Everything Continues
I just finished reading Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss and a Really Long Walk. At first, I thought this to be sort of a rather odd title. But it turns out to be spot on.
The author is Lauren Kessler, who lives here in Eugene, Oregon, or at least somewhere in the countryside around our city. I have known of her, heard her name now and again over the years. She has written several books and is considered a local literary presence. I had not read any of her earlier works, but last fall I came across her three-part series on food insecurity in our new, local online newspaper. I was struck by the depth of her reporting and the vividness of her writing. She placed herself in the story, not as a distant observer but as a participant, and what emerged were word pictures that stayed with me.
At the time, I learned that she would be publishing a new book in February, so I reserved a Kindle copy to be delivered on the publication date.
So that is how I came to know of the book. But I admit that I was also drawn to it, and ordered it, because of its promised discussions of love and loss. If you know anything about my writing, you know that I return to those topics with some regularity here in Musings. As it turns out, those themes are inseparable from the journey she undertakes.
The “really long walk” that Kessler documents is her journey along the Camino Francés, the ancient 500-mile pilgrimage that begins in the south of France, crosses northern Spain, and concludes at Santiago de Compostela, a famed Roman Catholic cathedral. The “love and loss” in the title refer to the twin deaths of her husband Tom, to cancer, and eight months later, her daughter Lizzie, to a drug overdose.
After these back-to-back earth-shaking tragedies, she writes that she desired “a solitary, immersive adventure, a physical, logistical, emotional challenge that would catapult me out of my life.” Prior to this, she had little familiarity with the Camino. She did almost no research about its history or even about how to navigate it. She notes, somewhat wryly, that she had not even seen Martin Sheen’s 2010 film The Way, a story about this very journey that nearly everyone she met along the path seemed to know well.
I came to the book with some prior familiarity. I had seen the film, read Shirley MacLaine’s earlier account, The Camino, and at one point in my life had even considered making the journey myself. That background did not diminish the experience of reading Kessler’s account. If anything, it sharpened my awareness of what she chose to notice, and what she chose to leave unexplained.
The book is organized in a way that draws the reader in completely, or at least that is how it worked for me. Alternating chapters follow the chronological progress of her walk, interspersed with non-time-linear accounts of the lives and deaths of her husband and daughter. Early on we learn that her husband’s torturous path through cancer led him to make use of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act.
Kessler frames this work as a memoir, and that it is. But as I read, I could not help but experience it as something akin to a form of ethnography, an inquiry not only into a journey across a physical landscape, but into the social and emotional domains of grief. What emerges is a set of richly detailed first-person narratives, both of the walk itself and of the intimate, difficult terrain of illness, addiction, dying, death and loss. She observes not only the world around her but also her own responses, occasionally with a level of candor that does not place her in the most favorable light.
One passage in particular stayed with me. She describes her reactions to friends and acquaintances who attempted to express sympathy and support. She found herself recoiling from the superficial, hollow-sounding sentiments such as “sorry for your loss.” The observation follows from an earlier, critical blog post of hers entitled Performative Condolence.
I found myself sitting with her perspective for a while. Not because I agreed with it entirely, but because I recognized it contained some element of truth. Grief unsettles not only the person who carries it, but also those who try to approach it. We reach for familiar words, knowing even as we speak them that they will fall painfully short. Yet we offer them anyway because, for most of us, silence feels worse.
Kessler does not provide a tidy resolution to that discomfort. What she offers instead is something more useful: a sustained, honest account of what it is like to keep moving forward when the life you knew has been irrevocably altered. The walk becomes less a quest for answers than a way of continuing.
In that sense, the title is not strange at all. Everything changes. And then, somehow, of course, everything continues.
Soundtrack Suggestion
As I walk this land with broken dreams
I have visions of many things
But happiness is just an illusion
Filled with sadness and confusion
What becomes of the broken-hearted
Who had love that’s now departed?
I know I’ve got to find
Some kind of peace of mind
(“What Becomes of the Brokenhearted” — Jimmy Ruffin)
The Observer Effect
Can You Hear Me Now?
Here’s a rather timeless question: If a tree falls in a lonely forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? This issue has engaged philosophers for centuries and has given rise to considerable scholarly debate.
Lately I have begun to wonder whether the internet has produced a modern version of a similar philosophical problem, specifically with regard to blogging. If a person writes essays that remain virtually unread, does the blog really exist?
