Joel Dietz

Thy name is like a prayer an angel whispers…

Time passes quickly. I do not journal. I only work — and not particularly well. Thought patterns stitched together, overlap, and then become tangled together like so many cords, re-reading countless lines of codes to catch a single bug, also of my introduction. There is no one to blame here, there is on I myself and I, sitting in front of a computer screen for countless hours, occasionally thinking of the outdoors or striking a yogic pose. The financial flow is fine, but nothing else satisfies. I receive some minor recognition. I have new twitter followers, but deeper needs magnify even as deeper wounds become gaping. There is some time for reading in between, but it also is executed poorly. Mere skimming and the future seem likely to hold much more of it. Why graduate school? Why now? I prepare myself for an eternity of labor. Would Sisyphus care if he could not remember the day before?

The gods it seem, care for us enough to clear our memory before we start on a new day. And so I, jittery, embark on a new journey to nothing and nowhere with no hopes except for momentary bounty. Onward! It is my great cry, lifted upward and to whomever will listen. There are not many around. 

Despite this, I spend secret hours on the arts. Calligraphy lessons move at a snails pace. I do not improve and, were I to evaluate myself, I would get the lowest of grades. So many strokes diverging. There is, here at least, a right way to do things — and I am not doing it.

I scoff at the paper, at the teacher, at the example on the wall. I will do things my own way. This gets me nowhere.

In the end it is dollars and cents / this new renaissance.

Readers here may wish to note that I maintain two other blogs:

The Idiots (mostly interviews and essays)

and

d3developer (tech stuff)

Work brings constant stress and exhaustion. Minor to do items pile up and I live in the constant tyranny of the urgent, until some wave breaks over my fragile barrier and I am, for a moment, submerged, then, gasping for air, flailing and struggling to regain my place on the beachhead of life. For dollars and binary, code castles free of damsels in distress, and the only dragon the one inside, laughing at my efforts to beat the ocean’s constant fury, his own appetite cooled in the ocean. I cannot reach to hell and thus remain far from heaven; the mind always races and immediate, libidinous thoughts consume me as I tread water. I know only work, no rest; only combat, no lasting peace. 

Return from the Zen Center. There is only one thing left. Resurrection in every moment.