Fragments

Love is interesting. You fall into it. The metaphor is like a cloud that you irrevocably slide into, and it blurs your perception of everything else except the lighthouse your lover resides in. The cloud is very much alive, though at the beginning the sudden transition from the commonplace to the divinity of love is so shocking that you think otherwise. It begins to move, and you have the continual choice of moving with it and sustaining the blurred perception of objectivity, or letting it pass and with it your lover, who now becomes just another landmark you may transcend yourself towards. Why is it so preferable to stick with this cloud? Because in whittling the importance of the world down to a single soul you thereby have the most expedient method for happiness at your disposal. But denial catches up, and actuality has a twist to it that denial cannot hold down.

I listen to Elliott Smith; people ask me why, in the sense of what precisely makes him so special. I tell them: his lyrics reflect the coldness of solitude, the pangs of love, the torment of addiction, and these three things, I say, summarize rather articulately the entire spectrum of human suffering, the entire path we must walk to become ourselves.

I resign myself from society; a few wonder, a few others assume bad intentions. I cannot be quick to blame them; everything different carries the womb of possible crookedness, and for precisely this reason I hold a shallow contempt for people for reducing me to the negative end of this dialectic. I resign myself from society not to hold a secret life, but for the simple preference of my solitude. Why solitude? Because it allows the echo of my thoughts to reach me, and I have no way -- no-one has a way -- of listening to myself in the pureness of actuality. The echo exists by virtue of the elongated walls of the mind; religiously qualified, I call these walls: conscience. Conscience is a secular way of saying something shockingly explicit: God. To refuse solitude is to refuse to listen to God; and we are not called to absolute solitude, for this is impossible by virtue of doing the work we are called to, but there is nothing more dangerous for the soul than neglecting the art of being alone -- and the true artist is the one that Merton hypothesized: the one who knows how to be alone in the crowd.

About preconceptions. They are the playing cards of denial. They prohibit the universe from flooding one's consciousness. Why? Because the individual who practices this witchcraft considers human beings, whether in a limited sense or not, land that must be conquered. They must fit as you see them, or they cannot be tolerated; therefore they are far from human beings; "you" is not instrumental, but intrinsic.

Depression is the somatological result of despair; despair's signpost is the dissonance that stems from a refusal to action; action -- conscious action, where you are the actor -- is based in an ideal. This ideal is either transitory, or eternal; the former is nihilism in relation to the latter, the latter is madness in relation to the former. This eternal ideal is based in the Eternal -- which is to say, God. The ideal itself is the good for the individual, and purity of heart is to will only this (Kierkegaard). What is sin? A refusal to will this one thing, not a refusal to stand within the boundaries of absolutes: "...to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin." (James 4:17, NASB) -- for there are no absolutes. Abraham has proven this. What would seem an absolute in "thou shalt not murder" was transcended by virtue of a commandment of God; for him not to have willed murder would have been, in that case, sin; he knew the right thing to do, and did it. Therefore his faith was justified -- in planning a murder. Swallow this whole and it will cut you. And so it is: there is a relative calling for every individual with a will to be an individual. We are called to movement. "Our nature resides in movement; absolute stillness is death." (Pascal)

What does it mean to be an individual? It means to stand against the external by virtue of flowing with the internal; conversely, to stand against the internal -- God -- is to flow with the external; and if a man's life is found within -- the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:28) -- it is only destruction to consume the bread of the external. This means: being alone, understood psychically, not physically; it means, in short, detaching yourself from your immediate surroundings, and continually responding to the whispers of your conscience. It means being misunderstood. It means having your motives falsely taken for evil. It means suffering, sadness; and yet "when a face is sad a heart may be happy" (Ecclesiastes 7:3).

What is weakness? A refusal to be oneself. What is strength? A willingness to be oneself. What is true happiness? The continuity of movement that resides in willing to be oneself.

Power. It is the narcotic-substitute for living authentically; it is the happiness that exists fleetingly. With power one seeks attention; attention is the demand made by lovelessness. With power one seeks to control the universe; more: in a very real sense make the universe an extension of one's self. It is thus conditional on the world; hence power is a form of weakness. It cannot exist but as a parasite, and when it has nothing to consume it will often create its own reality; thus many schizophrenics are paradigmatically power-hungry. Again, power looks outward; thus the individual with a hunger for power is one you can observe who always sacrifices the authenticity of the moment for a possible advantage in futurity in gaining something through the existence of others. The power-hungry are history's worst communicators.

"It is a misfortune," thought Augusto, "that we need the services of things and have to make use of them. All beauty is marred by use, if not destroyed. The noblest function of things is that of being contemplated. How beautiful is an orange before dinner! In heaven all this will be changed. There our function will be reduced, rather it will be broadened into that of contemplating God and all things in him. Here, in this wretched life, we think only of putting God to use; we try to open him as we do an umbrella, in order that he may protect us from all sorts of evils." -- Miguel de Unamuno, Mist

The concept of treasure: to remain hidden. If all saw the complete unnerving beauty of a girl a certain boy held dear, would she not lose value in his eyes? She would be reduced to the commonplace; the commonplace is the antithesis to everything valuable. Shame: keeping sacred what is hidden from the outer world that does not understand. Is shame not then -- necessary; is it not also -- good?