Going Alone

I walk a lot. Lately, I’ve begun using this activity as an opportunity to exercise improved control over both my body and mind. With the body, I’m taking more deliberate steps, and maintaining improved control – oversight might be a better word – over their placement and motion. When walking the dog, I allow him more leadership – especially on my days off when I’ve nowhere in particular to go – which provides a sort of training and practice for me of giving over control to th

My dead muse is gone… The only words which remain now are my own. These thoughts are familiar…though they come with that same labored effort I’ve known since youth…like pulling a heavy root from hard soil. It was easier when my dead muse led the way, allowing me to follow behind as she stepped easily through abstraction, pointing the way towards silent impressions I cannot muster alone by way of my dull pedestrian life. I expect a trip back to the desert will secure our reuni

Is it possible my dead muse has died? Is that even feasible? If not truly dead, she certainly seems less present. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been so long from her dead home out there in the desert? Maybe the spell has simply worn offf? She can’t utterly be gone, as I hear her faint whisper now as I type these words; like a distant cold wind across a skeleton landscape of stones and sand; hushed and muffled; indifferent and absolute. Learn more about my personal philosophy The

Where will you set up house? Though the body must reside in some shelter of a sort to keep it safe and warm, the mind needs only space and liberty sufficient to exercise its native capabilities and natural inclination. These places are not incompatible; though an excess of the former may indeed distract from the latter; while too much of the latter may cause disconnect from those who share our former. Learn more about my personal philosophy The Good Life Visit my main YouTube

From papa to Emily: As you embark on your adult life you’ll find need of principals and ethics to guide you. From your mother you’ve received the fact of being Japanese, which identity is self-contained with a quite complete system of morals and a very mature world view. You’re very fortunate to have this; though keep in mind that this is a highly specialized system which may not always fit outside the rarefied cultural atmosphere of Japan. From me you get The Good Life, whi

From papa to Emily: You are still young, and perhaps enjoying greatly the thrilling fury and turmoil of a mind just coming to grips with the tantalizing interests and distractions of adult life. However, like any loud and ruckus event, you may eventually tire of the ceaseless demands of your attention, and the exhausting fact of attendance to so many life “necessities.” When that day comes, do not seek simply to escape your cares by lessening your burden or changing your cir

How much is enough? For myself, it is enough to stop asking this question. For if my ethics are sound, my reason keen, and my intent judicious, then there will always be just enough of every endeavor. So instead of asking after the quantity of things, I should instead seek after their quality. How sound today my ethics? How keen my reason? How judicious my intent? Let me then tune my social machinations to run silent, efficient and true, satisfied that whatever product is the

It’s been over a month now since my dead muse followed me back from the desert. She’s always right here whenever my mind falls away from the fore. She lurks like a shadow and a memory, though her cold presence is now devoid of the fearful substance I remember of our first encounter. How my breath was taken away at that first sight at the edge of the Volcano Wilderness. I wonder if she saw me then too? Did she know me before? I certainly never knew anything prior so awful in t

From papa to Emily: Your mind is on a track. There’s actually very little leeway between birth and death. The course is strikingly simple, though we don’t notice due to our one chance at living, and the fact that our perspective biases us to exaggerate what little difference there really is between one life and the next, and one generation to the next. Gender plays a role in the course we must live, as does age, though these aren’t very popular topics to discuss. But keep th

From papa to Emily: Make your great life adventure early in life, when you’ve both everything and nothing to lose. The gamble then is more secure in your favor, the likelihood of success augmented by your ignorance and inability to recognize or assess risk. You’ll succeed even if the adventure kills you. Just don’t get pregnant, and in so doing assume your own risk onto the life of an innocent another. Save that wondrous adventure for later, when you’ve had your fill of yours

The human project is the occupation of attention until we’ve run out of time, death arrives, and we’re no longer forced to perceive. Indifference is the thing we do not want. For if we quiet our mind enough, something which isn’t really there becomes apparent. And if we separate ourselves far enough from our fellows, there it isn’t again. To apprehend this startling absence, through dead landscape or still mind, is like sensing a ghost which isn’t real; a frightening paradox

From papa to Emily: The edge of your universe isn’t far. You were there that day you led me back across the empty black desert. Did you know you were so far then?You’d certainly have realized if you’d gone alone; though the thought of you by yourself in that place scares me. You can get there elsewhere, and without leaving home, or being alone; though that’s a neat trick your dad’s never figured out, and the reason I put on boots and wear a hat. Why go to the edge of the univ

Society bears down with a crushing weight of responsibility, while the wild bears down with the weight of necessity. The consequence of failure in the first circumstance may be destitution and disgrace, while failure in the second punishes with extinction and death. Going alone then into the wild relieves for a moment the first and lesser burden, in exchange for the thrill and challenge of a more base and primal threat. When we return from wild places alive, and mostly intact

Our genetic inertia propels us towards ends we rarely consider: sex, love, marriage and even Jesus proclaim our mute acceptance of responsibility to the survival of our species. Our blind allegiance binds this mandate to action. The veil may never rise for us, though the ones to whom we may one day become God should certainly pity our narrow vision, and quite constrained understanding. Learn more about my personal philosophy The Good Life Visit my main YouTube channel Find me

From papa to Emily: What should I tell my child on the use of time? Should I caution her simply to be mindful of its passing? To measure each moment with her attentions, and keep busy with the application of sober utility? Should I recommend foresight towards the life she may want to live? If so, how do I caution her not to reside too long in the fiction of what might be; or against setting up house in the past; or living as a ghost within the life of another? I must indeed

My tribe are those who currently stand among brambles, wondering how they got there, bleeding a bit from the thorns, observing no trail back. Perhaps a book like Walden sent them this way; though by now they’ve far less use of a guide. Indeed, what wilderness is this that requires a guide; when every direction is in, and there’s now far too few rations for retreat. My tribe will know this place, though none of them are about. They’ll find me here long after I’m dead. I’ll lea

My poverty cannot withstand the price of so much good fortune. Learn more about my personal philosophy The Good Life Visit my main YouTube channel Find me elsewhere Send me a message From the original archive First published on softypapa.wordpress.com on March 15, 2017. Original text, photograph, and links preserved. View the original WordPress post

How might I become impervious to well-being, develop an immunity to good fortune, and make the good life a reality despite every blessing. Learn more about my personal philosophy The Good Life Visit my main YouTube channel Find me elsewhere Send me a message From the original archive First published on softypapa.wordpress.com on March 14, 2017. Original text, photograph, and links preserved. View the original WordPress post

I was asked today by a friend about my thoughts on the topic of worthwhile employ. Should the best occupation yield leisure and option to my heirs? Provide a catapult and catalyst to the next generation’s situation and state? At the time I was asked I thought such an aim both worthy and admirable. But upon some reflection I see now little good in laying up my days against the improvement of my heirs. For if the better aim of virtue is a mature capacity of wisdom, enlivened wi

We awake! Our fresh senses alive and new and electric with perception. At once we begin our locomotion; stepping and grabbing and speaking. We’re never lost, not for a moment, though our minds may despair of purpose or meaning or direction or worthy end. Indeed a deep mandate has the reins. A singular, worthy end. There’s but one direction, one meaning that really matters, a consolidated purpose, driving and quite distinct. All artifact speaks to this one end. All else is abs