Going Alone

A Stoic theory of life adventure

STOIC POETRY | The beginning of Going Alone

Aug 28, 2020
6 min

STOIC POETRY | The beginning of Going Alone

I remember when I first thought up the idea of Going Alone. My family and I were living then in Japan, and I was making YouTube videos for the Walking in Japan and Abandoned Japan series. I was active at that time on social media, and among the questions I answered from viewers were periodic requests from people who planned to visit Japan, and who asked if they could join me on an adventure in the mountains. Such arrangements only rarely worked out, as the logistics of visiti

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STOIC POETRY | To walk alone among ghosts

Aug 26, 2020
3 min

STOIC POETRY | To walk alone among ghosts

I was never very afraid of the dark, or the things which come out after the sun goes down, to wander, and slither, and creep, and fly across and over the darkened landscape around me—hunting prey with wide eyes and snuffling noses and darting tongues and feelers probing for scent and a lead to the kill. Though I sometimes must take a deep breath before I go out alone among them, I can always nevertheless set out into the dark by myself, without a light, or a map, or a compass

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STOIC POETRY | The upward ground

Aug 15, 2020
2 min

STOIC POETRY | The upward ground

"...and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward!" -Henry David Thoreau I accept life as hard. I accept the need to rise early. I accept my difficult work. I accept circumstance which are hard for the fact of change. And I accept my things must break, and that I am broken, too— And though I wish none of these for their own sake, and I desire no such life for another, I accept this way to go, and these facts of being—and maybe much worse—

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STOIC POETRY | The fact that we went—alone

Aug 12, 2020
2 min

STOIC POETRY | The fact that we went—alone

I began my life as a young adult finding things along the way. I went out from the circumstance I knew into life which was not yet mine, and made it mine. As so, I explored for some years along distant roads and over mountains and even under the sea. There are seeds to find Out there, Where life is strange Find them, For a lifetime of bounty And those places where I went did not become my own, though I remember them like photos I did never take. It was instead the going to su

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STOIC POETRY | When our finding days are done

Aug 11, 2020
3 min

STOIC POETRY | When our finding days are done

Before I was alive I'm pretty sure I simply did not exist. Oh sure, the stuff of which I am made was around, and the energy which courses through me was somewhere here—but, I wasn't. The thing which is me did not exist. The composite collection of atoms and energy which thus assembled and was given my name was never anywhere together before my conception and what was the start of a long chain of chemical reactions leading to now; a series of cellular additions—the lives and d

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STOIC POETRY | Emily draws The Path of Wildness

Aug 9, 2020
1 min

STOIC POETRY | Emily draws The Path of Wildness

Emily has produced another drawing for the book. This is an image of The Path of Wildness, which begins and ends nowhere, and is the setting out point and destination for every difficult life endeavor; it is the courage required to begin something new and carry it through to wherever life leads, and the inclination to follow our instinct rather than become mired in indecision, even if instinct leads us over the edge of a cliff. I think she has captured a visual impression of

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STOIC POETRY | A brief time to truly live

Aug 5, 2020
3 min

STOIC POETRY | A brief time to truly live

The Great Indifference exists wherever we are not distracted by ourselves. It is the substance of the universe that isn't—not empty space, but space devoid of us, or the projections we make of ourselves onto a universe that is mostly not us. But not just us, but what is alive, and living, or which once did live—as even a corpse suggests life—or the things we've made and evidently utilized to our end. Anywhere life can be detected in some way, so in that place the Indifference

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STOIC POETRY | BOOK READING - Going Alone - The Path of Wildness

Jun 6, 2020
1 min

STOIC POETRY | BOOK READING - Going Alone - The Path of Wildness

The Path of Wildness is easy to find... It is the course of a stream, and a beast's track through the woods; leaves blown in the wind, and the direction of our first inclination. I've trekked this Path so many times now in my life that the dark and shadowy places are become less fearful than familiar, less ominous than curious, and always the way I know I must go should I desire more of life than merely living. My name is Kurt Bell. You can learn more about The Good Life in m

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STOIC POETRY | Desert wildfire - BMW R 1150 Adventure motovlog

Jun 1, 2020
1 min

STOIC POETRY | Desert wildfire - BMW R 1150 Adventure motovlog

I encountered this desert wildfire two weeks back while en route to Siberia ghost town. The fire was moving fast across the desert scrub, consuming dry brush and grass and urged on by a powerful and steady east wind. #GoingAlone My name is Kurt Bell. You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone. Be safe... But not too safe. #Adventure #Solitude #Wildness #Death #GoingAlone #TheGoodLife #softypapa

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STOIC POETRY | BOOK READING - Going Alone - The Anxiety Hike

May 31, 2020
1 min

STOIC POETRY | BOOK READING - Going Alone - The Anxiety Hike

This is my May, 2020 book reading of Going Alone. For this month, I chose to read select portions of the chapter titled The Anxiety Hike, which is the centerpiece of adventure within the book upon which the rest of the story builds. This chapter is my attempt to take the reader through the landscape of the Deep-Water Wilderness, in search of a sighting of The Great Indifference. My name is Kurt Bell. You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone. Be safe... Bu

