Positivity!
Ugh.
So part of the big issue is that I find mindfulness shit, positivity, good-vibe talk a raft of utter nonsense. The mind rebels. That's just a natural reaction, like a hedgehog curling up into a ball.
Happiness is real. Joy, jouissance, contentment--though transitory, real. The world is certainly full of vibrations, some pleasant, some painful. That other stuff up there makes no sense at all, and even the stuff in the first part of the paragraph is often mishandled, misrepresented, and used as a bludgeon.
But who cares! You gotta try to look on the bright side, because that's where the light is, etc.
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Aku. Soku. Zan.
Despair is an evil. That, if nothing else about evil, is true.
But in having overcome it, there is the greatest triumph in life, which would not be without that which had to be vanquished. For hope is meaningless without despair. Faith is nothing without the darkness that only faith can lighten.
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We must seek relief in these paradoxes, rather than allow ourselves to be tormented.
As they say, the only way out is through.
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Another part ofthe big issue is that I can see where my relating to the world went wrong, and how the dysfunction is operating on my spirit to make me ill, and the way my mind contributes to and exacerbates the problem, because it is without guidance, and there is nothing more dangerous to itself than a machine without guidance or whose guidance is compromised.
In short, I am struggling to be in the world as-it-is, strangled as I am by my attachments to the world as I want it. A beautiful but nonexistent phantasy, which my current transfixation in an I-I mode of relating with the world serves only to pain and paralyze me, preventing me from relating with the You of the infinite, the I-You relation which is being-in-the-world and being-with-the-world.
That Martin Buber has some useful thoughts, boy, I tell ya. I'm out here trying, Marty.
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Why not, as I sometimes say. Since I bring it up, these things I'm reading, perhaps we are long overdue for a list of books I have read. It's been a long time, but I have played a HUGE amount of videos game instead of reading consistently, so perhaps it won't be all that onerous.
You will notice an increase in Star Wars books. Watching Star Wars, all the Star Wars, every bit of Star Wars I can look at, has also taken up a lot of time. The books are relatively recently read; I've been relying on the electronic hearth quite a lot, as I say.
Anyhow. As typical, presented in no particular order.
Star Wars: [Alphabet Squadron, by Alex Freed; Thrawn Ascendancy (Book I: Chaos Rising), by Timothy Zahn; Phasma, by Delilah S. Dawson; new] [Young Jedi Knights: Heirs of the Force; Shadow Academy; The Lost Ones; Lightsabers; Jedi Under Siege; by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta (reread)]
Peanuts: As You Like it, Charlie Brown; Peanuts 2000; Play Ball, Snoopy!; What Makes You Think You're Happy?; The Wonderful World of Peanuts; Peanuts Treasury; Peanuts I: 1952-1955; by Charles M. Schulz (reread)
Calvin and Hobbes: Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons; Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat; There's Treasure Everywhere; The Complete Calvin and Hobbes Book Two; by Bill Watterson (reread)
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, by Kate Beaton
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
I and Thou, by Martin Buber, translated and introduced by Walter Kaufmann
Shadow Life, written by Hiromi Goto, drawn by Ann Xiu
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It can be assumed that if I mentioned a book I've forgotten to list here, I finished it. Also I read a bunch of 19th century short stories by various peeps I don't feel the need to list out. Also large chunks out of various textbooks.
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Ok. Better. We're struggling towards it. We're approaching some kind of thing here. We are alive, and we are crawling towards Jerusalem.
--JL
