Cognitive Saplings: A Non-Chronological Insomnia Journal

On Boxes

2010-08-30T22:14:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting amidst boxes, and newspaper, and books. Mostly, I'm sitting amidst a lot of stuff piled up around me that I have yet to determine the sentimental value of, in terms of what I will keep and what I will not. I've been here before. I guess each time it feels the same, yet also different. It's so weird to pick up something and hold it in my hand and decide once again to keep it. A whole series of little moments like that will determine what stuff I will still have when I'm ninety and wrinkled and living in some old house somewhere, if I make it that far. And it's a whole series of little moments like that which will determine what memories I will retain, to some extent; since so many memories are triggered by a glance at a letter, or a sideways look at an old knick-knack, or a book, or a photograph. I would like to get rid of all of this, but only if it means placing it in the hand of a dear friend and closing their hand over it and putting my hand on theirs to make sure that they have it firmly clasped in their own. I can't do that, as friends are not storage spaces and they should not be treated as such. Instead, I will send a lot of this stuff out into the ether. It's weird how many things we manage acquire and then shed during our lives, and it's weird how much of it will still exist after we die. Unlike other animals, we don't manage to shed a big chunk of our skin in one long sheath, but we manage to make the things and people around us our protective layer, and we shed some of it as we go, but hold onto what matters. The older I get, the more I realize that the things that matter the most are few, but worth holding on to; and I realize that I only need so very few things to carry on.

We do so much in our lives to try to make ourselves live longer and to try to remind others of ourselves after we're gone, yet some little piece of wood that does nothing and says nothing manages to outlive us every time. Maybe that's why we cut down trees: We have an innate inability to bear the simple fact that these beautiful entities are going to keep living and growing longer than we can or will, unless we do something about it. This thought makes me sad; and yet it reminds me that I can't wait to be living in the trees again. It's comforting to be surrounded by things that have been around since before I was born and are going to still be around even after I am gone. If there's anything heartbreaking about moving, it's the thought that I might not be able to show people that I care as well as I would like to when I am not around to see them and let them know; but that's where trust comes in. No one wants to hear me tell them all the time that I'm glad they exists, and one of my faults it that I have a gross habit of doing this. People want, I think, to just have it be understood that their presence is meaningful in another person's life. I think I only say it so much because the more I care, the more I fear. Perhaps growing older is about learning to detach oneself not only from what matters the least, but more importantly from what matters the most. Strangely enough, it seems sometimes that the most guaranteed way of holding on to something is also the most intangible. A loose grip is a strong grip, especially when it comes to people. It will be nice to have a lot of space around me in which to loosely hold onto things and in which to learn how to hold on to very little. There's a lot of fullness in that empty space, and a lot of this fullness seems to be comprised of thoughts and dreams and songs and love and art.

Sitting amidst boxes, strangely enough, it is my future that flashes before my eyes more than my past. I've had moves in which the memories flooded over me and overwhelmed me to tears, but this time there's a feeling of acceptance that rushes over me. None of what awaits me beyond this point is yet determined, and somehow this is comforting where it should be terrifying. There's a point where it means being more at peace with oneself to just toss the dice. I feel more comfortable in my own skin when I let myself exist outside of what I know and what I love, in a place where I know very little and can expect nothing. I trust the people in my life enough to know that although I may see them rarely, I will still see them. Some may slip through the cracks, but they'll still manage to have changed my life forever, dramatically or subtly.

I don't know where I will land, but eventually I will land somewhere, and it will be home.

On Packing

2010-08-30T04:10:00.000-07:00

Each of these objects that I pack into boxes is not an object at all, but a thousand tiny little memories wrapped up together; some of them bigger than others. Some of the smallest objects have the most memories associated with them. Some of the largest have very few. All of these things, all this crap; it's just stuff. It's stuff that I love, but it's still just stuff. It's the people in my life, not this stuff, that I really wish I put into boxes and take with me. But I hate to see the people that I love stuffed into boxes.

One of the hardest things to throw away today was a tiny, plastic, parachuting man that I bought once, using prize-tickets won in a game of skee-ball with a really dear friend. I threw it away because I recognized that it in itself had little significance to me, and I recognized that the memories existed there even in its absence. I'm going to a place where I hardly know anyone. I look forward to feeling small and I look forward to being surrounded by strangers. I look forward to trusting only those who earn my trust and I look forward to spending a lot of time alone. I look forward to filling that space with thoughts and adventures and new things that I might make. I look forward to reading new books and shaking new hands. There are plenty of other piece-of-crap just-object objects for me to fill with memories, and I have plenty of time left in my life in which to do this.

Packing this stuff, this stuff that I suppose I do love, I realize how easy it would be for me to just get rid of it all. The more I pack, the more I realize that none of this constitutes who I am or what my life is. None of it gives me the sense of my life itself. The real grit and the backbone of what matters is totally invisible. It's the memories, and it's the people. When it comes to moving these objects, it could be simple. I could store these items, and wait long enough to forget what I had stored, and then stop paying for the storage unit and let the storage company people just get rid of it all for me. I've heard of people doing that, as a way of being more cutthroat about what they are willing to get rid of. It seems instead to me that they are paying the storage sheds, and paying time itself, to make them forget what it is that they are supposed to not be cutthroat about. I guess this makes sense. I'm not going to do it, and it wouldn't be my style really, anyway; but I could. It's far more plausible that I'd just decide to put everything in a huge dumpster and then walk away from it, with a great sense of loss accompanied by a feeling of victory. The thing is, I can't forget anyone who mattered to me, and no one's going to come along and get rid of them if I try to forget them for a long enough period of time. I don't want anybody to come along and get rid of them. I want to sit on porches with them and drink whiskey and lie in fields, staring at the sun. All of them.

It's strange: I'm bringing with me all the things that I could see myself so easily getting rid of; and I'm leaving behind all the things that, try as I might, I don't think I could ever truly walk away from. Perhaps this is a good exercise in independence; or perhaps it's a realization that I've put myself in storage for too long. Whatever it is, I'm not convinced that what I'm actually throwing away amounts in any way to a little plastic parachuting man, and I'm not convinced that what I'm planning to take with me is really stuff at all. I'm taking with me a million moments and laughs and pangs of sadness and every other emotion I've felt over the years. I'm taking this with me, and it's all at once lighter than air and heavier than lead. Maybe this is what Kundera was talking about, but in the context of a shift in geographical location.

I've got so many amazing people in my life, and I've loved fiercely until it hurt. But this time, I'm going to find myself a home. I'm going to fill my rooms with all the memories that I have, and I'm going to cover the walls with all of your faces, because that's just how it has to be. Maybe I should call off the moving truck and just consider myself smashed under the weight of the things that I hate to leave behind. I'd rather, I suppose, not do this; and just lug the crap that I do own all the way to my new home. I'd rather be smashed in the embrace of an old friend's hug when I finally get to see them again. I'd rather keep everything that matters, because only the things that do not embrace one-another are crap (the books, and the cables, and the kinked wires), and even the crap reminds me of those that do embrace.

To distract myself from the strong sense of missing that I am already anticipating, I think I'll probably learn to find comfort in these objects, even if they are just objects. There's something to be said for a warm quilt that smells of laundry detergent, even if it just reminds me of someplace else. Until I have new friends and until I make new memories, this will do: a warm quilt, and a cup of tea, and my own young old self.

On Being Awake in the Dead of Night

2010-08-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've written much here, but perhaps it's been a while since I've slept so little. I find it somewhat strange that insomnia is so often associated with distress, anxiety, and the like. I certainly am awful at sleeping - or at least I am awful at sleeping during the normal hours - but it is not always because I am feeling any of these things. I don't pretend to be immune to distress or anxiety, and in fact I can excel at both if I put my mind to it, but insomnia for me is something different. At times, it's felt like rebellion - a strange sort of semi-voluntary nonconformity. At other times, it's been a respite from the noise and chaos of excessive sensory stimulus. At times, it's been the time in which I can do all the things that I wanted to do during the daytime hours, but couldn't find time for: like reading, or drawing, or daydreaming, or drafting designs on the rest of my life and figuring out how best to direct my creative energies. I can't say I've figured it out yet, but I've got another fifty or sixty years to get it right.

There are nights in which I try to sleep, and I toss and turn for hours, but this sort of night is extremely rare. It may happen perhaps once every several months. The more common sort of night for me is the night in which I, finally having a large chunk of silence and space and time to work with, feel that I am free to think, and process, and sort through the things that I am feeling. It's important for me to have this time be alone and think about things and decompress, and it's easiest to do this in the middle of the night when the likelihood of any sort of responsibility interrupting my thoughts, or the likelihood of their being a loud voice in the next room, is slim.

I think it started out when I would stay up just an hour or two past my bedtime as a kid. I'd do all sorts of different things, and always it felt magical, like stolen time that I was using to do things that I had the pleasure of sharing with no one except for nighttime itself. Some nights I'd stay up late reading. My Dad or Mom would put me to bed, and I'd get out a little flashlight and hide under the sheets to read, like in the movies. Other nights, during the short time-period in which we shared a bunk-bed, my brother and I would talk about stuff to one another.

For a while, when I was thirteen or so, I'd try to quietly practice ballet within the small space of my bedroom. My Mom had recently made me quit taking classes, and I had this idea in the back of my mind that maybe if I practiced late into the night, even if it meant sacrificing sleep and being tired in class the next day, I could be a great ballerina. I eventually stopped doing this, because it was hard to do in the dark, and I realized that I was only fooling myself. Maybe I was doing it more for the sake of being obsessed with a craft - something that I feel strongly yet often direct at too many sorts of crafts at once, to the point where it is overwhelming and frustrating - than for the sake of being good at something. I'd really rather just obsess over one craft or art form and manage to pull off being good at it than obsess over every art form and obsess over creative expression in general. There is a point where it hurts to love something like, say, music, if one is forced to face one's own limitations; and these limitations are only increased when you throw in an additional love for drawing, and writing, and theatre, and ballet, or... The list could go on, and I don't want to get too hypothetical here.

Sometimes I'd stay up in my grandparents' house in Berkeley and read all of the old books on their bookshelf. Or I'd stay up at my other grandparents' house in Davis and tiptoe around, spooking myself out by glimpsing my own reflection in a window and then running, barefoot, on the cold brown tiles of the floor. Sometimes my cousin and I would stay up late whispering and giggling and talking about our lives and our families and the stories that we knew and liked. Sometimes we'd sneak out of the bedroom and just tiptoe around the house for the sake of making mischief. We weren't supposed to be up, and yet there we were, wide awake, with the clock above the stove to serve as a reminder of our delinquency. For such good kids, we sure loved to get into trouble, and we'd cry and then laugh about it once we were scolded.

