Just after midnight on June 12 of last year there was a knock on my door. Awake but startled, I peered through the peephole to see three friends, grinning and holding a cupcake with a lit candle in it. “That’s right,” I recalled. “It’s my birthday.” I begrudgingly let these kind souls in. Seeking to escape just such a circumstance, I had intentionally told no one of my upcoming birthday. Was planning to spend it in my apartment alone. Facebook probably ratted me out. So here life was, in the form of three friends, squeezing through the blockades of isolation I had erected specifically to keep it out. “I must try harder,” I thought.

And so I did. And it worked. The texts, calls and visits grew less and less frequent. But I was also growing sicker and sicker. One fortuitous knock unexpectedly brought help, and over a period of time I was nursed back to health physically, with attention also directed to my mental, spiritual and social well-being.

Now at another birthday, I take a moment to look back at the past year, and also to scan the horizon. For about half of last year, I did not think I would make it this far, and for the greater part of that time, I didn’t care. But I’m glad I did.

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A grain of sand, magnified 250 times.

Now more than any other time do I understand why people write poetry. I do not write good poems. I wish not to clutter the poetic realm with my overwrought and undercooked lamentations. They may distract someone from finding the real gems, the poems that squeeze an unsolicited exultation from one’s gut.

On the other hand, I’ve been told my prose writing is decent, so I’ll stick with that. In a way, it’s riskier. Poets get licenses. Writing in complete sentences, it is easier to come across as odd or unstable and be judged negatively for it, whereas in a poem, it is slightly encouraged. After all, it’s “just” a poem. Vulnerability and stanzas seem to have been made for one another.

So there is the poetic impulse without the poem. What is the point? The point is a desire to reach you – the you in you – via words ill-equipped for the mission in a format constrained by clunky rules with the hopes of getting a reply. Or perhaps just a troll or two. And to do this in public. With my name attached. (Oh, he had such a bright future until he started getting all emo on the internet.) Back when I was really blogging, eight or nine years ago, I wasn’t on Facebook or Twitter. And once I got on Facebook and Twitter, I didn’t blog much. Now all three are happening and people who know me in real life will be reading this. Interesting.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten into the business of feeling feelings. Still a novice at life, I’ve somehow accrued 33 years worth of experiences. A lot of them hurt. I believe they must have been for some purpose. Not a grand one, but a grain of sand-sized purpose. I see others’ experiences in the same light. Gather many millions of us and we’ll have ourselves a beach. But for that to work, we’ve each got to put our grain of sand out there.

So this blog is me here holding my grain. It’s not unique or original. Not all that poetic. Just quaint and quotidian. But it’s what I’ve got. Let’s get started.

Greetings! Thanks for dropping by, however you may have ended up here.

My name is Scott Campbell, and previously, for nearly eleven years, I maintained and occasionally posted to my previous blog, Angry White Kid. For reasons I elaborate on in my first post here, “Reorienting and debranding,” I feel a new outlet and approach calls to me at the moment. Hence, Falling Into Incandescence.

Explaining the name may help explain the purpose. Falling Into Incandescence is a phrase a professor of mine used to describe what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was attempting to encourage humanity to undertake. In brief, it is the idea that were we to let go and fall into our authentic selves we would become incandescent with the fire of truly being alive. I make no claims to authenticity or incandescence, though I strive for both. It is that striving in written form which I aim for with this site, in particular pursuing an integration of personal well-being, spirituality and social justice. As well, I hope to encounter others who feel similarly.

If you’d like to get in touch, please leave a comment, send me an email, or connect with me on Twitter.

Some may be interested in my qualifications. Sentience and self-reflection are the two main ones. But if it matters, I have a BA and MA in Humanities and am entering a Ph.D. program in the fall of 2015. My work (writings, translations, photos and videos) have appeared in outlets ranging from La Jornada to Al Jazeera to The Jerusalem Post, though I’m more likely to be found on ZNet, Upside Down World or MR Zine. I am also member of the collective which publishes the bilingual website El Enemigo Común.

The banner image is from the piece “Plunge” by André Varela and is used with permission.

“Plunge” by André Varela

This is the farewell post from my old website, Angry White Kid, and feels like an appropriate first post on this new site.

And I promise to learn to love the way I’ve learned to fear
To unknot all the inhibitions tangled in my hair
To let my ego mound in piles around the barber chair
And make a graceful exit from my vexed and troubled years

– Saul Williams, Sea Lion

I open up Facebook or Twitter and immediately get hit by a battering ram of bad news. My social media feeds are seeing red. Once notifications or messages are tended to, I close the pages almost as quickly as I open them.

Up until a few months ago, I would have been spending much of the day online, tweeting and posting alongside my virtual comrades. Now, I cannot afford to engage in that activity.

There is a reason. For the past two years, I’ve been in an intense struggle to address a life-threatening condition. Something that has very nearly killed me. I’ve tried many different methods of treatment, and feel through much work and assistance I have arrived at an approach that, with vigilance, will hopefully keep the disease in remission.

Part of that approach has to do with me assessing the activities I’m involved in and engaging in those which are more true to myself as I’ve come to understand myself during these past two years.

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