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June
June 30 Revision Retreats
What writers need are revision retreats (at least that's what I'm telling myself so that I don't delude myself into thinking that I need a writing retreat to get a big project done). A manuscript of a book-length project only comes together by clocking in day after day for months at a time. You're not going to cram it out in the woods in two weeks. Imagine if, instead, you bring your manuscript to the retreat and spend all that concentrated time making better, making it more of what it could be?
Failing a writing retreat is dire and can feel terrible: I didn't get anything done. It's about output. To fail a revision retreat, you'd have to not spend enough time on the input. That's the only way you'd disappoint yourself: I didn't use my time for what I set out to do. And that's an easier failure to avoid.
Finish your manuscript before you go to Walden Pond. You'll end up with a better book.
Hitchhiking was a big part of my time in Iceland. Each road-side, thumb-out "mediation session" was a leap of faith and an exercise in detachment. I learned a lot from it and met some incredible people who got me where I needed to go.
People worry about ingesting brain-eating amoeba by drinking from a clear-water stream. Yet many of those same people grab their phones within a minute of waking to scroll social media, inviting brain-eating amoeba into their heads and beds as the first act of their day.
Embarrassment is the perfect example of the Tibetan teaching that "recognition and liberation are simultaneous." As soon as you admit how you're feeling — "I'm embarrassed" — you are relieved of that feeling, for an essential characteristic of embarrassment is that you conceal it. By recognizing and declaring your embarrassment, it morphs and dissolves and ceases to be how you feel; you immediately become liberated from it.
June 26 Amelia, the nine-year-old, said, "I wonder why I've never taken a liking to chocolate" while roasting her marshmallow on the fire for a s'more.
June 24 The masculine energy creates and destroys things in the world. The feminine energy creates and destroys worlds.
Every four years, I should declare a major. The difficulty of long-term, solo learning is the lack of structure, so it would help to give myself some structure for my self-study. If I were to declare a major now, to study intensely through 2028, it would be English Composition, and my minor would be Tibetan Dream Yoga (maybe with another minor in Calisthenics).
June 23 Nothing you want will feed you, so don't feed your wanting. And everything you need, beyond sustenance and safety, you will only find within you.
Inspiration: AURORA's "The Seed":
You cannot eat money, oh noYou cannot eat money, oh no
When the last trees have fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
Do enough good work to be rewarded without ever working for a reward.
I've never understood the fear of rain. It's only dangerous if it's cold enough to get hypothermia or if the winds are strong enough to knock you off the cliff or if the volume is great enough to flood the creeks. Otherwise, you're just getting wet.
The realist/empiricist/materialist (R/E/M) would say that what they believe is fact, because what they believe relies only on science and not at all on faith. Dreams make you open to faith, because you start to realize that we make a leap of faith every morning when we operate under the unverifiable belief that this is "reality" and that a dream. It's unverifiable because our methods of measurement — our senses and our brains — literally cannot tell the difference between the dreaming and waking states.
One of the necessary effects of dream-journaling is openness, and the fruition of openness is lucidity.
June 21 For a writer, an adventure isn't over until they have finished writing about it. I haven't finished writing about Iceland.
June 20 Anne Lamott's "one-inch picture frame" is the equivalent for fiction to David Perell's Shiny Dime.
The skeptic is not mindlessly contrarian. The skeptic is only contra dogma.
The most universally applicable insight and one of the most beautiful lines from Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs:
"By meditating on death, we paradoxically become conscious of life. How extraordinary it is to be here at all. Awareness of death can jolt us awake to the sensuality of existence. Breath is no longer a routine inhalation of air but a quivering intake of life."
— wait! Here's another one that may have just trumped it (I'm reviewing my 'favorite'-tagged quotes in Readwise):
Nothing can be relied upon for security. As soon as you grasp something, it’s gone. Anguish emerges from craving for life to be other than it is. It is the symptom of flight from birth and death, from the pulse of the present. It is the gnawing mood of unease that haunts the clinging to 'me' and 'mine.'"
