The Brothers Karamazov

A hundred and fifty years after being published The Brothers Karamazov feels as relevant as ever. It’s an incredible mirror held up to the human soul that captures our incredible capacity for conflict, suffering, and love. Dostoevsky is so good at being patient; slowly layering scenes in such a way that the characters and story feels as true as reality itself. The classics seem to be so because they hold great insight into humanity that persists across time and space. The Brothers Karamazov grapples with multiple truths - clearly the capstone output of an extremely difficult life. Reading it today I was struck by how it puts its finger, perhaps incidentally, on the question of masculinity; namely what masculinity is and what role it plays in the modern world.

One of the ideas that Dostoevsky investigates is the duality of self: the “base” and “higher” selves. All three of the brothers have some awareness of their own baseness as “sensualists” inherited from their father. In the book it’s self-labeled the Karamazov depravity. Indeed, the novel in a way is an investigation of the different ways that this baseness manifests and conflicts with higher selves. Dmitri is perhaps the most directly in struggle with his base desires of sensuality, conflict, and sadism. Ivan represents the intellect, struggling with how the philosophy of the higher self can reconcile the suffering of the world. Alyosha, as the hero, represents faith and is able to sit with the contradiction between the two selves and still move forward with love.

The Duality of Self

I think this explicit categorization of the two selves is a valuable framework for grappling with what it means to be a man. What does it mean to be a man, versus a boy, or a woman, in the absence of socialized gender norms? One simple way to slice it is: being a man means integrating the various drives fueled by testosterone and the base self congruently with the higher self. Of course there is a bell curve to any population - but I think it’s clear that a base self of testosterone fuels aggression, competition, desire, and pride. The most cursory of glances through history shows men’s capacity for violence and depravity, and also for great bravery and action. This current runs through all of us.1

Furthermore, integration means recognizing that these attributes are not inherently bad -that despite pushback in the recent years, aggression, competition, desire, and pride can be extremely valuable- and that the danger is when these attributes dominate over the higher self. And importantly, it is recognizing that suppressing these natural inclinations results in repression, internalized guilt, derealization, disempowerment, and a relegation of desire and power to kink (see: Existential Kink by Dr. Carolyn Elliott, Jungs concept of The Shadow, etc). The goal is integration. In other words, neither fall slave to your base self and become an animal, nor suppress it and become a stiff (or in Gen Z speak, a soyboy beta cuck).

Instead recognize and value these attributes as real, and channel them in conversation with the higher self. I think that all too often what we hold up as an ideal tends to swing in one direction or the other, particularly online.2

Present Day

This duality of self is not a new concept. Two examples that come to mind are Steinbeck’s investigation through Caleb in East of Eden, or Harry Haller’s initial self-conception in Steppenwolfe.3 Or think of Freud’s concept of the id, ego and superego.4 Why does this framework seem to be deemphasized today?

Masculinity growing up was an uncomfortable topic, something alternatively labeled as either a fake social construct or as a doomed condemnation of depravity. Note that these map neatly into the duality of self, representing the extremes of the non-integrated higher and base selves. My sense was that people were afraid of having the wrong opinion and being canceled. In the noble effort to build a more gender-equal society it only takes small mental slip to conflate patriarchal power structure with the male gender itself. And movements often rally around a shared enemy.

Importantly, I don’t think concepts like gender fluidity, transgenderness, or queerness are incompatible at all with the perspective on masculinity I’m putting forth here. In fact, they reinforce it. Being transgender is an affirmation of someone seeking something conceptually male, delineated between the sexes. And anyone with enough gay and lesbian friends will tell you there is a clear divergence in patterns around sex and relationships between gay men and lesbian women that is too significant to be explained away by socialization.

It can be generally uncomfortable to discuss and reconcile the duality of self. It requires holding a lens up to the inner animal in all of us, admitting out loud that we are not all enlightened higher selves. It can feel conceptually distant to folks that are on the low end of the testosterone-driven bell curve.5 It can also feel like a callback to socialized toxic masculinity of the past where being a man meant you HAD to be silent, aggressive, strong, etc. But nothing in the duality of self is prescriptive to the individual, nor should it be. It is simply a tool that is particularly helpful to this population.

Repercussions of a Vacuum

If we don’t discuss masculinity and the pull of the dual self with our youth, or worse alternate between condemnation and denial of its existence, we leave a vacuum that is filled at best by a lukewarm movies and locker room talk and at worst, unfortunately seemingly more commonly, by redpilled rightwingers and reactionaries on online forums, videos, and streams. See the broad popularity of figures like Andrew Tate (extreme misogynist + sex trafficker) and Clavicular (looksmaxxing vlogger with a severe narcissistic disorder). If you tell people the base side of themselves don’t exist, or worse that having it means they are evil, you break with their known reality. They will seek out the messages and conversations that align with their reality, and unfortunately the people willing to break with the intellectual norm here often have pretty unhealthy takes.

The response is often a rightward drift, which has compounding repercussions. It took two Trump administrations for the left to (beleagueredly) start to wake up to the damage this vacuum has caused. Joe Rogan went from being a Bernie supporter to god knows what now, surely influencing his 56 million listeners along the way. Jordan Peterson was a somewhat academic figure trying to get men to clean their room, be capable, and read classical literature. I’m not sure what he’s doing now frankly but it clearly took a hard turn to the right as well.6

At risk of moving deep into substack gender slop territory, I have a hypothesis that the damage of this vacuum extends to courtship dynamics as well and explains the rise of incels. Again this falls on a bell curve; but I think it’s safe to say that things like being confident, chivalrous, initiating, embodied within your masculinity, etc are generally attractive traits to embody. This is only a small lead-in part of the complex and beautiful process of loving another person. But to deny that it exists out of misplaced idealism is misleading. Tell a shy teenage guy to just be themselves (which could be interpreted as not striving for something greater than the base self) and they will interpret their lack of success as a personal failing. When they stumble upon a pickup artist reddit forum they will think they have found the “real truth” that supersedes the other messy beautiful and deep aspects of human connection, and the be result is someone that leans into the most nihilistic interpretations of love, romance and connection.

If Dmitri Karamazov was your son, how would you raise him? What would you teach him, given his inclinations and awareness of his base self?

The Way Out is Through

I think step one would be to acknowledge the dual self, not castigate it. Recognize that it is part of being a man. Recognize that it often has to be reconciled in conversation with values of the higher self and society; you shouldn’t fight everyone you see on the street, there is a time and place where desire is appropriate and inappropriate, etcetera. Recognize that in many ways, can embrace and become empowered from this self. Aggressive tendencies can be channeled and utilized in sport. Competitiveness can be an incredible way to bond with others, and a motivating force for becoming a more capable and skillful person. Desire when treated with the appropriate caution and respect can be the spark for some of the most beautiful connections and experiences a human is privileged enough to experience on this Earth. Treating both men and women with respect and a sense of equality, while also seeing and valuing what tends to make them different.

And to reiterate, the goal is not to top-down enforce any specific traits. The quiet kid doesn’t need to become a loudmouthed extrovert, and the thoughtful bookworm doesn’t need to become a wrestler (or vice versa). The goal is to provide an awareness of these selves and to provide tools for how to reconcile.

To use a personal example, growing up I was a competitive kid, with a strong admiration and desire for physicality. As a young man there was always a desire to prove myself, and an undercurrent of tamped aggression that was a response to the dominance imposed by society on our lives. The martial arts ended up being an incredible outlet; they provided an avenue for growth, a safe outlet for frustration, anger, and aggression, a philosophy of self-determinism, and the physicality and competitiveness that I was seeking. They embraced these aspects of the base self as a transformative force to be harnessed, not something solely suppressed and fought against.

And rather than alienate, these experiences created some of the closest friendship and community that I’ve ever experienced. Whether these attributes create social alienation or close connection is more about the environment than the attributes themselves. Today in Jiu Jitsu we try to display that healthy balance on the mats, especially when training and talking with young men. Here is a place where you can work on being strong, and also be kind. Here is a place where with the right training partner you can fight, compete, dominate, and then afterwards hug and settle into a deeper friendship. Here is a place where we’re all tough, working on being tougher, and can still be emotionally vulnerable and support each other.7

Forms of Communication

For better or worse, online discourse is here to stay and it plays a huge role in education for the younger generation. However, a lot of these lessons are best learned in person, through observation, imitation, and mentorship. On a recent poll during a large group backpacking trip, most guys cited their fathers as their primary basis for understanding what it meant to grow up as a man.

It seems to me that when discussing virtue, one has to earn the right to be listened to. Among some men (probably the ones that most need it) there is a disinclination for communication, an expectation of silent strength.8 In A River Runs Through It, rough-and-tumble logger/fireman/fisherman Norman Maclean describes an elaborate form of communication in which he and his brother go through an arc of a disagreement, fight, apology, and reconfirmation of love solely through nonverbal fly fishing actions.

All this to say that typical top-down methods of communication may not be the salve they are often positioned to be. Part of the solution is promoting more dialogue and destigmatizing communication and emotional vulnerability. But part of it is meeting these inclinations halfway; I think our kids need more role models, online and otherwise, that embody traditional forms of masculinity, earn the respect and street cred, and then communicate about these other issues (George St. Pierre is a great example!).

Where This Goes From Here

The duality framework is like a pilot hole for a drill bit. It’s a starting point for exploring how to become an adult which can later be expanded, destroyed, or neglected altogether as the actual process of growth begins. Its greatest use is simply to put a label on the messy aspects of manhood and masculinity, to pin the tail on the donkey so to speak. I think our American youth would be better off for it.

One evening after two days of very little sleep I was sitting at our dinner table pondering how to improve faster at Jiu Jitsu. I ended up deep in a conversation with my new roommate who is training to become a therapist, and by the end of it we had realized that the way we thought about practice and growth were surprisingly similar. By the end of the night we had sketched out this broadly applicable framework for skill development:

1. When learning a skill the goal is to build Integration

2. New skills, patterns, and behavior can be built with Top Up and Bottom Down approaches

3. Top Up and Bottom Down approaches are defined in turn by cultivating sensitivity, and intentional implementation

In a way this is extremely intuitive. To rephrase the above, skill is basically a set of actions that combine knowledge and execution; to develop it you have to work on both knowledge and execution. It’s also an extension of the heart vs brain dichotomy I touched on in my last post about Jiu Jitsu. Like a lot of pedagogy, it’s not that complicated when you get down to it. The trick is to recognize when and where it applies in life, and actually follow through with applying it.

Integration

The first step to doing something is identifying what you’re actually trying to do. When training, the goal on the mats is not to just “win” or “execute better.” Ideas like “have fun” or “get 1% better everyday” while motivational don’t provide directional guidance on how to actually improve. The goalpost is integration.

An integrated self is one that contains external knowledge and skill, while also having that knowledge fully absorbed in the subconscious and reflexive behaviors. This means the self is able to contextualize that knowledge with respect to both the external environment (instructionals in the case of jiu jitsu, scientific papers in the case of therapy, peers, etc) and the internal environment (the preferences of one’s unique body and personality, and the strengths and weaknesses therein).

In Jiu Jitsu, integration might look like having a “game” of a set of dilemmas from the standing under hook position, with knowledge of their names, history, and how they chain into each other. At the same time, it would be having an intuitive understanding of each position, a reflexive, no-thinking-required response to opponent reactions, and the ability to flexibly adapt to how their physical attributes pair up with yours (say, changing stance if they are quite tall, or heavy & slower with their positioning).

In therapy, integration might look like having the sensitivity to recognize the hidden emotion and trauma in a story from a patient, and then being able to seamlessly map it to best practice procedures based on clinical research. And vice versa, it could mean sensing when typical schemas don’t apply and charting new territory to accommodate non-standard situations.

To quote Mina’s writeup:

Tai and I concluded that mastery and healing are governed by the same architecture. In learning, the synthesis of top-down study and bottom-up embodiment gives rise to mastery. In therapy, the synthesis of bottom-up emotional processing and top-down integration gives rise to healing. And in both, the destination is the same: integration.

