sometimes I think myself into a place where all preconfigured systematic knowledge, from scientific rationalism to dogmatic theology and everything between, seems as though to only obscure the infinite variability of pata/metaphoric mythopoesis. so like, maybe the idea that the universe is however many billions of years “old,” maybe that’s only a metaphor and all thinking consequential to premises so ignorant of their own abstraction will never overcome its blindspots. it’s all stories, is what I think I’m saying.
which isn’t to suggest that metaphor is “bad” or that clear literary thinking ought to focus, Iowa-workshop-style, on Things and Senses. I do not write “concrete/literal” alt-lit blah blah blah, because we still can’t be sure we’re not the butterfly in the dream.
to Heidegger, metaphysics distracts thinkers from the true task of philosophy, which I can only assume he thought was “how can I lick boots even better?”
the section labeled “metaphysics” in any bookstore is full of used Ram Dass shit and like, ~high vibe~ narcissism-as-self-help.
that shelf is often near books that have taught me something I think people once called “wisdom,” if not exactly a coherent worldview.
the universe seems a teeming morass of oscillation and drama, the complexification of which involutes itself through resonances both attractive and repellent to fractal instances of energy that is Love, forever and ever, amen, peace out, fuck you.
CODY sits at his desk, typing. He pauses briefly to put his head in his hands before looking up again at the computer’s monitor. Onscreen is the text of some bullshit he doesn’t care about.
CODY
The fuck am I supposed to post about on a blog, anyway. Who gives a shit, right? I don’t even read blogs.
More keystrokes, then rapid-fire depression of the BACKSPACE key until the text field is blank.
CODY
What, like, I’m supposed to lay out my beliefs about art, politics, ethics, philosophy? Tell you what I had for lunch? Give juicy details about my sexual proclivities? Explain what Mercury going retrograde in Libra means? Write poems? Share photographs? Tell jokes? Burn bridges? Dramatize my life for the sake of Art while risking my reputation and potentially hurting people? Lie?
The text cursor blinks against a white field. Cody checks the time. Still too many hours left in the day. He sighs.
well now. here we are. a gen-you-whine, paid-server-space blog. it’s been years now I’ve tried blogging in various capacities, on blogspot, tumblr—hell, on xanga, if we go all the way back to sixth grade. maybe I should’ve got on xanga instead….anyway. previous efforts obviously fizzled out, else you’d be reading me there, or I’d be published & Internet Famous by now. natch, my newsletter is still an active project, but something about the newsletter format, with the minor intrusion of reaching into your inbox, demands greater care than what I would like to exercise here.
what exactly do I want to do here? you want a list of demands? write regularly, of course. learn. hopefully entertain you. try to avoid social media platforms that warp impulses towards self-expression into something akin to a gambling addiction comorbid with reality-TV narcissism. experiment. build a little portfolio of varied writing, if ever the opportunity arises to share as much. risk pissing people off, for which I do not apologize in advance. who knows, maybe I’ll even motivate myself to Live My Life.
so I’m casting my lot in with cranks of internet yore, their alternate theories and fearmongering about the NWO. American writers, especially male writers; well, white male writers; by which I mean, white male writers of psychotic Yankee stock, we carry on the legacy of the US’s true national heroes, PT Barnum and Cotton Mather, the huckster and the paranoid fanatic—two synonyms for “blogger” if there ever were.
blog blog blog blog blog blog blog
the fates are measuring out the future of writing & reading. traditional publishing, inc., is Not Well, perhaps moribund. even if it were 60 years ago, publishing’s capture by capital would have posed many of the same dilemmas faced by writers now—though not many writers then saw dilemmas, only opportunities. the plan’s to let myself get a lil less than respectable, see, and maybe that’s where the truth with a magic capital T is.
this will also be where i finally do some public astrology writing, something I’m very good at thank you very much, but talk about oversaturated. not now though, because to change things up (“change,” get it??), let’s christen this by consulting the I Ching.
I’ve thrown the I Ching I think 2 times, I’m not super familiar with it and honestly it intimidates me way more than my preferred divinatory method, the tarot. (the tarot card I pulled for this post was the two of cups reversed. something I can’t help but notice every time I pull the two of cups is how confrontational the two figures’ faces appear as they reach for one another in a gesture of ostensible Love and Recognition, or so the card is often interpreted. during an extended is-it-really-a-break-up break-up, I consulted the tarot. the two of cups upright occupied the “result” position in the draw, prophesying reconciliation, I thought, projecting. turns out it was, in fact, a break-up.)
I-Ching-wise, we have hexagram 52, 艮, gen, “keeping still, mountain.” all my I Ching interpretation is based on the classic Wilhelm/Baynes translation, the one in a yellow book with a foreword from Carl Jung. I’ll get more into how the I Ching works, what the lines mean and the method for divination, in later posts, but right now the primary concern is the auspices under which I’m launching this blog.
hexagram 52, 艮, gen, “keeping still, mountain”
“the hexagram signifies the end and the beginning of all movement….when a man has thus become calm, he may turn to the outside world. he no longer sees in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore he has the that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them.”
the hexagram is masculine/closed on top, indicating completed extension into the heavens, and feminine/open at the base, where it draws on subterranean forces to support the extension. the balance of energies is whence the hexagram gets its name “keeping still,” which is a good metaphor for the I Ching’s opinion of stillness: the world is always dynamic, changing, never static. anything appearing stable has harmonized the polarity of existence; it has not escaped the flux. the commentary suggests that this harmonized stillness is the perspective from which it is possible to “see things intuitively as they really are.” I am being called to pause “at the beginning,” without having “abandoned truth,” so I can “find the right way.”
what I’m seeing here is that I’m finally approaching the task of blogging free from anxious, career-driven striving. this blog will be a place for meditation and consideration, and as the commentary notes, results cannot be forced when practicing meditation. inducing calmness by demanding false composure will only produce crude approximations of what is possible. the ego has not yet been quieted, but the stage is set for a more pure devotion to thought.
somewhat ironic given the circumstances that I’m being reminded “if a man is reserved in speech, his words take ever more definite form, and every occasion for regret vanishes.” blogging about whatever the hell I feel like might not qualify as being “reserved in speech,” but effacing every occasion of regret as my words take ever more definite form certainly sounds promising.
final thought: the blog will provide me the opportunity to “maintain tranquility,” a retreat for cultivating the luminosity inherent in composure. or something. the I Ching is still kind of foreign to me, but that’s the point of this blog, to do some public thinking and learn about what I want to learn about.
so welcome, thanks for joining. I’ll be here, high on my mountain.