Other nights, I'd open my bedroom window and press my nose against the screen, feeling the night air. I still remember the smell of that air, and the smell of the screen as I pressed my nose up against it. I did a lot of wishing on stars, and praying to Gods just in case they existed, and mouthing little wishes to whoever might listen. I wished a lot about my future, and about my family, and about people I cared about or people I had crushes on. I think I did a lot of crying while smelling that screen and while smelling that night air, too. But as much as I wished my nights away, I also just stared at the sky quite a bit. I looked for constellations, and I tried to sharpen my eyes to an extent that would allow me to see the deer running around in the back yard. Sometimes our cat would perch itself on the wooden railing near my window, and it would reach its nose far enough so that I could see its face through the screen. Sometimes I thought about removing the screen entirely and escaping from my room by climbing onto that railing, thirty feet or so off the ground; but when it came down to it, I had nothing really to escape from, and didn't know yet what I wanted to escape to.

At my Mom's house, it was different. I would stay up reading or writing or drawing, but I'd also often stay up playing my guitar, or listening to CD's in my discman. I had a copy of Sgt. Pepper's that I would listen to a lot. I had a copy of Peter and the Wolf that got some listening.

The best thing to do, though, was to open the door from my room to the front porch really softly, and leave my room. I'd step lightly on the front porch, and lightly in the front yard, and I'd open the gate softly so as not to let it squeak, and I'd be free. I spent a lot of time just walking around the old neighborhoods. Sometimes I'd go to the park and just sit in the middle of a field, or on the steps of the bleachers there. Sometimes I'd go to my old elementary school and look into the dark windows of the old classrooms. Sometimes I'd walk for hours and just keep walking because I felt I had a lot to sort through in my head. I didn't really sneak out for the purpose of meeting up with friends, although to this day I still like the feel of that notion, but mainly just for the purpose of seeing what it felt like to be out there in the night on my own terms, with my own thoughts. Sometimes I'd run into people while walking around - usually folks a bit older than me that I knew from the music scene back home - but usually I'd walk alone; and usually I'd walk for a long time.

I guess eventually this time of solitude had to be pushed back even further into the hours of the night, once I went to college and started living with other folks who stayed up late. Sometimes finding those hours of time to myself would mean waiting until three, or four, or five in the morning. After a while I think it just became habit.

I supposed the notion of insomnia being a vessel for anxiety hits home to some extent, in that I tend to do a lot of thinking during those wee hours of the night, but I still spot something of a misconception here, at least in terms of how I relate to the concept. The thoughts that I have are rarely thoughts of stress or anger or sadness. I get most of that kind of thinking done earlier in the day, if at all. Rather, I tend to find myself just remarking on the awe that I feel in response to life itself and in response to the world around me. I find myself dwelling in a sort of state of wonder. It's this state of wonder that keeps me reaching out to people, and letting myself open up my heart, and reminding myself to make art and music, and knowing why I live the kind of life that I live and do the things that I do. This sense of wonder can be found everywhere, and certainly not just in that space that exists in the silent middle of the night, but it's so immediate in that late, late hour, that I've grown fond of being acquainted with it in that way.

There's a comfort in the silence of the night, because it's a silence I know well. It's strange that different kinds of silence can feel so different. I think my favorite sort of silence is the kind that can be found by way of riding my bike way out into the country, stopping roadside, and walking into the middle of some orchard to just sit there amongst the little saplings or tomato plants or the tall grasses. It's a silence that seems to go well with the smell of grasses in the warm summer air. It's a silence that is rarely broken in a way that is abrasive, and more often broken in a way that indicates signs of life, sans the chaos of life. The buzzing of a fly, for instance, may break the silence, and although the fly has a more abrasive kind of sound to it, it still seems to be a sound that belongs.

Hours awake in the middle of the night never seem to bring about any confusion or unrest, despite the fact that what I experience during those hours is a very literal kind of unrest. Instead, I find myself coming to comforting kinds of conclusions. I find myself reminding myself why it is that I love what I love, and knowing - knowing that it is worth it, no matter how painful. I find myself remembering why I take risks in my interactions with people and why I remain open to people despite my own fears. I find myself reestablishing my love of music and art and writing if I need to, and if ever I find myself doubting whether I am wasting my time, within a few hours alone, wrapped in my own ponderings, I will manage to assure myself that I do these things because I must, and because that is who I am. Mostly, I find myself feeling great amounts of care - not care directed at anyone or anything in particular, but care still in the inlets of my heart, waiting to be applied toward some project or song or something. I find myself noting the great amounts of love that I have for the things in my life, and trying to find the best way to show this. I find myself thinking that maybe love is really all that I need, and the fact that I still find myself thinking this despite the number of times that i have been hurt only makes me believe it more. I find myself thinking about art and music and writing as extensions of this feeling, and feeling grateful that the source of these things is seemingly infinite and in no way confined within myself but existing in the people that I know and the songs that I listen to again and again.

The hours I spend awake at night are mostly spent thinking about why I am glad that I get to spend hours awake during the day. Sometimes I wish there were more of both - the daytime hours, and the nighttime hours.

Maybe it'll shorten my life, or render me too sleepy or sound-sensitive or introverted or ponderous; but fuck it. There is a clarity of thought that I find there, in the middle of the night, that I crave; and that I store for later use, lest I need it during the light of day.

On Lemon Trees and Spinning 'Round in Chairs

2010-05-06T04:06:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of a particular tree, in a particular yard, in a particular town. I haven't seen this tree in years. Maybe a decade. But i think it's probably still there. This time of year, it's likely bearing bright yellow fruit, and it's leaning toward the house and away from the house as a breeze that smells of flowers sways its branches. I've seen this tree a hundred times, but not in years. Something about knowing this tree, and thinking of it, and knowing that it's probably right where I left it those many years ago (not knowing then how long it would be that I would go without seeing it), makes me glad.

I'm thinking, too, of my Mom's old drafting table, and where it used to be in the house that I grew up in. I'm thinking of the spinning office chair that stood in front of it, that I used to sit on. I remember the exact feel of the metal circular bar at the base of it that I used to put my bare feet on - feet that grew in size as I did so. My feet, in all their different stages of growth, rested bare on that cool metal bar at the base of it, and many afternoons I spun around in the chair again and again, sometimes going so fast that I was sure I would fly off. Maybe I did. I don't remember. But I remember that feeling of just sitting in the chair and spinning, and again I feel glad.

I've written many-an-ode to solitude, and time spent alone. I've written many things about the reasons for letting people go, and letting people leave my life, and letting people know only a piece of me, but what I've come to realize is that there's something really incredible about truly getting to know people. There's something about things happening slowly, like the growth of those feet or the fruiting of that tree, that is really indescribable. It's been, lately, the people in my life who have made me realize how amazing it can be just to, well, be. It's not that my life is enjoyable only because these people are in it. It's sort of the other way around. I love these people because they are able to see and understand and appreciate all of those things that have always made life so rich - rich in ways I've often wondered if I could share with people, and rich in ways I've always hoped I wasn't the only person to understand. I love the people that I love not because they make life worth living, but because they understand why life is worth living, and they choose to live it, because they know how worth it it can be to do so. This makes me love many-a-small-thing about life, and it's manifested in my mind an ever-growing list of things that I would like to do, and places that I would like to see, and things that I would like to cook, and songs that I would like to find (if they exist) or write (if they don't). This ever-growing list of things that I would like to do, and experience, and see, and revisit, is something I'd like to share with other people. Maybe I'll do some of these things with people that I love, or maybe I'll do some of them alone. Maybe I won't do them, but I'll always know that I can. Maybe I'll meet people with similar ever-growing lists and we'll swap list-items, and we'll spend our lives doing things, and just being. And some of these things can be done again and again and somehow never be the same, because that's the nature of the mind, and one's thoughts and ideas, and the heart: It's constantly growing, and it relishes being somewhere beautiful or doing something fun or being with good people every time it happens, and always in a new way.

Sometimes those fleeting moments of happiness and awe and inspiration that I've talked about so much, usually couched as such (as being fleeting and ephemeral) are not so fleeting. Sometimes they come again and again. Sometimes they don't, but the memories remain. Sometimes new moments appear in their wake. Sometimes they're just dreams. But the beautiful thing is that so much can happen that cannot be anticipated, and there's a beauty to be experienced that even the most intricate and fruitful imagination can't, in its deepest state or REM or its most inspired years, ever guess would or could occur. There's a shaking of hands between will and volition and passion and determination and the unknown and that which is not apprehended and that which one never even dreamed existed. I'm ready for all of it.

Sometimes life can be so damn beautiful.

I'm thinking of impulsive decisions to jump on a bus with a dear friend in the middle of the night without checking to see where the bus is going, and I'm thinking of just letting the bus take me somewhere far away, where maybe I'll sit on a rocky beach, or drink a bottle of wine next to a redwood, or find some strange relic of yore in a little store in a box that hasn't been opened in years. I'm thinking of trains, and cars, and deserts, and night skies, and planes, and vehicles that take the individual away from one thing and toward another. And I'm also thinking of these trains and buses and planes as vehicles that move in two directions, and vehicles that will bring me home when I am ready to come home. I'm thinking of home, and somehow I can't help but think of it as a large and ever-growing entity that spreads out over my present and my past and the people I have known and know and will know, lost and kept and may lose and may not, and I am glad that all of these moments and all of these people comprise this feeling of comfort, and inspiration, and warmth, and nostalgia, and excitement, and anticipation, and home.

I just feel lucky. Lucky to be. And lucky to be in whatever way I choose to be. Lucky that the nature of this being can be whatever it should ultimately be. Lucky not to know yet what that may be, and lucky to get to find out.

Right now, I'm glad that when I think of why I am lucky to be here, I think of a lemon tree in a backyard on Thousand Oaks Blvd. in Berkeley, California; and I think of a drafting chair from long ago; and I think of the people in my life. I like, too, the fact that the changing of the seasons and the coming about of new smells in the air brings to mind new memories that cycle through me although I had for a long while forgotten them. There are things that I probably do not remember now that someday, maybe on some porch in front of some house I've never seen, next to who-knows-who or nobody or a cat, next to a tree bearing blossoms or fruit of a kind I can't predict, with a cup of tea that maybe I've had a hundred times before or maybe I've never had, I'll remember. And I look forward to remembering as much as I look forward to experiencing something new.