"Terrestrial Immortality"
This is my ideal state of being, described in beautiful words by John Muir:
"No, we are overpaid a thousand times for all our toil, and a single day in so divine an atmosphere of beauty and love would be well worth living for, and at its close, should death come, without any hope of another life, we could still say, "Thank you, God, for the glorious gift!" and pass on. Indeed, some of the days I have spent alone in the depths of the wilderness have shown me that immortal life beyond the grave is not essential to perfect happiness, for these diverse days were so complete there was no sense of time in them, they had no definite beginning or ending, and formed a kind of terrestrial immortality."
All-time advice on style and metaphor from Roy Peter Clark (packaged in a perfect turn of phrase):
"Use subtle symbols, not crashing cymbals." – Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools
Personal style guide rule: In the spirit of Bryan Garner and what seems to be the convention in meta-writing, I will resign my ways of using quotes to refer to single words (e.g., "'meta-writing' includes anything lexicographical or literary-critical or English-pedagogical"). Starting now, I will dress my reference-words in italics and see how it lays. I'll reserve the word-reference quotation marks for phrases, clauses, and full quotes. The italics should just make my meta-writing cleaner.
Example: "Buddha": "the awakened one" vs. Buddha: "the awakened one"
My main concern with this change is that all single-word references will take the same format of foreign words (ergo), which I also italicize to indicate their non-English nature. But the differences here should be clear by context; I must make it clear whether I am referencing a foreign word or whether I am using the foreign word for its meaning.
Another benefit: This will reduce the occurrence of a common exception for quotation marks, where I place the end punctuation outside of the end-quote if the quote is a reference, rather than a quote used in a sentence of its meaning.
Possible alternative to "he/she" (in the common effort to avoid using the masculine pronoun as the gender-neutral, singular subject: "(s)he"— David Foster Wallace used "s/he" in "Authority and American Usage" (as it appears in Consider the Lobster).
The Negative Sixty
Next time you're on public transit or in an airport, slowly scan around you and notice how many people have their heads bowed down into their laps. They have not dozed off. They are not praying. They're scrolling. You'll see tens or hundreds of heads hung at around -60º. It's the same shameful gaze-angle that men assume during masturbation. It's interior and self-isolating; the posture alone resigns you from the world.
This ubiquitous posture is a sorely overlooked effect of our devices and one that has an undeniably negative impact on our psychology. We are all but literally absorbed in our devices. We fixate on them, looking toward ourselves — but not into ourselves — as we peer through a rectangular portal into wherever: anywhere other than here. You hear this common progressivist argument that "Before people scrolled social media on their commutes, they would read a the paper. The 'Good Ol' Days' weren't so different." — as if those two activities aren't entirely different. Our devises are black holes for the laser-light of attention, oppressors of awareness; our phones are weapons of mass distraction. If you're reading the paper or a book, you are holding a physical thing and focused on that one thing for a significant amount of time. The whole point is to focus and learn, or to entertain yourself. The point of scrolling on your phone is to dis-tract yourself — literally "to pull you away" from where and when you are in the world — even if that intention is unconscious.
If someone across the bus from you is reading a book or the paper, you can see what they are doing. The only mystery is what article they're reading or what page they're on. You are welcome and invited to see the day's front-page headline or the title of the book on its cover. If you're curious and human enough, you might even strike up a conversation about current events or ask for the stranger's review of their book. But how are you supposed to engage with someone who is scrolling on their phone — someone who is entirely resigned, distracted, disengaged: absent? You are not supposed to. And what are they looking at? They don't want you to know. Leave them alone. They are not here. They don't want to be here. They don't care that they are sharing this space and time with you. Why aren't you looking at your phone? How miserable this bus is — and you don't have anywhere better to be? Go there. Leave this wretched place and draw your gaze away from me. Assume the position: "Negative sixty!"
