passion – William Dare

Make Believe Reality

Have you ever thought about the word creativity? What does it mean to create? What does someone do who is creative?

The word creative comes from L. creatus, pp. of creare “to make, bring forth, produce, beget,” related to crescere “arise, grow” (see crescent). The verb creare means “to create, appoint, cause, set up”.

This is from the present active L. credo meaning “I lend, loan; I commit, consign, entrust to; I trust, confide in, have confidence in; I believe in, trust in, give credence to; I believe.” From Proto-Indo-European *ḱred dʰeh₁- (“to place one’s heart, i.e. to trust, believe”), compound phrase of oblique case form of *ḱḗr (“heart”).

Interestingly, Latin for heart is cor or cordis (think coronary or cordial) which literally referred anatomically to the “heart” and figuratively to the “soul, mind”. The -do in credo comes from the PIE *dʰeh₁- which means “to put, place, set” (whence also Latin faciō). The present active infinitive L. credere means “to believe”.

In this way L. credo means to “do with your heart”.

It would seem that creativity requires that, first and foremost, you must believe.

Problems Don’t Exist.

Passion is powerful. You can’t be all thought, all machine, calculated and cool. You need warmth, fire, some fuel to spread your light. But I despise drama. Drama is unnecessary theatrics. It is passion with problems. Problematized passion. It takes good genuine energy and creates problems rather than solutions. People who attract drama feel insignificant without it. They lack an ability to exist in tranquility. It’s almost as if they think that drama gives their life character, somehow makes them strong or resilient for persisting through these problems, problems they create within abstract of their mind. They take a perfectly good life, and instead of applying their passion, their life force and energy to synthesizing new solutions, they problematize a good thing. Of course they talk like they don’t like the drama, like it weighs on them, like a millstone they carry with them. They are constantly talking about the day when they don’t have so many problems. They are the first ones to talk about discarding this laboring load and equally quick to point out how badly they want to set it down and dispel the drama, but they continue talking, thinking, seething about their problems, adding potency to their diluted delusion.

Problems do not exist. There. I said it. Problems are only problems when you identify them as problems. Before they are identified, we accept circumstance and situation, absolving that that’s just the way things are, for better or worse. Perhaps it is a skill to be able to identify problems, to label things are deficient, broken, and I bet it takes a critically inquiring eye to do this. But where do you draw the line?

Problems are not problems. Drama is not drama. These are facets of life. Contrary to the clamoring chorus of capitalist commercialism, our life does not need to be problematic and dramatic to be glorious and grand. They profiteer off such knave propensities for ease, for life without suffering. They drain you of your liquid wealth and welling life as you train to maintain and gain a greater sense of self, a sense of self complete with all the accessories they sell your squeaking soul. But your soul needs no oil. Let the soul, that broken squealing soul, scream, let it scream and burst forth in melody, let it create harmony with other squeaky souls. Do not oil. Warm yourself with its friction, these triturations of life. Soon your stridulating soul will begin to warble and transform into a beautiful hum, a harmonious vibration that echoes across cold chambers where copious copies of silent, gunky souls reside, soiled and slow from the years of feeble fabricated fixes. There is nothing wrong with your soul. You are perfect as a diamond is flawed, stronger than all the universal forces and extraterrestrial elements, pressed and latticed in structural perfectitude, lined with innumerable inclusions and trace elements that straddle its knitted bonds, strontium and nitrogen, rubidium and barium, adding to the refracting flash that douses the senses when you allow transparency and light to work their way within you and shine forth.

Problems do not exist. They are in your mind. If there were no mind to observe, no eye to see, there would be no problems to probe. Overcoming yourself is a task which has no end. The road up a mountain is the same road down it. Do not confuse your life’s task, your journey. Do not tire yourself with the trifling pursuits of climbing the insurmountable where barren cliffs and cleft rifts and ice tips are all that waits you. Go instead down the road, where momentum is your friend, and follow the valley where the streams merge with rivers and gather into looming pools and luscious lakes and lead to opulent oceans that provide cooling relief under the dense shade of living vegetation. Go where there is life.

Problems do not exist. Life begins in consciousness. Life is not simply physical minutia, else the moons and marbling spheres and stars and solar systems be living. Life is not simply movement. It is purely imagination. No mind exists apart from the life giving force of their imagination. Our eyes cannot capture meaning. That is reserved for our minds. Do not forfeit your mind and believe your eyes. Do not let your ears consume the drunken speech of other grey minds, their crannies and crevasses all canvassed in web, caught in a tangle of dense delusion, of smog that blocks the breathing flue, changing flowing channels into choking chimneys, and strangulating the stronghold of being.

