Getting Satisfaction

I have a book, music, and enough light to read by; I am satisfied.

Today became long with no more hours than the norm. I can't say it makes much sense. Likely tomorrow evening, after a good deal of running about, I'll sit down at Macy's and write one or two entries about my travels. The demands of the last few days--unpacking, furnishing, cleaning, purchasing odds and ends, getting lost and finding my way, looking for work, etc.--have taken a toll. That toll has been somewhat alleviated by new acquaintances and their fine company, and baking this morning helped, but still more needs doing.

Now, though, I am off to bed. I leave you with this:

The cat here on earth
Modern totem
And intermittently decorative
-a haiku from Paloma

Thank you Muriel Barbery for writing The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

{No post this evening due to making friends with the neighbors downstairs. Apologies for the delay, which would happen anyway because I don't have internet access yet.}

Address! Paella! Baking (soon)!

I have an apartment! That also mean that I have an address! That means you can send me things!

Caleb A Phillips
3835 S. Yaqui St. #2C
Flagstaff, AZ 86001

Some individuals may get this specially sent to them as per their request. Also, I have a booklet of fold-up letters that I plan on writing once I figure out where the mailbox near my place is.

If I can sneak my way onto someone's wi-fi, I'll be posting something about my travels tonight. In the meanwhile, I am trying to put together something like an application for jobs I actually want, or--barring that--tolerate and will allow me to pay the bills.

Finally, yesterday afternoon I had people over who helped me move in, then ate the paella I made having learned the method from Dustin the day before. New acquaintances include (friends seems like a rushed term, even though I fed them and they approved, also I am not posting last nights out of some weird sense of discretion): Miss Julia J. who is a fellow student in my program, Mr Eric (guest and sweetheart of Miss Julia), Mr Aaron E., and Miss Cori C. with her sweetheart whose name I have at the moment misplaced (which is unfortunate since we geeked out over both Linux and baking). They were wonderful guests and enjoyed the vegetarian paella! I doubt the place would have felt all that much like a place to live had I not so quickly hosted them. Also in order to make the place feel more livable, I plan on baking very soon, as a starter tonight and bread tomorrow.

Anyway, the place is still in pieces, but is definitely coming together. Maybe some photos...

[Posted from Macy's.]

Partial Transitions

So, after nigh on a week of driving, hiking, and camping--with a brief hotel stay in Santa Fe--my brother and I made it to Flagstaff. On the way, we camped in a public park in Tribune, Kansas; Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado (followed by Santa Fe); and then two nights in Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. We planned on staying at Comanche State Prairie Reserve (or something like that) in Southeast Colorado the first night, but didn't make it there in time. As I told my brother Friday night, had I told myself how much I would enjoy the trip, I would not have believed myself. Though it is true, it may be in part due to how I hedge my bets. Either way, it was pretty spectacular. Now I have some adequate camping gear to use in the beautiful areas around Flagstaff.

This whole trip I have been distracted or contemplating the primal elements of earth, fire, wind, and water. Lines from the Mountains and Waters Sutra have haunted me. Here is an excerpt and a link:

Some beings see water as a jeweled ornament, but they do not regard jeweled ornaments as water. What in the human realm corresponds to their water? We only see their jeweled ornaments as water. Some beings see water as wondrous blossoms, but they do not use blossoms as water. Hungry ghosts see water as raging fire or pus and blood. Dragons see water as a palace or a pavilion. Some beings see water as the seven treasures or a wish-granting jewel. Some beings see water as a forest or a wall. Some see it as the Dharma nature of pure liberation, the true human body, or as the form of body and essence of mind. Human beings see water as water. Water is seen as dead or alive depending on causes and conditions. Thus the views of all beings are not the same. You should question this matter now.

I have witnessed so many instances of wood being water, earth being fire or water, water being fire, and so on. At first, it felt like a pleasant meditation, but the more it occurred the more I felt drawn to the challenge of "Dragons [that] see water as a palace or a pavilion." In a way, though, challenge is completely inappropriate a term; what it felt more accurately was simply seeing that these were not distinct things.

Over the next few days, I plan on writing brief essays about my stay in each place, the recollections of those places, and reflections on my journal entries I made. The exploration, confusion, excitement, joy, distress, doubt, and accomplishment I felt were often with me. I will post photographs with those posts when the time comes. At the moment, I have more housekeeping to accomplish and wish to leave you with this:


Sunset, Petrified Forest, 12 August 2010

Now when dragons and fish see water as a palace, it is just like human beings seeing a palace. They do not think it flows. If an outsider tells them, "What you see as a palace is running water," the dragons and fish will be astonished, just as we are when we hear the words, "Mountains flow." Nevertheless, there maybe some dragons and fish who understand that the columns and pillars of palaces and pavilions are flowing water. You should reflect and consider the meaning of this. If you do not learn to be free from your superficial views, you will not be free from the body and mind of an ordinary person. Then you will not understand the land of Buddha ancestors, or even the land or the palace of ordinary people. Now human beings well know as water what is in the ocean and what is in the river, but they do not know what dragons and fish see as water and use as water. Do not foolishly suppose that what we see as water is used as water by all other beings. Do not foolishly suppose that what we see as water is used as water by all other beings. You who study with Buddhas should not be limited to human views when you are studying water. You should study how you view the water used by Buddha ancestors. You should study whether there is water or no water in the house of Buddha ancestors.

