Nietzche: Why I Am So Wise

He who knows how to breathe the air of my writings knows that it is an air of the heights, a robust air.  One has to be made for it.  Otherwise, there is no small danger one will catch cold.  The ice is near, the solitude is terrible- but how peacefully all things lie in the light!  How freely one breathes! How much one feels beneath one!  Philosophy, as I have hitherto understood and lived it, is a voluntary living in ice and high mountains- a seeking after everything strange and questionable in existence, all that has hitherto been excommunicated by morality.  From the lengthy experience afforded by such a wandering in the forbidden I learned to view the origin of moralizing and idealizing very differently from what might be desirable: the hidden history of the philosophers, the psychology of their great names came to light for me.  

How much truth can a spirit bear?  How much truth can a spirit dare?  That became for me more and more of the real measure of value.  Error (belief in the ideal) is not blindness.  Error is cowardice... every acquisition, every step forward in knowledge is the result of courage, of severity toward oneself, of cleanliness with respect to oneself... I do not refute ideals, I merely draw on gloves in their presence... Nitimur in vetitum.  We strive after the forbidden (Ovid):  In this sign my philosophy will one day conquer, for what has hitherto been forbidden on principle has never been anything but the truth. 

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies, but to hate his friends.  One repays a teacher badly if he remains a pupil.  You may be my believers, but of what impotance are all believers?  You had not yet sought yourselves when you found me.  Thus do all believers; therefore all belief is of so little account. 

Now I bid you lose me and find yourselves; and only when you have denied me will I return to you...

-Friedrich Nietzche                                                    

Writing for the Wastebasket.

Grand

 

A tree- content to ease its stay

hemmed in by giants, weakened while

it grows aloft and musters will

arboreal way- alone and still

reverent rostrum, proud profile.

 

Toward the light and with High help

it presses forth branch, bud and leaf.

A will within and vision true.

A timely magic to imbue.

Becomes grand through adversity.

 

 

Times of adversity confront each of us.

Without the difficulty of being hemmed in, a tree would not be forced to muster its own power to grow toward the light.  It must bring forth its own strength to spread its branches and flourish.  If it becomes grand, it is partly because of its suffering.  Times of adversity are crucial to personal development.

 

 

Writing for the Wastebasket

Die to Inquiry

I walked into the mountains four days ago to die.  I hadn’t worked out the details of the process or exact location.  I didn’t know how long it would take, or how much pain would be involved.  I had faced episodic bouts with deep despair, and each had stirred within me a desire to go into the mountains- never to self destruct, but always to die.  By now I knew only that I should ascend and allow.

January.

For the last three days the temperature has exceeded ninety degrees.  My hands, neck, and face, the only exposed parts of my body, have been cracked and reddened by the wind and sun.  A brush from an ocotillo branch or pack strap serve as smart reminders of the previous days’ exposure.  Today the weather is fittingly brisk and overcast.  I am perched on the crest of a cinder bluff, gazing west across a canyon to the hillside 300 meters away.  Still and exposed, the surprising weather change is enough to create discomfort, and the wind draws me into subtle shudders and convulsions.

I gaze downward into the black dirt and white bunch grass between my boots.  I wait, and then reach down and pull the tuft of dry grass up by its roots.  I carefully twist and tie the bunch grass into a bundle and set it back down.  I shift my feet deliberately and rest a flat stone in each of my boot prints, and then I scan the area for kindling.  The world slows as I survey my arms-length periphery.  The wind continues, but shifts to cause a rhythmic heaving in the flora.  My eyes pick through paloverdes and I break away dry branches.  My fingers float through nearby creosote and sage in various stages of flourish and decay.  I break away desiccated extensions of cane cholla, graythorn, and mesquite.  I muse at how light the dead cholla feels, and compare it to nearby samples of its thicker, weightier chainfruit cholla cousin. 

