A reminder, because I need it.

Seen among a bunch of otherwise pure-amusement memes:

I’m not very good at this.

To my future self who comes back around and finds this again some day: begin again.

A closer look at Yin-Yang.

So, in the end, this pretty fully just took me apart today.

I first clicked out of an academic interest, at least in part since I’ve lately been keen to take a fresh look at many of the things I think I know. But this guy actually goes right to the living heart of what he’s talking about, beyond the complicating constraints of language and translation, and for me–now after the flood–well, I’m happy to say that it all still has a direct connection to the place where I really live. (That’s a bigger deal than it may sound; I’ve actually started to question this connection, in recent years.) To say “I needed that” may be accurate, but truly doesn’t cover it.

Yin-Yang doesn’t describe an equilibrium you maintain.
It describes a turning you cannot stop.

By this point he had my full attention, and I started to recognize the dam beginning to break. On its own, the above is of course a great way to recontextualize the Western interpretation of the concept of yin-yang, but where that then leads is…so much bigger than that.

And he kept going, in the same vein. So many quotable moments, together presenting a very consistent look at a concept I have, indeed, mis-learned in just the manner he describes. Three statements in particular that really resonated with me:

“The moment of maximum Yang is not victory.
It is the exact moment that Yin begins.”

“Yin and Yang were never properties that things have.
There are positions that things pass through.”

“The Dao is not the balance between the two states.
The Dao is the rhythm that moves through them.”

Totally aside from his historical point about the yin-yang symbol appearing well after Laozi and the Tao Te Ching we often associate with it, this revised way of looking at the concept seems humblingly obvious once he points it out like that. Maybe I could quibble that my own misinterpretation of yin-yang perhaps hasn’t been quite as, well, black-and-white as he describes here, but truly, in the end, I absolutely have been guilty of thinking of the relationship in an “equilibrium” sense of one-in-the-other, rather than one-out-of-the-other. And what an enormous difference there is, in that!

And then, the punchline, the one that took whatever dam there was left and just vaporized it:

The old texts never promised you equilibrium.
They promised you something better:
that no season is final.

Yeah, it’s time to revisit a few things. Thank you, whoever you are, for the unexpected nudge. (This was the first I’ve seen or heard of this fellow, but dang, I don’t think it will be the last.)

Thought tickle: try to create more than you consume.

This week I got somewhat randomly introduced to a new podcaster* named Jack Neel, who recently dropped a two and a half hour interview with Tucker Carlson that probably merits its own separate bookmark (there’s a lot there). But, here, let’s just say that on the strength of that sprawling conversation, I’m now listening to my second Neel interview, featuring one Jett Franzen, and it is proving interesting thus far–interesting enough that I paused the ‘cast to make sure I recorded this thought.

This is not a direct quote, but rather an idea Franzen is pursuing early in the interview–one of those “makes a lotta sense once you point it out” thoughts that seems well important enough to bookmark. The idea is:

Always try to create more than you consume.

This sounds simple enough that it almost feels like low-hanging fruit to point it out, especially to myself (as so much of what is in these pages is intended to do in the first place). But in the hot mess of my ongoing battle with the closest inner demons, the simpler ideas tend to be the most profound, and probably those most worth pursuing.

(And honestly, I think there is something to say as well about how the principle relates to my own psychological need to commit written vomitus–to Craftygrass, to Rifleman Savant, and of course here–in the first place. I can be just as dense as anyone if I’m not paying enough attention, but when I can start seeing an idea make full and complete circles almost immediately, I do try and not miss the point.)

Anyway, thus bookmarked, I’ll head back in to, er, consume the rest of the interview. For full disclosure, I know very little about Jack Neel, and even less about Jett Franzen, but thus far the discussion, at least, has been interesting.

______________________
* I don’t even know if that’s the right term any more, but I find myself leaning on it, at least somewhat generically, for the longer-format, mostly-audio-but-always-interesting-to-see-the-body-language-too style of interview.

David Bowie: ‘Never play to the gallery.’

Ran across this somewhat randomly, on YouTube, and I wanted to capture it for Murray at least. A good reminder for us all.