The mark of a true master is not the acquisition of knowledge and skill, but their integration and internalization such that they can seamlessly present themselves as instinct.

Top Down Bottom Up

To improve our skill we can take two approaches. We can take external knowledge and try to integrate it into ourselves via studying and drilling, or we can practice our skills intuitively and then try to observe and extract learnings from it. On a micro level, this type of implementation + feedback + adjustment is something I think we’re all familiar with. You like to play basketball, and you see a new type of hook shot highlighted on YouTube. You go down to the court and try it twenty times to get a feel for the movement pattern. This is Top Down. In the next pickup game you keep shooting short, you recognize this and put a bit more strength into your wrist at the end of the shot. This is Bottom Up.

Where this framework gets interesting (to me) is when it is applied on the timescale of weeks and months as a way to structure a training plan. For example, I try to spend one to two months at a time alternating between top down and bottom up training.

Let’s start with a bottom up period. The goal here is to observe the current state of the skill. This might come from an analytical place: it could look watching match film or soliciting feedback from training partners. It could come more directly: I’ll spend time trying to go deep into the mind body connection and stretching the limits of sensitivity, awareness, and flow. It can also come from visiting high level gyms to get challenging rolls that highlight weaknessses. After a month or two of this, I’ll generally feel like I’ve become a better athlete, that my flow has improved and that I’m “sharp” so to speak. I’ll also have a laundry list of things to improve.

Next comes the top down period. After consolidating the list of shortcomings into a main ideas, the goal now is to bring down new information and integrate it into the self. This can be pulling from external sources (ie match study, instructionals) or self-directed analysis and discussion. In all cases, the knowledge is entering the body top down - from the brain. After a short period of drilling, the goal over the next month or two is to slowly build these new ideas into reflexes. There is none of the flow & sensitivity & rhythm from the bottom up training period - this is all about mechanical execution, observation, and repeated study. Once these ideas start to feel reflexive, I will transition back to a bottom up period, and the cycle continues.

In therapy, there is a concept of “core affect,” or a truth of what is happening internally in a patient’s body. Developing a sensitivity to the core affect is a bottom up skill. The metaprocessing of these feelings, categorizing, analyzing is a top down skill.

Broadly, top down is feedback, conversation, studying, drilling. Bottom up is sensitivity attunement, honing reflexes, stretching the limits of perception. This can be applied to nearly every skill in life, from sport to sex to writing to conversation to scientific research.

Sensitivity and Praxis

Both halves of top down / bottom up have a method of practice: one is sensitivity & adjustment, one is analysis & application. Both are skills that can be developed, on the praxis side by building a more quantitative, analytical mind that cuts away excess thought and defines cause and effect, and on the sensitivity side by embracing and stretching the limits of sensation and awareness, by observing the self without interrupting its flow.

If you are only top down you can overly intellectualize - your knowledge is calcified into general principles and not adaptive to specific environments. It is unable to be implemented in real life when immediate response and reflexive intuition is required.

If you are only bottom up you can become self-referential, stuck in limited patterns, out of date with the world, unable to teach, and in general slower to develop since you aren’t receiving new patterns and ideas from the broader human machine.

Critically, one also has to be able to exit the realm of study and enter the realm of execution. The whole primary value of a skill, after all, is to use it. In these cases neither top down nor bottom up methodologies are valuable - all mental and physical energy should be attuned to the external, and action and behavior should be fully trusted to the integrated self. Sometimes, videos and observation from coaches or other knowledgeable parties can loop performance back into the cycle of learning, but in the moment it’s just about sinking into the pool of your expertise. When the typical aspects of the human experience have been ingrained into the subconscious, there’s room in the brain for higher order thought and experience. This is the beauty of the flow state.

My housemate Mina wrote her thoughts on the topic as well! In beautiful prose I might add. See:

Some technical Jiu Jitsu notes from the last two months.

A bent spine is mobile, a straight spine is strong. I’ve heard this idea expressed in the context of guard retention by my coach and most recently by Jozef Chen when I visited Nomadic Grappling in Shanghai. In guard retention, if your opponent is applying weight and pressure passing you need to have a straight spine and head on the floor in order to transfer weight through frames to the floor. If they are mobile and loose passing, you need to curl the spine in order to spin and reduce the distance required to high pommel and change side to side.

(I highly recommend visiting Nomadic Grappling. My gym makes fun of me for glazing Jozef all the time but he’s really such a technical monster and an autodidact at the highest level. This is who you want to learn from. He’s also very friendly!)

I’ve been applying this principle in guard and also thinking about its inverse; choosing what passing style to engage in based on the opponent’s spinal posture. Switching between pressure and movement based passing forces compensatory reactions from the guard player. It’s one of those games where if the opponent doesn’t know they are playing it, it uses a lot of mental and physical energy to observe and react to subtle changes in passing strategy. This is one that I need to ingrain as a reflexive action via lots of intentional positional training.

The same spine principle applies to takedowns and pins. Use a straight spinal posture when you want to carry or apply weight, use a curved one when you want to be more mobile and reactive. Finishing a double leg or hitting a sprawl demands a straight spine. Hitting an arm drag or defensively hand fighting is better with a slightly bent spine (I’ll admit this can be subtle).

Following up on the previous thought, unknown unknowns are the toughest part of jiu jitsu. In a match they use up the intuitive and sensory energy that is then not available for offensive movement. Being forced to recover from disadvantageous positions, even very subtle ones, means more panic and greater energy expenditure. Knowing the micro-games that are played help the mind and body conserve energy, from grips to spinal positioning. On the offensive side, if you can play games that the opponent isn’t even aware of then you will slowly win the energy battle.

While passing I’ve been thinking about the foot line of the guard; this mainly because there was a period where I kept getting elevated when trying to stuff a leg. I only noticed this once I got my hands on some film of my rolls, which highlighted the importance of film as a training tool to me. When an opponent has foot frames (or hooks with their feet or shins) I think you want to bias your center of mass to be well below an imaginary line drawn between their feet. This prevents the passer from loading their weight on the guard player and getting off-balanced.

Most of the time this means keeping a high head and low hips when the guard player has grips, and leading with the hands and a low head when the guard player doesn’t have grips. Tripod when and only when you are able to use it to pin the hips or shoulders. It is okay for this pin to happen through collapsed frames, but it definitionally can’t happen through real frames (the bone structure of the arms/legs pointing at you).

I’ve also been paying more attention to my relative foot and knee position when passing. If the guard player is trying to move around to the back (say via a berimbolo in de la riva) the leading passing foot should be directly under the knee to stuff their guard. If the guard player is trying to elevate and get their center of mass underneath, the leading foot should be well behind the knee, with the knee pointing at the guard player. This brings weight back below the guard players foot line, making front and back off balances more difficult.

Switching gears to old school jiu jitsu, a crossface may more aptly be described as a cross neck. Starting low on the neck, frame up and into the jaw, focusing equally on the lifting and rotating aspects. This applies choking pressure to the carotid artery, and separating the head from the rest of the body makes them weak. Previously I was struggling with the bottom player claiming the inside space off a crossface (taking the underhook basically) and using that to scoop the leg or rotate inward. Separating the head from the body fixes this.

When playing both de la riva and reverse de la riva, if you’re moving around the body into a bolo/baby bolo/kiss of the dragon type of attack, you want to be inverted up on a shoulder as soon as possible, ideally before your upper body is in gripping range. This is a much more mobile position and is more defensively sound against weight and gripping, as your spine is now aligned with your opponent’s direction of force. Guard should rarely be played with the back flat on the ground.

Wrist to wrist under the scapula or just wrists/forearms under the body in general are the strongest pins in half guard / side control because of the reinforced wedging force.

I’m finally starting to understand how to place my hips when doing judo type throws. It really feels counterintuitive, but bringing the upper body and hips in and close to the opponent is what creates a strong connection for turning throws and foot sweeps.

And as always, remembering to keep knees to chest in guard, always off balance the opponent, present dilemmas, be light on the toes when standing, and relax.

I’ve always been afraid of planes. No matter how many times I read up on the safety statistics, there’s something deeply unsettling about being so high up off the ground, of having no control as to whether you live or die. It just feels like a deeply ironic way to go in today’s world of safety. Plus the moments of helplessness wouldn’t be great. At least in a car there is a semblance of control as you react behind the wheel. At least a shark attack is cool and over quickly.

No matter. Flying is one of the safest things you can do on earth, far away from speeding cars and people with guns. Planes are super stable, turbulence is just the plane wiggling within a block of jello, and there’s nothing but air up there to deal with. Still, my palms are sweaty on every takeoff and on every bump of turbulence I have to turn off the music and do breathing exercises. In fact, any change at all in physical state, whether that be noise, pitch, yaw, vibration frequency, etcetera requires the front brain to come in and do some rebalancing of the fear response. Drop the cortisol level via breathing, release tension in the neck musculature, perhaps force some smiles to temporarily increase serotonin. Laugh at the absurdity of the situation and think of the times I’ve actually been in danger, yet felt fine. To this day I’d rather walk on the side of the highway in a dusty hot desert over boarding a plane, even one with a 7/7 safety rating, periodic maintenance checks, and a 0.0000037% chance of being in an accident when calculated on a per-trip basis.

Half of all plane accidents happen during landing, but weirdly I’m never nervous during this period. Any lingering concerns are overwhelmed by the sense of relief at making it to the end. Somehow, being able to see the ground rush by gives me a false assurance of capability, like if there was an issue I could dodge the ensuing fireball, flip through the air, and maneuver my way safely back to the ground. Fears are also assuaged slightly if we’re over the ocean. The possibility of making a water landing and escaping lends a slight illusion of agency that softens the nerves. Of course, sometimes there’s turbulence on the descent and the familiar lurch of the stomach, acidic burn in the back of the throat, sweaty palms and pumping heart make a reoccurrence. And if a connecting flight is on deck after touching down, resignation at the knowledge that the relief is short lived.

This whole silly routine of fear, assurances, and relief that I have to go through every time I step into a gate continually shows me the limited control the mind has over the gut. There’s a sense that these periods will be tense for the rest of my life. Everyone likely has different hangups and irrational fears - I suppose we have to massage these periods of fear into life. I pretend not to freak out as I walk across the runway to a rickety bush plane. I’ve had tangential encounters with the possibility of death only a couple of times, and each time I was almost eerily calm. It’s funny that with the odds so much lower I feel that many times more mortal.

I wrote the above on a bumpy international flight to China. And here I am back again, six weeks later, flying to Hong Kong. Alas. Writing about the fear response contextualizes things in a way. I think it helps. Once again we’re on a bumpy flight - the plane is calm (or at least pretending quite well). The flight attendants are the level of unbothered I’d be if I was driving around the bumps of a flat gravel driveway, despite hurtling across the heavens in a giant coke can designed by the same human species that can’t seem to properly design a printer. I can only aspire to this level of chill.

Luckily I have a new strategy that works pretty well: considering how small the relative motion of turbulence is for the plane compared to a human body. What may feel aggressive to me is quite a small shake from the plane’s point of view. This helps a lot actually, although on the more significant episodes I still have to go through my typical breathing procedures. Other times, I’ll close my eyes and pretend I’m driving a car. Then in context the bumps are relatively mild. I flash back to when I lived briefly in Sumba and would get around in the bed of a pickup truck, bouncing heedlessly across the prairie and jungle on what could only vaguely be considered roads. Any flight, in comparison, is small potatoes. This illusion works, for a time, but requires significant mental capacity to maintain. I fear the only true solution, alas, is to get over the fear of powerlessness and death that accompanies being a biological life form. I seem to recall earlier international flights in my life being a lot more chill. Perhaps only now do I understand what is capable of being lost.

