Fri 22 Mar 2002 08:37
There are some things I think about quite a lot which I do not write about here, because I don't wish to give them any more time.

I hope to complete the initial resurrection of my old home page today, and perhaps get my old journal entries prepared/zopeized. Let's go. (I have the day off from work).

Boy, am I sad because of

that I could have done something that causes me to be someone you do not wish to speak to. That is sad, one of the saddest things I've experienced in a long time. I don't know it's true yet, and I hope I'm wrong, that there is another explanation. I do respect your decision, and do not seek to change it. You have already added a lot to my life and the way I look at life, and I thank you and love you for that. If I ever hear from/see you again, I won't be angry, I will be happy to see you.

We could spend days talking / being with eachother. It is so soon to say goodbye. (I probably would not say that--because it is obviously not true)

It is the initial phase that gets one.

She really is phenomenal, astounding, that she could do this. Seemingly inexplicable?

Let's go, It's looking like I have a book on experienceartists to write. It is incredibly cold outside. To be an experienceartist. To kill ones self by drinking windex. Gold cyanaide sounds much better.

By planning in my mind/fearing the worst, am I making it more likely to happen? No, it is an outcome quite possible to expect with an unknown person.

I am happy to have, I think, still Carmen, Peter, and Beverly, and Hal, and etc. and myself. Ken Wilber. Marcel Proust. My viewing screen.

[unfortunately the words I write here will not mean to others, i.e. Joanna, what they mean to me. Double_contingency is featured somewhat prominently on this site, but that doesn't mean that part of the communication system is in place for any of the readers of this site. I am thinking here of my statement above: 'because it is obviously not true' which means to me that no, we can't spend days talking, no it is the perfect time to say good bye, because, if what I've imagined she's decided she has actually decided, then that statement is not true. But I see how that statement could become a departure point for many other directions than the one I intended myself. Every word and phrase here is like that to a greater or lesser degree. Oscar Wilde wrote: It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. If the writing found on this site is read by another, I would not say it mirrors her, but that the symbols here are read and projected upon her viewing screen. Their context, how each of the symbols came to have meaning to her will be different from how they came to have meaning to me. But with enough similarity that some form of communication is possible. And so behind all this I hide the fact that I did press the red button on my cell phone when "Joanna O" was on the display, because it sounded to me like the phone was in her pocket moving around, and that the button to redial the last number called had somehow been pressed. Quite possibly I was wrong and she was intensely offended. Moreover I found that she had sent me two text messages clearly expressive of a desire to meet that evening. Unfortunately these messages had arrived after she had called me- I thought perhaps just to say Hi, but quite possibly she wished me to say, well, yes, I'd like to take Capoiera too. After reading these messages I called her back, realizing she had probably wanted more from that phone call than she got. The phone rang as if it was on, but that she decided not to answer, and I left a message. After pondering things more, I decided that regardless, capoiera would be a good adventure, and If I could see Joanna that night, I would like to, and I left a message saying I would be taking capoeira (now I'm spelling it right), though I realized she might no longer be planning to go. I thought I might have seen her at the studio briefly, but it was probably my imagination--and she had not picked up a note that was left for her by nicole. I called her again afterwards, and again it seemed like her phone was on but she was not answering (the message picks up immediately if the phone is off)--however I still said something like "I'm sure I'll talk to you again soon." But I was, as I had realized in the other recent message, momentarily, realizing that I was not sure, that this was the contingency I had been somewhat fearing since after leaving her Sunday evening. I called her again this morning after swimming, this time saying I wished I could talk to her in person--but that was about it. As each hour goes by, I'm more sure that there will be little if any future communication between us. And yet, it is still possible that there are other things going on I am not aware of. I'm sounding like that Rychard guy now, I'm sure. That's really the sum of the story, so far as I can tell. I'm sure she has a different one, which more clearly defines her actions more rationally, and as less based on one-time huge mistake on my part, than on, well, signals/symbols she'd been getting all along. This is why relationships generally work better and easier, I find, if they arise out of routine interaction and familiarity. This communication issue would not be as much of or any issue if we knew we'd see eachother at the swimming pool early the next morning, three mornings a week, or at dancespace as stage crew saturday and sunday evenings. Its not really unfortunate, in a way. I had learned to eschew communication by email in the maintenance of all but idea-centered relationships. I shall now be more circumspect with interaction via phone--though I should say, as some discussion above indicated that our in-person conversation seemed to involve quite often her interpreting a symbol of mine quite differently (and with much more significance, often) than I had intended. I really value this kind of sensitivity--she was incredibly responsive to almost everything I did, it seemed. Which is wonderful. But this might be the flip-side of that wonder. Are you asleep yet? Back to work. love]
--

The best way to present material on my site is a concern... it really is my book, and I'm planning for the future when it will be, perhaps, as easy for people to read the internet as to read a book. Easier, in fact, because they will not have to buy a physical thing or go to a physical library.

