It is time to get centered and quiet again, and return close to the truth, the truth on this day. The journal is a practice of self-knowledge, of self-process — not some kind of content mill. The more I’m seduced by the parts of me that wish to pump out content, to maintain some story or daily flow, the more this whole exercise will remain hollow. These outpourings will be no more than old scripts. Such is today’s world of online writing.
What does one care most about? This question ought provide structure to one’s days. Right here, gazing at the morning-lit palms and settling into the next thought worthy of a sentence, I am practicing meditation, practicing purpose, practicing a form of relationality (with you), and practicing some art. Writing here is an integral practice, a practice to exercise every facet of the being… not just the mind. The uncertainty in the practice comes from continually shedding old scripts — yesterday I did two-thousand words on jealousy (which are too valuable to deprive them a full day’s work on; they need publishing as an article on their own), and last night I scrawled out something interesting — but the knife’s edge-ness of the journal is to let the past’s ideas go and, just like in real intimacy with your lover, you refresh the browser of your perception, so to speak, and come back to what is here now.
What do I care most about? There are some solid structures in me, which are almost unthinkable to let go of: morning meditation (spiritual fitness, if you will), that morning coffee (part of me’s strangely proud to receive anchor from this drug), and this way of writing. Three things alone bring harmony to my days; all this is my lute, my bridge to the good life, the bohemian life, to a life of honour and right relationship. Beyond that — and this is not good for my projection of masculinity — I am completely up for grabs. Who I work with, what I create, the part of the world where I’d end the year (restrictions permitting), I do not know, cannot visualise, and don’t care much about in any gripping, visceral way. Goal-setting makes no sense anymore: that wholeness I might seek is already here. As I slow down and let any shred of writing goal go, I see I am rooted in the moment, but completely in the wind. To be rooted in the moment but completely in the wind might be the only viable way of navigating the strange changes our world is going through.
Certain motifs keep returning to me, though, as if I’m sat in life’s opera, amidst a recurring score and ballet. You know, the personal throb thing, the need for initiation — that vision quest, that exploration of maturity. I tremble in reverence, at times, at the naturality behind a woman’s smile, which can crash down on me, eliminating any dynamism from this motionful body, leaving me humbled, thirsty, astonished, inspired. There is fear inside me as I say this — a deep and holy terror — that if I let go of the horizontal threads I’ve comforted myself with this whole life (the pursuits that have given this ego continuity and meaning), the depths of who I am do not care where I end up.
The writing, the coffee, the spiritual fitness, then, perhaps last vestiges of keeping a centre. Clinging onto this sovereignty hard-won.
I hope these musings are of value to you as a reader. Else I’m an Amsterdam stripper before one-sided glass, through which I cannot see out. I imagine you’re reading this far because, after wholeness, you’re more drawn to deconstructing yourself, than building self up as project anew.
I actually decline the majority of invitations made to me these days. But I’m astonishingly open to just the right ones…