Vegas

Sitting on a bench in Vegas
Clothes drying on a sidewalk plant
Air dry against the skin
Bare mountains chuckle in the distance
Lingering, the afternoon sun drips down
Shifting under the shadow of a palm
Slipping into memories behind the heatwave
Maybe the clothes are dry

The world rolls on, bare uncaring rock
Scuttling along, wow we die alone…
Old enough to have regrets
Young enough that the elusive winds of hope sting
Cold and biting into exposed cheeks
Stumbling into a storm

Not naive anymore
Not sad, exactly, not happy
Just tumbling along
Like dust freewheeling across these desert plains
Tired, so tired…
My kingdom for a place to rest my feet
A lap for my head
To doze in the shade

Joliet

Gray skies and dead corn
Warm old house
Bustling with the weight of family footsteps
Cider, food, snow
Walks on sidewalks, smiling neighbors
Christmas carols on the radio
Now I play the same songs
To the blank wall next to me
It sighs back

Birdcall

Green blue melding in the dawn
Finger ridges dipping into the ocean
Calm day, only four foot swell
Inkspills of clouds on the horizon
Gazing south towards endless mountains
I forget maps exist

The grassy ridgetops backlit by morning sun
Cut a line through the shimmering blue sea
Sitting in the morning sun, peeling off the slope

Hummingbird in the manzanita flowers
Chipmunk and swallow in the bare buckeye
California bluejay in the enormous madrone
Other birds I wish I could identify: one with a yellow chest, black crest, and white and black spotted feathers.
The quail scream.
I see a western meadowlark, I think

Old trees, older stone
Yellow grass carpets under oak
Wild wind and wild birdsong
The soul drops out of the human
And dances free on the land

Walking barefoot, the forest becomes louder
Trickle of the spring stream
Deafens my ears
Wings rustling of a fowl, I’ve never heard before
And the great horned owls hoot is a trumpet to my ears

So nice to wander in the hills
And think what I want
No billboard urging me
No shop sign beckoning
The steep hills and bird calls are devoid of human meaning
And yet not empty at all

Ashes

Lying on the ground, watching the sky fade from dusty blue
A single star breaks out, meager, lonely
I’m waiting, praying
For the sound of familiar footsteps

The sun sets
Somehow stronger in its last moments
Sifting in the ashes, I find no phoenix
Small embers hoping for one last gasp of wind
To nurture them back to life
Or snuff them out

Haikus, ish

Today I have learned
To hear a deer sneeze
One must listen to crickets chirp
For a long time

~

To climb a tree
And not be observed
I walk for miles on dusty road

~

I don’t want to remove myself from humanity
Just sit far enough
Across the lake
That the sounds of construction
Can be mistaken for
Falling
Water

~

Wet leaves dry branches
Moonlight shines on white deer tail
Few tracks in fresh snow

~

Waking up from my flute
I conduct my koan
Under rushing stream
Unzip
Pee into sunny moss

Bar Rains

See the rain but can’t feel it
Swirling fog under streetlight
Yellow ochre color
Snuck into a fancy bar
Wrap breaded Japanese shrimp in a napkin and slip it into my denim jacket inner pocket
People, everywhere. Little lightbulbs of potential
One slips up and grabs my pinky in hers
Whispering lips brush my ear

I drift away, chasing that unknown
Three drinks, comped by the company running this rooftop show
One is passed to me. I say I work in operations
Lots of smiles, and eye bags
Folks my age, but they seem so far away
Living on a gilded surface, up here 12 stories above the streets

I go to the bathroom, adjust my baseball cap in the fluorescent mirror.
I got it from a startup event, more free food more free drinks. VCs in leather jackets and slicked hair talking about 10x-ers.
Floor and walls are black white tiled. Abstract art on the wall over the toilet. It looks like a sneeze.
Chatting in the elevator. She leans in, whispers “I was thinking of fucking you a little bit.” I laugh, whisper back, say I have to go feed my cat. Her friend waits outside the door.
I sneak out, mix amidst the giants fans streaming out of the stadium.
Cigarettes, fades, sports jerseys.
I stumble into an alley, gaze through colorless peeling paint on brick buildings out to dark water.
Half moon is barely visible behind the clouds.

Am I doing it right? Am I living up to the heroes in the books? It all feels like an elaborate cosplay. I find my way to the train. It’s only me and a white one eyed cat prowling the benches. Strange, no giants fans here. The concrete platform looks cold, brittle. I look up and the night sky swallows the city whole.

Breaks

Change the world
It’s an addicting aspiration
And also a doomed commandment
Little demons and self loathing
Angel voices make my skin crawl

Weave this life into a brick
Rigid, conformed
For the reading room of another

Psychotic break
Shopping aisles
Quality control
Waiting rooms

Break free
Break free break free

Living on a wooden pallet

Bleary eyes open to a patch of blue
Field mustard flowers tall in the dirt
A baby rabbit stops by to say hello
Warm dry air, faint scent of pine
And wafting from the house
Through the wooden veranda, over the grass
Under the slack line
Through the trees
Pancakes sizzling on the stove

Clouds

Rain clouds resting like tattered silk
Untroubled in the crooks of mountains
Long, wispy fingers creep between the treetops
Puzzle pieces, that don’t quite fit
Lone branch reaches tall
Shuddering, it silently screams “more”
Secretive blue lines retreating into the ocean fog

Drifting

In my fever dream I’m an old man
Sitting on a decrepit wood porch in a rainstorm
All my fights and battles, loves and losses
Are a distant afterthought.
A worn stain on washed wood.
I just sit, a vague sense that something is missing
That something has ended
That there are no more chances.

On Moving

Movement is a conversation
The way no conversation is perfect
But can still be good.
The way it starts and stops
The way the same motions are never the same
After training, light, loose, in sync with sinew and bone
The inner glow that comes from catching up with an old friend,
For we are social animals, and our flesh is our oldest companion.

Property Signs

Walk down the street
Flanked on both sides
By private property signs

I walk among dusty hills
Tired feet
Above me, I hear the hawk screech

It’s been following me, you see
Along this narrow ridge
Between forbidden seas

How I longe to stumble and fall
Call of the void
Find my freedom among grasses and trees

But for now I walk
In a line straight and dull
Gazing out at land once free

Five Lakes Basin

Granite and water so pristine
Closing my eyes is less restful
Dusting of snow on the bowl of mountains
Ancient wrinkled juniper twist out of rocks bathed in shimmering sunlight
Silence
The type made more pure by the wind blowing through the trees
And the lakewater lapping on the shore
Five lakes basin

Oak

Wood house full of books
Still hires gas leaf blower
To interrupt the quiet slumber of
The oak tree’s morning.

Rockaway

Sliding down mountains of steely gray water
Accelerating down a metal surface
Biggest wave I’ve ever ridden, by far
I mean, I’m getting a view!
Half my brain registers the hills and the sky
Froth tumbles over my fins, carve hard
Two dolphins breach to my left
“Oh shit!”
Bodyboarding mountains at Rockaway

Slow Moments

In retrospect, life is mostly the slow moments.

It’s a hazy August afternoon, post-thunderstorm, post sex, sweaty, silent. Even the crickets too swamped out to make a noise.

It’s an evening at a white sand beach where the only tasks of note are to smoke a joint and watch the moon reflect off the peaks of the incoming swell.

It’s sunny afternoons under a live oak tree, remembering childhood and listening to the fog roll in over the hills.

It’s that lull in a party when you step away from the dancing to go sit by the outdoor bonfire at the fringes and burn California bay incense.

It’s running away from Christmas carols to tramp through the woods in the moonlight and do the duty of disrupting fresh snow.

It’s the infinite minute after complete and total exertion in the training room with your body baked inside a gi and there literally being not enough energy in your body to fuel a thought and you just broil in your own heat and awareness of every vein that has opened up under your skin.

It’s the quiet familiarity of the living room at night, surrounded by family. The lifetime of history settling in, comfortably, silently, between the couches.

Ocean Beach

The world revealed to those who travel by foot?
Daunting first steps into black starry night
The journey begins, rather than ends, along the ocean
That everplunging energy of dark rumbling Poseidon crashing onto the shore
The world may be revealed to me
Someday
But for the moment all I see are muddy feet
And cold, smothered sky

Kiso Valley

Evening and morning onsen
Miso soup, rice, pickles, daikon, deviled egg
Kabocha squash, orange slice, Japanese hamburger
Which is quite strange
Tea
Wood structures, garden plots, colorful flowering misty mountains

I sit in an old wooden house
Woodsmoke in the air, a dark central room
The courtyard light spills in, but diminishes quickly
Like it’s afraid of the age of this place
Weeping cherry petals scatter on the ground

I’m Enraptured. I want it all.
It is all the things woven together.
I am hungry but I have no hands.

Twin

I lie on the tatami, tell my body to relax. Move through each muscle one by one until my whole body is as heavy as lead. 12:00pm alarm blares through the window. WWII leaves its trace even here, on the edge of the country.

I stretch, blow some notes. The texture of the woven grass is pleasant, says hi to the skin. I drift off again, lolling in the afternoon sun. Clothes are drying upstairs, maybe I’ll make some miso soup…

I’m awake again. My training partner is here, he looks at me. One of those piercing stares. I can tell he’s going to drop something.

He says, maybe if we could riff on the guitar we wouldn’t have to do this. Cuz sometimes it’s just too much, all this. Cycling between hostel beds, park benches, the woods. Meeting people, nice people, bad people, making love, training, wandering new grounds, but always onto the next place, always drifting lightly… there’s just too much and it tears me apart.

Sometimes it feels like we’re part of the universal rhythm, ya know? Other times I’m just so tired… it rolls onto me like a beachbreak. I’m lying down in the sand watching this huge wave rolls in. I know it’s going to pull me in, but I can’t move a finger. And I get washed away with the sand.

I look at this travel companion. Dusty, torn shirt from our hike, beat up backpack, messy hair drawn back with a piece of cloth, eyes hunting for something.

You and I - we’re two dumbasses too slow to express how we feel with words, much less fucking jazz. So these things build up and we let it out the only way we know. If we weren’t the same person, I’d pity you.

Wild Springs in Taiwan

I met a hunter at the hot springs
He appeared in the river, white vest with red and blue edges, spear
In the jungle valley, amidst the roaring river
I speak broken Chinese
Alone in this valley
An amphitheater for our two souls

I met a hunter at the hot springs
On a hot summer day in Taipei
I thought I was so far away
A one hour bus ride took me back
Plus a fifteen minute walk into the gorge
And I feel like an old human again

I met a hunter at the hot springs
The butterflies swarm the hot springs
Land, alight, back again
Five hours here, I’m not tired of them yet
I bet he never is either
Unleash me in this garden and I will stay forever
Dissolving into this landscape like a sugar cube

Miasma

Japantown
Waves of color roll over the peace plaza.
Old ghosts come out to say hi.
Jazz from a street performer wafts on the late summer breeze
The sound washes over, a rushing tide of ocean foam
Each tiny bubble forms a clear image of the self, millions of eyes looking back at me.
It’s a beautiful agony, really
A string under far more tension than it can handle
Holding on with baited breath, waiting

In Dubious Battle was the book Steinbeck wrote in between his breakout work Tortilla Flat and the famous Of Mice and Men. Telling the story of two “radical reds” that initiate a strike among apple pickers in response to slashed wages, the novel is set in dusty farmland of California like much of Steinbeck’s future work. This book is foreshadowing for Steinbeck’s most famous work The Grapes of Wrath; both focus on the plight of the working man in the face of capitalist forces, although ultimately as an earlier novel it has weaker character development and a more academic message. While this makes In Dubious Battle less compelling as a literary work than his later writing, its investigation into the dynamics of organized labor, power, and resistance are interesting in their own right.

In my view, Steinbeck is an author that builds his stories around a specific message he wants to convey. In East of Eden it’s his interpretation of Cain and Able and the question of nature versus nurture in human behavior. In Grapes of Wrath it is conveying the story of the displaced Okies that he witnessed in real life. In Dubious Battle explores the structure of organized rebellion; how it starts, sustains, and dies. In the novel he specifically explores the paradox of how creating momentum for these strikes requires an exploitation of the individual. Accidents are leveraged as emotional currency, influence is accumulated in the labor camp, and the concerns of an individual fall away. The same patterns that are being rebelled against have to be harnessed in order to have any leverage at all.

