mind, body, spirit

The Decision to Leave Came in an Instant [The Abundance of Less]

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 23:27:00 +0000

Chapter two of The Abundance of Less is centered around Osamu Nakamura. One of my favorite excerpts reads:

"The decision to actually leave," he continues, "happened in an instant. I looked at my life, and I knew that I didn't want to wake up one day and find myself an old man filled with regret that I hadn't seen the things of the world...Of course, there are two kinds of regret I could have faced: I knew it was quite possible that I might end up stranded in some foreign country, miserable, without a
ny money, and knowing that I had given up my job. But when I compared that possible regret against retiring at sixty-five years old, having known nothing except working at my job -- that was when I knew. The decision, as I said, came in an instant."

Couturier, soon after the above passage, notes that "In the world system of increasingly discrete labor...the act of disentangling oneself from the whole might, in hindsight, appear quite radical." So, it really is a heroic act to live a truly individual life as disconnected from the invisible social pressures that are all around us.

I've written a thread on r/MindBodySpirit about this book which you can find here. Please comment if you can.

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Wu Wei Is Not Doing SocietyIt was only life that pained.Wu Wei Is Not Doing SocietyIt was only life that pained." - Jack London

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 07:54:00 +0000

This excerpt really grabbed my attention.

We are all on death's door given the right perspective. Life does hurt, yes. That's part of the hand we're dealt. Whether it's acute pain such as a disease, physical violence, or some other unfortunate malady; or if it's the dull, weary pain of overwork and other social stressors, the statement still applies.

Therefore, why not think of death more positively? The absence of pain. Is that not pleasure?

Too often we project, often subconsciously (even more sinister), that the pain of life will endure till infinity. London points out that this is inherently false. He implies that the trick to life is being ever aware that it ends, and in that way of thinking, one can truly live. One can truly love life.

Later in the story, he describes the ragged and weak protagonist, basically crawling through the Alaskan wild, starving with a mind full of near-death hallucinations, as a man whose life is outside of his body, clinging to the man by nothing more than a thread. The man had left hunger behind. He had dropped his gold to save weight, dropped his gun, too. All that remained were a tattered blanket and his precious matches -- purveyors of warmth and light, bringers and keepers of life.

Life itself is then what is important, not the material pleasures that we are able to find along the way (if we are so fortunate). So in the end, yes, death is the absence of pain, and it very well may be synonymous with pleasure, but life will soldier on, and that is a fact, a fact so concrete that we owe it to ourselves to suck the marrow out of life, just like London's protagonist sucked the marrow out of caribou bones (another item that he chose to carry over gold). We owe it to ourselves to live and love life!

Read London's books here.

Wu Wei Is Not Doing SocietyIt was only life that pained.Wu Wei Is Not D

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Wed, 03 Jun 2020 07:10:00 +0000

In this clip, Alan Watts says that practicing Wu Wei, commonly known as going with the flow, "the art of sailing as opposed to the art of rowing," as Watts describes it, is not doing the opposite of what society orders us to do. That, in effect, is running along the same groove of society's train, just in the other direction (its mirror image, as Watts calls it).

A lot of people in the world are affected by unemployment and discrimination at the moment due to coronavirus and the George Floyd protests (which I and many believe are intrinsically linked). Therefore, many of us are confronting ourselves, our life choices, the roads that we choose to head down on this journey called life. When we find that we are dissatisfied with some of our choices, choices that are part of the identity that we carve out for ourselves on a daily basis (because, let's be honest, identity is slowly molded, not spontaneously called into existence), we should remember Alan's words and choose a novel existence that flows with nature, with universal truths, and not with societal constructs, mere trinkets by the roadside that will one day be unwanted dusty relics, forgotten.

At the very end he asks, "What do you truly, honestly hear? Don't name it. Just as if it were music... classical music." But tap into it! Let it become a part of you, for that is the truth that is being broadcast to you from the void. That is the wave you are meant to ride so freely and joyously.

Find books by Alan Watts here.

Running Form to Prevent Injury

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Wed, 27 May 2020 05:57:00 +0000

I can be a bit running centric in my thinking when I promote the values and virtues of physical health. Whatever your workout of choice may be, it may be beneficial to record yourself in order to reflect, refine, and receive feedback from others. That latter point is why I'm posting these videos. I'd love to hear your tips and observations about my form.

These videos were shot at the crack of dawn at my favorite barefoot running space, a high school baseball practice field in the mountains a kilometer from my front door. It's a quiet place that allows me to focus and avoid the distractions that sometimes come with cars zipping by and observers stealing glimpses of my powerful physique (joking, of course).

Running video links of my form on YouTube (opens in new window):

Video #1

Video #2

Below is a video of excellent running form. How do they compare? With any pursuit, I believe it's a good idea to compare your craft to that of an expert, someone who has put in 10,000 hours or more. Of course, many of our pursuits are creative in nature (even running, I would argue), so exact duplication is not the goal. However, emulation with the wiggle room to tweak as the artist sees fit and beneficial for his unique self/style, is the method that most (if not all) creators use.

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Closer to the Birds

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Mon, 25 May 2020 07:04:00 +0000

On Tangentially Speaking episode 393, Jeff Shipiro talks about hang gliding and jump suiting, and how they bring him closer to the birds, how he can feel a kinship with them as they fly together.

Chris then goes on to wonder why we dream of flying, what this connection to that experience really means. Some are drawn to the air, others to the desert, others still to water. Which are you drawn to?

Despite being drawn to differing environs, the constant that can be determined is the resetting of the soul. Arriving back at nature, like arriving back at your grandmother's kitchen table after years under the vise of societal life, is a meeting with our ancestors, a form of communication. It can refresh us and remind us what it truly means to be human.

This is what the surfer is chasing, not the endless summer nor the perfect wave, for both are impossibilities, unattainable perfections. This is what a runner cruising at high tempo has found: the place where mind, body, and soul merge and are given permission from which to be born again.

Chris's books:

- Sex at Dawn
- Civilized to Death

The 8 Things We Can Do To Stay Healthy

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Thu, 21 May 2020 22:59:00 +0000

At the end of this interview, Ben Greenfield gave, in his opinion, a list of 8 things one can do to optimize health. This is a fairly short post, but I felt obligated to pass this information along. You can find Greenfield's books here.

1. Consistent moderate exercise

2. Mediterranean diet

3. Grounding by walking outside barefoot

4. & 5. Hot and cold (e.g. sweating and cold showers)

6. Minerals

7. Get frequent sunlight

8. Clean water

Nature Writing Case Study: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Sat, 16 May 2020 10:29:00 +0000

I didn't read this book till recently, and am a little surprised that I passed it over when I was younger, though not that much so because I read few female authors then and wasn't quite as enamored with the natural word back then as I am now (I adored vistas from afar as opposed to getting right in there with them as I do now).

