Misgivings

I had misgivings about posting yesterday's essay about sharpening comprehension and intuition via winnowing.

An epidemic has arisen out of isolation and narcissism stoked via the unholy trinity of devices, social media, and COVID quarantine: we prioritize our gut impressions, our flip assumptions, and our baseless conjecture above all else.

So a superficial read of my posting might make people think I'm urging everyone to trust their visceral impulses even more.

The world is not complex or subtle or surprising. You're fully on top of it, standing triumphantly astride the landscape, so stand confident, eschew subtlety, and go with your gut!

No. None of that. There is a vast difference between 1. Cursory dismissal of subtlety and surprise while brutishly elevating your ditzy mental noise, and 2. Canny, sensitive pruning of irrelevant choices in order to escape a state of confusion.

But even having explained this, the brutish will read my essay and shout "EXACTLY!"

Showing Up Is Literally Everything

At this point I could sustain myself intellectually by playing Mah Jong with previous postings.

This...explains this

People "don't do anything" because "showing up" is the pinnacle. Presence. Parsing. Attention-paying. That's our contribution. That's our "doing."


In response to an embedded question in my previous posting, people don't hit the "like" button on YouTube videos because, for Christ's sake, they've already shown up and did the thing. They watched it.

I have a friend who's a huge fan of indie music. He goes to gigs every night. And he never, ever claps.

Belabored Serendipity

I've made critical improvements to my recent posting on Serendipity.

I can't understand how I could have published it when it was still so blurry, but blurriness doesn't look blurry until you've thought of a sharper way. By the same token, the photos I took with my iPhone 5 look comically bad, though they seemed awesome at the time.

It's not actually so difficult to come up with fresh and credible observations, connections, and explanations. I've been explaining this as one of my themes, outlining how we fritter away attention and creativity on self-defeating whims (see postings tagged "Creativity", but start low, not with the more recent). It's also not hard for me to write clearly and entertainingly, after 35 years of professional experience. But it's really hard to introduce a fresh thought and make it land for readers. For starters, you need to judge whether it will actually land or not, which is like stepping into a cognitive house of mirrors.

I've been using chatGPT to poke me when I'm foggy or tedious. It doesn't fix stuff, it just points to problems, keeping me on my toes. But a chatbot learns faster than a human, so at this point it can see through my fog—and to my essential point—too easily. It's like the smart minder of a babbling idiot, discerning bright gist even from drooly mumblings.

This process never gets easier. Which is weird, because I'm mostly improving. My insight has sharpened and grown more fertile, and my writing skills continue to hone. But the two must struggle to keep pace with each other, which feels pretty vicious circle-ish. Plus, my cosmic background fogginess increases with age, layering in another unknowable fog factor, as I grow too foggy to notice my fog. My kingdom for a reliable fog detector!

But, hey, the venture feels like a fitting Zen art, so here I am. I proudly declare my foggy essay on serendipity newly razor sharp. To me, anyway. You? You might find it totally foggy. And next week it may seem a turd to me as well. And so it goes.

Addendum

I've added a new closer to yesterday's posting, "Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes".

Proof of Concept

If you've been reading this Slog for some time, and want to check whether it's benefited you in any tangible way, watch this 2 minute Instagram video of Ezra Klein explaining something that lots of people find surprising and mysterious. A new way of parsing people's inner workings.

Maybe it won't feel quite so shocking and mysterious for you. See if you have a slightly shrewder understanding of the basis for this than your average Joe.

Secular Zen with Bourgeois Teeth

A section of my recent posting, "Hell in a Chaise", was bugging me, so I edited it. It now reads:

Put a rich person in a luxurious chaise longue before a million dollar view, wave palm fronds so he's not too warm, adjust his umbrella so it's just sunny enough, swathe him in tanning lotion because his dermatologist says he's extra susceptible, massage his feet, ply him with snacks and cooling drinks, and attend to every last desire, fear, preference, and whimsy—and he'll torture himself over that awful thing his third grade teacher said to him once. He'll dig into his bag of go-to bitter lozenges to find some way to ballast his happiness.

