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the siege of krishnapur

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:06:29 -0700

Why do people insist on defending their ideas and opinions which such ferocity, as if defending honour itself? What could be easier to change than an idea?

J.G. Farrell, 1973

archive: seed

Fri, 29 May 2026 07:49:47 -0700

july 2020

You are contacted by another being.

It communicates by possessing you.

It seems it is attempting to find a way to talk to you.

It is a dizzying sensation. You feel faint.

You manage to grab something to eat, you are hungry. You stumble, with a pillow it seems, there tucked into your right arm, around the kitchen counter and into the study.

It is dark in here. You move to sit on the dark couch, Right Arm puts the pillow on the couch first, then takes the food. Meanwhile you manage to avoid the black cat, he seems grateful with a soft welcoming meow, but you can’t respond.

On to the possession then. Whatever it is, wherever it’s from, it doesn’t seem to possess any notion of patience.

You feel your nerves tingle briefly, a scanning feeling beginning at the back of your head and traveling down the spine, branching out and away through the arms, hands, torso, fingers, hips, crotch, legs, toes. It missed your brain, it seems.

Then the visions begin.

They are symbols. Many of them. They seem to race out towards you, hordes of them, very faint, very small, against a pulsing tie-dye backdrop. They shift suddenly, to an array of symbols, scrolling roughly left to right, at a rather crooked angle.

They are hieroglyphics.

No, it immediately responds to this thought by inserting a mouse cursor, four-leaf clover, an emoji of a 🏠, then it is too much, the rainbow backdrop pulses stronger, overwhelming, like it’s urgently delighted that you can understand it.

They are hieroglyphics, which means you need a Rosetta Stone or something, to figure out -

NO, it pulses once, briefly, angrily. The symbols continue, repetitive iconography, emoji strings playing on heart strings, trying to make you understand.

You send it a picture of her. You imagine her, brown hair straight wavy fair face little smile white teeth in her ridiculously bright bold red sweater and matching pants. She is sitting on a stool for some reason (she never does that), against a living green wall background. You imagine her sharply, completely, easily, and push forth your image through the symbology.

Everything changes again.

This is turning into quite the trial. Right Arm manages to stuff food in your mouth and you chew. Tastes like chocolate and peanut butter. Good old Right Arm.

Now the images return, more starkly this time, more defined and larger but still a little fuzzy, like prints from photographs developed by a novice. An aesthetic choice rather than a lack of skill.

An aesthetic choice. These are things it likes.

I LIKE JUMPING I LIKE DRAWING I LIKE CLIMBING I LIKE DANCING WHO AM I

Oh wow. That was unexpected.

I LIKE SINGING I LIKE SWEET GOOD I LIKE MY YELLOW BIKE

It’s your daughter.

I LIKE ACTING ON STAGE I LIKE PLAYING IN A BAND I LIKE PLANTING SEEDS

That’s not familiar to you. She’s only three, no way unless…

an image of the two of them, mother daughter, in bright red clothing, hands in the soils moist from a strong rain - that was today, wasn’t it -

PLANT THE SEED

…unless she’s from the future.

I LOVE YOU

This is too much, really. You struggle to disengage, and find no resistance, but a sensation does wash over and through your body, the departing warmth of an embrace.

You are in the study again. The couch supports your weight, the pillow supports your back. You feel tears welling in your left eye. Right Arm feeds you.

Your body begins to twitch lightly, sequentially, like each nerve bundle is going through it’s own wakeup routine. You discover a warm feeling on your thighs, the cat has moved to your lap. Your back hurts. Your bladder is full. The cat is dozing hard, but he’s awake. He’s counting on your caring instinct not to move him and get up. You live up to his expectations.

The sensation of communicating with another sentient being was strong. Your memories are fresh and vivid. It could have been a powerful subconscious message, a dream, but mysteries of origin aside it was powerful enough to pay attention, like a slap to the face.

Plant the seed.

More than routines, lessons, chores, more than just getting by. It takes more time, more effort, more persistence, to plant a seed and help it grow.

