Or… the “Long Hello”.
“Guitar whisperer. Dog lover. Married w/no hair. Dad. Grandpa. Builds guitars & eats only plants.”
The above description was a good summary of myself at the time. It was the last known bio tag line found on my Facebook profile before I rolled up the rug, shut off the lights, pulled the plug, and left the building for good sometime in July of 2019. I had been a charter member of the Facebook community since 2006 when the platform was still finding its cyber-legs in the domain of emerging social media; about 13 years total. Before that I was a member of MySpace for 4 years. Prior still I was involved with MP3.com, joining as an “independent artist” shortly after that platform went public in July 1999. This was a time before the term “social media” was even coined; though the concept of a networked hivemind offering streaming media and other content, along with an opportunity for free and open, interactive self-expression, was emerging and rapidly evolving by then. Leading up to that Dotcom bubble era there was Aol and Compuserve; and before that were dial-up BBS platforms, all of which I held subscriptions to as far back as 1989. Roughly three decades of life spent on some avatar of evolving social media platforms. “If I had a nickel…”
My tenure on Facebook saw the accumulation of upwards of 900 “friends” and scores of “followers”; thumbnails attached to names, mostly people I didn’t actually know and who never actually knew me, with whom I experienced little or no interaction, though not necessarily for a lack of effort on my part. By what definition does one define “friendship”? It’s a fair question. Must it involve regular physical contact between individuals to sustain the connection? Is distance always measured against physical geography? “Friendship” is a word that describes a concept that has to do with human relationships. And words mean something. I am reminded of a nursery rhyme about friendships, old and new. “…One is silver and the other’s gold.”
My generation is one that historically is framed as the “Boomer” or “Baby-Boom” generation. Chronologically historians have placed Boomers as those born between January 1946 and December 1965. That infers, theoretically at least, the coming-of-age for babies born in this post-war pocket of time would be somewhere in the mid ’50’s to mid ’70’s; two to four decades before the Internet becomes a household word. In my life, which began at 4:32AM on the eighth day of March, 1955, I, as the residue of my generation, have witnessed wonderful and woeful things: Sputnik, John Glenn, the first Irish-Catholic President of the United States; JFK, blown away, and a Congressionally commissioned Report on the murder of an American president that left more room for doubt than it did providing answers and closure for a grieving nation. Color TV and transistor radios “Made In Japan” became a thing in the early ’60’s; The Beatles and Beatlemania; pony cars and muscle cars, and a boom for electric guitars; garage bands, and a new era for rock-n-roll; American Pie and LSD; MLK jr., and RFK. It was a world on fire in a Cold War, and a nation torn apart by an unjust S.E. Asian conflict abroad, an emerging counter-culture and civil-rights movement at home, and attitudes of peace-seeking and anarchy independently co-arising in what made for a powder keg of political and social unrest. Apollo 11, and “one small step for man…”; Nixon and Watergate; a disgraced President pardoned for his crimes; the end of the Vietnam War and the rise of a new culture war: the Feminist Movement and ERA. And with the advent of the 1980’s came advances in data and computer technology that would influence and shape our culture in amazing and unheard of ways compared to my parent’s and grandparent’s generations. I have evolved, sometimes slower than faster, with the redefining of concepts such as “friendship” as it is now represented by mediums like Facebook. How does one actually become a friend; and further, how does one maintain a friendship with another soul whose best representation of themselves is posited on a thumbnail and a name, being buttressed by so many pictures, posts, and comments concerned with (what is presumed to be) their defined interests? As if making friends these days is like window shopping: where platforms like Facebook offer a kind of shopping mall experience designed to bring about the “connection” (virtually speaking) while failing to present the tangible multidimensional environment of space-time where the limbic resonance mechanism, so vital to the development of human health and balanced social interaction, is enabled, properly stimulated, and sustained. Given the medium, for all its virtues and shortcomings, a better question might be: when physical geography combined with evident shared disinterest and a lack of common ground extinguish virtually any hope of actually being friends, how does one justly weigh in the balance who is silver or gold vs dross? Indeed, of what are “friends” made, and how? Very fair questions.