Let his glass remain empty for a moment or two, and he’ll find it even easier to reframe himself into Hell. There are myriad routes to misery when non-delight parses as persecution.

I asked ChatGPT to proofread, and noted that that final sentence was a modern take on the Hsin Hsin Ming (aka Verses on the Faith Mind by The 3rd Zen Patriarch, Sengstau).

It agreed, noting that my version is "more culturally fluent in neurosis." I was, it decided, offering "Secular Zen with Bourgeois Teeth," which I said I'd use when people ask me what I write about ("Oh, you know, secular Zen with bourgeois teeth, etc.")

The chatbot suggested tagging on "also: tacos" for a complete description of what I do.

I couldn't argue.

Contemplation in 2025

I sometimes hear from readers who figure that there's something wrong, either with me or them, because they can't easily pick up my gist, and must reread posts.

Either the problem's on my side—because I'm convoluting otherwise simple ideas (I'm not), or I'm just too "brainy" (that might be true if these ideas came easily to me, but I'm a normal guy who thinks long and hard)—or the problem's their's, for being foggily unable to connect as easily as they do with magazine articles and typical blog posts.

Neither is true.

Writers these days aim for easy digestibility above all. Like mama birds, they pre-chew everything to vomit down readers' gullets, terrified by their knowledge of how finicky folks are about unprocessed chunks. For years, I was one of the most easily digestible of writers. I don't regret it, it was fun, and I'm proud of my output (read some here).

But notions and insights percolate that do not lend themselves to glib premastication. Readers must chew a bit on writing which requires—and hopefully rewards—multiple re-readings. In 2025, that's a shocking ask. But while mental exercise isn't for everyone/anyone (super smart people get particularly frustrated when their powerful minds can't effortlessly Hoover everything up on the first pass), a few holdouts like me still demand it. Substance has no economic or aesthetic value in 2025, but it pings my Golden Rule. As a reader, I'd love this stuff.

I'm constantly bombarded by gooey glibness—the same ideas, the same buzzwords, the same framings with just a slight tilt to make it the writer's own. I can go weeks or months without seeing a single fresh idea. The Slog is mostly fresh ideas, and fresh ideas don't swallow easily. Re-reading is necessary.

I've re-read all the postings in the left sidebar multiple times, because I write to firm up nebulous intuition into more solid ideas and to try to connect them. Each time I reread, it firms up and connects better, propelling me toward new epiphanies and connections. I've been doing exactly what you've hopefully been doing - chewing on these ideas. The necessity of doing so is not a bug, it's a feature. It's not that I'm smart, or that you're dumb. It's that contemplation, while a sorely underused faculty, remains an option (for both of us!).

I addressed this seven years ago in a posting called "Cognitive Lozenges", noting that "these postings are cognitive lozenges which, by design, impede speedy absorption (by, for example, forcing you to unpack phrases like "cognitive lozenges"). The ideas that absorb me are counterintuitive and nuanced, and while I always leave a breadcrumb trail, I choose not to spoon-feed (having worked as a professional spoon-feeder for years). I want you to work it all through, as I have, and maybe go further than I could."

About Me

Hello future world. I'm back-dating this posting so no one presently notices.

No one in my life has a clear or full perspective on me. Not because I'm mysterious, but because people view each other as two-dimensional cartoons (I say this not with clenched bitterness but with a light sigh of blithe acceptance). So as you meet me within these writings, you'll come as close as anyone has ever come.

I've known love and friendship, but always thin-sliced and sandboxed (due to the realities of human purview). So anyone professing to offer insight about me is bullshitting. Again: nobody knows.

This Slog is a map of my brain. Looking beyond it for detail and color, you'll be poorly nourished. The truth is that I wasn't much of anyone. As a karma yogi, I gamely lost myself in the task. Particularly this task in which you presently steep.

This Slog is me.

All the Marbles

If you've noticed that my writing's been getting better, this is, per my trademark contrarianism, actually a sign that my mind is going.