June 19 Hot take: Every book needs its own bookmark. When you finish a book, move the bookmark to the start of your favorite chapter, or to your favorite page, and leave it there in your library.
It's okay if the bookmark is a receipt or a scrap of paper. But it's better if it's from your local bookstore (or the book's store of origin). Or, maybe you're an author yourself and you have your own custom-branded bookmark like me.
Indirect vs. Direct Objects
The direct object receives the verb (answering "What?" or "Whom?"). The indirect object receives the direct object (answering "To what/whom?" or "For what/whom?").
"Ferris gave Cameron the best day of his life."
Direct object ("What did he give?"): "the best day of his life" Indirect object ("To whom did he give it?"): "Cameron"
(Pardon the ambiguous pronoun "his" in the example. I left it in because it was likely the best day of Ferris's life too.)
This quiz on EnglishClub.com will teach you all you need to know about indirect objects.
Indirect objects are usually people — proper nouns or pronouns (or pets/animals, as in "Gave the dog a bone"). Direct objects are as varied as the dictionary of verbs and are often things, not people: "edited the essay," "cooked a meal," "rode the lift".
Make sure that, for both direct objects and indirect objects, you only ever use object-pronouns (me, them, him/her, us) and never subject-pronouns (I, they, he/she, we). This is easy for native speakers because it just sounds weird to the ear otherwise. But now you know the grammatical justification for it.
All object-pronouns can either serve as direct or indirect objects (e.g., "Our ancestors secured us peace" [indirect object] or "He helped us pay off our debt" [direct object]).
June 18 Every non-lucid dream is a psychotic break. This happens many times a night, every night, to almost everyone in the world.
Somnio, ergo non sum ("I dream, therefore I am not.")
Epistemology is the study of what truths we can know. Then, there are methods and competing philosophical camps for how we can learn truths, among them: rationalism and empiricism.
Personal Style Guide Rule: Delimit initialisms with periods but omit them for acronyms, to indicate which one it is and how to say it (e.g., REM, not R.E.M, and NAFTA, not N.A.F.TA.; F.B.I., not FBI, and U.S., not US).
The most important work we do for ourselves doesn't happen 9–5. It happens 11–7, or whenever you personally sleep and dream.
The phrase "family drama" is redundant.
June 17 If you want your reader to remember your ideas, they must be rendered in two ways: abstract and concrete. You really need both. You need the abstract to set the frame and give a grander meaning to the concrete visual you conjure in the mind's eye of your reader. The abstract context, whether it's given before or after the concrete example, turns the image into a symbol. A memorable idea has an abstract frame (e.g., moral perfection) and a concrete image/visual/story (e.g., the character and story of Jesus).
An editor as a butcher: Trim the fat without taking any meat off the bone.
June 16 Lucidity as a concept extends beyond the dream-state. It's the ideal form of conscious awareness. In a lucid dream, you realize that you are creating what you experience, and therefore, that you can change what you experience. The same is true for the waking state. You create what you experience in life, and that means you have the power to change it. Becoming lucid mens realizing the inherent malleability of reality and the power you have to change — realizing that you are free. As Andrew Holocek says, "dream yourself awake."
June 14 Self-Oughts Only
I have a personal rule that I never utter or write the words "you should." In place of that, I use commands framed as suggestions. And those two constructions come off as wildly different. One says "I know better than you what's best for you" and the other says "I suggest you change in this way, but you can do whatever you want." I've found that it's a simple way to avoid a preachy tone and any tinge of superiority (but it's not an exhaustive method). Imagine if Nike's slogan were "You should exercise." It means the same thing as "Just do it," but it sounds pretty moralizing, right?
The Craftsmanship of Poe's 'The Tell-Tale Heart'
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" is a masterpiece. I didn't appreciate it in middle school like I do now. It nails all the essential elements of the short story and then exceeds them and throws in surprises. It's supremely economical, suspenseful and gripping, memorable.
