System Sally is all for a nice time. That being said, do not do anything that is likely to cause unnecessary harm. There are many activities that can provide genuine fun where injury is common or at least unpreventable, so there is no reason whatsoever to add any potential for injury or harm.
Loud music is already harmful to your hearing, why make it intentionally louder?
Large gatherings of people can be uncontrollable so why add more things to the mix that make it more uncontrollable?
The body is a sensitive breakable organism, why introduce more chemicals, fits of violence (even the “loving” variety), or general disregard into the system?
It is important not to take what I am saying and think I am suggesting to lock one’s self up and never do anything. Quite the contrary, life should be explored, and the body should be pushed to its limits. It is the intention that matters, and it is important that life and fun is never lived as a mere result of not caring about the fate or future of body and mind.
why anything?
i’m with jacob– who says controllable is a goal for anything?
also if you think “the body should be pushed to its limits” then you should realize that the body’s limits are very very high.
i mean, what is your goal, and how are your systems helping you reach that goal?
I think it’s fair to say that nshay is not getting the thrust of this system. First of all, I never said my goal was controlling things. That’s a total imputation on your part. What I said was large gatherings of people can be uncontrollable, why add more to the mix to make it more uncontrollable. Most of the situations we are in are already beyond our control…it is the act of being overly careful or overly careless that could possibly be an act of control. I would agree that controlling a situation isn’t necessarily in one’s benefit, but what I’m saying is that making things more loud, or more slippery, or more dangerous is another form of control. This is the continual argument that I have with jacob, you know the one he continues to deny is an argument. That maintaining you don’t have a position, or maintaining that you have constructed a situation more ripe for awesomeness by ignoring convention is itself a position, is itself another form of convention. The person who says no to something is equally trying to control a situation as the person who says yes to something. The person who rolls die and tries to create a spontaneous haphazard way of deciding things is equally stuck in a fragmented mind state. Sure, always sticking to rules and authority and “apparent” forms of control isn’t freedom either, but it is no more or less a way to truth. The way to truth is the incessant attention to the mind’s intention. If the intentions of the mind are ignored, you will constantly be living from a fragmented world view. A world view that is conditioned and therefore inherently flawed and not free. Dancing on broken glass is fine, not dancing on broken glass is fine. All I am trying to point out is that trans-both of those options is the option of awareness, attention, mindfulness. Often, this takes the form of doing things that do not cause unncessary harm, or further dulling of the mind.
The body’s limits are very very high, fine. I should correct what I said in that the body should be pushed to its limits as one is paying attention. This way you can actually know what the limits are. It’s in the knowing, not in the actual action.
I have written elsewhere about the goal of my systems and the way I relate to them. Please see http://systemsally.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/why-systems-first-meta-post/ for more on that. The short answer is love. Greed, hate, and delusion are toxins that can be transformed into wisdom and compassion. This system, in particular, is a system for partying. Partying is completely within the realm of the possible, but if it is to be done with love, I would submit that this is a pretty good system. Remember, the actual form can look drastically different for different people, but the human mind is amazingly similar. If there is a trace of hate or delusion in the practice of partying, people will unknowingly be defeating their own purpose. And whether they admit it or not, they don’t really want to be doing that. Somewhere in the back of the mind of a party-goer is a desire to connect with other people, to be happy, to feel free, to expand, to feel pleasure, to do what is right, fun, creative, or natural. This, I believe, lies at the root of everyone’s mind. If a party-goer approaches the party with delusion, they are simply planting the seeds of delusion. The ripening of that karma will provide fruit proportional to the original delusion. Cause and effect is a universally observable law. Human beings are very very good at tricking themselves into thinking they are happy when in fact this may simply be delusion or hatred or greed or jealousy or something gratifying some aspect of ego. I would say that most people, on any level go to parties carrying an incredible amount of insecurity and desire, in addition to a genuine need for connection. The problem is, is that most environments for partying unfortunately are not conducive to genuine connection, but provide ample opportunity for the continued practice of self-hatred, and delusion.
sally, perhaps you need to seek the wisdom of experts in the field of having an awesome time at a party. namely, ME. seriously, i always have a great time wherever i go! i’m really good at it, i have years of experience, lots of published works on the subject, and i’m greatly respected in the field.
also, in re:
”
This is the continual argument that I have with jacob, you know the one he continues to deny is an argument. That maintaining you don’t have a position, or maintaining that you have constructed a situation more ripe for awesomeness by ignoring convention is itself a position, is itself another form of convention.
”
it’s not an argument because i agree with you! whatever my system is, it’s a position, it’s a system, and it’s working out really really really great for me! i think everyone should try it, and i should be totally non-unique in this regard.
also, let’s compare two fictional evenings:
a person, we’ll call her Smacob, walks to a punk show. at the show her friend’s band is playing very loud, people are smoking, people are extremely inebriated, people are dancing VERY crazy, but in a way that (believe it or not) expresses love, desire, unity, and abandonment of the fractured ego and everything else. smacob donates money ($5) at the door, knowing that it will directly go towards the bands playing,that they might continue their trip. there is very real danger- the floors are slippery with spilled beer, there is broken glass, people are throwing things around and actually lighting fireworks and dancing in them! no one is hurt, and when someone falls, ten people rush to pick them up. dancers achieve a state in which they cannot make a mis-step, and it is wall-to-wall smiles (we’ll assume a conservative estimate of 100 people were there). smacob is welcomed into this group with open arms, despite the fact that she does not dress the same way, does not drink to excess, and is older than almost everyone there.
meanwhile across town, smruce drives to two bars in the course of having drinks with her neighbor. smruce is a civilian flying into what many would deem a war zone the next day, on an airplane which is a major pollutant. (see: http://www.ehponline.org/qa/105-12focus/focus.html ).
who has caused more harm? whose harm was neccessary? we’ll assume that both the punk show and the trip result in deep spiritual experiences. i wasn’t on the trip, i can’t say.
O SNAP
Jacob, this is a stellar discussion. Thank you.
On the two fictional evenings. You’d have to admit that this a little apples and oranges. Flying on an airplane to go live in another country has its own questions, concerns, and systems. It’s not a fair comparison.
The two bars situation is a fair comparison, and to be honest, you pretty much know my position is that this is also a pretty unhealthy and counterproductive activity. I have yet to really find either crazydancing or bar hopping as fulfilling social activities. So, in this case, your comparison only serves to make me feel more justified in feeling that these types of social interaction are pretty meaningless, or destructive.
A better comparison would be for me to describe in positive terms what I have experienced numerous times as a healthy social and partying experience.
Across town from the punk show, Sprunky Brucester finishes a writing assignment that took three days to complete. It was a passionate exposition of Sprunky’s heart and mind’s reflections on a matter important to her and the world she lives in. Sprunky takes a nice relaxing shower afterwards and does some yogic-like stretching. Sprunky receives a call from her friend Corinthea who says a few people are meeting at her house for homemade dumplings. There people are moved to share their delight in the scrumptousnous of the dumplings, and some, like Sprunky enjoy the constant interaction with her friends, making jokes, being flirtatious, and generally receiving love from those around her. Someone hears about a kirtan going on nearby. For an hour they all sing Sanskrit songs that flip them into a state of relaxation and peace, and their bodies are able to relax completely because there is no fear of being attacked or approached in potentially damaging ways. Meanwhile Sprunky is receiving a bunch of text messages from another friend who after a long day of work wants to see her friends and meet up for sushi. A few of the kirtan goers head up to the downtown area, on foot, and enjoy the evening air, the beautiful sky, the street performers who perform slam poetry and sing songs, and strike up interesting conversations with smiles and even hugs if you want ‘em. They head over to the sushi restaurant and it’s hopping. People are dancing, and people are eating. There is a range of ages and persuasions. After this, people perhaps head over the Sprunky’s for some tea and good conversation. Because most people work or are studying they start feeling the exhaustion of the day set in. Because they are actually paying attention to their bodies, they realize that even that sushi place was a little too loud, and it is time, they realize to go to bed. After a full evening, people go home around 1 o’clock, and are able to wake up at seven the next morning to go about their new day with their meditation practice, or yoga practice, or meeting a professor to discuss the 50 page paper they are working on. They are already planning to go see that lecture coming up, or meeting some friends later to work at the cafe. But what they’re really excited about is planning a three hour hike on the weekend, where they can get out into nature and breathe amazingly fresh air, with nary a pollutant in it, and stretch their legs. Sure, maybe someone tweaks an ankle, or slips and falls on some rocks…this is dangerous stuff, but there are also people there to help lift them up.
Maybe, just maybe, on a friday or saturday occasionally Sprunky wants to get her groove on, so she finds a house party to go dance at. Unfortunately, since she is training to be a therapist, she happens to have a very well honed sense of other people’s emotional state. At these parties she sees people exhibited classic and fairly evident behaviors associated with self-hatred. She sees people unhealthily sick, and because she cares about other people, she keeps an eye out these the people intoxicated or doing self-destructive behaviors. She can’t help but feel a tremendous amount of compassion for these people, because she knows all too well the pain of deluded ourselves, the pain of ignoring our own pain, the pain of trying to dull our experience of life through chemical substances, and constructed displays of confidence in social situations, when she knows underneath that there is often a very insecure and vulnerable child that has not learned how to take care of him or herself. Seeing this situation, Sprunky can only enjoy herself so much, because even her own physical pain has started to exhaust her, and so as not to have to feel more, she decides it is time to go and be more nurturing to herself.
That would be a closer and more accurate depiction of Sprunky’s lifelong experience with social situations. Sprunky can certainly respect that other people are able to manage in these situations, but for Sprunky it is very clear that for her, at least, and if her gut tells her anything, for other people, many party situations are pushing the edges of what is healthy for the average person.
ok, we’re not debating “the best social situation” here, because ultimately it will just end with one of us dead and at eternal peace at one with the godhead and who wants that? not me, and we can assume not any god, or we wouldn’t be here.
now, while i would never seek to imply that one night is objectively “better” than the other, i think it’s totally valid to compare the danger levels and perceived harm of these original two nights– everything has its own questions, concerns, and systems, so insofar as anything can be compared (and this is another discussion), i think these can be. i’m not asking for an actual side-by-side comparison, but to dismiss this out-of-hand is not being fair to yourself and your process. also, it’s important to note that these aren’t specialized best/worst case scenarios, these are (and i’m breaking protocol here) our actual experiences on actually the same night, a night that each of us described as “somewhat of a perfect saturday night”. and for what it’s worth, calling something meaningless and/or destructive, plus perfect, is fine in my book. and to be fair, both our nights had more than just as mentioned.
the important part here is the implied drawing of a line. i don’t know you to be lazy or sloppy, so i don’t know why you’re being so unscientific with your systems– what is an acceptable vs an unacceptable (or necessary vs unnecessary) level of harm? and to be plain, is this a reasonable question to ask, and is this a valid distinction to make?
also (and again my apologies for piercing the veil)– i realize that this blog is written as advice for you alone, which is why i didn’t take it to heart when you said “don’t do what jacob does”. but do you really think i’m “carrying an incredible amount of insecurity and desire”? speak from your actual experience- am i now in the practice of self-hatred or delusion? i’m 100% of the people you know who go to crazy punk shows. i’m your entire pool.
also, if “Cause and effect is a universally observable law”, howcome my life rules and each next day is the best day?
Jacob, I’m a little unclear about the first part of your comment.
- Who is it that is going to end up dead and at eternal peace and at one with the godhead? Or is that two different things, one person dead, and one person at eternal peace? I’m just missing the actual meaning of the sentence here.
Ok. So if I go along with your interesting choice of the original two nights, I would say that it’s perfectly fine for both to be incredibly damaging and bad or both healthy and loving. Again, it’s funny that a lot of the time that we think we’re debating we’re actually agreeing. Going to two crappy bars in a car and flying to a war zone is potentially destructive, meaningless, dangerous, unhealthy, and based on fear, desire, insecurity. Yes, all of life, and many many of the things that we can do can be influenced by our deluded minds, not just punk shows. In this sense, I totally agree with you.
“Calling something meaningless and/or destructive, plus perfect, is fine in my book.” But perfect in what sense? Theologically, or actually? Or do you not distinguish?
I think this is a reasonable discussion. Just like discussing nutrition, or emotional intelligence, or writing a resume, there are systems for creating more of what we want in life. Since partying or athletics or traveling are all things we do for fun, I think it is a fair discussion to attempt to understand the psychological and practical implications of engaging in any of these activities. We could be discussing rock climbing and the difference between using ropes and free-climbing. What are pros and cons, what’s the philosophy behind it, what are the psychological motivations behind people who engage in certain levels of extremity, how do we make good choices for knowing what we ourselves want to do. You can still get hurt using ropes, you can still have fear and desire and insecurity with ropes, but it’s kind of crazy to think of climbing without ropes on a steep mountain, and you wonder what that person is thinking.
