Notes - October 25
6 AM on a nearby pedestrian path, a homeless man gets off his bike, sniffles as he holds the bike up and moves toward a construction fence. He then vigorously throws the bike over the fence while screaming: “I’m so tired of Elon fucking me in the ass all night.” I witnessed this, too closely, during my early morning walk trying to escape “the world.”
I feel like a joke reading indie blogs on my shiny new iPhone. Half of the societal issues discussed are growth/econ related and the rest is cloud of mental health concerns ranging from loneliness to moral breakdown. All seem to be in some ways connected to the piece of hardware in my hands.
I’m now writing a lot more in the first person. It feels more honest and less pedantic. That said the “I” feels more and more loosely defined as I write. Although it goes against my parents education who often told me: “don’t talk about yourself”.
As a 90s French kid, the name Claude will never rhyme with super intelligent AI, nor with Debussy and Monet. Claude is a middle age neglected guy who reads the local newspaper while drinking an espresso and smoking cigarettes.
Parenting this month: I feel like a bird in a storm. Ugly crow or the brightest dove, it doesn’t matter.
I found much mercy in strangers eyes as I take my earplugs off to answer.
2 opposite long term health strategies seem common.
Older folks and most women seems believe than stretching their health capital by reducing burn is the most rational approach.
Younger and mostly men try to elevate their health hoping to get further by starting from a higher point. That’s the performance gospel, where gear and fine metrics make believe health and very long term outcomes are quantifiable.
Eventually both curves cross paths. One strategy is not an actual long term one. Gyms are odd places I can’t quite apprehend. I equally empathize with critics of joggers. The things we put our bodies through hoping to live longer are all so absurd. Which gives a lot of weight to the preservation strategy. One can’t defeat decay, but slow down is possible. At some point don’t we all get there?
9th winter in Coastal California: Shorts and sneakers or pants and sandals.
Some people have a dog to get them out of the house. I have a job to keep me in the house.
“if we continue to fail gracefully, perhaps we can make a positive impact in the future, and the chimera will transubstantiate into reality” Nicola Boullosa
The most interesting part of life is the one escaping concepts. That’s why I love Alan Watts and Ram Dass. And why I’m not thrilled spending most of my daily verbal quota talking about logistic or family gossip.
In a recent conversation, J mentioned that he is okay working from Japan, “vampire schedule” as he call it. Because popping in a konbini at 3am in the middle of Tokyo’s concert jungle and walking the streets at night is where he wants to be. “It’s a vibe thing” he closed on. I wholeheartedly agree that it’s worth great sacrifice to vibe with a place. For me it’s beyond a sense of belonging or a welcoming place, it’s ease being there in the moment with what I physically perceive.
I loved being a total alien in Tokyo. My current location provides everything I need. But it doesn’t hit that spot on that other level. I guess I can say I’m not vibing with it.
“Take a deep freaking breath dude” said a mom, aggressively while starring her toddler down.
I’ve had earplugs on for about 4 hours every day this month. I wear them all night already. It intuitively gets me more aware of internal processes. When immobile I feel my heart beats and hear most breaths.
I’ve been resuming meditation-esque stuff. Mostly attention training.
“For all it’s conveniences the modern age has left us on edge, unfulfilled”
Paraphrasing/decyphering Sam Harris distilling Sartre: the self is induced by being around other people. Thus without others there would be no reference point to shape a sense of identity. While this nicely supports the importance of personal identity as a social mechanism it leaves little hope to kill the ego as long as one is around civilization? This supports my “into the wild” - let’s move to Maine fantasies!
A remark from James Low about the choreography around spiritual masters, reinforcing their status and leaving them untouched and untouchable made me think of a similar point by Ram Dass. It’s easy(ier) to make grand claim about taking it all in when in such a position. Meanwhile we are all drowning in notifications, responsibilities, chores…
In the same talk he evokes how all the Tibetan lineages all come from secluded valleys. Time, isolation, and the remarkable toughness of the living condition primed those communities to build resilience leading to an incredible awareness of their minds. Something we, in the comfy west, are far from. We are the product of our environment, I hold this as a fundamental truth. Thus there is no way to meditate (or any other practice) myself to a state of “enlightenment” in such environment. At least if we keep the Tibetan Lamas as references. Hearing Sam Harris probing and describing his experience of spiritual seeker seems to consistently hammer this…
Every time I shave, the fresh air on my face and the extra youth credits spring the desire of more regular shindig. Every other days, become once a week, then 2 weeks and then gives up the idea. I don’t shave. I’ve never had this part of my identity.