The central character of the story is Mac, as seen from the perspective of the main character Jim (kind of in a On the Road style of secondary narration). Mac is capable, driven, a reverent believer in “the cause,” and the main organizer behind the strike. He’s able to sweet talk cops, cut deals with shop owners and ranchers, and chat with the working farmhand. Over the course of the story we build a healthy respect for his capabilities (through the eyes of Jim, who is a newbie to the cause and absorbing all the techniques Mac has to offer) but also start to realize that in order to organize the strike, Mac has to dehumanize the men himself. He has no time to consider the individual, or really to question his base motives at all. And we believe it - we are witness to how difficult and unfair their cause is in the face of political and military power. Steinbeck is pointing out that perhaps a certain amount of close mindedness is necessary to create change.

The doctor in the strike is an intellectual foil to Mac, and perhaps the devil on the other shoulder of Steinbeck. He questions the cause and the suffering, while still working alongside it. When is exploitation a necessary tool to fight a larger evil? I don’t think Steinbeck has a clear answer; he just wants the reader to see the paradox for what it is. The destructive nature of power, and the gentleness that is still capable of blooming in response to that destruction; it seems like these ideas are what Steinbeck is exploring throughout his whole body of work. The ending of the book drives this home in a chilling final scene.

Steinbeck is also really good at building a sense of unease and struggle through basic action and dialogue. Life was clearly tough in the time period portrayed, and the logistics of managing a strike make up the bulk of the actual text. Actions were very conformed to basic needs: getting food, handling sanitation, coping with rain. There is a real physical presence in the novel that settles into your mind scene by scene. In a way it is similar to Murikami. Both authors layer simple dialogue and scenes on top of each other in a way that build up in the reader to something quite sophisticated and evocative. For Murakami it isblasé conversations in coffee shops and making toast that builds up to postmodern nihilism, and for Steinbeck it’s muddy latrines and three day old pots of pork rind and bean soup building up to the paradox of building power to fight power, the nature of change, and an awareness of the exploitation and unfairness that underlies most of history.

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Everything’s been said before, probably, but it’s been forgotten, so it must be written again. I heard this quote somewhere, possibly carried by the wind while sitting at a coffeeshop in a dusty cobblestone alleyway but more likely just online. Probably a screenshot of a tweet written by a handle like theThoughtsTheyCarried2000109. It’s a comforting notion, to be forgiven for unoriginality.

Perhaps the human experience is this pallid replica of experiences throughout history, with technology driving their number and strength downward. Perhaps in the past, with our histories perpetuated through old myths and half-remembered stories from elders, each new revolution would feel more novel. Not today. Living in the library of Babel, not doing the appropriate research can feel like a sin.

The world keeps on going flat like a screen. Mountains come up and greet the trees like layered paper = I glance down and my fingers and huge and flat, laid on top of the scene. I fall out of my body and watch it keep on walking around the lake by my office. Someone else takes the controller again ~ but they must be clumsy because the volume keeps dropping out.

Dead air & decaf coffee sit on my desk, backlit by spreadsheets and emails and the fading memory of daylight. Entry consultants have to pull long hours at the request of their higher ups, editing powerpoints for the boss to present to the client. It keeps my options open, though, and I get paid enough to live in a swanky New York studio apartment close to downtown. Damn the shopclass soulcraft. Caffeine is normally the drug that makes me forget your body and lock into the shifting shuffling network of interwebs, relationships, money and desire that keep this whole thing pumping, but lately it makes me antsy and I can’t sit still. Last week I had the flu and my whole body was empty, drained into a husk. I was able to sit in my chair all day and not get antsy at all. I wrote an email at the end of it.

“Hey Diedera, nice to hear from you. I have a meeting tonight but let’s grab lunch next week? Let me know if you’re free. Also, life shits a brick and calls it beauty. You know how it goes, a blurb here, a blurb there, shimmy shimmy hot damn and she’s up like a bucket lickety split, hot damn. Warmly pickled in a pack of hay, Todd.”

In my bed that I night I dreamed I was at a salsa ball. I’m dancing with a woman in a red dress, it flows down to her knees and spins out in circles. When she pulls close I can smell the sweat mixing with unmistakable musk, dark and suggestive. I’m hypnotized. I didn’t know you could smell in a dream. The dancing is electric, alive, I’m in an instagram filter and the contrast is wayyy up. Once I realize this, though, she slips away and the stagelights go out. I don’t dream the rest of the night.

I’m off of work after another late day, sleeping through sunrise, staying inside past sunset. Big full moon rests lazily on the hills. The rolling grass and scattered enclaves of liveoak becomes vast at night, dusty moonlit shadows stretching cavernously across the valley. I step in the grass. I’m an alien in this world. I approach one of the trees nervously. I can’t tell if it’s annoyed at my presence.

Ashen moonlight is scattered by oak leaves. Two coyotes prowl through slitted light. It’s cold enough that moving is more comfortable than being still; I stamp my feet and tuck my hands in my armpits. The loose polyester blazer and slacks I’m wearing don’t provide much protection against the night breeze. I smell hay on the wind, and hear chattering squirrels. They’re up late and active tonight, maybe drawn to the full moon like me.

The woman appears on the horizon. Pale skin and black hair framed against the moon like a woodblock print. The dress of her collar is the same color as her red lips, red dusted across the cheeks. She looks like a character from an old myth brought into the world. The air seems to part just before it reached her clothes, the dust just before it reaches her skin.

Another day in the office. Same 5 day pattern of discussion of weekend plans and TGIF. No moon tonight. I’m spinning in tighter and tighter spirals, waiting to hit the center and for the centripetal force to pull me into pieces. Shatter, reform, and take loping circular strides once again. At some point forget I'm not on a linear path.

Orthogonal energy is slowly smoothed out, conformed into the surface. Like a potter’s hand on a throwing wheel, no bumps allowed.

I dream again, I’m in the ballroom. I see the woman across the dance floor, she’s wearing the same color red but with a pointed hood, but the color and figure is unmistakable, I hustle over through the gentry. They’re in the middle of a dance, maybe a tango, everyone is wearing a black tux with a white shirt neatly tucked in. I tap her on the shoulder, but when she turns around her face is a giant grasshopper, mandibles clicking, kaleidoscope eyes the size of large oranges bulging out on either side.

Listen, please. I desperately have something to share with you, but I don’t know what it is.

Within any sufficiently complex system, there will exist enough dimensions that its meta-concepts will also map onto other complex systems. The threshold is based off of the capability of the human brain rather than any physical law of nature. For example, checkers is not generally used to learn war strategy because it is an easily solved game; anyone that studies it enough can reduce it exactly to a playbook of moves. Chess, on the other hand, is a useful and widely used metaphor for battle throughout history. We know today that AIs have more or less solved the game, but its complexity is still past the threshold required to be a useful map for the brain’s metacognition. “If you know the way broadly you can see it in all things” - in other words, any complex art can serve as a mirror for the brain and the human experience.

Jiu jitsu is a great example: it is (perhaps primarily) a giant salmon ladder of skill development, but it is also a strategy game, a puzzle, and a meditation. It is a scaffolding that so far remains untouched by technology, at least when you’re actually training. At the same time, information that used to be passed down in remote mountain temples and carefully guarded lineages is now being widely disseminated via the internet and an open gym culture. Jiu jitsu today is a curious blend of old spirit and new tech, held together by its epistemic method. This has allowed it to make great leaps forward in development while retaining the human element that makes it such a useful “way.”

Lately I’ve seem jiu jitsu as a combination of axioms and dichotomies. Axioms are direct definitions that we use in the sport. As examples:

• To pass guard is to control the inside hip space. This is done by either moving the knees away from the chest or across the centerline.

• Guard is having your legs around your opponent or between you and your opponent.

• To finish an armbar, you have to pin both ends of the lever arm and apply force to the middle.

• Rob Biernacki’s concept of “posture, structure, and base” is also an example of distilling the sport into axioms.

To return to the chess analogy, these axioms are like learning how the pieces on the board move and how the rules of checkmate work. Studying them helps us understand the fundamental nature of Jiu Jitsu.

Dichotomies on the other hand are like learning chess strategies. These are the concepts that apply on a meta level to any sufficiently complex system. One of the most rewarding parts of Jiu Jitsu (or any art) is the ability to graduate from studying axioms to studying strategy & dichotomies. Here are some that I have been thinking about.

Dichotomy: heart vs brain

Or in other words, art vs science. Concepts need to be consciously studied and drilled in the training room, but then integrated into the subconsciousness to be used instinctively during a match. Having only one or the other will create a competitor with a mediocre skillcap.

On the other hand, coordination and execution also has to be developed in the training room, and there are times where during a match you’ll consciously adjust your strategy based on realtime information. It is a yin yang relationship.

Dichotomy: specialization vs generalization

In a game with many potential skillsets and constrained training time, there is a tradeoff of becoming well rounded vs being a glass cannon. Deciding when to double down on a technique or set of techniques (say, becoming a leg lock specialist) vs spending more time on the fundamentals is always a question running through my mind. To an extent, I think personality determines how one approaches this.

Dichotomy: adaptive vs dominant behavior

In a match there is a balance between trying to impose your game on your opponent and taking advantage of whatever opportunities are presented. Focus too much on playing your game, and you become rigid and stuck in a set of moves that might not work. Jiu Jitsu is an interaction between two people, after all. But focus too much on responding and being reactive, and you risk being overwhelmed, or at the least being stuck on the back foot. I’ve seen both behaviors cause people with more technical skill to lose matches.

Dichotomy: ego vs egoless

Jiu Jitsu requires ego, because the desire to win is what drives improvement in the sport. But being unable to lose also severely hinders your ability to grow.

Jiu Jitsu requires you to be selfish, to focus on your own growth and constantly analyze what you have to improve on. But it also requires an investment in teammates and their growth, for the development of your own skill and for the development of the art.

Dichotomy: strategy vs skill

Maybe not a perfect dichotomy, but I think there are always two ways to resolve an issue presented to you: improve your strategy or improve your skill. Everything in Jiu Jitsu can work, but there is a tradeoff of skill for effectiveness. For example, if you are attempting a knee cut on a very flexible opponent but can’t finish, it is possible that you need to spend the next few weeks studying the mechanics of the position to improve your odds of finishing. It is also possible that it would be time better spent to focus on north/south passing, and forego the kneecut when faced with that particular issue. This is a judgement call that you’ll have to constantly make in the training room. “Is this move not working because my mechanics are wrong? Or because I am not setting it up properly? Or are the odds of success just low on an opponent with these specific physical attributes?”

Dichotomy: intimidate vs conceal

There are times when it’s useful to intimidate an opponent in a match, for example by chaining together rapid passing to get them to panic and exert a lot of energy. There are also times when it’s useful to fake tiredness or confusion, to lull an opponent into a sense of security, for example being still for a while in bottom side control before suddenly exploding to escape, or holding single leg X for a while without attacking before quickly catching an achilles straight ankle grip for the footlock. When to do one or the other is a judgement call that requires a sensitivity and understanding of your opponent’s energy state and frame of mind.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

I recently read All Fires the Fire by Julio Cortazar on the recommendation for a friend. I’ve just dipped my toes into Latin American surrealism by reading Like Water for Chocolate which I absolutely loved - equal parts hilarious and dark, dreamy surrealist imagery is layered over the rawness of ranch life, rebellion, unrequited love, and abusive family dynamics. Like a good spice the surrealism is not overpowering, serving only to emphasize the natural flavors that in Like Water for Chocolate are all too human and real.

So I was excited to get an introduction to Cortazar’s work as he’s part of the magical surrealist canon (and his novel Hopscotch has been on my reading list for a while). And while it turns out All Fires the Fire isn’t really surrealist, it contains one of my favorite short stories ever - Nurse Cora (or La Señorita Cora in Spanish).

All Fires the Fire read like a grab bag from Cortazar’s journal scribbles; offhand ideas that I found to be hit or miss in terms of grabbing the readers attention or really making sense at all. But I appreciated the experimental feel; you could tell he was playing and taking risks with his choice of story and literary device. And these elements really came together for me with the story of Nurse Cora, which examines the relationship between an adolescent teen with appendicitis (Pablito) and his nurse (Cora) over the course of his stay.

