Glenn Beck’s recent book is called Arguing with Idiots. One can only assume it’s a no-nonsense guide for arguing with him.
P.S. Is he dressed like Hitler on the cover? Why?
I have lived for 10,000 days.
What do I have? Little. Much. Am I master of my own life? Self-Author? Do I want to be? No. Not really. Negation. Tunnel vision.
Problem with self-authorship, solipsism, is the ultimate impossibility of surprise. The death of newness. On the other hand — ranging out into the wide world, merely a one among many, provides for the possibility of endless surprises.
One of those surprises will no doubt kill me, and take me away from all this, but that is a risk that a) cannot be avoided, even if we lock ourselves in boxes, and b) even if it could be avoided, we wouldn’t want to.
Surrounded by loneliness, I return to my parent’s house. My soul expands to fill its rooms.
Two dimensional sprites dance on screens across my view.
Larry David cracks a joke on the telescreen.
I line up seven books on deliberative democracy.
Kant tells us that the only moral act is the one we don’t want to do. Sounds right, but where does it come from?
Read a science fiction book about Platonic ideas and multiple worlds. I do think morality may have something to do with that, with the human brain modeling all possible worlds and picking the best one — morality is a science that tells us which possible world to pick.
Choice. Action. The Matrix Trilogy, which began in 1999, before the Dream of Fire broke through the Worlds of If into our world, the world of action. It was a dream, those days, secret crushes on dark haired girls, laying in a Kibbutz House in Israel trying to figure out a way to express my tumultous hormone-influenced feelings — that sea has settled somewhat — I burn, but burn steadier —
Still — when I’m alone — and I’m alone now — I recede and become less capable of bridging the gaps between us — though empatheogens help — I was quite friendly that first night of 8, talking to Geraldine, and the couple from 2006, and the kid from the ranch in Florida — I interrogate you friendly-like, exploring the outside world —
Other people. Sun light at 3 PM dapples and shines through my window — burning bright colored leaves wave in wind and divide the light making light shows —
something is missing here — something burnt out — feels like jetlag, but could also be ruins of neural tissue — I think that’s fine — just tired — not enough coffee, not enough donuts —
My memory, legion, surrounds, but I am less interested in them now — things I could do to mark the day — drive out to Hawk Mountain, or the Delaware Water Gap — sit and watch the creek out the back window of this house — talk to me — my parents come in — showing me a coat — offering me a coat — my mom used to dress me in coats for fat people when I was young — before I could choose for myself — old mean joke two-fisted “your mom dresses you funny” — reading the Hobbit in my friend’s house in Ventnor, his dad asking me if I understood all the words — I said yes — maybe not — I’m not afraid to skim past the slow parts — might miss a little miss a lot — a sword for kings — my great unceasing ambition — my righteous anger — how shall I be good — stop eating animals — oh, the poor poor animals, engaging in some bloody industrial final solution — not as bad but it looks the same — industrialized killing — robotic death planes — 21st century — war in the desert — war of assassins — all these things are outside of me — do not touch me except through broadsheets and internets — tubes — where do we go from here —
tomorrow is the true day — 10,001. First day of the rest of my life. Why not now. Exercise. Beauty. Making myself strong. I need to be strong and knowledgeable and wise. Right click. Context sensitive. Enough to run. Manhattan, Great City. Yankees win the Pennant. Bloomberg takes the election. I dance on the graves of 10,000 Indians, gone to dust. Shiva, metaphor, enacts the Dance of the End of the World. What new world is sleeping, safe, in amniotic fluid with amniotic dreams — piercing pain and egg yolks — Do I want a Child? Yes, if I can care for it — I hold this life in trust for Something Greater —
Am I master of my life or servant? Great honor and dignity of being a servant, of serving the cause of life and happiness and justice — Ayn Rand never got that — she was riches to rags and never forgave the thieves who did it — and here, in land of freedom, where we are free to be cruel, she worshipped that — having a gold dollar sign in front of her grave — foolish. Gold enslaves as well. Half right. Half right. We must not be slaves. Servants, who serve freely. Beings, with Respect for that Beingness. Slavery is not a crime but a lie — man cannot be enslaved, he can only be imprisoned —
I am imprisoned, we all are, but I am not enslaved — must self-legislate — things are true that I forget, no one taught that to me yet — the lesson was to be serious, to be more serious — which does not denigate play, but we must be serious about our play, at least for the time being I must live strongly and fiercely and fully — I do not want to be safe — I must live out on the edge — when I read, I’ll take notes — when I dream, I will remember — I will discern what I desire, and get it — I will plan, and follow through on those plans — I will search out new things and learn about them — Arshile Gorky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art —
Coffee is ready. 1000 words. 10,000 hours. 10,000 days. I am an expert at life, 12 times over.
