Author Topic: Diary Writing  (Read 1942 times)

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Holden

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Diary Writing
« on: May 07, 2016, 05:52:00 pm »
Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate...but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime
-Kafka.
Mr.H,wrote in 2005:History hides behind the promise of a long weekend,its will to endure until the Saturday that will never come.

Just like you I am experimenting with diary writing,lets see how it turns out.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

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Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2016, 07:04:18 pm »
May I suggest thinking of your diary as a "laboratory record book" where your own brain, your own animal-creature-organism, is the subject under investigation.  Maybe you can reach the state of a detached observer.

The hardest thing to do is to eliminate the word "I".

"I" use this word constantly.  What is it?
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2016, 11:32:36 pm »
From my experience with jotting in notebooks, I would also suggest keeping a few notebooks simultaneously, keeping mathematical interests separate from literary or philosophical.  Of course, from what I have discerned from your interests, like your boy, HP Lovecraft, these areas may overlap with you.  I guess we'll have to wait and see how your notes unfold.

From COSMIC PESSIMISM

Again, I will type these out since the online (early version) edition doesn't have this section.   :-\

The Abyss of a Notebook

Nietzsche once lauded the value of the "incomplete thought" for philosophy.  If we were to take this up, perhaps the best place to look for incomplete thoughts would be in the notebooks of philosophers.  Nietzsche himself was a fastidious user of his notebooks ... <<< SNIP >>>

Schopenhauer, no less fastidious than Nietzsche, preferred to keep several notebooks going at once, notebooks of all sizes and types - octavo, quarto, folio, bound and unbound.  Some notebooks remained fixed on his desk at home, while others could be taken with him on walks, and still other notebooks were reserved for traveling.  And then there is Cioran, that gloomy prowler of the Latin Quarter, who was fond of the bright, multi-colored, spiral notebooks used by students. 

It's almost as if the notebook mitigates against the book, if the former is not, in the end, negated by the latter.  As Nietzsche notes, the incomplete thought "displays the most beautiful butterfly wings - and it slips away from us."  I'm assuming that Nietzsche distinguishes between the incomplete thought from the merely lazy thought - though I'm rarely able to do so myself.


I used to sneak small notepads into work.  I was obsessed.

Now, I have to say, I am writing much less since I spend so much of the day working through mathematics textbooks, but I am taking notes, and I keep separate notebooks for working through exercises.  At times I feel great peace doing this, especially when I reach a point where I am not rushing.  I spend most my time now with a pencil in my hand rather than a pen.

Maybe I am just going through a phase.
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #3 on: May 08, 2016, 02:04:26 pm »
From My Diary:

Junk Thoughts:
Mr H has inspired me to write in my diary everyday.I remember reading in his diary that its important to protect the mind from junk thoughts.
I confess that my mind is obsessed with many junk thoughts-about food,about sex & about Will-to-Power(German: der Wille zur Macht).
And writing in the diary would perhaps enable me to pour out my thoughts in black & white.

When I look into my core -I find nothing there..only darkness.My chance meeting with Mr.Hentrich has had a huge influence in my life.I have found a man-who is actually living the principles I admire.There are those who are insistent that I must marry & marry as soon as possible,but ofcourse I SHALL NEVER MARRY,even if it means going the CHE WAY,rebelling openly,I shall use all the stalling tactics & if the push comes to shove-I will rebel openly,but no matter what,I shall never marry.

To marry is to commit metaphysical suicide..
What will I do with a wife,a child when I can barely bear my own being.Junk thoughts about Trump swirling in my head.I must turn the Will against itself.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2016, 02:06:47 pm by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #4 on: October 11, 2020, 12:13:21 pm »
I am back to this method presently.  This may be related to my ressurrected practice of marching through the documentation of solving mathematics exercises with art pencil, then explaining in ink with pen ... often my interests in math spill into the "literature" (what I refer to my 'diary' as) - it contains the processing of my emotions before I could ever be able to even enjoy the higher faculties required for "working with" mathematical phenomena.

There is a daily cruel joke in the form of a question:  Why not math?  It turns out that life is one unpredictable mishap and disaster after another.  If we all had crystal balls we might drop dead from fright and anxiety or be paralyzed by panic.  It's best to reach a point where you embrace those rare hours for a cerebral existence as a creature who ENJOYS working within the abstract realm of mathematics.  Within that realm, one might embrace a consistency that can be comforting in an otherwise chaotic and irrational swamp of blood and guts.   :-X     ;)  (not to mention the wonderful bowel movements of all we emotionally mature, psychologically sophisticated creatures-made-of-tubes [flesh robots on a dead rock in the middle of nowhere])

I also process even the most subtle interactions which cause me distress, a disagreement with the female member of a couple of neighbors ... walking away without allowing her to suck me into an argument ... like the novel Journey to the End of the Night, where suddenly he was verbally and psychologically attacked by what he called "frustrated vaginas".  There are just certain women who are intrinsically repelled by, I think, my intellect or cerebral nature.  They wish to make me feel inadequate or "emotionally disturbed and manic" so as not to face to enormous gulf between my representation of the world and theirs.