Little happens in the way of plot. The story mainly consists of interactions between Pablito and Cora over the course of his hospital stay, with brief interludes by secondary characters. There’s no exposition and very little context, we as the reader mainly pick up context between the lines as the scene unfolds over the course of a few days.

More than anything else I’ve read, this short story captures the painful awkwardness of male adolescence. Caught between fear and pride, lust and resentment, stoicism and sudden bursts of raw emotion, Pablito’s transitionary period is harshly exposed under the fluorescent hospital lights. And Nurse Cora is equally frustrated and unexpectedly charmed by his fledgling attempts at adulthood—his desire to appear strong and respected without really knowing how, his humiliation at peeing in a pan or being assisted with an enema, his inability to control tears, and his burgeoning sexual awakening. Their interactions are humorous and kind of cringeworthy in a way that everyone that has grown through adolescence can relate to.

I love the literary device Cortazar plays with here where we seamlessly phase from nurse Cora’s first person inner dialogue to the boy’s, sometimes several sentences interrupting each other in a stream of consciousness style with no direct attribution to the speaker. Through this back and forth their dialogue (and through it their relationship) takes on an essence as its own character in the story. Over the course of the story, I believe Julio is also sharing a message on the universality of the human experience, on how although these two have different ages genders and roles, the dance they engage in is ultimately kind of cut from the same cloth.

The adults in the story mainly function as background characters that progress the plot, but they are also examples of what happens when the burgeoning traits of puberty solidify. The father is completely stoic with his sick son; the mother is obsessively doting, worried to a fault, belligerent towards the staff. The doctor—competent, professional, and casually sleeping with Cora— has a clear cut relationship with both the patient and Cora that feels confined to a rigid definition of their relationship as patient and sexual partner. In contrast, the relationship between Cora and Pablito is less well defined, drifting from nurturing to sexual to frustrated and back again in a confused, bumbling manner that feels genuinely organic and personal. Not two archetypes interacting, but real people. It’s this in-between quality that makes the story so magnetic.

The ending hits like a ton of bricks when it arrives. I won’t spoil it, but it somehow manages to feel both inevitable (like, “duh, how did I not see that coming?”) and totally orthogonal to the tone of the story up to that point. It made me immediately go back and reread the story in a new light. All in all, it is an incredible vignette of a short story that is able to pull incredible depth out of very few moving parts - similar in a way to Steinbeck.

I spent this summer going on a long trip through Japan, Taiwan, and Hawaii. When I got home I had a severe panic attack, to a degree I haven’t had before. It knocked me into a period of intense reflection. I had thought that going on this trip, which I had been dreaming about for years, would help me resolve the anxiety I had about the future. Instead, I was clearly struggling with what to do next. I was exposed to some interesting ideas while talking to a friend and reading Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. After some contemplation, these came together into a perspective shift that I’d like to share.

As I transitioned from high school to college, I found a lot of power in the related ideas of nonconformism (don’t be a sheep!) and self-determinism (create the life/personality you want!). Promoted at the time as the basis of the innovation that made Silicon Valley great, they were tools that helped a young student claim intellectual agency in the world. But like all tools, they are tailored for specific applications. When taken to the extreme, these tools of empowerment can become instruments of delusion.

Non-conformism → Anti-zeitgeist slave morality

There’s the classic Steve Jobs quote that is passed around in the Valley: “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.”

To my uninitiated eighteen year old self, this was an eye opening message. The world to a child simply is, and you contort yourself to fit within it. The notion that it was created, malleable, and possibly flawed seemed unreasonable, like questioning the laws of motion. Suddenly, so much was possible.

It can be paralyzing, though, to question everything all the time. This insight was shared with me by a friend who had just returned to the Bay after visiting NYC. He was struck by how the people that he met were incredibly diverse in terms of background, hobbies, work, interests - and still excellent at what they do. This was in contrast to the Bay’s very specific archetypes: tech bro, alt-left co-op, endurance athlete/climber, etc. In his read, it was the fact that people in New York were more in tune with the zeitgeist, allowing them to save their energy for more focused, unique work. In other words, letting go of the small battles allowed them to focus on the big ones.

This is obviously a broad reduction of two very large cities, but a chord of it struck me. A tendency towards nonconformism is, at its best, a tool for shaking off incompatible or flawed societal norms. But at its worst, it can become an addiction that promises individuality while actually sapping it, sucking energy away from truly meaningful pursuits.

This idea bleeds into Nietzche’s concept of slave morality: the idea that as a coping mechanism, those who are not powerful/agentic moralize their weakness/passivity out of resentment of those who are. For example, conspiracy theorists use their delusions as ways to feel superior to others, when in reality they are compensating for their inability to understand the complexity of government.

I have struggled with many aspects of being an American, including our consumption habits, farming practices, media addictions, etc. But the gut reaction of rejecting these patterns of behavior obscured other desires: for example, the desire to live in a city because it’s where young people and resources are, despite the lack of self-reliance. Or, choosing to spend money on going out to eat, despite the lack of farm-to-table connection, in order to spend more time working on a career that could have an outsized impact. Like how an overactive immune system turns on itself, moralizing rebellion for its own sake can become self-destructive.

Visionary-ism → Idealism

The Bay tech culture idolizes the visionary, someone who has a radically different image of how life should be lived and does the work to make it a reality. In healthy amounts, it can help chart out a path for a more resonant life, “designing-your-life” style. In its extreme form, this behavior can turn into a form of idealistic perfectionism that is escapist and paralyzing.

It can be useful to question the world with an open mind. Imagining a better way to organize housing structure, and choosing to live in a co-op, was a great decision for me coming out of graduate school. But it can be dangerous to get lost in the idea that there is a perfect life waiting to be lived, locked behind a door.

For years while working, I dreamed of spending time in a bamboo forest as a wandering komuso in Japan or living off-grid in a yurt close to nature. These romantic dreams existed in that hazy headspace of half-reality that tends to come on during lazy sunny afternoons with a surrealist book and a little too much wine. Of course, somehow in these dreams, I would maintain my relationships, friends, family and career. And to be fair, it was wonderful to finally pursue one of those dreams this summer. But while it was exciting and educational, it clearly was not the long term vision for life that I had idealized in my head. Without the people and patterns from my life back home it was unsustainable; it was missing the deeper point.

I’ve been revisiting the idea of revealed preference, which I used to reject as disempowering. Revealed preference simply states that we do what we do, for reasons. Or in other words, actions speak louder than words. I used to think it meant that we should resign ourselves to the life we’re living, even if we’re unsatisfied with it. But now I see it as a tool that forces us to examine, if we think we want something, why we aren’t pursuing it. It’s possible that while we think we want some idealized fantasy, we aren’t taking steps towards it because it’s incredibly unrealistic (say, all of us returning to being hunter gatherers). Or, it’s possible that while we like the idea of it, we really don’t like it in practice (say, idealizing hunter gatherer life in a noble savage kind of way, but then not being willing to give up brown rice).

This exercise keeps us in closer lockstep with reality, and can protect us from the distraction of excessive idealism/perfectionism. Obsess too much over being a hunter gatherer, and you won’t make the changes in your life today to be more active/healthy. Reality will always involve compromise; you will always be a little bit complicit with something. Hyperfixating on an idealized vision is a way to hide from the consequences of imperfect, but real growth.

And so

These ideas really came together for me, not during my trip, but in the weeks directly afterwards. The summer was a time when I was actually playing too far into all of these concepts. I was idealizing a life that existed outside of reality, hunting for the perfect place, work, and lifestyle that would satisfy my idealism and rejection of the modern world. When I got back from my trip, I finally had to confront what to do next without the convenience of a next step to distract me.

About a week after the panic attack I went backpacking in the Eastern Sierra. I scrambled up to the top of Monument Ridge during a stormy day and looked out over the vast mountainscape. From the ridge I could see into the next basin and far down into Owens Valley. Clumped clouds put on a theatrical performance of rain and thunder, rolling across the landscape at eye level in dramatic turbulent masses. It was incredibly beautiful. And I realized, really in a sudden shock, that reality was right there, back where I had started four months ago, and that it was more intense and dramatic and beautiful than any artificial ideal in my head. This whole time I had been chasing a mirage, looking for a security that did not exist. Life is change. I was looking for a perfect house, rather than playing in the scrapyard.

Like all forms of growth, it seems you have to stumble and fall for yourself in order to learn, and accept living with the scars. I am excited to come back to sea level, so to speak, and to take small steps rather than imagining big ones.

Rain smoke hail
Rolling thunder
Tromping along in the god zone
Land titrated between desert and life
Over Paiute Pass

The smoke is stronger in the morning, from the growing Garnet fire. We bail, retracing our steps through a delirious combination of haze, dust, rain, and hail. Once we’re out we warm up in a hot spring in Owens Valley. It’s not a bad consolation, soak in a steaming river with USGS surveyors. Learn about frogs, toads, snakes, fish, land, springs. Enjoy the view. We get permits for another trailhead to the north and set up camp.

Hiking in up to Green lake, 9000 feet. This is my favorite elevation to camp - under the treeline, but high enough that the shrubby undergrowth and wet soil has given way to granite and pine needle duft. We set up the tent in a little protected grove of lodgepole and ponderosa pine, tucked away in a corner of the lake. As always, swimming and sunbathing are the first two priorities.

Entering the high sierra (10,000+ feet elevation) is often our goal when backpacking, but entering it can feel like trespassing on forbidden territory, a holy relic of a purer age. Often you enter by hiking over a pass from lower country, trees falling away, steep exertion and crumbling footing keeping your eyes trained on the ground. Then suddenly the slope levels off and spits you out into a high vista, a granite basin of the high sierra. The beauty sinks in, overwhelming, harrowing. You’re confronted with sweeping granite slopes, rock gardens, crystal lakes, wind heavy with the fragrance of wild herbs. The altitude and exertion and possibly hunger combines to create a heady, disorienting feeling. Perhaps you’ve been flipped upside down, because isn’t the bright gleaming rock below you the sky? Doesn’t the sky, split as it is into hundreds of miles of U-shaped canyons, look as solid and pure as a black sea when you look up?

Descending into the basin, the high sierra becomes personal. It is a garden of exquisite clumps of flowers and krummholz bonsai trees, rock gardens, and water so pure and cold it phases into a vacuum on closer examination. Dipping down to drink water the pebbles on the streambed resolve into perfect mosaic clarity. The aftertaste is pure air. It’s almost sacrilegious to sleep in such a place, to bring the messy routines of human existence - food, waste, shelter - into this exposed ceiling of the world.

Today, we’re walking in a bowl of mountains with no other people, in fact no signs of human existence besides a scattered trail that fades in and out of talus and clumps of spiky grass. Being alone in this landscape is childish joy and deep heartache, freedom and loneliness. I switch from playful to somber and back in an instant, and the landscape switches with me. It’s a playground, a church, a film, a prayer, a dream.

“On Climbing the Sierra Mountains again after 31 years
Range after range of mountains
Year after year after year.
I am still in love.”
― Gary Snyder

Later, we camp in a meadow next to tall western groundsel, dwarf lupine, spike trisetum, sulfur buckwheat, parry’s rush, rocky mountain pussytoes, bristly haircap moss, purple mountain-heath, spiny milkvetch, threadleaf sedge. By the stream mountain gooseberry, broadleaf lupine, and many other unknown plants clustering around the cold stream of life rushing down the valley floor. Possibly spotted endemic foxtail pine? Have to bring an ID book. Spy a coyote in the distance, hopping up the mountain. Two deer relax in the evening light. Yellow striped garter snakes hide by our tent poles. We cook dinner and sleep early.

Scramble up passes, carving lines across the rockface. Exertion. Reminder to stay calm. Feel the air thin, heart rippling in the neck. Keep a flow. Make it to the top, as the slope rounds out catch the view of the other side. Gulp it all in, over again. The high sierra is walking, up and down, Kim Stanley Robinson wrote in his high sierra love letter. It’s true. The repetition is also part of the prayer, and it’s easy with a new lake, new sight just around the bend. A week is never enough.