I'm getting older and no one in my family ever enjoyed noteworthy marble retention. So I've been compensating in two ways:

1. I'm trying harder than ever. Readers often assume that I dash this stuff off, which is both extremely flattering and completely maddening (I work like the house is on fire). But now I'm squeezing every last drop of juice from the grapes with extra purpose.

2. I've found assistance. I'm using ChatGPT to coax me through an extra few dozen drafts. I've found that the problem with mental fog is not inefficiency. Writing, after all, is performed out of time, so I can go as slowly as I'd like and you'll never know! The problem is that middling drafts strike me as finished. So the chatbot kicks me into gear by rooting out sloppy incoherence like a truffle dog.

I'm not being supplanted. The chatbot doesn't actually write anything for me...with one notable recent exception. That fantastic closing line on my last posting ("We're drowning in certainty and starved for magic") was 100% ChatGPT, whom I cursed with ample venom for having coughed up a line too great to ignore!

Corrected Shoulder Posting

I have rearranged the ordering of yesterday's posting, "Self-Healing Shoulder and Arm Arthritis". I realized I'd put some of the harder moves first, burying the very easy moves that provide useful quick relief.

I've put the easy stuff first.

I've Cruelly Deprived You of Food Porn

I've been posting an ongoing series on Facebook: photo essays of nothing-special, non-aspirational neighborhood meals in Setúbal, Portugal - with a strong emphasis on baked apples. It's pretty much "What Jim Had For Lunch Last Week", with wry running commentary. Catch up via links below.

October 18, 2024
October 25, 2024
November 3, 2024
November 12, 2024
November 13, 2024
December 1, 2024

Why am I posting this stuff there and not here? To explain, I need to tell a story of heights I cannot scale.

In a previous century, I wrote (as part of a weekly diary for Slate) about the closing week of wonderful Bo restaurant, a labor-of-love operated single-handedly by a feisty super-talented Korean woman named Maria who'd worked in fancy restaurants as a pastry chef but wanted to serve traditional Korean food in a cozy Queens storefront. She was the darling of food critics and of Chowhound's early years, but hardly anyone showed up.

I've experienced the death throes of thousands of restaurants. Normally, they turn glum and hapless. You'd think they'd be glad to see a customer, but, as you enter the dining room, you can feel the mental calculation: "This makes no real difference." Food goes downhill and servers bare their fangs. You lose your enthusiasm and stop coming as the circle turns vicious.

Maria, however, ran through the tape. The more hopeless it got, the better she cooked, and her gratitude to her small cadre of loyal customers only increased. As recounted in the link above, she walked me out to my car after my final meal on her final night, consoling me in my disconsolation. That's strength.


This Slog has been an abject failure, for a variety of reasons I've offered over the years. I have a long acquaintanceship with rejection (Chowhound's brief acclaim was a fluke), so I'm no stranger to the impulse to keep improving in the face of shunning (even when it's counterproductive because the problem all along was that you were too far ahead). I once explained the mindset:

However good you are now, get way way better, and then, when you're certain you're good enough, get way way better still. And then get better. Finally, realize you absolutely suck and triple it.

A vicious circle of rejection can thus provoke a virtuous circle of improvement. In the spirit of The Red Shoes, geometric progression can hoist things so far up the curve of declining results that a dimwitted trombonist/food critic might somehow (I can't take credit because it was mostly epiphany) conjure up fresh and credible explanations for most of the long-standing mysteries (human happiness, theology, cosmology, art, creativity, messiahs, god, autism, addiction, depression (here and here) spirituality, self-destructiveness, art, etc).

So that part was good, I guess, but, ultimately I've proven to lack Maria's strength of character. I haven't run through the tape; haven't shown diehards proper gratitude. I know many of you are here for the sporadic food content, but I've been posting it to Facebook without bothering to copy it over here for the tiny clique of readers who, in many cases, have followed me for years. I am the bitter idiot waiter who scowls at the good guys because there aren't enough of them. I am, alas, no Maria.


I have, though, at least turned out to be a Walter, despite lack of appreciation for the bubblegum (come to think of it, most of the kids just grabbed the gum and sullenly walked back to their seats, oblivious to the gesture and effort from this sweet old guy).