~Mountains and Waters Sutra, Eihei Dogen, part 16

I Don't Think I Should Be Sorry

Happy Birthday Walkencore
Here is the playlist for your birthday mix:
I Don't Think I Should Be Sorry
1. Bambi by Tokyo Police Club
2. 1901 by Phoenix
3. Well Now by Jesse Rose
4. Bad Reputation by Joan Jett
5. Guilt by The Long Blondes
6. Tonight's Today by Jack Penate (which has a tilde over the "n")
7. Boys Don't Cry by The Cure
8. Crystalised by The xx
9. Got My Dream (Messengers Remix) by J.Period & K'NAAN
10. Kilometer (A-Trak Main) by Sebastien Tellier
11. My Love (Diplo Remix) Justin Timberlake
12. Fall Hard by The Shout Out Louds
13. Roll Up Your Sleeves by We Were Promised Jetpacks
14. Bloodbuzz Ohio by The National
15. The Prowl by Dan Auerbach
16. Jungles by Holy Fuck
17. Song With A Mission by The Sounds
18. What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had To Go This Way) by Wolf Parade
19. Knife/Heartbeats (Mash Up by PARRKA) by Grizzly Bear/The Knife
20. Use Somebody (Kings of Leon Cover) by Bat For Lashes

Your party was wonderful. Many happy 24ths.

Also, I leave tomorrow morning for Flagstaff. My brother and I are spending days camping on the way. Expect sparse Tumblr updates from my phone and some reflections following. I move into the apartment in Flagstaff a week from today. Wish me luck.

Tumbling & Building

I feel like I ought to write again in order to prevent the last post from staying at the top for too long. I don't disagree with it or dislike it, but I feel like it may give a false representation of the weblog as a whole. As to where to go from here, well, that gets a little messy.

Part of the reason I have not been posting is because the concerns of moving to Flagstaff, AZ have been high priority and thoroughly distracting. I have gone days and likely weeks without looking at my computer, which has its perks, but also means I haven't been writing. I am not one who has an easy time moving. I feel only lightly attached to most to my goods--clothing, computer, books, notebooks, phone, movies--but when it comes to ruling out some for travel, I am pretty bad at it. I can live out of a backpack for weeks on end--which I manage to do in wintertime travels--and have pared down my toiletries to the minimum. This endeavor to move to Flagstaff comes with different expectations. I want to build a place for myself there, a place to welcome others into and to share some of those artifacts of myself with others.

When I consider a place to dwell--not just inhabit or live in, but to dwell--it is a place with those books and films that I represent or partially embody something about myself. When I lend someone The Fall or Labyrinths or Swamp Thing Volume 1, I simultaneously prepare myself for the conversations concerning those items. The Fall describes these beautiful dreamworld locales, places that actually do exist, but take on their own surreal, brilliant qualities once you start telling yourself the story of having been to those places; I feel that I have shared in the filming locations in The Fall in my own way. Labyrinths has, more so than religious and nonfiction philosophical texts, challenged my conception of the world, the narrative that describes the world to myself; Jorge Luis Borges isn't just telling stories to elucidate and entertain, but to suggest an alternative position of oneself in the world. As for Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, it marks part of my life adjacent to when I started reading Borges as well as my earnest introduction to comics, but more seriously forced me to consider how we tell stories, not just in text and images, but in film, gaming, and song.

(Spoiler Alert for Ghostworld ahead.) A very large part of me wants to either limit the things I bring or cut them out altogether. In Daniel Clowes Ghostworld, Enid dreams of leaving home with nothing but a valise of clothes and a hat. The plot eventually drives her--more explicitly in the film than in the graphic novel--to make just such a move, but her own will is exercised out of desperation and not out of willful independence. In Sleepwalk and Other Stories, Adrian Tomine also describes a character retrospecting on her move to a new place and her attempt to recreate herself, to be someone new but she does not deny herself her idiosyncratic loves (such as an erotic attachment to the smell of old books) that become painful neuroses following a split romance. If one is to allow these stories to lean on one another, the suggestion is that Enid will remain Enid wherever her bus takes her, inexcusably. The aspiration remains, the way that I read it anyway, that she will be herself in a more unabashed way, that being herself will not be a splinter in her life elsewhere. (Of course, Clowes and Tomine, if either were to write the story, would likely deny their protagonists just such an opportunity for successful personal recreation.)