I’m acceptably neglected when it comes to hair. Looking rough is very likely the counterpart of actually being fairly soft and physically unremarkable creature. I’m a skinny computer worker. There is absolutely no utility beyond style.
The beard is not part of my identity either. I don’t groom it. People who do weird me out. Like well manicured front yards, it looks jarring to me. If I had a front yard (which I often dream of) it would be wild.
Beard as social camouflage?
Unsurprisingly less work, especially side projects didn’t reduce anxiety, but it changed its nature. A worthy shift toward a familiar existentialism. I mostly noted it in my interactions with my wife. Poor soul got a barrage of attempts at voicing moral conundrums from guzzling Alan Watts archives.
The countless « voice to notes app » are making me smile. The voice to text technology is good, no doubt. The loss of the friction of typing, that extra effort creates a space ( arguably already rather small) for thinking. I frequently note to myself that not every thought needs to manifest. AI tech goes exactly against the mental discipline of leaving my thoughts go by.
Verbalizing stress is the main source of friction in my household.
“At sea without a paddle” is how I’m feeling when meditating. I surely fall into the description of what a beginner practice likely feels like: “at first you may be so scattered that you are trying to identify what is a thought, trying hard to focus”
I’m seduced by Dzogchen which see self improvement effort as rather pointless, suggesting instead to observe how all things come and go. It’s not only poetic but, to me, easier to contextualize.
I might have mistaken bad memory and carelessness for something rather positive. A sort of intuitive awareness that certain concepts are artificial and thus should not be taken seriously. My words and the primarily pragmatic context of modern life have left me sounding like a selfish and passive nihilist. I can and will find sharper images but the persistence and variants of this feeling I’m now grateful for.
I will lose myself 1000 times into lust, greed, doubt, fear, anxiety, anger etc and 1001 times I will awaken and get up and I won’t waste time on guilt and shame. I’ll just get on with it. That’s the secret of the whole game (Ram Dass) - that seems to be very commonly agreed by GenXers.
My thirties are about little victories and avoiding pitfalls.
I didn’t do much today but at least I didn’t break anything.
I’m amazed by how lost in thoughts I am. Despite this, here I am. If I extend this to most people, I can agree that the world at large is rather harmonious. At the same time, that also screams that there is a lot of room for improvement. Whether a this leads to gratitude or pity or whatever witty observation has little much weight but much humor. Most meditation content is fun noise in my earbuds. Good stuff, healthy vibrations perhaps. Noise nonetheless.
Every blip of awareness feels like this kind of thought experiment. I’m definitely missing the point. Sometimes humorously. Sometimes pathetically.
“I have uttered nonsense from the bathtub to the bathtub” - some zen master quoted by Alan Watts. It’s not only a beautifully absurd bit but having this stuck in my head while arguing about minutiae of modern household logistics is so perfectly infuriating, fantastic.
Got the flue shot and covid vaccine on a Saturday. The tiny one couldn’t sit still while filling the paperwork and waiting for the pharmacist. The lady saw that I was struggling and hurried. She stabbed me hard.
The night after the shots was long and laborious. Woke up and 3 and couldn’t cool down. Great meditation tho, lots of bodily sensations to observe.
What appeared as unacceptable neglect before having kids, now is empathetically understood and half forgiven.
After dropping my new iPhone 17 a few times and reading about the necessity of grips, I got a pop socket. I don’t pop it but the ridges add dimensions my fingers can hold on to. It’s fit well with my campaign of making the phone as unappealing as possible..
The narrow container of my website is just like me, lanky. Its simplicity is the byproduct of my lack of grand vision, and skills. I managed to channel my insecurities into my work and do something of it.
As a user, it’s very hard to refrain to critique apple Liquid Glass. That toggle animation is so upsettingly maximalist… amongst many others.
“I’d rather sleep in my car in California than have a dingy place of my own in Milwaukee” - a guy in line at my local grocery store.
Ahtoh called his website a retreat. I love that. My recent work on my own certainly follows that ethos. I’m turning a scrappy warehouse into a space for mindfulness — not with precise intent but by taking the time to look at things as they are and often trim a bunch.
Too pretentious to be a headline but rings true: My formula is doing the work, cultivating autonomy.
A large part of my writing on this blog is an attempt at sparing my wife. Thus if I had as much empathy for everyone I’d likely close shop.
— Published on 2025-11-01
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