Category: Reflections

A Star in the Gutenberg Galaxy

Don Quixote and The Enchanted Twenty-First Century

I finished Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes about a week ago. It took years to get through all 940 pages of this paperback Penguin classic, printed in 1952, with small type and thin pages.

Something that prompted me to read it was Marshal McLuhan’s Understanding Media (1964). I picked that up at a used book store years ago because it is the follow up to his breakthrough work that I read over a decade ago, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), wherein he analyzed Don Quixote in the context of the onset of the Gutenberg era, after the invention of the mass printing press.

McLuhan regards the printed book as a low definition “cool” form of media, because it requires the reader to fill in the experience from their own imagination, as opposed to high definition “hot” media, which focuses your attention acutely, as in watching a film on the big screen. He describes a spectrum of media along these lines while discussing its corresponding medium, the technological continuum driving it. The printing press a medium that gives birth to an extraordinary range of media, now combined with electricity, there is an incredible evolution taking place in a rather short time span, and this greatly effects human evolution.

Marshall McLuhan photographed by Bernard Gotfryd.

Cervantes’ epic tale was originally published in two parts, first in 1605, the second in 1615, each to about 400 pages. I would finish about 100 pages and then read another book, repeating the cycle until finishing Part 1. At least a year passed until I came to Part 2. I read that without interruption.

The story begins at the moment Don Quixote reaches the brink of madness. He is about to declare himself a knight errant. This role that he desires is entirely informed by books of chivalry — epic tales of medieval knights — contemporary to Cervantes’ time. The knight errant serves no royalty directly, instead, they roam the world like superheroes, doing what is right by the natural order of God’s creation, in a strictly Catholic Christian sense.

Quixote is a Spanish property owner, regarded well in his village, a man of fair means and educated, but he is spell bound by these books which were made to appear like historic documents when they were in fact fiction. His friends see through it but they cannot persuade him otherwise because the man is extremely clever, and hard-headed.

Quixote, the self-ordained knight, takes his friend, the illiterate Sancho Panza, as his squire. Sancho is a much simpler man but he is above the servant class. He is married with a daughter, he is a property owner, but he cannot read. He is oriented in the way that McLuhan calls audile-tactile. He hears and he feels above all.

Lithographic illustration of Don Quixote riding Rocinante and Sancho Panza on Dapple.

Sancho excessively strings together proverbs, an oral tradition (also a kind of media), rather than drawing up his own words, almost like he’s building his perspective with bricks. This annoys Quixote all the time, who is visually oriented because he is literate, and excessively so because he has time for leisure. His imagination is developed enough to dream a new identity for himself, and his intellect is developed enough to rationalize it.

No sooner do they set out on their journey does Quixote act as if he’s been a knight his entire life. He’s unshakeable from his vision. He hallucinates inns for castles, sheep for soldiers, most famously windmills for giants, and much more.

Quixote promises Sancho the governorship of an island when they are through with their conquests. This one fantasy is enough for Sancho to overlook all of his master’s red flags. He manages the delusion, as often as possible toward his own benefit. Not that he isn’t loyal, he never stops believing in his master’s powers and intellect.

This premise is potent enough to put the duo into a variety of hilarious situations that amounts to a whole lot of slapstick humor, bold wit and philosophical discussion that would be hip for the time. It’s also psychedelic, if you can only imagine the hallucinations that Quixote must be going through. I wish Alejandro Jodorowsky would make Don Quixote into an epic film.

Painting of Quixote on Rocinante by Salvador Dali

McLuhan predicted in the middle of the twentieth century that human beings were on the way to adapting back into an audile-tactile orientation just at the peak of the visual-literate era.

He sees the burgeoning world of television, radio, and printed audio as an extension of the Gutenberg press. Vinyl records, magnetic tape, film, mp3 files, DVD’s, it’s all the same, in essence. It’s just accelerated by the revolution of electricity, introduced en masse in the early 20th Century. Broadcasting is a major leap in delivery, as electricity naturally wants to network itself into channels, and we have such granular modulation of electric current that we can generate infinite signal channels and nodes.

Starting around the 1920’s, every household was to possess electricity, then a radio, then a television, eventually a computer, and now a network of computers inside televisions networked by wireless radio signals in every room of the house. Multimedia was a new concept 100 years ago, now it’s ubiquitous, and we’re all producing it.

The internet is the complete realization of electrical networking, it accelerates the production and delivery of media, and this new accelerant delivers a quixotic effect on the people because it replicates reality like a hallucination. The internet is still driven by text, but that will gradually give way to more audile-tactile content like interactive virtual spaces. I don’t believe we have a media hotter than virtual reality.

Quixotic is a literal description of the character Don Quixote. It is the state of being unpredictable, impulsive, impractical, and a touch mad. It is a precarious state of mind. I have lived a precarious life full of weird situations brought about by my quixotic personality. I was raised in some ways by media. My parents worked hard and I found myself highly influenced by television, video games, music, and as I got older, film and books.

Today, children are graduating public high schools illiterate in the worst cases, unable to read traditional clocks and solve math equations in too many cases, and yet they have mastered the audile-tactile universe of the smart phone and computer technology; they are highly socialized and have developed a sophisticated oral tradition of slang not unlike proverbs, more concise and granular, but shorter in attention span as new slang doesn’t convey complex ideas and principles, it’s more about feeling.

I believe that the illiterate kids entering adult life today are most persuaded by the promises made by the highly literate, who are most capable of persuasion, by the promise of instant wealth, fame, and grandeur, conveyed in the form of audile-tactile media.

The universe inside the smart phone, accelerated by new so-called AI technology, is quite literally transforming people into knights, dames, wizards, and all manner of mythical characters, and people are posting AI generated pictures in their profiles as if it was a recent portrait.

It could not be more obvious that McLuhan and Cervantes were right, that we are becoming Don Quixote or Sancho Panza, or both. If we don’t become zealous self-led identities, we are led by them, or we alternate both patterns.

The class of people that run the machine is different from those consuming its content. They know the power they wield while most of us don’t understand the influence we’re under.

By the end of Part 1, Quixote and Sancho have been battered, bruised, starved, and humiliated before they are dragged home by their village friends by hook and by crook. Quixote cannot accept that he’s going against the grain of the world while neglecting his real life, to him, he is under an invisible siege of enchanters, that there are wizards and demons sabotaging his heroic efforts, causing his hallucinations and follies. Sancho just keeps going along with it, seduced by the promise of governing an island.

For the second part of the book, the duo is infamous. The story of their follies got around by word of mouth, until a book about him and Sancho was published unbeknownst to them.

They had become a meme.

This time they were being deliberately tricked into situations by people who read the book, including a Duke and Duchess.

In a way, it is a fake it until you make it kind of story, for his reputation precedes him and eventually Quixote is treated like a knight, and he eats it up. Sancho becomes a governor just like he was promised, appointed by the Duke.

The problem is that in reality, they are pawns in a conspiracy largely devised for the amusement of a powerful couple. They actually persuade Sancho that some of what he witnessed really was enchantment.

The thing is, that when your ego is all wrapped up in the cloak of identity, and seduced by desire, it is highly susceptible to manipulation.

