thanks for making me write it down

here are things i wrote down while on my cruise (in chronological order)"pity and shame are the two extremes of pride" - there were alot of people on the boat who were very rich, and who didnt like .... well anything. At lunch one day i sat with these people who had a house in manhattan, and london, and florida, and they were talking shit on these fat people who had been gorging themselves, and the one person was like i feel so bad for them and the other was like they were so gross and i thought "you both are assholes, just in different ways." ive been working with being humble recently, and of course along with that the ability to love people for who they are, as equals. The pastor man with the tattoos said yesterday 'if your head is close enough to the ground, youll never know (or care, i might add) when people are disrespecting you." and i thought that was excellent. close to the ground meaning the level playing field, 'in it', as it were.

"love is either being blind to the facts or having faith in nothing ever going wrong. This is not to say that there is always something wrong, but that's just because that's nothing we like to say." I came up with what i think is a good solution, at least one that made me feel good, which comes at the end.this is chronological, after all.

"....but this isn't true either. Some art speaks without ever speaking of anything at all. Some words are only available when they are being used, when they are being heard in your ears, seen in your eyes - there is no need for you to say 'this is how it is' because it does not matter how it is, only that it IS, and you know it, and I know it. and we know it. and it is."thinking about storytelling in art, making a statement, beauty, believing in this shit. next to these in my sketchbook is a picture of a man in full terrorist garb (scarf over heaf, AK on his shoulder) sitting in a strip club, watching a naked lady. I think i am going to paint this next. because it will be fun.

"i think to mysel 'but what do i know?' and the answer is that I do not know much at all"

and lastly, from my moleskin, which is almost full, on the final day at sea, when the sun was setting over top of the water and i was being the exact feeling i always want to be (i am in love with the ocean, i came to terms with it - and hiroshi sugimoto, by extension, because of the eternity of the ocean, and the horizon line, cutting straight across, and all the colors and the deepness, and the blue of infinity.... anyway thats a tattoo for another day)"These answers come to me, and i don't remember taking time to think about reaching this conclusion - just knew there was a question that needed a solution (maybe this is some kind of proof that without my input there is something above me working and revealing) - Love is the knowledge, or rather the assurance, that no matter what others have had of yourself or her, that we know, beyond measure, that they never can have as much of that other person that we have had and have found. in each other. and that is enough, to pale out all insecurities, to quell all fears."we need to reveal it all, invest the whole mind and body, to find what we are looking for.

somebody pulling on my sleeve

A short story - On sunday afternoon, I went to church one time. A place called Liberti. It was great and I learned alot of important things. I came home and thought "maybe I should go to that other church where all my roommates go." It started at 7. It was 5. I thought another thought "Maybe I'll play zelda instead." So i did. And I played. I defeated the great deku tree, and was just about to learn the plot of the game, when the screen went crazy (see above). I said aloud "huh........well, what time is it?" I look at my phone. It's 7 pm. I say "Alllright already God, I'll go to that damn church!" Who ever heard of this happening? a 64 game? I think alot is happening betwixt me and God, and I am excited but also nervous, because there are some things I don't want to lose.

Notes from church - It doesn't take much effort to condemn yourself.

There isn't anyone else I need to be accountable to for doing anything wrong besides God, because noone else is any authority, noone else can be a perfect judge

we have no other reason to love those around us except because they are there, and we are here

in dreams begin responsibilities

so then I painted today. I couldnt think of anything, and the mirror was right there. I borrowed dante's idea of painting the colors as I saw them. It was fun. and i did more to this: (images taken with camera phone, and as such, are way shitty)

oh and one more thing

my dad would love this, and will, when i show it to him later today.

it's only your life

(taken from 'Socrates to Sartre', Samuel Enoch Stumpf)