2010-02-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of time trying to match up the things that I feel with the way that I live my life. There was an initial period of trying to understand the way that I felt, and why I felt the things that I did. This lasted probably through my adolescence, and in my adolescence it became the most difficult to reconcile with the world around me. It was during adolescence that I, like most people, learned about injustice, and the lack of immediate gratification, and the necessity of at certain points learning to let things go. One of the hardest things to learn was that the act of letting something go was not an act of betrayal toward the self, but rather an act of honor and respect for the self. In addition, I found that it was an act of respect for the thing that was let go. There's a certain point where one has to realize that the beauty of the world lies largely in its chaotic nature. The inability of one person to see what will happen in his or her life, and the inability to control that future, is easily seen as a cage inside of which the individual is bound. From a different point of view, it is a kind of adventure that is better than that with a self-prescribed itinerary, because the things presented to the self when control is relinquished are things that the individual wouldn't have chosen on his or her own. Because of this simple quality that these things have in common - the quality of being unexpected and unanticipated - they are exciting, and incredible, and capable of inducing awe. It's difficult to be awestruck by anything that is anticipated, so it seems that the best way to admit awe into one's life is to be open to things beyond one's control.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to wield my feelings, and how to wield them gracefully. I've come to the conclusion as of late that perhaps the best way to wield emotions is with absolute, shameless honesty. By this, I don't mean that they should be blown out of proportion, or played up, or wielded with the intent of gaining or manipulating. Instead, I mean that they should be held as precious simply because they are one's own, and because they are indicative of an honesty held with one's own self. They should be held as absolutely sacred because they are birthed out of real experiences, and interactions with real people, and because they exist as a direct result of the way that one's mind interacts not only with the world around it but with the heart, too. Where I was unable to find any sense of peace in downplaying or undermining the things that I felt because of a fear concerning how they would be received, I find one of the only comforts I've ever felt in accepting them as they are, and presenting them as they are, because each instance of this kind of behavior - an honest kind, that holds in high esteem the emotions and priorities of the self - reinforces the feeling of being alive in a completely sincere and vulnerable way. It's good to be vulnerable if the vulnerability is presented with absolute honesty and confidence, because it then embodies a kind of power instead of a weakness. No one can know what an individual truly feels, so if that individual presents something other than that which is real and sincere, the individual will feel out of place, not because he or she is misunderstood, but because he or she is out of touch with the self. The mind and heart may communicate clearly, but the mind and the individual's actions may exist in opposition to one another; or the mind and heart may disagree. The mind and heart may fail to even consult one-another, or the mind and the individual's actions may entirely contradict each other. The best way to enable a smooth travel from heart to mind and back to heart, or heart to mind to action, is to allow for each communication between each of these to be entirely honest, and open. Regardless of the seemingly stupid nature of any action that may be taken, it can be an utterly holy action so long as it comes from a place of honesty. And, because being honest with oneself can in itself be difficult, allowing for contradiction between past and present is another kind of honesty, and one that makes way for change and growth.

There's not enough time to silence the heart, and there's not enough time to be concerned with how things might be misinterpreted. The guarantee is this: if what is said is anything other than what is truly felt, misinterpretation is not only possible but absolutely present; and, worse, it is a misinterpretation not only held by others but also held by the self. It's hard enough, God knows, to understand oneself. Why make it harder for others to understand you, too?

Here's what I conclude: Seek to understand the self, of course, but don't hesitate to act in a situation that requires courage or strength. We remember this as children, but we somehow forget it as we get older. Could it be, then, that the act of maturing and growing is the act of remembering why we were right all along as children when we smiled at strangers, or hugged someone when we wanted to, or cried when we wanted to? Could it be that the act of growing up is nothing but learning to be a child again in all of the right ways, but now equipped with the emotional and mental maturity that it takes to truly appreciate what it is to be childlike? Maybe we force that emotional honesty out of our systems and, if we are lucky, we learn that it is absolutely imperative that we reestablish this. It is when we encounter things that we truly care about, and things that we can't risk being dishonest with, that we remember the reasons for being straightforward; and the strange thing is that, in being straightforward in these situations, we must take action, and through taking action we risk a change. Sometimes this change can mean losing that very thing that we hold dear - the very thing that made us aware of this need for emotional integrity. But, again, the guarantee is this: If we do nothing when we want to do something, we will absolutely lose that thing, not because of a sudden change, but because of a gradual loss caused by a lack of respect all around: respect for the self, and respect for other individuals' selves. If any one person loses someone or something simply by token of their being honest toward that person or that situation, then that thing was not nearly as precious as they initially perceived it to be. The most precious things in the world are not necessarily the easiest, but the ones that risk losing someone or something for the sake of letting that person or situation view their inner self and true feelings more clearly. The greatest gift I would ever want to give somebody would be a situation of trust, and this is the same gift that we should give ourselves. In trusting ourselves, we let ourselves trust others, and vice versa. Honesty - the shameless, brutal honesty of frolicking in the muck of life and love and risk and fear - may not be the quickest route toward comfortability, but it seems to be one of the surest routes toward feeling understood by the world, and understanding the world in turn. Maybe if we can all learn to do this, we can learn to feel at home wherever we go. What is home, after all, but a place where you are free to be understood, not just as you would like to be but as you are? I'd rather be understood as the absolute honest mess that each of us can be sometimes than as a composed shell of a human being, lacking in passion for the world around me. There's a lot in this world that warrants my love and my enthusiasm and my awe and my passion, and not only would I regret not experiencing those things in a way that lets me feel those things - I'd also regret not letting those things and people in the world know just how inspiring they are to me. It's selfish of me to fail to inform the world of the incredible extent to which it is capable of blowing my mind. From here on out, if something floors me more than I thought I was capable of being floored, I'll damn well let it know. If all this does is terrify it, then at least it will know more about itself by way of understanding its place as an influencing factor in the world and in the lives of others.

Frolic in the muck, I say, because we only get one chance to experience muck of any caliber at all. I don't know about everyone else, but I have an inkling that most people would agree that they would like to be around for their lives, no matter how awful or embarrassing the events in those lives may be. Sometimes you can't look at the ground closely unless you trip and fall flat on your face, and if you don't look at things closely you might miss something. I think it's important to give things the attention they warrant when they are interesting, and to be open to the possibility of failing and falling and embarrassing oneself, because that's just what life sometime entails, and it'll only make the good things better because we will know that we got there by way of unabashedly opening our hearts to the possibility of their occurrence. There's no reason to be afraid of truly living, in an honest way; and most of the time it seems that life is more painful when it is pain that we are most concerned with and worried about. Life is more painful when one exists in a strange interim, in which things are felt but not expressed, than it is when everything that is trusted and true is expressed - even if this sometimes results in loss or hurt or chaos. Better to have the bad kind of chaos along with the good kind of chaos than no chaos whatsoever. I'm excited to live and to learn every year how to better understand the things that I feel and act upon them in a way that pays tribute to how much they mean to me. One of these days I am going to say something and look back the next day only to realize that I had truly meant it, and had truly expressed it too; and although I'm sure this has happened before, I hope that it will continue to happen, and more frequently. I never fail to be amazed by the world around me, but I think I sometimes fail to articulate what this world means to me, or I fail to trust the things that most strike awe into my heart. Sometimes they are the same things that paralyze me with fear, but what I'm coming to realize is that the presence of fear is often a surefire indicator of deep care or feeling or love, and this is what it means to be alive. What we should really be afraid of is squelching those feelings because of that fear. When I feel fear in the future, I'd like to pay even more honest respect to whatever it is that caused that fear, because it'll surely be something of magnitude if it can cause me to tremble in my boots to that extent. I don't think fear will ever go away, because we will never stop caring. Fear is maybe an awareness of a risk, which is indicative of the extent to which something is meaningful to me. I never want to stop caring, so i say bring on the fear. Fear reminds me what I care about, and should never be a signal to undermine those things that I care about when I talk about them. If anything, fear should remind me to speak of those things with greater respect: not because they are innately good, or bad, or anything like that, but because they remind me what matters to me, and who matters to me, and why these things matter to me; and they will remind me to appreciate those things and immerse myself in those things and risk my own pride for those things. Pride can recuperate, and it is mostly illusory anyhow, so it's a small price to pay for true experience and a meaningful life.

Also, I think it's fine to stay up all night once in a while just to bask in appreciation, or inspiration. And I think it's okay to say things that come out kind of messy, and to stumble over words, so long as the attempt to be true is there. If the intent is there, and if one starts a sentence enough times, eventually some semblance of the truth will be understood. That's all we can ask for, and sometimes it takes years' worth of mangled sentences to get to that point. So, I guess, we should start talking and mangling sentences now so that we might be better understood sooner. We don't want to miss out on understanding and connection, because it is these which remind us of what is most beautiful in the world, and in our selves.

Even if things aren't always pleasant, they can be always interesting, and interestingness seems to be hugely underrated. Magic, unexplained or circumstantial, isn't going to find you if you don't give it a chance. If something means something to you, let it know - don't take to heel. Awesomeness abounds.

On Human Interaction

2010-01-04T06:06:00.000-08:00

The balance between the self and the other is something that is very difficult to maintain; but in a way that is so instructive in teaching one how to be patient, both with the self and with others, that I can't help but remark on the beauty of this lesson, even as I myself struggle to remind myself of its wisdom and struggle to apply its wisdom to my day-to-day life and the events therein.

When one approaches another, the other moves away. When the first steps back in a mirrored response to the moving away of the other, then the other will step forward. The result is a mutual attempt to either maintain the distance between the two, or to keep the amount of movement toward the center done by either party regulated, so that neither moves closer or further away more quickly than the other. If one moves toward the other a bit too quickly, the other will step back. If one moves toward the other much too quickly, the other will turn and run. In some people, this response is greater than in others. If one steps back a bit in apprehension of the forward-motion of another, the other may step back just a bit as well. If one steps back too far, or just turns and walks away, the other might take it as a breach of trust altogether, and will turn and run as well.

This is a rusty and sloppy version of what I hear is called the "rubber-band theory" by psychologists. My concern isn't really the specifics of the theory, but more my reactions to this phenomenon when I attempt to be objective about it.

If the person distancing himself from me is someone I care about, it's difficult to see the beauty in this little dance or game or whatever it might most aptly be called. However, if I try to step outside of myself and think of a hypothetical situation of this kind, the movements between one individual and another of this kind are somewhat remarkable, in that they create a perfect opportunity for a lesson to be learnt, and a perfect context for this learning to occur, in which there is room for small mistakes, and room for slow learning, and room for fear and hesitation. The context is perfectly designed (bear with me on my word choice here) to ensure that this lesson must eventually be learnt, for one can't enter the context without eventually entering into this game itself, which can only be won by way of learning the routine, and can only be lost by way of being made very aware of the routine - the hard way.

What I find most beautiful about this very natural quality of human interaction is just the fact that, as long as the individual is alive and living, the lesson is being slowly learnt. If the individual has to step away from a situation in order to approach it anew, the individual is learning. If he or she steps forward too far and causes someone to run away as a result, he or she is learning. If an individual chooses to give up on getting to know someone and runs away on his or her own, that individual is opting out but still learning the hard way; and the lesson will be repeated each time a new person is met. The only winning is in getting to know somebody well and keeping that person as a lover or as a friend. The only losing is getting once again beat over the head with the nature of the lesson itself; and this isn't really a loss at all, for it is a step forward in the learning of how to be able to truly get to know a person.

The other beautiful thing about this is that every person is a participant, even if they don't make attempts at getting to know other people at all. If, say, a hermit leaves his home to buy a carton of milk, he may encounter a clerk, and the clerk might ask him a personal question. The hermit, in true hermit-fashion, might perhaps take the milk, leave the change on the counter, and run away; but this will cause two things to happen. Firstly, the clerk will exercise a tiny bit more caution in the future, unless he's entirely dense, and will refrain from asking questions that are too personal. Secondly, the hermit might become slightly less sensitive to being asked personal questions, and the next time it happens he will perhaps remember to pick up his change instead of opting to tip the clerk out of pure social awkwardness and utter terror. So, in this way, this phenomenon works even when the results are only apparent with respect to how they effect other individuals who may not have even been involved in the initial interaction.