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STOIC POETRY | The blessing of mortality's embrace

May 30, 2020
1 min

STOIC POETRY | The blessing of mortality's embrace

An impressive thing about deserts is the honesty they demand of our age, our health, and our constitution. The desert will not countenance a lie, no matter how well we believe it, or how dearly we wish it were true. Go alone to the desert only for truth, or stay home with your settled sense and certitude and live to the end of your days with the story you dream is real. My name is Kurt Bell. You can learn more about The Good Life in my book Going Alone. Be safe... But not too

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STOIC POETRY | Shadow Dividend: The value of breaking our life

Dec 30, 2019
3 min

STOIC POETRY | Shadow Dividend: The value of breaking our life

Sometimes the best benefit of change is what we lose rather than what we gain.

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STOIC POETRY | November desert night hike

Nov 23, 2019
3 min

STOIC POETRY | November desert night hike

November 23 2019 Dear Eric, The very first principle I identified for The Good Life is something call The Path of Wildness. I happened upon this idea while living in Japan and exploring alone in the deep and empty mountainous wilderness of the Japan Southern Alps. Hiking far off-trail and without maps or compass I'd sometimes find myself confused about which way to go... It was then that I'd enlist my reason to assemble the facts of my circumstance: the appearance of the land

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STOIC POETRY | The places I've never been

Nov 2, 2019
1 min

STOIC POETRY | The places I've never been

October 31, 2019 Dear Eric, It's a neat trick to neither lament nor attempt to remember the lives we did not live. For we all walk strange roads in our minds sometimes when our current path becomes rough or confused. It is tempting to reflect on the ways we could have gone instead of becoming now so seemingly lost. But what mastery to reflect little or not at all on imagined lives, no more than to be remembered as a cautionary tale to inform reason ahead of our future way. I

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STOIC POETRY | The Path of Wildness

Oct 20, 2019
4 min

STOIC POETRY | The Path of Wildness

October 20, 2019 Dear Eric, I've an opportunity to exercise what is perhaps my earliest principle - The Path of Wildness: The Path of Wildness is easy to find The course of a stream Leaves blown in the wind A beast's track through the brush And the direction of our first inclination In particular, I've been offered a chance of new work in a new city. I know this routine well, it means a new life; or rather, a new chapter in my one and only life. Yumiko - my wife - knows this

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STOIC POETRY | Haunting a past life

Oct 15, 2019
3 min

STOIC POETRY | Haunting a past life

October 15, 2019 Dear Yumiko, Without costumes, and two weeks too soon, we haunted together yesterday the scene and setting of one of our past lives; a place we each once took for granted, or even gave little or no thought to, though it was the setting of our home and our lives then; a pass-through city where we lived a few years in pursuit of another life; a younger life, a less deliberate life of immediacy and excess and searching. We left that place together two-decades ba

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STOIC POETRY | Thinking chicken

Oct 14, 2019
2 min

STOIC POETRY | Thinking chicken

October 14, 2019 Dear Eric, What did you wonder over as you walked quietly to your death? I like to imagine you thought of the egg-laying hen which lived out back of your home in Eureka. Joe Bob was gone, and you knew you'd see him soon... All the people in your life were settled with the truth - as unsettling as it was - and you needn't worry any more about us. Your estate... What of it? Not even a thought. But that chicken out back in your yard...the egg-laying hen you both

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STOIC POETRY | A job well done

Oct 11, 2019
2 min

STOIC POETRY | A job well done

October 11, 2019 Dear Eric, I think we all desire to do well. And by this I mean to not just get by, but to complete our work to the level of satisfaction of a job well done. Only, so often we can't see or remember this aim for the distraction and folly of intemperate living. We get lost along a meandering pathway of unworthy answered emotions; feelings which we hear and hastily hearken to like breadcrumbs carelessly followed into a dark wood; followed and consumed one-by-one

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STOIC POETRY | A house called Stoic

Oct 9, 2019
2 min

STOIC POETRY | A house called Stoic

October 9, 2019 Dear Eric, My home was found at last with a school and way called Stoic. You never knew this journey, I think. We both missed it back then. What a difference this thinking and living may have made. The terms of Temperance, Fortitude, Limits, Apathy and Indifference may alone have saved your life. I'm sorely tempted to slip my humble book under the door of the house called Stoic. I wonder if it'll fit through so gaping a crack? This isn't because my story is so

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STOIC POETRY | Be safe... But not too safe

Oct 8, 2019
3 min

STOIC POETRY | Be safe... But not too safe

October 8, 2019 Dear Eric, And what of the fearful things of this world...? You knew some of these, and yet you fell at the first major encounter of life's deeper danger, and, dare I say, terror. Yes, it must have been a terror to you, though I know you put on a strong face. But yet, you fell. And I know that you were likely stronger than I was then, and that I too might have fallen just the same. I too will fall. And I too do fear. And I will also likely know real terror bef

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