Hail, and well met I am new here and perplexing how I should proceed in this month's topic. I thought perhaps by sharing excerpts from this journal with you all that I came across (which led me here to your discussion group) that this month's topic might be best addressed. Forgive me if it doesn't meet the restrictions you have and I will understand if it is rejected. I have deleted any mention of who the author is. But I do believe their are those among you who knew him. I thought it was kind of dynamic and wish to share. Cory The Journal- selected excerpts: Dec. 19 Mia left yesterday saying she's had enough of my shit. What did she mean by that? I don't understand and she wouldn't talk about it. Didn't take her stuff, said she only needed some time to think and would make her decision soon. I got drunk last night and soaked all her blue-jeans in water and tied the legs in knots. This morning I'm thinking that maybe I shouldn't have done that but I cannot seem to get the knots undone now. Oh boy, is she going to be pissed when she sees that. Dec. 22 The hospital called today and said Dad had passed away during the night. Heart-broken... wish I would have been there. Dec. 25 Ambivalent feelings towards X-mas. I like the good feeling in the air but bad things always happen when I feel good. To tell the truth, I'd just as soon skip December altogether. Staying drunk all day, that's the plan. Dec. 26 Buried Dad today. God, I couldn't look at him laying in that casket without seeing myself there. He didn't look peaceful at all. Just worn out. Why is death so cruel? Why is life? Dec. 31 End of the old, start of the new. Gotta be better than last year. Went down and bought new pants for Mia after failing to undo the knots I tied in her old ones. Still haven't heard from her. Worried. Jan. 7 Gave notice today at work. Can't handle the constant yammering of my co-workers. Christ, its just the same thing over and over and over again until I just want to scream SHUT THE FUCK UP! What's wrong with me? Why can't I fit in anywhere? Jan. 16 Officially unemployed, once again. Got enough money stashed to last a couple months plus several pounds of high grade pot I grew last summer that I can sell. Should see me through until summer. Wanna be a writer but nothing I write comes out like I mean it to. Who's gonna pay me to write when I can't even speak my mind? Jan. 20 Heard from Mia, finally. She called from Tucson where she's staying with an aunt. Said she doesn't know when she's coming back, or even if she's coming back. Asked for money. Sent her $500 and told her she'd better get a job because I'm no longer working and that's the last money she'll see from me. She's officially pissed at me now. Feb. 2 Signed up with a discussion group about Robert M. Pirsig. Seems rather intriguing and I am looking forward to sharing my point of view with the others. Feb. 6 Why do words upset me so? After sending several messages to the discussion group I just joined, all I received were nasty replies or silence. What's wrong with me? Why can't I seem to get along like everyone else? Feb. 10 Received several apologies from the discussion group today and feel a little better. God, was I down about this stupid discussion group! All I've done the last few days is wonder why no one understands what I am trying to say? Nothings getting done around here. The house is a disaster, the cat's litter box is overflowing and all my laundryy is dirty. Dishes piled everywhere and trash is close to knee deep on the floor. Feb. 16 Went on a job interview today but now I'm feeling that I don't want it, even though it went very well and I am expecting a call back. Feb. 20 Turned down the job offer today. Don't know if I should have done that but my motivation seems to be slipping away, almost as if it were a thief in the night. Wondering why I was ever motivated in the first place. Always for someone else but never for me. And now there is no one else. March 4 Found out Mia raided the checking account and took my last $600. Rumors of someone else in her life. Guess its really over. I closed the account and opened a new one in my name only. I am so naive to have trusted her. March 15 Everyone in the discussion group either condemns me or praises me but no one seems to want to talk to me. Why? What am I saying that is unclear? Why can I see clarity in others writings and yet cannot convey it in my own? Am I the stupid one to think I could ever earn a living by writing? March 29 Been spending way too many hours on the net. Christ, it seems that is all I do any more. Haven't seen anyone in weeks other than the clerk at the gas station where I buy my cigarettes and the delivery boy who brings my pizza. Gotta break out of this malaise. April 7 Can't pay the mortgage this month. Gonna try to refinance the place and claim I am self-employed. Don't know if it will work but I have no other choices right now. April 16 The refinance worked and I am in good shape now until fall. Breaking out of my internet rut to do my pre-planting groundbreaking. Dropped out of the discussion group after getting frustrated with several especially obnoxious members. April 27 Can't stay away from the discussion group. Ideas are flowing in my mind all the time. Re-subscribed today and spent from morning till dusk writing several messages and getting stoned. May 5 Who am I kidding thinking I can be a writer? Only myself I suppose. May 7 Mia called today saying she thinks that she made a mistake by leaving. Is she just feeling depressed or does she really mean it? Should I get my hopes up that she's really coming back? God the place is a mess. It's gonna take a week just to get it ready to clean up. Promised to send