I think bamboo craftsmanship embodies a philosophy of harmonious human interaction with nature. It’s an example of how light human touch can create something beautiful while highlighting the natural beauty of the resource. Whether in its natural state as a grove (or cluster) or made into a flute, garden trellis, or woven flower vase, the bamboo retains its connection to nature.

As a free renewable resource, bamboo is the perfect raw material for empowering democratic design. I first read about the concept of democratic design in A Handmaid Life by William Coperthwaite. He argues that as a society we should create, preserve, and share simple and accessible designs for fundamental everyday items like utensils, tools, and furniture. When we do this, we enable everyone to live a more self-sufficient and embodied life, and in a small but significant way minimize the effect of wealth disparity on quality of life. A simple chair made of four to five pieces of wood can be studied and recreated by a hobbyist, whereas many modern chairs require machined parts and steel. With bamboo, we can completely eliminate money and stores from the equation for many household items. Instead, there are infinite small opportunities for creativity, experimentation, and learning.

The first step, of course, is to find and prepare bamboo for craftsmanship. There are many guides online, but here is my quick rundown. In all cases, the bamboo is ideally harvested in the winter when there is the least amount of sugar in its walls (because it’s not growing). Some writing online talks about syncing harvest with the moon phase, but I haven’t found any concrete evidence for this or heard it corroborated while in Japan. Many bamboo species are suitable for craftsmanship, but Phyllostachys Bambusoides (madake) is a standout for its prevalence, size, and strength.

Processing for weaving: after being cut, the bamboo is left with its leaves intact in the forest for two weeks for the moisture to be removed via transpiration. Then, it is sun dried until it turns white (1-3 months) and moved to a shed for further drying. The longer the cure the better, but the bamboo should be shed-dried for at least 6 months before use. I saw woven bamboo used to make vases, plates, bowls, baskets, lampshades, and hats.

Processing for shakuhachi: traditionally, shakuhachi is made from the madake bamboo species, harvested in the winter with the root nodes intact. Within the week after harvesting, it is heat treated over the fire, and then left to dry vertically in the sun for 1-3 months, followed by 3-5 years of storage in a cool dark place for further curing. I think this same treatment process can be used for creating other bamboo tools, like handles, back scratchers, utensils, walking sticks, etc.

For use in construction, the bamboo is often treated with boric acid for pest prevention. In Japan I saw bamboo used as drying poles, roofs, trellises, garden fences, gutters, and furniture.

All examples of bamboo uses in this article came from direct observation. I’ve been reading the The Book of Bamboo by David Farrelly. Chapter two is titled “One Thousand Things” and quotes Hans Sporry as documenting 1,048 uses of bamboo in his personal collection of Japanese items, as well as an additional 498 ornamental uses. The chapter (and book as a whole) is a wealth of information on bamboo craftsmanship across the globe and time, from wells to wheelbarrows. Lots of reading to do!

I love how jade can harbor a wide variety of characteristics: mottled stripes, spiderwebs, ripples, and windows of pure translucency. It’s a stone that captures the characteristics of the ocean and the sky. In particular, I like the “low quality” jades that have more impurity. Rather than looking like glass (boring) they capture some of the organized chaos of nature; like wispy clouds in the sky, or the churning of water where a river meets the sea. They contain fantastic visual variety that is discovered in each piece as the surface is polished smooth. This anticipation of what internal patterns of the jade will be brought to light by the polishing process is the best part of jade carving, and something I’ll never get tired of.

Jade is hard (nephrite is a 6-6.5 on the Mohs scale), but with modern tools it’s relatively easy to carve. I started off with just a dremel but quickly appreciated the value of a grinding wheel. Fine carving and polish is done with a dremel + flex shaft, and I do some handsanding at the end for delicate pieces. The flex shaft is a necessity, or eventually the water that you use for cooling/dust prevention will damage the motor. I learned that from experience.

Freediving for jade in Big Sur is a phenomenal experience, I’ve done it a few times now and I just get more stoked after every outing. Hunting for green stone on the seafloor and watching it turn translucent as you bring it up into the sun is a quasireligious experience. Not to mention, it certainly tickles the gambling/foraging instinct that more often than not makes me stay out until I’m nauseous and freezing. The last couple of years the reef has seemed pretty healthy - the kelp is strong and there’s lots of life. It seems to have avoided the worst of the urchin barrens that have severely impacted Monterey and the Northern coast. I’ll generally come back with a good cabezon or olive rockfish for dinner.

Big Sur jade has a unique look: it’s normally a blueish green with swirling impurities, sometimes with vulcanization or barnacles attached. It has the only underwater vein of nephrite in the world, so to find a well-shaped, ocean polished piece is something special. It’s perhaps the most fully formed natural jewelry made by mother nature.

I’ve also had the chance recently to rockhound for some Taiwan jade in Hualien county. Taiwan contains half of the worlds nephrite reserves and post-monsoon this river had quite a bit of jade hidden in it! Pieces get broken off upstream and washed down into the ocean at Baibao river. From what I can tell this jade tends to be a bit flakier, with a more transparent electric green color and dark flecking impurities. I was able to find 5-10 good pieces over the course of a few days with my girlfriend. We discovered that when river hunting, the key seems to be prioritizing covering ground over thoroughness, and looking specifically for the translucent green color that is characteristic of the jade here. Shallow areas with some amount of elevation drop (tumbling) seemed to hold the best pieces. Here is a comparison of a polished piece with my smaller Big Sur jade Bi necklace.

Backlit:

Notice the slightly bluer and more mottled coloration of the Big Sur Jade. Taiwan Jade in raw form:

Another solid piece was hiding mostly buried in the sand:

Waiting to be carved! I’m appreciating what seems to be the beginning of a lifelong journey of hounding and carving jade from around the world. Sadly I missed by chance to visit Jade Beach in Japan this time around, but it will happen.

Like with many items of quality, the unique aspects of each type of jade is enhanced when brought into contrast with others (I really appreciated this when I had the good luck to compare many shakuhachi flutes earlier this summer). I also got a chance to look at some incredible Chinese Jade artifacts at the Taiwan National Palace Museum. One of my favorites:

Jade has been a part of Chinese culture since the beginning of culture, more or less. Some of the jade carvings at this museum were 5000 years old.

(3500-3000BCE hongshan cloud carving). Really spectacular, especially when you consider that they were using foot-pumped wheels and sand as their main abrasive tool. A tactile representation of virtue, all gentlemen were expected to wear jade. Confucius wrote in the Book of Rites:

Anciently, superior men found the likeness of all excellent qualities in jade.
Soft smooth and glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence.
Fine, compact, and strong—like intelligence.
Angular, but not sharp and cutting—like righteousness.
Hanging down (in beads) as if it would fall to the ground like (the humility of) propriety.
When struck, yielding a note, clear and prolonged, yet terminating abruptly—like music.
Its flaws not concealing its beauty, nor its beauty concealing its flaws—like loyalty.
With an internal radiance issuing from it on every side—like good faith.
Bright as a brilliant rainbow—like heaven.
Exquisite and mysterious, appearing in the hills and streams—like the earth.

I suspect that the material qualities of polished jade taps into some of our evolutionary instincts: looking for good tools, perhaps, or clean water. Every time I find a piece in the water, or examine one of the pieces I’m wearing, I’m struck with the same sense of undiminished revelry. When the jade bug hits, it hits hard.

I’m coming up on the end of the Japan leg of my summer travels. I’m reminded again of how much value can be found on the other side of discomfort, if I just have a bit of patience. The past seven weeks have certainly had their ups and downs, but I’ve come away with many lessons. One that sounds obvious but was really impressed upon me on this trip is the value of mentorship.

In Japan, I’ve been able to find individuals deeply skilled in many things that I’ve been searching to learn more about: small scale agriculture, fishing, construction, bamboo craftsmanship, and of course also shakuhachi. Part of this discovery I’m sure is me having more time and a more exploratory mindset compared to when I was in the States. At the same time, it does feel like traditional knowledge and skill is preserved better here, and is more abundant among the populace. Over the past weeks of travel I’ve been lucky enough to meet some really fascinating individuals, largely in rural areas.

For example, I worked at an organic tea farm where the owner Morii-san also has rice fields and built his own house from scratch, all while operating a wwoof volunteer program with preternatural calm and goodwill. Ken-san, who is working for him as a farmhand while adopting and restoring his own tea fields, speaks Japanese, German, Spanish, and English, and is also training in tea ceremony to be a combination tea farmer and tea master. I lived with a bamboo craftsman in Susaki who created beautiful woven baskets and vases, and shared his knowledge about many different forms of traditional craftsmanship as we worked on restoring an old temple. In Susaki I met Shoji-san, a rice and vegetable farmer who is also a swimming instructor and experiments with creating shakuhachi. He took me out to harvest bamboo for me to make my own, and also showed us a traditional method of eliminating the bitterness from bamboo shoots (take no ko). I met an Indonesian fisherman who spoke perfect Japanese and pretty great English, and while teaching us how to prepare local fish did perfect side splits on the tatami. In Osaka I met Fuu-san, who studies Shakuhachi and Kyudo and is also an ordained monk, retired jazz musician, and Kung fu practitioner. And I met many other fascinating shakuhachi players through the Koten-shakuhachi-kenkyū-kai (Society for the Study of Classical Shakuhachi).

Without much planning, I was able to meet many incredible people that I felt had deep knowledge in the art of living. I felt the power of human knowledge transmitted through generations - my small amounts of self-study through YouTube and solo experimentation felt as marginal as a candle in a wildfire. I’ve learned so much so quickly - and realized that to learn and preserve these skills real human mentorship is absolutely necessary. Seeing a lifetime of dedication in these arts was both inspiring and also somewhat validating for my own far off aspirations of mastery.

Four years ago, I wrote on my blog “I still want to travel to rural Japan and immerse myself in mountainous homesteading, shakuhachi, landscape painting and judo, and I’m still too afraid of the consequences of that decision to actually do it.” Well, here we are! I’m happy I finally did it. What started as a one-off summer trip I think has become the first of many pilgrimages to learn more about the arts of rice, tea, and bamboo. I hope to meet more farmers, craftsmen, and artists in Taiwan over the next two months as well! Freed for now from the 9-5, I‘m hoping to find similar mentorship in the States when I return.