Check Your Tailwind

I added this TL;DR ( "too long; didn't read") atop my recent posting "The Banality of Two Prominent Miracles":


The remarkable thing about declining to generate a 900mph headwind
is that you find yourself riding a 900mph tailwind.

And that's cause for enjoyment,
but not glory-basking.

The Creative Caveman

I redid last week's posting on Jealousy. When I posted it, it seemed clearly written. But after setting it aside for a day, I realized it was a jumbled mess.

I offer fresh connections, explanations, perspectives, and insights here, at least on good days. Credible ones, too...usually. Perhaps not always air-tight or fully-baked, but that would be asking too much. I imagine that fresh credible ideas are interesting and worth consideration, if I make it a good read. That part is essential. If it turns out blurry (a writer can't always tell!), that's a problem, even if the ideas are strong. Here's why:

We're not built to swallow fresh ideas and perspectives. Our tribal, conformist minds struggle to ingest that sort of thing. A caveman or two in each tribe was gifted with the slippery ribbon of human creativity, but evolutionary adaptation ensured that the others would resist endless efforts to reinvent and reframe sloth hunting and tool-making.

The gang might have appreciated a couple of Herbie's early hits - e.g. his clever trick for rain-catching - but inevitably would come to ignore his exhilarated flow of preposterous, annoying eurekas. They were, after all, busy, with sloths to hunt and tools to make.

Novel thinking is an irritant (because it doesn't swallow easily; we need to apply limited assets of effort and concentration) and a distraction (who has time to entertain this crap?). We're built to favor familiar thinking so we can get on with it. At most, we might consider a fresh rewording of some familiar message.

Fortunately, truly fresh ideas, explanations, and connections are exceptionally rare. How often do we encounter such things? Step back a light year or two and you'll notice there's little new under the sun. Just incremental retreads, with, at most, an enticing new angle on the familiar.

It bores me terribly. So I use my writing skills, honed from decades spent coaxing bologna sandwich eaters to venture out for Cubanos, to make the swallowing part easier; to make my exhilarated eureka flow (EEF) worth the effort and concentration of entertaining such crap. I strive to be a more entertaining Herbie.

But when it fails, yikes.

Surgery and Noodles and Indulgent Self-Dramatization

A couple of postings ago, I said:

I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.

How did it feel? Well, in the aftermath it felt, as it always does (which is why people need to chain smoke this stuff) tacky and insufficient and fast-fading. And the dramatic arc-building and poignant complaining left me feeling like crap for a couple of days. I foolishly wrote myself - framed myself - into melodrama. I cocked up a whole story for myself to feel a part of, which is what I used to do years ago, in my misery, before I learned to opt out of dramatization and got real.

What's really going to happen? I'll have the surgery, and it'll suck, and then it'll get better, and the noodles will be awesome and the luxe flying will be a mild tickle and then something else will suck and get better. We're raindrops slowly working down windows, not heroic protagonists.

I'm not ashamed to publicly confess my backsliding and foolishness. Being agile about framing doesn't mean I always choose perfectly. If I can catch myself within two or three days, that's viable. Just so long as I don't spend decades or lifetimes steeped in nonsense!

The Relish of Freddie Miles

I added some key points to yesterday's posting, "Be Freddie Miles". Here's the current version of the paragraph, after the addition:

Most of us collapse, for no good reason, into an unappealing off-the-rack bit/type/cartoon. Consciously or not, we bought a ticket and then we took the ride. But same for anyone like me who decided to remain an earnest, unaffected eleven year old. No points are awarded for that. Freddie Miles is doing it right. If the world compels you to be a cartoon cut-out character serving other people's narcisissistic mental contrivances, at least lean into it. Relish it. And force the card.

Reminding You What to Forget

Earlier this week, I explained an effective technique for forgetting. A couple of readers wrote in to ask for examples. What sorts of things might a person want to forget?

My thoughts:

1. I want your life. Seriously. I want a cranium stocked with nothing but brownies and puppies and lazy summer days. Wow.