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (winner of the Pulitzer Prize) is a tale set in northern Florida just after the American Civil War. It's about a family living off the land and all of the pleasures and hardships that come with such a life. More specifically, it's about a young boy learning to cope with loss while using his compassion to care for a fawn whose mother had perished.

I picked the book up in my quest to become a better nature writer. Flipping through the pages I encountered paragraph after marvelous paragraph filled with descriptive gems of the great Earth and her landscape.

One such passage is as follows:

...during the past months, he had learned the value of his father's trick of an unarguing silence...He watched the sun rise beyond the grape arbor. In the thin golden light the young leaves and tendrils of the Scuppernon were like Twink Weatherby's hair. He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color of dried corn husks. He went at his work vigorously.

In the above extract Rawlings seems to mesh the beauty of the outer world with the beauty of mankind's inner world (his soul, or whatever you choose to call it) when she intimates that he "indulged his agreeable melancholy," an act that could be interpreted as a sort of communion with the mystery of nature. To expand, nature has an unmistakable sense of order, yet the purpose or drive to achieve said order; therefore, man, with his own, alien order in his society, separate from nature, feels left out when he appreciates Mother Earth's beauty but her secret isn't whispered into his ear.

Rawlings also does an excellent job of contrasting society and nature, pointing out the merits of the latter. She writes:

"But in the towns and villages, in farming sections where neighbors were not too far apart, men's minds and actions and property overlapped. There were intrusions on the individual spirit. There were friendliness and mutual help in times of trouble, true, but there were bickering and watchfulness, one man's suspicion of another...He had perhaps been bruised too often (by society). The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence. Something in him was raw and tender...The wild animals seemed less predatory to him than the people he had known.

Here Rawlings makes a case for leaving society, not out of fear or incompetence, but simply because the family in The Yearling have made a choice that there just might be something better receive from nature's bosom than from man's. Too often we buy in to the belief that society has improved man's lot in life in comparison to nature. Perhaps it's time to question that supposition. Perhaps it's time to return to the garden that we blossomed from, if only for a time.

Rawlings also attempts to pinpoint the Catch-22 that is man's fondness for nature, yet his need to destroy it in order to ensure his survival. In a beautiful paragraph, Rawlings writes:

Jody examined the deer hide. It was large and handsome, red with spring. The game seemed for him to be two different animals. On the chase, it was quarry. He wanted only to see it fall. When it lay dead and bleeding, he was sickened and sorry. His heart ached over the mangled death. Then when it was cut into portions, and dried and salted and smoked; or boiled or baked or fried in the savory kitchen or roasted over the camp-fire, it was only meat, like bacon, and his mouth watered at its goodness. He wondered by what alchemy it was changed, so that what sickened him one hour, maddened him with hunger, the next. It seemed as though there were either two different animals or two different boys.

Of course, this Catch-22 can be superimposed onto anything. For instance, our labors are sometimes lusted after, whether it be acquiring a sought after title to print on a business card, or something far more simple, such as developing a farm that can provide all of one's family's calories. Yet, the reality of toiling in the office or in the dirt can be hair pulling and back breaking. However, once we push through the uncomfortable stage of labor, we are able to reap the attached rewards. So, just like Jody above, we all feel some sort of ecstasy in the chase, pain in the toil, and satisfaction in the remuneration. Perhaps this is a fact of life.

No. Perhaps knowing this is a secret of life. If we decide to set a goal, whether it be material or otherwise, let us embrace the toil that is required to reap the satisfaction at road's end.

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Gollum's Voice In My Head

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Tue, 12 May 2020 22:10:00 +0000

I'm on a mission to get my fitness back up after a period of too much laziness that followed my marathon effort in March (and subsequent Morton's neuroma flare-ups while trying to restart my training).

I found myself get into a pattern of negative choices as they related to high carb foods and, to some extent, alcohol intake.

Before I get too hard on myself, I would like to say that after months of hard training, to the point that we reach peak physical condition (I had 9% body fat as a 39 year old), we do deserve to treat ourselves a bit. Even Meb Keflezighi says that gaining weight after a hard training cycle is part of the gain (see: Meb for Mortals). However, those of us with addictive tendencies should tread those waters lightly. We can soon find ourselves in the deep end, up to our necks in family size dessert servings and entire six packs of beers.

There is definitely something like Gollum's voice in my head when I feel ravenous. If not a voice, then a strong compulsion that, when observed from a distance, looks like a different person, a mindless person, and I sometimes cannot believe what I am seeing. Thankfully, mindfulness training has enabled me to see this side of myself whereas others may be unable to.

The good news is, like the force can be wielded for both dark and light, so can our addictive nature. I'm happy to be back on the path of hard and smart training, including a sound diet (see: Racing Weight). And I'm also happy I tracked my weight last year, because I noticed that I'm still lighter than I was at this time back then. The future is bright. Train on my friends.

Side note: My go-to whole food snack is a boiled egg, a boiled sweet potato, and a small piece of dark chocolate.

Introduction to My Small Farm

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Sun, 10 May 2020 06:47:00 +0000

If there are any experienced farmers out there, I would love some kind advice. As I mentioned in the video, this is my first farm, and though I plan to make this a lifelong pursuit, I am very much winging it at the moment.

Here are some useful books on farming if you are interesting in picking up this calming and rewarding hobby.

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Take Care of Your Tools

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Fri, 08 May 2020 11:07:00 +0000

One thing that I love about reading about gardening is metaphors derived from the plants and from working with them. Five Acres and Independence by MG Kains has a short chapter on choosing the right tools for your gardens.

He writes: "One point seldom emphasized is that an owner is more likely to take care of good tools than of poor ones."

The "buy-for-life" movement is very real and full of merit. Investing in the products that enrich our lives -- our tools, our dishes, our kitchenware, our luggage -- can not only save us money in the long run but also cut down on the waste we create over the course of our lives. More about investing soon.

We can apply Kains's philosophy to the mind, body, spirit approach to life, as well. For instance, there are tools on the market, such as this one, that are designed to have three separate purposes such as hammering, pulling nails, and prying things open. This is not the metaphor that I'm searching for. Separate purposes reflect the scattered nature of modern society.

For example, one could be an expert at his craft, say a highly knowledgeable electrical engineer. He could also be an accomplished powerlifter in the evenings, as well as an avid practitioner at his church or temple. Checking these three boxes does not equate to living a life rich in truth unless all three practices have the intention of a full life of truth behind them.

That is to say, this fictional man could have easily pursued engineering for the money, weightlifting for the external appearance and the superficial rewards that come along with big muscles, and finally the religious activity due to cultural pressures instead of an organic spiritual drive burning from within. But, of course, there certainly is a version of the fictional man that I drew up who is the real McCoy, the one working on himself for all of the right reasons.