That clip seems to be an excerpt from a larger interview (more of it here) and the whole thing comes across quite well, but the best zingers (e.g. “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area.”) happen in this short segment.

Quirky dude, for sure, but it’s not hard to see the genius if you look. (And I didn’t look, for the longest time. Really, the only reason I did start to look honorably, is because Murray took an interest after first reading the Little People, Big Dreams book on Bowie. Much of the music still doesn’t really resonate with me, but now I understand the appeal a lot better, and of course watching the gears turn in the boy’s head is worth it on its own!)

Qutekcak NYO in Seward.

So it’s somehow been more than a year since the last Qutekcak NYO event in Seward (last year’s was in March), and for me, as with so many NYO invitationals of the last few years, this one arrived just in time for a much-needed metaphysical boost. This year’s event was limited to 150 advance-registered athletes, but the whole fam was again able to go, and we even got to try a couple of new events as well, so we learned a ton and had a great time with the best people you could ever ask for.

And I am so proud of the fam. Everyone PR’d in at least one event, and the girls all made the podium as well. Even Ye Oulde Farte here achieved his goals of 1) a Scissor Broad Jump that went more than half the distance of the Open men’s winner, and 2) an Alaskan High Kick which actually left the ground and landed in balance. (I didn’t hit the bag, and t’weren’t pretty, but by gum I got off the ground and landed in balance, and that’s a start!)

Neil Oliver on the idea of home and self.

I needed this, this week. Thanks Neil, for the timely reminder.

Not sure I’ve ever seen a Neil Oliver monologue that’s not worthwhile, but some do stick out.

A reminder from Byron Katie.

This is one of those reminders I need to confront myself, more often.

Beautifully stated.

Chad O. Jackson needs a bookmark.

A significant portion of the world may have gone insane, with no apparent interest in recovering, and it can be tempting to fall into real despair from the disproportionate noise of their one-note drumbeat. To paraphrase a sentiment I’ve seen many times now, in the not-quite-two-weeks since Charlie Kirk was publicly assassinated: “Do you even see yourself, calling piously to “have a conversation” now, after decades of increasingly-unapologetic dehumanization and beyond-mere-hatred loathing of anyone actually objecting to insufficiently supportive of the deliberately-ever-shifting Current [misanthropic] Thing? Really? ‘Have a conversation’? You just openly murdered the guy most obviously doing–literally in the correct use of that horribly misused word–exactly that.” The sentiment usually then ends with a terse and ungracious decline of this most mendaciously insulting “offer”, and it’s hard for anyone who has been around for even one of those decades, to argue with that.

But even in the face of such monstrous evil, authentic human beings continue to exist; in this regard I ran across one Chad O. Jackson, discussing others’ comparisons of Charlie Kirk to Martin Luther King, and I immediately felt the need to bookmark it, both for myself and my kids, who deserve an analysis of such quality to try and make some sense of the larger world in which these events exist.

Make whatever allowances you may require, for Mr. Jackson’s specifically Christian point of view and intended audience–which are even technically relevant in this case. (And, if you find yourself somehow needing to make some significant allowance, you might just take yourself a sobriety checkpoint and compare this, to any source anywhere, which attempts to paint Kirk as some sort of threat to individual human beings. Compare just the analytical quality and the respect and see for yourself–it will not take long.)

Jackson’s discussion is important, and rich, for those who can make themselves available to listen, and to see. Many who admire Dr. King’s public work don’t know about the significantly flawed human being that was behind them, and I can sympathize as I didn’t learn of his private life myself until I was in my thirties. And I think Jackson does a great job at creating a feel that is not of somehow elevating Kirk above King, but rather simply illustrating just how truly absurd it is to smear Kirk as ungenuine or threatening based on the (rather copious) evidence we have. (To paraphrase another sentiment, “tell me you don’t know what you’re talking about without telling me you don’t know what you’re talking about”.)

Anyway, I was impressed at what seems to me to be a valuable contribution to a genuine, er, conversation about Kirk, and his place in the world. Thank you, Mr. Jackson, for that.

Because Lego.

My first thought was that I’d want to bookmark this so that my kids could see it. But hell, this is Lego, and I’m still a kid too.

Oh, I like this one.

Appropriated from the internets. Not mine, but I wish it was.