DBG.RIP

DBG.RIP: Omamori/Memento Mori

  • An Interruption

    Now that I write the title, “An Interruption,” I see there’s something wrong with it. The “interruption” would better, perhaps, be the status quo.

    Yesterday, we had quite a dramatic thunder storm. It rolled through the heatwave we’ve been under, and brought huge drops of rain down for all the plants, creatures, mushrooms…

    In the midst of it, the power went out, and — for a moment — the relentlessness of daily life paused. Mid-way through my morning espresso routine, I went to the window, experienced the world around me for a moment, and realized that — if the power remained out — I could make tea instead.

    It was wonderful to be absorbed in nature, or, maybe more accurately, to be conscious of being absorbed in nature. We’re always absorbed in nature, but we barricade ourselves against it — against nature, itself, but also against the knowledge of that absorption.

    An incredibly rich petrichor — true, earth petrichor, rather than the also wonderful, but perhaps less primal smell of the pavement — washed through the house like the smell of 普洱 aging: warm, wet, complexly resinous; at once so fresh, and so ancient… My very brain felt alive.

    * * *

    Later that day, C. & I went out on the balcony and I did make tea, properly, heating the water over charcoal. We drank S.’s 紅水. I’ve still been experiencing a lot of anxiety around tea, but I think I’m starting to identify some of the internal pressures that produce it.

    Having been well and truly interrupted earlier by the storm, I was able to soften more of my resistance, relax into the process, and allow things to take their own slow course. I must have brewed nine or ten beautiful rounds from that pot of leaves, and at the end of it, felt at such peace with the world. It was wonderful.

  • Individual Contributions To The Collective

    A facet of my perfectionism, or of my trauma, or OCD, or something, is the feeling that my contribution has to be, more or less, everything, everywhere, all at once. I have not see the movie that shares that phrase, so I don’t know if it deals with this feeling at all, but it’s not a feeling I especially like. It’s both very intimidating, and very lonely — no one else is going to help. I have to carry it all.

    Also — and I’m not sure I’d noticed either of these things before — it’s a feeling that denies the value of a contribution that would be unique and specific to me, to my experiences and individual character. Not only does it not honor my individual contribution, it denies to the collective whatever it is I might contribute that *is* uniquely me.

    It’s so hard to overcome this, though! It’s so entrenched. And a step beyond that, perhaps, would be actually working with others on contributions that honor not only each of our individualities, but also our unique combination? Our micro-collective? That seems very hard indeed.

  • Medium-Term Memory?

    I suspect most human brains have either a “medium-term” memory, or some mechanism for moving things quickly back and forth from (perhaps a “recently used” portion of) long-term memory with short-term memory, such that it would approximate a more hard-wired medium-term memory brain part.

  • The World Of Yesterday: Enthusiasms

    Last night, I was listening to Stefan Zweig’s The World Of Yesterday as I was falling asleep (which, to be honest, may or may not be advisable, but I am on Prozac now, so..?). In any case, he was talking about the enthusiasms that would sweep through the classes of students at his childhood school. For his class, the overriding obsession was with all things artistic — musical, theatrical, literary, philosophical — and he was speculating as to whether this — this happenstance, as it could have been any other kind of obsession, as other classes had had — had determined the trajectory of his whole career.

    Immediately, I began wondering the same about myself. The foundations — and, to use an oddly loaded word, the values, really — laid down in and by my peer environment, and by other happenstances, like my childhood travels to Japan with my parents, have had outsized influence on what I, even now, as an adult, see as important, worthy, valuable… or even on what I see at all, rather than miss entirely.

    I — like Zweig — still feel in some deep part of myself that, if I’m not doing something creative, and — moreover — creative for art’s sake, I’m in some way betraying those values. If I were to take a job which, while inherently requiring creativity, was simply channeling that creativity into some corporate canal, that would still, in some way, be unworthy. If I were to create, for example, a foundation that funded or supported the arts, but still was not, myself, “creating” anything, that would be similarly unworthy. (Though, oddly, perhaps less so? Differently so, to be sure…)

    In any case, some of these early-laid foundations formed assumptions I’ve become aware of, even interrogated, even dismissed. Others, though… I’m sure there are intense depths I haven’t even realized it’s optional for me to inhabit.

    I’d like to tag this for further investigation:
    #furtherinvestigation
    #thisthis
    #hadhadhad

    In fact, the whole thing must reflect a similar sort of foundational environment — the values, certainly, but also the privilege? I’m not sure… It seems likely, but his take on the aspirations of his Jewish cohort in Vienna make it sound like, in his understanding at least, intellectual and artistic life was the sort of end-point-aspiration of most everyone, regardless of wealth. That, in fact, wealth was broadly seen as a means to the end of the intellectual and artistic life, as opposed to an end in itself, or even necessarily a prerequisite… I don’t know. 🧐

  • An ‘istorical Record

    I’ve been a bit perplexed, especially in more recent years, by the continued existence of the printed guidebook. Probably there are fewer now, but they are still around! Especially in *very* recent years, everything has been in such rapid and violent flux that it seems almost impossible to print a guidebook that’s still useful by the time it gets to stores. (Wait, stores? ):

    But, it just occurred to me that that very thing — the “point-in-time-ness” of a guidebook — is actually very valuable. It records a reality that may disappear, and that’s wonderful. (Not so much the disappearing of the reality, obviously, but the recording of it.)

    The thought gives me a bit strength to pursue the Portland Coffee Shops book idea… It will certainly not be as durable as that wonderful Portland Parks book, but that could be a feature, rather than a bug. It also gives me slightly more of a feeling of spaciousness in time; even if I include shops that close soon after (or even before) publication, at least there’s a record of them. I want a record of them.

  • C嶡†øl@ Çøƒƒee

    Some stuff.

  • What’s The Opposite…

    What’s the opposite of laughing behind someone’s back? It might not be the only opposite, but one is telling them, “I’m scared, too.”

Got any book recommendations?

So do I!