Whether it was going off to school or coming back from it, or the two academic trips abroad, I took the opportunity to be myself in a different way. From this vantage, I can't say that I was more or less myself than before, only that I was myself in distinct ways. Imagine seeing the sun from Earth; it has its comfortable size, brilliant but not awful hue, the warm but not usually offensive rays. Now, consider the view from another planet in the solar system. From Mercury, the sun is immense and blinding, ruthless and unkind, dominating the sky in Mercury's slow revolution. From the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, the sun is a bright but cold star in the sky, the sky itself claimed by the mother planets just an astronomical skip away; it is a minor but clearly present character in the sky, something like a social acquaintance rather than a parent. From the far reaches of the solar system, the sun is just an especially bright star in the sky, similar to Mars or Venus as seen from Earth, its light and heat so dissipated as to be negligible.

In each case, one still sees the same sun, the star that gives heat, light, and life to our small blue orb. Nevertheless, one cannot help but feel the character of that nuclear furnace manifests itself distinctly from each point of view. From these extreme perspectives, the differences can be profound, even disturbing. Rarely do we view our acquaintances, neighbors, friends, and family from such radically diverse locations, but the metaphor holds; just because someone describes him/herself differently does not mean that the person is acting dishonestly to him/herself. In those occasions when someone is in close, viewing the flaws, fractures and gems of who we are, we may be able to understand that diversity of personality, that flexibility of persona infinitely more than we can from the usual familiar or familial distances.

Generally speaking, I have very little difficulty welcoming people closer to my orbit. I find excitement and joy with that tight revolution around another person, romantic or amiable. Though they are not me, the artifacts I take with me are stepping stones, asteroids, signposts to guide new people closer to me. The process is frustrating and mildly dangerous, the way littered with misplaced books and films, a distraught face and tightened heart, a wasted night or tardy date. Those risks need not toughen the skin or line the face when they can allow us closer to ourselves, allow us to appreciate the potency of temperament, passion, confusion, uncertainty. I collect the artifacts of myself so that when I enter a new place I can enter it with the notion of, "the more you have, the more you have to give away."

Darkness & Lightning

It smells of youth, mischief, sweat, and sex outside. Lightning flashes in all directions but the south, gathering or rallying in great sonorous blasts, like long brass trumpets. Yesterday the winds were such that the smell of shit came in and, though it hasn't exactly vanished, has dissipated or been outperformed by new competitors. Friends of ne'er-do-well neighbors have parked poorly by the corner, tempting each turning vehicle to leave its mark on a bumper or rear, driver's side door.

Something about tonight--rumbling thunder, pungent odors, nigh oppressive humidity, the shear electricity--rings inarguably of power, sexuality, beastliness. It feels like a night for monsters and demons, for an assault on the senses, on bodies. Competitive sports, especially brutal ones, come to mind. The personal aroma of labor, heat, and humidity bring together a private involvement, an intermixing of skin and light and noise. I have felt displaced, uncoordinated all day; distractions and discouragement mounting about every other corner. Now, though, I perceive some stronger urge; not necessarily my own, but one undeniably present.

Oddly, I cannot escape the sensuality of thunderstorms, of the blend of fear, excitement, suspense, proximity of darkness interspersed with flashes of light, blasts of guttural sound. The heavy, heady air has its own intoxicating qualities, its power to subdue and suggest. Everything about tonight carries some promise or threat just beyond the glare of houselights and streetlamps, outside the limit of what you expect to see and what you want to see.

The night smacks of the macabre and of the primeval; of mischief for no other sake than the Bacchic spirits demand it. Tonight would be a night for painful satisfaction, for bitemarks and the smell if not the taste of iron. Proximity, privacy, sensuality all come with their double-edge, their expectations or aspirations of trust but the threat of damage, harm, decay, abandon. Abandon not just in the sense of loss, but in the sense of disregard to oneself, to expectations, to inhibitions and guidance. The moon is waxing tonight, half decayed from its full, but something has all of its potency.

Horror stories and fantastic fiction come to mind, the pressures and drives of the environment on places and people. Mages and mystics refer to ley lines that crisscross the Earth, marking highways of psychic or earthen or celestial power. Soils or caverns become blessed or cursed, therefore tainting the residents and landscape above. Millions gather in Varanasi, India to cleanse away sins, make offerings, of spread ashes at the northern turning of the Ganges where the Goddess-turned-river flows back toward heaven. Lovecraft chronicles the falling of a meteorite and its spectacular transformation of the land and its farming family in "The Colour Out of Space." Being Human suggests that part of the lycanthropic cycle is based on atmospheric pressure due to lunar gravity. Temples are founded on sacred ground, cities built on sanctified stones, children conceived within blessed circles, all in order to curry some favor or transform the future with some supernatural entity. (I do not casually group the Hindu religion or serious mages and witches with TV paranormal drama and weird fiction, only mean to express a great range of the recurring paranormal realities present in each.)

To view these episodes, places, people as out-dated or quaint misses the reality that is suffused with spirit, energy, supernormal potency. All faiths, cultures, even personal histories are suffused with mystery. Sometimes mystery takes the form of illusion, fraud, and mischief, but I think its manifestation as miracle, magic, and the inexplicably weird is distinct. Something about the night, its sureness, its immediate presence carries with it that peculiar intensity. In a way, it is the energy of a storm, of an especial night, but I also see it, feel it as something else.