I’ve decided to put my full weight behind this Substack again, after half a year working on a novel and pursuing other writing projects. Here are some lightly edited fragments from my morning journal that might be fun or interesting to you all—just to start spinning the wheels…

On place

A lovely day. Sun ripping over the mountains. I’m going to miss these wide, sweeping views. Soon—tomorrow!

Vivid recollections of New York, the cold steam of the subways, chugging over the East River, echoes down the corridors of the city. Excitement and dread. To be again in a place that electrifies me, fills me with otherness, makes me feel a part of the mad rush of humanity, puts the triviality of my life into perspective.

That one’s problems are small—that’s the great joyful revelation of the city and it’s terrible depression.

—

Being in the Bay Area has made it clear how much that place—the people and their influences, their thoughts, their occupations and preoccupations—affected and influenced my own when I lived there—the world of building companies, products, investing…

even in that contained environment, I was able to intuit that there was something more out there for me.

Distance has put the last few years into focus as well—exposure to people, ideas, events, learning to receive and dissipate their force and hold the center, learning to be calm and trust and not hold onto things with an excessively tight grip.

—

Being in New York has been a treat. The energy, the chill, the daily difficulties—rich, bitter, salty. New York’s got umami.

—

Guitar is fun.

Generally in a racing, nervous state of mind.

Should help Mom with the website.

Winter is thawing.

—

It’s both a lovely thing and a minor disaster, that New York has come to feel like a home

On relationships

What is a thoughtful gift?

Obviously, something they wouldn’t get for themselves
Ideally it represents something specific not just about the person but about their relationship with the giver (and not in a self-aggrandizing way)
It should be actively useful or at least a visible presence in daily life. (But not too much of a utility.)
It should point toward the future
It should show an understanding of at least a dimension of the recipient’s taste
It should be specific to the event

—

hearing about all of things that [] has said about me—it makes me wonder about my particular wretchedness, the things that only my best friends are deeply exposed to, the gathering whisperings about the ways that I’m burdensome, emotionally volatile, judgmental…

And yet, thought of from another angle, grateful for the grace and friendship and love sent my way despite my continual failings. [], [], [] … I’ve given all of these people reasons to despise me at times—and yet they choose to see what’s best in me.

Grace—grace is a defining quality of my close friends. I don’t really mean forgiveness—I mean the greater quality of not giving up on people, and by extension the world, despite the ways it continually fails.

It relates somehow to the things I find most brutal and disgusting about our culture—the endless “meritocracy,” the ranking and judgment of goodness along all dimensions—financial, moral—that stratifies us between the high and the low. It’s all lack of grace.

On politics and responsibility

The power of ideas, and yet the inability of ideas to erase people’s humanity. People want to be machines for their ideas, but they end up just being people.

—

Political life: “a true relationship with people who are truly strangers”

If I were a woman whose husband has been deported by ICE, how would I want a 28-year old in Brooklyn to act?

—

Pete Singer’s idea that living with more than $30k a year is immoral—it’s wrong, but like any utilitarian argument, it’s not a joke. Why exactly is it wrong? Because I don’t want my life to be disturbed by it? Because the cold math of it is annoying? I have to contend with it.

—

the frantic state of struggling for life, dignity, and spiritual peace that all humans live under. All. It’s a truly insane thing to consider fully: that the state of peace and certainty and happy oneness with the world is only theoretical—because even when internal stability and sensibility is achieved, there is an endless onslaught of sufferings that implicate you, require your action, your sacrifice. “The poor will always be among us…”

Does that mean you shouldn’t act or sacrifice? No—but it means that the extent to which you do must be based on the knowledge that no amount of action will do more than nothing.

To do whatever doesn’t embitter the soul. Neither the bitter cynic nor the acrid idealist.

—

To act not from abstract ideals but from real engagement with my surroundings.

But what is there to say about the aspect of the world that hides people underneath our boots?

—

My most critical task right now is to build a worldview—to read, to think, to converse. This precedes any kind of art, any activism, even any conversations about these things. When I collide with my ignorance, it’s something I need to examine properly.

This question of political and moral responsibility—this will be the gravitational center of this period.

Underneath that is the larger spiritual question: who am I, and what does that mean for my role in the world?

But this is nebulous. Face the moral question, the immediate question of concrete responsibility first, and maybe sneak up on the answer to the second.

—

How can I manage to stay sane and find meaning in a truthless environment?