If the book of experienceartists ever comes to exist- that might be a more typical book.

A free mind with which to work. The art of being a writer/unschooler like Ken Wilber.

her use of this harshest of punishments would make me circumspect in all future interaction, unfortunately. Still, I may be wrong in my guess at what she's communicating.

btw the correct spelling of Joanna's nickname is Asia [asha]--Aisling -- in irish is Ashley?

could be random noise, technical difficulties, or one of hundreds of other possibilities besides the scenario I have presented. Truth is stranger than fiction. God is what happens. God happens.

dead horses should not be aggravated forcefully with a boot on one's dominant foot. Time should be encoded with the characters here for the full picture of this creation. Perhaps code phrases as links with alt's or mouseovers which record the time at which they were written. Oh so complicated.

What happens can be perceived as beautiful, though one should be circumspect about describing the beauty one may see at the risk of being excoriated and becoming a social outcast. There are such emotions as empathy, horror, sadness that presumably serve some purpose as well.

This is a classic example of ratiocinating ones problems away. Taken to unhealthy extremes it can lead to detatchment from life, despair at ever finding meaning in life, cynicism, suicide, but probably not acts of mass destruction. Actually probably not suicide either, but a simple death by self-starvation like Bartleby. The cursor blinks expectantly (was that Dee Hock? probably hundreds of other writers by now). My cursor does blink expectantly, as if to say, "Dear, won't you please push me along the screen some more?" "Ha, ha!..... O.K.!" aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, do you want some more? Be patient for a change, why don't you. Geez! Cursors these days... (from the keith faq?)
I suppose I could adjust the blink rate, or even turn the blink off.

But that would just mean: My cursor broods silently, a glowing, impenetrable, implacable monolith on a dark, expansive, empty plain.......|































Sob! Sniffle, Sniffle! And I have to write 50 pages by 9am tomorrow!

Someday, I will really cry again, but it might, unforutnately be a very long time. That is one good thing about having a real girlfriend (though I'm not sure how long she'd stay my girlfriend), is that it is someone to come home and sob to when one feels like sobbing. Unfortunately, not everyone perceives sobbing as expressing a certain kind of joy and a beautifully intense feeling. I cry at movies and at some books, it is true. Its been a while since I've read one of those though. Maybe I should keep some of the saddest literature I can find around, so when I feel like a good cry, I can have a little help. I'm really not terribly fond of group crying clubs, like I've heard of laughing clubs. And re-evaluation counseling does not excite me either, though I expect it depends on the co-counselor's sobbing style (high pitched screams are not my thing). As to who could appreciate my sobbing I don't know. To hug someone, like a mom, and sob. My mom, and Rebecca are the only people so far. Gosh.

Someday.

Something to look forward to has been taken away.

having trouble deciding how to organize site. The docs directory should probably be a listing by title and by date.
purl.oclc.org/net/cleath --> experienceartist.org/cleath/docs
so that in docs there will be a cat/ being/ and writings/ directory to maintain the old permanent links?
The main docs listing will list date, then title, reverse order, like a timeline.
There will also be my early books in there.

All that is left of the j9k site will be a pointer to experienceartist.org and to my resume.

Sounds good.

images can also be a directory in docs.
Experienceartist.org/cleath/docs/meaning.htm
What about, the permanent address of this page is:? keep using purl.oclc.org or use experienceartist.org? We should switch to experienceartist.org. We can use that domain to redirect things wherever we want......................

I am taking an enormous risk that this laptop will continue to function until I am able to back up my entire website. If I work through the weekend, the work I should be backing up will be very large. Actually, much of what I'm doing will fit nicely on a floppy. So, this evening, I will back up what I've done to floppy--should be fine. It's the structure that can't be. It's so much easier to just back up everything instead of remembering the individual files that changed.

Part of my problem with Joanna could be that I have a tendency to express that I can get on fine without someone. E.g., "It's fine if you don't make it there [to capoeira]." This is probably developed from my time with Rebecca. To say I absolutely need someone, almost makes it so. I'm not sure how to do better with this. I can say things like, "I hope to see you!" and leave it at that. When, as occurred later, both Rebecca and I expressed reservations, caution, holding back, that really kills what might have been had both expressed enthusiasm. Expressing the enthusiasm almost makes it come to exist. I will think about this more carefully when it comes up again.

