Pages torn from a hustler's journal: 14

If China and the U.S. form a strong economic partnership, how much will our culture change from adopting their legislative practices? China is the ultimate social laboratory gone off the rails. No regulations, no stopping, no checks and balances, just a system designed for infinite growth, replicating itself and improving at a killer refresh rate. It’s like the national version of Moore’s Law in effect, with memory speed and capacity doubling every 6 months. America will mimic what China does. Whatever they’re doing in China they’ll do over here in 20 years. There’s no way our leaders aren’t watching closely, how much they can get away with over there and how people respond. What happens when we start hiring Chinese Consultants, when Huawei starts losing staff to defection? I s’pose there’s the issue of counter-spies and any former Huawei folk we pick up would be segregated like Operation Paperclip. Look into that. Operation Paperclip Part 2: "Hey, Huawei's OK".


I can at most wish that hurtful former friends learn how to treat people. I can’t school people like Maria or Lance on how to be conscientious and kind adults. My knee-jerk reaction is to declare them to be broken and say they can never recover or grow up. But these people came from somewhere and they’re going somewhere, even if that somewhere is just a grey repeat of the present. The selfish loci behind outward concern to such an extent is largely the preservation instinct. In a non-dual universe they are me and in some respects I could find myself in very similar situations. Psychological parallel traps could spring upon me as well and I would be wise to avoid such honeypots of the mind. What trips up grown up children, the ones I had to excise is the lack of accountability. The shifting of blame, the ad hominem missive, followed by a directive in response to every moment of change. The precipice of awareness, the beat before the a-ha is a space that cyphers stay clued towards. It’s a high value zone for stand up comics, battle rappers, negotiators of any kind from seduction to sales. In moments of deep meditation I sometimes recall the precipice and hold the liminal state for as long as I can just to juice the lecithin drip that I experience and remain lucid. The comfort in discomfort yielded from the contemplative exercise means that I can remain stoic in the pocket for longer periods of time. Eye of the storm can yield greater perspective when that eye is from above. Panopticon in my palm. Accountability is essential to that clarity. Extreme ownership of one’s actions and consequences maintains the center of the moral compass and life ship. Especially if I want to surround myself with strong personalities and achieve anything it’s essential that I maintain autonomy and center and hence be able to contribute and serve the needs of myself and the whole without losing myself and the whole.


The growth that is made in writing, applying, studying, questioning, contemplating, returning is incremental but so expansive. With consistency more and more aspects of life are affected by our daily habits and self-building routines. Knowing that my mind returns to its strength haven, its castle, it’s important that my castle not be a cave, that my pantries not be empty. The growth made on the mat seeps out in different parts of my day because the primal state opened up during grappling grows the animal, honors the primitive and simplifies the duty down to techniques, to do, learn, do. Mistakes, losses are learning, so there’s no negative burst. Just ground gained and lost. All ground lost is ultimately ground gained because it’s those hundreds of losses in training that make mistakes and traps foreseeable in high intensity moments. It’s those hundreds of lessons in training from hundreds of losses that make the moments that matter so much smaller, easier to handle. The consistency in grappling and returning mentally to grappling, learning about grappling and returning to it weekly comes out whenever the animal Is activated, when primal senses are activated. Sometimes the mind doesn’t know what side is becoming dominant, and so having those chambers tested, trained, primed is so key. It means that when I feel stress or change looming I can be steady and calm and prepared, expecting the unexpected and being cool in the moment, just as though I were on the mat. The growth that is made in solitary time, in the gym, rock climbing, skating, in freestyle and journaling is transformative and makes me aware of how different I am in every situation I encounter. I feel more connected and real to the situations and also different from who I was before, from how I was before. Whether it’s expanding my self understanding with pornography, masturbation and sex, or self-acceptance, self-forgiveness, patience, and outward communication, anything the world brings to me feels like a gift, like a unique but familiar blanket I can wear and swim in for what may be my final moment. The growth that is made in my journey makes me more and more prepared for my final moment at any moment.


If there is nothing past this life, if this is all we get, then I can live this day fully and appreciate every second without recourse. If I accept as a possibility that consciousness might just be a strange chemical reaction that makes up for less than an iota of the experience of existence, that experience itself is separate from consciousness, then the here and now is easier to let go of. Death is easier to accept if I accept that questions themselves are a scrabble, a desperate sleeve grab to recover position. Life is juxtaposition. The apposition of opposites in strife or vice is what composes a high contrast life. That path, day or night is what lasts. Mind burning bright. For a moment. But honest is created between empty spaces. If the empty spaces are what’s before and after this life, like remembering before I was born, waking up without having gone to sleep, worrying about what after me? No me, no we, just be. I am conscious now and I can ride this tide, take the next mystery in stride, because this one is infinitely wide.

The trip about being sapiosexual is how frequently you can fall in love with fiction, with an author, with an adventure that .... Only existed in that straaaaange "maybe that didn't really happen place"... With someone long dead. But then, I always subscribed to the philosophy of being in tuned and in love with the experience, the moment more than the person. Somehow the right book burns that philosophy to ashes. So I s'pose that makes bibliophiles players of the literary realm. Burning through books like Nazis in the Catholic Church.