This brings me back to investing. When we have a deeply rich focus on our pursuits in life, we earn a satisfaction that is more valuable than anything else out there. "Value" is probably not even the right word because of its close relationship with money. No amount of money will bring satisfaction to a true seeker on his day of dying, so build your own shovel with your mind, body, and spirit. Perhaps the hole that it will dig slowly, day in and day out, will not be an easily known and measurable entity in this world. It will probably not be a diploma or a deed to a house. However, it very well may be the small farm you have worked on or the art you have created.

And I do strongly believe that creativity is part of the puzzle of this world. If our vision of a full and rich life, our individual image of that metaphorical hole we are digging, might possibly be required to embody a creative pursuit. That is not to say that we all must be artists, poets, or musicians. Creating life as parents, pet owners, and gardeners do is also a form of creativity, as is creating health as doctors or nurses do, or creating love as teachers of all forms do. This list could go on ad infinitum.

Good luck digging your hole. Take care of the three tools you need in order to dig deeply and wisely: mind, body, and spirit. Give your work the focus of the universal creative spirit, and don't look back.

Poem I Wrote At The Beach

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Mon, 04 May 2020 11:15:00 +0000

Children's voices pierce through

the drone of the waves
Small and breaking up and down the beach
in no particular rhythm

So each break blends into the whole
and white noise prevails over each
Separate Crash

It's nice to know that even
in the alien world of sound
Individuals make up the crowd

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Waking Up One Day Someone New

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Sun, 03 May 2020 11:33:00 +0000

She was a lush, a slut, an utter wreck. Each night she downed a bottle of Chardonnay, often tacking on a few beers or cocktails. She would wake up bloated and groggy, yet her insecurities and fears drove her to the gym and to count her calories like they were precious nuggets of gold that had fallen out of holes in her soul. She held onto her beauty like a thread, but her white-knuckled grasp was tight indeed.

At this point, her spirit had become nothing more than a reused, frayed burlap sack. Nobody would take the time to pick it up from the roadside ditch and mend it back together again with a needle made of love and thread of tenderness, let alone want to trade places with it.

Yet myriad folks have envied Jane's lot it life. The way her cleavage slipped accidentally from behind her garments like a coquettish child playing peek-a-boo. The way her dimples seemed to form in sync with the radiant glint in her eye. But little did these gawkers and wannabes know that Jane was merely a creature of habit. Countless nights had been spent in her teen years in front of the mirror, observing the way her body moved, anticipating the best postures and angles needed to procure maximum satisfaction in her peers (and often in her superiors, too). "What a beautiful creature," they would comment on the side, their assumption being that she was born that way, no work required, like an Arctic fox cub born into aesthetic perfection. Little did they know.

Habits had made her who she was and they could make her into someone else one day, too. Afraid of waking up one day someone knew, she was reluctant to make any life-altering changes, so, instead, she set out to prove to herself that she could stay consistent with a new habit, only this habit would be purposeless, nonsensical, an experiment designed to nudge her in the direction of change without actually changing anything.

What pointless new routine would she decide to take-on then? A few ideas had been circling like sharks through her head. One was to cut a single strand of hair from her head each evening. Another was to knock twice on her own (empty) apartment door each morning as she was leaving for work. A third, the eventual choice, was to fill up a cup of water upon waking and, before doing anything else, to pour it in the toilet.

So that is what she did. For an entire year, she filled up a five-ounce paper Dixie cup with water from the bathroom tap and poured it into the toilet. Jane poured it rain or shine, healthy or sick, calm or stressed, drunk or sober. And unpredictably, consequences did occur. She had thought that this would be a consequence-free exercise, but oh how wrong she had been. That simple, seemingly meaningless little ritual transformed Jane inside and out.

She became less lonely, for one thing. The part of her that drank and obsessed over prostrating to her many insecurities seemed to be a different being than the sly fox, the trickster, who poured the water into the toilet each morning. The Jane who had spent her youth manufacturing her image in front of the mirror found this newfound persona despicable, and vice-versa. Interestingly, the more Jane's front and center mind (her Driver) dwelled in the satisfaction that the water pouring ritual gave her, the more she handed that trickster the keys, and the more the old Jane took to the backseat.

The backseat on the road of life can be a lonely place indeed. Often the road is dark and forlorn with the only light being the radio display up front. One can lose touch with oneself if stuck in the back for too long, and as the sly fox navigated for the driver it also picked the tunes to play on the radio and, all due to this funny little ritual, Jane's Driver began to prefer the trickster to the insecure perfectionist.

Jane started forgetting to doll herself up like she used to. Her bosoms often found themselves comfortably bound up behind sweaters and turtlenecks. Those manufactured smiles, like sidewinder missiles, found themselves forgotten back at the hangar for Jane turned inward for warmth and happiness more and more frequently with the trickster in the front seat. She needed the stares of others less and less to be content with her life.

Over time, she found herself skipping after-work happy hours and forgetting to go down the booze aisle at the supermarket. She began getting most of her exercise outdoors at green parks with paths made of wood chips and that smelled of mulch and grass clippings. All because of that funny little ritual. One day while at the park she caught the eye of a bearded stranger and knew that he was the one for her. It was love at first sight and the twinkle in her eye that had once been entirely contrived, came out of her as innately as a bird flapping its wings, and she flew somewhere new that day, somewhere lighter and loftier, somewhere she could never and would never return from, all thanks to pouring five ounces of water into the toilet each morning upon rising.

Slack the Line But Still Tethered

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 23:08:00 +0000

He was on a raft that was tethered to a dock on a great emerald shore. The lush landscape, like an eternal womb, provided nourishment, wisdom, plentiful goodness, anything the man needed to feel whole.

But the man always felt that something was lacking in his emerald paradise. Fear, danger, violence, uncertainty, all of those unpredictable occurrences of the vast ocean out "there," never bothered him on the land.

If he wanted to encounter the challenges of the sea, all he had to do was slack the rope that tethered him to shore. The more slack he allowed, the choppier the water became and bit by bit he began to forget his emerald paradise. But the tether, no matter how much it frayed or got buried under the treasures he acquired on his seaward journeys, never frayed, and though the man knew not the following fact, it snapping and disconnecting him from his pure land was a physical impossibility no different than the law of gravity one day switching off at the snap of one's fingers.

And so the man continued to slack the line and venture out into stormy seas because the game of life that swung like a pendulum from fear to courage, hate to love, was the right of all people descended from the emerald land of paradise. And every so often the man would close his eyes and breathe softly and purely and some part of him, not his mind per se, would glimpse his homeland and blush at the feeling of peace and tranquility that it gave him, even from so very far away.

Be Like the Weeds

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:12:00 +0000

*Apologies for any blatant errors or formatting issues. I wrote this on mobile.