What is frightening to me is that technology has caught up to the human brain. Beyond the dopamine hits provided with endless rotation on social media, which is enough to control someone’s thinking, it is reportedly possible to send and receive thoughts and feelings into individuals. The technology is being tested surely on both willing and unwilling participants.

My upbringing was unusual and social integration has always been difficult for me, so I believe that my identity suffered a substantial number of schisms, enough to make me a rather irrational, impulsive, dreamy, desperate young man.

Quixote believes that he is enchanted, but my equivalent to feeling enchanted is tied to our paradigm of surveillance and controlled opposition. That paranoia enlivens sometimes, and I don’t know if I’m wrong, because I consume media that depicts a world of conspiracy. Anyone can become a target of the powerful, especially those who stick their neck out. Not to get into details, but I’ve been set up, coerced, investigated, and surveilled, at one time or another in my life, and sometimes you have no idea it’s happening until it’s done.

All in all, my life has worked out remarkably well, as I think I’ve taken more risks with people and situations than I should have survived through. Honestly, I believe when we deviate from our true purpose to fulfill a self-identity, shit gets weird, we become vulnerable.

I cannot allow the ego to build my sense of purpose, rather it is ordained and determined by the authentic people in my life delivered by karma, which I believe is the medium of God’s grace and mercy, for I have rejected her guidance excessively out of ignorance and craving.

We do not all have a grand purpose in life. We cannot all be spectacles, and frankly that’s a difficult fate most people cannot handle.

Quixote’s ego got the best of him. Call it a mid-life crisis, his humble purpose and responsibilities must have felt droll and lacking inspiration. He is alone, apparently never married, no children, and he cares for his niece and one house maid. I think he was bored, and sad. In fact, he declares himself the Knight of the Sad Countenance at the beginning.

He dedicates his new life to Teresa Del Toboso, a woman in the neighboring village that he claims is the fairest, most virtuous, and beautiful woman on the planet. It is revealed however that he only saw her once, and never met her. It’s like a crush gone too far.

Now I can relate to that. I’ll get myself crushing on a girl and in my mind we’re already together. After my sex magic episode of The Not-a-Podcast Show, I realized that the subconscious is easily persuaded by our imagination, as in the context of masturbating to a crush that isn’t reciprocating. Vastly more times than not, I end up crushed, because I became attached to my crush as if it were a real thing.

So long as mass media is constantly showing us a world of sex, glamour, wealth, and exoticism, some people are going to live with the anxiety that their lives don’t measure up, and will act on it, one way or another, self-destructively.

Impatience under the lure of self-image results in putting the cart before the horse.

As a young adult, I declared myself a musician before I had developed my musicianship. In my early thirties, I declared myself a journalist and publisher before really understanding what is entailed in starting up a magazine. I did all kinds of silly things that nobody asked for. It does not characterize my whole life, but it’s enough to see aspects of my story inside Quixote’s.

Myself in front of Don Quixote art. Photo by Megan McIsaac.

People did respect the man’s valor, for he was fearless, and survived his follies with endless determination. That kind of infamy however is much different than his self-image, and that delusion is pathetic.

Quixote would be able to speak intelligently and at length on all kinds of subjects, but he could so quickly drift from clarity and poignancy to utter nonsense derived from hallucinations and false books. I can relate to that. Consistency in thought was not my thing, rather just the ability to think and speak with confidence whilst patching logical holes on the fly, I was persuasive, and at the least people were entertained.

All I look for now, in myself and others, is consistency in thought and deed, because the compartmentalized person is not a whole person, and they can easily move you to the shit box.

Quixote was so hard-headed, you dare not contradict and challenge his profession, for he might challenge you to a dual. That was me, and that is anyone whose identity has been constructed in this way.

Around page 700, there are signs that Quixote’s wits are coming back, as his hallucinations start to go away, around the time that he is recognized by the public as a knight. It’s like he could not live in reality until reality conformed to him. By the end, he recognizes his error, but the damage is done.

After twenty years of exposure to Jiddu Krishnamurti telling me that only when we die to knowledge can we be liberated from its conditioning, that the accumulation of knowledge as dangerous, it took reading a classic story for me to see that point fully.

Like our possessions, the identity cannot be taken to the grave. Our identity is the accumulation of knowledge applied to time. In the end, it is left in the hands of those who witnessed our deeds. There is no true self outside the memory of our witnesses.

When we are young, we go through the stage of exploring the “true self” and we search it out. The hazard is that it can be corrupted and made grotesque by the images that we put on ourselves, usually influenced by media. The humbling fact of our mortal existence and the abyssal emptiness of our true self can be too much to bear, so we use self images to feel permanent.

If we see a sexy someone that turns us on, or a lovely piece of clothing, images of exotic places, bawlers throwing Benjamins around, or anything in media that draws our attention away from the painful truth of immediate existence — our loneliness, our ugliness, our internal or external poverty, our monotonies — it gives us a projection to live within, to aspire to become over time. We spend most of our lives in this conflict between our immediate selves and who we want to become in the future. The problem is there is no future, just endless immediacy.

It is a natural youthful and maybe necessary thing to invent a true self to become, but it’s a sad thing to see an older man whose life is already laid out before him, whose responsibilities are already clear.

The scary thing is that I’m 40 and I’m not positive if I’ve changed. Whenever I think I have, I repeat a cycle, then peel back the onion and wonder if there is an end to ego at all.

Today, we see a lot of film and television characters of grown up children, which I think is a real outcome of the trauma of hyper exposure to multimedia.

Entering the second part of my life, I am more focused on process than outcome, I ask God for my purpose and I watch the universe respond to my efforts to discover it, because if I’m running into constant conflict like Quixote, then surely I’m deviating.

There must be a balance between imposter syndrome and healthy self-awareness. Quixote would have benefitted from a little imposter syndrome, as he was in fact an imposter. It’s one thing to be perseverant, disciplined, it’s another to be oblivious to yourself.

Rarely does the world bless us with a true visionary, someone that sees the truth unfolding in real time, someone that perceives on a higher level. Quixote is the invention of a visionary, Cervantes, to illustrate self-deception.

Maybe we all can access truth, but I see now it can only happen by liberating ourselves from deception, and deception starts with the self.

February 25, 2023
At Home in the Diner

North Philadelphia Avenue is the street leading to and from St. John’s Bridge, a utilitarian Portland, Oregon landmark, of which I had formed an extraordinary bond well over a decade ago.

Landing right into town, you take a right onto Lombard Avenue and there is a corner diner there at the next left. It is an old school sock hop soda fountain style diner. It isn’t retro, it has just been there forever. It is called Pattie’s Home Plate.

Exterior of Pattie’s Home Plate

The landmark restaurant lives there in memory only today. It closed just after I moved to Philadelphia in 2018. According to a friend of mine, the building was nearly sold. Due to structural issues, the deal fell through. Unfortunately, the owner shut down the active restaurant (and two other businesses) in advance of the failed deal, so the building has been vacant ever since.

Anyway.

The “home plate” pun is irresistible. It suggests a starting place and an ending, like rounding the bases you end up where you began. It is a plate of food that you’re seeking, and a refuge like home, but not, because you’re out.