".... James argues that certain kinds of truths become possible only when we put ourselves in the position for the truth fully to materialize itself. If we fail to make ourselves 'available', we risk losing the truth. Suppose a young man wants to know whether a certain young lady loves him. Let us also suppose that objectively it is a fact that she loves him but he does not know it. If he assumes that she does not, if, that is, he does not will to believe that she loves him, his doubt will prevent him from saying or doing what would cause her to reveal her love. In this case, he would 'lose the truth'. His will to believe would not necessarily create the love: that is already there. Belief has the effect of making what is already there come full circle. If the young man required evidence before he could know the truth, he would never know it, because the evidence he is looking for can become available only after he willed to believe it is true. In this case, the will to believe would have discovered a fact that already existed. (William) James did not want to argue that the will to believe would 'create' the existence of God as the product of a mere wish. He rather thought that the truth of religion and the power of God in human experience is the discovery, through the will to believe, of what is in fact (already) "there". Some truths forever escape us until we plunge into the stream of experience."

Oh, Pragmatism. William James to be exact. I tried to explain this to Dante last night at 3 am. We agreed that it was a better example if the girl was dead instead of alive.

Here's a painting.

bands that have made july promising -

right away, great captain

made out of babies

coldplay

ray lamontagne

and also the movie 'the assassination of jesse james by yada yada yada'

what i learned last night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1imThTYBhZ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpT3TqsNqBY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e7yyloq2o


that last one = the best

and to a lesser extent, here's this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-3qncy5Qfk

if you haven't seen it, its new to you!

let's start a war

oh.............. hey. My internet just started to work yesterday. Comcast. I have been away, accidentally put on the italics. I haven't done alot of reading of the philosophy lately, which I find disappointing. I've tried to study some spanish language skills, and keep up with the drawing a picture every day. I made this painting in the past week or two. I am working on a new one of a similar style. I dont know how I feel about it. I'm trying to do what comes naturally, maybe. I like to have fun when I make something. My brain has been short circuiting lately and my creative days have suffered. I am trying very hard to stay happy, knowing that I am in control of it. I attended a discussion about prayer last nite (mostly because it took place in my house) that was interesting for several reasons. We were talking about the balance of worship and prayer 'the way you want it' and the way God said He wants it. I think it's easy to say oh I am praying all the time and to keep God in your mind in everything you do - something i generally advocate, and wish was true of most of the things I do. If you did everything for God, everything would be ........ good? maybe. maybe not so much. It seems to me that at the same time, while that is good, God also asked us to be in contact with Him, to spend time with Him. Does that mean you need to sit down and pray in a quiet room for an hour a day? maybe it does. What if you have serious a.d.d.? im not saying i do, but what if you did? anyway. The point i made at the end was that if you look for God in anything hard enough, you're going to find Him, because He's there. What does that mean exactly? There's some good in everything, because it's made by God? Just because you're good, doesn't mean everything you make is good. And sometimes if the thing you make can do whatever it wants, it will do something less than good, like be an SS doctor on the run in argentina (who i was reading about today). God is strange. And also fun.

So that leads me to the next thing - forgiveness. get real. What does it mean to actually forgive someone, to actually love someone else as yourself? There are alot of bad people i know of, but i never felt like there was any need for me to forgive them, because they didn't affect me, besides to maybe make me 'pissed off at the world dave'. They were never directly connected to me, so i didn't need to care what they did (not really anyway), and never really thought about what it would take to forgive them of the terrible things they do, to love a person who shoots another dude for an i-pod. But that has changed. I seem to be learning lately what I am capable of, how bad people can be, how bad i could be, and that forgiving someone for something unspeakable is difficult to do. Just because I know I could kill someone, doesn't seem to help me relate to someone who actually does, maybe I am just not realizing it on a deep enough level. It hurts to rationalize that you're the worst person in the world, if wrong is wrong and it all deserves the same death. But that's the story of sin nature. Does that help you to love other people - we're all fuck-ups, trying to make it work? I think it does, but in a weird way. I feel like I only know it on the surface and it doesn't get inside, and now I am trying to let it. Bad stuff going on close to home has that effect. I was really struggling until someone i love said to me 'who are you to judge? noone.' and this isn't because i have a history of crime but just because it's true. Everybody is great and really terrible. Doesn't that lead right into the idea that we need something extra-personal to really fix us and take away that thing in us that could make us do all of the worst things in history? That we need to get rid of that ability in us to ever really not be able to do those bad things again? oh hey.