It's lovely to think about a whole network, in which people are dancing back and forth with one-another, and in which some run so far from one person that they run too fast into another, who in turn runs too far from that person and too quickly into another, and so on. It brings to mind an image much like the one I had in my head in middle school when my science teacher taught us about the dispersion of gaseous molecules in a sealed room; and the way in which they would distance themselves from one-another so that the distance between each was the same; and the subsequent way in which they would restore this equidistance after it was disturbed (e.g. after a window was opened for a short while, or after more of this gaseous substance was let into the room).

With this in mind, human beings seem a very natural and predicable bunch. They aren't really, though, are they? The thing I like about it is that these human beings behave emotionally very much like these gaseous molecules behave physically. Rarely do we get a chance to say that the emotional realm is mimetic of the physical, or vice-versa. Loosely, sure, but nonetheless mimetic.

On saying all the wrong things and none of the right things

2009-11-23T04:53:00.001-08:00

I can tell you a million unimportant yet perhaps mildly amusing anecdotes. I can tell you some really funny ones, maybe, too; at least once in a while. I can say an infinite number of things about an infinite number of unimportant subjects: The kinds of things that are easy to speculate about because no assertion one way or the other with regard to these subjects will really shock or offend anyone. No one will raise an eyebrow. Someone might chuckle, but he or she will not remember what was said in a day or a month or a year. I can make a dozen jokes and several dozen silly or even witty puns, and a million or more out-of-place sound-effects. I can say something under my breath just to myself that is entirely inaudible, and laugh for hours about it. Speaking is easy, and I say so, so many things. The kinds of things that can be said, and the ways in which these things might be uttered, are so numerous. Despite this, I get tired of talking, because it's the things I don't say that are the most important.

Why is it that I choke on my words when I want to say something that actually means something to me? Many words might have little effect on the world around me, but there are some things that could really effect something or someone. By way of uttering these certain words, I might actually change the course of my life in one way or another; but these are the words I just can't stutter my way through. I might say a million seemingly unrelated things in an attempt to enclose the topic and by way of framing it somehow get my point across, but the result will be something of a spider-web of sentiment, and will likely result in confusion rather than clarity.

The words that I want to shout from mountaintops are the same words that I can't even bring myself to force out in a whisper. The things I'm most sure of are the things I'm most hesitant to say. I'm perfectly willing to say a number of things that I'm unsure of, and to present these ideas as postulations, but when I know something to be true for me, I keep it to myself and hold it close as if it could do no good in the world outside of my own mind. I truly want to say these things, because I feel that I often keep myself from expressing my most sincere or meaningful thoughts.

When I find that I really believe in something, or care about something or someone, I become so sure of it that I fear I wouldn't be able to handle the pain of presenting it to the world - that thing that I so adamantly believe in - and having the world snuff it out or throw stones at it or walk away from me as soon as they see it.

I'm caged in by my own awareness of the potential for negative repercussions that might result from things that I say that have actual weight to them. I'm tired of saying so many things that don't mean much to me, and yet not saying anything that truly means something to me. I'd rather say nothing at all than say anything other than what matters the most. I can't expect people to read my mind, and yet I find myself feeling disappointed when they don't.

Speaking a million truths that mean nothing to me feels almost the same as telling a million little lies. And the more I refrain from saying the things that I most believe in and most care about, the more I care about those things and the more I treasure them, and the more I fear that they will be ruined once they are expressed to the world. I've tried to remedy this by just confronting my fears head-on and saying what I mean whenever I want to, but the result is this: I end up saying a lot of things in an attempt to express those things which matter the most, but I never quite hit the nail on the head and so I just end up doing a lot of talking, and saying a lot of things that don't quite do justice to the way I feel.

My heart feels about full to a bursting-point, so I'm going to have to find some way to express the love and conviction and passion and wonder and awe that I feel. Most importantly, I have to find some way to express these things in a way that doesn't request anything of the listener, and doesn't apologize for itself, and doesn't undermine or belittle itself, and doesn't dismiss itself even in that moment in which it is uttered. I don't know how to do this. I admire those who say nothing, because at least they are saying fewer unimportant things than the rest of us.

On Grumps and Recluses

2009-11-11T19:02:00.000-08:00

For whatever reason, I think a lot about time spent alone. Perhaps it's because I've done a lot of it in my time. I'm not sure. It's comfortable for me. I guess it makes sense that it would be, given that I had divorced parents and went from one house to another every three days. When there's no one point on a map that constitutes home at a given point in time, and when one is always surrounded by different people, one learns to be chameleon-like, and flexible. I don't know if this is good - and wish sometimes that I could be more set in my ways, or have my "ways" be less numerous, or even be more clear on what my "ways" are - but it has its applications.

Living in multiple places makes one aware of his or her ability to be happy in different conditions, and around different people, and in different environments. This makes life easier, because one realizes that he or she will never really be unable to cope with whatever environment happens to exist around the self at the moment; but it also makes certain things harder. When one option seems as doable as another option, in terms of career or location or surroundings, the act of deciding proves difficult. I feel like I've learned to look at situations from all angles, but the problem is that I think I can find merit in just about anything, and that means that I want to devote adequate time to a number of things; and, of course, if I devote time to a number of things, none of this time will be in any way at all adequate.

Perhaps this is why it feels so good to indiscriminately get rid of stuff and rule out options just for the sake of simplification. I take great pleasure in selling records that I don't listen to anymore, just because of the space it creates in my room. I take pleasure in realizing that I prioritize one thing over another thing, just because it is so often the case that I can't do this, and will instead talk myself into pursuing multiple avenues at once. I'd rather do nothing than do too many things half-assedly; and i certainly don't want to wind up doing nothing. Ruling out options means committing to doing something more wholly and less half-assedly, and I consider this a good thing.

I've digressed. Something occurred to me while I was on my bike the other day. The sun was going down, and the sky was past the point of sunset and in the midst of that weird interim phase where it looks almost grey. This is irrelevant, but I can picture the color of it, so it seems worth writing down. Here's what occurred to me: Society seems to frequently perceive the recluse as somebody who has shunned society - someone who dislikes human interaction and has given up on it. But it seems that this might be a huge misconception in some cases. At times, I seek solitude, and there is something that always holds true about these particular times: They are times in which I consider human interaction to be something extremely important, yet in which I feel that I should avoid it for some reason. The reason is never anything like me deciding to write of friendships, or me having become so fed up with socialization that I have decided that I am better off alone. Usually it's something else: Perhaps I will feel that I have become spread too thin, and want to take time out to refuel so that I feel I have more to offer to my friends when I do see them; or perhaps I have been hugely effected by some social interaction, and want to fully understand it and mentally digest it before moving on with my social life, such as one might do after a break up; or perhaps I feel the need to work on things in my own life so that I'm not placing the burden of my own happiness on other people, as I think one tends to do when one spends too much time being social and not enough time on oneself. Additionally, I think it's good to be alone once in a while to remind oneself that one can be happy alone, because then social interactions take on the quality of being a bonus - the icing on the cake - rather than something necessary. I'd rather treat the people around me as wonderful additions to my life, rather than necessary ingredients, because it protects their autonomy and lets them trust in my motives when it comes to why I am their friend. None of these reasons for solitude are in any way indicative of a dislike for company or companionship or the social world in general, but they are testaments to just how valuable all of the aforementioned are to the individual, and they are indicative of a desire to have utmost respect for others by way of having respect for the self and not holding others responsible for this respect. In this way, one is able to better appreciate others.

I wonder if all of the Scrooges of the world just had hearts bigger than they knew what to do with - hearts of sizes so big that the only possible culprit could be a love for humanity itself... Maybe a love for humanity so great that the awareness of how difficult it could be to reconcile that kind if an idealism with the real world would just be too much to bear. Grumpiness seems often an indicator of some underlying sensitivity and vulnerability. That's where benefit-of-the-doubt comes in; and forgiveness. Some people don't deal with people well, but I don't think it always means that they don't care. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that more often than not it's the opposite. I'm a big fan of spending time alone, and I'm a big fan of benefit-of-the-doubt. I'm a fan of grumps, too.

2009-11-10T03:56:00.000-08:00

Annoying: Groups of people acting way too excited about mundane shit.

"How are you guys doing tonight?"
"GREAT!!!!!!!!!"

"Is everybody already on the mailing list?"
"NOT YET, BUT WE WILL BE!"

It's like a giant fake orgasm. I'm not sure which is a more frightening prospect: That these people are actually that enthused about signing a mailing list, or that these people are so eager to play the role of good audience member. Reexamine your priorities and think for yourselves, people. The nazi party was composed of a bunch of really good audience members.

I'm all for excitement, but I think it should be reserved for things that are actually exciting. If you react like this to the prospect of signing up to be pummeled with spam, how are you going to react when you win the lottery?

"I dunno, man... He really didn't deserve to win. He didn't even seem very happy about it."
"I thought he looked happy. He was pumping his fist and grinning from ear to ear, while tears streamed down his face."
"Yeah, well, I dunno. He's always like that. He acted that way when my grandmother showed him her thimble collection."

...Seriously?

I have a hard time believing that this kind of exuberance benefits the self in any way. But then who is it for? The performer/ person on stage/ other audience members? What happened to people being desirous of sincerity, even if it meant a bit of apathy?

On Things That Remain the Same

2009-11-05T09:55:00.001-08:00

Sometimes it seems that nothing has changed since I was a kid in the way that I view the world, and in the way that things effect me. My reactions remain pretty consistent. My ability to predict these reactions, perhaps, gets better - which results in my avoidance of certain situations - but the reactions themselves are pretty much the same.

I find myself recreating situations of comfort that were existent when I was a kid without my having to create them. For instance, I find myself taking great comfort in breakfasting with a group of people and talking for hours after, and I find myself fantasizing about hosting large breakfast parties on Sunday mornings. This seems like an emulation of what my Grandparents used to do out in the country. Of course, the original event itself can never be recreated, but the desire to do so seems to be an attempt to ensure that there is some sort of a constant in my life that ties the present to the past. When location and company is constantly changing, there are few links of this sort, and many of them involve tradition. Family is another.

My natural surroundings seem to be another constant that I return to for comfort. They, too, are always changing; but unlike the changing nature of circumstance or friendship or location, there is something really serene and beautiful about this kind of change, at least when it involves the changing of the seasons and not the unnatural changes brought on by human beings. I worry that the comforting nature of - well, nature itself - will be disrupted by human nature. This is selfish, and really my worries concerning our effect on nature are broader, but since in this context I'm discussing my own relationship to nature, perhaps I will be understood.

