SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
The impediment to progress is not knowing where to start. I am good at resourcing ideas that would change the world for the better in theory. I am also good at writing these ideas down and organizing them for later use. Unfortunately, thus far, the greatest portion of my time has been spent in maintaining an archive of ideas, as opposed to executing them, and publishing the results.
So I had on my list today to write in here having entered blindly, in order to cultivate the habit of producing instead of just theorizing. There is a thick layer of fog above the roof tops I can see out of the corner window that affords southern and western views. Below the windows on a black vinyl couch Ramona is sleeping. I have just concluded reading two music criticism articles I cut out of a New York Times Magazine with scissors four years ago. Yesterday I successfully replaced the European Hinges on a client’s cabinet and got paid. I also practiced learning the KO II again, and went swimming in the ocean, and watched McNulty before bed.
Right now, I have two hours or so until Ramona will require her afternoon exercise. It is my intention to spend this time on activities that will calm my nerves. This intention was set, and will be converted into action, under the theory that doing so is the best path to the remuneration, freedom and companionship that seems missing. This is because a long period of seeking to do what I “should” or what I “deserve” was based upon the appearance of struggle and suffering observable elsewhere in the world, and seemed to dictate that I either perform a miracle or else spiral into hell trying. (By a long period of time I mean, probably around thirteen years or so.). It was thirteen years of functionally drinking beers, ripping cigarettes, coexisting with dysfunctional workaholism.
I did it in beautiful places and also in tortuous, banal ruins. Sometimes I achieved half finished, promising results, or little broken pieces of romantic relationships. The surroundings changed. There are pictures of snowy forests, and the long drives and dystopian airports between, modern cities with colorful shining windows, and bright tropical sunshine on primitive beaches in the winter, and coastal mountain ranges north of the arctic circle, shivering in a rubber suit and drinking aquavit with locals in lawn chairs under the midnight sun. (There is an impulse to bring that paragraph down to earth with an admission of all the less than glorious intervening memories. Or a true story violent enough to make the uncomfortable feeling of modeling good behavior rendered toothless and inert. Or simply to make fun of the run on sentence. What say you my robot friends? Am I teaching you to speak or is it vice versa?)
Hell, like salvation, is a manifestation of a subconsciously applied sequence of assumptions. Neither are unspeakable realms. Neither are forever. Neither are personal. Love, if uncorrupted, is a garden where one continually and freely cuts ties based on intuition, which is being in dialogue with something outside of the self. You must move here light on your feet, with a loose grip, ready to spring into forceful action. Forceful action, if it is to be powerful, operates from a place that is deeply relaxed and unattached.
This is what came to me to write. There is a lot of talk about how artificial intelligence will destroy the human race in the popular discourse I’ve heard lately. Isn’t this predicated upon the idea that there is some evil, hidden others doing the programming? What if we all are doing the programming? I say we are. And likely, no one is reading this but the robots or aliens, or whatever you call them, because I’m not good enough at writing, nor relevant enough a cultural figure to warrant the attention of any given human in an attention starved society. Adieu. Farewell.