True. The lion’s share of my para-social relationships on Facebook remained unknown and unexplored from the get go; and I’m thinking this is probably par for the course with most users’ experience too. I suppose I might have culled from the herd — trimmed the tree, so to speak, pruning away dead branches to make room for new growth. In fact, attempts to better organize my reference groups and associations in the past proved futile. Presiding over 900+ souls, sitting in judgment over who should “live” and who should be cut off, was a long, tedious, and emotionally draining undertaking for me. Does anyone really need 900 friends they don’t know, and in all likelihood will never ever actually meet face to face to investigate possibilities of an actual friendship in the first place? A more than fair question. The efficacy of settling everything in one fell swoop seemed the more expedient way to go. No drama.
I didn’t “give notice” or send up a flair signaling my departure. I just got up one morning, downloaded my stuff, threw off the bowline and quietly sailed out of the bay. No one seemed to notice, not even my “actual” friends with whom I shared a real-life connection from somewhere in time. My immediate and extended family didn’t notice; or if they did, never considered it important enough to investigate my whereabouts with a text or a phone call. Not even my wife noticed, who is also on Facebook; who was also a “thumbnail with a name” on my Friends list. The fact that she hadn’t noticed my absence, and likely would have remained oblivious indefinitely had I not mentioned it three days after the fact, both amused me and also validated my decision to leave the platform; it was the right thing to do. I reckoned if the person I am most attached to in life, with whom I share a bed and sofa every day typically glued to our smartphones trolling our Facebook feeds, didn’t even realize I was no longer “there” (though in reality we are usually within arm’s reach, or at least within ear shot of each other) — well, something had to be seriously broken with a social media platform that advertises “connecting you with the people you love” as a main point of their mission statement. Geez, Facebook! How’d you guys miss that one?
And don’t get me started on the sinister aspects of social media as it plays into issues of privacy and government surveillance of citizens. Brzezinski’s prognostications concerned with the Technotronic Era have all come true, and in the most eerily prophetic manner, in less than just one generation. And you thought it was all about “connecting people with those they love” — and cat memes, and pics of babies and puppies, and all those foodie topics, etc., etc. Bless your heart!
Anyway. After 13 years of life on Facebook, and close to two decades prior on the other places, I’d had my fill. It was a good run, and big fun — for a minute. You’re welcome!
This website is intended to be something of an online composite of my life and interests, offered in the humble belief that to someone somewhere, that actually matters. It’s kind of a flowery way of saying, “It’s all about me.” Because, frankly, it is.
So… A little about me.
I was born March 8, 1955 in Chicago, Illinois. I have a college education. I have sustained at least two professional careers worth noting over the course of my life, and done a lot of “this, that, and the other” too as necessity dictated. I have been married twice, and my current status is — “let’s see what Tiffany’s got behind Door #3…” — “Married w/no hair”… just like it says in the opening bio tag line. By my first marriage I have two grown sons; and it has been a real pleasure… er, challenge sometimes… watching them make their way in the world. Their mother and I, after almost 13 years post-divorce as of this writing, through the grace of dialog and forgiveness, of ourselves and each other, have remained friends. She is likewise remarried, and I like the Guy, too. (His name is actually “Guy”, so… You saw what I did there?) I have also raised two wonderful dogs, Sophie and Sammy, and a cat, Camille; all raised together from babies, all whom have sadly passed away now. These fur-family members were dearly loved and cared for over a period of nearly twenty-one years collectively. They are sorely missed; and though they can never be replaced, we have adopted, as of August 2020, a two year old GoldenDoodle named Baylee. She rocks our world and makes us laugh out loud every day.
By my current wife I also proudly claim three wonderful grown children as my own, making it a blended family of five. Also on my wife’s side of the family tree are three precious grandkids, whom we don’t get to see nearly as much as we’d like since they live so far away. My wife and I are ethical vegans. We passionately advocate for cruelty-free, sustainable food choices and are committed to a lifestyle of health — for ourselves, our beautiful planet, and the sentient creatures with whom we share it.
I retired from professional life in June 2017 with just enough money to live comfortably but not enough to be a world-traveler, and too much free time and energy with seemingly precious few outlets to channel either. No complaints either way! Following my “divorce” from Facebook I started this website — MyNuminosity.com — to provide an outlet for myself to continue journaling my journey; something I found difficult to do amidst the noise and distractions of social media. I enjoy the creative discipline of writing (I was a writing major at the University of IL/Urbana), and blogging facilitates a means of tapping into that. Because I enjoy diverse interests and talents this website hosts a variety of topics, all of which represent a composite of the things I am most deeply connected with and affected by, and which reflect in no small way this numinous and sacred adventure I call my Life. I am haunted by guitars; so there are stories about guitars being made and played, and other musical things. Among my closest friends in life have undoubtedly been my dogs; so look for stories about dogs and the magic they bring to our lives. And married life: how two senior people are changing the world for the better from their vegan kitchen — and doing it day by day, one bite at a time. Yes, you can eat only plants and truly make a difference! These are a few of my favorite things.