Another comfort to me throughout the years that has remained effective since I was a young child is just solitude itself. This - especially when coupled with time spent in natural surroundings - keeps me grounded and helps me to reevaluate my priorities and limits. There's a clarity of thought that can be found when alone that doesn't even compare to the hyperactive series of tangents that I experience when in good company. Both are equally important and rewarding, yet each serves a very different purpose. There's something to be said for withdrawing, too, because the reality that manifests itself is one in which those friends who remain through these periods of withdrawal and in spite of these periods of withdrawal are those who truly seem to understand me - and when they don't, they give me the benefit of the doubt. I appreciate this.

The two other comforts that most readily come to mind are more distractions than constants. The impetuses for these two things remain constant, yet the things themselves are erratic and by nature spontaneous and disruptive. In a positive way that reinforces my appreciation for all of the aforementioned. These two things are art (and by this I mean listening to music, making music, reading literature, writing, drawing, looking at art, watching films, etc.) and the act of being stir-crazy. The first of these two is rich and multi-faceted and worthy of an entire entry devoted to each part of it, so I'll leave it be for now. The latter is probably at first look difficult to understand, but just as valuable. By "stir-crazy" I mean discontent with just remaining stagnant and instead craving movement and adventure and progress. It is this constant feeling of a desire to do something and go somewhere and travel on in a forward motion in my life that (perhaps aside from friends and loved ones) gives life the most purpose of all, because it is what causes me to pursue new avenues and meet new people and start new projects. It is what makes me plug my headphones in and listen to that record I've never really given a chance. It's what makes me write a song. It's what makes me go out into the fields and just sit in the vastness of open space. It's what makes me plan my next course of action and dream about all the places and people I've never seen. It's what provides me with the comfort of the realization that I will never be terribly unhappy or bored or impoverished because I will just get too antsy for mental stimulation for this to really happen. I feel fortunate in this respect. The interestingness of life itself is enough reason to wake up every morning. Curiosity is the best thing in the world and, even if it begets a kind of idealism that leaves the individual always looking forward for something greater, it is still positive; for this kind of idealism is what causes the individual to provide better solutions, more accurate answers... This is the kind of idealism that causes the individual who is dissatisfied with the present to look at the reasons for this, and an awareness of these reasons is what leads to social and political change. It is what perpetuates scientific research. It is what makes better art. It is what disrupts dysfunctional governments. And it is what sometimes keeps children from making the same mistakes that their parents made. It's what allows for growth.

Skies seen while cycling

2009-11-03T17:42:00.000-08:00

"Bike X-ing" sign:

Clouds, Stevenson Rd.:

Sunset, Russell Blvd.:

Treetops, Old Putah Creek Rd.:

On Popular Music and Lyrics

2009-11-03T11:36:00.000-08:00

Someone needs to do a comprehensive study of how often certain words are used in the popular songs of various eras throughout the history of popular music, and which words most frequently occur in the top 100 or so songs over the years at different points in time. It would be interesting to see whether there is any pattern to the occurrence of certain words in songs that resonate with the general public at different points in time, aside from the obvious ones ("love," "time," "baby," etc.) - although it would be interesting to see how frequently these occur, too, and to then look at what was going on politically and culturally at the point at which, say, the word "gone" is most frequently occurring. I suspect that a lot of it is arbitrary, and that a lot of it remains somewhat consistent (because certain things just always have and always will resonate with human beings), but it would be interesting to see how the influence of an economic recession or depression or the influence of war or assassination changed the poetry of the most popular music of that time. I'm not saying that the most popular music would be the best music; but if the study just focused on the songs that were most listened to and requested, the resulting data would say something about the majority of human beings, which might be interesting even if it centered around some shitty music.

Someone also needs to write an entire book, complete with a plot, comprised only of lyrics from songs that meant something in some way to the author, or which were somehow lyrics that the author was aware of in some capacity.

That Feel

2009-10-14T02:50:00.001-07:00

Perhaps it's the wet leaves that I know must litter the ground outside, or the flooding in my kitchen caused by the leaking roof; or the fleeting power-outtages that did not stay, but which made their peripheral presence known. Whatever it is, it's that one thing that, according to Tom Waits (with Keith Richards in the background to boot), you can't lose: That feel. Don't ask me to describe it, because it can't be described except by way of circling it and shooting through it without quite hitting it on the mark; but you know it when you have it, and I have it. It's not love, but more something like the awe of every kind of love one has ever had for anything ever. It's a feeling of not wanting to forget so many other feelings. It's a feeling of not wanting to lose those feelings. It's a feeling of sadness as one watches memories slowly fade and become paler, and the feeling of relief and joy upon realizing that there are so many moments yet to come in one's lifetime. It's the feeling of total and complete gratitude for those in one's life who are most loved. It's the simultaneous fear of losing these people, and fear of never meeting the others who could be these sorts of precious people. It's an open window in a suburb of Paris in the middle of the night, in a room that smells like pastries and cologne and coffee. It's a small elevator, and a large parking lot, and a small telephone booth, and a number of strange shops and an absence of people. It's a bus in Portland, and the colors of the seats and the nickels on the floor. It's a tree, in the middle of a field next to an orchard, under a full moon, and beer and whiskey both, and a laugh shared with the company there. It's the exchange of a book in a little park during a Christmas festival and a promise to return the book and to start anew. It's a walk to a trash can in a dirty city and a conversation about wanting to start again. It's a kiss in a church parking-lot at five in the morning and a moment of panic as the sun begins to rise. It's the feeling of sneaking out of one's bedroom in the middle of the night as a teenager, not to meet someone or to do anything illicit but just to be out in the night air, and just to have gotten there by way of sneaking out. It's the frozen noses of winter in the middle of the night, and the silence of solitude underneath the pine trees. It's a song's ability to bring tears to one's eye as that song is heard through headphones in the middle of the softest and quietest of snow-storms. It's the warm air and dry red dirt of a summer back home, and the stained and scratched purple hands of the blackberry-picker after hours of picking. It's the thousands of feet between one's nose and the floor of the valley as you look over at the Yosemite valley and feel very much a part of things and yet very, very small. It's frozen hands from snowball fights, and swollen eyes from sleepless nights, and long walks home from school just for the sake of walking under the pines. It's the act of leaning over the rail of a balcony to watch strangers pass by below, unaware that they are being watched. It's a nap in a park in the middle of the afternoon. It's that space of silence in the middle of the night when everyone is asleep. It's Christmas morning when you're awake too early and you're still young enough to wear pajamas with feet. It's the thumbing-through of picture-books and the wonder thereby induced. It's the callused hands from games of dodgeball and the broken nails from tetherball. It's the fear to approach another and the excitement felt at the same time over the idea of making a new friend. It's the brief goodbyes that don't sum up the moments before. It's the attempt to define those things which can't be bound by words. It's the look of understanding in the middle of a sentence and the look that follows which recognizes that the look before it pertained to something entirely unrelated to the sentence uttered. It's the space between faces and eyes and hands and noses, and the lack of space. It's the words uttered while waking, and the last words before sleep. It's all the things that slipped away from your memory as time passed by, or because you drank too much that night, or because you couldn't bear to remember those things because they were too beautiful or because they were too painful. It's the sudden remembrance or something from long ago that is unimportant but which happened. It's the running ahead of a group in order to be the first to look at some particular painting in a museum, just to get there first or just to see it without having to discuss it with anyone, just for a minute; to look at it in silence for that moment before the group catches up. It's the waving at a stranger because he's on his bike in the rain and so are you. It's the good meal after a long hike. It's the sky that makes you think about everyone you've ever missed when you realize that you wish they were there to look at that sky with you. It's those people who will never know how much they mean to you. It's that fear that you might forget, and the trust that you won't. It's the fact that every time you look at someone in the eye, every moment of past eye-contact and conversation and time spent together is summed up there in that present interaction. It's the way in which every past moment and thought and idea and experience and feeling serves as ornamentation for the present moment; and every past moment serves as a window through which to view the present. None of this will feel the same or look the same, but things will be felt and things will be seen. It's none of these things, but all of them and more, but only when these things are fluid and at risk of being forgotten and considered with regard to the infinite number of possibilities that await the individual.

I don't really know what or who is to blame, but this season causes my heart to swell up like that of the Grinch, and I feel myself floored by whatever it means to be alive and to learn and to fuck up and to falter and to love. I don't want to forget anything. I feel this need to write everything down before it's gone; but if I write things too fast it won't quite describe anything as it should. Perhaps it's best to process it all slowly, allowing for some of it to perhaps be forgotten (although hopefully not the sound of the hail on the roof as it awoke my childhood self in the middle of the night), if that means that those things processed and written down can be written about in the right way.

None of this was described in the right way, but at least it made me realize that these things are worth writing down someday in the right way. I hope the right day comes for remembering these things and writing them down right.

I'm sure that many of the moments that I forget were really, really beautiful. Many of those that I remember certainly were. Perhaps somebody else remembers some beautiful moment that I forget; and somebody else another, and so on. Some moments are just lost... "Like tears in rain."

Perhaps that makes life all the more precious. Life itself happens to be its own only record.

On Choosing One Path, Amongst Many Paths

2009-06-07T03:15:00.000-07:00

I’m tired of being told that I’m flawed; that some medication or some new view of the world would make me once again a functioning component of a larger machine. I’m tired of trying to mold myself into a component of this larger machine without even knowing what the machine’s actual purpose is. I’d rather be a flawed component of a machine than a functioning one without knowing what the larger machine is meant to do. For it could very well be doing something that I would never want to be a part of, ever. I’m equally tired of the view that it’s the fault of the society around me that keeps me from being a functional and useful component. This view – this cop-out – is as tired itself as I am of it.

As children, we’re taught that we should have a purpose, and a set of goals, or even just one grandiose goal that we sacrifice all other past and potential goals for. We stop ourselves from even thinking about the other ways we could be directing our lives because the very act of thinking about these things causes us to stray from the path we’ve set ourselves on. Why? Because we are pressured to do so. Because time is scarce, and because we can’t waste it. It doesn’t seem logical that anyone chooses one particular path because it’s the best thing for that person, or because it’s their “calling”. No one with any amount of cognitive ability is able to determine what might be a better path to take than any number of other paths, simply because one’s ability to gauge his own abilities is limited; and one’s ability to guess the events that will surround his own life are even more limited. Both of these do not just contribute to an individual’s success in a particular field or pursuit, but by all means entirely dictate it.

If someone wants to truly make an impact on the world, he has to be open to the inevitable fluctuation of the circumstances around him, even if it means that he will have to revise his plans. He has to be open to being wrong. Otherwise he runs the risk of picking something that ten years down the line is so obviously irrelevant to the paradigm in which he lives that he can no longer justify taking any action to further the end that he has, for all those years, solely had in mind. Logically, the wise thing for him to do (if he really wants to have a positive effect on the world) is to be willing to shift gears if circumstances suggest that he should; but this again goes against the notion that has been ingrained in his mind: Stick to your guns and follow your dream. The subtext, and the small-print, is this: “Stick to your plans, even if your dream no longer has any bearing on the world around it.” Otherwise the individual is rendered nothing more than a willing hypocrite.