Should cv/ be put in docs directory? Do I want job people looking at this site? for now it is not an issue, perhaps. No, there will always have to be a separate j9k site anyways. cv may as well stay there. From now on, my real resume shall be this work. The resume gets at so little of what means anything to me, whereas, this site is in effect my home, and in a way my self. Bizarre-- perhaps I only think like that when I work on it a lot. But to have it all wiped out? Care must be taken to not have that happen. 100s of years from now will it still exist? Well, I'm doing what feels important to me at the time. There is a community forming in my mind of these thinkers who I read about. This is the thing I'm making, and I don't really need to analyze my particular aesthetic sense/motivation, though in time I perhaps I will.

list of what to do on update of site:
o need to clear/move being, cat, writings out of j9k on ea.freezope
o need to update purl.oclc.org and docs themselves to use experienceartist address.
o being will now be: experienceartist.org/cleath/docs/being

the main body of cleath is journal entries.


One taste, Ken Wilber: p12
Aldous Huxley: "I have almost no ideas about myself and don't like having them--avoid having them--on principle even--and only improvise them, when somebody like you asks to know them...."

What does that mean?

p12:Sybille Bedford, one of Huxley's biographers: "a number of extraordinarily and diversely gifted individuals whose influence... had been tremendous. Their common denominator was an intense desire to acquire, to advance, and to disseminate knowledge--a wish to improve the lot as well as the administration of humankind, an assumption of responsibility--l'intelligence oblige--and a passion, no tamer word will do, for truth."

p13: kw: if there is no beyond-the-given, there is no freedom from the given, and liberation is futile.
Yehudi Menuhin: "only a mind such as Aldous's, cleansed of personal vanity, noticing and recording everything, and exploiting nothing, could achieve so broad a purpose."

p23: kw to Huston [Huston Smith]:On the one hand, everything that happens--every single thing, from the very best to the very worst--is the equal radiance of the Divine. I simply cannot tell the difference between them.
The other side of this Emptiness is that, in addition to (or alongside of) the constant radiance of this moment, all the little moments are all the more themselves, somehow. Sadness is even sadder; happiness is happier; pleasure is more intense; pain hurts even more. I laugh louder and cry harder. Precisely because it is all the purest Emptiness, each relative phenomenon is allowed to be itself even more intensely, because it no longer contends with the Divine, but simply expresses it.

me: I did sob on 2001-09-11, but in the shower (after swimming) and while alone, and also later, at home. probably not very long--though I can't say that for sure.

kw: And on that side of the double-entry--where pain is more painful (because it is Empty), and where sadness is much sadder (because it is Empty)--when I hear that the citadel of dearest Huston is crumbling, I am overcome with a sadness that I do not know how to convey.

me: His letter is a complex--"I'm sorry to hear your health is failing. You have meant more to me than any other man." I don't understand what is going on: Ken's need to qualify his sorryness in the context of his professed philosophy-- though they both know his philosophy. His apology for expressing his love now, instead of waiting until he has died. His apology. I don't like them, because someone somewhere told me to never make excuses. Yet this attitude of mine could lead to woes, and perhaps already has with others who value apologies? I am sorry when I accidentally hurt someone.-- I say I'm sorry, and I mean it.


p45: kw: is publishing other people's letters to him in his journals! I can't remember what the mass media law take on emails was. "Because the letters are an indelible part of my life"

p7 from Grace and Grit: Spirituality and healing in the life and death of Treya Killam Wilber.
Boston, 2000 Shambhala:
So what was so wrong with dying alone, miserable and wretched? Beats dating.

p8 I spent most of the time trying to get used to his shaved head, which was disconcerting to me. I loved the way he looked from the front, but the side view... well, that would take some getting used to.

p8-9 wow. what a story: kw: I remember thinking, Oh great, it's four in the morning and I'm having some sort of wierd mystical experience right in the kitchen of one of my best friends, merely by touching a woman I've never met before. This is not going to be easy to explain....

I could not sleep that night

me:(but Treya did-- I hope this isn't a male thing)

kw: This woman said LIFE more than anybody I had ever known. The most open and transparent face I had ever seen-- God, she was alive!

me: this is an incredible story. This is actually just what I was emailing Joanna about--and KW already has done it here in Grace and Grit: (from my email to Joanna on 2002-03-19):


this is taking too long, heres a short try:
(1) Do you think you'd want to write like I have
written (and am still writing) about how what
we've been doing has affected you(me)/what you
(I)'ve been thinking about with respect to what
we've been doing?
(2) Do you think you could find value on seeing
that on the internet somewhere?

Two big ifs but I would love to present the
unfolding of something like what we've been doing
from both sides, and even a third someday, if
possible... (partly because, I believe the
thoughts on both sides are/will be so off base--
but yet still do mean a whole lot)

If you're remotely interested, I could explain
more later.