Pattie’s could not really be a true home away from home because it wasn’t open 24/7. Like many restaurants out west, they chose either to be breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner, or dinner and cocktails. A few modern coffee houses stayed open late, so they fulfilled much of that role.

24/7 restaurants offer a holy atmosphere. Especially in the Northeastern United States, with shining steel surfaces, tiled floors and walls, private booths with vinyl seats, the diner is something between a church and a hospital cafeteria. You go there to be healed — possibly to be saved.

The first 35 years of my life were lived all over the West Coast. There, we do not have the diner tradition like that. In Portland, I can only think of three 24/7 restaurants. There was the Pancake House on Powell, Javier’s (fast Mexican food) on Lombard, and the Roxy on Stark Street. None of these use the term “diner” and they all have some other kind of theme.

Roxy Cafe interior Portland, OR

When I was about 20 years old, living in the valley in Los Angeles, I would jump on the 101 and drive like ten miles to the North Hollywood Diner just to drink coffee and eat toast, to read and write, living out a beatnik fantasy that only a young budding stoner intellectual would go out of their way for.

That NOHO spot is an unusual place for LA, even though the city is full of 24/7 donut shops. Portland is full of coffee shops. Tucson has Waffle House and Denny’s. High school kids with cars that hung out there were “Dennys’ Rats.”

A couple of weeks ago, I drove I-95 to and from Florida, and I found Waffle House to rule that route. It is reliable but I consider it a last resort.

The Northeast is different from the rest of the country in many respects, but focusing on the people’s food, burritos are presented with more exoticism and a higher price point in Philly while hoagies are at every corner. Out west, is basically the opposite.

Philadelphia diners have more Italian history to them — always a selection of pasta. New York tends to lean Greek — always a gyro. Jersey diners define the classic all-American melting pot, offering both gyro and pasta.

Jersey diners more often dress the building with steel siding that apparently armors it against the apocalypse. It suggests that this place is bullet-proof: You can rely on it.

The Midwest is different still. I drove through the town that invented sliced bread in Missouri one time, I could not find a sandwich shop, except for Subway.

In Michigan, at least in the areas surrounding Detroit, you will find Coney Island restaurants everywhere, with a range of hot dogs, the typical burgers and omelets, but then it could have some other twist of their own. Usually gyros and pastas are on the menu.

Wherever you go, there is a regional flavor to it anyway. It’s something I love about this country. We have at least 50 different twists on what it means to be American. You absorb a lot about an area just by sitting inside a local diner.

However the people like to lay it out in their land, there will always be some demand for 24-hour food. For me, I want a place to sit. When I am with someone, a booth is great. Alone, the counter, because I can usually banter with the server and get faster coffee refills.

Today, most of the demand for a commuter breakfast is met by gas stations and fast food. Personally, I go to Wawa and Dunkin quite a lot. They solve the problem. Especially Wawa, that place is the gold standard of gas station stops.

Women at Luncheonette in New York, 1948

I think about automotive culture and how that evolved the diner into its second generation. Early on, fast food was a hole in the wall near a train station where you could sit down to order a pork chop $0.15, one egg $0.10, toast $0.05, and coffee $.10, and be out in ten minutes for less than a buck, after tip. This was pedestrian life, pre-auto culture. These places are properly called Luncheonettes.

Then the roadside diner sprang up along new highways and freeways interconnecting the nation for the first time since the railroad. This and commuters from the suburbs changed the idea from the hole in the wall by the train stop to a large building with a massive parking lot, huge signage, and lots of booths.

Elmer Diner, New Jersey 1950

I remember my first truck stop. I was a young boy, a few years old, riding home to Santa Barbara from Arizona after visiting some relatives. There is this remote Interstate 10 diner that was featured in the film, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. It was still a new movie at that time — a household favorite — so we had to stop there.

This roadside attraction these great dinosaur structures that you could walk into, where, lo and behold, there was a gift shop. It’s primary goal was to attract business to Wheel Inn, and gas station.

Original Postcard

The atmosphere was fun and comfortable, and when the meal came out it was this massive chili burger and fries. I was delighted and exclaimed, “This is why I love truck stops!” And my father shot back, “But you’ve never been to a truck stop.”

He was making fun of me a little. But he wasn’t gaslighting me, it was true. Only I am sure that I knew what I was talking about. It turns out I was right. They are delightful.

I stopped in there in 2018 but the restaurant was already gone and the dinosaurs became the main attraction.

We didn’t have any diners around Santa Barbara, although I’d say humble restaurants with standard fare were far more common than today. Santa Barbara has been a gradual gentrification process, to become an epicenter of chic world-class dining. It is not the same town, but even around 1986, the road to its future was being paved in sun-dried tomatoes and sprouts.

Today, the self-awareness of being a diner is a marketing concept. Before, it was just typical American dining: Always bread on the table, and always soup or salad before the meal. There are a few places that just keep doing what they’ve been doing for decades, and those places feel real. Too many new diners try to reinvent them to satisfy the bourgeoise. It is dumb.

It is always dumb to focus your attention on the people who do not frequent your business.

I made it my business more than three years ago, when I moved here, to visit every diner in the city. Whenever I think I am close to meeting the goal, I see one that I wasn’t aware of.

Honestly, I accelerated my pace on that this year, due to domestic problems. I was three months into an eviction case that was severely protracted, thanks to the CDC eviction moratorium, and subsequent local laws based on that order. The tenant became irate and destructive, so to protect myself, I began to stay with other people. My presence in my own home became covert. I was avoiding the place like hell.

During that desperate period of three months, I ate a lot of meals, and killed a lot of time, in diners. Even without 24/7 service, these places were available all over the place. The pressures of surviving that ordeal were alleviated by women asking me how I like my eggs, pouring refills of coffee. It was my hospital and church, especially in the morning. It was my home plate.

Llanerch Diner, 2012, Photo by Marvin Greenbaum

It was a winning strategy, but arduous. Today, I get to go to the diner not out of desperation but again to enjoy myself, to meet with someone, or simply to get a break from the road.

And I have so much experience with them now, I could write a review for each one. The criteria for what makes a good experience is entirely my own. I would say in general, diner owners should hold back on LED strip lighting and modern tile designs. I don’t want to name names, but some of our best places are remodeled into oblivion.

Return to 24/7 as soon as possible, god willing someone likes working overnight. And keep the menu traditional, just improve the quality of the food, like spending an extra nickel on cage free eggs. If you’re about to spend $50K on bad tile installations, please consider the eggs. That is all. Thank You. I’ll see you soon anyway.

SOURCES:

Luncheonette, Bowery Boys Podcast

Elmer Diner, Flashbak

Wheel Inn Demolished, Rusting Relics

October 20, 2021
I Vote for Civil Peace
The Impulse to Hit the Road

Election Day is today. Fears are at an all-time high. Tensions are raised but nobody is sure if the call to war is going to find movement. The present feeling of ideological tension just needing a little spark to flame a civil war has been expressed by millions of Americans — as though this is the only thing that we can all agree on.

With this in mind, I decided that I couldn’t wait until after the election to put myself square in the presence of the great monuments of our great country. I have countless indictments against our government, nonetheless, I want to defend it and take a wide view to see its history and its greatness.