It is a prime example of three main things:
- In fine rerum* (starting at the end of things): From the very beginning, you know that the narrator has already killed the old man; that's not the source of suspense; there is no dramatic irony. It's not a cheap trick. It's straight, and it gets you to focus on the main thing: the narrator's madness and how he justifies what he's done, as you hear the depraved story of the murder from the mouth of the murderer.
- Clear motive: Not in the murder-mystery sense — I mean in the "your reader needs to know what your character wants" sense. In the case of this story, you know it by the end of the first paragraph. The narrator wants to prove to you that he's not mad, by how he tells the story: "How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily — how calmly I can tell you the whole story."
- Unreliable narrator: From the jump, you know that the narrator is mad, and you know that he's telling a biased version of the story, trying to paint himself in the most sane possible light. So, the whole time, you're forced to stay vigilant: "What actually happened? Does the old man actually have a 'vulture-eye'?" It makes for even more tension and suspense. It has an eery effect, because even though he's trying to convince you of his sanity, he fixates on things like a mad man and, ultimately, hears the blaring beating heart of his dismembered victim.
Refs:
- TedED Video about Edgar Allen Poe's Short Story Style: "Why Should Read Edgar Allen Poe?
- "The Tell-Tale Heart" read aloud, by The Poe Museum
Make your life a meditation. Retreat in order to advance; stop to start again.
The path towards whatever lies beyond is through the pitch-dark abyss at the core of my center-less self, within which there is a kernel of clear light.
If you are not in a self-improvement phase, you're in a self-destruction phase.
June 13 So much of what we communicate is non-verbal. This is good news. It means that sometimes the best way to say what you mean is to shut up and pay attention. You can make someone feel understood by looking calmly and openly into their eyes.
I just re-read DFW's obituary in The New York Times. The whole thing isn’t amazing, but this paragraph has the elements of what I think make for a great obituary:
- Duality of the soul (neither good nor evil, righteous or depraved)
- Specific visuals and an image of how the deceased would act in certain scenarios
- An interior view that most people could never have of the deceased, from the perspective of a loved one.
"In contrast to the lively spirit of his writing, Mr. Wallace was a temperamentally unassuming man, long-haired, unhappy in front of a camera, consumed with his work and its worth, perpetually at odds with himself. Journalists who interviewed him invariably commented on his discomfort with celebrity and his self-questioning. And those who knew him best concurred that Mr. Wallace was a titanically gifted writer with an equally troubled soul.”
The best phrase in here is "consumed with his work and its worth," and it should have been placed at the end of that sentence for emphasis.
The illusory nature of form is like that of a rainbow. The rainbow brings you to a pause because you think it is beautiful and worthy of your attention, and you also know that the rainbow is fleeting and ephemeral — ultimately, empty. In the next moment those waves of light will change to a different frequency. There is nothing in the appearance of the rainbow that reveals its essence. It has the same essence as the light that moves through the air around it; it's formless and clear — empty. The same is true for all forms and appearances. They are beautiful and worthy of your attention, but only as long as you don't get swept up by them and forget that what appears to be solid, lasting, and independent is in fact fleeting, ephemeral, and relative.
June 12 Reflecting on the dream retreat at Beyul:
The free time felt like Iceland, alone in beautiful Nature with my thoughts; the lecture-sessions felt like a mix of my favorite philosophy classes in college and the best church sermons I've ever attended; the food tasted like we were on a resort vacation; and the conversations were as deep and therapeutic as I've had with anyone I've ever known for less than a year.
You couldn't possibly offend me with thoughtful and considered feedback. As an editor, if I were offended by feedback, I'd be the biggest hypocrite on the planet.
If you are giving a card to someone, read it aloud to them (or say part of it aloud). Spoken words are powerful. They are even more powerful if those words are first written (and revised).
