And we're back.

I haven't blogged in 7 months. Not since Grandpa died. Since then, I have moved to LA, got a new job, see very few people that I care deeply about, have lost a little weight, lost another person close to me, moved in with the girlfriend and the cat, and met some interesting people along the way. So, basically, since I last wrote on here, nearly everything changed in my life. Mostly for the better, thankfully.

LA is not so different from the Bay Area. The main differences are of course the weather, the traffic, and the immense geography. It takes so long to travel from any one place to another. And the traffic makes not a lick of sense either. I am glad for the holiday season because no one is going to work, which means my commute is 15 minutes both ways instead of the usual hour.

I haven't written a creative word in months. When I was in the academic setting of Cal, I wrote all the time. Partly to prevent myself from studying, and partly because it was just easier to write when surrounded by creativity. I know I am in the global capitol of the entertainment industry, and I should be in my creative element here, but I'm just not. I haven't been able to write a poem, a story, or (clearly) a blog post since moving down. My life is so far from creative now. I'm a piece of clay that has had the water sucked from it. Even this post lacks a certain beauty that I once had in my writing. It makes me very sad to see this. Perhaps if I write more on here, then I will get some of it back. We shall see how long I can keep this up.

I was looking for a TKD place down here for a few months. No dice. All these places cater to kids, and I'm a little spoiled having trained with adults for 7 years. I would love to train at UCLA, but the hours are a little ridiculous for working professionals like myself, and USC doesn't allow non-students to participate in the program. I went searching for an Aikido place and found two interesting prospects. Once I land a permanent job at SCE, where I am now as a temp, I will definitely invest in a few months of classes to get my chops back up. I really miss AKD. I told the masters at both places that I was only a 4th kyu, which is sort of like saying I'm an intermediate who can roll reasonably well, but can't do much else. It will be sort of exciting to start over again, having beginners mind at a new place to learn from a new master. It will be good martial arts practice for me to empty my cup of all the things I think I know and fill it with things that I do not. That is the true meaning of martial arts practice. The teacher is the student is the teacher.

I have embraced my Buddhist roots a little bit more in the past few months. I have been dealing with a lot of loss, and being able to let those things and people go has been a great unburdening for me. It is freeing to be able to be okay with not having something. Being Buddhist really helped me in all the transitions I have had to do in the past months. I think it may have started up when I was writing my personal statements for USC, which I by the way am not planning to attend. I decided that while my personal statements were artistic and beautifully formed expressions of myself, it was okay to take part of them away and change them completely as needed. Art is a transient experience rather than a solid piece of form. A painting will change in both meaning and actual form from the time it is first created to when it turns to dust. Every stage between is art, and different from the adjacent stages. That does not cheapen the art but deepens it and strengthens it. And then when I had to move back home from Berkeley, i let go of a lot of things. A lot of possessions primarily, but also plans that did not pan out. Realizing that I was where I was in my existence and not before nor after helped me to realize that where I go from here all depends on how I am right now in the moment. One of my Muslim friends said to me "you should just believe in God, Ben." I proceeded to defensively explain my beliefs about what I consider to be "God," which is something similar to The Force in Star Wars. Instead of her telling me something Islam-centric to convert me, she simply said "yeah, sure that's God." In literary theory, it is generally understood that people create art and write to understand and bring themselves closer to what is known as the "sublime." The sublime is considered to be all that which human beings cannot experience themselves. We can climb to the top of a mountain, but we will never know the mountain; we can fly in airplanes but we will never feel what it is like to be a cloud; we can die but no one can know what that feels like or what happens after. Those are all "the sublime." Just like the big lion from Narnia said, "I am known by another name in your world." I think it isn't particularly difficult to reconcile my Buddhist beliefs with my understanding of "the sublime." In Zen Buddhism, the primary practice is to "just sit," where you bring yourself closer to your true self through meditation. What is your "true self?" When you strip away all the things that make you your "false self," all that is left is what the Christians would consider a soul. That is when you, in Buddhism, reach "enlightenment," or "Nirvana." "Heaven." "Jannah." All describe a "place" or state free from suffering and full of joy. Closer to God. Closer to your own divine and true self. It's really all the same. All strive to bring yourself to a level of understanding of yourself, of the world and universe, and all strive to bring you to the end of your worldly sufferings.


I end, as always, with a haiku:

Sitting in silence
What is the mountain? The cloud?
Someday, I will know.