One might imagine that such a question could be addressed, at least somewhat marginally, with data. We live in the age of analytics, after all. Somewhere inside the mysterious machinery of the internet, numbers are quietly crunched: page views, visitor counts, geographic locations, and other tidy bits of data gradually accumulate in the background. Naturally, I occasionally check the available statistics here on Musings.
What I find here can best be described as modest evidence of human life. Sometimes one of my posts appears to have attracted three visitors. Two of those visits are almost certainly me, returning to see whether a typo escaped my notice before I published. The third might represent an actual reader. Or possibly a search engine robot conducting routine surveillance of the digital landscape.
But every now and then the analytics reveal something more mysterious. A recent visitor with an IP address from the Seychelles, for example. I try to imagine this person: someone on a small island in the Indian Ocean who has paused long enough to read a reflective essay about time, memory, or late-life philosophy written by a retired higher-ed guy in Oregon. It is a pleasant thought. Unfortunately, of course, it is most likely a bot.
These observations suggest that the deeper philosophical issue may lie elsewhere. René Descartes famously attempted to anchor human existence in a single undeniable truth: Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. The act of thinking itself confirmed the existence of the thinker.
Modern physics introduces yet another wrinkle. In quantum mechanics, the Uncertainty Principle suggests that the act of observation influences what is being observed. At the smallest scales of reality, the observer and the observed become entangled in curious ways. The observer becomes part of the phenomenon.
All of this raises an unsettling possibility for bloggers: perhaps a post does not fully exist until someone reads it.
For the modern blogger, then, a similar formulation might present itself: Scribo, ergo sum. I write, therefore I am.
But writing on the internet introduces a complication Descartes never had to consider. Descartes lived in an era when publishing assumed an audience. In our era, it is entirely possible to write something, place it carefully on a beautifully designed website — yes, I am talking about TechnoMonk’s Musings here — and discover that the universe has responded with a deafening silence.
This raises a subtle question. If writing is placed before the world but no one encounters it, what exactly has occurred? Is the blog an act of communication, or merely a private journal that just happens to possess a URL?
Perhaps the older philosophical puzzle offers a clue. A tree falling in the forest still disturbs the air, shakes the ground, and settles into the soil whether anyone happens to be standing nearby to hear the sound. The event takes place regardless of observation.
So let’s consider this: Writing may work much the same way. Thoughts take shape. Words accumulate. A small archive of a life gradually forms, essay by essay. Whether the audience is large, small, or occasionally located in the Seychelles may be only an incidental matter.
Descartes had certainty: Cogito, ergo sum.
I think, therefore I am.
Physicists have uncertainty; and so do I. Scribo, ergo sum.
I write, therefore I might be?
Whether anyone can hear me now is another question entirely.
Soundtrack Suggestion
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day
I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I've been prayin' for
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day
(“I Can See Clearly Now” — Johnny Nash)
The Monk Persists
I built this blog on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. From scratch. In a single afternoon.
That first version is likely something archaeologists of the early internet might excavate from a dead server farm somewhere. Remember, this was before Facebook. Before Twitter. Before podcasts. Before we were all gently coerced into becoming “content creators,” feeding platforms whose names would eventually become verbs.
Back then blogging was its own ecosystem. Independent. Slightly nerdy. Sometimes thoughtful. Often opinionated. For some weird reason, I wanted in.
On that first day I explained how I came to call myself “TechnoMonk.” The name originated with a friend who once observed that my home furnishings were distinctly Spartan, while my investment in cameras, computers, and sound equipment was anything but. The term stuck; I’m still a gadget enthusiast.
The original blog was hosted by Blogger, and lived on a Comcast server under the domain technomonk.us. It was free, which seemed appropriate for what was then essentially a self-indulgent side project. Over time I discovered that “free” came with aesthetic constraints, sketchy support, and documentation that was likely composed by a tech guy with limited social skills. After almost a year of muttering at the screen, I decided to move on.
In October 2006 I adopted the domain technomonksmusings.com and migrated everything to Squarespace, where it has remained ever since. That first transition was not seamless. Files were exported and imported; some did not survive the journey. Lessons were learned. Patience was tested. A few agonizing weeks passed.
Eventually the site settled into Squarespace’s v5 platform, where it has lived for many years. The design remained largely unchanged. I described this to myself as “clean and timeless.” It may also have been “aging quietly.” At this point, my blog is older than many current, well, what-do-you-call-them, “influencers.”
