2022
you make life beautiful. what else is there to say? you give life such flavor and color, you reading this. the light you exude brings me to tears. how can one entity give so much? i get an inkling we’re all one. i wish for the happiness and healing of all beings. how can i do or feel anything but love and awe for all the things passing through my perceptions in this fragile transitory experience?
i will address everything wholeheartedly as it arises and not a moment before. this breath is the most important breath i’ve ever taken. this step i take with my foot is the most important step i’ve ever taken. and the next, and the next. what is happening right now will never happen again. every single passing moment is the best thing that’s ever happened.
You are me and i am you, now what do we do? Dance. (DH would say this, beautiful being.) it is the one answer. love is the only idea. the idea that requires no thought. i’m not bothered by philosophies or opinions. i don’t want to put on a show. i don’t want to be right. love is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. ‘feeling is first,’ ee says. live by it.
i was lying there shut-eyed on a late sunday morning, one could call it leisurely. i could see myself enjoying little(huge) moments, each nuanced microcosm of various interactions and exchanges. i am petting this dog with my full self, pressing the piano keys with pure feeling. i could see the figures in my life, new and known. no worries and nothing but pure love and gratitude. i can see it and feel it in this moment. i’m going to call AS and tell them they make life beautiful. you’ll tell someone in your life that they make life beautiful, right? from your full heart? today, right now? as i was lying there on that sunny sunday morning, feeling the love and thankfulness for those wonderful beings in my(our) life, it was asked – what about you? where’s the love and gratitude for yourself? the big L & G? when i looked inward to locate myself, there was nothing. there was no inward, just space in between these people and experiences in my mind. but even the space is full. but i was nowhere to be found. i am all of these people. i am experience. you are too. i am nowhere to be found, and how beautiful it is
immense suffering stems from expecting something outside oneself
the aim is not to see the world in a certain way, but to just see it.
i am bobbing along the road of progress and growth on a powder blue beach cruiser bicycle, bobbing, bobbing along the various bumps and porous pavement riding past pastel cottages with good vibration bubbles flowing out of the little brick chimneys in a vast orange desert peppered with the occasional tree whose bark unwraps around it turning into paper so that the tree, the world may be given a voice, there is an ocean in this desert and everyone is riding the waves on surfboards of enlightenment: i am enjoying the beautiful view.
The mind is the sole object that either serves or impedes all things within and without the individual self. At the base level of consciousness it is a monumental, immovable object that is virtually imperceptible due to its sheer size and scope; it’s impossible to tell how exactly it is affecting every morsel of our experience because it has blanketed everything in an invisible veil that is tinting our perceptions in various ways, unhelpful ways. The next level is awareness of the mind’s machinations and thusly poking holes in the veil and recognizing how it is tainting every flavor of our experience and beliefs. The mind is simultaneously real and not real, and therefore one of the most elusive and powerful objects/tools in existence. Once we realize what the mind is doing, we can either attempt to shape it to our beneficial will or recognize it for what it is and ignore/move past it, and let it be it’s erratic illogical self in the corner. I say opt for the latter – attempting to sculpt the mind to one’s will does not create a new work of Michelangelo, it simply results in a new prison constructed around oneself. We built the prison ourselves though, we should be proud. Why are we convinced that thinking/worrying is productive or serves any purpose whatsoever? It serves nothing, it is a complete waste of life. The mind is a toxic buffer between the experiencer and the experience, though of course there is no separation. (The modern hominid is in the business of distinction, by men of Distinction©) The path takes time and discovery. How deep the roots of its tendrils go. But how quickly can they be dissolved by putting in a little effort bit by bit, or going to a new side of the neighborhood (where the grass is rosé and everything’s okay.)
why do you feel the need to be right? what’s to gain, a little stroke to the ego? the ego can kiss my foot. no, no benefit to being right. the benefits of being wrong are far greater. u know where this is going: learning, humility, mind elasticity like a floppy rubberband. one of the most powerful wins in life would be waking up to discover you were wrong about absolutely everything. you hear that jacob james?
2021
art should extract something from the ineffable and evoke a deep, visceral feeling of the ineffable. the ineffable essence of being, of nothing, of infinity. any production stemming from an inescapable, existential need to express or communicate the ineffable infinitesimal which is hovering, vibrating, permeating everything and nothing must be considered and felt with best non-effort awareness. some things in life feel so sacred that i’m not sure what to do with the gratitude/awe/energy I have for them – relationships, synchronicities, moments, etc. some seem so sacred that they almost seem surreal. speaking about these with others is something, but that has a limit. is this a call appealing to my higher self, to channel my energy into something “greater?” Is this why art exists? could be visual arts, the healing arts, etc. anything. to express the sacred and ineffable within ourselves? these feelings and sensations within us, to me, feel like they need to be expressed in some way. maybe this is The Way. what would be the point of sacred moments/realizations/feelings if they simply remained within us? of course, if nothing else, the sacred/ineffable would naturally permeate from our being, since it is part of our deeper selves once it is experienced. but i feel strongly that it must be shared and expressed. descriptions seem futile. the more words, the more diluted the meaning. more words, more dilution. words, dilution. wo di . w r d n . w n .
