The Neo-Platonic Maze
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
proclus' LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Thursday, February 12th, 2009 | | 10:25 am |
Happy
I am happy to be happy. | | Monday, November 17th, 2008 | | 5:19 pm |
Today
I am happy today and dancing. Wow! Life is good. | | Wednesday, September 12th, 2007 | | 7:11 pm |
Walking and Listening to Music I forgot until recently how wonderful it is to walk and listen to music. It is said that Aristotle had his greatest thoughts while he was walking. Thus his students got a workout of sorts following him around the grounds of his campus as he lectured.
I compose poetry in my head as I walk. This may appear strange to onlookers, but i will try out cadences and metric regularities out loud. Poetry and walking each have their rhythms, and changes in tempo and mood. | | Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 | | 11:55 am |
Be Like Water The soul that companies with Virtue is like an ever-flowing source. It is a pure, clear, and wholesome draught; sweet, rich, and generous of its store; that injures not, neither destroys. (Epictetus)
The supreme good is to be like water which nourishes all things without trying. It is content with the low places that people disdain. In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present. When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you. (Lao Tzu)
Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink. (Cooleridge) | | Monday, June 25th, 2007 | | 12:57 pm |
Worst Pride Ever Oh for crying out loud! This was the worst Pride ever... 2007. The only bright spot in an otherwise dreary weekend was watching the parade on Capitol Hill with my friend and his buddies.
Otherwise it was totally lame.
I spent it pretty much alone. I could have gone down to the parade at the Seattle Center on Sunday, but by then I had already become demoralized and misanthropic.
I walked around Broadway and Pike and Pine watching everyone else in groups of three or more enjoy themselves. I said "hi" to everyone I passed. Still I was outside looking in. Its difficult lately to find my own group of Gay Friends, buddies, dudes who would hang out with me, go to metal shows, throw a frisbee around, quaff a few beers with on a Saturday night.
Oh well. Next Year will be better. | | Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 | | 9:50 pm |
Weight Training For the past seven weeks, I have been working out twice a week with a personal trainer. Yes, he's handsome... but darlings, I pay him to yell at me and make my body hurt all over and nothing else...really.
We -- he and I -- are doing a wonderful job. My body fat has dropped to the lowest it has been since I was in Graduate School. I have gained several pounds of muscle faster than I ever thought possible. In fact I have begun to show off my body at bars by wearing tight tank tops. I have gone from a large shirt size to a medium. I have a newfound confidence in my appearance. Not bad for a man rapidly descending into middle age.
A few weeks ago, a young man saw me at a bar and asked our mutual acquaintance who I was. We sat on a sofa together and I held him until closing time and they kicked us out. I saw him again a few days later, and we talked. The bartender remarked that he looked quite taken with me.
I saw him again the next week at a dance. We also spent some time holding each other, along with a couple of other guys who joined us.
I saw the bartender last night and he asked me where my boy was. I told him that I thought it was merely an affectionate flirtation. This is truly what it was.
I haven't really changed that much. I'm still shy. I still take a copy of Middlemarch with me to the bar in order to thumb through it as I sip my rum & diet. I still feel awkward and like an outsider. But there are things I've never done before. For instance:
Last week, I was sitting at the bar and drinking diet coke (no rum) and a couple of men whom I have seen at the bar before were sitting near me. A photographer entered the bar and was about to take their pictures for a magazine that is distributed free in Northwest Bars (Oregon, Washington, British Columbia) One man ducked out of the way. I leaned over to him and extended my hand. He held my hand and I said, "You're a handsome man. You didn't let your picture get taken. I don't understand." He said he didn't like his nose. Now whenever I see him he smiles at me and says "Hello." I have never told someone spontaneously like that that I thought he was handsome. Something very profound has changed in me.
| | Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 | | 9:46 pm |
Energy and Resolve The world belongs to the energetic. -- Emerson
The truest wisdom in general is a resolute determination. -- Napoleon
Energy? Resolve? Wish I had those. Alas. Within my psyche there is only entropy.
\ | | Thursday, March 29th, 2007 | | 3:33 pm |
Tomorrow becomes Yesterday So I'm not sure what to make of the new year as it approaches -- my birthday is coming up soon -- I don't know. I look back at my life, nothing much has really changed.
I need to take projects off the backburner. Take the bull by the horns, somehow finding the energy and confidence to move byond my habit of procrastination. Am I afraid? Perhaps. In the end, Of course, as the Elder Edda says, "A brave man can live well anywhere."
I need to learn to promote myself and my accomplishments. This means in part that I need to not denigrate what I've accomplished, even if those accomplishments seem remote and half-forgotten.
| | Monday, March 26th, 2007 | | 9:03 pm |
My New Toy I bought an ipod the other day and now I am a plugged-in person, wandering the streets with my own personal soundtrack. I notice now how many people -- many, many people -- are also ipod people. It's like being part of a not-so-secret society.