畳へのラブレター田舎暮らしで気づいた、椅子の傲慢さ

この1か月、日本に滞在して様々な素晴らしい経験をしてきました。中山道や四国遍路の一部をハイキングしたり、オーガニックのお茶農園で働いたり、尺八の名人から学んだり。しかし、その中でも最も心に残っているのは、古い日本家屋の畳の上にただ座るという、静かで深い体験です。

畳は稲わらと草で編まれた、日本の田んぼから生まれた素朴な素材。それが、土のぬくもりと洗練さを絶妙に融合させています。その質感は香りと同じように繊細で、座ったり、寝転んだり、伸びをしたりするのにちょうどいい固さと柔らかさのバランス。五感がやさしく満たされていくような、気づけば心が落ち着いている——そんな感覚を与えてくれます。

家具のない部屋では、畳の上で自由に体勢を変えられます。あぐらをかけば腰や股関節が開いていき、正座をすれば、姿勢の悪さがすぐに自覚できて自然と整います。人間の身体は本来、平らな地面に休むようにできている。畳は、どこに身体の弱さがあるかを教えてくれ、それを癒す手助けをしてくれるのです。

一方で椅子は、身体と地面のつながりを断ち切ります。まるで「地に足をつけない」感覚。王様が玉座に座るように、自分が他の生き物より上にいるような錯覚さえ生むかもしれません。床は「汚いもの」「触れてはいけない場所」と感じてしまいがちで、椅子は身体を直角に固定し、動きを制限します。まるで硬い登山靴のように、サポートはしてくれても、その中で身体は衰えていく。畳の上では「王様気分」になんてなれません。地面に直接座り、せいぜい座布団に助けられている程度。それがかえって心を落ち着かせ、謙虚な気持ちを呼び起こしてくれるのです。

椅子や靴が作る“地面との距離”は、感覚を鈍らせ、じわじわと不安を生むことがあります。裸足で砂や草の上を走ったとき、「ああ、これを求めていたんだ」と気づくあの感覚。靴下、柔らかいベッド、プラスチックの椅子に囲まれた生活では、少しずつ感覚が抑え込まれ、何かが足りないような気持ちになります。その“空白”を埋めるために、私たちは大きな刺激を求めてしまう。大音量の音楽、ジャンクフード、映画、クラブ——それ自体が悪いわけではないけれど、それが「何かの代わり」として選ばれているとしたら、本当の満足にはつながりません。

日本の伝統的な暮らしの中には、このような“微細な感覚”を大切にする価値観が息づいています。コーヒーではなくお茶、金管楽器ではなく竹の尺八、蛍光灯の白い空間ではなく木の暗がり。すべてが「ゆっくりと気づく」ことを促してくれる文化なのです。

高知県須崎市では、海を望む畳の部屋で毎日数時間を過ごしています。朝はストレッチや尺八の練習、昼はお昼寝、そしてその他の時間はただぼーっと海を眺めたり。今滞在しているのは、り〜な姉さんという素晴らしい方が運営するシェアハウスで、私たちは近所の方々がくれる旬の野菜で、季節を感じる食事を楽しんでいます。お店がないので、キャベツと豆腐でも味噌を変えることで変化を楽しんだり、地元のアジを刺身や塩焼きにして食べる——そんな工夫が、味わいの奥行きを教えてくれます。

畳の上で、焦ることなく2時間過ごすことができます。床の香りや肌触りに注意を向け、軽くストレッチをするだけで、思考と感覚の隙間が穏やかに満たされる。その静けさが、深い思索を支えてくれるのです。これは、人々がカフェで仕事をしたり、散歩中やシャワー中にアイデアをひらめくのと同じ。少しだけ感覚が刺激されているとき、私たちの思考は一番自由になるのでしょう。

もちろん、現代の都市部の日本はまた別の世界です。明治維新以降の「反伝統・親西洋」の風潮は、都市に強烈な刺激をもたらしました。パチンコ店、ぎらつくコンビニ、ネオンの看板、眩しい蛍光灯——ビジネスホテルに畳や影は存在しません。でも、こうした現代的な美も確かにある中で、り〜なさんのような若者が地方に伝統美を受け継ぎながら、現代的に再解釈してくれていることに大きな希望を感じます。

私はしばらく、畳の上で学びを深めていこうと思っています。

I’ve had a lot of great experiences traveling in Japan the past month: hiking parts of the Nakasendo and the Shikoku Henro, working on an organic tea farm, learning from master shakuhachi players. But one of the most thought provoking things I’ve had the pleasure of doing is simply sitting on tatami in an old Japanese house.

Tatami is woven rice straw and grass, humble field materials turned into a blend of earthiness and sophistication. Tatami is warm and somehow strikes a perfect balance of firmness and cushion for sitting, stretching, and sleeping. Like its smell, the texture is subtle, a sensory experience appearing to fill voids of attention before pleasantly fading away.

Without any furniture the tatami welcomes you to change positions freely. Sitting cross-legged is a stretch, opening up the lower back and hips in a way that a chair doesn’t. Kneeling in seiza, bad back or neck posture is acutely uncomfortable and quickly corrected. It makes sense that the human body should be able to rest on a flat surface; the tatami shows you where the body is lacking and encourages you to fix them.

A chair, on the other hand, separates the body from the earth. This creates a feeling of being “above” or better than creatures that touch the ground - perhaps there’s an association with being a king on a throne. It locks the body into 90 degree angles and discourages movement. Like a stiff hiking boot, it provides some support but allows the body encased within to atrophy. On tatami, it is very difficult to feel royal. You sit on the ground, insulated only by a common farming byproduct and perhaps a zabuton cushion. It is clean, aesthetic, and sophisticated, but somehow humbling at the same time.

The layer of separation from the earth enforced by a chair or hiking boot muffles our sensory input and creates a subtle anxiety, like the sensory opposite of an itch. I always realize this when I take off my shoes to run in the sand or a grassy field - something about experiencing that sensation just feels good and is something I didn’t realize I was missing. Add up many small moments throughout the day where our sensory input is muffled by a sock, a soft bed, a smooth plastic chair - a sense of impatience builds. There’s a feeling that something unidentifiable is missing. I believe this causes us to search for loud and intense sensation to fill the void. It’s not that these things are bad, but when we seek them out not for their own sake but as a compensatory mechanism, neither craving is properly satisfied. There is a lack of presence, a sense of jumping from hedonistic input to input, of searching for something while knowing we’re looking in the wrong place.

In my brief experiences, it seems like appreciating these subtle sensations is a theme in traditional Japanese living. In green tea versus coffee, bamboo shakuhachi vs brass woodwinds, dark wooden rooms vs fluorescently lit ceramic, there is an underlying current of hidden nuance compared to western culture that encourages you to slow down and pay attention.

I’ve had the pleasure of spending a few hours a day on the tatami looking out over the ocean in Susaki. In the morning, for stretching and shakuhachi, in the afternoon, for a nap, and hours in between to just relax and enjoy the view. I’m staying in a shared house run by the inspiring Reena ne-san, where we pretty much only eat local seasonal food, most of it gifted from neighbors in exchange for some labor. There are no restaurants or stores in town. We enjoy variety by eating our cabbage and tofu with a different type of miso, or eating Aji as sashimi vs salted and grilled. In this way as well, traditional living encourages us to pay attention to the nuance of flavor.

I can sit on the tatami for two hours without urgency. Paying attention to the smell and texture of the floor and doing light stretches creates just enough sensation to bridge the gap between thoughts. This helps sustain deep thinking. It is similar to why people work in coffee shops or have their best ideas in the shower - with minor sensory input our nerves are calmed, leaving our higher brain functions to operate in peace.

Modern Japan, of course, is a different story. The anti-traditional, pro-Western sentiment of the Meiji restoration in industrializing Japan means today the cities are full of shock impact and rapid sensation: pachinko, epileptic convenience stores, intense indoor fluorescent lights, neon street signs. There are no tatami and no shadows in a business hotelroom. And while this modern aesthetic has its own beauty and depth, I’m glad that pockets of young people like Reena are sustaining the traditional aesthetic values of the countryside, even as they adapt and modernize them for the world today. For now I am continuing my lessons by sitting on tatami.

On April 5, 2025 I was spearfishing in Big Sur when I encountered a 12 foot great white shark. We were cruising close to shore in about 40ft of water, wrapping up a 2.5 hour dive out in deeper waters. I was about halfway down the water column, starting a dive, when I noticed a large dark shadow appearing out from the direction of the open ocean. I remember thinking “wow, that is a big tuna” and turning rightside up to get a better look. As it got closer and its features resolved out from the water I realized it was the front profile of a great white.

In retrospect, the shark was quite chill - it must have come over to investigate what I was, and it made a sharp left turn about 15 feet away once it decided I wasn’t a seal and cruised onward. We were at the same depth, and I got a full side view of its body - I remember being struck by how thick it was from head to tail, an utterly massive hunk of muscle gliding silently through the water. I had never been in the water with anything remotely as large before. The one black eye I saw was utterly alien and uncaring.

I stayed pretty calm through the encounter, keeping my gun trained on its nose although it was just out of range and I knew it wouldn’t do much against >1000lb of shark swimming at 35mph. In the moment when we first came face to face and I realized my life was up to this creature’s whims I had two simultaneous thoughts: I knew I was going to cause a lot my parents and girlfriend a lot of grief if I died, and I was bummed I wasn’t going to be able to train Jiu Jitsu anymore (lol). There wasn’t time to really feel any emotion, I was completely present in the moment primed to take any (futile) action I could take.

As it departed I surfaced and did panic a bit, I swam over to my dive float and pulled the two black rockfish on my stringer out of the water and onto the board. I was still about 200ft away from shore and started swimming on my back, taking occasional looks below me to see if it was coming back for a second look (the shark ended up turning back towards the open ocean and swam under my dive buddies, they caught it on GoPro from the surface). I realized my panic swimming was probably making me look like prey, and forced myself to slow down. In retrospect it is nice to know I can stay calm and take rational actions in the face of a great fear, but that was definitely the most agonizing and intense swim of my life; taking deep breaths, starting at the open blue sky, trying to kick slowly, not knowing if in a moment a gaping mouth was going to burst out from the depths and make this the last thing I saw…! The sky was beautiful and full of vibrant color.

I made it to a partially submerged pinnacle and scrambled onto some mussels, where I spent a few minutes getting washed into the rock before working up the nerve to cross the last channel to our rocky entry point. By then I knew the shark had probably already lost interest, but it was an immense relief to be on solid land. My dive buddies had already made it to shore by then. We spent a good 30 minutes shaking off the adrenaline and coming to terms with what just happened.

Great white shark attacks are quite rare, although I don’t know how the probability of attack stacks up if you’re actually in the water with one. There have been 201 attacks and 16 deaths in the last 75 years attributed to great whites. Most experienced divers that I know in California had never seen one in decades of being in the water. They don’t see humans as prey, and supposedly most attacks are either from a human being mistaken for a seal, or a curiosity driven “nibble” that nevertheless can cause one to bleed out.

Moreso than the actual risk of death, the enormous sense of powerlessness I felt in presence of such a massive, dangerous, and wild creature has left a strong impression on me, one of both fear and awe. It was a humbling experience.

I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been hesitant to return to bodyboarding and diving after this event, but to be honest my biggest takeaway from this has been to be way more terrified of driving. Your lifetime odds of dying in a car accident in the US are 1%, 45,000x more likely than a shark attack. Of course folks spend more time in a car than the ocean generally so the risk factor per unit time of activity is different, but it’s still likely much greater.

The shark triggers my biological instincts in the way an oncoming truck on the highway doesn’t, but both are lethally dangerous objects that you have no control over. We need more trains!

So, that is my great white shark story. I was hesitant to post about this at first since I didn’t want to scare anyone away from diving, but to be honest it has had a lingering impact on how grateful I am for life. We spend so much time in human-created environments with human stressors and human-driven consequences; this was a reminder of how many of the things I perceive to be issues and stressors in daily life are really not that serious. And it was a reminder that the wilderness is both terrifying and beautiful, that we can learn from interacting with it, that we should be humble and embrace these lessons rather than trying to extinguish the wilderness out of fear.

I’ve been geeking out on Bruce Lee quotes lately after watching Warrior. In this quote he captures the value of martial arts as a physical vector for philosophical practice. I sometimes fall prey to the belief that the mind and body can be separated, that one can think oneself into a different state, can consciously change how they interact with the world.

I think the truth is that one takes shape the way a rushing river carves into a sandstone canyon. There exists both the fast day to day flow and the slow, more stable structure that is carved out over time. Our conscious action is the water, and through it we can indirectly carve out the subconscious “wisdom” or “self.” As Bruce Lee’s quote above suggests, to pursue wisdom is to try to directly shape canyon walls with the hands - a futile endeavor. I’m certain his martial arts background, as a forefather of modern mma, led him to this conclusion. Competitive martial arts (and I’m specifically using Jiu Jitsu here as an example) is a fabulous rushing river for sculpting a better existence.

This is something I think all Jiu Jitsu practitioners implicitly feel, although it is rarely directly mentioned. People become addicted, but can’t put their finger on why. Of course there are a plethora of obvious benefits: physical exercise of all types, skill development, camaraderie. But really, the value is having a “Way” of being, a form of practice that is capable of creating change in the subconsciousness.

Daily, prove to yourself that you are not inherently good, by losing. Prove to yourself that you can grow, through practice. That you can be better than the day before. That you can endure pain, that you can become as good as, and then better than, those who you idolized at the start of your journey.

This lesson is repeated over and over, and you never stop taking it. Rather than a flash realization, through Jiu Jitsu this is drilled into you until you have no choice but to believe it. These are -isms that are written about in every self help book. Knowing what the better version of yourself looks like is not complicated - everyone implicitly has an idea of where they want to be. The real magic is in the method of delivery, of taking ideals and ingraining them.