We just moved into a new house about a month ago and are fortunate enough to have a decent size farm space out back. We're growing all sorts of exciting plants: potatoes, sweet potatoes, spinach, Swiss chard, daikon radishes, tomatoes, green peppers, and yellow and red ones, too. I also have soy beans seeds in starter pots and am crossing my fingers that they will sprout and grow enough to be successfully transplanted into one of the last remaining empty rows.

It's been a hell of a lot of fun, though I'm very much a beginner and will accept the failures as they come.

Since I know that my first few years of growing will have their ups and downs and be chock full of learning experiences, I'm using the time in the dirt and under the resplendent sun to think about the things that are important to me -- hobbies, family, philosophy, running, creativity. In short, the quietude of the dirt under the sky draws me inward and reminds me that the world is ever changing. The subtly changing green landscape teaches me the same.

Just yesterday, to drive this point home, we had a torrential downpour. The sound of the droplets pelting the roof like aquatic assassins put me into one of the deepest sleeps I've had in a long time. Today, then, when I returned home from work, I checked on my plants. I wanted to make sure that my newfound friends were OK. Fortunately, they weathered the storm. Unfortunately, though I don't mind all that much, a gang of new weeds sprouted up to a height that I would have deemed impossible had I not just weeded the day before prior to the big deluge.

The weeds got me thinking today. They got me thinking about persistence and possibility. I pull this one emerald and spindly variety out of the ground consistently, and it simply refuses to lose. Its roots dig deep and hold on tight, so nine out of ten attempts to remove it, the moment I think that I've just about got it, it snaps with an almost joyful pop, as if to say, "Ha! Nice try but fat chance!"

Then the damned thing rears its ugly head the very next day asking for another go. It's like a free game of Whack a Mole, I tell you. But before I get angry at the weed, I get hit with mystical jolt of wisdom. The weed, if it could talk, wouldn't be taunting me at all. Instead, it would be encouraging me to live my life like it does, to never give up, to reach for the sun, that original source of life, God, no matter if its circumstances aren't ideal, no matter if a force beyond its control keeps on chopping it down.

Be like the weeds.

Project X

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 11:56:00 +0000

*Sorry for any glaring typos or formatting issues. I wrote this on mobile.

I heard someone at work mention the film Project X, which immediately hit me with a rush of memories and the feelings that attached themselves like suckerfish.

If you haven't seen the film, a quick synopsis is as follows: a young Matthew Broderick works at a secret government facility that researches the effects of high-dosage radiation on chimps in flight simulators. It was filmed at the peak of the Cold War and touches on themes of friendship, autonomy, animal rights, and standing up for one's beliefs vs. following orders. That last concept is one that I would like to explore more thoroughly in the bear future, but exploring the cultivation of one's own feelings from a young age and the importance of seemingly innocuous and innocent moments of one's past that may have actually played a more important part in his development than originally thought.

First, I'd like to touch on this idea of following one's beliefs vs. following orders. If you have read much of my writing here on this site or on Reddit (u/pbzen) then you may have learned that I live in Japan. Since the end of WWII, Japan has been a model for the virtues of social harmony and cohesion. Their economy saw a massive boom, crime statistics are consistently at global lows, and generous social programs make the chances of extreme poverty very low. It is clear that working together as a group has much to offer.

There is, of course, a much darker, rusted, and defaced flip side to this coin. During WWII, for example, group-think took hold of young Japanese men (as it does to soldiers the world over), gripping their minds like a powerful and unforgiving vice. Pacifists and draft-dodgers were nearly impossible to come by as young boys found themselves following orders to torture and rape their way through China and the rest of Asia. Questioning authority, often seen as a pillar of Western thought, was an impossible notion.

Fast forward to the bubble years until today and we see similar behavior from the ubiquitous salaryman. Blind dedication to their company and a culturally ingrained ethos to be at the office for as long as one's superior, even if that means missing out on quality family time and ensuring that the only identity he needs is the one fixed to his job title. Sure, these long hours and that mindboggling commitment helps the company's bottom line and puts food on the table (and then some), but it sucks the marrow out of life.

Back to Project X, a young man portrayed by Matthew Broderick works at a military facility. No doubt he has been conditioned to be loyal to his job, to his country; yet, he befriends these chimps, and he sees autonomous creatures who are trapped, helpless and in need of help. Great movie short, he goes against his social conditioning and does what he can to help. There is something built into Western mythos that validates this act of heroism. These stories are not uncommon.

However, the Japanese soldiers and salarymen had/have not encountered these myths. They have not felt society's praise of them land on their shoulders like a friendly bird, a companion of good. The myths they have been fed have been those of teamwork and selflessness for the success of the whole. In all fairness, perhaps these types of myths need to be amplified in Western society, and perhaps a balance of the two must be agreed upon.

I got on this subject because I want to talk about COVID-19 a bit and how it's affected me personally. Living in Japan, we have seen relatively low rates of infection for a variety of reasons, and to me it does seem that the Japanese way of following the crowd has helped in this time of crisis. E.g. Don't be the only one in the office or on the train without a mask. But, there has been a late spike in cases that no one knows just yet how bad it will get. This, I fear, has to do with Japan's lack of exposure to the Western myth of rugged individualism a-la Matthew Broderick in Project X. Had more people stood up in crowded meeting rooms and demanded work-from-home opportunities, days off even, perhaps this second wave of infections could have been averted. On the flip side, of course, had New Yorkers been more like the Japanese from the onset, perhaps their horrific crisis could have at least been dampened a bit.

One of my favorite philosophers, the bard Terence McKenna, has famously stated that "culture is not your friend." I wholeheartedly agree with him; however, many of us are steeped and stinking within culture, forgotten like a week old tea bag in a to-go cup on the floor of one's car. Therefore, I urge all of us to stubbornly ignore culture's wish to clamp down on us, to mold us into its own image. Instead, let's remember to be elastic and to take the parts of other cultures that work, and to use them when the timing is right. This requires learnedness, open-mindedness, and a rare quality that is one part East, one part West, one part humble, one part brash. Perhaps don't forget to throw in a dash of spiritual/indigenous wisdom and a pinch of love.

Shades of Green

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Thu, 16 Apr 2020 00:58:00 +0000

*Sorry for any glaring typos or formatting issues. I wrote this over mobile.

As a partially colorblind individual, I occasionally get grilled about what it's like to have such an infliction.

"Can you see this?" is the most frequent question as the inquisitor proceeds to hold up or point to various items of various colors: a book cover, a marker, a stripe on a shirt.

But over the years a couple things have occurred to me: 1) maybe they are asking the wrong question and 2) maybe I have figured out something essential about beauty and subjectivity thanks to my colorblindness.

Let me break this down for you.

