"What are my true desires?" I asked myself this question, about a month ago, while looking into a mirror, per the poetic suggestion of Peter Lamborn Wilson. Here is a summary of the answer I came up with then: to be happy, ecstatic, or imbued with pleasure, as much as possible, through as many different means as possible.
Pretty straightforward, isn't it? And yet, it feels accurate.
Lately I've also been thinking about how good I feel when everything is going smoothly and in organized fashion... banal things, I mean. Like, I can pick chives from the yard while my bagel toasts and the coffee roasts, then take care of my videos*, and write a few emails before leaving for class... boom. Pretty vanilla, huh? It feels good though, and I've come to realize that it's a momentary feeling. That's not a bad thing. It's great to have very short time periods when everything just seems ideal.
On the other hand, there are times when every part of ordinary life goes badly - missing buses, no time to eat, forgetting things at home, etc. This is no fun, but the same sort of "positive logic" applies: things are going badly at this moment, but it's only a moment. Of course I prefer the former feeling, and I strive for it most of the time, but it's not always there. And for me, the simplest and best way to handle it all is to embrace those great moments and let go of (deal with) the bad ones. Simple.
...
I saw a little kid on the T the other day, coming home from Fenway Park with his dad, wearing a Red Sox cap, and playing with a toy baseball bat or something like that (I wasn't paying too close attention, I guess). Different kind of "simple" - the pleasant nostalgia of having no responsibilities in the world except to play.
Seeing the people pouring into Lafayette Park after the announcement of Bin Laden's death, I thought of the presumably comfortable apartments they were leaving that night - well-lit, with carpets, and open windows.... Also a different kind of "simple" - simple material comfort, I suppose.
Then there is the simplicity of Debord and Bernstein's cold-water dwelling in Paris in the early 1950s - simply uncomfortable, physically, but with a simple focus on stimulation of the mind... perhaps? I'll leave off with a description of their abode - simple, to be sure, yet terribly romantic, I think - as found in Andy Merrifield's Guy Debord:
"Henri Lefebvre, who didn't live far away from Debord and Michele Bernstein, remembered their inhabiting 'a kind of studio on rue Saint Martin, in a dark room, no lights at all'. It was 'a miserable place, but at the same time a place where there was a great deal of strength and radiance in the thinking and the research'. Nobody knew how Debord got by. He had no job, didn't want a job, opting instead to reside in a rich and happy poverty, a privilege long gone for most big city dwellers."
* Curating YouTube videos for several Redux channels is a new part-time/freelance gig I've acquired - here's my page.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Like a Flashlight in a Tanning Salon
Preface: It's remarkable how the walk home from Quincy Center, especially after a long day and/or night, can literally exhaust the thoughts out of my head. Having said that....
Freedom. It's easy to define... with words. In theory and in practice, the concept becomes more muddled. We went out for drinks tonight after Film Club, and after talking to Alisha, I quite admire the fact that she's going back to work - at a neighborhood flower shop - at 1 in the morning. Because she wants to, and because she can. Through subconscious association, I connect this action to the second semester of my sophomore year in college - doing actual work (even if that often meant reading, watching, writing about, and making films), but also freely wandering the city of Boston (downtown, the Common, Beacon Hill, Cambridge, Somerville, etc.) - at all hours of the night. Wandering, and going places, in the middle of the night. A wonderful feeling to have so many goals and options, at such witching hours. Sure, I feel a bit more chained living in the 'burbs, when the yellow house on Common Street is my destination most nights after 10, and almost all nights after 1. But I had a limited range even in Austin, even in Somerville. I had wonderful experiences within those ranges, but it was always in one direction. Before, when I lived at 6 Arlington Street, overlooking the Garden... it was like living at an oyster bar.
I wrote the above passage about a month ago. Revisiting it today, it's easy to see that I was mistaken. Or rather, I was limited perceptively. The possibilities for enriching and pleasureful experiences exist everywhere in this world... I merely found it easier to create them while living in the middle of a fairly large city - in the middle of the night, anyway.
That's the other thing: I jumped off from the perspective of a night owl, which I am - not only do I seem to come alive at night, but I feed keenly on my surroundings, in the moonlight, when everything takes on a peculiarly indescribable nocturnal quality - but that, in itself, is a philosophical limitation; it's only one side of the coin. I feed on my surroundings in daylight too, just in a different manner. But to ignore that for the sake of a philosophical treatise on adventure... that's just silly.
Then again... I did ignore it! There must be something to the whimsy of the mind, the pen, and the keyboard. I guess the only thing to take from this - before I pull another about-face - is to open the mind as much as possible while simultaneously thinking critically about the information that said open mind yields.
I will say this: I did not expect to find myself in the middle of this particular mental dialogue when I began typing a short while ago. But in such a situation, I feel a strong urge to simply throw this one to the gods of cyberspace, and click on that button that says "Publish Post--"
Freedom. It's easy to define... with words. In theory and in practice, the concept becomes more muddled. We went out for drinks tonight after Film Club, and after talking to Alisha, I quite admire the fact that she's going back to work - at a neighborhood flower shop - at 1 in the morning. Because she wants to, and because she can. Through subconscious association, I connect this action to the second semester of my sophomore year in college - doing actual work (even if that often meant reading, watching, writing about, and making films), but also freely wandering the city of Boston (downtown, the Common, Beacon Hill, Cambridge, Somerville, etc.) - at all hours of the night. Wandering, and going places, in the middle of the night. A wonderful feeling to have so many goals and options, at such witching hours. Sure, I feel a bit more chained living in the 'burbs, when the yellow house on Common Street is my destination most nights after 10, and almost all nights after 1. But I had a limited range even in Austin, even in Somerville. I had wonderful experiences within those ranges, but it was always in one direction. Before, when I lived at 6 Arlington Street, overlooking the Garden... it was like living at an oyster bar.
I wrote the above passage about a month ago. Revisiting it today, it's easy to see that I was mistaken. Or rather, I was limited perceptively. The possibilities for enriching and pleasureful experiences exist everywhere in this world... I merely found it easier to create them while living in the middle of a fairly large city - in the middle of the night, anyway.
That's the other thing: I jumped off from the perspective of a night owl, which I am - not only do I seem to come alive at night, but I feed keenly on my surroundings, in the moonlight, when everything takes on a peculiarly indescribable nocturnal quality - but that, in itself, is a philosophical limitation; it's only one side of the coin. I feed on my surroundings in daylight too, just in a different manner. But to ignore that for the sake of a philosophical treatise on adventure... that's just silly.
Then again... I did ignore it! There must be something to the whimsy of the mind, the pen, and the keyboard. I guess the only thing to take from this - before I pull another about-face - is to open the mind as much as possible while simultaneously thinking critically about the information that said open mind yields.
I will say this: I did not expect to find myself in the middle of this particular mental dialogue when I began typing a short while ago. But in such a situation, I feel a strong urge to simply throw this one to the gods of cyberspace, and click on that button that says "Publish Post--"
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