Problems do not exist. They are created, by us, to achieve ends, fabricated ends, short sighted ends, poor hallow ends. Until we believe that our means are greater than our ends, we will fail to dream, fail to see opportunity where there is challenge. Our lives will encapsulate a silent storm of tears, sleeting, frozen over from lack of warmth, from lack of friction with the world, lack of authentic abrasion that causes aural ambage.

Problems do not exist. People sell you problems, don’t sell yourself problems. Don’t add insult to injury and do the job that capitalism, commercial advertising, has perfected. Problems. Everyone wants you to believe that there is a problem free life– that can be achieved by means they can provide if you forfeit a small payment in price, a small piece of your time, a fraction of your wage. We will provide you the happiness, the comfort, the pleasure, the distress-free existence if you pay for it. But this is a lie. There are no problems. And the people who buy into the problems die poor, poor in pocket and poor in spirit. They failed to save, failed to build, collect and create. They diluted themselves with the quick fixes, the shabby solutions that clutter their consciousness, until they are wrapped in flax linnens and preserved in a perfect state of lifelessness.

Problems do not exist. What exists is desire for power, power over circumstance, power over passion, power over thoughts. These people die a slave. They never learned to revolt, never embraced the chaos, the flowing flux that embodies a living life, and rebel as a self-sustaining individual, perfectly punctual in the moment. Defining and confining, constraining and restraining.

Problems do not exist. Mind exists. When our mind identifies a problem with some thing, it is not the thing that changes, but our mind, our relation to that thing. Our mind is eternal, but our attention is finite. We cannot allow ourselves to be preoccupied with any thought or feeling that does not deliver grandeur to house of being, or fails to cleanse our doors of perception. We have one life, one spectacle, a single show, a solemn act to perform. We must choose the words that echo into the ears of eternity with heart, with care. We cannot think our way out of a state of being, a dramatic scene of tragedy, we can act our way out, only feel ourselves into another line, continue playing a developing role to an ambivalent audience.

There are no problems. There is fate. There are ends. There are expectations: faulty suspensions, wry calculations, aslant anticipations. Properly viewed, problems are merely stepping stones that carry you through life.

Anyway.

I believe that love for a subject, passionate unrequited love, is the only way to let yourself gain any appreciable acquaintance, since love is selfless devotion. But I’m not sure we can love people before we love ourselves. We love the me we see in thee.

Dys-

Monsters we are, monsters that hide under flesh, gleaming eyes, sharp teeth, foul breath. We wait for dark to settle, for the shadows of ignorance to blanket the mind, then we sink our teeth and claws into your cold dead flesh. We don’t like the live ones, but that isn’t a worry since there’s so few of them, the live ones. We sink and we tear and we rip and we shred, then we mash meat and gargle blood and floss our jagged teeth with the sinews. We live like this because we want to wake people, we want to scare people from their desultory dreams, but we find that not only are these people unmoved and unperturbed, they’re altogether dead. There is no heinous crime desecrating the sleeping dead.

Flowers line the walkway. Little children in white dresses saunter ahead dropping petals as they walk. Oak trees sway as rays of light poke through the branches and land on the path before me. I grasp her hand and squeeze gently an affirmation of assurance, of our bond. The children vanish and I am left staring into a hand holding only a pen, a slender cylindrical pen dark as the ink it jets. I continue weaving these fabrications onto paper before I hear a ring for supper. I close my book and head downstairs to discover my family laying on the floor, in a heap, dismembered and bleeding, their eyes still open, their mouths still gaping their last gasp. They’ve been dead for weeks now but the stench is hardly the concern, rather its the putrified puddles of blood and bile now squirming with fly larva. I grab a stack of books on the stairs and lay them before me in the humors, like stepping stones, and make my way to the kitchen. A waft of turkey liver titillates my nostrils just as I pop open the microwave. My favorite.

The hedges trimmed nicely, I thought. The sidewalk is swept and the mailboxes are full with new news. I observe a serry of school boys across the way huddled under the stop sign. They were probably in college by the looks of their swagger. Boat shoes and collared tees, frayed hats and cigarettes, all coupled with a laughter that bellowed into the air like toxic smoke that choked my lungs. I wanted to go over and begin strangling them all, one by one, but prudence stepped in.