her another $500. May 16 Some of the other members of the discussion group have corresponded with Robert Pirsig. I wonder why they would feel moved to do that when I myself do not. Christ, if I sat across from him at the dinner table I doubt we would say two words to each other. Yet there's definitely a connection there to his words. Why am I like this? Why can't I just be like everyone else? May 25 Called Mia today and a man answered the phone. I hung up without saying anything. Shocked and shakey-handed now. Wondering if I am the biggest goddamned fool ever born on this earth. Gonna get real drunk today. June 1 Planting is going well. Already have as many plants in the ground as I planted all last year. Developed a back-pack watering system to keep from lugging around a bucket of water all the time. Slipped a flexible 5 gallon water jug in a backpack and ran a hose from the nozzle. Man, I'm stylin' now. Ought to market it. June 14 Been very depressed and can't seem to shake it. Writing even has lost its glitter for me. All I do is sit in front of the TV and smoke dope. Watching movies over and over again until the acting seems to be just acting and all flavor is lost. But still I watch. June 21 The days will start getting shorter now and its time to do my serious planting. Wish I had a partner to share in all the work. I've got poison ivy all over my hands and my arms are all scratched up from briars. Plus my dick itches terribly since I always piss on the new plantings. Got poison ivy on it too from my hands. Bummer. And it takes me all day just to water the plants I already have in the ground. But that's only once a week. June 28 Talked to my brother about being partners but he refused. Grows his own and has spoken in the past about having partners but I guess he doesn't want me for one is what it boils down to. I am hurt but I didn't let on to him that I was. I guess I understand. I wouldn't want me for a partner either if I could help it. July 4 Back to writing now. Every waking minute that I am not with my plants. Days all run together and I can feel the season of summer blooming all around me as I walk to check on my plants. Life is good. July 14 Mia called today wanting more money. Got in a fight with her over who answered the phone when I last called. She claimed it was her friend's husband. I feel her lying though and pressed her about it. Shouldn't have done that I guess. She's not coming back. Hell, I wouldn't come back to me either. Sent her $500 because I felt guilty then realized the check is going to bounce. Out of money again. What am I going to do? Not just about the money. About my life. This rut I am in seems so deep that I can see stars way at the very top of it. I got no skills, no education, no career. All I've done my whole life is go from one menial job to another. And here I am close to 40 and it's all shit. All shit. Everything I have ever done is shit. I've let down everyone I have ever known in my life. Everyone. No wonder I am so alone. July 17 Something is happening. I cannot really put a finger on just precisely what it is, but I feel closer today to the Pirsig discussion group than I have in a long time. Actually since I've joined. Oddly its not directly because of the discussion group itself but rather because of certain other members who have written to me privately. These conversations are much more enjoyable than trying to break through the constant barrage of messages from all the others. Maybe there really are other out there who are like me. August 2 God, it's been a roller coaster ride the last couple weeks. Reading my last entry I can't believe how naive I was. I got served with divorce papers this morning, my hand shaking as I received them from the deputy sheriff who delivered them. And those people who I though might understand me in some fashion have turned out to be just like everyone else I've ever met. Full of themselves. Perhaps I am just like them too and only fooling myself into thinking I am any different. Money is short and I need $1000 for a lawyer now. Don't know what I am going to do so I just write and write the hours away. No job, no prospects for one. Motivation in that direction has completely subsided. Two days a week I water my plants and two days I plant more. Have over 400 out now. Looking at some serious trim time when harvest rolls around. But the deer will get at least 100 of those, they always do take about a quarter of the harvest. Gotta just hold out another couple months, that's all. August 22 I am so irritated with this stupid discussion group. Why, oh why did I ever think I could make myself understood to others? Christ, there's professors and executives and people with phd's there. What the hell was I thinking when I thought I could discuss Pirsig on a level playing field with these people? I got no clue how to do that. Why is this discussion group so important to me? Why don't I just drop out and leave them alone? Why do I keep going back? Oh God, I must be so ignorant looking to all of them and the ones who don't say so are only humoring me. Sept. 15 Took in my first mature plants today and I am happy. Already got that batch sold as soon as it dries. They cut off my electricity yesterday for non payment and I had to go next door to my neighbor and ask if I could run an extension cord from his house to mine. At least I have my computer and my tv plugged in. The hell with everything else. Sept. 21 Got a private e mail message from a man in Germany today concerning one of my posts to the discussion group. He told me how much it brightened his day and in doing so he brightened my own immeasurably. Now I know why I joined that stupid discussion group and even