I felt on Friday morning that I needed to take that drive to Washington DC. I debated with myself about it over breakfast, but I truly just saw myself there and thought, this is happening. I started working my way out the door around 10am. It was impulsive, so the things I lacked became self-evident later. I didn’t brush my teeth for 36 hours, for example.

I drove more than 400 miles, from my home in North Philadelphia, to Washington DC, back to Baltimore, then to Gettysburg, then Harrisburg. The drive to a destination, for me, always needs much more time than the GPS tells me. I like stopping. I like knowing what there is on the road. I like to master my routes.

I can drive from Seattle to San Diego without a map, and I could take three routes doing it. The East Coast is my new frontier. Part of the excitement of living in Philadelphia is the positioning: The great historic cities are all a day’s drive from home.

The American history of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, they all began long before Washington DC. Philadelphia was founded as a British colony 108 years before DC, in 1682. It was the city that served as the nation’s capital in the beginning.

Living in Philly as a transplant from the West coast I think helps me appreciate the deep history of this nation with Philadelphia as the real epicenter of it. Before DC, this is where laws were written. This is where stocks were traded. This is where currency was minted (and still is). It was the manufacturing and distribution hub of the country well into the Twentieth Century.

As long ago as the battle at Gettysburg may be, it is relatively modern history. The revolutionary war could be viewed as a civil war, as the ties to Europe were much stronger and there was no national identity to speak of. They had to finally break with the kingdoms that ruled the colonies in order to set a course for self-governance.

The Americas were first colonized in the Fifteenth Century. Global positions of domination change over time. Portugal is quite the example, having pioneered much of the New World and seafaring power of Europe in those pivotal year, it is today considered almost third world. It’s like comparing Yahoo to Google.

Declaring independence from the dictatorship of those kingdoms was a revolutionary act that set Europe on a course toward self-governance. I have never seen a time when I am more concerned that this course could be going in reverse from Europe and Asia toward America.

This country does in fact have a long period of evolution to look at, some excellent accomplishments that have lasting positive effects for the world. The contradictions lie all over the place too. The whole displacement of indigenous peoples, the protracted dominance of slavery as an economic model, the subjugation of the will of the people in other nations to satisfy the needs of private corporations, and the abuse of intelligence agencies in the name of national security. This is the kind of stuff that was in the back of my mind as I did my tour. This government has essentially become what it was founded to protect itself from. This ironically happened just as we unified as a people toward universal voting rights and ended the era of the state-regulated second-class citizen.

The truth of this only evolved to reinforce that I care deeply about maintaining our union with the embrace of that darkness as part of the growth and our character as a people. It is the only way to heal and carry ourselves in the light of the best intentions of the people, which is self-governance.

Getting to D.C.

The intention of this trip was just to see those monumental sites in DC at the National Mall. Once I hit the road, however, I just wanted to keep moving. It was a solo road trip for peace, trying to find appreciation for the United States of America in my heart, to embrace whatever outcome there may be this week, then take the fight back to the power, not the people.

I like driving. I like thinking on the road. I like taking a break from my home life, taking hours at the wheel to compress my thoughts. I like highways and small towns and counters at diners and bars. I like synchronicity and meeting random people.

I arrived in DC a bit late, I knew I had to hustle to make the most of the sunlight. When I travel, it’s about walking. If I drive into a place, I find free street parking, typically, and walk through neighborhoods to get to the destination. Not every city works like this, but that is the spirit of it: Walking through the place to get a sense of its genuine character.

I underestimated that city in many ways. It is much more dense and bustling than I expected of it. It has very recently gentrified. Her bad neighborhoods are pretty much wiped out, and that means displaced and relocated, ie gentrified. The trend to colonize and displace those of lesser means continues as a tradition in this country.

There is no avoiding the fact that everything we have built in DC is a monument to genocide. That is the only way that it could have been constructed. The symbolism of conquest becomes more apparent when you are standing at the World War II monument in relation to the reflective pool in relation to Abraham Lincoln looking on toward the Capitol buildings with his massive shoe extending just slightly over the lip of the pedestal, as you stand below it.

Walking from Mt. Vernon through Chinatown and then Georgetown University law campus, there was a totally empty outdoor Covid-19 testing and lab station setup. I checked online, it was supposed to be open until 4pm, but it was only 3:30. I spotted the capitol building down New Jersey Avenue. I headed straight for it.

The United States Capitol and Supreme Court are across the street from one another. They are massive structures. It’s a lot of walking. The Supreme Court is at the east end of the National Mall, so I turned around and headed for the Washington Monument. You can enjoy a lot of views along the way. The Smithsonian building is a tremendous walking experience.

Pushing on while trying not to spend much time on any of the wonders surrounding me all the time, I had the treat of walking through a marital engagement, a man proposing to a woman with the Washington Monument in the backdrop. I breezed passed them saying, “It looks like you two just got engaged!” He replied, “Thanks!” because was nervous as hell. He was barely present but at the same time totally exhilarated. I tagged that with, “Good luck!” I wish to hell that I never said that. Congratulations were in order!

I was engaged to Kate exactly four years ago. I realized immediately that I had a twinge of bitterness in my heart, as I am a single man today. Love isn’t luck. It is careful work.

There is dimensionality to the Washington Monument that doesn’t come across on television or in photos. There is a vast field between the monument and the reflecting pool, which is designed to reflect the monument. There is even another monument between them that I never really noticed on TV or photos, because it disappears below the line of sight from Lincoln’s steps.

That monument is the World War II pool at the east end of the pool. There are dual structures, one is labeled Atlantic, the other is Pacific. On a side note, I realized upon seeing these columns that the Atlantic ocean refers to Atlantis. Weird. How did I miss that? Anyway, this monument is a huge structure and would be a site independent of the whole. In the whole, it is merely an adornment.

What clicked more meaningfully to me was the connection of these structures to the reflecting pool and Abraham Lincoln and how these huge spaces shrink and become a unified image under the gaze of Lincoln at his monument. I haven’t researched enough of the symbolism of it to say what it’s all about, but for me, it feels powerful, meant to continuously reinforce the power of the United States.

Lincoln is revered, I think, because we were in the midst of intense westward expansion during his time. The steadfast belief that took hold was the so-called manifest destiny of the American people to command both oceans. With the grandeur and purpose of spreading democracy and Christianity, the destiny was manifested under brute force, in an ends defeats means kind of philosophy. I would observe that this belief remains to this day and ultimately represents the same trend line all the way to Iraq and beyond.

Lincoln essentially became the sole founding father of our modern nation. This is why he is so greatly revered, and it’s all in that pool. You may feel the energy of the triumph in the conflict in these monuments but it cannot be separated from the suffering. Lincoln caused extraordinary suffering and destruction by maintaining the Union. It could have been a peaceful secession, but his rule of law and force set a direction for this country that amounts to a single nation controlling all of the waterways of the world by the end of World War II.
- The Capitol Building
- Me with Capitol Behind Me
- Washington Monument
- Me with Washington Monument at Reflecting Pool
- Under the Boot of Lincoln
- Looking East from the Lincoln Monument
- DC Fortified
Pitting Power Against Progress

There is beauty in this ugliness. First of all: We have this incredible land. We have this vast connectivity from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Abraham Lincoln was the man that held it all together. This shit was on his shoulders. That deserves some respect.