| | Saturday, March 10th, 2007 | | 1:56 pm |
Year Ahead
My birthday is coming up. I spend the time of Aries (March 21st to April 20th) re-examing my life. The time for such examination is a mere 11 days away. I plan to put the examination off until the sun enters my sign. My twin will be visiting March 21st to March 25th. That will a great way to enter into my new year. Great changes are instore for me. I merely have to spend the time building the foundations. I've been feeling popular lately; strangely, however, I have also retreated, and I have not spent much time with anyone. Perhaps this a preparation for my beginning things anew. There is a spiritual quality about my retreat. For any of you who haven't heard from me lately, I apologize for my silence. Current Mood: contemplativeCurrent Music: In my Darkest Hours -- by Sirenia. | | Saturday, February 10th, 2007 | | 5:51 pm |
Stagnation is Death I am ready to move on, to find a new place for myself. The time is right for me to go forward. I want to make it so that new and possibly unpredictable possibilities are open to me. I have been writing about going back to school for almost two years now, but i was waiting until I became vested in the state retirement system. That will happen on October 5th of this year. I wait patiently for October. I gather my strength. Now is the time to make preparations. It's going to take dedication, resolve and effort to shake myself loose from the chains of predicablity and secruity that fasten me to this city and job. The chains must be cast off. The dreams I wrote about in my last entry are nice, but I want to make this move not to acheive them, but because stagnation is death. I want to live. | | Thursday, February 8th, 2007 | | 7:42 pm |
Nothing Keeping Me Here I am merely a spectre wandering the streets of Seattle, unnoticed, unheeded, unknown. I walk the city as an invisible wraith who looks on at the activity about me, and who has no ability to affect it.
Fact is there is nothing keeping me here. My job leads nowhere. The cost of living is outstripping my financial ability. When I first moved here more than a decade ago, I thought I would settle down, establish roots, find a boyfriend and make a life for myself. My real dream was simple: friends, a husband, a career, a modest house in a city that opens its arms. But I have none of these things.
I have acquaintences, romantic rejection, sex without intimacy, a dead-end job, a tiny apartment, a city that closes itself off from me. There's not a soul out there.
I think it's time to move on. By January of next year I expect to be gone. I will set that as a goal to get out of this god-forsaken hellhole. I should get while the getting is good. I should leave before I am too old to begin a new life. I should go before the inertia calcifies me. I should move away while I still have some self-respect.
| | Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 | | 2:10 pm |
Since My Last Post What I’ve Spent My Time Doing Since My Last Post
- Watching the first two seasons of Gillligan’s Island
- Reading two books: Silas Marner and Stoic Warriors
- Secretly (?) checking out the handsome bartender at Purr.
- Sleeping way too much
- Doing the pointless weight training thing – lots o’ work, little progress
- Saw Pan’s Labyrinth – loved it loved it loved it
- I celebrated Edgar Allan Poe's birthday. (January 19th) This is a personal tradition that has been observed by my Twin and I since we were sophmores in high school. We usually invite people over for a glass of Amontillado. We read a poem by Poe and ask other people thier own read poems. This years, as in the last few years, my brother and I sent each other e-mails and did a virtual toast. He's in Spokane this year. Last Year he was in Belarus. Before that, Spokane again.
- Getting ready for my vacation next month.
| | Thursday, January 11th, 2007 | | 9:58 am |
My Winter so Far I stopped off at the Metropolitan for a beer and a bowl of Mac-N-Cheese yesterday after work. Not much has been happening in my life lately; mostly I spend my time hibernating, sleeping, reading. I’m in the middle of a great novel, and it’s got me hooked. I haven’t even been going out as much as usual.
| | Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 | | 9:57 am |
New Years I had a great New Year's Weekend. Did some partying, some connecting, lots of sleeping. I read some, wrote some. I missed my work out because the gym cut back its hour for the holiday. Still I had a wonderful time. | | Friday, December 29th, 2006 | | 2:32 pm |
Late Night Visit Last night, I was awakened at 4 A.M. (!!!) by a hobo pounding on my door and someone else ringing my door bell. I answered the door saying, "It's four in the morning. Who are you?" he said he was looking for David. I said that I don't know who David is. He peered around me as if David was hiding in my apartment. After assuring him again that I had no idea who David is, I shut my door. 1) Who visits someone at four in the morning? 2) How did he get in the door to the apartment complex in the first place? 3) Who is David? 4) And why was it so urgent that they talk to him at such an ungodly hour? | | Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 | | 5:09 pm |
Speech and Silence It is a good to know the season for speech and the season for silence. -- Seneca
| | Monday, December 4th, 2006 | | 8:12 am |
Thoughts for the Day 1. No longer wander aimlessly; for neither wilt thou read thy own memoirs, nor the acts of the ancient Romans and Greeks, and the selections from books which thou wast reserving for thy old age. Hasten then to the end which thou hast before thee, and throwing away idle hopes, come to thy own aid, if thou carest at all for thyself, while it is in thy power.
-- Marcus Aurelius
2. I don’t always get what I want. Despite this I continue to put myself out there. I remind myself, that should my enthusiasm wane, I can still move forward. Fact is, all-in-all my life is pretty good. Disappointment is part of life. But so are passion and kindness. It is not productive to lament the few frustrations. I keep walking on, one step at a time, enjoying the scenery and the activity around me. 3. My Horoscope Reads: Love interests who are ready to go the distance are more concerned with what's inside than what's outside. Long conversations and genuine interest in your opinions are two big clues that they're quality suitors.
4. Notice that my horoscope says nothing about someone actually showing up in my life who might be interested in me. Oh well....
5. I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest. -- W. B. Yeats 6. Tonight is the monthly Spelling Bee at the Rebar. I’m looking forward to it. Even though I don’t get up on stage, I still enjoy it when other people do. It’s pretty fun entertainment, and I get to hang out with good people. | | Sunday, December 3rd, 2006 | | 6:44 pm |
Thanksgiving Yes I had a pretty good Thanksgiving. I took a train down to Olympia and visted my brother and his family. We watched a couple movies on his VCR. My mother and I spent the night in a hotel and she took me up to Seattle the next day. It was the first Thanksgiving in a long time that my family was spread so far and wide and weren't able to have dinner together. My twin and sister are both in Europe. My oldest brother spent the holiday with his wife's family. But all in all it was pretty good. Mellow, low key, pleasant. | | 5:56 pm |
Whatever
I spent the day writing. At this rate my short story may be done by 2012. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|