1) "Can you see this?" Ah the question I've heard a gazillion times which carries with it the jagged connotation of What a lovely opportunity to point out this poor fellow's flaws. and/or What a chance to point out my superiority over this guy (regardless of how insignificant it may be in the grand scheme of things, for in no way shape or form is color-seeing an indicator of valuable human aspects like altruism, perserverence, or contentiousness).

Think I'm at all scarred by these inquisitions? Nah!

Anyway, when I look through the lenses of my eyeballs out into the world I see myriad colors. I really do. And what I see is positively glorious. My favorite colors are the shades of green that dutifully paint the world. The bushes, the differing species of trees -- cedar, Cypress, cherry -- the grass and weeds that speckle it like toppings on a sundae. And nothing completes the scene like a purely blue sky, as if that shade of cloudless blue were the color of the canvas that the world was painted on.

Art class as a child taught me that a dark green is simply green with some black added, and that to get light green just exchange the black for white. Science has taught me that my rods and cones have trouble sending the proper signal to my brain that allows it to easily distinguish one color from the next. But does this deficiency disclude me from experiencing joyous rapture when I see colors like the ones I just mentioned? Hardly. And this is the assumption that the color-seer makes. He thinks (even if subconsciously) that my worldly experience is less because I cannot identify the names of the different colors that light up the landscape.

2) That brings me to my second point. Perhaps I am blessed because of my colorblindness. Perhaps the color-seeing person has the tendency to objectify the world. For example, sight, arguably the primary sense of man can be broken down into shapes and names -- e.g. colors, materials, species, etc... In the present moment, sensory input is very much objective (i.e. that is a beige pair of pants). The subjective side of things doesn't happen till after the fact (i.e. those are some snazzy beige pants).

So, is it possible that us colorblind folks, lacking the ability to objectify the world of color, slip into that subjective reality sooner and more seamlessly? I think you know what my answer to that question is, and I see it as a little recompense for all of the abuse I have taken over the years.

Revising and Combining Favorite Texts As A Writing Exercise

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 12:05:00 +0000

I love to annotate the books I enjoy reading. Underline key words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. Jot down profundities (or at least what seem to be at that moment) in the margins. Question marks, stars, and even smiley faces adorn my books' pages. Interacting with a text has a productive energy about it that I just can't ignore.

The more I read, the bigger collection of literary highlights I accumulate. Of course, I try to back and reread them from time to time, those little morsels of knowledge that reteach my mind and reinvigorate my soul. But I wondered if there was any way to use them besides simple reabsorbtion. After all, these are not household cleaning supplies that we are talking about. Rather, these are nuggets of sage wisdom, units of soulful measurement.

So, I came up with a plan, and honesty, I'm not sure how novel it is, but I'm going to share it anyway:

Turn your favorite authors' words into your own. Reorder the syntax, rephrase the vocabulary, and combine them with other such experiments to create something brand new: a new message, a fresh perspective.

For example, I read Watership Down for the first time this year and absolutely adored it. I'm purposefully reading novels chock full if nature description in hopes to gain some skill in that area of my own prose. Here are a few of my favorite passages:

1a) "...their staunch ability to withstand disaster and let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss."

2a) "Along the western horizon the lower clouds formed a single purple mass, against which distant trees stood out minute and sharp. The upper edges rose into the light, a far land of wild mountains. Copper-colored, weightless and motionless, they suggested a glassy fragility like that of frost."

3a) "A wild animal that feels that it no longer has any reason to live reaches in the end a point when its remaining energies may actually be directed toward dying."

Here is how I paraphrased and reworded them:

1b) They are steadfastly adept at overcoming hardship and letting the rushing river that is their time on this earth surge them right by stretches of fear and disaster.

2b) Out in the distance near the ominous border of the earth and the sky, a violet globule of vapors made shape. Trees keenly outlined those clouds as if they were etched into the air by a master illustrator who specialized in realism, an artist who carefully connected the tips of the mountains with the light of the heavens. Those whispy white shapes stood featherly-still, intimating an impermanence reminiscent of aged rice paper.

3b) The earthly beast understands when its time of death has approached. In place of the struggle to hunt and scavenge, it turns its attention to the act of departing. There is an inherent sense of satisfaction in this shift of spirit from life to death.

I'm also reading an excellent non-fiction book called The Abundance of Less. When picking a second book to draw ideas from, choose one with a similar theme. The nature quotes from Watership Down blend well with the philosophical musings about simple living in the countryside that are present in The Abundance of Less. Two of my favorite quotes from that book are these:

1c) "I remember she once told me she wanted to be like plants are, producing an uncountable number of seeds, or like wildflowers in a meadow, not thinking of herself as so unique or special. 'I admire how they simply sacrifice themselves, hundreds of thousands of seeds, and only a few grow into plants. I'd like to be more like that myself.'"

2c) "He asked himself the question: 'What is beautiful?' And the answer, for him, was: 'Everyday things; things that are used in daily life by ordinary people.'"

And here they are rephrased:

1d) As I recall, he muttered to me once that he wanted to embody the life-essence of plants, to create from seemingly nothing an endless hoard of seeds, unleashing life unto the world with the intent to affect truly lasting change, the same as the man who planted a tree a day for eighty years only to find his dusty dry field had become a lush forest, a veritable ecosystem of wonder. To be a seed and inject simply one's potential into the soil of the world was enough for him, for he didn't care if his seed were to become a giant redwood or if it were plucked quickly out from the ground by the massive black beak of a raven, digested, and put someplace else. In both cases, the potential would merely be transferred, never killed.

2d) Beauty to him was not a rare illustrious stone, nor is it a once in a lifetime sunset of rich hues that melt the heart. To him, true beauty is made up of everyday items and occurrences: the castiron skillet that was pounded into existence thanks to the sweaty toil of the blacksmith four generations prior, or the weathered lines on the face of his better half that seem to reveal themselves only when she's at her most tired and weary moments, like when she's just returned to the cabin with a basket full of freshly cut timber on a crisp February morning.

Finally, with some other minor tweaks (including an original idea or two), I am able to create my own piece of writing. I'll need a thesis of some sort. In this case, I choose to... I also need a synthesis to wrap it all together:

They were steadfastly adept at overcoming hardship. The Forest People were those who let the rushing river that was their time on this earth surge them right by stretches of fear and disaster.

Out in the distance near the ominous border of the earth and the sky, a violet globule of vapors made shape. Their medicine man, humming an archaic tune, watch the scene unfold with interest. Trees keenly outlined those clouds as if they were etched into the air by a master illustrator who specialized in realism, an artist who carefully connected the tips of the mountains with the light of the heavens. Those whispy white shapes stood featherly-still, intimating an impermanence reminiscent of aged rice paper. The medicine man clapped his hands together firmly, part signal that his meditation was complete, part applause.