If you thirst, do not climb. Go the spill-way.
Just as I co-create my dreams with an imperceptible part of my mind, I co-create the waking world with an imperceptible part of the collective mind that abides in Nature.
The only way to get over something (on top of it) is to go through it. If you don't see a way through, knock until the world splits open for you.
Truth lies ever beyond the horizon. Aim for it but know that you will never reach it. If you say "Land ho!" and run aground and settle, you have strayed from Truth and have chosen to dwell in self-delusion.
v1 of "The Creature of the Air and Sea" allegory
Before there was earth to walk, our world was only sky and sea. These infinitely vast domains are ruled by two creatures: the albatross and the manta ray. The albatross soars to whatever heights it pleases, for however long it likes; and the manta ray jets beneath the surface, diving as deep as the seafloor. The sky and the sea are infinitely vast and could never be fully explored, yet the two intersect. The creature of the air preys on the creature of the sea, and she humbles him with her grace and beauty. The two are not enemies; the albatross and the manta ray are kin and co-creators of our world. It was the albatross's hunger that kept him tethered to the sea and the manta ray's curiosity that drew her to the air. The manta ray taught the albatross how to dive, and the albatross taught the manta ray how to leap from the sea. The albatross and manta ray lived in harmony and engendered our ancestors, all the creatures of the air and sea. Now that there is earth to walk, we are witness to the albatross and the manta ray existing in harmony. And there is much wisdom to learn from them, if we look closely.
June 11
How and why you do are undeniably more important than what you do.
My top-3 values:
- Autonomy
- Stillness
- Connection
Stillness is the bridge; it's how I take care of myself, and it's how I learn to connect with others. The ideal to which these jointly point is Lucidity.
June 10 The essence of all form is emptiness.
Always Be Holding
Always be holding, never be holden.
Explanation:
Hold
- The root (dhr) of the word dharma, meaning — among many things — "divine duty" and "the path of righteousness"
- A reminder to pause and retreat and be mindful and still — being a witness of your experience
- Creating space to acknowledge the reality of emptiness and formlessness, not getting caught up in mere appearances
Behold
- While holding space for emptiness, appreciate forms as they appear, while they appear, exactly as they are
- Live in awe of the world and in gratitude for life
- Pay attention and look closely
Holden
- The archaic past particle of the verb "to hold," meaning to be restricted from action, limited, unable to see
- As in Luke 24:16 (KJV), after the resurrection: "But their eyes were holden that they should not know him [Jesus]."
Beholden
- Obligated and/or indebted to someone else for their service to you
- Not autonomous, tethered to the past, unable to live freely in the present moment
Reference:
"This is a dream. I am free. I can change." – Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Meditation is not clearing your mind — thoughtlessness. It is opening your mind — acknowledging your thought-fulness — and recognizing each thought as empty.
You want it? Too bad — you can't have it. It's all min(e)...d.
Wanting to impress someone is a burden on that person. It is the same as wanting them to be impressed by you. It's unfair and counterproductive to have that expectation, because the outcome is entirely out of your control.
June 6 Remain ever-open to receive the truth when it is presented to you. That means remaining ever-open to the likelihood that what you know to be true is not.
"Should I stay or should I—" "Go."
What's the most stable environment on Earth? The bottom of the ocean. What is the most volatile environment on Earth? The top of the mountain.
There's something to the fact that the symbol of Catholicism (Christianity), the crucifix, depicts God as immutably stable, static, and suffering. The message is that He suffered for us, and that we ought to remember that, and that the way to survive and succeed is to remain faithful as you endure suffering. For all Eastern deities, the symbols are much different. Everything is fluid and unstable, and gods like Shiva are depicted dancing atop puny humans. Or, the god is depicted as seated in meditation, which is a voluntary stillness unlike Christ's on the cross. The message in the Eastern symbolism is that this world is a mix of order and chaos, and you need to look to God to find your way through it all, and that the solution involves both play (dancing) and stillness (mediation).
