revjim.net

November 14th, 2006:

website house keeping

Nov 14th, 2006
by Jim Reverend.
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First of all, since I’ve been putting off the final touches for what seems like forever now, I’m just going to do it. “Arranging Light”:http://djamesphoto.com/arranginglight/, my “new”photoblog is officially in use. There are a few small changes that will take place in the near future, but, for most purposes, it’s ready to go. Until this point, I’ve been using it to hold images that I publish along side content here at *revjim.net*. I will continue to do that, however, in addition, I will be posting other images to that site on a, hopefully, nearly daily basis. I wish for it to blossom into an open arena for me to share and experiment with photography.

Please, “have a look around”:http://djamesphoto.com/arranginglight/. Those of you that use a “News Aggregator”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator can subscribe to the “Arranging Light RSS Feed”:http://djamesphoto.com/arranginglight/feed/. LiveJournal users can add arranginglight to their friends lists.

Secondly, believe it or not, there are some *revjim.net* readers that don’t use a “News Aggregator”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregator or some other service that I cross post to (like “LiveJournal.com”:http://revjim.livejournal.com/ or “Tribe.net”:http://people.tribe.net/daniel-james) in order to stay on top of my life, my writing, and my photographs. That’s right, there are some readers who actually type r-e-v-j-i-m-dot-net into their browsers every couple of days just to have a look and see what I’m up to lately. There are others who just got used to me updating my “MySpace”:http://myspace.com/revjim blog from time to time with content from here and are jones-ing for a fix now that I’ve stopped.

Well, if you fall into this category, I’ve got good news for you. *revjim.net* now provides updates via email. That’s right! Plug your email address into my “email subscription”:http://revjim.net/subscribe/ page, verify your email address, and, from that point forward you’ll get a nice friendly email on days that I publish new content.

Subscribe Now!

I don’t have an email service setup for the photoblog yet. If you’d be interested in such a thing, let me know, and I’ll set one up for that too.

finding ghosts

Nov 14th, 2006
by Jim Reverend.
No comments yet

Do I really need a cigarette, or do I just need some time to think? Do I really need coffee, or do I just want an escape? Do I really need a drink, or do I just want to put my cares aside and take the opportunity to be irresponsible? Am I really excited, or do I just want a distraction or feeling of acceptance? Am I really angry, or do I just want somewhere else to place the blame? Do I really need to eat, or do I just want to feel full and safe?

finding ghosts

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Taken at a small Ghost Town in West Texas en route from Marfa to the Mexican Border.

Learning to distinguish actual physical feeling from mentally fabricated desire is tricky. I still don’t have it down, but I’m learning. At first, I went about it the wrong way. I assumed that since the mind is flawed, the physical feeling should be trusted. The problem with this, however, is two-fold. First, the only access I have to these physical feelings is through the mind since my entire body is wired through it. Secondly, even if I could rip them out and access them, say, with a computer, it would be, once again, my mind that I’d be using to interpret the results.

So, despite my initial reaction to the contrary, it seems that the most direct path toward clearing the mind is through the mind itself. By feeding the physical needs in regular recurring intervals with known measurements I’m able to force my mind to realize that it is impossible that I am actually feeling what it thinks I’m feeling. I can then decipher the mental desire behind the physical feeling. By acknowledging these mental desires for escape, solitude, acceptance, distraction, rest, security, or responsibility, I will learn to recognize the mental need instead of the false physical feeling.

Once I am able to recognize these mental desires accurately and regularly, then I’ll have to decide how I want to handle them. Maybe getting a cup of coffee is a safe, acceptable, non-harmful way to acquire a much needed escape from time to time. If so, I don’t see any reason to stop doing it. However, recognizing my need for escape instead of my desire for coffee will allow me to control myself better and not allow me to use a false need for coffee as an instrument of escape and procrastination.

Of course people have lots of other addictions with their own corresponding false physical feelings and the mental desires that cause them. I’m only hitting on the common ones here.

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