From the careful gathering of this tinder arises an awareness of my shins.  I check them a few times a day.  I’m due.  I place the twigs and branches in a radiating pattern over the bunch grass and pull my right pant leg over my boot to my knee.  Three needles.  I pull the cholla quills out of my leg, and marvel at how the reddening flesh clings to them and resists their removal.  The thought makes me smile.  Risus sardonicus.  Miraculous, living tissue clings desperately to its primary source of agony like a mother having an infant torn from her arms.  Despite the obvious harm inflicted, the angry skin from the violent little assailants clings so well that all the focus and strength of a grown man is required to accomplish the task.  I think, observe, lower my pant leg, and stare for a long while up the canyon to the north.

I came to the mountain to die with two friends, though I’m fairly certain they thought I was there to hike and hunt deer with them. We spoke, strategized, maneuvered, and hyperventilated as we trudged together up fifty-degree slopes of cactus and scree.  Cade and Matt didn’t know I was there to die.  Since I had wanted to die for the entire decade I had known them both, I wasn’t behaving in a way that would betray my secret.  Even if they had known, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t miss me.  After all, they must have thought about me the same repellant way that I thought about myself.  Even in these desolate mountains with these rough-and-tumble men, I continued to wallow in a sticky, stinking cesspool of me.   My mind was overridden with thoughts of my problems, my laments, my choices, my skeletons, my addictions, my life, my death. Me.  This was my story- etched into my bones.  Carved into my flesh in bold-face Times New Roman.  And for this purpose I had marched into these mountains:  Control+Alt+Delete.

I had finally decided how it would happen.  Better said, the method chose me- it was inquiry.  I would ask myself to death- hen peck and interrogate until the sinews had been peeled from my bones, leaving only a sun-bleached, bold-face bone pile crumbling in the desert.

For three days I have been asking.  All the questions remained unanswered because, of course, they were all rhetorical.  All but one: 

“How do I hate Me?”  Let me count the ways…

754 before I stopped counting.  Even then, I stopped counting so that I could add to the list “#755: you can’t even keep track of the reasons you should hate yourself?  What’s wrong with you?” Other remarkable questions spilled from my brain, each one deepening the profundity of my psychic distress.

“What kind of person does something like that?”

“How could you have hurt her that way?” 

“What the hell happened to your life?”

“Is this the example of a father you want your kids to know?”

“Why can’t you string together two solid weeks?”

I never bothered with the answers.  They didn’t matter.  Of paramount importance, however, was the tallying of questions as reasons in and of themselves.  I filed them away as IOU’s- notes to be drawn upon when I tried to slip back into self-trust or enjoyment.  They were psychic currency- to be used for the sole purpose of purchasing pain and stagnation.  I categorized them, sub-categorized them, alphabetized them, and rated them by importance.  I assigned them relative values.  Questions that caused me to visibly grimace with regret were allotted ten points.  The feeling of a sucker-punch with no visible grimace was worth eight.  The higher the number, the more “value” the inquiry had on the Character Auto-Brutalization index.  After day two, my shame exceeded my desire to think of new things to be ashamed about.  I was too pathetic to continue calculating how pathetic I had become.  What else would I think about if not this?  As always, self-sabotage was the nearest and best-fitting answer.  When in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when in Mexico, pass the Bacanora.

Day three- panting and wheezing like an obese asthmatic, straining to see through rivulets of sweat streaming into my eyes.  My lower limbs feel barely intact- loosely articulated by duct tape and rubber bands.  My swollen ankles, knees, and feet, bolstered by heavy hiking boots, are no match for the rough-hewn volcanic boulder and shale.  I am halfway through my one-mile jaunt to where I heard the echo of gunfire.  A 20 pound pack,  a rifle, and 754 rocks piled high on my shoulders slow my steady ascent.  I don’t know how big or heavy the rocks are.  Actual size.  Heavy enough.  Cade was a crack shot with a rifle, and I knew he had shot at a deer.  I also knew that if I didn’t get to him shortly, we would run out of daylight and be unable to track or locate the deer he had shot.

