Blog o’ Gnosis

Writing is such a solitary pursuit. Or rather, it is solitary only in a sense. I need utter stillness around me, and writing within that stillness I find all the ways I am connected with everyone else.

I was at it the other day, although my thoughts were elsewhere. I had just received an email relaying the sad news that my cousin’s son had been killed in a car crash. Another 20-year-old coming to a tragic, untimely end; a handsome kid that had just met his West Coast cousins a year previously, at a family reunion.

News like that, laden with the otherworldliness of grief, takes several days to work through one’s system. I was noticing how, after a couple days, the torrent of feelings had become manageable, and this fresh loss had become another thin layer added to the transparency of sadness I seem to carry with me.

My paternal grandmother was a Naval officer’s wife, and through the years she spent travelling with her husband and sons from base to base, she always employed a housekeeper. The last of these, when she and my grandfather were in their late 70s and living in a modest apartment in Oakland, was a [...]

A friend of mine lives right down by Ocean Beach in San Francisco. From the picture windows in her third floor apartment you get a panoramic view of the wild surf that animates the City’s miles-long beachfront promenade. The place is simply stunning. To sit there for an afternoon meeting and have as a backdrop the crashing waves and rip currents, sailboarders and sandcastles while the sun makes the metal-gray water glisten like ivory, is just a sublime experience.

Every time I go there I remember and then forget to bring my camera. But this weekend I remembered and then put my camera into my bag before I forgot again. I wasn’t after a picture of the surf, because really that is too vast an expanse to translate well onto film, least of all my point-and-shoot camera. No, it was to capture this sight which greets the stray visitor who happens to tear her eyes away from the ocean and look east up the gently sloping hills of the City.

I ran across an interesting little article in the latest New Yorker this evening, about a Canadian woman named Sheila Heti who became interested in what people were dreaming about the presidential frontrunners. She has created a website, The Metaphysical Poll, explaining her Hillary in pineapplesproject and linking to archives of the dreams she has collected so far. From her website:

The question we’re asking here is: what role do Barack and Hillary and John play in the collective unconscious? What can that tell us about where they might lead us — and which one does more coke when we sleep?

Well there I was, cordoned off from polite society for a week, chained to my desk in order to meet a ridiculous self-imposed writing deadline. In such circumstances, the mind is incredibly adept at finding amusements to pass the time in lieu of working on one’s appointed task. Mine certainly rose to the occasion, as [...]

One thing I know about cities is that you can really read their vital signs by reading the posters stapled to telephone poles. Looking for where the reggae fans hang out? Search for the neighborhood with the largest number of reggae show posters on the phone poles. Want to hook up with the jazz and poetry crowd? Check out the poles outside a random sampling of coffee houses, and you’re sure to find the spot where most of the cool cats meet.

The same is true for churches—or, if you prefer, darshans and Buddhist retreats. Find the area in the city that sports the most posters advertising a certain faith, and you are almost assured of meeting like-minded folks there. You can tell a lot about the spiritual make-up of a city by the diversity on its phone poles. Which is why I am so enamoured by the recent development going on in Portland, OR.