It’s funny, because even though I’m having the debate with you, you are not my pool. My pool is the entire group of people I have met in my life. I know people who are alcoholic, and suffered because of it. I know people who have done way too many drugs, and suffered because of it. I see people on a daily basis who make decisions that aren’t in their best interest. And here’s the kicker…I make decisions constantly that aren’t in my best interest. The only reason I care so much about this is because my life has been filled with pain, confusion, and difficulty, and I have tried my best to understand the ways that I unnecessarily create that pain for myself. Because it is unnecessary, and it is an undesired result, I think it is fair for me to make the decision to refrain from certain activities.
I feel sympathetic joy for you that you have been blessed with such an amazing life of happy party experiences. I go to a party and I feel sick for a week. I was blessed with a different kind of body, one that apparently is just not fit for the kind of lifestyle you live. The great thing, is that that’s great. A Corvette, A Subaru, A Hummer, A Moped, A Honda, A Mercedes…each car performs better in different circumstances.
Maybe what I need to realize is that just because something is so obviously dangerous for me, it isn’t necessarily so for another. At the same time, what I hope to convey even slightly is that maybe I have a window onto something that not everyone can see as clearly. Sure, that’s an arrogant thing to say, and perhaps it’s totally bullpucky. But maybe the sensitivity of my body gives me a window into what certain substances and activities actually do energetically to the body, and so when I see other people engaging in these activities, I cringe, and have the haunting sense that maybe, just maybe, they are negatively affecting their bodies but have not been willing to recognize that fact, or okay with that fact because there is a certain level of not really caring about themselves. But, I am in no way implying or stating that this is you. In fact, I am impressed both by your seeming resilience and your obvious ability to make a case for your position in quite a convincing manner.
The key point here is this…I have spent years hating various aspects of my experience, my self, my body. In many hundreds or thousands of ways, not taken an active role in taking care of myself, because I never understand exactly what was at stake. I took my body and my life for granted. As I examined my life more closely and as I got older, I grew in my ability to see that in fact life was a miracle, and that the body is truly a temple for the spirit. All I want for myself is to protect, and honor the miracle that is my life and everyone’s life, and if I even get the whiff of anything other than that in myself or other people, I feel a little sad and I feel a need to care for that mind state and activity. Ultimately, I need only worry about myself. I do not want to judge others when I am far from the ideal myself. But you can’t blame a man entirely for caring about his fellow man and wanting the best for his brothers and sisters and children and elders. I may be completely incorrect in my assessment that other people in certain environments are not taking care of themselves. If that is the case, that knowledge makes me the happiest man alive because I know then that I only need work on myself and the world will be a loving place. But tell me this…what newspapers are you reading? Who do you talk to? Most of the people I talk to struggle…they have terrible addictions, diseases, emotional blocks, life struggles, career and vocational struggle, financial woes, physical pain. Is this all in my head?
We have scientific proof that cigarette smoke is bad for you in excess. A close member of my family suffered for many years and died of a lung disease directly related to her many years of smoking. How can this be debated anymore? Being in a smoke filled room is not good for you.
Have you seen Super Size Me? It is pretty clear that McDonald’s food is not good for the body. When I eat it, I can tell right away, but other people go on eating it because of their life circumstance, or because they can’t actually feel how bad it is for their body, or they just don’t care.
Have you ever worked in a hospital? Have you ever dealt with a patient who swallowed razor blades because she hated herself so much? Have you ever talked to your friends are realized that many of them are on anti-depressants? Have you ever dated a girl who slit her wrists just so she could “feel” something? Have you ever met a young teenage kid only to find out the next day that he overdosed on drugs and was dead? And yeah, have you ever had such pain in your eardrums that you thought you’d never be able to do what you love ever again? Have you ever met a person who had sex with someone they met at a party and had to get an abortion?
Please write back with a litany of the positive experiences you have had with the people you run into and the ways you experience parties and people in their lives and they way they deal with their fears, insecurities and pains, because I feel like we’re talking with different people. I know someone who’s struggling a lot right now because her son won’t do his homework and doesn’t want to finish school. I know someone right now who can’t find a job despite her incredible talent. Why are self-help books flying off the shelves? Why do people watch Oprah if they’re already happy? Why do people drink alcohol if they are comfortable naturally in social situations? Why do people listen to such loud emotional music at punk shows if they have no rage or anger to have to express? My response to all of this, is why not find healthy ways of learning to cope with life, rather than ways that have a “well, it already sucks, so why bother caring anymore attitude” and tend to just compound the problem.
Are these not fair questions? Is this not a reasonable discussion? Is this all my own projection, and judgment, and jealousy?
”
I would say that it’s perfectly fine for both to be incredibly damaging and bad or both healthy and loving. Again, it’s funny that a lot of the time that we think we’re debating we’re actually agreeing. Going to two crappy bars in a car and flying to a war zone is potentially destructive, meaningless, dangerous, unhealthy, and based on fear, desire, insecurity. Yes, all of life, and many many of the things that we can do can be influenced by our deluded minds, not just punk shows. In this sense, I totally agree with you.
”
i don’t agree with this. i’m not trying to catch us both in incredibly damaging and bad acts, and say “we’re both wrong”. i’m saying that both of us are motivated by love. i never called into question the amount of suffering you’ve witnessed or the number of people you talk to, i just said (and this is speculative but informed) that i am your only source of first hand information on punk shows, so for you to generalize out from my experience and say that it is delusional and motivated by self-hatred, this is insulting. of course i don’t really think that you think that i’m being delusional, i think you’re working backwards from a premise (punk show = delusional violence), which is maybe me being insulting to you but someone told me once about this cool way to make omelets.
anyway, i don’t want to go through your response piece by piece just to dedamn my spiritual practice. rather, i would like to attempt a summation of what i view as the chief difference between us, made evident by this post. i think it all boils down to pain (which is to say, suffering, which is to say, life). i would like to delineate two possible approaches to pain management:
on one hand there is minimizing pain: life is suffering, and suffering is not enjoyable, so the best route is to minimize the suffering, and enjoy what we can of everything else.
on the other hand we have maximizing enjoyment: life is suffering, so to enjoy life as much as possible, we have to be able to enjoy suffering.
we both know there are caveats, troubles, inconsistancies and so forth with this view, and chief among them are satisfactory definitions of “suffering” and “enjoyment”, which i strongly recommend we do not tackle. moreover it’s clear we each have portions of both approaches. nonetheless i feel this is perhaps the neatest this particular nail can be hit on the head, and this is what i was driving at with “dead and at eternal peace”… it’s my belief that who plays a defense game against suffering can only ever be satisfied (and that only half-satisfied) with the general cleanliness of tombs.
i was going to just email you, but as this concerns perhaps the toppest level systems there is, i thought it perhaps valuable to include.
it’s really cute that we both look out for each other, we’re certainly incredibly lucky to have us.
It’s four in the morning, and yet System Sally feels happy to respond. Yes, it is a grinding process (painful?) sometimes but our discussions are amazing expressions of love and care, and I am extremely grateful for having your friendship.
And yes, I think this does boil down to a discussion of suffering. In the language I am most familiar with, that being Buddhism, the important questions of life, and path, and choices comes down to our relationship to suffering. From this system to which I mostly adhere to, you are, as they say, totally hitting the nail.
What’s great, from my perspective, is that the study of Buddhism is the study of 2500 years of this exact debate that we are having. There are the more conservative approaches to managing pain, and there are the more “tantric” approaches. The various schools have kept up the debate and polemics of which way might be more effective. The ‘maximizing’ school as you have phrased it, would be more tantric, and would claim that by more directly embracing pain and desire and the juices of life, enlightenment can be reached in only one life time.
After all, if enlightenment is the realization that you are not in control, why not put yourself in an environment where you really have no control, like say a punk show? This is the tantric view, and your maximizing view. To enjoy suffering, as it were.
And this group…they laugh at the more conservative groups who try to overcome suffering by quelling desire, by avoiding situations that may bring up pain unnecessarily. Of course the more conservative types think the tantrikas are heathens, sensationalist deluded types who simply act out their desires without attention or care.
From the perspective of the more conservative groups, life is so full of suffering, why bother seeking it? If you simply tuned into your body walking in the forest you would feel all the pain that you needed to feel to understand and realize that you have no control over life. This is the conservative view, the “minimizing” view as you have it.
And really, we’ve been taking those two positions in a textbook, almost ashamedly predictable fashion now that I think about it.
And yes, the debate goes on, it has to…because each pole provides a mirror for the other…and this reflection is itself the realization of nonduality…that the minimizing view and the maximizing view are both necessary, and complimentary. You can’t have one without the other. And, different paths work for different people, with different karmic patterns to work out and with different temperaments. And, this could change. In some moments you may actually find that minimizing pain is a strategy that you employ. I may find that in many instances I take the maximizing approach in expressing painful emotions, or relating to my patterns of suffering.
At the end of both of our journeys, or at the end of an evening out dancing, or staying at home reading a book, there is only the one truth that can be arrived at in its multitude of paths: love.
If there are others who want to chime in here, I’d welcome it. Also, if you want to find out more about the specifics of the Buddhist interpretation and understanding of suffering, and working with suffering, please send an email to systemsally [at] gmail [dot] com
I can’t help but dive in here. I’m not bothering to edit even slightly, because adequately saying what I wanted to say took a long enough goddamn time…
My question is what do you hope to achieve out of establishing a system?
When I want to erect a routine or structure in my life, what I understand the implicit goal to be is that my moments become more streamlined because I will have an order of operations which ideally should unfold in such a way as to make my action more efficient, perhaps in terms of time or emotional energy or whatever resource I’m hoping to conserve. Efficiency would be achieved by relieving me of having to process the minutiae of circumstance, of having to calculate insignificant difference. I can apply what I have learned in the past to what I am doing now, not because I am living in Groundhog day, but because I have quickly assessed the differences between the moment I made the conclusions which informed my system and the moment I am living in now as sufficiently minimal.
A highly developed system will make provisions for specific deviations, but naturally cannot anticipate with absolute certainty a finite list of factors and scenarios which might strain or break the system. It is elastic and open ended, because its own survival or usefulness depends on a built-in escape hatch, in which nothing fits and one must improvise from inside the moment. This escape hatch is an acknowledgment of chaos, or at least the inability of the system’s author to access/comprehend an objective, universal truth. A system is therefore superficially valuable, but only in the way that what its really compensating for is full presence. A fully present mind would need no pause to consider its path, nor experience anxiety, frustration, or regret over its steps forward or backward.
When we were discussing stuff I had written about yesterday, Nick made this really interesting comparison of system application to judo. Sloth that I am, I have no expertise here (maybe you do, jbru?), but judo seems to be the consummate systemless practice because it is an art of pure response and improvisation. The only grain of the “structure” would be the decision to make the most of the elemental forces exerted against you. There is a process of learning how to align yourself with the momentum, but it is not an inborn knowledge, and thus not a natural state of being. You are not re-learning something you forgot, but expanding or building upon established human qualities. You are also consciously disengaging from, or better put UN-learning, certain behaviors such as anxiety or myopia—minimal hesitation and broad vision are both critical for advancing in the practice.
Ultimately, the goal is for the system to deliver you to a place of mastery which allows the system itself to dissolve. It is finally so purely intuitive for you to yield and pull and dodge and sway in response to your opponent/s that the only thing occupying your consciousness is the absolute present, not the lessons you took or might need to take for judo mastery. It’s considered an art because the behaviors one must let go of exist with both purpose AND negative consequence are the ones which obstruct your logical mind from expanding in this direction on its own. I tend to liken it in my brain as the same sort of process we call “elderly wisdom;”
The most relevant behavior to this discussion is the assessment of risk. A master of judo does not asses risk, but moves in synchronicity with danger or harm. He does not avoid it because he has no fear of it, placid in the face of calamity because he understands his every response will be the right one, and also, significantly, that the outcome will be “the right” one as well, even if that means injury or death. True mastery is unwavering presence within one’s own mind and body, not the ability nor desire to control its surroundings—again, it moves with them, not against them. If one is overpowered at the height of total capacity, that’s just kicks.