I stared into the mindless, lifeless eyes of the deer.  I had seen living deer from this distance.  Death evokes shallowness almost immediately.  The shape, contour, and color of the eyes remains, but the depth, essence and connection escapes.  The effect is eerie.  I look into the eyes of people every day, and take that depth for granted.  It’s only when I see the eyes like this- vacant hulls of what once contained and harnessed teeming, beaming, living light- that I retroactively admire that bright eyes of the living.  I sensed that this moment was one of the tipping points- the existential crises that arose out of seemingly normal points in time.  I had seen this sight many dozens of occasions before, but on this occasion I began to inquire. 

Had the deer suffered? 

No.  Dead in it’s tracks.  Never knew what hit him.

Would his life, or rather the circumstances surrounding his death be useful?

The meat would be carefully stripped from his carcass, packed out, cleaned, and gifted to Abundio- the destitute and senile ranch hand.  Abundio would slice it into thin strips and hang it over branches of mesquite to dry into machaca.  It would feed him for 6 months.  He would use the cape and pelt for warmth when needed.  It’s hard to imagine any human in the current stages of global development relying on a deer hide for warmth and survival, but these humans exist.  They are men like Abundio.

Why am I okay with this type of violence against life?

Not sure.

I wondered about my wonderment.

Is it regret?  No.  Resolve?  Commitment?  Compassion?  No.  What is it? 

It just is.

I stood on the bloody hillside- questioning my questions.

Maybe inquiry is still the best way to die, but not this method of inquiry.  These rhetorical interrogations seem only to prolong my suffering.  Maybe, as with the deer, a new series of questions are in order.  New guards and rifles on the firing squad.

I light the bundle of bunch grass with a butane lighter, and after a few moments of attention, a tiny fire crackles to life.  I stoke it with my sticks and dry cactus, manicure it, ensure it is contained to the size of one of my boot prints, and re-position the rocks on either side of it to protect it from the wind.  I rustle searchingly through my pack and retrieve my lunch- handmade tortillas with a spoonful of black beans folded into them.  I peel back the tin foil that envelops them, and expose them with my ash-streaked fingertips.  Frozen from the morning in my backpack.  I replace the foil and perch them over the flames of my tiny fire.

Why must my story about myself be engraved so deeply?  It seems irreparable.  Is it true? Or could it be that my demons are only stories?  Rocks as large and heavy as my mind fashions them to be.  Are they macabre fairy tales that turn Prince Charmings back into frogs, and end with Jack falling off the beanstalk to his death? How can I know they are (or aren’t) true?  If they are stories, who do I become when I believe them?  In what way do I change? How damaging are these concepts when my mind gives them teeth, claws, aggression, bubonic plague?  And now this: If I see the stories for what they are and leave them here, with the deer’s soul on the bloody hillside, who will I be without them?

754 stories.  Pathetic, demeaning, depressing, and defining stories.  I am these stories insofar as I acknowledge them. 

So, what am I if they are untrue? 

A heart at peace.

And the I of the scary tales and armored scales? 

Dead to reality.

On the mountain where I came to die, I lie down next to a boot print fire.  A chilling gale assaults my back, yet my face is warmed by embers.  I don’t need to fight the cold anymore.  No more rushing to the ramparts.  Just allow.  The flame, the source, will do the rest.  Smoke from paloverde, creosote, cholla, and mesquite wisps into my nostrils and my eyes well up.  I am being smoked.  I turn my mind’s attention to the wind bracing my back, to my soft and shallow breathing. I am being breathed. 

I was born here, on this mountain, just now.  Born with no trace of past- just storybooks and imagination.  I ascended and allowed.  I found the way to find me.  I fix and stare from eyes vacated of mind.  I feel it must be what the deer felt yesterday on the bloody hillside.  I will tell myself more frightening stories someday. Being a masterfully self-deceptive raconteur, I will likely believe them again.  I remind myself to be still.  Rather than breathing, thinking, and living… allow. Be breathed, thought, and lived.  It will happen anyway, despite my ignorance of it.