As Kodokan judo was a way to bring old ideals of combat into an industrialized world in the 19th century, Jiu Jitsu does the same in the 21st. Jiu Jitsu retains the raw, primal aspects of combat that forces growth. But it categorizes it in such a way that you can do it every day without destroying yourself. What a vector for development! One on one physical conflict with nobody else to rely on, the prospect of not death but domination lurking in your mind - this creates growth that is more solid, more fundamental than the confidence gained by trying to keep up with fast fashion or social approval.

Fighting is instinct, but it is also something that must be practiced deeply to be understood. Proper practice is bringing the unconscious into the conscious, practicing it, refining it, and then retraining it into the unconsciousness. Practice is having a conversation with the millions of lived experiences of our ancestors that shaped our instinct. Proper practice is stubbornly butting heads with reality over and over, then moulding one’s instinct to better fit what is true. “So, this position requires more weight in the left leg, to maintain mobility. Even if I want to, I can’t be aggressive in this position.” These are epistemic lessons that carve deeply over time.

And of course there is also the competition aspect, the moments of putting it all on the line. Its purpose is both the act itself and to further stress test and iterate on the practice. To continue is the goal.

In short, Jiu Jitsu is (can be) philosophy. And Bruce Lee is based.

There’s a quote in the book Electrify by Saul Griffiths that really stood out to me when I was a fresh college graduate: “Something like global warming can seem overwhelming, but we should approach the problem as 100 separate problems, tackling 1% of emissions at a time.” It made the overwhelming, global issue of our time feel slightly more manageable.

One third of the world, about 2.5 billion people, cooks with polluting fuels: mainly charcoal and biofuel (wood, dung, etc) but also biogas and kerosene. This consumption is responsible for roughly 3% of global carbon emissions, half of all global wood consumption, and roughly three millions deaths per year.

This is problem doesn’t seem mentioned often in climate circles - probably partially because it is responsible for a smaller percentage of global emissions than say transportation or industry, but I think also because it is just a hard problem to track, much less solve. You can’t go out and meter the cookfires of 2.5 billion people to identify exactly how much carbon they are emitting. There isn’t much money in addressing this market, compared to something sexy like EVs. Plus, it feels a bit facetious to focus on cooking when people in more industrialized nations consume orders of magnitude more energy.

And yet, 3% of global emissions is still a critical piece of the global warming puzzle, when seen from the perspective of Electrify. And I think there is an opportunity to provide an alternative cooking option that is renewable, healthier, and in some cases cheaper. Let’s dive into it.

The Problem

I mentioned this in the intro: burning biofuels in a home for cooking is terrible for lung health. It also increases carbon emissions (when burning kerosene or other fossil fuels) and deforestation (when burning wood or charcoal). Purchasing these fuels can be expensive, or otherwise extremely labor intensive. When I was traveling in Northern Vietnam I saw how far the tree line had moved up the mountains in the rural northern provinces. More than once we passed people bent over nearly ninety degrees at the waist loaded down with a huge bundle of firewood, making the long trek back to their house so they could cook and be warm.

Most of the 2.5 billion people that still rely on biofuel or dirtier fossil fuels live in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. If a reliable electric grid reached the less developed areas of these regions, the clear solution would be to install electric or induction ranges. But 9% of the global population still doesn’t have access to an electrical grid, largely in sub-Saharan Africa. And I’m guessing there are many small pockets in Asia where it will take a long time to get a grid connection, leaving some left behind.

Solution: A solar powered off-grid induction stove

As an alternative, I propose developing a fully off-grid induction stove. Just like developing nations can leapfrog the landline and go straight to cellular, it’s possible to move from wood and dung directly to renewable cooking, leapfrogging fossil-fuel cooking sources like kerosene or liquid natural gas.

Basically, the product would be an induction stove with two large LFP lithium ion cells, power electronics, and MC4 connectors to accept solar power directly from panels. Basically a portable induction stove plugged into a universal power supply with a solar input, this is not inventing any new technologies. Rather, it’d be making a cheap, integrated solution that would be robust and simple to use.

The stove doesn’t have to work 365 days a year; if there is a stretch with no sun people could use wood or other fuels still. The goal is just to provide a clean, desirable alternative to day-to-day biofuel use. But both sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are good locations for solar.

So let’s break down how cost-competitive a product like this could be.

Design & Cost Analysis

To replace the majority of the cooking done in the home, the stove has to be hot enough, and cook long enough, to cook a normal lunch and dinner. Let’s design it to last at least 10 years, preferably 20.

As a starting point, let’s say to cook a meal we need to power a medium-sized induction burner for one hour. In the afternoon we can power this from solar, and in the evening from the battery. The EPRI estimates a medium sized induction cooktop to consume 1.4kW (similar in power to a large space heater, for context). Assuming we need to provide this power for one hour at the 10 year mark of the product, and an aggressive cell energy loss of 30% over life, we need a 2kWh lithium iron phosphaate cell (LFP). LFP cells are cheap, safer than most lithium ion alternatives, don’t use rare metals, and can discharge at high C rates (power-to-energy ratios). Their main downside is energy density, which we don’t care too much about for this product.

This paper estimates that LFP cell cost will be $50/kWh by 2030, a reasonable assumption. So our system will require $100 of cell.

From our initial assumption of cooking energy, the system will require 2.8kWh of solar energy a day. We can use the solar installer’s rough rule of thumb that a PV system’s energy output is five times its power rating: 2.8kWh/5hr = 560W solar system. Rounding this up to 800W to account for cloudy days, reduced light in winter, and reduced PV efficiency from dust cover.

Polycrystalline PV panels today go for about 25c/W, with lower quality panels possibly selling for as low a 7c/W. Let’s assume we can get a reasonably reliable PV system in 2030 for 10c/W. We don’t care too much about panel efficiency, since we’re not limited by roof space. So wholesale, 800W will cost $80s.

Besides these two components, the third major cost will be the stove itself. Power electronics required to step up the solar power to a higher voltage and invert it to drive the magnetic coils of the system. (It’s possible we could choose to use an electric stove instead and be less efficient, in exchange for a simpler and cheaper system). You can buy an induction stove today on Amazon for $50, so let’s assume we can build a custom stove, with the necessary cables and interfaces for the solar and cell inputs, for something similar.

So, our total cost comes out to $230. Accounting for battery management, possibly some cooling system, and other odds and ends, I think this system could be built for less than $400.

Comparison with Kerosene

Well, is $400 cheap enough? The main competing product would be a kerosene stove.

Over ten years of operation, the social cost of the carbon produced by a typical kerosene stove is about $1000.

(Here’s the math, if you’re interested: 9.88kg CO2 emitted per gallon of kerosene → About 15 hours on medium heat to burn a gallon of kerosene means ballpark 0.67kg CO2 per hour → cooking 2hr a day, 1.34kg of CO2/day → 1.34*365*10 = ~5 metric tons of CO2 over life → $200/metric ton social cost of carbon estimate according to EPA → $1000 total cost, not account for net present value adjustments).

Plus there is the actual cost of kerosene that has to be regularly purchased by the stove owner. Kersone prices vary significantly by country, but for the regions we’re interested in (sub-Saharan Africa and Asia) let’s assume a typical price of $3/gallon. This comes out to a total ten year cost of $1460 (again not including net present value).

So our comparison comes out to: $400 total stove cost with no fuel costs for the solar powered stove, versus $1460 in fuel costs plus about $1000 in social cost of carbon (plus the $50 cost of a kerosene stove). However, in a given year the cost of using a kerosene stove will be cheaper ($146/year fuel costs).

Conclusion

In any case, as the cost of solar and lithium batteries continues to drop, new product spaces are opening up that would be economically unfeasible a decade ago. From an engineering perspective, it seems eminently possible to build a completely off-grid cooking setup that is superior to fossil and biofuel alternatives from a cost, health, and labor perspective.

If the US really does believe in its social cost of carbon assessment it would build these stoves and give them away for free - it would be getting a 2.5x return on investment on emissions alone, not to mention the health and convenience impact.

The real challenge is probably building a business model that can sell and distribute product in these low-income markets. The company Mobisol is an example of a company innovating on the business model side, providing rent-to-own off-grid solar systems that reduce the upfront cost of ownership. I don’t know how successful this has proven to be for them, but if there are other ideas on how to get a product like this out I am all ears.

If you’re only doing jiu jitsu for fun, just keep showing up, relax during training, and enjoy the ride.

If you want to be a professional, find a pro-level gym with a successful coach and do whatever they tell you.

If you’re starting out as a hobbyist but want to improve as quickly as possible for whatever reason (ie live your anime leveling up dream) these are some tips I have for how to approach jiu jitsu as a committed white/blue belt.

1) Build coordination early

Start working on the most difficult movements early on. For jiu jitsu, I think most of these movements fall within the realm of takedowns and open guard. It takes time to have the strength through range of motion for a good double leg, the reflexes and explosiveness for a good sprawl, and the flexibility and core strength necessary to high pommel or invert in guard. These movements are complex and generally unfamiliar, even to dedicated athletes. Ingraining these skills early on will help you five years down the line when you’re trying to put the pieces together.

2) Keep a narrow focus

To become dangerous on the mat quickly, become an expert in a couple specific positions, and then find ways to get there in a match. In particular I think it makes sense to be an expert in guard retention and back control, but you can pick what you like. People that are really good are often talked about in mystical terms, as if they have some secret aura that just makes them Good At Jiu Jitsu. But in my experience, getting good is a matter of slowly building out the number of areas where you feel like an expert in. When you have a path to one of these expert areas from any position, and understand the dilemmas that you can impose on your opponent to get to these positions, it will feel to your opponent that you can read the future.

3) Get good at guard retention and back control

Guard retention, because as my coach says: “when your opponent can’t pass your guard jiu jitsu becomes a lot more fun - there is no getting smashed in side control for five minutes.” Guard retention is a skill that is easily practiced in open rolling, so you can work on it all the time. And having a guard that is impassable will mean you’re able to get reps on whatever you’d like during rolling. Hobbyist gyms often don’t spend enough time doing positional sparring, making it difficult to keep a narrow focus. Retention is a tool that will allow you to easily convert a roll into a focused training session.

Becoming an expert in back control means you always have a way of submitting an opponent, no matter their skill level. This gives you a path to victory even against very skilled opponents. When you have back control in a roll, try to never lose that position.

4) Build your physical resilience

Jiu jitsu is a demanding sport, and if you don’t build strength, flexibility, and endurance into your muscles, tendons, and ligaments, you’re going to be spending a lot of time sitting out on the sidelines not getting reps in.

Crucially, white/blue belt seems to be the time when people get injured the most because they don’t know what they’re doing yet. Everyone says to relax, but I honestly am not sure that’s possible early on in the jiu jitsu journey. Familiarity breeds flow, and when everything is unfamiliar it’s hard not to spazz at least some of the time. So spending serious effort to develop one’s strength and flexibility is critical to surviving those early years without major injuries.

5) The gym is about learning

This should go without saying, but approach time in the gym as time to learn jiu jitsu, not as a competition. This is maybe the most cliche of the tips, but it’s something that needs to be frequently revisited or else lost to the ego. Jiu jitsu is complicated enough as it is, don’t make it harder by having a “killer mindset” and seeing every roll as a war. Everyone I know who trains like this gets stuck at a mid to low level of skill.

Treat most rolls like an experiment: you’re calm, observant, assessing what you do that works and what you need to work on. You’re containing your focus to a single position or concept for a few months, to have the time to study it thoroughly. Maybe 20% of the time, you pick up the pace and work on developing your coordination, speed, cardio, etc. But even then, the back of your mind should be thinking “how can I do this better? What is working and not working for me right now?”

If you’re able to iterate and course-correct on your skillset each day, then you’re getting thousands of cycles of improvement in over the course of white and blue belt. If you’re in the gym fighting wars, weaknesses will stay unpatched and will always be exploited by those with complete games.