Practicing in the hopes of mastery would really mean training yourself not to respond to certain mechanisms, and nurturing the strength in your mind/body to do so. Over time you gain confidence in your strength and have to make a deliberate effort to not asses risk less and less. That confidence is given not to any system, but precisely in the lack thereof (which is why judo is such a great metaphor; you are not mentally sorting through prior lesson plans to regurgitate, but instinctively creating a new one in every moment). The system was the tool, but it is you yourself who will provide the answer. You will be operating exclusively from the escape hatch, if you will.
So what if you made the effort right now to disengage with risk assessment and proceeded towards fulfilling whatever felt good for you right then? Being conscious of others and belief in oneself can come later. You immediately reduce obstructions to your own presence in titanic measure. Assessing risk sows the seeds of fear, anxiety, hesitation, self-doubt, regret. Instead, you could move forward and respond artfully and intuitively to danger, rewarded by increasing success the more often you deliberately practiced.
Any harm/suffering you encounter is not useful if it inspires measures to protect yourself from whatever or whomever caused you pain. That would expand your system rather than dismantle it. This doesn’t mean your pain isn’t of essential value, but the point is to move into and through it instead of shielding yourself. Like in judo, you use all momentum to your advantage, building strength without a calculated plan of action for the future.
JBru, when you describe the pain of your own life and witnessing the pain of others, you seem unable to appreciate the constitutive power of suffering. There is no alternative to living or to the relentless reinvention of the present. Even suicide is a step forward into the unknown and therefore an action affirming life. Barring that, though, existence happens whether or not you are happening with it. Your words seem to imply that pain can only erode some kind of precious and essential self which you seek to protect. I don’t believe there is such a thing; we are an amalgam of genetics, environment, history—humanity in the smallest and largest senses of the word.
It is excruciating to watch as others destroy themselves out of self-loathing, especially when that is something you know intimately yourself. Some people are frankly less able to imagine their own future than others, and more inclined to allow themselves a permanent shroud of mourning for their own traumas. Sometimes, their entire identity seems to find itself rooted in victimhood, and to leave that self behind is something not everyone has the courage to do. I think that’s rare, though. Most of us want to be better, and we want to grow into something greater than what we were.
When a great trauma occurs (great in terms of its resonance, not in terms of fanfare), what have you, personally, done with that pain? Do you see how it’s motivated you to seek understanding of it, and do you see where that search has taken you? At the time it may have felt like something had been taken away from you, like there was a very sudden and deep emptiness that refused to be ignored. Over time, though, those holes fill themselves with something new. You were changed. It wasn’t good or bad, it was just new. Was there anything that has ever happened in your life which you believe truly diminished who you are, or who you could be? The question you have to ask is, would you ever sincerely choose to be anyone else than exactly who you are? Not a new and improved You, not a You 2.0 or an enlightened You, but someone else entirely.
Even my own father, whose ostensible every move is an act of violence against himself—to this day dipping in and out of varying levels of addiction to varying degrees of poison, alienating his family and friends with spectacular dedication, all the way down to refusing all medical care to nevermind cure, but manage, monitor, or just alleviate the symptoms of his failing liver—even he would not say he did. Those who do are either already dead or atrophying; the rest of us choose life, and we live it as well as each of us know how to. You have to appreciate that when you witness another’s acts of self-hatred, you are seeing them in a more cocooned state of transition. They will emerge someone else after however long and in whatever direction they need. Sometimes you’re there at the height of rapid change, and others over maddening stretches of very little movement.
Pain is also necessary because it is the only test of your grace when you’ve found yourself under the very shadow of joy. Judo mastery is learned, a lesson plan which included 45 broken noses etc. Without exposing yourself to the possibility of it, by assessing risk and seeking to reduce harm, how would you ever learn to be present? And on what would the unmitigated belief in the strength of mind/body be founded or where would it even begin? Not only does a determination to avoid unnecessary pain end up hindering growth, but not voluntarily throwing yourself in harm’s way every now and then is actually the only way to push forward, like a judoka sparring every day.
Jake’s example of understanding the dangers inherently a part of dancing/thrashing at that show Smacob is at, doing it anyway, getting hurt, and still loving every second of it is actually every bit as valuable as the placid and very, very, very safe evening Sprunky is having. Safety and serenity are critical elements of psychic balance because they allow you to turn inside and reflect without distraction. But the other half of life is lived in the face of risk and chaos and danger! You need it! A deficiency in either direction is not a full life! For me personally, I go in cycles of being very internally focused for stretches of time and then turning it outward, where I am more drawn to social situations and romantic relationships and total debauchery in general. I notice myself shift when I start to feel the weight of mediocrity pressing on me, like I’ve become too accustomed to either chaos or quiet, like it’s no longer a challenge and I am becoming too comfortable, ie stagnant. The only way to honor life is to live it, and the only way to live it is to always move forward.
If true “mastery” is an achievable state of being is something we probably disagree on, but the pursuit of that ideal is the reward in itself. Ultimately, you hope to come to a place where you can love and find joy in the entirety of your whole life, even the parts which were bloody and full of suffering. You do not fear death because it is only another turn in the chaos of life. You might have imagined what will happen to you when you die, but do you know? Can you rely on a system, or must you face it knowing that it is completely unknowable? The only remaining trace of your system is still the decision to move into whatever comes rather than fight against it.
Jake, I have to disagree with you here too about “the best route” being to “minimize the suffering, and enjoy what we can of everything else.” I don’t see how suffering can be lessened without lessening everything else. And this is a consistent binary that Sally uses to explain her system, citing that science has proven smoking causes cancer, so therefore smoking is essentially a suicidal gesture. This is the perfect example of why the only good system is a dead one: what you fail to consider is why people smoke in the first place, which is because it gives them pleasure.
You might rightly point out the irrationality of indulging in what feels good now when it will almost certainly not feel so good later. But at what point does moderation turn to self-denial turn to excess? This is yet another set of falls divisions that are not so easily discernible from one another, and for which we all must draw and continue to redraw our own borders whenever it feels right to. Is there a system with which you can gauge the exact last pack of cigarettes a person can go through until the benefits of pleasure are subsumed by the medical consequences in the future, something averaging some set of physical and behavioral probabilities perhaps? Or is that rather why quitting one’s physical addiction to nicotine is peanuts compared to overcoming one’s emotional and social relationship to cigarettes?
Even if it’s a medical bet against the house to continue smoking and still avoid cancer, but your physical health is only one facet of happiness. It is perfectly valid to decide the joy one gets out of smoking is so great that whatever future maladies it will definitely cause, they do not overpower the appeal of sensational pleasure in the present. There is always the reflection of light to be found in dark, and vice versa—won’t all pleasurable pursuits slide easily into painful vices?
Not to get too academic, but the lines between all of these purported opposites like health and illness, pain and pleasure, truth and fiction, joy and suffering; these are shallow just like all systems are. They are only shorthand for the infinitely subjective and yet still universal experience we are always struggling to describe. The language and the concepts they refer to are indistinguishable from one another—for more on that, I recommend reading Derrida’s Of Grammatology, which is heavily influenced by Eastern thought. There is an unforgettable Levinas quote that I think expresses with such beauty the need to consider truth beyond the convenience of constructions, referring here specifically to a system of law:
“Justice would not be possible without the singularity, the unicity of subjectivity. In this justice subjectivity does not figure as a formal reason but as individuality: formal reason is incarnate in being only in the measure that losses its election and its equivalent to all others. Formal reason is incarnate only in a being who does not have the strength to suppose that, under the visible that is history, there is the invisible that is judgment.”
Is an existence devoid of risk and safe from harm worth the trouble if joy is harnessed by the same leash which restrains the reaches of its sorrow? And is dying from cancer really such a terrible thing if it’s preceded by a life truly and fully realized? Would that terror even exist to such a life?
Levinas again,
“Death threatens me from beyond. This unknown that frightens, the silence of the infinite, spaces that terrify, comes from the other, and this alterity, precisely as absolute, strikes me in an evil design or in a judgment of justice. The solitude of death does not make the Other vanish, but remains in a consciousness of hostility and consequently still renders possible an appeal to the Other, to his friendship and his medication. The doctor is an a priori principle of human mortality. Death approaches in the fear of someone and hopes in someone. ‘The Eternal brings death and brings life.’ A social conjecture is maintained in this menace. It does not sink into the anxiety that would transform it into an annihilation of nothingness. In the being for death of fear I am not faced with nothingness, but faced with what is against me, as though murder, rather than being one of the occasions of dying were inseparable from the essence of death, as though the approach of death remained one of the modalities of the relation with the Other.”
Also, something worth thinking about is the degree to which creating structures with the wish they will conserve real or imagined resources might be explored as a capitalist reflex.
this convo is a fucking BURNER!!!!! so psyched. to clarify,
”
Jake, I have to disagree with you here too about “the best route” being to “minimize the suffering, and enjoy what we can of everything else.”
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i disagree too, but i was just summing up our host. i’m with the path of the other hand
, mas o menos.
“When I want to erect a routine or structure in my life, what I understand the implicit goal to be is that my moments become more streamlined because I will have an order of operations which ideally should unfold in such a way as to make my action more efficient, perhaps in terms of time or emotional energy or whatever resource I’m hoping to conserve. Efficiency would be achieved by relieving me of having to process the minutiae of circumstance, of having to calculate insignificant difference. I can apply what I have learned in the past to what I am doing now, not because I am living in Groundhog day, but because I have quickly assessed the differences between the moment I made the conclusions which informed my system and the moment I am living in now as sufficiently minimal.”
“A highly developed system will make provisions for specific deviations, but naturally cannot anticipate with absolute certainty a finite list of factors and scenarios which might strain or break the system. It is elastic and open ended, because its own survival or usefulness depends on a built-in escape hatch, in which nothing fits and one must improvise from inside the moment. This escape hatch is an acknowledgment of chaos, or at least the inability of the system’s author to access/comprehend an objective, universal truth. A system is therefore superficially valuable, but only in the way that what its really compensating for is full presence. A fully present mind would need no pause to consider its path, nor experience anxiety, frustration, or regret over its steps forward or backward.”
I agree. When have I ever mentioned otherwise?
“When we were discussing stuff I had written about yesterday, Nick made this really interesting comparison of system application to judo. Sloth that I am, I have no expertise here (maybe you do, jbru?), but judo seems to be the consummate systemless practice because it is an art of pure response and improvisation. The only grain of the “structure” would be the decision to make the most of the elemental forces exerted against you. There is a process of learning how to align yourself with the momentum, but it is not an inborn knowledge, and thus not a natural state of being. You are not re-learning something you forgot, but expanding or building upon established human qualities. You are also consciously disengaging from, or better put UN-learning, certain behaviors such as anxiety or myopia—minimal hesitation and broad vision are both critical for advancing in the practice”
“Ultimately, the goal is for the system to deliver you to a place of mastery which allows the system itself to dissolve. It is finally so purely intuitive for you to yield and pull and dodge and sway in response to your opponent/s that the only thing occupying your consciousness is the absolute present, not the lessons you took or might need to take for judo mastery. It’s considered an art because the behaviors one must let go of exist with both purpose AND negative consequence are the ones which obstruct your logical mind from expanding in this direction on its own. I tend to liken it in my brain as the same sort of process we call “elderly wisdom;”
Yes. I also agree with this. This is generally the Buddhist view as well. Certain aspects of the “system” fall away, and you reach a perfect balance point of flow. But !!!! in no way, shape, or form does this mean that Judo masters all of the sudden start losing their keys, or start eating sloppily. Most stories I have read about “Masters” tell about their incredible attention to detail (Think tea ceremony), idiosyncratic behavior (Like refusal to eat certain foods), or incredible wit, speed, deftness, organization, and precision. A Master has let go of systems that restrict flow, but allows systems that increase flow, or are a result of the new wisdom they have tapped into. “Allowing the system to dissolve” is not a blank state of being…it still includes toothbrushes, the need for hydration, the need to arrive on time for a departing train, technology, etc. Zen is the perfect expression of how being organized is what actually frees up the physical world so we can penetrate through it. But the physical world is also there as an expression of the stillness behind it.
“The most relevant behavior to this discussion is the assessment of risk. A master of judo does not asses risk, but moves in synchronicity with danger or harm. He does not avoid it because he has no fear of it, placid in the face of calamity because he understands his every response will be the right one, and also, significantly, that the outcome will be “the right” one as well, even if that means injury or death. True mastery is unwavering presence within one’s own mind and body, not the ability nor desire to control its surroundings—again, it moves with them, not against them. If one is overpowered at the height of total capacity, that’s just kicks.”