2. Perhaps I should have rounded out the essay with examples. The two big Slog complaints are: a. Explain more thoroughly! and b. Nobody wants to read through all that verbiage! So I try to be terse. And take pains to make things super-readable and entertaining (once a party-thrower, always a party-thrower). But, still, it's too damned wordy and too skimpily-explained. Other writers offer snarky epithets and memes, which swallow effortlessly and require no explanation. Why can't I be more like them?

3. Ok, here are your examples:

a. Driving alone, you find yourself mentally re-litigating some ancient argument. You want to let it go, but it keeps popping back up.

b. Taking a walk in a lovely park, your mind drifts to, consecutively, the car mechanic who ripped you off, the fact that you're fat, DONALD TRUMP, the fact that you're fat, and a montage of more productive things you should be doing.

c. You feel a sense of dread, but can't quite pin it down. This dread magnetically exhumes negative memories, feelings and associations, and you feel hopeless to cope with this influx.

e. You can't get anything done because your mind keeps flashing back to that awful thing that awful person said.

f. Negotiating a tricky situation, you undermine your self confidence by referencing previous failure.

g. Anything currently making you worried, sad, or stressed that can not be productively handled in the current moment. Any mental scab you feel compelled to pick at. The persistent echos of the last bad thing that happened.

As each arises, delegate. To whomever/whatever. With real heft. Take it seriously! Anything that pops up (if, and only if, it's not something you need to drop everything to deal with presently) can be handed off to some stable, established whomever/whatever. God. Your late grandpa. Your guardian angel. The labrador retriever you grew up with. The toy orangutan on your desk back home.

And as new ones arise (they clump, as you know!), do the same. Keep piling tasks upon your tireless and devoted delegatee.

Added Link

I added a new link to my previous posting, "Pity Parties" - namely, from the term "karma yoga" near the bottom.

While I frequently toss off the term, or dance around it (here are all such postings in reverse chronological order), I often forget that I once did a decent job of explaining it.

As for "karma" itself, yeesh. What a task to try to cut through all the absurd misconception and misuse of the term. I've heard respected swamis yammer on about karma without ever getting anywhere. But here's my uncharacteristically terse effort. See what you think!


A postscript: if you read my definition of karma and my explanation of karma yoga, you might very well fail to see a direct link between the two. In fact, I'd be quite surprised if you put it all together. It took me decades to bridge that gap, even with a strong yoga practice and an early understanding of karma. The practice of karma yoga involves unfolding the paradoxical connection between action and surrender. It's the most puzzling puzzle there is, and intellectual solutions are worthless. You need to personally experience it, by "letting go and letting god (or whomever/whatever)" WHILE YOU "try to do something worthwhile regardless of whether anyone gives a crap". It's a rough ride because each of those things is a bit of a shlep. If only that guy had accepted the tongs, I'd have been spared the effort.

Messiah Addendum

I added a new ending to my posting analyzing the potential frustrations of would-be messiahs, "You Can Be The Messiah".

Echo Echo

I mistakenly posted an old draft of "Echo", the posting wherein ChatGPT writes me a story. It's been corrected.

Prose and Poetry

I don't read a ton of poetry, though I've written some (this one is my fave). But I recently enjoyed this poem, which I recommend (note: you'll need to turn the page, so to speak).

It reminded me of how poets, the lucky bastards, are released from responsibility to fill it all in; to connect all the dots; to support their statements and explain every iota. They're free to flout linearity to forge an effect - a musical, rhythmic wash of intimation - far more important than any literal takeaway. They illuminate puzzles without always solving them. That's the difference of poetry.

The main criticism of this Slog - from others and also from myself - is that I often fail to fill it all in; to connect the dots; to directly explain every iota. I flout linearity to forge an effect; a musical, rhythmic wash of intimation. I illuminate puzzles without always solving them.

And this only seems odd because (yet another example of "being" versus "seeming", aka the hollowness of Form) I happen to write the prosiest of prose, gurgling with goofy vernacular informality. Every last phoneme hollers "Not Poetry!!!" Rarely do I offer the haughty throat-clearing and affected tenor which signal readers to sit up straight and ingest the poem.