Day 20 |
January 6, 1998 | Return |
1,803 Miles Today: 27 Miles |
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Roamer's
Rest RV Park Tualatin OR |
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| Bliss? What bliss? | The mythologist Joseph Campbell used to say, "Follow your bliss, and doors will open where there were never doors before." | ||
| I’d follow it, if I could find it. I’ve been looking in vain for twenty years. | |||
| Perhaps my ‘bliss’ is fretfully searching for a bliss. It doesn’t give me any joy, though. I feel aimless, without a goal. | |||
| "Change people’s relationship to digital information." That’s a worthwhile goal, isn’t it? To create conditions that put people in an intimate context-driven relationship with information. To enable people to discover what they need to know wherever they are. To become aware of new kinds of data out in the world, like being given X-ray specs. | |||
| But will this be good enough? | No. This is fine for a job, but not for a life. | ||
| Got really angry about all this. I really, deeply want to care about the projects I do. There are so many passionate people around, I deal with them every day. They seem to have such a well-spring of conviction, and such determination. Why the HELL do I have to be so shallow and cold? One could subtitle this trip "A failed search for a worthy life goal." Even a short-term objective for the next six months would be progress... Or finding someone or some group whose goals and aspirations I deeply share. | I’ve never been any good at finding role models or establishing group affiliations. Just don’t seem to have the knack of finding inspiring people. Though the folks writing for the Baffler seem to be a stimulating bunch of counter-culturalists. My favorite quote so far is from Thomas Frank’s cynical assessment of new capitalism: "If you’re unhappy with your lot, the Culture Trust tells us with each new tale of [Henry] Rollings [the rock ‘n’ roll musician], if you feel you must rebel, take your cue from the most disgruntled guy of all: Lift weights! Work hard! Meditate in your back yard! Root out the weaknesses deep down inside yourself! But whatever you do, don’t think about who controls power or how it is wielded." (Why Johnny can’t Dissent, Baffler #6, 1995, reprinted in Commodify Your Dissent | ||
| Spent half the day getting the rig an oil change. Ended up having to drive all the way to Beaverton. Also filled up with propane on the way back, so I won’t have to worry about keeping warm tonight. | Didn’t want a repeat of the late-night run on Day 14 | ||
| Then mostly working on the web journal. There’s a duality principle at work here: the more I work on the journal, the less I do/think that’s worth recording in the journal. | While Wittgenstein might be right that "an unexamined word is not worth using," it may be the case that an over-examined life is not worth living. | ||
| Cracked a bracket off a tooth (lower right 4) while absentmindedly brushing my teeth after lunch. I had been hoping to make it through this course of orthodontia without a re-bonding (unlike the experience in Oxford) – then this happens, four weeks before all the brackets finally come off. Four weeks! Damn. | |||