“A master of judo does not assess risk” is a statement that is central to your argument, but I don’t see how you can make such a declaration. Plus, assessing risk was never my injunction…taking care was. I think it is possible to be careful (full of care) without being hindered, as you might say, by risk assessment. I agree…risk assessment is based on fragmentary thinking from the past, and doesn’t serve to open one up to the present moment. Being full of care is what being in the present moment feels like…you move from moment to moment attending to the situation in whatever way is necessary. What I find so funny about this is that in another post you say you don’t like Buddhism…but you are using Buddhist principles (and a Japanese martial art that came from a Zen temple in Japan) to support your argument…which is basically my argument. At the core of any of these religious, or martial arts practices is a basic belief in non-violence and the infinite compassion of the Bodhisattva, grounded in direct apprehension of Truth. Zen has systems for Tea ceremony, Archery, Painting/Calligraphy, Sitting, Walking, Bowing, Eating…man, they love systems almost more than I do. So, if that’s what you’re saying…that systems are a good thing, when they are in the context of Nondual teachings on the nature of mind and the centrality of intuitive wisdom, then it sounds like you’re in full agreement with my view and a closet Buddhist
“Practicing in the hopes of mastery would really mean training yourself not to respond to certain mechanisms, and nurturing the strength in your mind/body to do so. Over time you gain confidence in your strength and have to make a deliberate effort to not asses risk less and less. That confidence is given not to any system, but precisely in the lack thereof (which is why judo is such a great metaphor; you are not mentally sorting through prior lesson plans to regurgitate, but instinctively creating a new one in every moment). The system was the tool, but it is you yourself who will provide the answer. You will be operating exclusively from the escape hatch, if you will.”
“So what if you made the effort right now to disengage with risk assessment and proceeded towards fulfilling whatever felt good for you right then? Being conscious of others and belief in oneself can come later. You immediately reduce obstructions to your own presence in titanic measure. Assessing risk sows the seeds of fear, anxiety, hesitation, self-doubt, regret. Instead, you could move forward and respond artfully and intuitively to danger, rewarded by increasing success the more often you deliberately practiced.”
I agree. Yes. This is right. This is the way the dharma is understood.
“Any harm/suffering you encounter is not useful if it inspires measures to protect yourself from whatever or whomever caused you pain. That would expand your system rather than dismantle it. This doesn’t mean your pain isn’t of essential value, but the point is to move into and through it instead of shielding yourself. Like in judo, you use all momentum to your advantage, building strength without a calculated plan of action for the future.”
Uh-huh. Why are you arguing my point for me?
“JBru, when you describe the pain of your own life and witnessing the pain of others, you seem unable to appreciate the constitutive power of suffering. There is no alternative to living or to the relentless reinvention of the present. Even suicide is a step forward into the unknown and therefore an action affirming life. Barring that, though, existence happens whether or not you are happening with it. Your words seem to imply that pain can only erode some kind of precious and essential self which you seek to protect. I don’t believe there is such a thing; we are an amalgam of genetics, environment, history—humanity in the smallest and largest senses of the word.”
The four noble truths of Buddhism, which you take issue with, is based on a very simple idea: Suffering has constitutive power. In fact, this is so central to the Buddhist teachings, it is the first noble truth. Suffering exists in your life…face it, look at it, embrace it, open up to it for it…has immense constitutive power. Again, You are saying what I’ve been saying. Pain cannot erode anything. Causing unnecessary pain to oneself or another erodes one’s self-respect and dignity….it’s the intention in the mind to cause harm that erodes our peace of mind. It’s the kind of suffering we call “Suffering that leads to more suffering” as opposed to “Suffering that leads to the end of suffering.” These wizards of the mind have been working on this stuff for a long time, and these subtleties have been worked out. My point — to go back to the original post is — don’t take the path of “suffering that leads to more suffering” but please, by any and every means, take the path of “suffering that leads to the end of suffering.” Working out the specifics of that is hard, and up to everyone to figure out in their own way, but the idea is the same. Suffering is unavoidable (in fact it’s the basis of our lives), and has immense constitutive power, so embrace it, and pay attention to it. What I was warning against was an attitude that says “Suffering is unavoidable so ignore it, continue piling more suffering on top of it.” If you take that path, you will actually miss out on the constitutive power of suffering. I thought this was clear from the original post, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to clarify. This is my argument, but everything you have said, and the sources you have drawn from totally support it 100%.
“It is excruciating to watch as others destroy themselves out of self-loathing, especially when that is something you know intimately yourself. Some people are frankly less able to imagine their own future than others, and more inclined to allow themselves a permanent shroud of mourning for their own traumas. Sometimes, their entire identity seems to find itself rooted in victimhood, and to leave that self behind is something not everyone has the courage to do. I think that’s rare, though. Most of us want to be better, and we want to grow into something greater than what we were.”
Yes, most of us want to be better, but we don’t necessary have the best skill set or encouragement to become better. That’s why I am committed to the system of transformation I practice…because it provides an incredible set of tools for people to actually be able to fulfill that wish to be something better. Left on our own we can often be resourceful and creative a lot of the time, but it is very easy, I believe, to get caught up in the wrong group, or set of behaviors, and lose our way. It’s easy to lose your way even when you have a great support system, so why would it be easier to stay on track when intoxicated, and isolated? That doesn’t make sense. So, yes, most people are fine, but isn’t it fine to want and expect more from ourselves?
“When a great trauma occurs (great in terms of its resonance, not in terms of fanfare), what have you, personally, done with that pain? Do you see how it’s motivated you to seek understanding of it, and do you see where that search has taken you? At the time it may have felt like something had been taken away from you, like there was a very sudden and deep emptiness that refused to be ignored. Over time, though, those holes fill themselves with something new. You were changed. It wasn’t good or bad, it was just new. Was there anything that has ever happened in your life which you believe truly diminished who you are, or who you could be? The question you have to ask is, would you ever sincerely choose to be anyone else than exactly who you are? Not a new and improved You, not a You 2.0 or an enlightened You, but someone else entirely”
Again, I am agreeing with your technique. You’re saying to “do something” with the pain, “seek understanding.” I agree. The alternative is to push it down, ignore it, numb yourself to it, inflict more pain on yourself to keep the negative cycle going. I am simply campaigning for what you yourself are suggesting. I have found that people who start abusing drugs, or get lost in certain social scenes are doing so because they are unwilling to engage in the process of understanding you are suggesting. Pain and suffering is inevitable…so why spend your time complicating it more by hurting yourself? You and smacob seem unwilling, I guess, to see this very simple distinction. If you get cut and you’re bleeding (because you were doing something fun and loving), there is a qualitative difference between sticking your finger into the cut and ripping it wider and washing out the cut and putting a bandaid on it. You’ve been hurt, because of whatever, why put salt in your wounds? And yes, I am making the audacious claim that drug abuse, or self-imposed sexual abuse, or getting involved in activities that are high-risk could be a form of putting salt in your wounds. It doesn’t have to be…but couldn’t it possibly be? I think you could concede that much.
If life has gotten you down…failed relationships, unlived dreams, unsupportive parents, sickness, whatever…if that state of being is the “wound” in my example it makes more sense to me to dress that wound and heal it. Sure, the point isn’t to stay inside wrapped in a Band-aid forever. I never suggested that either. That’s as much of a denial mechanism as drugs. But a few hours a week spent hurting yourself further could be replaced with a few hours of meditation, therapy, and positive active healing like attempting to create relationships and life goals that don’t simply recreate the wounds from the past (or cover them up by making your whole system shut down even more) but seek to transform the pain and suffering in a constitutive way. Maybe you feel ready to go out dancing but you do it in a place where if you fall the worst that happens is you get a black and blue, not a big gash in the side of your leg. I would say, from the other perspective, if someone were to go dancing in a place with broken bottles on the floor, they would have to be clear that they are doing from a positive frame of “overcoming their fear of injury.” Like the judo master, yes, this is fine, but can most people really say they are this clear about it? Maybe so. But, in either case, the specifics of the action aren’t as important as the underlying psycho-spiritual process, which you agree with me on. Each person is responsible for figuring that out, and some do it better than others, and have moments of realization quicker, or as a result of fortuitous circumstances. While I don’t know for sure if a heroine addict is doing it with a positive and clear intention, there are certain behaviors, I think you would agree, where it is easier to make predictions about someone’s state of mind. Someone who cuts themself could be doing it as a way of overcoming their dualistic thinking, but it’s more likely they are storing an intense amount of self-loathing. People who get drunk every weekend could be doing it as a way of entering the judo master’s intuitive state of being, but they probably are just uncreative people, who have nothing better to do, and who are doing it because they don’t feel really secure about who they are when not drunk. There are certain common sense accepted judgments about certain behaviors. While it may be important to analyze and deconstruct some of those judgements, or cast them off as status quo fear, there is probably some element of truth in them.
“Even my own father, whose ostensible every move is an act of violence against himself—to this day dipping in and out of varying levels of addiction to varying degrees of poison, alienating his family and friends with spectacular dedication, all the way down to refusing all medical care to nevermind cure, but manage, monitor, or just alleviate the symptoms of his failing liver—even he would not say he did. Those who do are either already dead or atrophying; the rest of us choose life, and we live it as well as each of us know how to. You have to appreciate that when you witness another’s acts of self-hatred, you are seeing them in a more cocooned state of transition. They will emerge someone else after however long and in whatever direction they need. Sometimes you’re there at the height of rapid change, and others over maddening stretches of very little movement.”
I’m with you here. The rest of us do choose life, and even your dad in some way is choosing life. I totally get that, and I’m with you. To reiterate, my point is that I like refined systems. Why not not only choose life, but choose it and pursue the best path you possibly can with all the heart in the world? Maybe it’s not required, but again…why can’t we continue to ask ourselves and our fellow humans to be the best? If living life is like playing the piano, why can’t we approach our practice and our performances with more energy and focus? I like that approach, and I’ve seen other peoples’ lives improve when they took that approach too.
“Pain is also necessary because it is the only test of your grace when you’ve found yourself under the very shadow of joy. Judo mastery is learned, a lesson plan which included 45 broken noses etc. Without exposing yourself to the possibility of it, by assessing risk and seeking to reduce harm, how would you ever learn to be present? And on what would the unmitigated belief in the strength of mind/body be founded or where would it even begin? Not only does a determination to avoid unnecessary pain end up hindering growth, but not voluntarily throwing yourself in harm’s way every now and then is actually the only way to push forward, like a judoka sparring every day.”
I agree. Pain tests you. But if you inflict unncessary pain on yourself, you’re kind of failing the test. No? In my original post I recommend pushing your body to its limits…but you have to do it with heart and clear intentions…and you have to occasionally be gentle with yourself and stop. It’s good to force yourself to run 5 miles everyday, but sometimes you can only do two. Sometimes, even if it sounds cheesy, you have to have a heart. Someone who has been physically or sexually abused may find that sitting around in a dark, smelly, warehouse just continues to make them unsafe, or may plant seeds of feeling worthless. How can this be healthy? On a path with heart, we can understand our boundaries, and our limits, and maybe that night we need to be with no more than three people and have no one moving or dancing uncontrollably because we may simply be retraumatizing ourselves. This is not a running away from life…this is taking care of yourself. Loving yourself. Being gentle with your body and mind like you would take care of a baby. Sometimes we need that. My system is for “Partying and taking care.” We should party, but knowing a lot of us have been hurt, how can we do so in a way that is loving and gentle? Judo masters have an incredible capacity for compassion and care and love. The Dalai Lama always talks about how we can generate the heart of a mother for its child. A story I heard once from a teacher of mine was when the Dalai Lama visited the meditation center he got out of the car, walk through the whole crowd and walked up to the teacher who had just broken her leg. He just looked at her and said “What happened?” It’s that kind of deep caring that I strive for in myself, and appreciate receiving from people around me. When someone appears to have a disregard for their own body, or possessions, or heart, how can I trust them with my own? How can I truly feel comfortable in a hostile environment? Are you suggested that the people in Palestine are living the Judo ideal because they live in such horror all the time? I mean, come on, they need to NOT have that much violence around them. It can’t be good for them. Are you arguing that it is?
“Jake’s example of understanding the dangers inherently a part of dancing/thrashing at that show Smacob is at, doing it anyway, getting hurt, and still loving every second of it is actually every bit as valuable as the placid and very, very, very safe evening Sprunky is having. Safety and serenity are critical elements of psychic balance because they allow you to turn inside and reflect without distraction. But the other half of life is lived in the face of risk and chaos and danger! You need it! A deficiency in either direction is not a full life! For me personally, I go in cycles of being very internally focused for stretches of time and then turning it outward, where I am more drawn to social situations and romantic relationships and total debauchery in general. I notice myself shift when I start to feel the weight of mediocrity pressing on me, like I’ve become too accustomed to either chaos or quiet, like it’s no longer a challenge and I am becoming too comfortable, ie stagnant. The only way to honor life is to live it, and the only way to live it is to always move forward.”
