caterpillar completely goes away. The caterpillar has to die in gruesome fashion in order to change into the best version of itself.From violence and suffering come rebirth.

Making your own luck means knowing an opportunity when you see it, and seizing it. It does not mean manifesting.

Why are there all these men being toddlers and whining about wearing a condom and wanting to cum inside women? It's called delayed gratification — you know, that lesson you can teach children with a stopwatch and two marshmallows. You don't deserve to cum inside a woman until you're ready to care for the life that you are thereby welcoming into the world and ready to care for that life with that woman. But that doesn't mean you can't have the privilege and pleasure of intercourse with a woman.

[['Casual Sex' Is an Oxymoron]]

December 2 The mystery of life, to me, is feminine.

December 1 Here's a clever communications exercise/example that my dad taught me. It shows the importance of emphasis and inflection and context in conveying meaning:

I never said you stole my money. I never said you stole my money. I never said you stole my money. I never said you stole my money. I never said you stole my money. I never said you stole my money. I never said you stole my money. I never said you stole my money.

One point to make with this is that, in writing, you don't have the data of inflection, verbal tone, or emphasis, so you must convey that meaning without those tools that we have in speech. And you must understand how the emphasis and tone of your inner monologue may be different than that of the inner monologue of your reader. They may read "...my money" when you mean "...my money."

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