#axiomaticabsurdities

What is anger without passion?

What is love without feeling?

A man can, in his fashion.

But what is life without meaning?

I was sitting at my dinner table, green tea & ginger in an warm mug and my kindle sat before me. 

I had stopped reading.

A malaise had come over me, having started not a few days ago I know.

It had started with a video – a document short to be precise – whereby a reporter flew over the barren stretches of Greenland, pointing to the bare rock and rough grasslands reaching from horizon to horizon. 

“All this was ice last year, part of the glacier now a few kilometres away” he declared sadly through the static of a headset and steady whoomp whoomp of the rotator blades. The ice cap, it turned out, had lost nine metres due to melt in the last year.

My roommate had commented only the night before how, in Spain, they hear about global warming as much as we do, but “it is always hot in the south of Spain, so…” he shrugged. He had spoken to a few Danish fellows at the university who had commented that they were upset as this had been their first Christmas without a drop of snow.

A tear came to my eye then. The realisation was profound and horrifying.
I had grown up with many a white Christmas back home, but hadn’t seen more than four days of snow in the last six years.

“Six years…” I said aloud, just to hear the words myself.

And yet, each year we decorate our homes and buy cards with snowy motifs as if a sad reminder of what used to be. 

My mind turned then to the generations of others who would come after us, who would know nothing of the profound change – of what we had done to ourselves and our planet.

I sat staring at my cup. It grew cold in my hand before I took another lethargic swig.

“What to do, what to do…”

-

-

Musiks – Rhinestone Eyes, Gorillaz

Feral - George Manbiot

Antifragile - Nassim Taleb*

Critical Mass - Philip Ball*

Letters from a Stoic - Seneca*

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

Economics - Ha-Joon Chang

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

The Joyous Cosmology - Alan Watts

Dreams - C.G. Jung

Woodsman - Ben Law

The Rise of Superman - Steven Kotler

Mastery - Robert Greene

The Green Self-Build Book - Jon Broome

Zero to One - Peter Thiel

The Rig Vedas - Various Authors, Penguin Classics (or other publisher)

[To be read in order and as an in-depth study into Taoist Alchemy]

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

Chuang Tzu - Chuang Tzu

The Seal of the Unity of the Three - Author debated, Fabrizio Pregadio (Trans.)

Cultivating the Tao - Liu Yiming, Fabrizio Pregadio (Trans.)

The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan, way to Rejuvenation - Jou, Tsung Hwa

The Root of Chinese Qigong - Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming

[These are listed from oldest to newest texts - I would highly recommend reading them from new to old and back again or the inverse as each reading gives new meaning to the text before it…]

The Sacred Pipe - Black Elk

Black Elk Speaks - John G. Neihardt

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars  - Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan

The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Musashi

The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance  - Robert Pirsig

On The Road - Jack Kerouac

Bushido, The Soul of Japan - Inazo Nitobe

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term Travel - Rolf Potts

*Excellent reads if read together! Wonderful melding of ideas and concurrent thought patterns…

-

-

Theme Song - Darkside, Paper Trails

I came to a sudden and abrupt realisation not moments ago.

Some background for an idea of the forethought:

I have done many many things in my short 20-odd years, felt like I have lived many life times that took me from sea to sea and across the face of the planet, experiencing intense small happenings and large events on this earth.

My experience has a crippling downside - an innate explorer and curioso, but hampered by profound needs to see and know. Elsewhere.

So now:

Each time I have taken a huge turn in my life - reckless or courageous, both and neither - dropped everything and moved or taken great leaps in opposite directions (to the dismay of many). But I realise now that what had changed, what had spurred me to these things was not a latent need or want or depression (although that often came with it).

It was an immense change in my philosophy.

My personal philosophy and constant drive for perspective has been the most prevailing subject in my life. But the fundamental -enormity- of changes over the last 5 years has developed and moved drastically from my starting pointing.

A child of science (and always returning to it) but animistic in belief, ‘Zaoist’ (Zen and Taoist) in philosophical tendencies and shamanic in practice. This through a journey along Jung, Freud, Plato, Descarte, Heidigger, to the Middle-Eastern dogmas, South-American spiritualism, Australian animism and of course - Asia, Buddhism,Jainism, Hindu believes, Chan/Zen, Shintoism and Bushido.

So am I an ADD riddled weirdo, who can’t sit still and flit from place to place? Or merely following the change in what I consider to be most important thing to me, that which surrounds my every moment?

Conclusion:

Both. Its definitely both.

-

-

Melodic Noise Makings: Yoshida Brothers - Ibuki