Which causes are legitimate stances toward the good, and which are postures, reactions, deceptions of others and the self?

How can I live with force and conviction but also grace and loveliness?

How can I grow to use my personhood in a beautiful, productive way? To write with urgency, to grapple with real, consequential things?

—

Unseasonably hot today. A listless bourgeois feeling, sitting in a cafe with dozens of well-dressed yuppies sipping lattes, talking the hip language of youth, feeling a bit old for it…

A feeling of guilt that this is what I’m experiencing—sunlight, tank tops and perfume, boho design—while fury is raining on innocent people, while fragile civility and common cause and truth are disintegrating…

A “who am I kidding, I’m as selfish as the rest”

A hope that maybe I can live a life that rises above that selfishness

On writing, art, and craft

Writing by hand—it’s been a revelation. Writing behind my thoughts, allowing them to congeal before solidifying in pen strokes—a texture like molasses, viscous and rich… rather than typing, a pace that exceeds and pushes past my thoughts—leaving smoke in the jet stream.

—

Time to see what’s in store for me at work—what the machine asks of me before I can ask my own, delicate, floral questions

—

Reading Yongsu’s Mother’s story (The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman) makes me both excited about the possibilities of storytelling and daunted by the depth of a person’s experience, their relationships, their settings—and the machinations working outside of their view—the particular richness of the stories of women, stories that are tucked away and made secondary to a main story, stories about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of isolation and quashed agency.

This book is constantly questioning the truth and validity of her more outlandish claims, like her mother’s face turning into a tiger, the old man who she meets in her village, then on the mountain, then at the DMZ, then in the prison camp—while recognizing the historical value and humanity of myth-making, which distorts but also colors and crystallizes the truth of things.

Still, a bit too academic, an attempt to get to the cold, sequential, objective truth of things. Not that this isn’t a compelling aim—but the content seems to beckon for much more artistic liberty—not to use the stories as evidence, but as material.

This is the kind of thing that I would hope to do with my own family history.

—

An undiscovered story will fight for climax

—

Is the goal of every artist to live all of his lives through the lens of his art? To write out his politics? To write through his leisure? Sociality? Sex? There, perhaps, is the exact limitation of writing. That is why he can’t only be a writer.

Is it possible to say that the written word is both meaningful and also lifeless, without sensuality, without vigor, without viscera?

Is it possible to say that painting is both sensual and meaningless? That music—the best and most unshakeable of the arts—is mind, body, and soul, but ultimately fails to relate to daily life? That it’s pathologically transcendent?

All of these media are powerful and limited, limited in their power, and powerful in their limitations.

—

To love life in its entirety, not in its parts, or in its reductions, distillations.

To create not out of obligation but out of purpose. To be the silverfish swimming with or even against the current, but never the lamb thrashing in the whitewater.

To do everything according to a creative purpose, insofar as everything good is creative, and follows the same principles as creativity.

To not just enjoy the fruits of life, but to be the fruit, and the branch, and the trunk, and the roots, which is the greatest enjoyment.

—

Desperate honesty

—

My mind should be utterly clear. A life’s work.

—

This journal—a completely limited experience. An opaque filter that lets nothing out. A self communicating with itself. There’s magic.

Where else is magic?

Through the mask of stories. Through anonymity. Through voiceless materials.

But to be utterly naked…

On time

Is this just a never-ending circular loop? Or do I trust in the helical nature of life?

—

Outside, the bricks are catching the morning light again. Trees are swaying. Sky is bright blue. Kid scootering down the sidewalk at full speed. Peak cold has passed—last month of winter before the spring. Things to savor, things to look forward to.

Life is moving. Precious time. No need to rush anything. Savor, and look forward.

—

My version of fuck you money—a fuck you life.

—

And the writing? The job? The music? Tactile things like drawing, painting, woodworking? Learning Chinese, Korean, Russian for God’s sake? Reading about politics? Reading fiction, nonfiction, science, advice, nonsense? Watching tv? Eating, fucking, decompressing? Laughing, experiencing, dancing? Just talking, catching up? Exploring, socializing, anti-socializing? How does it all fit in? And does it harmonize or does it cause confusion?

—

so much to engage in, and so much to retreat from in this world.

—

The sheer joy and pleasure of life, of locomotion, of desire!

The sheer pain and spiritual poverty of modern life, its disorientation and necessary cruelty and epistemological burdens, the abstractness of its pursuits…

The desire to jump in the ocean

✤