The earthly beasts that are the Forest People understand when their time of death has approached. In place of the struggle to hunt and scavenge, they turn their attention to the act of departing. There is an inherent sense of satisfaction in this shift of spirit from life to death.

As I recall, he, the medicine man that is, muttered to me once that he wanted to embody the life-essence of plants, to create from seemingly nothing an endless hoard of seeds, unleashing life unto the world with the intent to affect truly lasting change, the same as the man who planted a tree a day for eighty years only to find his dusty dry field had become a lush forest, a veritable ecosystem of wonder. To be a seed and inject simply one's potential into the soil of the world was enough for him, for he didn't care if his seed were to become a giant redwood or if it were plucked quickly out from the ground by the massive black beak of a raven, digested, and put someplace else. In both cases, the potential would merely be transferred, never killed.

He hummed his tune even louder now and he slowly walked barefoot down the earthen road.

Beauty to him was not a rare illustrious stone, nor was it a once in a lifetime sunset of rich hues that melt the heart. To him, true beauty was made up of everyday items and occurrences: the castiron skillet that was pounded into existence thanks to the sweaty toil of the blacksmith four generations prior, or the weathered lines on the face of his better half which seemed to reveal themselves only when she was at her most tired and weary, like when she had just returned to the cabin with a basket full of freshly cut timber on a crisp February morning.

No, he was not in a rush to meet the moment of his transformation from life to death, but he was most definitely in anticipation of it. He would one day smile upon it like a long-lost friend, and that thought curled the corner of his mouth upward slightly. And his hum grew ever louder, for he was at peace with the world that would provide him shelter and grain manifested by nothing besides sweat and toil. And love of course. There was always love.

His tune was carried along the wind as if a message sent to his faraway friend, Death, whom he knew less than a stranger, but loved like none other.

What do you think?

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Dancing Naked With The Serpent [Flash Fiction/Short Story]

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 11:30:00 +0000

Dancing Naked With The Serpent

The forest, that old observer, had tricked me into thinking she wasn’t there, that it was just me alone that day. All the while, I had wooed myself into believing society had been switched off, as if it were a mere lamp shining insignificantly in the corner of the great and wide universe while I ran.

I was 10.4km into my trail run. No other cars were parked at the trailhead. 17 degrees Celcius at sunrise, the cedars and pines swayed gently in the damp morning air. With each bend and jostle they revealed a different pattern of tree and sky, kaleidoscopic designs dancing on the purely blue canvas up above.

It was moments like these that got me up and out of bed while the Normals, as I liked to call them, were still sleeping soundly, deeply breathing in and out the idea that they deserved said rest, as if it were the last of the pompous and circumstantial hoops to jump through for the week. For these moments I had reserved a morsel of reverence for my own vitality. And this time of year, too, was spring, when life was abounding: coon dogs, weasels, pheasants, and deer.

Just then, as I was soaking into life’s warm bath of wonder all the way down to my philtrum, she threw me her signature curveball of irony.

A dead snake. A pitviper no less. Spotted and clean, it lay straight across the edge of the path as if someone or something had started measuring the width of the trail with him then given up suddenly, perhaps to go boil some water for tea, or maybe to pick wildflowers for his lover the mistress of the oaken shade.

The Japanese pitviper. Him and his ilk did not amass many fatalities each year -- 20 or thereabouts I would guess -- but his fangs and the venomous sacks they were connected to, instilled me with an acute blend of awe and fear which I drank down like a stiff shot of medicine.

I stopped in my tracks and looked curiously at the snake, cocking my head to one side, eyes steely alert, instinctively scanning for danger. The sun threw itself over the reptilian corpse after a sudden shift in the breeze adjusted the angle of the trees. Its rays glinting in the eyes of the serpent, I took a cautious step towards it. My heart rate was still elevated from running, but there was a newfound pounding present, more connected to the imminence of death than to the liveliness of exercise.

“Touch its tail,” prodded a voice in my head. “Do it,” it implored.

Where was this voice coming from? That was not me. I abhorred snakes.

“Just a little rub of the index finger. Then be on your way,”

A fiendish consciousness had invaded my thoughts, an interloper.

I heeded its call and reached down with my trembling outstretched finger. I dabbed my finger firmly on its backside and meanwhile tickled that spot in my brain that lights up with mischievous glee. A few times in my youth I had played with that fire, chased that dragon. Minor episodes of shoplifting -- a Heath bar, Voltron’s sword, a Playboy (Special Vuluptious Vixens Edition), but the repercussions -- a spanking, a grounding, a heavy sense of guilt like a lead blanket on a patient in an x-ray room -- had conditioned me to be wary.

I’m not sure which order (or for which crimes) those punishments came. I surely didn’t care about the oh-so-minor decrease in profits that the various stores I stole from incurred, but being locked in my room or kept from my friends? Those moments of pain kept me in check. In some small way, seven-year-old me could empathize with prisoners who’d been sent to the hole. In some facet, I had been damaged. Now that I had become a father, would I choose to be the warden? I wondered.

So there I was, petting a dead snake. It didn’t twitch back to life like my imagination flickered to me. It felt smooth and pleasant, like a meaty couch cushion.

The voice spoke again.

“Pick it up,” it persisted. “Pick it up and run with it.”

My devilish impulse caught hold like a hook to the lip of a ravenous fish, and like the fish I splashed around chaotically along the trail. The dance had begun. At first, I dragged the dead snake along behind me, crouching low with back bent at ninety degrees and legs at forty-five. In a way, I was no different than a boy playfully pulling a toy car on a string. You know the type. Hand-made. Hand-painted. Pure innocence to the tune of vroom-vroom. However, presently, my sound effects were more guttural, primal high-pitched whoops, a cross between a crane and a wildcat.

The excitement possessed me fully. I darted and dashed, hopped and skipped. I swung my toy snake like a lasso in circles above my head. I dangled it like a pendulum between my legs and changed my tone to a caveman-esque grunt. Consumed by the wildfire of excitement, I succumbed to the carnal urge to rip off my clothes and continue my ritual in the buff, to commune with nature in full.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling so alive. Pure bliss with my newfound friend, the dead snake (more description of dancing around??).

But the joyous insanity all came screeching to a halt.

I saw the whites of his eyes first, those of the man kneeling in the underbrush on one knee. Other than the flicker of the eye, he was purely still, voyeuristically taking in my display as if a paying customer, like he knew that any movement would have him found out, and the show of a lifetime would be gone and done with, carried briskly along into the past like dry leaves on the wind. He dared not say anything, but when he knew that I knew he was there, he flinched ever so slightly. Then the corners of his mouth curled into the smallest of grins.