So, such disturbing rupturings with the social fabric serve as opportunities to document our current Dostoyevskian "psychological observations" in our respective social encounters from the perspective of We, the protagonist who must struggle to remain on his own side at all times, no matter what.

There were what I imagined to be quite attractive and strong women characters in, say The Idiot, where she had repressed hidden feelings for Prince Myshkin, but she hated him outwardly for this.  Dostoevsky wrote before the institutionalization of psychology, which is what makes these contradictory characters so fascinating, I suppose.

If you can invoke your own brain to look upon and behold our/your current math texts and notebooks and diaries "in a sacred manner," then there is the evidence of an inner-directed life that is independent of social relationships.  This becomes your lifelong lifeboat in a river of darkness until we disappear into the void ... { }

There are also the daily misadventures of Maman to process.  Why not math?  Why not?  Because Maman has lost the keys to her car again.  This mother has taught me patience.  Dark low-grade science fiction dystopia. 

Moods ... it's all about the moods.  Think of the very mood one has to be in when one feels what is being written is worth exploring or analyzing.  Maybe those who don't handle liquor well are those whose nervous systems, especially the neo-cortex [frontal lobes], are more developed, or, to put it another way, Schopenhauer's way, those who enjoy their higher mental faculties on a regular basis throughout their lives, may become acutely alarmed upon witnessing the disintegration of their hand-eye coordination.  A diarist would be particularly SENSITIVE to the impacts of alcohol on the nervous system, since the ramifications have immediate consequences.

To pick up a pen and notebook as a way to process or attempt to articulate what one is experiencing as potentially overwhelming in the present moment.  This entails allowing the bad mood to settle in without self-deception.  Or one grabs the pen in a fit of enthusiasm.

To realize all one's reflections, written down or lost in the wind of the nonverbal and submicroscopic, will be dust in actual wind one day ... Can any one of us console another entity in the face of its existential predicament?  No, that power within must be attained by each of us, by hook or by crook.  May YOU, the reader, collect some blank notebooks to be seized upon one day when you have found a place to hide in seclusion and privacy ... preferably notebooks with no lines (unruled).
« Last Edit: October 11, 2020, 02:37:15 pm by Sticks and Stones »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #5 on: October 12, 2020, 03:29:53 pm »
I think hatred is far more common in our day to day lives than most people would like to admit.
In fact, I think, I could say that it is the default emotion which one feels towards the others. It might not always be in its extreme form.But its undertone is almost always there.

These days Pelagianism is everywhere. Augustine says that he observed a lot of children and the reason they do not go around murdering people is not because they do not want to,but because they are physically weak.The free-will debate is really puerile, I think anyone who honestly gives some thought to it can see it for himself that we have none.

What the antinatalists do not seem to understand is that they can preach as much as they like about the misery of existence and yet most people, would ,continue to reproduce.While I would in all probability continue to study mathematics,I would not like to set any goals for myself.
In a world like this one, the only goal worth having is to not have any.

The ancients, some of them, called a spade a spade.I think in the end all the logical systems breakdown and only eternal pessimism remains. Pessimism of Schopenhauer and Cioran.This world is full of suffering and cruelty and I do not seem to like it one bit. Not one bit.

I would like to explore Pascal as a pessimistic thinker. I would like to know what he has to say.
I cannot make head or tail of this existence.Schopenhauer's book  deserves to outsell the Bible. But of course that will never happen. Never.

Take care.

La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Holden

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2020, 02:57:07 pm »
Like your neighbour most people like to argue and try to win the argument.But they end up losing the friend.

I was thinking about the time when your mother brought you a Nietzsche book because the shopkeeper told her that's the closest thing to Schopenhauer with them.

Most of his adult life he suffers from many bodily ailments-he lacks not only Schopenhauer's constitution but also his fortune.

The last time he was employed was when he was about thirty four and then he almost only had his small pension to sustain him.

I see people here looking up some kind of God,some kind of meaning.

I have come to suspect that there might be no meaning at all.But we still need to eat bread and cheese( or pickle).

Karma, reincarnation etc. is all nonsense.All these so called spiritual masters know as much about the after life matters as a church mouse.

Buddha says he just teaches suffering and relief from suffering.

He might have gone too far.There might just be suffering.

