Try to look ahead and see where you’re heading. Often times the landscape stretches out for miles with no exits, other times there’s choices at every turn. It’s exhilarating as every moment you’ve made distance. You have an idea but you’re unsure where you’re going or what it will look like.

The only anxiety is that moment in between, where there is no distance, no direction– it’s ironic how the answer isn’t important, it doesn’t matter what direction, just go somewhere, anywhere.

Occasionally I find myself awake at night thinking about Richard W. Hamming’s speech ‘You are Your Research’. “If what you’re doing is not important… why are you working on it?” he asked.

This can (and should) be a haunting question; it certainly keeps me up at night.

What are the important problems? Or to put it in a more existential tone, what should one work on?

We tend to operate on a flimsy context for what is important. Is it for survival– either individual, or for our species, or for our planet? Or is it the advancement of human knowledge, such as science and art?

Most of the time we don’t concern ourselves with such questions. We work to sustain ourselves, finding pleasure and happiness where we can, and occasionally giving back to others. Life is often nothing but an affirmation of our existence.

Perhaps then the answer is much simpler, and the existential concerns are nothing but evolutionary baggage– a side-effect of our oversize primate brains– perhaps what is important is to exist for existence sake. That is, to exist devoid of a purpose, not to leave an indelible mark, but simply to be. I consider this a sort of existential freedom.

Consider again, what are the important problems? I believe it is to understand who you are and be the best of who you are. Work to affirm your existence, simply be. There is nothing more important.

For me, there is much I can do, and much I cannot. Happiness is often my goal, my pursuit, my passion for the moment. I do not dream of grand human endeavors, but of the passions of soul and comfort. I am drawn to these things, my focus is on feeling good, making others feel good, and enjoying the beauty of existence. I do not wish to compete, to prove myself, to be strong, to be courageous… I wish only to love, be loved, and experience as much beauty in life as one could experience. But that’s just me…

You are who you are– and you cannot change that. You may or may not even like it. But the important problems are there for you to work on, knowing what they are is nothing but an exercise in understanding who you are– and being the best of who you are.

There is a simplicity to existence that conscious ego will not tolerate. Your existence just is. It is not planned nor intended. You are, simply as you are. The most basic truth is so clearly in front of your face– base and predictable: human, primate, mammal, life– the truth bores as it insults ego. Delusions are so much more interesting– God, soul, love– they are real in effect of our every action, but they are as malleable as any childish whim. We shape these delusions with every want and expectation. Try it. Expect love and find it. Want God and see! The filters of perception are yours to control– we are masters to this shared delusion we often confuse with reality.

These are simply ideals, and we breathe them as necessary as air. What a curious primate.

Unfiltered reality– what does that mean? Is it even possible? We sometimes speak of it as beautiful, seeing things as they truly are– but is not that beauty another delusion, another filter? Unfiltered reality, I imagine, would be too boring and too simple to comprehend. It would be data with no metaphor, no symbol system, and none of the artful abstractions that we thrive on.

So then, curious primate, what is it that you want? Anything that you consider worth comprehending is possible; but still you persist in wondering about this most basic thing. Do what you like, and let none be the judge, you cannot help to do otherwise.

We are masters to our own delusion. Do what you want and shape every filter. Let life happen. Make art, love, and offer people a reason for their existence to matter.

It is all poetry and art, and all blissfully useless.

Do you ever wonder if that reflection looks back?
Fragments of who you are, multiple selves throughout
every facet of your life– your past, present, and
all possible futures

At some point, as perceptions collapse and reality
is seen as illusion– you are whole
The sum of your knowledge– all of you

In that moment, everything is as you have made it
And you, the whole of who you are, are responsible
Where you go from here…
That is the better question

Gathering the total of yourself
Everything
The ugly bits and the beautiful

Pieces and shards of yourself
They fit together nicely
Often leaving small and barely perceptible holes

Missing pieces to an incomplete self
In order to answer that basic question
‘What do I want?’
You need only to look at
What is missing

I was told that 2009 is my Christ year.