Prudence was my dog. He had long white hair, as most sheep dogs do, and it dragged through every puddle and dirt pile he made his way through. This dog had particularly bad taste in women. He was always fond of the older types, the ones with fake teeth and hair rollers who wore stockings whenever they made trips to the seven eleven. It was their flesh he liked most of all. Maybe it was because Prudence was old and his senses were far less keen than what they use to be, but he loved to nuzzle and lick the crotch of these old ladies to their delight. It was a dog thing. They understood it. But they loved it. And if it wasn’t entirely inappropriate they would have taken Prudence home and made’em their own.

I pressed the weight, squeezing my will against the bar, pressing the fibers, contracting them together with enough force to pop the blood vessels in my face. When I was finished with the last rep I fell down and collapsed to the ground, grabbing my chest in pain. The hate, don’t go– I yelled– don’t leave me. Surely enough the hate returned and I began to reharness that focus and apply that hate to the weight. This is how strength is born.

Continue reading “Dys-“

Existential Freedom: Albert Camus

Camus wrote the Myth of Sisyphus as an essay on the relationship between individual thought and suicide as a solution to the absurd (6). Camus used the Greek myth of Sisyphus as a metaphor for life and the seeming absurdity of living. Understanding Camus conception of absurdity is necessary for grasping the role of freedom in human existence.

According to Camus, absurdity can be found to occur anywhere, on street corners or in revolving doors. (12) It strikes in moments throughout a man’s life when the uniformity and routine of existence—the habituations of thought and regularities of action—are broken and man seeks to reconnect and repair them again (12). Camus says that “before encountering the absurd, every man lives with aims, a concern for the future or for justification (with regard to whom or what is not the question).” (57)

Absurdity arises when the inference of reason reveals itself to be wholly dependent on cognitive activity alone, the sole work of consciousness. In this event inference ceases to follow from the nauseating compulsion of objective necessities and the world readjusts itself as a relative, subjective condition of man. Camus says that “A man’s failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.” (69) Inference positions itself as alien to the world from which we attribute it (21). When man posits the question ‘why?’ and weariness sets it, he reveals the lack of inference in his mechanical routines, and elucidates an impulse of consciousness. (13) This consciousness either dissipates as man falls back into his life’s motifs, or he realizes, through an awakening, that inference is a device imparted to the mind, rather than a process inherent to the world. Camus says man comes to terms with this awakening by embracing suicide or recovery. (13)

Camus holds that life is indeed meaningless, full of contradictions and confusion, and has no inherent values other than those that we create. He entreats, however, asking “In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has about life and the act one commits to leave it?” (7,8) Certainly not. Rather accepting the futility of our world as an excuse for suicide, and rather than accepting the leap of faith that religion calls for, Camus proposes that we consciously accept the futility moment by moment by revolting with freedom and passion (64). In this way living is keeping the absurd alive, retaining the possibility of happiness and meaning in moments in between, whereas suicide would negate the very absurdity and possibility that established it. (6, 54) According to Camus, revolt as “the constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity” is one of the few acceptable philosophical positions. It means we must “challenge the world at every second” (54). This revolt is defiance, an exercise of freedom, which intensifies life’s value maximally in a way that no other ideological thinking can guarantee (55).

Camus paints three extreme portraits of absurd lifestyles given the form of the lover, the actors, and the conqueror (90). While there is nothing exclusive about these lifestyles they provide a caricature of the absurdity as a joy of living creatively. Inasmuch as life is absurd, life is creation (94). “To think is first of all to create a world” Camus says. Through creation man manifests ends and aims and realities so that just as an artist “commits himself and becomes himself in his work”, a creative being commits himself and becomes himself in the tasks he lovingly chooses for himself (97). Intelligence must refuse to reason the concrete, concluding that “expression begins where thought ends” (99). According to Camus, gratuitousness is a hallmark of the absurd life and a life with hope: with no revolt or divorce from illusions, there is no gratuitousness. What is necessary then is this constant passionate detachment (102).

Works Cited

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage International, 1991.

Decide to be.

Revolt! You are free to be! Now dream and pursue freedom with passion! Escape societies noisy clamour, throw off the chains that drag you downward. Create yourself! There is no path where you are meant to go! Blaze anew, for there are no limits to the wanderlust of dreams! Gather your gaze and seek yourself out! Pour out the paltry perceptions of pain and problem, for you are beyond the grasp of trouble!

Decide and create! There is no need for the reassurance of petty peddlers. You needn’t ask the world a thing. Demand it from yourself, and the world will respond in bounty! Brave the unknown, lay siege to the remote and mysterious- for possibility awaits! And where possibility abounds, so does life!

Boy. God. Low. High.

I want to think pretty. I would like my mind to turn on the pretty poetic thoughts. Every once and while I feel like I’m a genius. Don’t care if it’s true, I just wanna feel that way. Be really creative and just let out my bridled passions.