It is an attempt to demystify the relationship
process--to open it.

It can't ever be demystified entirely, of course,
but I think that what can be learned from these
rudimentary attempts can make development of
subsequent relationships, for both the writers
and their audience....?

I think this process might help lead to mastery
in creating beauty in relationships,

p14 Grace and Grit:
"I wanted to know about mind, and especially about soul and spirit. I wanted some meaning in the mess of facts I was ingesting."

He left with a masters. So like Gordon, who was studying physical chemistry and did the same. It seems like Gordon would have read Wilber--but he never mentioned him...

p15 Grace and Grit:
I had been practicing Zen meditation for almost ten years; the books were a great success; I was quite content. I was happily married for nine years, then happily divorced (we're friends to this day).

p21 one taste:
People should mate for life, like pigeons, penguins, and Catholics. Except, of course, pigeons never get their marriages miraculously annulled.

p15 Grace and Grit:
ReVISION Journal
The Holographic Paradigm. Karl Pribram, David Bohm, Fritjof Capra, and others.

p16 Grace and Grit:
"not only do I approve, I'm worried about her getting shortchanged."

"All she said was, 'If you didn't ask me, I was going to ask you.'"


Well, we only have Treya's journal, not Ken's--I don't know that he had one.


p25: Grace and Grit: this is an incredible story!
treya: Finding him also made me feel somewhat vindicated ...that follwing my own inner sense of direction, as confused as it may have looked on the surface, really was leading me somewhere.

....

let's work on site.

the essential ken wilber: shambhala 1998 p 172
By "imagining" what you are like before your parents were born, you are forced to drop all identity with your present body and ego.
p175
if it is not present in deep dreamless sleep it is not real.

p183, thoughts on growth/development: Well, the point, of course, is to take up integral practice as the only sound and balanced way to proceed with one's own higher development.

p181: Fascinating...


p184: 20 min/day of centering prayer. Zikr for 30 min; vipassana for 40 min. Yoga exercises 2x/day. tantric visualization. prayer of the heart; counting your breaths for 15 minutes each morning before you get out of bed. just take the first few bites....Treat yourself with real compassion, not idiot compassion, and therefore begin to challenge yourself, engage yourself, push yourself: begin to practice.
begin practice
Without practice, you will never move beyond the phases of belief, faith, and random peak experiences. You will never evolve into plateau experiences, nor from there into permanent adaptation. You will remain, at best, a brief visitor in the territory of your own higher estate, a tourist in your own true Self. [One Taste: December 30]


So, what is left to do? perfection in all quadrants. Do I really want to leave behind my constant nosepicking, farting up a storm, self-decay, obsessing over relationships, lack of flexibility (physical), time sink of technology. What else? I suppose I would like to leave all that behind. Should I replace it with practice? Yes, I will replace it with practice, and I'll probably start by learning from Ken, who does not appear perfect but quite accomplished in many areas I would also like to be accomplished in. It all sounds rather dull.

Yet it also sounds like it could be an incredible adventure. What adventures might be more incredible? I don't want to forget the social realm- not just interpersonal relationships, but attempting to visualize the social realm. I am really excited about where the practice will take me relationship wise. Maybe I will shave my head...no more scalp scratching, though I will have to worry about sunburn. People who are also working in the ways I'm working will be found. But what of the radically different worldviews, such as Joanna's (now don't laugh when I say radically different, just tell me something in as much detail and with as much enthusiasm that is even more different from how I look at things)--? I still need an integrative point, and it seems KW provides a good starting point if not almost the entirety (impossible).

Yoga practice. Stretching Tai Chi Chuan. Movement, and strength. What will my practice be. And what will my intellectual practice be? Or creative practice, I mean--creative in/with thought. Is that necessary? And also work on maintaining the mu (mantra?/koan) through to dreaming and all day. The mind practice that gordon showed me just a bit of. But what of the Oquai way of overeating? (Hope I have that tribe's name right). This is the kind of adventure I seek. Heck, it may not even require a body, so there's no need for a motorized parasail.

I wonder what that that is becoming/or, the always and already will do in this situation.

Why exactly would an individual undertake, begin such practice anyways? Will I maintain the experienceartist label?

I am falling asleep. Perhaps tomorrow I can make some progress on making my website more integral with what is always and already. Furthermore perhaps tomorrow, I shall be one day closer to that wonderful interpersonal relationsip which shall challenge me intensely to expand my horizons and develop my practice... Or is that really how it is supposed to work. Treya saw death on KW's shoulder.

A mysterey. I really do wish to make some progress on site, however. so no more of this. remember about dreaming, though.backup.

.