I’m not totally clear as to whether a "Christ Year" is the year of your 33rd birthday or the 33rd year of your life (or the year you label yourself as being 33). It doesn’t really matter; I’m an atheist; don’t tell Jesus.

Whatever you call it, it is for me a significant point of change.

Change is never pretty. It can be disjointed; erratic. We either regress to where we started, or take hard earned control of our social mores and personal ideals, shaping and defining what we ought to be doing.

Many people I meet tend to regress, never questioning the basic social ontology they find themselves trapped within. They avert the crises by buying new cars, complaining about useless things, or otherwise distract themselves from the clear question of what they ought to be doing with their life.

I’m certainly not perfect in this regard. I’ve just spent the last year distracting myself with random girls, travel to exotic places, photography, and living the douche-bag life in La Jolla. It all seemed to work fine up until life’s little crises culminated into an emotional breakdown, as if life is reminding me to pay attention and answer the fucking question we’re all too scared to even ask. Strange way to end the year.

I don’t know what this year is going to be like. Change is funny that way– we’re never really sure what it’s going to be like, and even though things typically turn out for the best, we’re scared shitless until we figure that out.

The best advice I’ve gotten: go for a run, listen to music. I have to say, that totally helped. And it subsequently reminded me that I’m ridiculously out of shape. I ran along the coast, I was wheezing, desperately trying to catch my breath. It could have been the lack of oxygen to my brain, but I momentarily forgot about everything. A moment of clarity, an epiphany.

This my Christ year.

And I honestly don’t know what that means yet. I recognize that I need to replace those bad habits of mine with some good habits. I’ll need to clear my head, this means a break from the distractions. All of them. Or do I regress?

Encinitas, California
Near the towering golden lotus blossoms there is something quietly surreal as you walk through the meditation gardens

It is man and nature in harmony

Look deeper Odysseus
You have seen every move
And all end in tragedy

Go back
Undo your meticulous planning
And see the inverted path

There, you see now
Standing on the precipice
As she flies from your open arms

You, Odysseus, cannot fly
And cannot heal her

Others have caged her
And nearly killed her
You must shape the world
So that she may fly

Hold her with open palms
And let her mend her wings

Strong Odysseus, Shaper of worlds
Shape the world Odysseus
That she may fly

Give her a world to fly in
So that she may fly away

breaking down the doors of perception
the dizzying distractions and running thoughts
all melt effortlessly away

without the doubts and fears
you look out and see nothing the same

you see only the world as it is
simple awareness with no filters
endless appreciation for the
vast beauty in all things

it is calm, serene
with infinite potential

I was reading about Dual-coding Theory, which states that visual and verbal information is processed on distinct and different cognitive channels. The verbal cues refer to symbolic codes; in other words, arbitrary representations of something (such as reading or listening to a speech). The visual cues are perceptual, that is, a direct representation of what you are seeing.

Dual-coding refers to utilizing both visual and verbal, that is, symbolic as well as perceptual codes. Memory seems to favor the visual channel, and this is known as the picture superiority effect.

Think of watching the presidential debates. The information is symbolic (through words) as well as visual. What we remember tends to favor the visual, which can then act as a voluntary trigger to retrieve the words.

This is an interesting concept, and taken further leads to synesthesia– a rare phenomenon where one cognitive pathway triggers another involuntarily. For example, someone with synesthesia may see numbers in different colors; or see musical notes. And not a voluntary association, but a completely involuntary reaction. The advantages should be obvious, such as encoding symbolic information into long-term memory as easily as a visual information.

I wonder, if with the right training, we could develop in ourselves something like synesthesia; associating visual/perceptual codes to symbolic codes — allowing perceptual representations of abstract concepts.

We tend to do this naturally with metaphoric associations, such as an emotional reaction to an image or sound. I suspect we can take this much further, where we directly leverage perceptual codes to involuntarily trigger any number of symbolic/abstract information (whether emotional, or intellectual, or artistic)