I’m not against the dangers of any activity. I drive a car, and know fully how dangerous it is. I feel like I need to yell this point…which I made in my first post, and over and over again…IT’S THE INTENTION OF THE MIND…it’s not the inherent danger or lack of danger in any activity. That’s the primary point. The secondary point is that certain activities, because of their known danger, probably are linked with an unwholesome intention of the mind. Murder is bad. It’s probably possible (even the Buddha did it in a past life) to kill someone with a pure and wholesome intention…But most people agree that murder is usually done out of intense anguish. The Buddhist looks first and foremost at the intention in the mind (“I hate my body, I resent my parents for being wealthy, I think it would be cool to do something different, and I hate the way society asks me to conform, so I’m gonna go into an unsafe environment and do some drugs, just to state my case” vs. “I love dancing, and I’m really feeling this, rock on! Wow, part of my mind is telling me this is a little unsafe, but I’m watching that with care, simultaneously trusting the life force flow that’s happening right now in my body”), but has a sense, or a consensus, that certain activities happen to often coincide with unwholesome mind states. Murder, stealing, lying, rape, intoxication, physical violence…sure, you could have a pure intention in doing these things, but the consensus is that you probably don’t. I’ve done a ton of things that were risky, and dangerous, and chaotic…but the irony is that dancing at a loud punk show and doing drugs are faux-risky…they’re actually quite predictable. You know what’s going to happen, you have heard reports from most people about them. How is it any riskier, in other words, than learning to ice skate? Or playing an open mic? And if you really want to do something risky, why not do what’s actually going to provide pleasure…like run for president, or attempt to write a 2000 page treatise on Turkish foreign policy, or fight for the Palestinians right to freedom, or sit a meditation retreat and see what happens when you don’t talk for 3 months. And if you’re talking just about socializing, why not try something really risky…like don’t drink alcohol and deal with a lifetime of feeling left out of social convention (even in social circles that are trying to be subversive with the status quo). If you really want to risk your flesh, then it’s not really a risk is it, you might as well just stay home and put broken glass in your bed while you’re falling asleep. I have no problem with your idea that we need expansiveness and inwardness (my gloss), but why is expansiveness in socializing always a old dilapidated warehouse in an old industrial city with loud music and various risks. Is that all creativity has created? What about going to the opera? Is that expansive enough? What about doing a pilgramage? What about going on a group hike? I mean, if you really want risk why not join a gang and go out and do a hit and run…that’ll get your blood pumping, or why not drink a bunch of kool-aid and go down with a bang? You have limits, you know you do. You wouldn’t join a KKK rally, or a gun show after party. Maybe one of the riskiest things would be to go to a dinner party with writers your admire, and have to figure out how you can impress upon them how talented you are.
Let me see if I can simplify. If the goal is to experience danger, and chaos, you are severely limiting yourself by going to punk shows with people you know. At this point, there is almost no risk. So you’ve mastered it, now, what next? Do you up the risk, and introduce more dangers? And you keep testing your limits in the same environment? So you add orgies, or more risky drugs, or you put more sharp objects over things? Is that the goal? This sounds more like an episode of Fear Factor than it does a viable path to the mind of the Judo master. Where’s the end point? What is it for? You say, to see what the limits of human interaction can create. Unfortunately, we already know most of the negative limits of what groups of people can produce. Sex, drugs, violence in the extreme have already been experimented with. There is almost nothing new to explore here. No? We know where that leads. We know what happens…STDS, death, the occasional redemption. Lilah, it sounds like you’re saying alone time is good, and being with other people is good. But I don’t see how that translates to intentionally not taking care of yourself. Do you feel better because you hurt yourself, or do you feel better because you simply got out of the house and talked with other people, which I agree is a natural and normal inclination?
“If true “mastery” is an achievable state of being is something we probably disagree on, but the pursuit of that ideal is the reward in itself. Ultimately, you hope to come to a place where you can love and find joy in the entirety of your whole life, even the parts which were bloody and full of suffering. You do not fear death because it is only another turn in the chaos of life. You might have imagined what will happen to you when you die, but do you know? Can you rely on a system, or must you face it knowing that it is completely unknowable? The only remaining trace of your system is still the decision to move into whatever comes rather than fight against it.”
You’re back to your original frame, and here again I agree with you. But your argument lost its way in the last few paragraphs. I agree you find love and joy in the entirety of your life. I explained that process above. I also explained how blood, and suffering is a good part of life. But you intervening paragraphs conflate what I have differentiated above as “suffering that leads to more suffering,” and the “suffering that leads to the end of suffering.” You have not differentiated these in your argument, so you’re left having to justify self-inflicted unneccesary harm because you also believe strongly in the power of suffering. Separating these two dimensions out, you may, in no longer having to justify self harm, find that you can still believe passionately and whole-heartedly in the power of redemptive suffering and existence, and have more freedom and redemption in your choices about how to exercise your social and entertainment activities.
This is an important point, so I will restate it here: People who have the belief (which they’ve gleaned from some sort of philosophy or other) that suffering is a powerful force, and should be embraced, often use that as an initial excuse to tolerate more pain than is appropriate. This, my friend, is a nihilistic view. Even if you claim that suffering is redemptive, believing that all suffering is somehow redemptive and that a wise person actually should inflict more suffering on themselves, is an entirely limited view. Buddhism, and beginning Buddhist practitioners, can suffer (no pun intended) from the same type of foggy thinking. The Buddhist teachings on suffering are not meant to be an invitation for more suffering. If a judo master can avoid a fight, he will. It’s just that knowing (with her wisdom) that the fight is necessary, she won’t turn away even if death is probable. This is also the story of Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita…one must follow their dharma…that much is sure…even if it involves killing your cousins or brothers…but it’s having the clarity of mind to know that that is your dharma. You don’t just go kill your cousin because it’s risky or time for some fun extroverted activity. It’s great that you can appreciate the power of suffering, but this is an entirely different matter…the unnecessary creation of pain.
“Jake, I have to disagree with you here too about “the best route” being to “minimize the suffering, and enjoy what we can of everything else.” I don’t see how suffering can be lessened without lessening everything else. And this is a consistent binary that Sally uses to explain her system, citing that science has proven smoking causes cancer, so therefore smoking is essentially a suicidal gesture. This is the perfect example of why the only good system is a dead one: what you fail to consider is why people smoke in the first place, which is because it gives them pleasure.”
Jake’s position has already being clarified. Ok. But Lilah, I don’t understand your last point. You tell me I fail to consider why people smoke. Hah! That’s exactly what my entirely argument is based on…the why. And my point is is that people fail to recognize (yes, you also in this case) that this apparent “pleasure” is not truly what the person needs deep down. While it might provide a sort of “pleasurable” response (pleasurable because it slowly masks over the anxiety they are feeling and let’s them forget it for a couple of minutes before it rises back up again and requires another smack down), it is actually PAINFUL precisely because it has been proven to be destructive and it doesn’t actually solve the problem…which is that the person is stressed out and anxious. I’ve never in my life heard of someone who needed to go outside for a smoke just because they wanted to. Almost 100% of the time it is an anxious rush out the door to get some relief from something…which I can only assume is something unpleasant in themselves. Suffering (of the type that leads to more) can most certainly be lessened and actually have the effect of enlivening everything else. Someone who stops drinking after a lifetime of addiction actually sees that the quality of their life improves. Someone who continues to smoke usually dies from it and misses out on opportunities to breathe fully. Just to beat a dead horse…you have one word for suffering that you’re using to describe too entirely different processes.
“You might rightly point out the irrationality of indulging in what feels good now when it will almost certainly not feel so good later. But at what point does moderation turn to self-denial turn to excess? This is yet another set of falls divisions that are not so easily discernible from one another, and for which we all must draw and continue to redraw our own borders whenever it feels right to. Is there a system with which you can gauge the exact last pack of cigarettes a person can go through until the benefits of pleasure are subsumed by the medical consequences in the future, something averaging some set of physical and behavioral probabilities perhaps? Or is that rather why quitting one’s physical addiction to nicotine is peanuts compared to overcoming one’s emotional and social relationship to cigarettes?”
This is your golden moment, if I may so say, because your questions I think actually draw most closely to the type of process I am suggesting. Using awareness, attention (i.e. care) you watch yourself engage in various activities to determine what the quality of your state of mind is before, during, and after. Three bites of chocolate could be loving, that extra fourth could be excessive. You watch your mind (this is what meditation is) and see what motivates (read: the intention in the mind, cetana in Pali) each bite. When it turns to excess you stop, or try to stop. Your system (or lack thereof) is what sets up the false divisions and binaries. The system of awareness is a nondual system…a system where the practitioner is forced to discern for themselves what is appropriate and skillful. The point to your last couple of questions there is that there’s a process in self-inquiry and self-reflection and discernment. That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about care…it’s not a prescription. A baby with a booboo shouldn’t be treated like a machine…you have to listen to him or her, take care of him or her, notice what changes over time, make decisions…heck, take risks! I will maintain that when no system is present it is much more difficult to discern what is healthy and what is excessive. If it’s too loud in a room to listen to the child, it’s not the child that needs to yell louder…it’s you who has to take the child to another room to be able to listen more carefully to what is needed.
“Even if it’s a medical bet against the house to continue smoking and still avoid cancer, but your physical health is only one facet of happiness. It is perfectly valid to decide the joy one gets out of smoking is so great that whatever future maladies it will definitely cause, they do not overpower the appeal of sensational pleasure in the present. There is always the reflection of light to be found in dark, and vice versa—won’t all pleasurable pursuits slide easily into painful vices?”
The body eventually dies. I’m not a body fundamentalist in any sense. The only thing I’ve ever argued about the body is that not caring for the body is a spiritual and psychological failure.
“Not to get too academic, but the lines between all of these purported opposites like health and illness, pain and pleasure, truth and fiction, joy and suffering; these are shallow just like all systems are. They are only shorthand for the infinitely subjective and yet still universal experience we are always struggling to describe. The language and the concepts they refer to are indistinguishable from one another—for more on that, I recommend reading Derrida’s Of Grammatology, which is heavily influenced by Eastern thought. There is an unforgettable Levinas quote that I think expresses with such beauty the need to consider truth beyond the convenience of constructions, referring here specifically to a system of law:
“Justice would not be possible without the singularity, the unicity of subjectivity. In this justice subjectivity does not figure as a formal reason but as individuality: formal reason is incarnate in being only in the measure that losses its election and its equivalent to all others. Formal reason is incarnate only in a being who does not have the strength to suppose that, under the visible that is history, there is the invisible that is judgment.”
“Is an existence devoid of risk and safe from harm worth the trouble if joy is harnessed by the same leash which restrains the reaches of its sorrow? And is dying from cancer really such a terrible thing if it’s preceded by a life truly and fully realized? Would that terror even exist to such a life?”
My life, and the way of life I suggest is not devoid of risk and safe from harm. Like I’ve said many times…I get hurt all the time. Jeeze, I almost sprained my ankle the other day literally standing still. Again, again, again, this is different than saying “Go out and hurt yourself, or do an activity where you’re definitely likely to hurt yourself.” Dying from cancer is one thing. Getting an xray everyday (knowing full well it can cause cancer) just to be cool and outrageous and because all of your friend are doing just seems stupid to me. Knowing you can get a gash anytime, just even cutting carrots, or knowing you can get cancer just simply by having been born in a body, why dance on broken glass in front of xray machines? Oh jeeze, have I given you a new idea? You can easily get a gash at a party in a really clean ballroom. The beautiful person you’re dancing with could turn around with their watch or bracelet and it could rip your finger off. I’m not talking about that kind of risk control. “Oh well, my date wears a watch…that could certainly cause me harm were it to catch a piece of skin in the wrong way.” No! That’s absurd, and that’s not my view at all. But if you know that this one x is most likely y, and y is undesirable, why would you x? Makes no sense to me. But, if you know that all x is possibly or unavoidably a possible y, and y is undesirable, then sure, go ahead and x. That’s a more realistic and loving picture of life to me.
Levinas again,
“Death threatens me from beyond. This unknown that frightens, the silence of the infinite, spaces that terrify, comes from the other, and this alterity, precisely as absolute, strikes me in an evil design or in a judgment of justice. The solitude of death does not make the Other vanish, but remains in a consciousness of hostility and consequently still renders possible an appeal to the Other, to his friendship and his medication. The doctor is an a priori principle of human mortality. Death approaches in the fear of someone and hopes in someone. ‘The Eternal brings death and brings life.’ A social conjecture is maintained in this menace. It does not sink into the anxiety that would transform it into an annihilation of nothingness. In the being for death of fear I am not faced with nothingness, but faced with what is against me, as though murder, rather than being one of the occasions of dying were inseparable from the essence of death, as though the approach of death remained one of the modalities of the relation with the Other.”
ok, again, i know that this blog is just you talking to yourself in the second person, but because this post is about me, i have to ask:
what’s my intention? why/how did i have a great time at the crazy show? were my intentions honorable?
