The Writer's Sketchbook - April - June '08

Just as a painter's sketches are at times especially appealing due to their playful spontaneity, so can a writer's marginal notes possess a raw vitality that beckons exploration. The following collection of disparate notes are the byproduct of writing a number of essays and short stories over the last few months. While most of these snippets are simply islands of thought that could not find their place in my larger projects, some are the coming to a form of closure on difficult concepts through the soft precision of poetics. Others are like tiny portals to new avenues of thought that will most likely materialize over the next few weeks, months, or even years.

Her features were thrown asunder. Her smile propagated, began to revolve around the room.

Within the circumstance, there is only enlightenment. But, we are always standing on the outside peering in.

To mimic life is to bestill it.

Find the question to this answer:
"Because your body cannot speak this form of wind."

Misplaced.

I sit at the interface between two worlds. Pondering the reflections.

I ponder the thought of pondering only to find the thought in the shadow of itself.

The thought in the shadow of itself.
The thought in the shadow of itself.

Reflections like a tide.

I live within a tiny speck on the magnifying glass.

Earth Diminutive

Always, always, always, there is the melancholy before the birth.

The deep blue of dusk permeates the house.

And I have withdrawn into a vague siren that threads through the night.

The Distribution of a Progression

Always to return to the bookstore, to leaf through the books, only to find nothing, to feel the rising sense of despair, to begin searching frantically, and then finally to let go and give up, for it is my own book that I seek.

A dream can indeed be interpreted, but the heart of its mystery can never be plumbed. So is the case with a synchronicity.

An enigma opens a gateway, presents a passageway which ever deepens till depth loses meaning.

And were my wings to be clipped would I not simply fall upwards?

The logician says:
For the sake of happiness - for is happiness not important? - let Truth come more slowly so that one is not devoured by it.

The artist says:
The magician speaks with the speed of lightning. It is like the worshiping of the winds.

Enigma is a cloak of protection.

Enigma is the artist's avenue towards mysticism. The artist who crafts an enigma potentiates a mystical experience in his work, to be actualized by an audience through psychological resonance and abandoning the self to an uncritical appreciation of the work.

I am now imperceptible.

The spiral is a booming trumpet.

Perhaps. Perhaps, the intellect would be adequate were it omni-articulate.

An alternative introduction to Kafka, Enigma, and Mysticism:
This post is at once an essay and a homage to Kafka. Similar to how his two most prominent novels The Trial and The Castle were left unfinished when he died, this work is also presented in its incomplete form, not out of a desire to emulate Kafka but because I arrived at the inevitable conclusion that any analysis of his work cannot, and is even obliged not to be, complete. Otherwise, the reader is falsely lead to a sense of closure about his writing. Thus, the more fragmented and even self-contradictory my writing is presented, the more I remain true to my admiration of his writing. Indeed, just as the greatest responses to Zen koans have been equally enigmatic and defiant of reason, I believe there is no way to truly talk about Kafka than in responding to his fiction with more fiction. "Logic Dies, I am Sorry" is a short story I wrote while struggling with this post. It is perhaps my real essay.

For, to stumble upon myself in the darkness...there is nothing more frightening.

I would expect my fiction to be taken seriously, although there can be found no answers therein, and my essays and their "answers" to be taken with a grain of salt, if not immediately mutilated in order to see if they withstand the test.

And then the nighttime lay dusk on its shoulder.

The shadow playing on the wall is your great-grandfather pleading to come to your aid!

How I would have loved to declare the following to my boss:
"To me, what I worry about are the archetypal patterns at play in this endeavour."

An often overlooked, yet significant, aspect of spiritual advancement is the reaching towards a finer granularity of one's insights.

One can view the positive path (of unconditional love and acceptance) from a purely mechanical perspective. You may have every excuse in the world to be pissed off at someone. But, it doesn't matter. The negativity will still weigh you down. "The sin is forgiven before it is committed", such an attitude is inevitable.

Tidbits of thought, merrily blows the night air.
Marginal to be sure, almost parenthetical, yet varied in scope, like the outstretched arms of Atlas.

In enigma craftsmanship, the avenue to infinity must be setup and protected. There should be no dead end closure to any idea.

Always utilize life in its entirety!

I appreciate everything.

...And so the tears may suffice. So the tears may suffice...