 I am alive.  And the I  that I survived rests in ashes on the mountain of my birth.

What Makes Us Happy?

A great article from the June 2009 Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/20...

Daedalus

Daedalus is a character of Greek mythology.  His name (meaning 'cunning worker'), is synonymous with the image of a skillful artificer, or craftsman.  He is mentioned by Homer, Ovid (Metamorphosis VIII:183-235), and Virgil (Aeneid, book 6).  Daedalus is most famous for creating the Labyrinth of the Minotaur, and for being the father of Icarus.

Daedalus and the Labyrinth of the Minotaur

Daedalus constructed the Labyrinth for King Minos of Crete, who used it to imprison his wife's son, the Minotaur. The story is a pretty strange one by any standard.   The story is told that Poseidon gave a white bull to Minos, so that he might use it as a sacrifice to the Gods.  Instead, Minos kept the bull for himself; and in revenge, Poseidon made his wife lust after the bull. Possessed by her lust, Minos' wife (Pasiphae) built a wooden cow to hide in, so that she could mate with the bull.  Pretty strange by todays standard, but the ancient Minoans worshipped the bull as the God of the Sun (he would later become the Greek Apollo (aka the Roman God Mercury).

Daedalus and Icarus

In Metamorphosis, Ovid tells of Daedalus and his son, Icarus being locked in a tower to prevent them from telling the public about the Labyrinth.  They could not escape by sea, as Minos was thorough about inspecting all incoming and outgoing vessels.  Inspired by a bird that visited the tower, Minos set out to fabricate wings for himself and his young son.  He tied feathers together, from smallest to largest in order to optimize the surface area.  The larger feathers he secured with thread, and the smaller ones with wax.  When the work was complete, the artist, waving his wings, found himself buoyed upward and hung suspended, poising himself on the beaten air.  He next equipped Icarus, and taught him how to fly.

When both were prepared for flight, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too high, because the heat of the sun would melt the wax, nor too low because the sea spray would wet the feathers and prevent his flight.  Thus the father and son escaped the tower by flight.

They passed three neighboring islands, and then Icarus began to soar toward the heavens, elated by the sensation of flight.  The blazing sun softened the wax which held the feathers together, and they came off.  Icarus fell into the sea and died.  His father cried, bitterly lamenting his own artistry.  He eventually arrived in Sicily, under the care of King Cocalus, where he built the famed temple of Apollo.  Therein, he hung up his wings, an offering to the God of the Sun.

Minos, upset by the captive's escape, journeyed from city to city, asking a riddle.  He presented a spiral seashell, and asked for a string to be run through it.  When he reached Sicily, Cocalus knew that Daedalus could solve the riddle, and called for the old man to join him in the palace.  Daedalus tied a string to an ant, put a drop of honey at the exit end of the shell, and allowed the ant to walk through the spiral shell until it emerged on the other side.  Minos knew instantly that Daedalus was in Cocalus' palace, and demanded he be handed over. Cocalus convinced Minos to take a bath first, where his daughters bathed him, and then killed him.

Daedalus was said by Pliny to have invented the saw and the compass, carpentry, glue, the plumb line, and also allegedly developed a way to transfer the soul of a human being into a machine.  One of Daedalus' protege's became increasingly apt, and challenged Daedalus' ingenuity.  Daedalus tried to kill him by throwing him off a tower, but Athena changed him into a unique bird, to be known thereafter as the partridge.

Over time, Icarus became the archetype for the Romantic Artist- an undisputed prototype of the classic artist, whose impetuous, passionate, and rebellious nature, as well as his defiance of formal aesthetic and social conventions, ultimately proved to be self destructive.  Daedalus came to represent the classic artist, a skilled mature craftsman.

Ultimately, the genius of Daedalus brought about both his liberation and time-transcendent fame, as well as his greatest tragedy- the death of his son, Icarus.