"How much barbecue sauce would you like?" "More."
If you want to remember something, write it down. You don't have to re-read it later; just write it down. By writing it down, you enrich the experience, expand the idea — hacking your brain into giving it priority storage. You will remember the best of what you write down. And of the things you fail to write down, you will forget the best.
June 5 Steinbeck's Sentence Structure
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good"
This well-known quote from Steinbeck's East of Eden is an example of how sentence structure can help meaning-making. There's an implicit meaning here that adds richness to the explicit message: "Don't be perfect; be good." The implicit message comes from the corollary of this statement, which is: "You can only be good once you no longer have to be perfect." Or, in other words, "Perfect is the enemy of the good." Or, in some French words by Voltaire from 1772:
"Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien" ("The best is the enemy of the good").
Within a single, short sentence, Steinbeck gets both of these messages across: (1) "Don't be perfect; be good" and (2) "We fail to be good because we are trying to be perfect" ("Perfect is the enemy of the good").
The cliche thing to say would be "And now that you don't have to be perfect, just be yourself" or "...just try your best." "Be good" is different from "be yourself" or "try your best" in a crucial way: it's more objective. It's normative, moral; it has to do with how you treat other people, rather than how you see yourself.
Our pursuit of a perfect self-image causes us to overlook how we treat our fellow man. It's not about you. Don't be perfect (for yourself). Be good (for the world).
Get creative.
Have a problem? Get creative. You'll find a solution. Have some free time? Get creative. You'll be energized and full. Think you have it all figured out? Get creative. You'll realize all what you've yet to learn. Want to improve yourself? Get creative. You'll discover some new truth about your nature.
"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."
– Francis Beacon (via Cissy Hu on Substack)
[[On Meaty Hooks]]
June 3 The best part about Grammarly is its blog, because it's written by contributors who are talented writers and editors (not AI-generated suggestions on your prose with a surface-level explanation like the tool itself). These blog posts are more valuable than the tool, because they actually teach you about grammar, mechanics, and style. I just read a post on polysyndeton by Anthony O'Riley that was clear, direct, and memorable.
Here's an all-time, custom compound adjective (courtesy of the hyphen, my hero) from DFW's masterpiece, "Authority and American Usage (Or "'Politics and the English Language' Is Redundant"):
Did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of U.S. lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a near-Lewinskian scale?
This is also a wonderful use of a rhetorical question as a hook (this the first sentence of the essay) — and a wonderful use of polysyndeton.
I want to be loyal, like a dog, but in every other way a wolf.
There are either three or four stages of editing (depending on whether you do stages one and two in a single pass):
- The Content-Edit: "What doesn't belong here, and what's missing?" (Also: "What is this actually about?")
- The Structural Edit: "What is the hierarchy of information, and in what order would the content flow best?" (Editing for cohesion)
- The Line-Edit: "What reads wrong; comes of confusing; or feels clunky, verbose, repetitive, tangential, or misplaced?" (Editing for clarity and concision)
- The Proofread: "What did I miss?" (Editing for semantic/lexicographical/visual perfection — grammar, mechanics, usage, style, formatting and typesetting, footnotes, indexing, citations, etc.)
Note: In the ideal case, the Content Edit happens in the outlining/planning phase. This is more difficult for book-length works and for any works of fiction. (Of course there will be feedback on the content during the structural edit, but hopefully it's not so far off that it warrants a rewrite-pass before restructuring.)
These can either be the stages for a writer doing self-editing or the stages for an editor, suggesting changes, between each round of the writer's revision.
June 1 Writing is an act of the ego. Editing is the opposite.
Ref: William Zinsser in On Writing Well:
“Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.”
“The Creature of the Air and Sea” is possibly the thing I’ve written that’s most important to me, because it (1) describes the way I want to live and (2) expresses what I believe to be the most fundamental truths of human reality.
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