Mr.Mosher shouts about suffering till he is hoarse-there might literally be nothing more to say in philosophy.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #7 on: March 30, 2021, 10:40:26 pm »
Someone recently told me that it is not a good idea to explore one's inner life in writing because such documents might be used against me.  I realized that I had basically stopped keeping track of day-to-day transformations sometime over the summer.   Even prior to this, the notes had become all-too-technical and "scholarly" ---

I may not even know my own heart.  I have to find out how I really feel.  This is not possible to do through communicating with others.  Other people can't tell me what I think and feel.   Since we human beings lie to ourselves, exploring our thoughts through writing might reveal to us that we do not think or feel the way we thought we did.   

What is the significance of verbal articulation?   What is the difference between recording oneself babbling and the act of writing down the bones?

Quote from: Samara O'Shea
Someone potentially reading a journal is one of the reasons many people don't keep them, and it is certainly a dangerous aspect of the craft. It is not, however, the most dangerous aspect. The most dangerous aspect is telling yourself something you didn't want to know. We, as human beings, lie to ourselves all the time. It's very strange and counter productive. We'll tell ourselves we like job when we don't. We'll tell ourselves we're in love with someone when we're not. We'll tell ourselves we aren't attracted to a person when we are. So to me a journal is that place to be unabashedly honest with yourself, and it's dangerous because you won't always like what you see. You'll look at your thoughts and say, "I don't actually think that do I?" You do and it's fine. Admittance is the first step in anything.

from The Dangers of Keeping a Journal.
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #8 on: March 30, 2021, 11:17:43 pm »
Quote from: Holden
I think hatred is far more common in our day to day lives than most people would like to admit.
In fact, I think, I could say that it is the default emotion which one feels towards the others. It might not always be in its extreme form.But its undertone is almost always there.

These days Pelagianism is everywhere. Augustine says that he observed a lot of children and the reason they do not go around murdering people is not because they do not want to,but because they are physically weak.The free-will debate is really puerile, I think anyone who honestly gives some thought to it can see it for himself that we have none.

Very well stated.   In the spirit of "Denial of Death," I would like to shed some light on this undertone of unspeakable hatred.  I have noticed it and have called it a plague of spiritual illness (or psychic illness, mental illness, etc).   It is the evil within us all, no?   When we do not get our way, this is a thwarting of the Will - and the very nature of this Will must be the Animal Being, the Beast that is our Creaturely Presence.   This animal being has been declared EVIL by the super-ego [society].

Maybe we need to accept that we are animals trapped in a world of [alphanumeric] language, which is itself alienated from the Natural World.   Our animal urges, hatreds, fears, anxieties are part of this Natural World.   Our angers and frustrations are the brute force of our impulses as organisms.  We are often at the mercy of a hypersensitive nervous system, victims of our very own sensory apparatus!

When we attempt to explain our experiential existence from within this world of language, we end up confined to dichotomies such as good and evil, soul and body, real and imaginary, heaven and hell, male and female, and savage and civilized, among others.   

There are few people to discuss the non-existence of Free Will with.   We do not choose what we will.   If another person has a base and brutal nature, all philosophical musings will be mocked and trampled under foot.   There are varying grades of Will, degrees of sensitivity and intellectual receptiveness.

Is it not more difficult to hate anyone knowing that they do not choose the grade of their will?   Creatures do not design their own temperaments, but are molded by their DNA and the ordeals of being born into this world of ours.
« Last Edit: March 31, 2021, 08:58:02 am by Sticks and Stones »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #9 on: April 11, 2023, 05:22:59 pm »
It is time to scribble again.

If I had a place of my own, I might invest in a Kindle Scribe!




Until then, a $3 blank notebook will have to suffice to invoke the deep and poetic Scholarly Mood.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2023, 11:26:08 am by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #10 on: May 09, 2023, 06:25:37 pm »
I referenced this thread to scribble down an exerpt:

The Abyss of a Notebook

Nietzsche once lauded the value of the "incomplete thought" for philosophy.  If we were to take this up, perhaps the best place to look for incomplete thoughts would be in the notebooks of philosophers.  Nietzsche himself was a fastidious user of his notebooks ... <<< SNIP >>>

Schopenhauer, no less fastidious than Nietzsche, preferred to keep several notebooks going at once, notebooks of all sizes and types - octavo, quarto, folio, bound and unbound.  Some notebooks remained fixed on his desk at home, while others could be taken with him on walks, and still other notebooks were reserved for traveling.  And then there is Cioran, that gloomy prowler of the Latin Quarter, who was fond of the bright, multi-colored, spiral notebooks used by students.

It's almost as if the notebook mitigates against the book, if the former is not, in the end, negated by the latter. 



As Nietzsche notes, the incomplete thought "displays the most beautiful butterfly wings - and it slips away from us."
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

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Re: Diary Writing
« Reply #11 on: May 17, 2023, 07:18:01 pm »
I am not sure where to place a reference to this next text, but I learned of it through my reading of Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life


The Inward Morning: A Philosophical Exploration in Journal Form
by Henry Bugbee
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~