Your grip on the memories begins to fade, they are slippery little creatures, fuzzing in and out of existence like an old television struggling with a weak signal. You manage to retain the essence of the experience; you can still order them in time, that’s a plus. Your visual memory of the experience fades, but with concentrated effort you retain it and commit it to writing.

archive: napa

Fri, 29 May 2026 07:41:34 -0700

march 2021

well it took me long enough i suppose. 18 years ago i was possessed by an urge to climb mountains, hills whatever. i don’t need to conquer the tallest peaks, but at least those that are around me i wanted to see the top.

there was a hill behind a church that a couple of my friends found back in San Diego. You weren’t really allowed up there but no one was there to stop you. just like right now. 18 years later.

i recall a full moon one night i love driving cars that will let you turn their headlights off at night. i love driving over the light on the full moon with nothing else - pretty dangerous in retrospect but also pretty liberating. one of those things that teenage boys love to do pretending that they are men.

i reached the park that held this property behind the church. it was a small church, nothing special, a little playground for the kids running small daycare. gods i would kill for some daycare.

i parked my car in their parking lot, headlights off. and i started to cross the creek where my friends and i would gather and reflect and it reminded me of the woods in my backyard growing up in Georgia when i was 6 years old. i lived there from 4 to 9. you could just walk and start walking. no one was there to stop you - no boundaries, no fences.

i never quite reached the top of that hill that night. there was nothing there to stop me except myself. after some way up i grew scared. i believe i was afraid someone would come find me and tell me i wasn’t supposed to be there. i don’t think i was ever afraid of such a thing but when i was 13 we were illegally setting off fireworks and the cops came twice. once they gave us the benefit of the doubt. we lied and the next time they were pissed. i’m not sure what would have happened to us down there in the deep south if my mom hadn’t come through it just the right time and put on a show for the police.

in any case i stopped myself that night. i stopped and turned around and said someday i’ll come back for you. and i did come back and each time i did i felt like it wasn’t worth it any more. not sure why.

but here i am 18 years later on top of a hill near a cabin i rented. i don’t feel anxiety on my way up. it was much steeper actually, much harder to climb that dinky ass hill. i face the same doubts on my way up. are there mountain lions here? is there a tree that will fall on me? should i just stop and turn back now? but i pushed through that and i made it to the top of the hill. and i’m glad i did it.

there’s nothing really up here except for the view. it is at once remarkable and mundane. remarkable that no one else is up here, remarkable at the expanse that you can view. mundane in that every other spot on this ridge would give you the exact same view.

lulu

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:34:55 -0700

word

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 11:05:01 -0700

“In the beginning there was information. The word came later.” - Fred Dretske

infosphere

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 11:03:05 -0700

Most of the biosphere cannot see the infosphere; it is invisible, a parallel universe humming with ghostly inhabitants. But they are not ghosts to us - not anymore. We humans, alone among the earth’s organic creatures, live in both worlds at once. It is as though, having long coexisted with the unseen, we have begun to develop the needed extrasensory perception. We are aware of the many species of information. We name their types sardonically, as though to reassure ourselves that we understand: urban myths and zombie lies. We keep them alive in air-conditioned server farms. But we cannot own them. When a jingle lingers in our ears, or a fad turns fashion upside down, or a hoax dominates the global chatter for months and vanishes as swiftly as it came, who is master and who is slave?

James Gleick, The Information

gathering

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:38:34 -0800

“Man the food-gatherer reappears incongruously as information-gatherer. In this role, [digital] man is no less a nomad than his Paleolithic ancestors.”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964)

blame

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 11:04:25 -0700

“The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed.”

David Mitchell

chaos

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:37:01 -0800

On a philosophical level, [the phenomenon of chaos] struck me as an operational way to define free will, in a way that allowed you to reconcile free will with determinism. The system is deterministic, but you can’t say what it’s going to do next.

At the same time, I’d always felt that the important problems out there in the world had to do with the creation of organization, in life or intelligence. But how did you study that? I always felt that the spontaneous emergence of self-organization ought to be part of physics.

Here was one coin with two sides. Here was order, with randomness emerging, and then one step further away was randomness with its own underlying order.

Doyle Farmer, in Chaos by James Gleick

maturity

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 11:01:05 -0700

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.

How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give.

If I carry only grief, I’ll bend toward cynicism and despair.

If I have only gratitude, I’ll become saccharine and won’t develop much compassion for other people’s suffering.

Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.

Francis Weller

fern

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:13:02 -0800

travel

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 10:19:18 -0800

“Don’t just do something. Sit there!” - Zen proverb

I received the gift of a lovely New Yorker essay from a relative, which blessed me with this opportunity to reflect on and clarify my feelings towards travelling.[1] I was at first reminded of my time spent online dating. “I love to travel” became a clear signal to me to just move on! But why? That essay put words to some of my feelings that contributed to developing that heuristic.

First, the usage of travel for personality. As the article states, “I love to travel” is highly uninformative. Perhaps unfairly, I judged this statement (and to be clear, when unaccompanied by any expansion on the statement) to indicate a certain lack of self-awareness, or clear self-knowledge.

Second, the favoring of doing over being. This was for the profiles with photos in every particular location - except perhaps where I’m most likely to spend my time with said person! I think this derives from Platonic philosophy - “a man is measured by what he does” - and is a particular affliction of Westernized peoples. Not the kind of thinker I want to keep close by.