I’m troubled by the brutality of war and power. I have always been a peace activist. We do not have enough anti-war rallies anymore. We lost our steam in 2003 and never got it back.

Standing under the boot of Lincoln in that moment feels like that of the boot of executive power. It feels violent in this whole context. Now, I can look at it other ways. I would say also that his foot extending off the pedestal brings him back to the level of a Man, from the position of idol. The National Park Service says that the monument depicts Fasces as a continuum of leaders that work toward the liberation, not subjugation, of their people. Funny how it is also the root word for fascist. And funny how Lincoln had to use brutal fascistic force to maintain the union.

Leading to this moment of reflection with Lincoln, I have firmly decided that I want to maintain our union. I don’t want Texas or California or any other State to secede. Despite all of our brutal past, there is verifiable evolution toward justice. It gets tricky every step of the way. It definitely feels like we’re at the breaking point of another major step in the wrong direction.

Without trying to be precise about it, this nation was stitched together largely by Christian zealots and the only people participating in democracy were property owners, and pretty much the only property owners were white men. The civil war forced the people to take a side, even if Lincoln used slaves as his pawn to win the union, which has economic interests at heart just the same, he still took that step versus the maintenance of slavery.

The following hundred years were marked with continuous upsets to the white male status quo until finally, universal voting rights were established. The period that has followed looks like the gradual disentanglement of white maleness from the elite power hierarchy. There are absolutely more wealthy and powerful non-white non-male people in the country than ever.

The conflicts in society fomenting and mounting up today are totally connected to the same thread of oppression that also tells the story of progress. The specific goals are getting looser and the demands more confusing. For example, non-whites in the 1960s were advocating for equal access to goods and services, the end to segregation, and the assurance of voting rights. That is a clearcut goal. Self-governance is meant to pick up from there. Today, it’s a little different. The system is unfair today due to classist structures that were waged against racial groups, but were redirected entirely to income-based groups. Racist structures are still haunting communities post-segregation, so the problems overlap between racial groups.

The goals of the Black Lives Matter movement are shared with a huge level of support with whites. The obvious thing is police brutality, a scourge that takes all kinds of lives. Disproportionate it may be, it is still a shared problem. What people don’t understand, there are factions amidst that protest movement that are ideologically marxist, they don’t agree with classic liberalism, and would be willing to rewrite the constitution.

At one time, all whites were better off than all non-whites. That is absolutely not true today. When slavery gave way and black folks entered the same status as the Irish, there were race riots over competition for work and land. Famously in South Philadelphia, after the Civil War, the Irish waged war on freed slaves, even though they shared a common systemic oppressor. They did not come together to fight against the same forces, they fought each other. Not having equal rights and protection under the law, they took their frustrations on each other. We are not doing well to avoid this cycle today.

If whites and non-whites are fighting amongst each other about the same class struggles, then the fascists have already won. They don’t want us getting together to solve shared problems.

Leaving the Lincoln memorial, I continued onto the White House. I had just enough sunlight to catch it. Much to my dismay, I began to see an alarming degree of fortification happening across DC. I really wanted to look across the lawn and wonder if Trump or any “important” figures were in there. But there is a barrier running all along the fence line of the White House right now. You can only see the upper half of the building.

This was a sad end to my walking tour. As I headed back toward Mount Vernon, enjoying the old architecture splitting up contemporary glass jawns along the way, I noticed that everyone was boarding up their restaurants, hotels, and retail shops. Generally, the police presence in DC is high, but I could sense it was elevated, the giveaway being that for a substantial radius surrounding the White House, businesses are digging in and sealing up.

If only I had known, I would have launched boardupyourbusiness.com in February. I could have made a killing on this pandemic and civil unrest, specializing in boarding up shit.

I wandered around DC looking for a good bar and food. I was annoyed with everything. It’s like Portland, it’s all designer with either chic patina or bold glossy finishes. I don’t like that. I like diners and old Irish pubs. So I pressed back to Baltimore. I ate fast food.

Camping in Gettysburg

Baltimore is a jaunt away from DC. I parked right at the peak of their central monument at Mount Vernon. I then walked up and down Charles looking for action. I go on intuition. Turns out this is a major connective nightlife street. There was live music going on, something I hadn’t seen since March. For a Halloween Weekend, however, it was very quiet. I had one beer and decided it would be smart to get a room between there and Gettysburg so I could have a good start that morning.

I did what I often do, which is to drive around being dissatisfied with rates, then I sleep in my car or stay up all night. Or both, I stay up trying to sleep. That’s what happened. I rested my eyes in the freezing cold of my car in Gettysburg. I couldn’t bring myself to spend $80 and up. We’re talking about cheap motels. They weren’t cutting me any deals, because they were all well booked. I was happy to see that, just for the sake of economic activity. I wondered if people were traveling out of the cities in fear of riots, especially from places like DC.

It was cold. It was dumb, attempting this without a blanket. My mom always told me to keep a blanket in the car. I laid there imagining the hardships of soldiers in Gettysburg. I imagined them weary and freezing in their encampments. Then I saw that the battle lasted for three days in July. Their hardships were, at the least, warm at night.

At 6am, I headed for the nearest open diner. Covid hours have down stepped the 24/7 joints to more standard hours. The second diner of choice, in Hunterstown, was the one that was actually open. But it was top choice in retrospect. Perfect for sitting at the counter and listening to the locals yak, joining in a bit myself, as I like to do in diners. The food was good. The banter was ridiculous.

Everything about Gettysburg challenged my expectations. I never researched the town, I just imagined it to be a tiny, old time boring place, crafted for tourist expectations. The battlefield, I imagined to be a relatively small field by modern scope, that you could easily survey from a single position. And at that point there would be a plaque, a monument, and the standard informational presentations you would expect from an historical site.

Gettysburg is a modern little college city, dense at its center, but it becomes rural very quickly. This town has the most Biden/Harris signs I have seen per capita. The place is full of those little artsy boutiques and coffee shops. I doubt anyone in that diner voted for Biden, just a few miles outside town. The television ran Fox News. But none of them talked about politics.

I can feel the national tension today in the City of Gettysburg. It is a microcosm of our urban and rural divide like I have never seen, because it is such a compact urban area that the same people passionately opposed to one another are also forced to cooperate. The people of Philadelphia don’t have to deal with the rural folk, and likewise. It’s a matter of scale.

Gettysburg National Military Park is a sprawling area larger than the town itself. There are positions that can survey large areas, but even the highest points, like Little Round Top and Culp’s Hill, cannot take the whole area into view.

The constancy of military units occupying this area and the intense clashes unfolding there is effectively realized by the seeming endless trail of inscribed grand monuments to represent each battalion and squadron and individual leaders in the war. The vastness of death is clear, imagining instead of these stone blocks, a horrifying pile of bodies that would involve a reconnaissance and burial effort that would easily outlast the length of the battle. Lincoln’s famous “Gettysburg Address” happened at the dedication of the national cemetery that November, four months after the battle.