if I never write anything of value again in this or any other life, at least I've reached one person. I feel very good today about myself. Oct. 5 Got a call from Mia saying that she thinks the divorce is a mistake. I don't understand what she is doing to me. I dream her almost every night and then I wake up and realize she's not here. Sometimes it hits me in the middle of the day and I will go to the closet and smell her clothes still hanging there and she seems so close. Can't seem to shake this feeling of non-motivation. Maybe it's the dope being particularly good this year. Staying stoned from waking till passing out. Oct. 18 Money is rolling in. Made over $30,000 already and I have over 20 pounds left yet to sell at $3200 a pound. Investing in mutual funds and filling out my IRA. Wondering though if what I am doing is right? Clearly I am breaking the law of the land yet I am hurting no one, only providing a commodity for which others will pay handsomely and of their own free will. Where is the wrong in this? I can't see it. Oct. 31 Halloween. I keep my lights off so they don't bother me. Haven't left the house now in weeks. Just have everything delivered. Haven't dressed either. Just wander from bed to computer to Tv in my robe and back again to bed. Losing all track of days. Only know its Halloween by the little date on my computer. Means nothing at all to me any more. Nov. 9 Finally hired a lawyer and gave him a retainer. Decided to move and called Service-Master to clean the house. They charged me $1200 but hell, it was dirty. I can't stay here any more. Too many memories. Looking at a place in the country and I have cash money for anything up to $100,000 between the equity in the house and the money I have stashed away. No house payment will be nice. Nov. 21 My sister called and invited me to Thanksgiving dinner but I begged off. Can't be with other people right now. All I am doing is drinking again from morning to night. Why do I go through these endless cycles of repetitive self-destruction? Why do I push everyone away who tries to get close to me? Why do I treasure my solitude over all else in this world? God I am hung over today. Dec. 11 My mother died on this day thirty-some years ago. Can't seem to remember exactly what year that was now, '64, or was it '66? Should visit her grave I suppose and refresh my memory. Very depressed again as I am every December. I can feel something bad coming my way though I can't say exactly what it is yet. But it's coming. When I die it will be December. Just got to make it through this month and I will have another year ahead of me... Dec. 16 Depression has deepened though my drinking has stopped, for now. Too sick to continue. Nothing has any meaning, nothing, nothing. People call on the phone and I don't answer, knock at my door and I don't open it. My newspapers are piling up unread and I've dropped out of the discussion group altogether. This is the first time I've turned on the computer in days. God, I wish the sun would come out. Dec. 24 Christmas eve. Serious thoughts of suicide tonight. A quick slice of the wrist perhaps, or maybe just wrap a noose around my neck and lean forward until I pass out and die. It will be simple and easy. Nothing left to live for. But God, please let me make it through this night and maybe things will look brighter in the morning. END OF JOURNAL How does this relate to this months topic: "That's the whole thing: to obtain static and Dynamic Quality *simultaneously*. If you don't have the static patterns of scientific knowledge to build upon you're back with the cave man. But if you don't have the freedom to change those patterns you're blocked from any further growth." (Chapter 17, page 222, Bantam hard back edition.) "What does Pirsig mean here? What does it mean for a real live person to obtain both simultaneously?" I am not really to sure how the journal answers your questions. But I think that static quality is needed just as much as dynamic quality and that we don't have to try and obtain both. We already have both. What we need to do is to realize our potentials but to do that we need anchors that hold us firmly to reality and keep us away from anything too constructive or destructive to ourself. The middle path is the best path. Living with what and who we are. The journal tells a story of one man who lost his anchors one by one and slipped completely into dynamic reality, all the time trying to cling to static quality straws that floated all around him just out of grasp. Right to the end. That's the key to your answers I guess. Anchors that hold us in place when too much dynamic things happen in life. That's why families are important. And friends. And work. And love. To live both dynamically and statically is to live a full life and experience pain and sorrow and joy and happiness without letting them overcome your anchors to reality. Seeing it happen in real life and feeling and experiencing it is different than just conceiving it and talking about it and writing about it. Maybe that's why I have such a hard time coming up with a concrete and set-in-stone answer to this month's topic. I have tried though. What does this man's journal say to you about your own life? That's what I have been asking myself. Beginning this month's discussion Rocky talked of life and wondered how to be more dynamically involved with it. Despite the well-intentioned posts meant to help Rocky get his groove back, we all already have our groove. We don't have to obtain anything when we already have it. As long as we are alive, we have it. I hope I have answered your questions. Cory ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com MOQ.org - http://www.moq.org
