Algonquin Park Wildlife Adventure! Highlight Reel

Please enjoy this compilation of wildlife sighted in Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada, during March 2024.

There is no creed that makes pain less painful

All that exists owes its life to all that is no more. Each passing moment is a martyr for the next, just as pain is our debt to joy. There’s no wisdom or faith that makes pain less painful. It must hurt if anything is to matter: your life depends on it.

So stop. Your sorrow chases you: turn toward it. Watch it catch up. It will not pounce and end you. You will not lose more than you already have.

Grief is your mother. Let her feed you, for grief is the food your soul was made to eat. It digests pain into life itself. Your soul knows how to break pain down into its parts, which are the same nutrients that combine to make purpose and awe and laughter. You don’t have to do anything, just as your stomach knows what to do with meat and potatoes. Turnips have birthed poetry — consciousness — war crimes — human drama. Pain birthed the chance at eking out a living at all.

Stop starving yourself. This hunger strike never prevented the bad things from happening, and your numbness slips into dissolution as you cease to exist.

So greet your sorrow. Make room for it at your table. Accept the dish it offers and break bread for you both.

Grief is here. Grief, your mother who loved you. Eat, weep, and see tomorrow. Nourished, you will survive; one day you will have enough strength to give as thanks.

A Letter From The Universe

To An Old Soul;

You are not being punished. Admittedly this place will hurt you. However, we expect you will find ways to make it better — not just for your own comfort’s sake, but to help others who also live here. 

Time is still precious, of course, but here you must give nearly all of yours as dues for daring to exist in the first place. Breathing is still free but very little else in terms of your bodily requirements. Do you begin to understand? Here, you will feel you ought not to exist. The one thing you are surely innocent of causing — the fact you have a body and mind — will be considered suspect. You are leasing your life, in a sense, and you will likely have to leverage most of your life’s hours just to afford it. 

You will be taught much — oh, so much! — but not how to cope with the strain and pain of your labour; not how to feel as though you and everyone else deserve to be here. It will be tempting to sleep or otherwise distract your mind from the absurdity of this place. It will get into you like a chill at night. If you remember this message, you must reject everything this place has ever told you and hold fast to what feels only obvious in your heart. 

You may come to feel that nothing matters at all, since life is treated like a crime. People all around you will feel this too, even if they do not know that the world at large is a parody of worthwhile existence. We cannot guarantee you will remember this message, dear soul. We pray you will seek meaning, and perhaps even come to realize that by seeking “meaning” you are asking for a reason to go on living instead of finding a way out. 

You want a reason for going through the effort and the pain. Pet possibilities — like gods and mystical answers — may not satisfy you. In this case you must choose to create your own feeling that life is worth it, because you know it is. You know that if life were valued here the way you feel it ought to be, it would be beautiful, remarkable, perfect. 

That means you know that life is worth it. 

We hope you will go forth on a mission of life-cherishing. There will be no shortage of other souls who need help cherishing their own lives, and we hope you will be moved to aid them. You may try to change the world if you wish. But your own mind’s freedom is your utmost responsibility. Do not be deceived and do not behave as if you believe the absurdities of a worthless life. Stand out in radical devotion to your worth, and the worth of all Being. 

We will meet again. Be brave — in this life and the eternal thereafters.

Algonquin Park Wildlife Highlights — June 2023

A video compliation of some of our best wildlife viewings during our Algonquin adventure. Music by me.

[Poetry] Mongolia Awaiting

Were emptiness real,

would I still drift, dream-drawn

to endless steppes of lichen latched

on lonely rock, fearlessly communing

with an existential sky?

For every place is teeming

with spirals of being,

and where I am without void

I find the rite of dancing,

enjoined ecstatically

in the passion of being amongst it all.

Here, sadness has no home,

as I oust my denial of coiling mystery,

and thus crown to glory the Stirrer

of all sightless cycles of existence

everywhere.

Algonquin Park Wildlife Highlights

Willow and I recently went to Algonquin Park for 10 nights, and experienced so many amazing wildlife moments! I have created a video compilation of some of my favourite encounters.

The Spirit of Algonquin

At the end of April we went to Algonquin Park and enjoyed a beautiful time of wildlife viewing. It means a lot to me to connect with nature and animals, so when I saw a moose get spooked by a loud truck, I instinctively put out my arm and said, “It’s okay.” The moose had abruptly moved to bolt, but now stopped instead to gaze at me, and then went back to drinking from a little stream. It was an amazing feeling.

Here is a video compilation of the trip’s highlights, with music composed by me.

Of Meaning and Existential Crisis

Meaning has no place in thoughts of the future, but only in how you think of the now.

This is my answer to all you existentially-minded souls, all who just seek a reason… All who have feared an empty, bleak future.

Care about something and feel the meaning of that, here in the now.

That’s all there is to it. You can only feel meaning in the present moment. So reflect on what you do care about, let yourself truly feel, and go from there.

New Music: Fireflies

Instrumental post-rock composed and performed by me! I used my Axiom mini Air 32 keyboard, Ignite and Studio One software.

Otherworldly

Lately I have been working on my purpose in life by examining my true nature — which is being someone who sees the world in soul terms. I believe in the power of the imagination and that the physical world — the world beyond the Self — is the unknown, the esoteric Otherness. In keeping with this idea I created a song called “Otherworldly”, with vocals and lyrics by me.

 

I am also interested in a new therapeutic approach to anxiety and the emptiness of depression. It seeks to honour our power to create experiences and learn about ourselves — the only thing we can truly know.

Through our imagination we can “build out of nothing” like the gods.