To live in a way that leaves open the possibility of this necessary changing of courses, even at the risk of this aforementioned hypocrisy, perhaps one must take care not to neglect a number of backup plans that he may have had in mind. He must avoid neglecting several things to the point where, if it so happens that he has to switch gears and start on down another path at some point (whether it be for financial reasons or because he has convinced himself or been convinced that his offerings in some field are naught), he is not yet so far behind in another field or pursuit that there is no point in changing his course and attempting to do something else.

The natural fear, then, is this: What if he has already traveled so far down one path, with such staunch determination, that in all of the other possible routes he might have taken he would have to just beginat the trail-head if he began something new at all. Then what does he do? Does he stay on the path he’s on, regardless of how irrelevant it may be and regardless of how futile he deems his efforts in that given area, or does he switch to a new path, in which he may very well have little or nothing to offer just because he has been busy pursuing something else (just because he has been wasting his time all of these years because he failed to recognize his “true calling”)?

Either way, the man will be deemed a failure, entirely because of external factors beyond his control; and additionally (what might have turned out badly has instead turned out horribly) because he has thrown himself so blindly and ardently down that former path.

The same may be said of relationships, or of a man who dives headlong into a marriage. A passion for one thing, and a determination to make that one single thing the focus of all of his time and all of his energy, may be the very thing that renders him a failure not just in that relationship but also in all of the other relationships that he might have pursued had he been viewing things a bit more clearly and not been stuck in the “wrong” relationship. But, I swear, there’s no way of knowing that might have been the right choice except in retrospect. The biggest human fear, pertaining to this, is seemingly the inevitability of realizing that one has made the wrong choice. Perhaps even worse might be the prospect of not being sure that a choice was wrong, but spending all of one’s hours just wondering whether it might have been.

Our society is not really conducive to a man who wants – who really truly wants – to maximize the degree to which he might be able to benefit the world. Thus this world breeds individuals who are forced to shut off that part of their mind that even cares whether or not they benefit the world, rendering them crude, primitive, selfish animals. Those who might have been the most passionate contributors are at risk of being rendered stagnant or tormented just as a result of having been unable to choose between multiple passions, or as a result of having decided to blindly throw themselves with all of their faculties into one thing just because they wanted to know what would happen when they truly cared about something and pursued it. What happens to those other things that these unfortunate individuals once also cared about? Is the passion for these other, conflicting pursuits redirected? Or is it just obliterated? If the latter is the case, then can these people really say that they are throwing all of themselves into their respective chosen pursuits? Isn’t it perhaps better to pursue several things with a great deal of passion than to just snuff passions for things that take time away from one chosen pursuit?

Human beings are equal parts primitive animals, acting on instinct and passion and smooth, functional mechanical components. Perhaps they are not innately these things, but they are forced to be not one but both, simultaneously. The two do not make sense with one-another, and cannot be reconciled. And yet we are given no other option. Lucky is the man who is able to be a smooth, operating component of a larger machine, by way of which he is able to understand both his purpose and his usefulness in the world, who also is able to approach the prospect of being a mechanical component with full, unfaltering and undivided passion and determination. I do not know how to be this kind of a person, and I am left with nothing but a nagging awareness of the faulty nature of that mechanical component which I embody (or those numerous mechanical components which I attempt to embody, alternately or all at once, to less of an extent than might be desirable). Time does not allow me to turn myself into a passionate, functional, interchangeable part of a larger machine, just because it is scarce. And yet the tragic point to be made with regard to this is that it is this same scarcity of time that has embedded in me a strong passion to be a determined, ardent mechanical component: Not several, but just one; and one that functions to its full capacity even if it is required of me that I sacrifice all of my other inclinations to be other parts, corresponding or conflicting. The scarcity of time has rendered me simultaneously passionate and scattered; determined and stagnant; inadequate and idealistic. Yet I can’t do anything else but spend my time trying to be a more functional part of a larger whole, even though I have no idea which part of the machine I might be best suited for, or what the function of the machine as a whole might be. I’m too busy thinking about whether or not I even want to aid in the functions of this machine to figure out which part I should be.

Misc.

2008-07-27T19:18:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, the chronological moment of an epiphany does not line up with the time at which it would be most useful. The moment of recognition either precedes or follows the time at which the knowledge could most effectively be applied to one's existence. I suppose this lends credit both to memory and to integrity, and the importance of cultivating skills in each. I only hope that I will be able, to the best of my abilities, to accurately and honestly quantify and weigh those many, many things which can't actually be quantified or weighed, yet which clearly deserve attention. Perhaps this - our inability to quantify those things which we feel the most intensely - is why we again and again try to create different devices for the measuring of things: clocks for time, scales for weight, books for record, certain gestures for certain meanings, and so on. Strangely, none of these things - time, weight, record, or literal meaning - are as important as the unmeasurable; the weightless; the undefinable. The things that I most could use some kind of an accurate scale for are those very things which resist being measured and weighed altogether. There's no way to put a mark on a wall to indicate one feeling, or another mark on the same wall to indicate another feeling. Nothing would be appropriate and nothing would do that feeling justice or clearly indicate the ways in which it is different from all other feelings. Even if there were a way, there would be no way to gauge which is superior to the other. Because of this, I think human beings flub quite a bit; but I think there's something quite beautiful in this fact. It's as if mistakes are evidence of things that can't be as easily explained by biology, and although this should be frightening it is somehow encouraging. If we don't understand everything, we're on the right track. That is, if we don't understand everything, then we still have a right to be on this track at all, because a search for understanding and meaning is noble even when it is futile. Some mistakes are caused by too much eagerness and serve as evidence to the human will. Some are evidence of laziness that exists against all logical realizations discouraging laziness. I can only hope to grow less lazy and only be eager when it is appropriate. What is it that makes us choose to remember some days over others? Some moments over others? Some feelings over others? Surely there is no equation that we could produce that would explain any of this, and yet we seem to know what matters most when we see it or feel it. Sometimes only in retrospect, and not when the knowledge is most useful, but things can't be perfect in a world that does not come equipped with demarcations.

On mind, language, trajectory, and car-wrecks

2008-07-06T14:18:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid I used to play a game where I would walk in a straight line until I hit something - be it a wall or an obstacle of another kind - and then I would turn around at whatever angle it seemed the laws of physics would most support, as if in fact I were an object without any movement of my own but only able to be moved by the force of my impact with other objects. I would do this again and again, like a billiard ball, until I tired of the game. It would be interesting to look at language or the mind in a way that considers every concept about the world as a single trajectory, perhaps represented by a symbol, that acts very much in the same way -- that moves in a straight line, influenced by nothing, until it encounters something which changes its course (perhaps another belief about the world). Perhaps every element of language or every belief about the world has a set trajectory until it encounters another moving about on IT'S set trajectory, and then certain laws determine the way in which these two trajectories change when they hit one-another. It would be entirely formulaic, and although it would look like chaos from a distance, it would be entirely algorithmic. This seems to some extent to be how the mind works, leaving out the propensity for error that seems to (arguably) make the mind something other than algorithmic. It has - if you will forgive the oversimplification - a framework that functions in cruise control until more facts are given to it. And yet there seems to be a lot that goes on within the brain that happens not just because of the facts available to it, but in spite of them (the most obvious example of this being mistakes themselves - yet it seems that even mistakes function in a somewhat predicable manner, or at least it could be said that frequently the way we go about trying to rectify our errors is predictable, and so what we ultimately glean from those mistakes is predictable once we are aware of what the mistake is). The element of randomness seems mostly illusory, and phenomena within the brain seem inclined to function in cruise-control until they encounter other vehicles, if you will, that also are set to cruise-control. Two cars running in cruise-control still obey the laws of physics when they hit one-another, despite the fact that the resulting crash or pile-up is not as orderly as the mode of operation of each vehicle prior to the crash.

Basic Discussion of the Logical Implications found in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" (...to be continued)

2008-06-19T04:15:00.000-07:00

What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the imminent dangers of the young. Now where were these imminent dangers?-H.G. Wells, p. 34, "The Time Machine"

The protagonist in H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine", referred to simply and trustingly as 'The Time Traveller', finds himself sitting in an ancient and decaying throne, overlooking the landscape of the planet in a distant future, and as he does so he tries to process what he has seen thus far. He has encountered only a very frail and beautiful race of beings, for which he has at this point no name or title. He sees no evidence of strife, hunger, labor, disease, or struggle. The only thing unpleasant about the world in which he finds himself is the fact that the buildings populated by this race seem to be crumbling, moulding, and falling apart. Those parts made out of bronze are coated in verdigris. Those parts made out of glass are cracked and broken. And the floors made out of blocks of metal are worn to the point of near-concave by the feet of innumerable passersby.

'The Time Traveller' postulates that the only explanation possibly applicable to the situation of this observed race is this: Human beings, over the years, have become so refined in their ability to produce food, to cure disease, and to minimize labor that disease itself has been obliterated altogether; food grows abundantly and it is unanimously edible and never poisonous; and labor is unnecessary because communism prevails and both food and drink require no effort whatsoever for their production.

The race in question, so far as he can tell by way of his limited means of communication, is idiotic and unresponsive, lacking the curiosity and antagonism that seems to be so innate in the beings of today. He postulates that a lack of danger and a lack of cause for concern has brought about a general lack of concern altogether, and a lack of ability to deal with problems. There has been virtually no demand for advanced cognitive abilities, and so the mental supplies have, over the years, diminished to almost nothingness. He suspects that he is witnessing Human Kind in its waning cycle.

This postulation, though, is interesting: Interesting in itself, of course, but also interesting insofar as the things that it logically entails. First of all, is this a biconditional? That is, if A entails B, where A is lack of demand for capability, and B is lack of capability, then does B entail A? That is, does lack of capability lead to lack of demand for capability? Certainly not, it would seem. This would be ridiculous, and would imply that the human race's inability to cure AIDS might lead to a decrease in the likelihood of AIDS outbreaks worldwide, for example. This is intuitively ridiculous and obviously false.

Furthermore, if Wells' protagonist is right, and if a lack of need for human abilities and faculties leads to a lack of ability itself and a lack of faculty itself, then what about the negation of this conditional?

That is to say, if there were an overwhelming and unmanageable demand for mental faculties (~A), then it seems that Wells' protagonist might guess that the result would be an overwhelming increase in ability and faculty (~B). That is, 'The Time Traveller' seems to be of the opinion that ~A--> ~B. This would mean that more difficult problems would result in more able minds, more capable of dealing with said problems. Surely if this occurred, the improvement would not happen overnight, but it would - by this character's reasoning - nevertheless come to be.