one of many creative desires: to create the poetry/prose version of Malevich’s Black Square, Rauschenberg’s White Paintings, Cage’s 4’33”. instinct says this would be a blank page, or a book of blank pages. this won’t do. there are other yet-to-be-realized ways that will come in time. the best thing to do is whatever is being done right now. do something without purpose or direction.
the only knowable things are sensations – not the sensations themselves, but the awareness that the sensations are there. underneath the sensations, the infinite. something beyond comprehension is occurring and being experienced – true understanding is futile beyond this. nothing is knowable. the aforementioned types of creation reveal a miniscule, clouded window into the infinite for a fleeting moment within. the more that is turned away from, the more wisdom that is cultivated. everything is a presentation. the wisest being in the world is the being reading this. and this. and this. the being who’s breath and pulse is being felt right now. and now. and now. now.
nothing can be known until it is experienced firsthand. abandon familiarity completely.
an original thought must be pursued to its end.
these are words
is art dead? this occasionally crosses my mind and becomes an area of inner contention. on the one hand it’s obvious that art in all forms/mediums is more accessible than ever, and more opportunities to earn money as an artist are present today than ever before.
the compartmentalization and increasingly niche breakaway fragments of art and life as a whole seem to be simultaneously liberating and confining: there is a space for everyone, yet the more that groups evolve and split into specialized units, the more insular they seem to become.
there is no distinguishable or unified art movement, focus, or dialogue. could it even be considered as part of the zeitgeist of the 21st century? an obvious problem is the instantaneous commodification of every facet of the (art) world and the preference for presentation over substance, to the point where the presentation has almost become the substance itself. today’s media matriarch and other omnipresent offspring of the times might be considered the ultimate exhibits of this. Debord says all that needs to be said on the subject in Society of the Spectacle. a must read to tickle the old wigglebrain. a quote:
“the origin of the spectacle lies in the world’s loss of unity…the spectacle divides the world into two parts, one of which is held up as a self-representation to the world, and is superior to the world. The spectacle is simply the common language that bridges this division. Spectators are linked only by a one-way relationship to the very center that maintains their isolation from one another. The spectacle thus unites what is separate, but it unites it only in its separateness.” (22)
the questions i come back to myself with are “is a unified art movement needed? what is it needed for? what is the purpose of art or any movement?” these questions need much further exploration within myself.
something i must stress is that this is not an inquiry rooted in frustration or discouragement. i will create and pursue what i feel most pulled to regardless of what is happening externally. at times it might be more motivating, to strive for an evermore unfiltered and direct expression that might create the smallest or most transient bit of dialogue/focus on the artistic or ethereal.
a final note on presentation vs. substance: everyone in the world constantly tailors the presentation of their inward/outward selves, this is a core component to being human. my personal feeling is that presentation should only be tailored and crafted to the minimal point at which the presentation can act as a stable vessel for the substance. this can vary wildly. basically, don’t worry about the bells and whistles. people want real. it’s my feeling that one doesn’t even need to hone a specific craft beyond the foundations – more important to hone one’s mind/perception/experiences/curiosities, and these things will bleed into all of one’s creations.
perhaps the attitude of every instant should be the same as the attitude we adopt during a trip – “we’ll never see these people or places again, let’s dissolve the comfort zone, the ego a little bit.” newfound freedom. green light to 4-lane Expression Expressway. we all know, you know – this loaned experience is the overarching trip, we’ll never see these people and places again. that’s why i want you to be the most you You can be, right now. the perfectly imperfect you who loves and cries and has wishes and wears shoes. [saw a woman wearing platform crocs at the store the other day, need a pair myself]
anyways you don’t need to DO anything or ADD anything to your self, you’re doing it already bubba. the best thing for you to do is what you do in every blinking instant
interesting to me how no two people can hold the same perception of a thing or person. recently i was thinking about this relative to different generations. my grandmother’s best friend in high school has a fundamentally different perception of her than i do or her father or pastor or dog did. we never see all the crystalline dimensions of someone, let alone ourselves. every person in a sense has a different fragment of every person they meet – at best we can describe this fragment to others, but the other party can never see it themselves. stories about those older than i or others in general are a delight to me for this reason.
a person isn’t a person. we’re fluid and blameless by my estimation. a continuously amassing collection of vibrations pictures feelings dreams inputs. it’s ironic to be angry at anyone, especially yourself. to say any of this isn’t novel
the crumb on top of this dutch apple pie of beginningless fluidity is that once we pass, we no longer have one iota of affiliation with the persona which we were. were we ever that persona? space is good. it may as well be that i never was jacob james