I always feel like i could do or be more…particularly when it comes to being creative and passionate. I want to produce art. I’ve been thinking about getting some paint and a canvas and just starting. Teach myself some acrylic or oil painting. I recognize its a difficult skill to pick up. I figure I can teach myself but, this probably won’t happen. I tell myself I have a pencil and paper and I should experiment with that more. That sounds more reasonable. And i have been… in my paper journal i’ve started sketching with my ink pens and graphite pencils… usually local scenery, whereever i’m journaling. I enjoy it.

I mentally want to engage. Emotionally I could care less. I tell myself I’m exactly where I want to be, cause if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here. I know that I sometimes think I don’t like where I’m at, but I know that I chose to put myself here… and i can choose to put myself somewhere else. Unless… and this may be whats happening… I am… settling. oh no. oh…oh no. Could it be? has michael been settling all these weeks? mayhaps! Oh well tho. My priorities are as they are.

I was looking as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I may be stuck at friendships. Dunno why. Or maybe sexual intimacy. or maybe not. Maybe i’m hung up at self esteem and confidence. Self actualization! I have ground to a halt.

I read someones blog and they mentioned how important enthusiasm for your life. *laughter and cheering* Their words struck me. I’ve been thinking about how vital enthusiasm is. When you’re enthusiastic, you let your soul fully breath. You let yourself spread out to absorb life’s radiant beauty. Heavy, restrictive thoughts fall away and you’re left with your naked self. The whole being of you. I like that idea. I always hold myself in. I almost feel like I’m suffocating myself. This steely reserved posture. I justify and say its my reserved nature, but thats crap. My nature is a wild boy who has consumed too many sweets and has a field of flowers to run through and frogs to run after. But that person is not well received.. in my mind anyway. Or maybe not for my audience? what the hell audience am i trying to entertaining? and, if thats the case, why at my expense? hmph. well… I shouldn’t. I always feel like there is a set standard. And their is… its the worlds expectations. Moreover, its the expectations you hold youself to. Often times, for me, i derive these from what i think people think of me. more crap.

I remember going through this a few years ago. I was strung out on alcoholic binges, sleep deprivation, and maintained an overall listlessness towards life. My friends were too. That was who I was in their eyes. I remember trying to escape their psychic pull… their judgments and subtle influence… but it was strong. I remember a time where i accepted my state… surrendering myself to who and what people thought I was, and what my past experiences indicated me to be. I also remember a time when I hit this new low… and in my youth these new lows were always new and low…. so I hit this new low… and I said… I hate myself… i hate where I am… and i hate that i’m not doing anything about it. One of the steps i took in changing who I was involved ridding myself of the majority of my friends… no one I could reference my old self to. I set out to form a new me… with new habits and a new frame of mind… new expectations for myself, what I was capable of, and where I was going. that was then.

Well… years later… I’ve evolved to my current state, and I feel as though I’ve hit a plateau. A combination of getting to a new level and being disoriented with this new place. Possibly misology?? I always try to pin point this confusion. I’ve been thinking, or use to think, that perhaps my rejection for a resolved faith in God has tipped some internal balance. I am not sure. I also thought that this new level would look differently. I also thought that I would be different… and I am. I just thought the effort would somehow, diminish as good habits accumulated. Not the case. Achievement is a difficult, strenuous journey every leg of the way. I do need to teach myself how to enjoy this journey though.

❤

Cut the ties, hold your sighs, and say good-byes.

There is no fuel, no passion igniting my inner cavities. I want life. I want reasons. Logical or illogical, something with life and vitality I can hug and lean myself against. I want friction that sharpens and warms. I want something in life that’s exciting, enticing, surprising and never regular. I want simplicity that screams fire and love and charm. I want to hold an open hand and watch memories mature. I want something that draws me in and spits me out. I want to be rebirthed in the presence of another. I want to look at life like a challenge that grips and shakes and caresses me. GOD. Where the fuck is a breath of fresh air. Why do I have this horrible feeling like I have it all figured out. Typically I’d get to a point like this in my life and sabotage all my progress, throwing myself into an oblivious raving state, harming those closest to me, and destroy my character in the process. I would rebuild in order to keep myself sane,only to prove to myself that I am capable of doing good. I feel that at the ceiling of achievement lies the virtue of patience. I cannot hurry my progress along. I cannot change my circumstances to better suit me without waiting longer. I desire all day and night to be better, but I will not compromise my aspirations.

