Ornoth

Eighteen years ago, in one of my more sentimental moments, I blogged this:

This is what it's like to grow old.

I've lived my life thinking: while I'm young, I'll live it up. That way I'll have a huge collection of wonderful memories to relive when I get old, and can't do all those fun things anymore.

I guess I'm over the crest of that proverbial hill, because when I look back, I'm filled with hundreds upon hundreds of memories of my life.

I see now why old people feel isolated. It's not because they're alone; it's because they've lived an amazing, deeply touching novel that no one else will ever read.

So many people and places and events have touched my life, but no person will ever share the things I remember, the things that even today bring up deep feelings that toss me around like a toy boat toy boat toy boat.

Nearly two decades of life experience later, that image – of one’s life being a rich and meaningful story that no one else can ever fully appreciate – remains a powerful truth. That’s doubly so because most of our lives only persist within our own memories, locked within a single mind with no effective way to share them.

Don't Look Yet!

But all is not entirely lost. For many of us there are, in fact, a few precious, long-buried and boxed-up artifacts from those distant times. Fragments of the past that can be seen and touched, perhaps even photographed and shared.

So partly to share them with those of you who care, and partly just to honor the sacred memories of my life, today I begin what will probably be a long and ongoing new project: digging up and posting about some of the more interesting memorabilia that I’ve collected over six decades of living, laughing, loving, and adventuring.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey back through the times of my life. Maybe some of you will even see an item you recognize from our shared past. That would be delightful!

My plan is to share one item at a time, posting regularly, maybe once or twice a week. Photos will be accompanied by a brief writeup. Everything will be tagged “memorabilia”, and I’ve added a link to that growing collection of posts in my blog’s sidebar.

But the journey has already begun, in some sense. There are a handful of artifacts that I’ve already highlighted in past blogposts. So along with this introduction, I’ll begin by linking to those.

In vaguely descending order of their age, here are:

• Most of my professional business cards
• Several of my ID and driver’s license photos
• That time I ported my insult-generating computer program onto my cell phone, with speech synthesis
• My photo appearing on the cover of my art school’s brochure
• A friend’s painting that used to hang over the Sapient Corp. reception desk
• A newspaper article about a dumptruck tipping over backward on Liscomb Street in Worcester MA, which I found while interviewing at MediQual, my first post-college employer
• My collegiate mainframe assembler language textbook
• A fake Neal Peart $20 bill dumped on the crowd during Rush’s appearance in Portland, ME on their “Power Windows” tour
• PDF copies of the two-issue literary journal I edited for the Tolkien fandom group I founded as a high schooler
• A cassette of a song someone wrote for the same Tolkien fandom group
• Some odd items my mother left after her passing, including the surgical forceps she used as cooking tongs and one of the cutest family photos we have
• A poem typed on a recipe card by my mother, anticipating her death
• One of my typically offbeat childhood creative projects saved by my family

I’ll leave you with those for now, but you can look forward to lots more, as I begin this new series of postings. I’m certain I’ll enjoy it, and I hope you do, as well.

I joined LJ six years ago, on February 16, 2002.

It’s kind of amusing that my fourth and fifth posts, on February 24th 2002, discussed the first steps I took on the long path of philosophical inquiry I’ve been on in the years since. So this journal is all bound up with my review of my previous Existential beliefs, a survey of the overall philosophical landscape, and my adventures in Theravada Buddhism.

Arguably my biggest discovery along the way was the commonalities between Existential and Buddhist thought. Which makes it odd that only now, six years later, I recognized another very basic tenet those two philosophical systems share: sensualism.

A key Buddhist view is to experience the fullness of life in the present moment by maintaining one’s focus on the bodily sensations like touch, sound, and smell, and to rein in discursive thought like fearing and planning about the future, as well as reminiscing about the past. To actually experience your life requires you to live in full sensory perception of each moment of “now”, as it arises and passes away. Anything else is a distraction from what is most vital, in both senses of the word (i.e. both “essential” and “characteristic of living beings”). So Buddhism promotes a certain kind of sensualism.

Existentialism, with its rejection of theism and focus on the individual, also puts a lot of stock in sensualism. The best example that leaps to mind is from albert Camus’ “L’étranger”, which describes the blinding heat of a North African beach and its effect upon the protagonist. Meursault is overcome by the glare of the sun, which drives him to shoot a friend’s rival. He is unmoved by major events in his life, and he is only really present for the more sensory experiences of sex and swimming.

By the way, the irony is not lost on me that this revelation came to me as I sat on a tropical beach this morning.

However, be careful about that word “sensualism”. Americans usually use the word to refer to someone who is a thrill-seeker, searching out ever more extreme sensory input. The sensualism of Buddhism and Existentialism is not so radical. Instead, it’s the simple and easy act of being present to all your sensory input at each moment of “now”, rather than spending those precious moments thinking about the past or the future. We can all recognize and appreciate the silhouette of a tree or the sound of crashing surf or the smell of breakfast in the morning. The essence of life isn’t to be found in manipulating abstract concepts with our minds, but in sensing, noting, and fully experiencing the beauty of the world around us, in every moment of our lives, including even the most mundane.