The problem at this point (or all along) is that we’re stuck in a polarity that has no end. You say you had a great time, I say you’re just kidding yourself. You won’t listen to me, and I won’t listen to you. We’re stuck in our positions, stubborn, and dead-ended.
I can’t tell from your comment if you’re asking me or telling me. If you’re telling me “Oh, ok, fine, what’s my intention?” you’ve already cut me off. If you’re asking me, genuinely “I don’t understand what he’s getting at, maybe I haven’t looked at my intentions, can he help me do that?” then we’re getting somewhere.
And from my end, if I’ve already decided that I’m right, I don’t really want to know your intentions. I’ve spit back to you “I’ll tell you your intentions…they’re bad!” Whereas, if I suspend judgment, and respect this is where you’re coming from, then we’re getting somewhere.
But in either case, of each of us letting go of our stubbornness, we have to be truly committed and open to that process. You can only voice after you’re sure you’ve suspended judgment and respected the other person’s view. Only at that point, can you offer a healthy criticism.
So, which is it? Are we going to let go of our stubbornness and enter into a dialogue, or are we going to keep butting heads with the polarized view?
Let’s start again…in Dialogue Dougie style:
In your worldview/philosophy/spirituality how would you handle going to a party with live fireworks indoors and broken glass on the floor? How do you feel about it?
Your question to me, “why/how did I have a great time…” I think you need to answer that for me, not from me to you. Tell me that story. How is it that you came to the belief that this was an acceptable behavior for you?
”
The problem at this point (or all along) is that we’re stuck in a polarity that has no end. You say you had a great time, I say you’re just kidding yourself. You won’t listen to me, and I won’t listen to you. We’re stuck in our positions, stubborn, and dead-ended.
”
sally, we are having a dialogue. i am genuinely interested in whether you think my intentions in going to the crazy show were honorable and spirit-affirming, or dishonorable and spirit-diminishing. you have said that it’s the intention of the mind, not the inherent danger in any activity, that matters. so, i don’t want to talk about things that don’t matter, i want to talk about things that do matter. my intentions should define whether my activities are right or wrong. i think (based on your “secondary point”) that you are looking at the activity and letting that define the intention. no one can truly know the intentions of another, but we’ve known each other for a very long time, you should be able to put in a good guess. don’t put the cart in front of the horse– do you think my intention was honorable or not? or do you not really believe that intention is what matters?
now i will oblige you and answer your questions in as straightforward a manner as i can, “starting again”:
”
In your worldview/philosophy/spirituality how would you handle going to a party with live fireworks indoors and broken glass on the floor? How do you feel about it?
”
broken glass is a rarity, and something everyone keeps a lookout for. in fact at the show in question, the only rule at the venue was “no breaking glass”. of course, this was the last show, and all rules eventually break, so there was broken glass. but as soon as it happened, circle pat was right there with a huge push broom sweeping it up. no one wants to get cut up.
as for fireworks, i always get kind of psyched when there’s fireworks at a punk show. it’s kind of a roller coaster feeling, but as hakim bey said, gunpowder was “invented by the chinese but never developed for war… more useful to frighten, malign demons, delight children, fill the air with brave and risky-smelling haze.” they smell great, they look great, they sound great, they add to a wonderful sense of world-turned-upside-down-ed-ness. this is not for everyday, and can be a bummer. but saved for the proper moment, this is like a standing ovation.
actually, a large and very positive change in my life came about from setting off fireworks inside. i was at a party on castle st with little andrew, and i was talking to my friend jerry. as we were talking, i put a small “black cat” in the hummus and lit it. i don’t know why i did, i just did it. though it was just a small container, the hummus went everywhere. some people were unhappy about getting food on them, i felt kind of stupid, and left. the next day i got a message from one of the people who lived at the apartment (kind of a famous grouch), saying that the landlord saw the mess and was keeping their security deposit. yikes! i felt really bad and made a decision to make the money back for him, in a way that was fun, that was something i wouldn’t have done otherwise, and that would move us all in a positive direction, so that at no point could i say “i wish i never set the fireworks off at the party”. anyway that’s how i became an artist– soon after that happened i got a show at a gallery in chinatown and sold most of the paintings i had made for it. i gave the roommate the money, he was amazed. someone told me later that the whole landlord story was made up, and while it could’ve been, i didn’t care then, and still don’t– i had fun doing it, it was a valuable experience.
so in short, my take on fireworks at a party is generally positive- there are parties and shows at which fireworks are totally inappropriate, but when it’s right, it’s perfect.
”
Your question to me, “why/how did I have a great time…” I think you need to answer that for me, not from me to you. Tell me that story. How is it that you came to the belief that this was an acceptable behavior for you?”
”
this is an extremely loaded way of posing a question for someone committed to an open dialogue! rather than “how is it you came to the belief that this was an acceptable behavior for you”? i am going to answer the first question: “how did i have a good time?”
now, i initially brought this night to your attention because i knew that you would have had a really terrible time there, but i had a great time, and the world is wide with many things within. i need to be totally cleat that i have no interest in trying to get you or anyone else to go to crazy punk shows (although i wish you were at the jacob the terrible show a few months ago). ok, here goes.
being at a good punk show is like nothing else. everyone is united through the music– i mean, there are people there you might not get along with, but ultimately, you all like some of the same music, everyone has decided that everyone else there is pretty alright. also, on the community side of things, there are people you see only at shows, and they are your friends, and it’s good to see your friends, and to meet their friends, and to be friends. the music is loud, and even though you don’t like “intentionally loud” music (but you do like “loud music” (which is a funny flip flop for you on this dichotomy, away from intent)) there’s really something awesome about really loud music that i feel i don’t need to explain. ok, let’s say this: high volume moves the music out of the domain of the mind and into the domain of the body. an interesting side effect is that loud music makes it somewhat impossible to socialize for 20 – 40 minute stretches, which contributes to a general transformation from being “cool” (socializing, being detatched) to “hot” (dancing and running around, being physical, being “in it”). dancing around at a show is similarly “hot”, in a way that i feel other types of dancing are not. i never felt comfortable dancing until i discovered punk. dancing had always been just another part of an elaborate courtship behaviour of signs and signifiers. dancing at a punk show is a great, crazy whirlwind. personally, it has been very very helpful to me, in all areas of my life, to have experienced (and to continue to experience) this feeling of wonderful abandonment, of being pushed but also buoyed and held aloft by friends and especially strangers, of everything being alright as long as you let your body move they way it wants to go. and conversely, that if you try to force an agenda (i am going to stand here and not move at all, i am going to move in this manner), you open yourself up to injury. yes sometimes people dance like idiots, or act tough, but these are just things to flow around or through. this is, to be sure, a somewhat practiced art, and something i don’t think you could just do. but i wish you could be immaterial and invisible and in the middle of the floor watching me- you would see a person completely in the moment, without fear or judgement or thought. sometimes i get the feeling and i can just walk through the thick of it at an even snail’s pace, and be completely untouched. this is an amazing feeling.
anyway, there’s other reasons i enjoy a crazy show, and obviously there are things i don’t like (that get far outweighed by the good things). this isn’t even “a nutshell”, but i think that’s enough to start.
so, how are my intentions?
also, my own writings on the venue in question can be found here.
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. I couldn’t figure out a way in my last post to strike the right tone in my writing vs how I was actually thinking, so I hope my previous post wasn’t too defensive or accusative. But it was a way of saying that while we may have been having a dialogue all along, what you have written in this comment section really completes the dialogue feel for me. Your tone is describing in positive terms what your experience is, rather than simply having to defend a philosophical position, which can tend away from dialogue towards debate. That’s all I was saying. So, good. Here we have it.
”
The problem at this point (or all along) is that we’re stuck in a polarity that has no end. You say you had a great time, I say you’re just kidding yourself. You won’t listen to me, and I won’t listen to you. We’re stuck in our positions, stubborn, and dead-ended.
”
” sally, we are having a dialogue. i am genuinely interested in whether you think my intentions in going to the crazy show were honorable and spirit-affirming, or dishonorable and spirit-diminishing. you have said that it’s the intention of the mind, not the inherent danger in any activity, that matters. so, i don’t want to talk about things that don’t matter, i want to talk about things that do matter. my intentions should define whether my activities are right or wrong. i think (based on your “secondary point”) that you are looking at the activity and letting that define the intention. no one can truly know the intentions of another, but we’ve known each other for a very long time, you should be able to put in a good guess. don’t put the cart in front of the horse– do you think my intention was honorable or not? or do you not really believe that intention is what matters?”
“now i will oblige you and answer your questions in as straightforward a manner as i can, “starting again”:”
”
In your worldview/philosophy/spirituality how would you handle going to a party with live fireworks indoors and broken glass on the floor? How do you feel about it?
”
“broken glass is a rarity, and something everyone keeps a lookout for. in fact at the show in question, the only rule at the venue was “no breaking glass”. of course, this was the last show, and all rules eventually break, so there was broken glass. but as soon as it happened, circle pat was right there with a huge push broom sweeping it up. no one wants to get cut up.”
So, for the sake of completeness, let’s stick with the original title of the post: Partying and taking care. The system is this: have fun but respect yourself at the same time, take care of your body and mind, even while you are stretching it to its limits or playing with it. So simple and yet so difficult to discern. So, if we can determine whether your intentions match this standard I have set forth, then I would give you the “sounds good and honorable,” official System Sally seal of approval. Please forgive the simplicity of the format, as I will be making quick and simplistic judgments.
* If you expected broken glass at every party and still went, that’s bad. Knowing broken glass is a rarity (just like it is anywhere) is good and honorable.
* Everyone keeping a lookout for broken glass is good and honorable.
* Having a rule “No Breaking Glass” sounds great and honorable.
* Breaking rules sometimes is good and honorable. Other times it is bad and careless. Learning from that ‘mistake’ and not doing it again is good. Repeating the same carelessness intentionally is ignoble.In this case, it seems it just happened, and that’s more neutral than anything.
* Circle pat sweeping it up is good and honorable.
* Knowing and acknowledging that “no one wants to get cut up” is good and honorable, and makes me feel a lot better.
Overall Grade and Assessment: Good, Honorable, but who broke the rule and why? That person (not the other people in attendance) would need to investigate that decision for themself. For the average party goer, A. For Circle Pat A+ in the care department. For person who broke glass, could be F, could be A+, would have to ask them to share their intention.
“as for fireworks, i always get kind of psyched when there’s fireworks at a punk show. it’s kind of a roller coaster feeling, but as hakim bey said, gunpowder was “invented by the chinese but never developed for war… more useful to frighten, malign demons, delight children, fill the air with brave and risky-smelling haze.” they smell great, they look great, they sound great, they add to a wonderful sense of world-turned-upside-down-ed-ness. this is not for everyday, and can be a bummer. but saved for the proper moment, this is like a standing ovation”
* Always getting kind of psyched when there’s fireworks needs more explanation. As is, it’s a D. I mean, I always leave when there’s fireworks at a show. How can we explain the discrepency here?
* Wanting a roller coaster feeling is good, neutral, or bad. It depends on the cost? You could get the same feeling with outdoor fireworks without the danger.
* I love fireworks. I agree with every positive description you give, but you don’t explain here why indoors is acceptable. This intention has not been clearly articulated. Where do the concerns for your well-being go when confronted with the knowledge that you are indoors with bouncing and shooting fire balls? Is circle pat deflecting possible errant fireballs? Until you explain this, I’m giving this firework circumstance a D. Jacob, seeing, having 10-digits, and being alive are great things. I wonder if losing those things is worth having a roller coaster feeling for ten minutes. At http://www.fireworksafety.com/statistics.htm they say 9600 people were treated for fireworks related injuries. and this wikipedia category entry lists a number of nightclub fires. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nightclub_fires
“actually, a large and very positive change in my life came about from setting off fireworks inside. i was at a party on castle st with little andrew, and i was talking to my friend jerry. as we were talking, i put a small “black cat” in the hummus and lit it. i don’t know why i did, i just did it. though it was just a small container, the hummus went everywhere. some people were unhappy about getting food on them, i felt kind of stupid, and left. the next day i got a message from one of the people who lived at the apartment (kind of a famous grouch), saying that the landlord saw the mess and was keeping their security deposit. yikes! i felt really bad and made a decision to make the money back for him, in a way that was fun, that was something i wouldn’t have done otherwise, and that would move us all in a positive direction, so that at no point could i say “i wish i never set the fireworks off at the party”. anyway that’s how i became an artist– soon after that happened i got a show at a gallery in chinatown and sold most of the paintings i had made for it. i gave the roommate the money, he was amazed. someone told me later that the whole landlord story was made up, and while it could’ve been, i didn’t care then, and still don’t– i had fun doing it, it was a valuable experience.”
