7/30/25

"Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive--that you can touch the miracle of being alive--then that is a kind of enlightenment."

Something I'm very interested in pursuing at some point is a deep reading of a particular piece of fiction. Truly understanding a text through several re-readings, combing through secondary sources and essays, reading every significant work that had influenced it, etc. There's a website on here called Mental Labour which I take major inspiration from. They talk about their methodical approach to research in their journal and in the notes on their projects. That deep understanding that comes from re-readings, reading other sources, scrawling notes in the margins is something I really admire. And though I'm certainly not a serious philosopher, or even really an intellectual, more like a delusional day-dreamer who insists on sharing his hallucinations with others, it's something I'd really like to give a shot.

So what great work am I picking for this rigorous study? Well, sort of embarrassingly, I'm leaning towards Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I don't think I fit the "lit bro" archetype, but you really wouldn't know that by going through my reading list. The reason I pick Blood Meridian in particular is because of my familiarity with it already, and because of my interest in Christian Gnosticism, which was spurred upon me by this very book. I don't think I really resonate much with their beliefs, but I found the Gnostic cosmology so fascinating, as well as the various similarities Gnosticism shares with Buddhism, the only other religion I've been remotely familiar with.

In addition to the Nag Hammadi Scriptures, I'd already been planning to read A Bloody and Barbarous God, which analyses the Gnostic themes in Blood Meridian quite closely, as well as Recollections of a Rogue, the direct inspiration for the novel, and of course, the King James Bible, which I've already been reading off and on for about a year now. I think I'll also want to give Paradise Lost a re-read, if for no other reason than how much I enjoyed it the first time. It's a fuck-ton of words, and perhaps it'd be better to start off with something smaller, but a good trial by fire sounds like it could be fun. We'll see how it pans out.

Nothing else to report. Work is slow, weeks are too long, days are too short, life is okay. I've finished my second reading of Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh. He was such a good human. I only hope to inspire even a sliver of as much joy and peace as he did in his lifetime.