How does one become inspired? I feel that I’ve exhausted my resources. My philosophy is.. yes.. its always that simple… now make it work and stick to it. thats the hard part. Sticking to lofty ideals. I want gratification. I want to scrap the nuances of sacrificial achievement. I want to be happy on this journey. I want to sift through the idiosyncratic subtleties that paint the landscape of life. I want to indulge, be straight forward and clear about my intentions. I want to manage a world of discovery without making it a mundane routine.

Help me expand my horizons to things outside myself. I want to remove my preconceptions about life. I want to learn from the best, the mad ones, the crazy ones, the ones with too much time and too little worries. I want to get caught up in a surge of creativity, burning brightly with passion and zeal. I want to stab my way through hardship and beat on the door of opportunity every day of my life. I want to live to the fullest.

All this would be especially wonderful if I had another to share it with. Where are these people? Where is my soul mate? yes they exist… people who, despite similarities or differences… you are drawn to.. magnetized, hypnotized, mesmerized… love… call it what you want but its powerful. These people feed off your presence, and you theirs. I want to bathe in that someones aura of innocence. I want to penetrate their gaze and swim with their soul in mutual harmony and pleasure and share in a gentle childlike mirth that envelops every corner of my mind and heart… I want it to fill the cracks of desperation and settle me like a soothing lullaby.

Where are you?

I’m distraught. No motives other than the introspective examination of a life wasted. I know who I was… I will be everything that person wasn’t. I am tired of chasing paper trails. I want fancy thrills with substance beyond the ephemeral promises of the times. I want to nurture ethereal relationships that quench the parched and pallid landscapes I live in.

Most people are other people. Where is the passion?

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation”
-Oscar Wilde

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When I read this quote it struck me hard. How true. I talk to people and they know nothing for themselves. They examine the evidence and opinions of others, negating their true voice and adopting a tone of another. People don’t know what they believe, nor do they give it too much thought. It requires far too much of them. They’d rather rely on someone else being wrong, or right, for their direction. Speak out and find yourself! I want people to care! How SAD that people don’t know their passion! They try finding themselves! It’s not about finding yourself!! It’s about listening to you’re heart. ‘Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.’ Why do people scrutinize their own understanding? Do people really find security in settling? Can you achieve an intimacy with your passions in this way?

I think settling is the larger issue. People settle. They accept the minimum instead of probing the depths of truism, where their soul resides and their desires yearn to flourish. They unknowingly, err, ignorantly live according to the opinions of the world. I can’t imagine anyone would become a slave, sacrificing their will, if they really knew it. But they should know it, and they don’t question. They accept the obvious and most convenient proclamations.

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“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keep with a perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” The sole servant to you’re passions and you’re own convictions. You are important and you’re experience is just as real as anyone else’s.

waves

man oh man. i am feeling interesting right now. i told myself a few years ago that I’d never let my feelings dictate how i live my life. i dont know how much of that is true. I am searching for a passion that appeals to my logic and my feelings. I always stray from emotional discourse pertaining to my life. I dwell on it in my inner cavities and it fumigates deep in my heart but i’d never let it make me who i am. I prefer the solitary reliance on hearty logic that weaves itsr way into my agenda. Feelings make me feel alive though. This is a huge paradox that i live in. For years i was a victim to my feelings. How i felt dictated life at any given time. There was no logic involved really. flawed logic like ” If i feel great, life is great… is it not?” or if i felt bad, life was bad. but no. life is good no matter what. as long as you’re actions support the belief that life is good then no matter what you feel you should know life is good. and good thoughts bread good feelings… do they not? it is easy to think bad thought when your hormones and biochemicals communicate differently… but a single thought can bread the best of feelings from those neurotransmitters. anyway. Logic.
Reason.

A woman. I dream about feelings. I dont like letting feelings interrupt a logically constructed existence. Feelings go contrary to my logic far too often. I love her. Then chase her mike. It would hinder your plan for success. alright. i wont. maybe it’s never been worth it. maybe not.Chase her mike. She won’t appreciate the sacrifice. Its not about you mike its about her. well who’s gonna think about me then? she’s not thinking of me. what if she is? its never ideal. Feelings are never Ideal. Feelings are never logically based. How i wished they were. A perfect relationship would be a logically orchestrated symphony of emotional discharge. Does that paint the picture? maybe it sounds too logical. A beautifully woven sea of harmonious understandings of love. nope. its never that mutual. The best of the relationships may touch on those magnificent waves but they never stay on those crests so close to heaven. eventually you come down and the wave beats its ferocity and power against the bow which weakens the heart and causes a change in course. Its a delicate balance of risking trust to feel.

Linear.