Max is NOW!

Mr Buddha-beads,
I can honestly say there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish I were in a graduate program or teaching or just on the streets doing philosophy. And just for the record, I think our boundaries of creativity are the same. I’ve just never had the sense to obey mine, though, and have always lived beyond my means in every capacity. Which has also created my problems in life. Like wanting to be a thousand different Maxs in a thousand different places. It tears me to pieces. The real reason I stopped doing philosophy is because I am terrified of doing one thing, and then doing it wrong. That’s why I spread myself so thin, its like betting across the table in craps. I can only suffer minor losses. But much like craps, I always lose in the end. This is all a part of why I moved up here. To find Max. I was/am so confused, so very disoriented by the mixed messages of everything and everyone, all the time. I had lost me. I lost what I wanted and did what everyone else wanted, always.
I love philosophy, and I constantly drift back into it. Not because I have to, but because I want to. Why don’t I do graduate school? Because I’m not sure if I can. I’m not sure if it’s worth my time to legitimate what I’ve learned by writing papers about what I already know is wrong (Not to say everything you learn in grad school is wrong). But I do know that we stopped doing it from where it really resides. We stopped living and thinking and being from our hearts. I do philosophy because I love it. Not because I want to be right or find “the answer.” There is no answer, you know that. Truth, reality, knowledge, these things all come from the same place. And there is no way to “know” them, not in the way they are pursued now. I lost hope in the classic methods. I lost hope in approaching their avatars. Because I realized what Tolstoy was really trying to say. That no matter the magnitude of the question, the seemingly marvel notion of some thought: we still woke up in the same bed and ate the same breakfast and lived the same lives. Only it was the hearts of men that changed, not their minds. And thats when I knew I had truly walked away. Because I was done with the academics. I was done with their importance. And I was done with myself as anything more than a man. Of course I still do philosophy, but not on their terms anymore. I do it on mine now. I manipulate them, I contort and tweak them beyond recognition. Nietzsche knew that he would be smashed by a hammer, but his students never understand that. It is not my life that bends into my philosophy, it is my philosophy that bends into my life. I love talking with you Eric, because I think of you as one of the few who ever understands what I am saying or even sees me as what I am. And you must know better than anyone that I didn’t leave school to chase something else. I left to be educated. I left because the academy is once again an ivory tower. I am unsure if I will ever write or return to school to get a degree. Because it is more clear to me now that to truly hold what I have realized, I must live it more than speak it. If I am to believe in the virtue of one man against the plurality of many, I must be one of those men. And if I am to believe that in the future of philosophy, I must take it outside the walls. I think you are/will make an excellent philosopher, professor, father, and friend. You may not be as aggressive as me, or as heavy handed, but you have always been better at understanding. My creativity is rooted in my misunderstandings. It is not a gift, it is the just the state of things. I’m a designer who is colorblind, and a philosopher who is upside-down. I don’t see the answers beyond us, I see them below us. I no longer care what truth is, and with that I have seen the meaning of the word philosophy. It is not to ask better and better questions, in hopes of finding the bottom answer. It is learning that there is no bottom for an answer to rest. That the most important question is not about what is Good? But, rather, what does Max believe to be Good? It is within me, not out there somewhere. There is no “out there.”
Sorry, I’m rambling now.

I’m very alienated here as I haven’t found many people who wish to listen to me banter on and on as I do.
I do miss school. But I know that it isn’t for me. I have these grand dreams of teaching a classroom of kids about Descartes or Hume or Derrida. But then I remember what I believe to be the case. And I wonder if I would even be able to represent any of the philosophers of old in a fair manner. I care so little for the context of their writings now. And I have made most of them into monsters. But what else would I have done? Worshiped them?

Write back and take care of yourself friend.

Max