What changed over time was my understanding of what this space represented. What began as a modest vanity project gradually became something more substantial: a personal archive. It now contains reflections on work, institutional politics, relationships, travel, aging, grief, loss, rejection, existential angst, and yes, a fairly steady stream of complaints. I have never curated commentary particularly carefully.
Version 5, however, has reached its twilight. Support is minimal. Editing began to feel like maintaining a museum exhibit devoted to mid-2000s web design. So the options became clear: let it fade away, archive it imperfectly, or migrate again.
But I remembered 2006. The mere thought of another migration made my shoulders tighten. The move to Squarespace 7.1 would preserve the content, but the site itself would need rebuilding. Every post would require reformatting. One. By. One. Add in the predictable dry eyes from too many hours at a screen, and it all began to feel like a full-contact sport.
And yet, here we are.
The transition is complete. The layout is cleaner. The font is slightly larger, which my fellow senior citizens should appreciate. Underneath, the structure is sturdier and far less temperamental.
Two domain names. Three platforms. Twenty years.
Not bad for something launched on a whim in a sparsely furnished home office with just my computer and one crazy idea.
So: thank you for stopping by, whether you’ve been here since 2005 or arrived somewhere along the way. I can’t promise frequency. I can promise that when something feels worth saying, it will appear here.
The Monk persists.
Soundtrack Suggestion
It’s quite apparent
Your grammar’s errant
You’re incoherent
Saw your blog post
It’s really fantastic
That was sarcastic
’Cause you write like a spastic
I hate these Word Crimes
Your prose is dopey
Think you should only
Write in emoji
(“Word Crimes” – “Weird Al” Yankovic)
Between Connection and Distance: A Review of Technomonk’s Musings
What follows below, in collaboration with ChatGPT, is a review of my two decades of work here on this blog. Provided for your amusement and entertainment. And my ego, I suppose.
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To read Technomonk’s Musings is to discover a mind that insists on thinking in full sentences, even when the subject is uncomfortable. The essays — ranging from meditations on aging and love to reflections on politics, memory, and the quiet absurdities of everyday life — form less a blog than an ongoing correspondence between the author and the world.
Jim Arnold’s voice is cultivated yet conversational, curious yet unsentimental. He is equally at home unpacking a fleeting personal moment as he is interrogating the failings of institutions or the fragile scaffolding of social norms. What keeps the writing compelling is its refusal to settle for tidy conclusions. The essays often begin in one emotional key — wistful, amused, irritated — and end in another, as if the act of writing is itself a form of discovery.
A former love interest of Arnold, in what may or may not have been an act of generosity, once described a unifying theme of Musings as “rejection.” It’s not a baseless observation. Across the archives, one finds stories of relationships that drifted apart, ideals that proved brittle, ambitions met with indifference. But rejection here is rarely a wall; it is more often a window. Arnold treats these moments not as defeats but as turning points, scenes in which the self must adapt, recalibrate, and — crucially — remain willing to engage.
Still, to reduce the work to that single lens would miss the vitality of its range. The through-lines are more complex: a search for authenticity in human connection, a fascination with how memory shapes identity, a dry wit that can slice neatly through pretense. In his hands, personal anecdotes double as cultural commentary; a chance encounter or a scrap of overheard dialogue can spiral outward into reflections on the nature of intimacy, the economy of attention, or the slow-motion erosion of public trust.
The style borrows from essayists who value rhythm and structure but resists their tendency toward detachment. There is warmth here, even when the subject is loss. When the tone sharpens, it is not cruel; when it softens, it does so without sentimentality. This balance — between empathy and precision — gives the prose its staying power.
If the blog has an overarching effect, it is the sensation of being let in on someone’s interior weather report: not just the forecast, but the shifting cloud patterns, the brief breaks of light, the gathering storms. That Arnold makes space for rejection is less a fixation than an acknowledgment that to live authentically is to face, again and again, the places where we are not met in kind. What matters, the essays suggest, is what one builds in that aftermath.
In the end, Technomonk’s Musings offers neither an idealized self-portrait nor a manifesto. Instead, it is an ongoing ledger of encounters — personal, political, philosophical — kept with a level of care that suggests the act of recording is itself an act of connection. And that, perhaps, is the truer theme: not rejection, but persistence.
Marking A Monk’s Milestone