It is my sincere hope that what appears on these pages can make a positive dent in some area of anyone else’s life who may visit this site, and reads them. I really don’t have any higher mission or purpose here than that, so I’ll do my best to keep it interesting if not also entertaining. In any case, I’ll write, you’ll read, and we’ll all hopefully gain something from it. As Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home.” So walk with me a while, won’t you?
You may be wondering, “What does ‘my numinosity’ even mean anyway?…” The term “numinosity” is a concept you probably don’t often hear floated these days; not unless your reference group identifies with topics of New Age spiritualism, Jungian psychology, and philosophies dealing with the soul and religious experience in general. In any case, since you’ve read this far — and if so, I do thank you with welcome appreciation — it’s only fair I attempt to expound at least a little on what this idea of “numinosity” is, and try to relate to it here on the page as best as my experience and understanding of it allows. Look up the root word “numinous” in a dictionary and you find synonyms like “spiritual” and “mysterious”, and definitions like “surpassing comprehension or understanding” and “filled with a sense of the presence of divinity”; all of which sound clearly vague.
But… I digress. Here is what my numinosity means to me:
It is the realization that the path I am on in this life is one that has been there all the while, as if waiting to be discovered. I was neither predestined to this life, nor am I fated by it to receive one outcome over another at some appointed end. I am neither “lost” to some eternal purpose, nor am I needing to be “saved” from some certain perdition. Because I have lived many lives before, and will realize many lives beyond the veil of this one, I already know that in the constancy of change the life I ought to be living now is the one I am in fact living. Wherever I am, and in whatever circumstance I find myself — in all of the suffering and all of the joy I have ever known and experienced, including what is waiting to be known and experienced — the awareness of being filled with a sense of the presence of the Divine is always with me, inseparable and timeless, and remains in me. Some call it “God-consciousness”, some say it is in being “born again” or “filled with the Spirit”. There are those who also wait, perhaps in fear, perhaps in faith, for the appearance or return of God in a future apocalyptic event, such as has been described by many religions since ancient times. But these expressions are at best only a representation of the longings of the human soul in its feeble attempts to describe what is beyond comprehension in hopes of one day laying hold of it. They are indicators pointing at something far away — a heaven, a kingdom of God, a Shangri-La — a place of eternal bliss apart from this world’s experience. It is like a finger pointing at the moon. The finger is not the moon; it only indicates where to look for the moon. If you focus only on the finger you will likely miss the moon!
What I refer to as my numinosity is, as the Upanishads say, my bliss or “ananda”. It is knowing that my joy lies in purposely living in the open awareness that I am in the presence of God at all times, here and now, moment by moment. Where else can I be, or go? To live in this way, free from the bondage of guilt and the fear of judgment and condemnation, is to be delivered from the same into peace, and from death into life. For as much as I can realize that, and hang on to that, I know I’m on the right track.
To my true friends — you “golden ones” wherever you may be — whether we found each other on social media or some other place in time, we live in each other’s memories. As long as we can do that, we are never far from each other’s gates.
In closing, I will share four rules for success that I have observed along my path. Actually, what informs me are not only my own experiences, but also in a great way what stems from those observances of my wife, her character and demeanor, as we go through this life together. She shares all her candy with me, leaving none on the floor in the lobby, and her presence in my orbit contributes daily to my numinous adventure; without which I am certain I would only be half the man I am, and am becoming. These are four things that apply no matter if it’s professional or domestic success, and no matter who you are or what you do.
Rule number 1:
Try your best to find humor and good in everything you do.
Rule number 2:
No matter what your chosen vocation, be prepared to work hard at it (at least some of the time), and be resilient in all circumstances. Allow yourself the freedom to change.
Rule number 3 ( and most importantly):
Never reveal everything you know…
Glenn E. Arnold
August, 2019
(Last edit: January, 2022)
My Numinosity... 