Panorama of Little Round Top
- View from Little Round Top
- View from Little Round Top
- Pennsylvania Monument at Gettysburg
- See the cannabis flag at Pennsylvania State Capitol
- Cocoa Diner in Hershey, PA
To imagine a contemporary civil war given the number of assault rifles in this country, the amount of ammo, the kind of house-to-house fighting that would result in constant quagmires in cities like Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, where territories can easily be fragmented up into factions, is to imagine the devastation of these historic sites. The same way that Syria became a proxy war of terrorist groups funded by governments, the conflicts here would be tied to outcomes desired by other nations like China and Russia.

We are certainly in a make or break moment in this country. With or without a President Trump to worry about, the leadership and the political body that is meant to serve us has become so totally corrupted that most people are not excited with whoever wins the election. There is some extraordinary enthusiasm for Trump and I would rather tap into that than fight it.

When I was protesting the George W. Bush administration with as much intensity that people have for Trump today, I remember this girl I liked that I was trying to date who was hippyish and going to Cal Arts suggested that a more effective way to reach him might be to send some flowers. I thought that was dumb. I get that now.

People believe they are fighting with Trump for all kinds of liberties that are directly under attack by people like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The exact same thing can be said of those who feel attacked by Donald Trump and Mike Pence. Everybody is correct about this. None of them have our best interests at heart. Choosing a side and defending one piece of shit against another is not the solution.

There are values to both the right and left that make this country a very special place. The crisis in our whole social system is leading to the collateral damage of this nation’s spirit, its purpose, its economic power, and will ultimately lead to the failure of our military power. Public morale is a national crisis. People feel used, and lied to, and they point the finger at one another.

The project of self-governance, allowing ourselves to love who we love, worship how we worship, speak what we believe, and defend these rights and our property against the tyranny of a corrupt state, by force, is what is at stake when we turn against one another.

In the same way that I could never have understood the vastness of the battle at Gettysburg without going to the battlefield, we are going to sorely underestimate the despair and destruction that will come with a contemporary civil war.

If that occurs, there is no way that The United States will survive and continue the progress it has made in terms of bringing about a nation of civil rights and liberties, economic mobility, and peacemaking in the world. Most likely, Europe and Asia will interfere in our domestic matters and prolong the civil war until staggering lives are lost, and at least they can come out on top and negotiate a reconstruction deal that would divide us into Eurasia. China would probably dominate the West Coast. Canada would move into the heartland. The Northeast and parts of the South would go to Europe. America would move into Texas, absorbing parts of the South.

To me, preserving the manifestation of this nation’s culture from coast to coast is a worthwhile act of peace and democracy. It is the only way we can maintain that continuity.

From a simple, selfish point of view, I love being able to drive from coast to coast as an American. I don’t want to need my passport to visit California. It would break my heart.

Today, the nation will be tested. I hope that I don’t have to flee the city. I hope nobody riots. I hope it comes to pass and we learn to elect better leaders and challenge whoever is in power. War is not inevitable. If we choose to, we can evolve yet again.

Regardless of who is in the White House, we have unfathomable challenges to deal with. This nation cannot be so belligerent in its foreign policy. We need the kind of diplomacy that brings about mutually beneficial trade deals that can lead to lasting peace and economic prowess. The people of this country cannot survive with endless debt from health and education costs. Police forces cannot go on with this oppositional relationship to the community they are sworn to protect. Inherently classist structures cannot remain standing lest we continue a kind of economic racial segregation that leads again back to the entanglement of education and policing that leads to ignorance which leads to the enabling of globally tyrannical behavior.

The knot is indeed badly tangled. But I’m one of those people that takes the cord and straightens it out, then I coil it up correctly so that it won’t knot up again. That’s what democracy is supposed to be: routine maintenance.

We have no real honest choice but to accept the results of this election and get back to work on correcting the course of this country. In theory, that is what our constitution, the basis for our system, is meant to do: self-correct.

I truly just skimmed the surface of Gettysburg because I wanted to get home by the evening and it would be a long drive. I also wanted to see Harrisburg again, almost just to complete the patriotic ritual, to visit the capitol city of Pennsylvania, a state that is today considered a battleground for the White House, a state that I have deep ancestral ties to, a state that cradled the birth of this nation and has contributed incredibly to the social and economic progress of this country. It also acts as a conservative point of resistance. It is a diverse place.

The media is telling us that Pennsylvania is the battleground state of 2020. I would believe it. I hope we do not host another Gettysburg. Businesses are boarding up all over Philly, partly out of fears of riots related to the shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. last week. Not a great lead-in to the election for Philly, but the police just keep blasting rounds off at the wrong time.

I believe that if we can avoid civil war, then we can become a much stronger people. I fear that violent clashes across major cities would mark the end of the tradition of self-governance forever in this country, as we have already given up civil liberties in the name of national security. Such clashes would make it permanent.

My vote is that we don’t do that.
November 4, 2020
Combating Cults with Jiddu Krishnamurti

Taking the Self Off the Cross

Do things happen in life for a reason, or do we apply reason to chaos? If we have the endowment of reason, do we stand alone with this power? If we are not alone, do we stand below a higher power? My consciousness feels timeless although I know my body is aging, what happens to consciousness when my body fails?

Jiddu Krishnamurti is a stand-alone spiritual leader that takes these common questions and reflects them back at the questioner by absolving himself from answering them. His attitude is skeptical of the questioner and puts it on them to get their own answers. He tries to get behind their question to push it back at them. For example, behind the question of death is very likely fear and insecurity about the unknown, all forms of the unknown. Quick answers may sooth that insecurity, but it may not be Truth.

He renounced all forms of organized religion and refused to teach any kind of meditation practice while deconstructing religious practice and meditative behavior, demystifying these things. If this line of thought makes you feel disoriented, that is good. “Truth is a pathless land,” says Krishnamurti.

Despite having no instruction to offer, people flocked and paid to attend his retreats hoping for spiritual advancement through contact, and community. It is fair to say that he was also a pioneer in business. He was in fact a millionaire. His career spanned from the 1920s until he died in Ojai, California, 1986. His business model has been repeated by hundreds of spiritual and self-help figures, from Tony Robbins to Ram Das.

Today, his legacy is recorded in numerous books transcribed from audio recordings, video and film reels, and increasingly these tapes are becoming available online, thanks to the work of Krishnamurti Foundation.

I borrowed his most famous book, Think On These Things, from a neighbor in my apartment building, in Los Angeles when I was 20 years old. Was that book given to me for a reason? The new age school of thought would respond, “Yes, of course, you manifested it.“ But I have found that to be a cultish kind of thinking prevalent on the West Coast.

I lived in the epicenter (LA) of the cult religion (Scientology) that I was raised in but had rejected firmly as an adult person. Today, my parents are out, but they paid a hefty price. And they continue to struggle with the deep conditioning of it. There is a solution from Scientology to every problem in life — not saying correct solutions. But this is how an adult person loses themselves in it, as life is scary and difficult to face. I think most people tend to look for guidance rather than build and refine their instincts.

