Merry Christmas to one and all!
My dad got me a cook book from Ten Thousand Villages, so now I have one to call my own, and thus no excuse to not cook and bake as much as I'd like to. I want to be able to cook for a few reasons. I like to feel the pride of having made my own nutritious meal, something beyond mac and cheese. I'd rather not die of malnutrition or heart disease, thank you. It may get to a point where I have to fend for myself, so I think the More With Less Mennonite cook book is a good place to start on my road to culinary self-reliance. And besides, the ladies like a guy who can cook. I don't know why I'm so afraid of it. It's fairly straightforward as long as you follow the recipe. I guess it's a question of motivation.
Actually, it's something I've noticed pervades all aspects of my life. My love life, my writing, my acting, my spirituality. In all things, I've been living in my head. It's funny, it feels like only in the past month or so I've realized what it means to work. What it feels like to be growing. If I feel an immediate unwillingness to do something because I'm not in the mood for it or whatever excuse I have at the time, that usually means I ought to do it, and I never regret it. This is something I've touched on many times, because it's plagued me for so long. I feel a strong pull toward some power underlying the universe, quite possibly God, but I can never act on it. I'm too afraid to commit, so that feeling that draws me to the dark centre of the universe is still shapeless. I think I'm too clever, analytical, skeptical, to let myself surrender completely to a higher power. I'm worried about committing to someone, falling in love with someone for fear that they might actually *god forbid* know me. Or that if they were to know me, then they won't like what they see, and by then it'll be too late to get out unscathed. I think so low of myself that I don't feel deserving of the grace of someone's love. And is my opinion so low of the other person to doubt that they love me if indeed they do? For all my faults? I'm never the first to volunteer in my acting class, and only after class is over do I wish I did go first and took that risk and if need be, stumbled. Any idea I scribble down becomes detestable, and I lose faith in it so easily. I don't know why I'm so reluctant to do what's good for me, even if it means failure. I lack faith. I need the faith of a trapeze artist in freefall, or else this will never change.
Seriously now, I have a cookbook, and I will be writing every day of the New Year. In all seriousness. Now is the perfect opportunity, I'm working out a plan, and there's no time left for excuses.
P.S.
My dad also got me Tales From The Perilous Realm by Tolkien. I really appreciate him for this, as I've been looking for it for a year now and couldn't find it anywhere.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
On Memory, Continued
I have no reason not to write. Yet I don't. And so here's my periodical self-flogging for it.
I just started reading Charlie Chaplin's autobiography, and it's raised a question in my mind that always surface when I read memoirs and autobiographies: how much of it is elaboration and how much of it is fact? And how is it possible to remember so far into the past about very specific details? It's made me think about the subject of memory, its extreme significance as a part of who we are, and especially as an element of our imagination. My mom pointed out that people used to be more literary; more people wrote in journals more than they do now. I don't know if I agree with her on this, but I have the feeling that both of our opinions are only anecdotal so there's little headway to be made there. All the same, it doesn't change the fact that things like journaling are an extremely valuable tool, to anybody, let alone writers. It sharpens our faculties, it can ward off mental deterioration in old age (or in youth!), since the mind is like a tool that needs constant sharpening to keep it in good use. I was thinking about the novel 1984, and how terribly easy it is to forget if you're not careful. To be erased from all records, and to be convinced by the authorities that any given person never existed, so your memory is in fact edited as is history. This is an extreme scenario, but then it makes you think about all the facts that weren't included by historians through the ages, and what facts were distorted to serve political or personal interests, and you realize it's not all that farfetched.
I was reflecting on my day and I nearly forgot what I had for breakfast. It's not something I'd ever need to know, but just the fact that it was only a few hours ago made it quite alarming. To be fair, the brain works like that, and it has a lot of information to process throughout the day that it's physically impossible to retain everything that happened to you in a day, all at once. But that's precisely why things like journaling is so useful. This practice has no immediate usefulness of course, but if nothing else it allows you to find the story in your existence. It focuses your attention to detail and it can simply amaze you at how rich and eventful even the most mundane of days has been. I did recall after the moment's panic, what I had for breakfast. I had pancakes and breakfast sausages made by my good friend Scott Whittaker. We had Mango Passionfruit green tea to go with it. It was a delicious one-in-the-afternoon breakfast.
I need to journal and document my life and the world for fear of forgetting who I am, and in time, who I was. As the Buddha said, if you want to understand the present, look at the past. What better way to understand who I am and where I am going, by observing where I came from. I feel confident enough in my memory right now in my life that I won't be forgetting these things any time soon, but that alone won't ever explain to me why some details are more significant than others, unless I actually process my experiences, slow down and really think about them, and for me the best way of doing that is sitting down and seeing what my thoughts look like in words. But that's not the only way either. Through photographs and art and newspaper clippings, old book reports, music, etc. you can trace an unbroken line through your life, and see more clearly where you where that line is leading you, like a golden thread out of a labyrinth.
I just started reading Charlie Chaplin's autobiography, and it's raised a question in my mind that always surface when I read memoirs and autobiographies: how much of it is elaboration and how much of it is fact? And how is it possible to remember so far into the past about very specific details? It's made me think about the subject of memory, its extreme significance as a part of who we are, and especially as an element of our imagination. My mom pointed out that people used to be more literary; more people wrote in journals more than they do now. I don't know if I agree with her on this, but I have the feeling that both of our opinions are only anecdotal so there's little headway to be made there. All the same, it doesn't change the fact that things like journaling are an extremely valuable tool, to anybody, let alone writers. It sharpens our faculties, it can ward off mental deterioration in old age (or in youth!), since the mind is like a tool that needs constant sharpening to keep it in good use. I was thinking about the novel 1984, and how terribly easy it is to forget if you're not careful. To be erased from all records, and to be convinced by the authorities that any given person never existed, so your memory is in fact edited as is history. This is an extreme scenario, but then it makes you think about all the facts that weren't included by historians through the ages, and what facts were distorted to serve political or personal interests, and you realize it's not all that farfetched.
I was reflecting on my day and I nearly forgot what I had for breakfast. It's not something I'd ever need to know, but just the fact that it was only a few hours ago made it quite alarming. To be fair, the brain works like that, and it has a lot of information to process throughout the day that it's physically impossible to retain everything that happened to you in a day, all at once. But that's precisely why things like journaling is so useful. This practice has no immediate usefulness of course, but if nothing else it allows you to find the story in your existence. It focuses your attention to detail and it can simply amaze you at how rich and eventful even the most mundane of days has been. I did recall after the moment's panic, what I had for breakfast. I had pancakes and breakfast sausages made by my good friend Scott Whittaker. We had Mango Passionfruit green tea to go with it. It was a delicious one-in-the-afternoon breakfast.
I need to journal and document my life and the world for fear of forgetting who I am, and in time, who I was. As the Buddha said, if you want to understand the present, look at the past. What better way to understand who I am and where I am going, by observing where I came from. I feel confident enough in my memory right now in my life that I won't be forgetting these things any time soon, but that alone won't ever explain to me why some details are more significant than others, unless I actually process my experiences, slow down and really think about them, and for me the best way of doing that is sitting down and seeing what my thoughts look like in words. But that's not the only way either. Through photographs and art and newspaper clippings, old book reports, music, etc. you can trace an unbroken line through your life, and see more clearly where you where that line is leading you, like a golden thread out of a labyrinth.
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