This story is awesome, but it really proves my point. You did something, it caused a lot of problems, you did your time in repentence and it was a good experience all around. While you might not say “i wish i never,” might you say “i won’t again,” or ” I will have more awareness with how i handle them in the future.” Lilah’s argument was very much like this….you created suffering, but it was overall a constructive experience that enriched your life that you were able to grow and learn from. Great! I’ve done many things, just because (because i didn’t know any better) and then i grew and changed and learned and became more me because of the suffering involved. This is the suffering that leads to the end of suffering. If you went to a party every week and exploded some hummus and pissed people off and damaged walls over and over again, it would be fair to say you hadn’t learned anything about how your actions affect other people and situations, and you’d be on the path of suffering that leads to more suffering. No, you did the right thing and took the pain of the experience and transformed it into good. I commend you on that and give that process an A++. So, to be clear: “screwing up and learning from it” is good and honorable. “Screwing up and not giving a care” is bad and ignoble. Your sharing here shows me that you did “feel really bad,” “felt kinda stupid,” and sought to take care of those feelings by trying to mend the situation. In this sense, even though you made a mistake, in the end I think this experience has taught you how to party and take care. You haven’t said as much, but how would feel now repeating the same act? Would you given the same circumstances? Can’t you just make the art from positive things now, instead of being motivated by having “felt kinda stupid?”
“so in short, my take on fireworks at a party is generally positive- there are parties and shows at which fireworks are totally inappropriate, but when it’s right, it’s perfect.”
”
Your question to me, “why/how did I have a great time…” I think you need to answer that for me, not from me to you. Tell me that story. How is it that you came to the belief that this was an acceptable behavior for you?”
”
“this is an extremely loaded way of posing a question for someone committed to an open dialogue! rather than “how is it you came to the belief that this was an acceptable behavior for you”? i am going to answer the first question: “how did i have a good time?”
fair enough.
“now, i initially brought this night to your attention because i knew that you would have had a really terrible time there, but i had a great time, and the world is wide with many things within. i need to be totally cleat that i have no interest in trying to get you or anyone else to go to crazy punk shows (although i wish you were at the jacob the terrible show a few months ago). ok, here goes.”
“being at a good punk show is like nothing else. everyone is united through the music– i mean, there are people there you might not get along with, but ultimately, you all like some of the same music, everyone has decided that everyone else there is pretty alright. also, on the community side of things, there are people you see only at shows, and they are your friends, and it’s good to see your friends, and to meet their friends, and to be friends. the music is loud, and even though you don’t like “intentionally loud” music (but you do like “loud music” (which is a funny flip flop for you on this dichotomy, away from intent)) there’s really something awesome about really loud music that i feel i don’t need to explain. ok, let’s say this: high volume moves the music out of the domain of the mind and into the domain of the body. an interesting side effect is that loud music makes it somewhat impossible to socialize for 20 – 40 minute stretches, which contributes to a general transformation from being “cool” (socializing, being detatched) to “hot” (dancing and running around, being physical, being “in it”). dancing around at a show is similarly “hot”, in a way that i feel other types of dancing are not. i never felt comfortable dancing until i discovered punk. dancing had always been just another part of an elaborate courtship behaviour of signs and signifiers. dancing at a punk show is a great, crazy whirlwind. personally, it has been very very helpful to me, in all areas of my life, to have experienced (and to continue to experience) this feeling of wonderful abandonment, of being pushed but also buoyed and held aloft by friends and especially strangers, of everything being alright as long as you let your body move they way it wants to go. and conversely, that if you try to force an agenda (i am going to stand here and not move at all, i am going to move in this manner), you open yourself up to injury. yes sometimes people dance like idiots, or act tough, but these are just things to flow around or through. this is, to be sure, a somewhat practiced art, and something i don’t think you could just do. but i wish you could be immaterial and invisible and in the middle of the floor watching me- you would see a person completely in the moment, without fear or judgement or thought. sometimes i get the feeling and i can just walk through the thick of it at an even snail’s pace, and be completely untouched. this is an amazing feeling.”
* Being united through music is good and honorable.
* Being with people you might not get along with but eventually seeing everyone is pretty alright is great and honorable.
* Liking the same music with people you think are pretty alright is good and honorable.
* Seeing friends, meeting friends, and beings friends is good and honorable.
* Loud music is fine, whatever. I went to see the Inauguration (a most honorable event) and the speakers were on full blast and I had to wear earplugs. I realize this is an unavoidable part of living in a world with amplification. This is neutral.
* Really loud music making it hard to socialize for 20-40 minutes stretches could be good and honorable. Really loud music all the time makes it hard to connect with people, and so might be bad and ignoble.
* You feeling comfortable dancing and discovering what you need for that to happen is good and honorable.
* Feeling “in the zone” (my translation) is very difficult to ascertain. Abandonment is hard to ascertain. Driving drunk is probably a feeling of wonderful abadonment too. I get the sense this is mostly a positive version of this. I’d have to hear a little more, but let’s say I give this a B+/A-.
* Having people around you that aren’t in the zone who are idiots or act tough, without a way of filtering them is bad and unsafe. As you say, flowing around or through is good and honorable as long as you feel that opportunity is there most of the time.
Music, dancing, and socializing at a punk show, I’d give an A.
So, punk show (A), as you describe it here not being the one who broke the glass, with Circle pat cleaning up (A) and fireworks, as I currently understand it indoors (D) averages out to be a B-. But dying from a nightclub fire, the mere thought, the horror of that, makes me just want to give it an F. But, giving it the benefit of the doubt, that there’s no foam on the ceiling, and the doors are plentiful and wide open, let’s say the show is a B-. That’s passing!
Now, I wouldn’t go for the first part, the music, and dancing, but not because it isn’t taking care (I gave it an A!), but because of my personal tastes (not gradable in this system). I would be okay with Circle pat there, let’s say if I went to a funk show, but I would leave when the fireworks started even if it was the Beatles.
So, jacob, a B- is not bad at all. Move the fireworks outside in the back, where it’s a choice for people to be near them or not, keep my buddy Circle pat around, stick the rules when it’s not the last show ever, and then you get an A. That’s my System Sally assessment. Do you have any questions about the judging?
Fight for your right to party while taking care!
“anyway, there’s other reasons i enjoy a crazy show, and obviously there are things i don’t like (that get far outweighed by the good things). this isn’t even “a nutshell”, but i think that’s enough to start.
so, how are my intentions?
also, my own writings on the venue in question can be found here.”
“having said that, the show was pretty self-aware, which is a buzzkill for gleeful abandon. nonetheless, rowdy ones drove everyone into a frenzy, it was fun. the only rule: NO BREAKING BOTTLES, was broken, but as soon as the band stopped circle pat was there with the broom sweeping all the glass up and apparently no one got sliced up, despite the cement floor being slick with spilled beer. fireworks were going off everywhere, the air equal parts cigarette smoke and flying debris– beer cans, cardboard boxes, a large plastic trash barrel, and no small amount of mildewy couch cushions surprisingly heavy with miscellaneous damp, soaring through the air at such a rate that it was more like electrons clouding. ok, it was awesome.”
Interesting statement. I think it’s possible to be self-aware and have gleeful abandon. Would you disagree?
* Air being equal parts cigarette smoke and flying debris gets bad grade for smoke. Beer cans, cardboard boxes, trash barrels, and couch cushions are relatively benign. I’d much rather those over fireworks, but it’s kind gross either way. I mean mildew? Isn’t that just simply unpleasant?
not to continually bring up strategy, but i think the chaos and mess of the place are really important for quelling both bullies and serious injury. serious injury is at a minimum because minor injury is a constant– you can’t get up a good speed to really knock anyone over because everything’s so damn slippery– everyone’s a bambi on ice. it’s cute even. and you can’t act hard and assume a stance to defend because at any second you might get randomly hit in the face with a soggy romance novel or something, coming from an untraceable location. it’s like how kelley square doesn’t have a lot of accidents despite being “the worst intersection in america”. fascinating.
* I hope I am never hit in the face with a soggy romance novel. Maybe a sappy one. As long as it’s not tied to a Roman candle, I guess I’m good.
You had to hit me in my weak spot, didn’t you? I do love Kelley Square, just kinda cuz. I could certainly envision a more efficient intersection, but I agree it’s probably more safe because no one is relying on rules, but taking care and paying attention. But it’s not a good analogy. There’s no way I would get hit in the face with a bottle rocket in Kelley square, precisely because people know not to aim it for fear of hurting someone, anyone, anywhere. I think your analogy is actually in reverse. “Not acting hard and assuming a stance,” yes, but “getting randomly hit”, no.
first, this is quite a flip flop for you. only 2 comments ago you said i was “just kidding myself” about having honorable intentions. now you say my intentions were 80 – 83% honorable. that’s dialogue!
so now i assume you’re going to make a new version of “partying and taking care”, something along the lines of “don’t go into any circumstance (danger levels notwithstanding, because they don’t matter) with an honorable intention level less than 65%”. or is there a different pass level?
although… i wasn’t aware of the things that would happen before i went. i mean, i didn’t know there would be broken glass. and even though i had no reason to assume there wouldn’t be fireworks, i was not the one setting them off… so how does that alter my honorable intent rating? also, isn’t it MORE honorable to remain in a crazy setting where people may get hurt (regardless of how you got there) if you have a good chance of helping others if they get hurt and not hurting yourself? i’m confused. why didn’t i get a A+ totally honorable? i only intended to do the things you gave me As for, and when the stuff you failed me for happened, i behaved totally honorably. do my intentions matter or don’t they? be aware that if i tried to stop the fireworks i would be unable to, and it would probably even get worse.
although it turns out that fireworks are not as bad as i had thought! that page you linked to had some interesting points which i’m happy you brought to my attention:
9,600 people were treated for fireworks-related injuries in 2004.
30-33 percent of the injuries associated with fireworks have typically been caused by illegal explosives or homemade fireworks.
In instances where legal types of fireworks were involved in accidents, either from misuse or malfunction, the resulting injuries were relatively minor and did not require hospitalization.
Since [1976], the amount of fireworks used each year has doubled [while numbers of injuries have gone down], suggesting that the injury rate in terms of injuries per one million pounds of fireworks ignited has declined significantly.
so, fireworks are pretty safe, and seemingly getting safer. a pdf linked to from the page says they account for about .01% of all american injuries. as a contrast, upwards of 4% of american workers get a nonfatal injury or sickness on the job. so, if it’s a numbers game (which it isn’t), compare my intentions of being with the fireworks with your intentions of getting a job– fireworks is 4 times safer. if i get a D, you get a triple F! ok, this is a joke– what i’m saying is, your quoted statistics aren’t that bad, fireworks at a show are kind of not a big deal. in the instance of the station fire in providence, we are talking about fountains of fire 15 feet tall. this is orders of magnitude different from a few black cats and jumping jacks. also, as with the kelley square scenario, fireworks at a show feel so crazy that everyone is aware of it. if a stray jumping jack were to light a piece of paper on fire, there would be twenty people right there to stomp it out. if it is possible to start a fire with a bottle rocket, well you could light a bottle rocket off outside, it could shoot into the woods and catch something on fire, you’d never know it. set if off in a room full of people, it’s going to go out fast.
and speaking of kelley square, i would certainly not say that people are “taking care” of each other or themselves. as you well know, kelley square is a psychic exercise– if you hesitate in kelley square, you are lost. if you pause to ask “can i go?” or even to communicate “i am going, please stop”, you are lost. this is not “taking care”. i would say that in kelley square, people have a heightened sense of awareness. i think the analogy is perfect. you might not get hit by a bottle rocket, but you might get hit by, oh, i don’t know, a car? at no point in kelley square is an enourmous car pointed directly at you and oftentimes, in motion. compared to a bottle rocket that just whizzes through your legs, or bounces off you? which would you rather be hit by?
and back to fireworks, i have to take issue with your assessment (positive though it was) of the fireworks in the hummus situation. in answer to your question, if i had to relive it i would do it again and again until the end of time. it’s true that the reason i reacted so positively was that i felt “kind of stupid”, but really it was because later i felt stupid about feeling stupid. as i said, what i did after the fact i did to prove to myself that setting off a single firework in the food, at that time, was 100% the right thing to do. in no way was i making an atonement for a sin– you might say i was denying or sidestepping the sin, but i feel totally at peace with my decision of that night. does this mean i would definitely do this again, or make a habit out of it, or tell others to do so? no. but this is one out of an infinite array of things i might do should circumstances arise. i always make art from something positive, and this was no exception. as you say, ““screwing up and learning from it” is good and honorable.”. i am outside of screwing up, which is, for me, a totally positive place.