Today, I self-identify as Buddhist, but I don’t go to a temple. I practice Vipassana meditation, and Zen, and I work to live by the moral code first transmitted by Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha. If you are Buddhist then you may believe that the principle of karma not only delivered me into a human form, but also the opportunity to at once reject religion and embrace Buddhism on the path of liberation. For me, believing in karma isn’t important. It is about finding gratitude for having a fortunate position in life, and using that position to practice the Dharma (moral code).

My first splintering from Scientology began with a short book by Dalai Llama, The Way to Freedom. I was 17. I have written about that process for THRU Media in a story called “Going Clear, For Real”.

Living inside a conspiracy theory like Scientology gave me the opportunity to come out the other side with the power of spiritual skepticism. Scientology is a quasi-political pseudo-religious multi-billion dollar tax shelter that depends on near-slave labor to maintain itself. I didn’t know about any of this until everyone else did, but I knew it was wrong, spiritually, and the intellectual tool of skepticism guided me away from it through adulthood.

The only people who don’t know how corrupt Scientology is are the many thousands of Scientologists that censor their own information. Like my parents. My family wasn’t deep, so I don’t have any trade secrets, but I saw how a community can reinforce itself in delusion. And let’s face it, you may substitute Scientology with “The Republican Party,” or “The Democratic Party,” or “The Catholic Church,” and so on, and this paragraph would still hold up.

That is spiritual skepticism, looking at all institutions and leaders for what they are: inherently corruptible. We know the self by reflecting on our relationship with others, and we know others from reflecting on ourselves.

We look toward figures of greatness for allegorical inspiration. Siddhartha’s legendary story of leaving the walled garden of his kingdom to face the truth of human suffering has inspired billions of people to date, although we cannot accurately place him in history.

Jiddu Krishnamurti has a documented story that carries allegorical power, but it shows the truth of political convenience, individual weakness, and the dark side of spirituality.

Oil on Canvas Portrait of Jiddu Krishnamurti by Jane Adams via janeadamsart.wordpress.com/

Manufacturing The Messiah

He was personally selected by infamous mystic Charles Leadbetter to become the messiah for the Theosophical Society, at their headquarters in India. The boy, fourteen years old, kind of frail and low energy, was lifted from his impoverished Father by some degree of manipulation on the part of Leadbetter.

The Father was devoted to Theosophy and he knew that the opportunity offered wealth and education for his boy. Perhaps the man believed he would benefit too. Their relationship suffered the deep loss of estrangement as the Father was left outside the inner circle.

Leadbetter believed Krishnamurti was already awakened, claiming to see his brilliant aura, while others thought the boy was dull. He was given a rigorous combination of British education with esoteric training into occult practices so that young Jiddu would become The World Teacher. He was not only groomed as their messiah over the next decade, but he eventually served as a salaried editor and columnist for their newsletter, providing a public face for the Theosophical Society.

This is a lot of pressure, and a rebellious young man might exploit some holes to their logic. After those first ten years of rather more blissful times, the delusion of the role they set out for him began to crack under intellectual scrutiny. The first blow to his faith in Theosophy must have been the estrangement of his master.

Leadbetter would be forced out of the Theosophical Society, England and India, where the society was headquartered, for sexual misconduct with countless children under his tutelage. Jiddu himself denied having gone through sexual abuse. Leadbetter found exile in Sydney, Australia, by 1915, just six years after discovering Jiddu. The mystical pedophile would live the rest of his life as a Bishop in the Liberal Catholic Church and as a member of the Co-Masonic Order.

The story of Leadbetter and other figures in his life are a big feature of the posthumous biography A Star In The East. Author Roland Vernon wanted to illustrate clearly why Krishnamurti renounced Theosophy. Prior to this book, very little was understood about his youth.

Annie Besant consolidated much of the power that she shared with Leadbetter as a leader of the Theosophical Society. She helped conceive of the World Teacher Project circa 1900. She provided a critical role in Jiddu’s daily life, serving him as a mother figure, educator, and role model, while at once manipulating him toward her project. He cared for her and she cared for him, but he would be estranged from her eventually, as well. He last visited Besant in 1926, though she did not pass until 1933.

In August of 1929, just a month before the market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, he dissolved The Order of the Star, an organization of 3,000 members devoted to the oncoming messiah that he had strategically positioned himself to lead. By dissolving it, he was just Jiddu Krishnamurti again. I’m not sure how much money or followers we was able to keep with the dissolution, but it was apparently enough to start his own venture with the help of his core posse.

He never spoke of Theosophy, Besant or Leadbetter unless pushed into it. He made a wise political decision in that regard, but also liberated himself from bad vibes and carried on with the new frequency that he had tuned into.

He settled in Ojai, California with his closest friends and long-time lover, working the land, rebuilding his speaking career where he felt there was more open-mindedness than almost any other place in the world. He spoke mostly in India, Europe, and across the United States, publishing dozens of books containing hundreds of transcripts, until his death in the 1980’s.

Finding My Allegorical Inspiration

He was born into a situation much riskier than mine and his payoff was much greater. Like all heroes, we look to them even if our problems are minor by comparison. I found allegorical inspiration at a time in life in which I was voracious for philosophies that could thoroughly discredit Scientology, so that I could move on psychologically.

If you want to critically think through life, skepticism is indispensable. The term “spiritual skepticism” was adopted if not coined on the Tin Foil Hat Podcast. That is where I heard it. I enjoy that show for its humorous presentation of conspiracy theories. A diversity of opinion is good. Even sifting through false information is good, which you have to do with that show, if you want to get some genuine, unreported Truth.

Our sense of discernment is built like a muscle. Nobody will curate a perfect stream of Truth for us and to expect that is like opening your skullcap for easy brainwashing. I like ideas that make me uncomfortable. I like challenging my biases. By doing so, I explore the depth of my psyche.

Krishnamurti says that true listening happens in three areas at once. If someone is speaking, you hear the speaker verbatim, while observing their bias, while observing your reaction. The same can be said of reading a book, a news article, hearing a podcast, or watching documentary.

Listening is meditation. It involves deep concentration. The old joke of people falling asleep at church is taken for granted. If there is a total loss of attention, what is the purpose of going to church? If one goes for the community, I can tell you that Scientology had a lovely community, but it was the blind leading the blind. If you’re asleep during service, are you deaf?

How often have you loudly reiterated a position on a political topic even though it was debunked or misinformed? Nobody has never done this. Do not deny it. Whereas the admission that you don’t know something liberates the mind from delusion and frees up brain power for new possibilities. Intelligence is allowed to operate with a simple “I don’t know.” It is fully shackled when stuck in one position. So it is not about being right all the time, that is too much pressure, it is about knowing when you don’t know.

I don’t know if there is ever a time that you can absolutely know anything. But in the parameters of our observable universe, there is plenty to know and to live by. If we too frequently say we don’t know, I’m afraid we’re making ourselves dull. Keep an open mind, but not so much that your brain spills out. I’m not sure who said that.

Everything in life is in motion. Sometimes you know. Sometimes you don’t know. Truth will continually flow, but your mind is not required to flow with it, it can believe whatever it wants. The brain doesn’t care if an object is real or imagined. The idiomatic expression, “jerking yourself off” uses the allegory of masturbation to refer to a psychological process. Men will lay in bed with dry palms imagining a warm wet pussy and cum into that imaginary woman, that is their bare fist. There is no difference between this and filling your head with beliefs in order to satisfy some absence in your life.