My heart then pounded identically to the way it had when I ran from the bookstore security guard who had witnessed me slide the Playboy (Special Vuluptious Vixens Edition) under my Triple Fat Goose down winter coat. I dropped the snake and overflowed with shame. Warblers and wrens called from all around, but their melodies fell on my deaf ears, for I was in full flight then as I scrambled to pick up my clothes and retreat the way I had come.

Never had I run with such ferocity, such fear. I turned to look back at the empty stage of my ritual and I spied the dead snake one last time, but now it was not beautiful like when I had first discovered it, because it lay overturned on its back, and because I perceived my display of hedonism tarnished by the observer. The gray skin and the horizontal lines of its underbelly made it look wormlike and pallid. It was as if my observer had spit in my soup or taken a razor blade to my silk drapes. He spoiled my magical moment, but as I reflect back on it later, I do feel that, in some inexplicable way, his presence was necessary.

I don’t know whatever happened to that old man dressed in workman overalls, nor where he came from in the first place. Perhaps he was a lumberjack or a forestry worker of some kind. Or maybe he lived off-grid in an unmarked, unknown cabin deep in the woods, away from the distractions of society, the very ill wind that had blown me out to the trail that day in the first place. Or he could have been a forest spirit disguised as a man.

Had my observer told anyone the story of the insane naked white man dancing wildly with the dead snake? Would he dare? Who would believe him? So, after all, I like to think that he and I share that morning in a very special way. If our lives could be boiled down to a single day, that time spent together, the observer’s and mine, was like a firm handshake with deep, conviction-laden eye contact, where a pact beyond words was made, where courses were changed radically. I’d like to think that anyhow.

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On Ownership

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 11:43:00 +0000

"You don't own anything. You enjoy these fleeting moments that we have together."

This quote by Ajahn Brahm really got me to thinking, thinking about money and all of the planning my mind finds itself doing. I want to do this. I should do that. I need to do this by the time I'm 65. I'll be more secure if I have X amount of money by the time I'm 50. Me, me, me. Mine, mine, mine. The voice in my mind can sound like that kid who used to live down the street hoarding his immense collection of video games. Haven't I learned anything since then?

Meditation, for me, can be like taking a step back from a masterpiece painting that I'm staring at, only I'm so close to the thing that my nose is touching it. But when I take a step back, the shapes of its strokes stand out, the vibrancy of its colors jump off the canvas, the purpose of the artist reveals itself.

Getting fixated on possessions, those monetarily-based and not, brings me closer into that painting, yet, ironically, causes me not to be able to see it, and what I can see is blurry and insignificant. So, I pledge a new perspective, a fresh look on life. I vow to let go my grasp, to allow things to float around the world naturally like whispy bits of cotton on the wind.

This train of thought started with the video below and, coincidentally, continued with the latest book I picked up. It's called The Abundance of Less by Andy Couturier. I have only read the introduction, but he paints a picture of rural Japan (where I happen to live) that is free from the industrialized greed of its urban cousin. I live in a semi-rural part of Japan and have always been fascinated with the notion of dropping everything and living a way of life that's sustainable and simple. To quit my career and create enough free time to write, meditate, and run to the fullest extent may not be a step I'm willing to take just yet, but perhaps one day I will have the courage to do so. I will try to update more on the book as I continue to read.

As I think more deeply on it, I have come to the premature conclusion (so, of course, this may need revision) that giving up future earning for more time now is a scary notion for these reasons:

- the question of how I will feed, house, and provide for myself and my family
- dealing with likely bouts of regret for the decision I will have made
- the unknown reaction of loved ones
- even dealing with the reactions of acquaintances with whom I'm not all that close
- can I grow my own food?
- how will I afford to return to my home country when I need to?
- how will I afford to buy the few expensive things that I still may want (a computer, a running watch, a nice TV every decade or so)?

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On "Roll the Dice" by Charles Bukowski

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Tue, 11 Feb 2020 12:03:00 +0000

As Bukowski advises us in this fabulous poem, there is an undertone of pride and vigor, a vibration of the meaning of life, that wobbles into one's soul as both eyes and mind scan the lines in wonder. Below is the full poem:

if you’re going to try, go all the

way.

otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the

way. this could mean losing girlfriends,

wives, relatives, jobs and

maybe your mind.

go all the way.

it could mean not eating for 3 or

4 days.

it could mean freezing on a

park bench.

it could mean jail,

it could mean derision,

mockery,

isolation.

isolation is the gift,

all the others are a test of your

endurance, of

how much you really want to

do it.

and you’ll do it

despite rejection and the

worst odds

and it will be better than

anything else

you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,

go all the way.

there is no other feeling like

that.

you will be alone with the

gods

and the nights will flame with

fire.

do it, do it, do it.

do it.

all the way

all the way.

you will ride life straight to

perfect laughter,

it’s the only good fight

there is.

The spirit of unabashed, rugged individualism rings powerfully, like from a one-ton brass bell forgotten in the skeleton of a long-abandoned forest church. Despite no parishioners to hear its audacious cry, it cries on nevertheless. Its spirit lives on sans observer. In fact, it prefers that the gawking onlookers have left, for their favorable opinions were vapid reasons to live. No, they were worse than that. They were tragic. The bell, now mature, knows this, as does Mr. Bukowski.

Of course, going all the way means something different to everyone. That is the beauty of this poem. I recommend looking at it like a form of confirmation. Write down your path, your goals, your visions for yourself in the future. Then, from time to time, come back to this poem. Pin it on your wall. Better yet. Commit it to memory. When you read it in that uncertain future of yours, ask yourself: Am I going all the way? Is this what going all the way means to me?

If not, then just maybe, like the bell, your parishioners are still gawking. Just maybe, you have yet to know truly what a moment alone with the gods is like.

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The Dying Wave And Hitting Life's Reset Button

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Thu, 06 Feb 2020 11:37:00 +0000

I'm reading West of Jesus by Steven Kotler, a surfing book about questing for the meaning of life on a board on the edge of a wave. It's non-fiction, and the prose is brilliant. I particularly like his sense of humor and poignant observations about the meshing of science and spirituality.

There's a section where he explains that the surfer is interacting with a wave at the moment of its death. Death and creativity merge, sometimes gracefully, sometimes perfectly.

That makes me wonder intently about whether or not these types of poetic moments can exist in other ways.

Running is my hobby, and for me, it kills that incessant train of thought, squelches it in its tracks. To feel nothing both in body and in mind is an utterly remarkable notion.

The mind is clear and the body is in a zone where it feels (mostly just pain) but there is no memory of that pain, no regret of it later. That's why I am okay in using the term "feel nothing" even though it is technically untrue.

Unlike overdoing it with a bottle of booze -- and the smarting pain of a wicked hangover that ensues, along with the regret, a worse form of pain than the physical by most accounts -- the physical pain of running is simply right. It's imbued with meaning. There's a faith in it, as if that pain will sprout appendages, take you by the hand, and walk side by side with you to the promised land.