Had strange dreams as soon as I returned to New York City. Went to bed around 3 AM Eastern. Almost immediately was in a deeply strong lucid dream — first of all, all the folks from the festival were back, having conversations, talking, there in the fields or the room or something and was I in my bed or in a tent in California — strong strong lucidity — and overflow of reality pushing down on my cavern —
later — a hero in a strange city — enemies everywhere — allies elsewhere — not sure where —
later — a dark haired girl — the one I love — or not — before me — suddenly she’s naked and so am I — I embrace her, feeling her substantiality in my hands — I am dreaming, I know — how is this happening? Struggling struggling I wake myself up — yes — a dream — a dream —
later — same story, but I’m a different hero — the young prince many years earlier — sneaking with my sister through the underground cellars of our family mansion — trying not to be discovered —
later — navigating great architectures — headed for the magistrate — casting aspersions on our driver — dangling from chasms into great unknowns — jumping across broken stair cases — looking out on great arenas full of people — bright lights — bright lights —
where is my mind?
There is no overlapping consensus. Not in America. (Britain might be different, where Blair’s New Left is about to be replaced by Cameron’s New Right.)
The problem is that Rawls as prophet of the progressives requires an overlapping consensus where we agree on the burdens of judgment, a largely liberal idea, that there is no one good and citizens must respect each other’s differences of opinions and private lives.
Against that is the philosopher Russel Kirk, whom Wikipedia terms the father of New Conservatism.
These are his six canons:
The Conservative Mind was written by Kirk as a doctoral dissertation while he was a student at the St. Andrews University in Scotland. Previously the author of a biography of American conservative John Randolph of Roanoke, Kirk’s The Conservative Mind had laid out six “canons of conservative thought” in the book, including:
When we see that this is the philosophy of the political right, is the only conclusion we can reach is that there will be no peace between Liberals and Conservatives, with Liberals affirming uncertainty and multiple goods and Conservatives believing in a divine intent?
(Day 9981)
Standing with my father waiting for the train.
Two forty year old friends walk up.
Asks us for money. I say no. My Dad says no.
Falls down, flat on face. Spills his beer. Helped up by his friend. He asks us for money again. My Dad, feeling bad, gives him a dollar.
At some point — his friend leaves — he is crying. He tells us why. His mother is dying. Oh. Oh. Oh.
Train is coming. He wanders close to the train track. My father yells for him to come back. He does.
His mother is dying. He is crying. A grown man. Drunk in himself.
After. Sitting on the train, fear for him, will he make it home?
Did he try to take someone’s phone as he left?
Child playing with someone else’s ticket. No sense of property yet, just curiosity.
Deep and rumbling anxiety. Bouncing back and forth in my mind.
Back to New York. Television sitcoms. Baseball games. Erudite magazines. Can’t sleep. Stay up till 3 reading reading.
All the sadness of the world. His mother is dying.
Poems are not thoughts but words – WCW
Asking the Universe for another. We love and we bleed and we suffer, and we say more, more, give me more.
Stephanie said “Anyone who thinks life is short isn’t paying enough attention.”
What do I even want? Curiousity, and kindness, and generosity of spirit. A fallen sad sinner, just like me. A wicked sense of humor, with a Good Little Girl inside, inside. Not Moralizing Superego but Moral Ego. A skeptic, but one who is a happy liver, or maybe spleen.
Round and round the mulberry bush.
Giles Corey at the Salem Witch Trail, saying either “Wait!” or “more weight!.” Lame joke of my father. Remember everything? Maybe — Giles Corey came flowing from the Collective Subconscious, not my own ontological being.
Being, being and time, Sein und Zeit, I’ve read a bit about Sein, not as much about Zeit, Zeit, cruel master.
Sketches. Not a post, not an entry. Exhalations of my being. Little whirlpools, and sailing past the Wandering Rocks.
“If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”
– Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1921). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, pp. 6.4311.
Day 8645 was the day I finally gave it away. 23 years and 7 months. Could’ve, should’ve, would’ve?
When I was a kid, growing up among the rowhouse duplexes of Benson St in Northeast Philadelphia, behind the rowhouses, there was what seemed to me as a child a great dark wood, and once a year, on a day between the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, my parents would take me into the wood, with bread crumbs in my hand, and we would walk along a dark dirt path until we came to a swiftly moving stream of clear water. Then, we would take the bread, and throw it in the water — the bread was supposed to represent my sins, but being three years old, I had few sins, and imagine I was more interested watching the crumbs ride the streaming water out of sight.
Walking along that stream, my legs growing longer as I walked, the baby fat falling from my cheeks, my eyes growing sharper, I followed that stream to where it joined another, and then another, and then emptied into the great gray Delaware River, north of the great industrial shipyards and refineries, where the the far distant bank was clothed in evergreen trees.
Walking farther, taller again, I take the river past the great Post-Industrial City of my youth and young adulthood. I stand over the river in a cemetary, burying my uncle in January snow and mud. Older now, full of some fiery intensity and a madness of eyes kept too wide open, I followed the river to a great long-reeded marsh. Children are calling to each other from within the long grass. Trash floats by on the water. I put a cigarette to my lips.
Farther now, over the marsh, I stand on sand, heaped up ground up rock and stardust, standing there, beneath the scattered blue starlight of day, the water dragged towards me by some great invisible satellite. I sit amongst the grains of sand, counting a few, moving some from here to there, engaged in great industry, trying to forget all I know of sandcastles, tides, and time —
I have not yet seen the ocean. Many waters, and many seas, but I have not yet seen the ocean.
The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees 