This is an interesting idea to think about. Our society seems to illustrate the truth of this suggested phenomenon to some degree, but it doesn't seem that there is a direct relation between the two. It seems - and I say this only based on societal observation - that, if the demand for cognitive/ problem-solving capability were to be represented by the X axis of a graph, and the degree of cognitive/ problem-solving capability of the average individual were to be represented by the Y axis of a graph, then the points would not form a straight diagonal line leaning upwards to the right, but rather a diagonal line leading upwards in this way that eventually levels out, or plateaus. That is, it seems that an increase in demand for capability at first DOES lead to an increase in ability, due to attempts of various individuals to fulfill a need that has made itself apparent, and success of these attempts, and additional attempts that are undertaken as a result of these successful attempts, etc. However, it seems that too much demand for human capabilities would not necessarily have this effect. If the need is too great, the human will does not always seem - if you will - willing. It is almost as if the demand for capability has to be just high enough to make the efforts necessary, yet just low enough to make success seem possible, in order for human beings to remain productive and improve their capabilities as a culture or even individually. I suppose that, over a period of time, if the demand were to be slowly increased, then the capabilities could perhaps keep up; yet this doesn't seem to be the way that demand for human capabilities functions. The demand is created by events of a chaotic nature: Floods create a demand for problem-solving, with regard to the economy, and disease-prevention, and housing, etc.; deadly illnesses create a demand, and there is no slow progression toward this demand, for it is immediate. The demand for human capability is never very gradual, but often sudden. The human response - that is, levels of capability and effort - is easily humbled by these huge leaps in demand, and the human beings give up if the demand is too great.

Perhaps in large numbers the blow of this 'giving up' is softened by several fringe cases of individuals who are abnormally courageous and determined - individuals who can advance an entire culture at a rate faster than usual, so as to catch up with the sudden increase in demand for capability - but so often these fringe-case individuals are ignored just because they overshadow the jealous egos of other individuals, who want to believe they are incapable of being overshadowed.

And what about this conditional, ~A--> ~B. Is it a bi-conditional? Does ~B--> ~A, where A is lack of demand for capability and B is degree of capability? That is, does an increase in degree of capability entail an increase in demand? Again, it seems that this is certainly not the case.

Unlimited demand for cognitive abilities or problem-solving abilities or production or what-have-you does not lead to an unlimited amount of response from each. Instead, limited demands for such things leads to an increase in each, because in the case of limited demand, solutions to problems are perceived to be within the realm of possibility. Only when things are deemed perhaps possible - and only when solutions are not always and immediately met with an infinite number of additional problems - do solutions seem worth attempting. Demand for solution that is too great does not encourage solution, because there is arguably no point in solving a problem that, in being solved, does little to better the state of things due to the sheer amount of other problems at hand.

Some Ponderings About Word-Use

2008-06-14T02:54:00.000-07:00

It seems fair to say that, in contexts of conversation, we select our words based on which words we think will best express whatever it is that we are trying to say about the world. Because one of the primary goals is to communicate and organize our thoughts, not for ourselves but for the comprehension of our interlocutor, we select words from our vocabulary according to those words which we think our interlocutor will understand. Perhaps sometimes we use words that we aren't sure will be understood, but in these cases (unless the goal is self-indulgent in nature) we generally pause while speaking or after certain utterances in order to make sure that what we have said is understood. Surely we are often misunderstood, as people (I think) in general like to come across as competent, so often times it seems that the interlocutor nods his head in agreement when he thinks the speaker means one thing that turns out to be quite contrary to what the speaker actually means to convey, either because he doesn't wish to clarify or because what the speaker says can be construed in multiple says. In the conversational realm, we select our words differently than we might in another realm - perhaps one of creative expression, for example - because our audience is a specific individual or several individuals. In the creative realm, we can use whatever language we like, and our audience is something more fluid. Our audience is whoever fits the description of the person who will understand what we are saying, or glean something from what we have said. What is gleaned might be what we are intending to convey in our creative expression, or it might be something altogether different, but seeing as the goal in creative arenas is simply some kind of reaction or response (repulsion, anger, empathy, inspiration, etc.), and not a particular kind of reaction or response, the audience is in one way more limited (for only some will gain anything at all from any particular poem or bit of writing), and less limited (because what we convey can be a multitude of things).

Because of the different kinds of intentions involved in the process of writing in this creative realm, the manner of word-selection seems altogether different. Words are chosen not because they represent a kind of common ground or understanding between two people, but because they represent a kind of common ground between the writer and an experience, or the writer and the world: one that a reader may or may not relate to or gain anything from. The writer in this realm generally doesn't care whether a specific or particular individual understands him, but he may hope that SOMEONE does. Whomever this may be perhaps doesn't matter. In fact, the knowledge that someone - whomever it may be - understands or possibly understands some variant of what the writer means to convey sufficiently justifies the writing. Just the CHANCE of there being some such person justifies the writing, for if that person is not around at the time a given work is written, he may be in any year in the future, and then the writing does not simply slip through fingers but lands somewhere; permeates some THING.

This act of writing in a creative way (and I don't mean just poetry or fiction, but also essays that are creative in the thoughts that they address, etc.) is creative in itself: It isn't just creative in the sense of something that is 'artsy', but in the sense that a seed is creative. It is something that can cause growth; something that cannot grow on its own; something that can cause a series of other causal entities that in turn cause growth. Furthermore, it can be creative in a way that is indeterminate to the writer himself. What grows from a thought, or from a work of poetry, is only up to the writer insofar as he is able to control the way his words are interpreted. And he can arguably only do this to a very limited extent. So the way that a writer's words are creative is just as much up to the reader as it is to the writer; likely MORE so.

None of the words that we write are born just from our interpretation of the world. None of the words we select are selected because we feel they represent the world in OUR specific way. The words we associate with given objects or references are the result of words we have previously heard associated with those objects or references. Even words used poetically or metaphorically - supposedly alloted a greater amount of abstraction from the object itself - can only be abstract within a certain realm or confined space, so long as the writer intends to be understood in a way somewhat close to the way in which he means to be understood. If a word is assigned to a concept in a way that is entirely random, without any contextual cues to indicate the reason for this assignment, the writer cannot hope to be understood in the way that he intends. Perhaps this is part of the beauty of creative word use. It allows the writer to have a personal relationship with his own writing that will be specific to his own interpretation and no one else's. But few writers seem to use words in a way that is completely inaccessible to the audience. Small steps of abstraction from literal meaning or conventional meaning can be taken, so that an eventual word use may be a complete abstraction from the original, but if this does not happen in steps, the meaning will be lost because it will be trapped in the mind of the author and the author will alone have access to the intended meaning.

Perhaps there are words that seem naturally appropriate to objects or ideas. Perhaps something about the phonetic sound of certain words seems appropriate to certain things. But it is likely impossible to even capture these words in this pure sense, because the act of even THINKING about which words may be appropriate for which ideas or objects automatically kicks off a series of associations in the mind, so that the words ultimately selected will have some correlation to the object through some causal chain of thought processes, unless the writer/ speaker intentionally tries to select words that are not intuitively appropriate, in which case the result will be forced, and the meaning inaccessible; and in these cases the words will likely have little intuitive connection to the object that the writer wishes them to designate, because they are selected specifically BECAUSE they are the least likely words to be associated with that given object. Yet even something's being the LEAST LIKELY THING to be used to reference an object or idea still gives it a relation to that object or idea. The only difference is that it is a negative relation. But seeing as human beings tend to recognize opposites, this negative relation - this word's being selected due to its lack of intuitive connection to an object - might still be recognized as a connection to that object (the connection being just that it is something quite opposite or far removed from that thing); and thus it might be more intuitively associated with that object in being so FAR REMOVED from that object than some word nearer in proximity of intuitive association might be. That is, if one intended to say a word in order to poetically speak of an object, the most cryptic word he could possibly select would likely not be one connoting something directly OPPOSITE from the more likely word-candidates for that object; but rather one connoting something SOMEWHAT intuitively appropriate to that object, but somehow not entirely.

The act of thinking about what words we are using necessarily affects our choice of words. The act of considering our audience necessarily affects our choice of words. It is difficult to use words to denote objects in a way that is a pure representation of the unique way that we perceive an object, for in the very act of cognizing a word we are considering our audience or our ability to be understood, even if it is just ourself whose ability to understand that we are most concerned with.

Let's say we take it upon ourselves to think up a number of words most appropriate to describe a color, and let's say we wish to do so in a new and innovative way, so that we might say something specific about our personal relationship to that color. Simply KNOWING that there are particular KINDS of words generally associated with a given color (such as the names of crayons, etc.) automatically affects the kinds of words we will select. Even if they are new words that are not conventionally associated with that color, they will likely have either categorical semblance to those words, or they will be indicative of a conscious attempt to AVOID such categories as those words most often associated with that color might generally fit into. In selecting words outside of such categories, we are still selecting words based on categories containing words often associated with a given color, and so our description of that color will still be influenced by other speakers' past descriptions of that color. It seems that only by way of making mistakes, in a legitimately accidental manner, can we describe things in ways that are entirely removed from convention; and yet if it is accidental then it could be argued that we are not selecting our words based on the object at all. If the chosen word is chosen as the result of a mistake, then it seems we must have in mind a false conception of the object (e.g., color) in question, and we are not talking about that THING at all.

Does our being conscious of our own language use cause us to use words that are more appropriate to a given object, or less appropriate? Does it depend on our audience? In which cases do we choose words because they conform and may then be better understood, as opposed to those cases in which we choose words that are less conventional because we want to say something new? How far in abstraction can we go, with regard to word selection, without rendering ourselves incapable of talking about the object/thing in question altogether? Language use is inherently a self-conscious activity. We cannot be random in our use of words unless we are not conscious of the objects that we are talking about. Even attempts at random word-use will be anything but random. Calculated randomness is just as algorithmic as intentionally orderly word-selection.

Do our errors in speech enable us, over time (by way of causality, from one speaker to another and so on down the line) to say things that are more true about the world, or less true? In making errors, are we speaking more intuitively about the world, or are we broadening the gap between what we say and what we mean? Are all words equally appropriate in their application to given objects? Does the appropriateness depend entirely upon the audience, speaker, interlocutors, etc.?

Changes in language and word-use often result from mistakes in translation and mistakes in understanding (and the resulting misuse of words). Does this make language resemble objects less, or more so, or to the same degree no matter what? What about the association of objects to other objects, as with metaphor? What about our association of KINDS of words with other KINDS of words? What effect does our self-consciousness in use of language have, with regard to our ability to convey something resembling our meaning? Do our words ever diverge from our meaning to a GREATER degree, or is this divergence impossible, because of this aforementioned self-consciousness in our use of the words?

