Reality Laughs

I keep writing about the same topics over and over.

There must be something more to say that I haven’t said yet. Or I need to hear it again and again because Eraserman made me forget.

Things will be gone from me. I have watched my father discard and discard and discard again—a lifetime of accumulation. Some of these are items of aesthetic value, of economic value, of sentimental value.

That table, hand-carved from a single massive log and purchased for £5 in Rhodesia, of prodigious artistic quality and sentimental value: I remember it on the long drive home, squeezed in the back seat of our VW bug between my sister and me on the long drive home from up north. This will be gone.

The table—and all of the things around me—will be gone, sooner or later. I will give them away. I will sell them. I will throw them away. Or I will die and they will remain and I will gone.

I like being surrounded by beautiful things. The plein air paintings at home make me happy. So I don’t want to go all hair shirt about things. I think things are a neutral. As long as you don’t take them seriously, they are not evil or good. They just are.

What do I really have? Experiences evoked by actions. Memories of actions. All of these are “now” and are inside me. Memories are not “then.” My dim memory of a hot bumpy ride on strip roads with a table in the back seat beside me is a thought I am toying with now, in a Singapore hotel restaurant, almost 60 years after the event.

The experience of meeting people and talking to them is now. The manager of the hotel repeatedly scolding me for not giving a fuck about masks and my calm indifference and kind acknowledgment of his admonition. (And playing his mask game when I get up to go back to the buffet). That’s now. And my feelings are now.

These memories and these real time experiences cannot be removed from me. These are what cannot be removed from me. I don’t fear losing the inner experiences. And I know that the memories of the past are malleable by me, now.

So that’s all I have. The inner state, the opinions and ideas that I choose to keep, or alter, or ignore. These too will be gone when I die. A universe blinks off. So be it.

All of which helps explain my father’s eagerness to give things away. “You like that painting? Please take it.” No thought of sentiment, of economic value. These things mean nothing. The sentiment remains inside him, even if the painting is no longer on his wall. The idea of converting the painting to money is pointless, just a shape-shifting exercise. No, he is freeing himself of being possessed by things around him. What remains is the inside man, a universe within itself.

We live. We die.

The things, the money. These are just interesting toys. Then they become tedious.

Live.

And don’t take yourself too damned seriously.

I am not required to do something just because the opportunity presents itself to me.

This thought is brought to you courtesy of a breakfast buffet at my hotel. I could sit here for an hour gorging myself: infinite everything is here to eat.

Nope. Have a final cup of coffee and relax. There is enough.

I’m in Singapore, having breakfast. My son sent me a photo of the back of his car—he successfully navigated the DMVs of two states and moved his car registration to where he lives now. New plates!

This made me all teary-eyed. It’s the connection across the world to someone I love. It’s watching a child successful as an adult.

And don’t take that wrong. “New license plates, what’s the big deal?” Nah. He’s extremely capable. This is a no big deal for him.

But! It’s the 10,000 little things that matter.

For him, dealing with the DMV and insurance and not having a screwdriver handy and all of the impediments between him and a goal. These are adult life skills, as essential as remembering to eat.

For me, the utter joy of watching the bird leave the nest and start to soar, higher and higher.

The little things matter. I’m writing this to remind myself—just as I write all this stuff here to remember them. Funny, though. I haven’t gone back to read my old stuff. 😀 That’s the point, innit? Write to remember. Read what I wrote to re-remember.

Do the little things. Make the bed. Eat incrementally healthier than yesterday, if you can. Exercise a bit today. Always create negative entropy. The compounding effect of decades of incrementally directional actions is astonishing. In a good direction and a bad, self-destructive direction. I’m living proof of it.

World without end. Amen.

The Bed of Procrustes was a silly old story until about three minutes ago.

Now I see it differently. It describes mental filters. Biases.

When we wander around with preconceived ideas, we only see what we are looking for. Reality is much, much larger than our pea-sized brains.

So when we approach the world with our own conceptions about The Way Things Are, we fit the world into our own mental Procrustean Bed.

I want you to know that it’s okay if you only save one person, and it’s okay if that person is you.

Taken from @visakanv’s Friendly Ambitious Nerd, and he is quoting someone else who was quoting someone else.

Sometimes I look back at what I have accomplished and I think I only did 10% of what I set out to do.

For the most part, it was the 10% that mattered, though.

A reorientation thought: be prepared to shed 90% of goals in service of reaching the 10% that matters.

My standard operating procedure has been to overcommit, then fail to accomplish everything I overcommitted to.

Reorientation: fewer commitments, frequent pruning and discarding.

the stuff you joke about (even ironically or whatever) has a way of shaping your reality so be careful and deliberate with that stuff. a lot of people out here fumbling their own bags by joking about outcomes they don’t want. you might as well joke about the outcomes you do want

https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1394772091660951555?s=21&t=1hVT3DDwm9b7lvVky0kKgw

Everything you allow to remain in your head shapes your reality. Music. Jokes. Images. Conversations with others. Internal dialog with self.

Dick Whittington’s tale goes here as a reminder.

The customary English theatre story, adapted from the life of the real Richard Whittington, is that the young boy Dick Whittington was an unhappy apprentice running away from his master, and heard the tune ringing from the bell tower of the church of St Mary-le-Bow in London in 1392.[5] The penniless boy heard the bells seemingly saying to him “Turn again Dick Whittington”. Dick returned to London upon hearing the bells, where he went on to find his fortune and became the Lord Mayor of London four times.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittington_chimes

No joke there, but he heard what he needed to hear and nurtured the thought in his heart. Those who have ears to hear, etc.

A story from 1392. Relevant today and as fresh as it was 600 years ago.

Music is closer to guided meditations than we want to admit. They’re selected to be invasive, then get stuck in our head and eventually merge with us. Make sure they’re the messages you want to be part of you

https://twitter.com/nickcammarata/status/1468000584796020736?s=21&t=R9w-CkyReiAqLCycH8RiyA

Self-programming.

At the moment it’s Palestrina and Purcell.

I am asking myself “what job is my business’s website supposed to do?” I don’t have a good answer.

No one gives me good answers. They just want to build sites on WordPress. “Tell me what you want! I will make it for you!”

No. Fuck you. Tell me what I need.

The world cries out for someone who is more than an order-taker.

Out of desperation I have set up a meeting with a guy next week, just to ask the question “Why does this website even exist? And what should a website do?” No more.

He does not build websites, but I think he may have some wisdom. If not, on to the next person.