”
I think it’s possible to be self-aware and have gleeful abandon. Would you disagree?
”
i hate to digress here, but i think we are using slightly different meanings of “self aware”. it’s like how you can’t really dance at a party because people are constantly taking pictures and you keep thinking about what that picture will look like. it takes you out of it, it sucks. you know what i’m talking about, but anyway unless you think this is especially relevant, maybe we can table this for another discussion, as we already have a lot on the table.
“* Feeling “in the zone” (my translation) is very difficult to ascertain. Abandonment is hard to ascertain. Driving drunk is probably a feeling of wonderful abadonment too.”
this is a good example of an appeal to fear, pretty weak sauce as far as rhetoric is concerned. i bring this up only because you’re a teacher, and kids love to tear a teacher’s shit apart, so you might as well get your methods of discourse as tight as a drum now. anyway, this is like saying “dinner at a nice restaurant is hard to ascertain. dinner happens at night. driving drunk probably happens at night too.” this uses fear to build on the the implication that the two are both as bad as just one, when obviously that’s preposterous. a quick rundown of fallacies to look out for can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy . ha, i actually took a college course in this at nerd camp! anyway, as far as “assessing abandoment”, have you ever been playing music and your hands were just moving and you weren’t thinking about it you were doing these incredible things and it was amazing? well, if not, i’m sorry, but if so, i would describe that as a form of abandonment similar to that experienced in ecstatic dancing scenarios.
in conclusion, give me the damn 100, which i deserve.
oops, in rereading i caught this:
”
at no point in kelley square is an enourmous car pointed directly at you and oftentimes, in motion.
”
should be
at no point in kelley square is an enourmous car NOT pointed directly at you and oftentimes, in motion.
“first, this is quite a flip flop for you. only 2 comments ago you said i was “just kidding myself” about having honorable intentions. now you say my intentions were 80 – 83% honorable. that’s dialogue!”
having a dialogue is a good system.
“so now i assume you’re going to make a new version of “partying and taking care”, something along the lines of “don’t go into any circumstance (danger levels notwithstanding, because they don’t matter) with an honorable intention level less than 65%”. or is there a different pass level?”
this is an entire post, but the simple point is this: aim for perfect intentions. weed out unwholesome intentions and cultivate wholesome intentions. this is ‘right effort’ in the eightfold path. we can’t always purify our intentions before doing something, but awareness itself can often trump this and do a whole range of positive things. if you’re intentions are 25% good, and you still end up doing it’s fine…you just experience the karma of whatever that is and you use the negative fruits to continue your practice. you use the unwholesome fruits as compost to plant better seeds.
“although… i wasn’t aware of the things that would happen before i went. i mean, i didn’t know there would be broken glass. and even though i had no reason to assume there wouldn’t be fireworks, i was not the one setting them off… so how does that alter my honorable intent rating? also, isn’t it MORE honorable to remain in a crazy setting where people may get hurt (regardless of how you got there) if you have a good chance of helping others if they get hurt and not hurting yourself? i’m confused. why didn’t i get a A+ totally honorable? i only intended to do the things you gave me As for, and when the stuff you failed me for happened, i behaved totally honorably. do my intentions matter or don’t they? be aware that if i tried to stop the fireworks i would be unable to, and it would probably even get worse.”
it is important to determine the correct path of action in such situations. stopping the person lighting the fireworks, or helping people wanting (or needing) help could be an honorable activity. kidding yourself into thinking that is why you stayed instead of recognizing complicity in the action is dishonorable. on the karmic scale, starting a fire is the full weight, but adding fuel to the fire still bears fruits. once you saw what was happening you made some complex decision which was probably a combination of complicity and responsibility. only your experience of the fruits can tell you how those have mixed together in the karmic meat grinder. sometimes positive karma outweighs negative. sometimes negative outweighs positive. not being aware of what will happen before going somewhere is pure and neutral. it’s what you do with new information once you know it that makes the decision wholesome or unwholesome. also, a bodhisattva is committed to helping others, but since there is no self, one’s self is also an other. if the actual others don’t want to be helped (they think it’s cool and wholesome to set fireworks off indoors), the only option you may have is to just leave and take care of yourself. that isn’t selfish in the least, as long as the intentions have been fully explored. when you say “i behaved totally honorably,” i’m not remembering you tell me that you tried to stop the fireworks or that you were deflecting fireworks from would be victims. i got the sense you were standing around enjoying them…which i would judge as complicit in the setting off of them and therefore dishonorable. but correct me if i’m wrong. and if you were truly unable to stop the fireworks or attempt to help people who’s ignorance prevented them from seeing their need for help, then you should have left and protected yourself.
“although it turns out that fireworks are not as bad as i had thought! that page you linked to had some interesting points which i’m happy you brought to my attention:
9,600 people were treated for fireworks-related injuries in 2004.
30-33 percent of the injuries associated with fireworks have typically been caused by illegal explosives or homemade fireworks.
In instances where legal types of fireworks were involved in accidents, either from misuse or malfunction, the resulting injuries were relatively minor and did not require hospitalization.
Since [1976], the amount of fireworks used each year has doubled [while numbers of injuries have gone down], suggesting that the injury rate in terms of injuries per one million pounds of fireworks ignited has declined significantly.”
“so, fireworks are pretty safe, and seemingly getting safer. a pdf linked to from the page says they account for about .01% of all american injuries. as a contrast, upwards of 4% of american workers get a nonfatal injury or sickness on the job. so, if it’s a numbers game (which it isn’t), compare my intentions of being with the fireworks with your intentions of getting a job– fireworks is 4 times safer. if i get a D, you get a triple F! ok, this is a joke– what i’m saying is, your quoted statistics aren’t that bad, fireworks at a show are kind of not a big deal. in the instance of the station fire in providence, we are talking about fountains of fire 15 feet tall. this is orders of magnitude different from a few black cats and jumping jacks. also, as with the kelley square scenario, fireworks at a show feel so crazy that everyone is aware of it. if a stray jumping jack were to light a piece of paper on fire, there would be twenty people right there to stomp it out. if it is possible to start a fire with a bottle rocket, well you could light a bottle rocket off outside, it could shoot into the woods and catch something on fire, you’d never know it. set if off in a room full of people, it’s going to go out fast.”
on the catching on fire, that may be a fair argument. there is awareness and so it could be prevented. i’m not so sure one can prevent a jumping jack or bottle rocket from getting lodged in my eye or clothing. that’s what i’d still be concerned about. also, fireworks are getting safer probably because people have heard horror stories and they take the necessary precautions. your argument on that is poor. people are living longer. true. but they are living longer because we are learning from the past. we have new systems for understanding health. if we started living like we used to we would go back to living shorter lives. if we go back to the fireworks stone-ages, before child safety regulations or education, we’d have more people losing an eye or a finger or getting burned.
“and speaking of kelley square, i would certainly not say that people are “taking care” of each other or themselves. as you well know, kelley square is a psychic exercise– if you hesitate in kelley square, you are lost. if you pause to ask “can i go?” or even to communicate “i am going, please stop”, you are lost. this is not “taking care”. i would say that in kelley square, people have a heightened sense of awareness. i think the analogy is perfect. you might not get hit by a bottle rocket, but you might get hit by, oh, i don’t know, a car? at no point in kelley square is an enourmous car pointed directly at you and oftentimes, in motion. compared to a bottle rocket that just whizzes through your legs, or bounces off you? which would you rather be hit by?”
i think i agree. i said in my last post that kelley square is actually a bad system, or i at least alluded to that. people aren’t really taking care, they’re just trying their best. and i’m confused. “at no point is an enormous car pointed directly at you.” was this sarcastic? because there usually is. also, i could choose not to drive through kelley square if i don’t like it. also, i could say i have to drive through kelley square, meaning the lack of choice is the problem, not my intention to go into a crazy situation in a sort of masochistic way. we may have to discuss this one in person or a whole new post about kelley square on its own because like kelley square, arguments about it are a little confusing.
“and back to fireworks, i have to take issue with your assessment (positive though it was) of the fireworks in the hummus situation. in answer to your question, if i had to relive it i would do it again and again until the end of time. it’s true that the reason i reacted so positively was that i felt “kind of stupid”, but really it was because later i felt stupid about feeling stupid. as i said, what i did after the fact i did to prove to myself that setting off a single firework in the food, at that time, was 100% the right thing to do. in no way was i making an atonement for a sin– you might say i was denying or sidestepping the sin, but i feel totally at peace with my decision of that night. does this mean i would definitely do this again, or make a habit out of it, or tell others to do so? no. but this is one out of an infinite array of things i might do should circumstances arise. i always make art from something positive, and this was no exception. as you say, ““screwing up and learning from it” is good and honorable.”. i am outside of screwing up, which is, for me, a totally positive place.”
would you set off a roman candle in hummus again and again until the end of time with your niece in the room? where’s the line? if i were at the party, how am i any different than your niece?
”
I think it’s possible to be self-aware and have gleeful abandon. Would you disagree?
”
i hate to digress here, but i think we are using slightly different meanings of “self aware”. it’s like how you can’t really dance at a party because people are constantly taking pictures and you keep thinking about what that picture will look like. it takes you out of it, it sucks. you know what i’m talking about, but anyway unless you think this is especially relevant, maybe we can table this for another discussion, as we already have a lot on the table.
ok, your self-aware is my self-conscious. fair enough. my self-aware may be your “flow without thinking, just awareness” that you describe while dancing. but even for buddhists, describing awareness and all of the balance of factors of mind is a big discussion so we’ll table it.
“* Feeling “in the zone” (my translation) is very difficult to ascertain. Abandonment is hard to ascertain. Driving drunk is probably a feeling of wonderful abadonment too.”
“this is a good example of an appeal to fear, pretty weak sauce as far as rhetoric is concerned. i bring this up only because you’re a teacher, and kids love to tear a teacher’s shit apart, so you might as well get your methods of discourse as tight as a drum now. anyway, this is like saying “dinner at a nice restaurant is hard to ascertain. dinner happens at night. driving drunk probably happens at night too.” this uses fear to build on the the implication that the two are both as bad as just one, when obviously that’s preposterous. a quick rundown of fallacies to look out for can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy . ha, i actually took a college course in this at nerd camp! anyway, as far as “assessing abandoment”, have you ever been playing music and your hands were just moving and you weren’t thinking about it you were doing these incredible things and it was amazing? well, if not, i’m sorry, but if so, i would describe that as a form of abandonment similar to that experienced in ecstatic dancing scenarios.”
No, I know what you mean by feeling in the zone and abandonment and I’m saying that this is a unique experience that i know and prize. But, (and that’s a big but), even that experience can have ego in it (“Oh man, this feels great! I want to experience this again! I have experienced this and someone else hasn’t experienced this!”) and from the Buddhist perspective, even these so called zone experiences can be impure and tainted with unwholesome intentions, and they’re conditional and therefore impermanent. If you only experience this while playing music then it’s a conditional experience and doesn’t lead to ultimate happiness. True Flow, if I may call it that, is continual, and not conditioned by experience in anyway. There are other categories of flow, such as being drunk, that are tainted with a whole other set of unwholesome mind states. All I was saying was that it is important to identify all of the factors in any of these experiences, and not conflate them, for exactly the reason you are suggesting…that to conflate them is to imply that the two are both as bad as just one.
“in conclusion, give me the damn 100, which i deserve.”
you’d still have to clarify the fireworks leaving/not leaving/helping or protecting others situation. and, check this out, even if your intentions were still in ‘D’ range, acknowledging that, and practicing to create more wholesome intentions in the future means you get an ‘A’ for effort. over time the fruits from the D (or the B-) will be weeded out and the ‘A’ s will fill your garden.
jacob Says:
January 22, 2009 at 9:39 am e
oops, in rereading i caught this:
”
at no point in kelley square is an enourmous car pointed directly at you and oftentimes, in motion.
”
should be
at no point in kelley square is an enourmous car NOT pointed directly at you and oftentimes, in motion.
ok, good…it’s clarified already.