The essay speaks of “locomotive traveling”, and I am reminded of a tour I did 15 years ago through the American Southwest. I recall watching the sunrise in Monument Valley, yearning to lean into the connection between my body and the land, but being very much contained by the Navajo protocol. Keep to the road, tourist, then leave.

I complied. They knew what I did not yet understand: I came for an experience, they remain for the land.

It’s interesting to me to observe the correlation between imperialism and leisure travel. At least in Western history, we see the practice first arise in Roman times, only to fall during the Dark Ages, and resurface again in modern imperial Europe.[2] Due to the expense involved, leisure travel was restricted to nobility and royalty - only with the advent of modern transport infrastructure did such vacations become available to the masses.

Fast forward to today and it seems there is a distinction worth drawing - between travelling and the idea of travelling. Whether it’s a resort, a retreat, or some bespoke enlightened lodging situation - an experience is being created and sold in your mind as an idea of travelling. The empire of money and the colonization of the planet and its peoples facilitate this ideation. Capitalist salesmanship leans on storytelling to refine your idea into an experience. Time, artificially constrained by the social order, drives the efficient transfer of experience - and its price.

This pattern of conquer-then-consume doesn’t seem to me to be tied to Western imperialism, although that may be the flavor du jour. I can imagine any nobleman from any kingdom or empire performing similar acts of tourism - always removed, always at a distance. Even modern psychedelic tourism, born from the bowels of Burning Man, with all its promises of integrative and indigenous experiences, end up with strangers retreating in isolation, with ceremonies designed to meet their expectations.[3]

Even though on that old tour, I traveled to experience the beauty and strangeness of unfamiliar lands, this exactly was an act of doing. Like a Spaniard seeking gold, I had an story in my mind of what I wanted, and I went out and I found it.

It’s two months after my mother has passed when I encounter the grief.

A wildfire has swept through the largest grove of Joshua trees out in the Mojave National Preserve. Wildfires, sparked by dry lightning, are not uncommon to the area. The vegetation is rather sparse and damage is typically localized. However in recent generations, invasive cheatgrass has taken root here and spread, brought over the years by travelers and their vehicles. Grass fires accelerate and intensify the flames, creating conditions the Joshua trees simply cannot survive.

I step out of my car, eyes red, feet bare. The ground aches for water. The sky begs for sound.

Here there is no postcard to experience, no view to behold, no story to consume. There are lava tubes somewhere, maybe, for those who feel the need to see it. Otherwise it is hundreds of miles of desolation, dotted with sage brush, yucca trees, flash flood gullies, and the occasional faded map bolted to a shaded wooden frame. I traveled here with little agenda other than to experience this devastation, but nothing could have prepared me for its scale.

The land shakes me with a torrential grief. It is reality - simple, pure, and unfiltered by human perception.

The grasses thrive. The trees wither. There is nothing to do but sit, and bear witness.

Travel is fun, and also a class-restricted privilege.[4] Philosophically I agree with the essayist that the benefits of travelling are overstated. I am also partial to the mind of G.K. Chesterton and I am tickled to find agreement with him here.

But I don’t think the average tourist is guilty of believing in their travels as some virtuous means towards self-fulfillment. It more just seems like they are choosing a slightly different way to pass the time until they die. If you have the privilege, why not exercise it?

I think some clarifying questions are helpful in assessing your relationship to travel:

Are you traveling to escape your current life environment?
Are you traveling to accumulate experiences and stories?
Are you feeling called or summoned to a particular travel?
What else would you do if you did not embark on this travel?
Who else would you be if you never traveled again?

When answering these questions for myself I keep close verse 47 of the Tao Te Ching.[5] For myself I have found that unless my body feels summoned to a particular journey, the experience is likely to remain a shallow and ephemeral one. Knowing that awe can be experienced anytime, anywhere - why not here, now?

houses

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 21:10:41 -0800

Why do the houses stand
When they that built them are gone;
When remaineth even of one
That lived there and loved and planned
Not a face, not an eye, not a hand,
Only here and there a bone?
Why do the houses stand
When they who built them are gone?

Oft in the moonlighted land
When the day is overblown,
With happy memorial moan
Sweet ghosts in a loving band
Roam through the houses that stand–
For the builders are not gone.

George MacDonald

the bell jar

Sun, 07 Sep 2025 21:41:37 -0800

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.

One fig was a husband and a happy home and children,
and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,
and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor,
and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America,
and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila
and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions,
and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion,
and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death,
just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.
I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest,
and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black,
and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Fireplace (license)

time cat: japan (4/9)

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:57:46 -0800

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