And so, one might be asking how this is connected (if only tangentially) to the poetic beauty of that surfer catching that perfect dying wave. Well, the runner's mind, body, and soul, if even just briefly, are in a state of harmony, as the surfer and the wave are, too. There is a frequency that exists in such a state, the frequency needed for new beginnings, the prime conditions for creativity.

On Tangentially Speaking Episode 393 Jeff Shapiro talks about hang gliding and base jumping and how those activities bring him closer to the birds, how he can feel a kinship with them. Chris then goes in to wonder why we dream of flying, what this connection to that experience really means. Some are drawn to the air, others to the desert, others still to water. Despite being drawn to differing environs, the constant that can be determined is the resetting of the soul. This is what the surfer is chasing, not the endless summer nor the perfect wave, for both are impossibilities, unattainable perfections. A clean slate on life is what a runner cruising at high tempo has found: the place where mind, body, and soul merge and are given permission from which to be born again.

So, in the end, the lesson that I can garner from this is that by using our bodies with intention, purpose, and creative license, we are bringing a sense of dignity into our practice that paints colorful strokes onto the canvases of our lives. And each time that we return to our physical routines, we open up the potential to paint a masterpiece. If we keep it up, we may find ourselves on our deathbed with a collection of gorgeous paintings of all varieties, store carefully in the warehouses of our minds, a place that only we can visit, beauty that only we can gaze upon, that only we can appreciate.

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Running Back on Schedule

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Sun, 03 Sep 2017 11:19:00 +0000

After over a month of travelling, I'm back home in Japan. It's funny how time off changes one's perspective. When I'm taking life seriously, I feel small. When I'm living it whimsically, I feel big. To explain, the houses in my neighborhood are small and rather flimsy -- nothing to devote much respect to. However, I became obsessed with owning one and bought into their exorbitant prices, accepting them as reasonable.

It's funny how culture can consume us, even when we're unwilling. Ironically, I'm cheap as they come with daily purchases. Generic this, off-brand that. Weeks on end of sack lunches (bentos, as they're called here) with little more than a few store-bought beers in the way of disposable income expended. But the biggest expenditure of all -- a house -- was something that I was willing to take-on. Sure glad I didn't. My time away from home gave me the vision to be able to see that. The culturally contrived image of a domicile (my very own!) -- and all the positive emotional connotations that come with that purchase -- consumed me a bit. I'm human. What can I say?

But now I'm back here, a renter, and never happier. I do owe some money each month to someone I don't know and have never met. Though, I'm not anchored to the earth like so many others. I, and my family, are still free to dream about the unknown future, free to wonder what this odd incarnation will one-day bring.

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Family Living Without Waste

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 08:10:00 +0000

The intentionality of this is what strikes me as being most impressive. Sure, living zero waste has a positive benefit for the earth and its inhabitants, but lifestyle gestures such as these won't reverse the environmental damage we are seeing unless they are practiced on a wide scale. That said, there are numerous personal benefits that this type of intentional living must produce for this family.

To expand, having a long-term goal that one is forced to encounter and meet incrementally on a daily basis is akin to being present, to engaging with the world head-on. This is what I mean by intentionality. It is very easy (and soul sucking) to follow the trends. Consume plastic. Funnel your attention (i.e. your present self) into smart phones, apps, and consumer products. Turn into a cog. Lose your sense of self.

I would love to talk to the mother and father in this video and pick their brains about the unintended benefits that this without waste project of theirs has reaped. Just as Thoreau, who went into the woods to live intentionally, to notice the world more deeply, formulated his thesis of civil disobedience while he was there, so too are there myriad bonuses falling into the laps of these family members.

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"Blasting out of the canal"

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Thu, 29 Jun 2017 09:15:00 +0000

Blasting out of the canal
Set free from the prison
Baby, baby this ain't banal
When I engage there is fission

I wanna fight through this mist
of life that wants to weigh me
down onto the shore with a pounding fist
I get the sense it wants me to flee

Blah blah blah I speak through life
Thoughts pervade my mind like lice
Tickling my brain making me insane
Turn off to the side of the lane, ease the pain

Purple coat, looks like royalty
I appreciate when my wife spoils me
She knows not all my pain inside
But she senses some of the hurt that resides

Pick up a guitar in my fifties
Want to learn the rhythm of life
Through a sieve do I sift these
Pieces of ash, ancestors of strife

Like a sun I want to be
Wind blows right through me
Like light through a window
Energy, synergy, soul flow

And now I am at the time of dying
No more from life can I demand
Stop your worldly minds from prying
No way the decaying can understand

Into immortality do I ascend
But I don't know how to ammend
These atrocities that I did commit
So again, in another world, I will sit...

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Martian Spice

ajsnookauthor@gmail.com (AJ Snook) — Sat, 24 Jun 2017 09:21:00 +0000

I wrote this far-out comment on Reddit on a whim and was pleased with the result. Pretty cool premise for a sci-fi book or film, I think:

I've lived abroad for most of my adult life and this is something that I often think about. Sometimes it feels like the majority of my childhood memories are riding in cars listening to classic rock. In the '90s that meant Skynyrd, Allmans, Floyd, Stones, Queen, etc... So what do you call that kind of music now? And where are the Buddy Holly, Chubby Checker, Chuck Berry oldies? Are they still played or are they slowly being forgotten? It makes me think how interesting living in the distant future will be from a digital archive perspective. So much to discover. I guess that's what people were thinking when books first came out, but dialects and languages are huge barriers of entry compared to rhythm and melody. I can imagine some future dude finding dope rhymes in the dead language called English and sharing them with his friends. Then there's this small clique of friends on Mars (so they're Martians, I guess) and they're jamming out to Run DMC and rebirthing the English language. They use late 80s urban slang as code so they can talk about Martian Spice, the rad new psychedelic drug that's flooding the Martian streets. Then they discover this song and it really blows their minds. And all the while they're about thirty years into the biggest breakthrough of the history of the solar system's civilization: the same Martian Spice that the kids dig takes people to a place that proves the existence of an afterlife, immersing them in a world full of their ancestors, although they don't know the people are their ancestors while they're there, they only realize it once they've returned from their trip. The trip itself lasts a millisecond in Martian time, but feels like anywhere from a day to 125 years of Earth time. And their parents don't want them to take it, not due to the religious implications, and definitely not because they think drugs are bad, mmkay, but rather because it hurts them tremendously to see their precious Martian children return from these trips full of guilt and shame for how they've treated their ancestors and the beautiful planet that they destroyed once upon a time. Therefore, the Martian Spice becomes addictive, not physically, but mentally, for the takers of the Spice are compelled to return to the place of their ancestors to try to live a life of compassion and generosity, but they fail nearly every time, compounding their depression and malaise.

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