Be willing to disprove your beliefs every day. Abandon them when you reach the shore of Truth. Belief is a raft to carry over the tumultuous river of doubt.

Skepticism gradually purifies all the nonsense that comes from living in our media saturated environment, this age of PR. I have upended my relationships and reset my spiritual, political, and aesthetic preferences a few times now. I have been susceptible to insecurity and I was clinging to my social group out of fear rather than out of love. It led to almost as much delusion as any cult. It led to many people being hurt by me, and many people hurting me. Let’s face it, fear exposes you like nothing else.

We are all hurdling into a brave new world, with all the trappings of social fragmentation that Krishnamurti spent his life warning about. He tracked it from the end of World War One through the height of the Cold War, the hippie movement, the new age, yoga, and meditation crazes. He got notably more cranky over the decades as it seemed his message was going to waste. But he tried on until death.

Maybe he really was the world teacher, because I have yet to see a more concise and apt description of the stresses taking place on the human psyche than the ones he described. He lasted into the computer age — he had begun comparing the brain to the computer. Science has proven him correct. It is that easy to program.

The world we live in desperately needs defragmentation, yet the tactics of ideological warfare only seem to be increasing. If the world psyche is an operating system, it is Windows 95 and it is full of viruses.

Yet for me, my life personally, I have never felt less like I am on a side, part of any groupthink, or even swayed by any close friends and family. It is lonely, but I’m not tormented. I am watching a world fracturing, watching people at the height of fear become highly susceptible to whatever information, whatever community that brings them security. I worry about them, but I am through with trying to control anyone’s perspective. I know that I crave a good cult and belief to live by, but once you’ve discriminated gold from pyrite, you will not trade back.

June 12, 2020
Doing What You Want

Not everything in life comes as planned. You can favor your life heavily in the unexpected or try to control the events surrounding you. William S. Burroughs said that control cannot be used toward a practical end, it only leads to more control. I suppose his principle is true, that control leads to more control. So my lesson actually is that you control and release in life so that you have certain predictable, stable factors, and try to enjoy the remaining chaos.

How do you do what you want to do, with your life? By choosing control, you can be like Frank Underwood and go up against the world, manipulating it, deceiving, controlling the chaos like a dark wizard. Most of us are just trying to play by the rules and achieve optimum outcomes for ourselves and those we care about, without interfering with the will of others.

The question however goes round and round: How do you do what you want to do? It has been asked and struggled over by countless souls forever. I’m finding some semblance of a solution in this control and release strategy.

I’m approaching middle-age, but thankfully my generation has extended youth by ten years. Most folks say I’m young enough to start over. I have started over. I moved out of Portland where I lived, built and destroyed my career, over fourteen years. I live in the more dangerous, more dense, urban, and lawless Philadelphia, now. Very different, very new, although I’m coming up on two years here.

I never had a career. In fact, only recently have I put on my to-do list to write a full and complete professional CV, tracking every position I’ve held in my life. Looking back, it is kind of amazing. I’ve done quite a few things.

I spent six months as an insurance claims investigator for a private investigation firm. I was assistant manager for a small café until it shuttered. I volunteered as a broadcast engineer and programmer for radio. I started a bonafide 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation and directed seven music festivals. I installed 200 televisions and audio systems in people’s homes. I installed extensive professional audio systems in a haunted house and historic prison. I was “the best suites bartender ever” for Portland Timbers and Thorns matches. I did the same work in a horse track. I have practiced hundreds of hours of yoga and meditation. I delivered weekly magazines throughout the entire Portland metropolitan area: That city is mapped in my brain forever. I launched and failed with a media startup, but in the process wrote hundreds of articles and produced dozens of podcasts. I operated two art galleries with public exhibits. I restored a rental property, learning permaculture 101. I bought a house and learned all there is about home maintenance. I lived on a farm for altogether four years, learning gardening, forestry, carpentry, how to manage sheep and llamas. I developed prototypes for combustible hydrogen, retrofitting several cars. I rebuilt two engines, one a ford truck and one a Volkswagen, with very different engineering. I managed two music projects, taking the groups on four west coast tours at notable venues. I was in a metal band for a while, and they became a notable band. I was certified in Audio Engineering under the great Brian Ingoldsby, and was blessed with brilliant teachers at one of the best community college systems in the country, Portland Community College, where I earned a degree with honors. I spent a full year as a music student at Portland State University. I was a depressed, D and C student in High School, smoked pot and became an intellectual overnight. I have taken heroic doses of mushrooms and other natural hallucinogens. I trained myself how to manage diet and weight by age 12. I made goofy videos with a boy that became a genuine Hollywood Film Editor. I survived the cult of Scientology. And I’m still learning how to speak spanish.

With a story like that, you want to feel special, accomplished, but when you’re broke and nobody cares, its not exactly the wind beneath your wings. There are people who deserve their story to be told far more than mine. But mostly we need to take the spectacle off the pedestal, break the hypnosis of celebrity culture, and return to a localized way of life, because individuals are struggling despite having alot to offer. They cannot find jobs commensurate with their intellgence earned through a variety of experiences, simply because it doesn’t fit into a recognizable box.

I have always done what I wanted to do. I have run a fools errand or two and lost momentum gained in one area by pursuing another. I have been beaten by taking on too much risk. I have learned all the dumb lessons that one can learn — especially now that I’m in Philly where I’m finally getting the street sense knocked into me. However, I have always done what I wanted to do.

To make sense of all this experience, I really just have to keep going like this. Things that I could see doing for the rest of my life: Media, Music, Real Estate, Finance. All of this can be done by taking up jobs as needed while managing finance really diligently. I just onboarded with the United States Census. That is perfect for me at this moment. Life has a way of bringing you opportunity.

Not every career has to look like a career. Approaching 40 years old, I definitely have goals in mind toward my long term financial health that would connect my experiences much like a career. Probably, I’ll take that farming experience and enter mid-life in the bliss of rural Pennsylvania, close to the greatest American cities of all time, all grouped together in the Northeast. No offense Portland and Los Angeles. My heart was left there but the blood pumping through it is Pennsylvanian.

So what is the answer to doing what you want to do? It changes for everyone. That is why you cannot prescribe a how-to. My personality was fucked for twenty solid years. Probably because my parents raised me in a cult. I mean, don’t underestimate the mindfuck of being even a low-totem Scientologist family. It is pretty much behind me though, I mean all the trauma, all the mistakes. I feel vastly more mature and capable of taking on a whole new range of jobs over the next twenty years, to keep funding my 20-year financial plan. Why I bring all this up is simple: Your starting position is not equal to anyone else’s starting position. The outcome of your efforts will vary. My advantages went against my disadvantages and it led to a fairly chaotic scene.

I am more level-headed, loaded with lessons and skills and things I’ve learned, hoping to just reinforce those skills rather than take more on. I’m looking at a more focused plan, a steadier course, and a less foolhardy approach to whatever thing I want to do next.

February 1, 2020