It has been a long and eventful holiday weekend, with my life taking some interesting and perhaps long-overdue turns. I struggle a lot with this site about how much detail I really feel comfortable revealing in relation to my personal life. And the long and the short of it is: not much. I’m more than happy to detail my emotional struggles with spirituality and relentless seeking for truth. And yet, as much as that consumes me, I leave out a lot of the nitty-gritty day-to-day problems I face on a personal level with relationships, jobs, and the sort of more mundane elements. But they are there, they are strong and they inform (literally give form to) the things that I write.
So it can be a sort of strange struggle to maintain that somewhat artificial barrier I have erected to protect my personal and private life from my very public endeavors of working (currently full-time again) as a writer, supporting myself from my work. In some ways, it feels very necessary that I maintain these barriers for my own sanity and privacy. While in others, it sometimes feels a little dishonest, a little neutered from what and where I actually am in my own life.
It’s something I continually struggle with, and always have as an artist. There was a time in my career - back when I painted - where I experimented with a more open format to sharing my life: everything was an open book. Every small event in my life was celebrated and memorialized in paint. And I’ve experimented with more loose writing, where I engage much more emotionally than intellectually, but at the same time keep it fairly abstract and refuse to be pinned down on the details of whether or not any of this actually happened, or if it is simply emotionally true.
And that’s the thing I’ve realized with art and writing and creativity over these many years engaging in it as my primary spiritual discipline, basically. That you have to “speak the truth” and that’s that. Sometimes the truth is things that happened. Sometimes the truth is things that didn’t happen, but feel true. Sometimes the truth has nothing to do with either of these realms and it is its own thing, a spark that kind of bends and weaves and navigates its way through the strange complexities of life. And you simply have to chase it and not pay attention to where it’s going or why. And that is more where I am at with it now. Chase after it. Run through the forest. Damn the details.
I spent a few weeks the summer after my freshman year in college up on 300 acres in North-East Pennsylvania. One day I took off into the woods by myself to see what I could see. I stood in the midst of an ice cold stream, and ran across some wild turkeys that looked like strange old men jogging through the woods. And I found a deer. Or maybe it found me. And I didn’t think about it at all, but suddenly this impulse overtook me and I just started running after it. It bounded away from me, of course, and I never came anywhere near it. But for a few minutes I wasn’t just running through the woods, I was running on the wings of angels. Every step a perfect unity between my body and the forest.
I have been reading the Bible a lot lately. The four Gospels, specifically. And I have been doing it in the hopes of hearing the voice of god (more on that a little later today). And what I came away from the whole thing with after this weekend is that God doesn’t just speak to you through some kind of magic voice in the sky - doves and rays of holy sunshine and all that. He speaks through whatever is handy, whatever you surround yourself with. Your friends, the people you are close to.
My writing is about to shift dramatically, I think. Because my search has shifted dramatically. Some new phase has opened. Doors and windows have been flung wide. And thank God for it. It’s been a long time coming. I have started a novel to document my new experiences and to give shape to the opportunities which present themselves before me in my life. I am feeling that this week I will be spending a relatively small amount of time working on this website as I turn a great deal of my energy and intention towards that project. I have a few podcast ideas for this week though, one of which I recorded probably Wednesday night of last week after about two hours (with one break) of reading the Gospel of Luke out loud, combined with some “magickal experiments” in prayer and supplication.
Inspired by this passage in Luke 21 (where Jesus is talking about the end of the world), I recorded the podcast which I’ll post later today:
12 But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues, and into prisons, being brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake.
13 And it shall turn to you for a testimony.
14 Settle it therefore in your hearts, not to meditate before what ye shall answer:
15 For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist.
I opened up my mouth and that was what came out. Stay tuned for more! I have various other small things: some quotes, speculations and a couple news items I wanted to examine through this week as well. But most of my attention will be focused elsewhere. And hopefully I’ll have some opportunity to post excerpts from what I am working on in that regard as well. Talk to you soon.
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9 Comments
Been missing the ‘blog, dude… good to see ya back.
As I mulled over your recent posts in the shower just now, two puzzle-pieces joined in my mind. And I think it’s kind of relevant to this post about internal / external life and privacy. It’s about individuality: it came to me that this ‘individuality’, distinguishing oneself from one’s environment and one’s fellows, is perhaps /necessary but not sufficient/ for value. That felt kinda right: like this thing about the free market I’ve had rolling around my head: the free market /can/ create wealth but /need not/.
The other puzzle-piece goes like this: what happens when one individual meets another? Several things (four, I think) are possible:
1. I do what I’m told, submit to the other
2. I give the other respect and try and learn about his/her culture
3. I do what I like, get on with my life
4. I try and bring something new to the relationship, change the other person.
Now this is a crossroads of no less than two contradictory sets of actions: do what you’re told vs. do what you like; learn about the other / do something new. But this is what’s cool: taken as a whole, those four things are merely what any /friend/ does.
Basically, you might be right: there is something very important hiding in the interactions between individuals (dinner with friends, anyone?)
Well good. Maybe you are using the bible the way Jimi Hendrix used the Blues.
As a jumping off point for a creative experiment.
Jimi loved the Blues and could play them , It was his basis , but not his artistic achievement, which was his own thing, that he invented.
Mr. Speedbird , I suggest that you have a lot of control issue`s.
You can not control another human.
People always do what they want to do. Relationships can not be artificially made. All relationships find their own level. No thought required.
Good luck Tim.
i think you can control another person. i think what mr. speedbird is saying that his four points are options. whether you should control others is a moral and ethical choice we all have to sort out for ourselves. as a parent i have to control my children or utter chaos will ensue………..especially when they are on chocolate.
tim, the passage you quoted above is particularly appropriate in my life at this time as i am facing some harsh criticism on several fronts. blog on brother……….
Not options, alistair, simultaneous activities…
but yes, you’ve begged the question of that random ramble I posted last night (apologies if it was a wee bit obtuse): this whole issue of causing change in the world seems to encapsulate two forces: a creative and a consumptive.
A candle burns… the candle is consumed and light is created. Wax melts and the melt-pool vaporizes and the vapour burns. Which happens first? It’s a meaningless question: they all happen simultaneously in a self-sustaining cycle.
So I sit and contemplate the ouroboros…
Skip… absolutely right, no-one can change anyone else. But people do change through meeting other people. My point is there’s a good way and a bad way this happens.
controlling and changing are two different things though. but people do control and change others, for good and for bad. many times people ask to be controlled and look to be changed. there are entire industries providing these services and whole cultures devoted to control and change.
Well, beggar me, look what I ran into on Fantastic Planet:
Matthew 18:20: “Where there are two or three gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.â€
Frankly this whole topic scares the crap out of me. Some Big Bad Ugly lurks at the bottom of it, I sense. My thinking on it is half-formed, as evidenced by my poorly expressed first post on this thread, which I feel really bad about. But running into something like that passage… which is kind of exactly what I’m trying to say… that’s just crazy.
I am kind of interested in this new development. I am a former Christian more in the sense of being a failed Christian I think. I don’t think Christians are full of shit really. I’ll be following your esoteric interpretation of the gospels with interest.
If you seek the truth you will have to take new directions if that is where the truth leads you. I am going through a similar direction change.
The truth has a lively changing face.