On Irregular Schedules

2008-05-04T05:53:00.000-07:00

I'm sold on the idea of living on an irregular sleeping schedule. Granted, it would be extremely detrimental to my health for me to stay awake all night on a regular basis, and horribly detrimental to my grades to boot; but there's something about experiencing the two different sorts of mental states that can be achieved by way of alternating between different sleep schedules that seems somehow beneficial. The sort of mental state that I get in after being awake all night is interesting. It still seems motivated by that perpetual sense of restlessness that underlies virtually everything I do; but that restlessness reaches the forefront of my mind: Not in a stressful, urgent way as it does when I've had too much coffee, but in a calm, conscious, and decisive way. It presents ideas of great importance to me - ideas about my future, and my goals, and my wants - and lets me look at them in a systematic and accepting manner. During the day, when I've slept at normal hours, these pressing matter are just that: pressing. They want to be given my full attention, but my attention is focused on hours and schedules and the process of allotting increments of time to the process of getting to various locations on time, or leaving on time, or gauging my energy levels and gauging the amount of coffee that will wake me up just enough to put me in a state of mind conducive to schoolwork but not conducive to overactive mental activity and the susceptibility to distraction that it tends to result in.

Staying up all night on weekends allows me to devote time to the things that have been waiting in line all week for their time in the spotlight of my thoughts, after having stood there and having to be told again and again, "No, hold on; wait just a little while longer. Hold that thought." If I don't spend time thinking about those thoughts - the line-waiting kind - they'll forget why they were waiting around in the first place and wander off. I've had thoughts leave me, and I think some of them are never going to come back. There were some that I was sorry to see go: I saw them, standing in line, and I thought, "Oh, I look forward to having the time to give that one a moment to tell me what it's all about." And then I was distracted by an assignment or a book or a meal or a friend and before I knew it, that thought had abandoned me. Something can be glimpsed and gleaned by just seeing it waiting there, but what's glimpsed is just a fraction of its substance, and doesn't amount to much. It's like the faint outline of someone's face from the obituaries page of the newspaper, stamped onto silly putty and bent and stretched. It's a distortion of an impression of an impression of the man himself. And arguably the man himself is an impression of himself, or an impression of his parents, or an impression of his surroundings, or an impression of his biological composition. If I had it my way, I'd pause whatever class I was taking notes in when I glimpsed a particularly eager thought standing there in line, and I'd pull him aside and say, "Alright, hey. You. Lay it on me. Tell me what you're all about." But instead I find myself giving him a look of annoyance - a look of warning - and shooing him away and out of my periphery, telling him in one look that he's being distracting and that his incessant presence is making it difficult to focus on the matter at hand.

The matter at hand might not be the matter that is supposed to be at hand, and some of the most interesting thoughts come when one is being exposed to a slew of other interesting thoughts, which is really quite annoying because none of said thoughts are able to be given adequate attention as a result. I suppose that's alright, because the ones that matter resurface in some manner or other at some point along the line, or so I hope.

The worst part of odd sleep-schedules is the adjustment at the beginning of a new week. Peace of mind and introspection and speculation gained from quiet hours of thought and pondering are almost counteracted by the mental retardation and vocabulary-looting properties of sleep debt. Little can be retained or learned or cognized when the brain hasn't rested itself, and any amount of eagerness on the part of the will cannot make up for this. And so, I suppose I should designate Friday and Saturday nights as insomnia nights, and try to connote some degree of normalcy to the rest.

There's something about taking that time out from society - not in terms of one's activities, but in terms of one's schedule - that is nice, too. Knowing that you're awake, thinking, or reading, or working, for YOURSELF, and for the sake of thought itself, and not for anyone else - and in fact knowing that your being awake is at odds with the rest of the world other than yourself (and the authors to which you are devoting your time and attention) somehow claims that time and those thoughts as your own, and somehow puts a bit more stock in the ideas contrived because they are contrived out of the will to contrive itself; and because they are manifested in the defiance of some other kind of established manifestation (that is, society and the structure of society, and the structure of time and days and hours themselves). They are somehow stronger in their presence; more likely to last beyond their moment, and sometimes prone to lingering on, sometimes for days, stretching their influence out over the normally-demarcated hours of the weekdays to follow.

On Religion, Ethics, Descartes, and Woody Allen (unfinished draft)

2008-04-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

There's been a recent pattern in my thoughts that I've noticed as of late, by way of two primary means: 1) observing my own comments on the topic of religion, when it comes up, and 2) trying to defend my unfaltering love for Woody Allen's films, pre-controversy and post-controversy alike.

The first cluster of thoughts, concerning the topic of religion, has to do with some ideas that I've been mulling over often enough to take notice. The result has been that I've become aware of a belief that I hold, simply through observing the fact that I defend that belief, without first being aware that it is a belief that I hold. Once I realize what I am defending, I have to ask myself what the implications of this belief may be, and whether I really could pit myself against the world in order to defend it. beliefs that I come to realize that I hold are, in my case, rarely discounted or dismissed upon discovery, for these beliefs that I seem to come to by way of the sum of a number of days of unconscious pondering (and according to Bertrand Russell, in his "The Conquest of Happiness", the unconscious mind can be assigned tasks to complete simply by thinking ardently about a specific topic for a given amount of time and then letting the unconscious mind do the rest of the work - a view of the unconscious that I much prefer to those that attribute to it guilt and feelings of sin and guilty lust and the like), and for my unconscious mind to have been assigned a topic to focus on usually means, so it seems, that I have spent a great deal of time thinking about something pertaining to that topic in my conscious thoughts. I give these beliefs that I accidentally uncover in my own mind the respect that I believe they deserve, at least with regard to their consideration (and of course claiming veto-power over them if I deem them faulty), because if they surface in such a way, it seems likely that it has been the result of rigorous ponderings that I've done, consciously and unconsciously, as if my unconscious mind has put together a number of propositions into a system the outputs a belief or two: propositions that I consciously hold to be true, resulting in beliefs that I wasn't even aware were so explicitly and logically implied by my beliefs, and the conjunction of these respective propositions, considered with regard to one-another. In other words, I form conscious and simple beliefs (I believe that P, etc.), and my mind constructs them as a writer might construct a paragraph, so that they form a larger, more significant, complex unconscious beliefs when put together. These unconscious beliefs are eventually presented to my conscious mind for dissection and consideration.

This belief is a bit unorthodox upon first consideration, and as such I am hesitant to put it in clear terms just yet, without first explaining my reasons for it. It has to do with the concept of "good" and "bad", about which much has been said (Nietzsche's Geneology of Morality, for instance), and it also pertains to Descartes' concept of the evil demon, who hypothetically deceives us into believing that we exist. Both philosophical works just mentioned have become tired at this point. I don't mean to say that they are useless (on the contrary, I think they're quite necessary); I mean simply that there isn't much that I could say about them that you haven't heard before.

That said, what I find most interesting about Descartes' "evil demon" is the fact that he's called "evil". Yes, it's prima facie quite a redundant and dull concept, but it's implications prove to be interesting. First of all, if we are not in fact living bodies, walking around earth, but are instead being deceived into thinking such (or, as Putnam suggests, if we are brains in vats), then there surely is no such thing as "evil". The word itself seems to suggest that the physical world is meaningful, and subsequently that what is done in the physical world has deeper, perhaps spiritual meaning. If the physical world is an illusion, then how is anything "evil"? By this token, we do not call a man evil just for playing a video game in which he shoots other human beings (say, an FBI-simulator or something of that sort). The fact that it is not reality is enough to render him innocent and morally astute. Why, then, are actions considered "evil" if the world, and all of said actions, is an illusion? The only other answer to that question seems to be that the fact that we THINK that it is real is enough to require that we act in a way that is "good" or "moral" or "ethical". Yet if there is doubt that it is real, is it really fair to hold the doubter to these standards? Obviously it is, unless the doubt is substantial, but Descartes seemed to believe that the doubt was substantial.

Then there is the question: If the demon is "evil" in deceiving us, why is God not considered "evil" if he supposedly created the universe and all things in it? Living in a world in which everything was created by an all-powerful being is not very different from living in a world in which everything was created by an "evil demon", especially since the world we are considering at this juncture is the world in which we actually live, and thus the word 'world', in discussion of the evil demon, refers the same world as in the context of religion. We can't say one or the other is evil or good because of any prevalence of evil or good things in the world, for there are the same amount of each in both cases, for we are talking about the same world: this world! There's also the response, often asserted, that "God is not a deceiver", but this, too, asserts that deception is a necessary "evil". First of all, I've already argued that "evil" and "good" seem hard to support in a world which is entirely illusory. And secondly, if there is nothing outside of this illusion, then it seems quite fortunate that each of us is being deceived by this "evil" demon, for I am sure I'm not the first to say that existence itself is quite interesting and exciting. This "evil" demon is providing, if Descartes is right, an otherwise-stagnant or otherwise-employed soul with something that, although perhaps not "real", is better than television. If it seems real, does it really matter if it's real? Isn't real simply, in some sense, what we think is real? If it's this or nothing, then I'd rather be deceived. And I see nothing evil about the fact that this "evil demon" is ostensibly giving my mind an occupation that is both interesting and enjoyable, and a body and tangible world to boot.

I've also been thinking a lot about concepts like demons, and devils, and "evil" figures in various religions. They seem to serve a necessary purpose: To teach individuals by way of example what is good, and to punish those who are bad. Say what you will about the latter (and I'll likely say the same), but the former seems necessary for the formation of the concept of "good". Nietzsche's covered the societal implications of this pretty thoroughly, so I won't get into it.

I usually steer clear of any discussion of ethics, in philosophy or elsewhere, mainly because my own views on the matter seem to be so contrary to the views of the majority. But the topic keeps coming up. Perhaps it's been on my mind.

On the next figurative shelf in the forefront of my mind is this issue of Woody Allen. I didn't even consider that I was expected to form an opinion on what he did or did not do in his personal life, but I've been forced to do so by way of being again and again grilled on the subject anytime I mention one of his films. People seem to be of the opinion that it was only "okay" for an individual to like his films before that individual became aware of the fact that he'd been sleeping with his much younger stepdaughter.

The main relevant facts of the matter are as follows:
1) Mia Farrow charged Woody Allen with an account of child molestation against his 7 yr. old daughter
2) The charges were dropped
3) Farrow's lawyer claimed that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to convict Allen, but that they were dropping the charges and withholding the evidence in order to protect Farrow's daughter
4) Woody Allen had multiple top-lawyers working in his defense
5) Farrow had recently discovered nude photographs of her adopted daughter on Woody Allen's mantle, which subsequently led her to discover that Woody Allen had been having an affair with her daughter, Soon-Yi, since she was in high school
6) Woody Allen admitted to #5, left Farrow, moved out, and proceeded to marry Soon-Yii

I'd rather not get into the logistics of the case itself, because frankly I don't think we can ever really know exactly what happened, but I'm of the opinion that the charges of molestation were unfounded, (perhaps) evidenced by the fact they were dropped for such vague reasons. Allen was, I think, denied custody of the child, but was not put behind bars.

That said, it seems to boil down to a discussion of the ethics of a man dating a girl very much his junior. The fact that she was his stepdaughter seems of little importance for several reasons: 1) She'd adopted Soon-Yi before she met Woody Allen, 2) Woody Allen and Mia Farrow were not married, and 3) Soon-Yi and Woody Allen began their sexual relationship after she had gone through puberty. 1) and 2) are of the most important. It is obvious that someone can serve a certain familial role without actually being conventionally of that kind, and if there is no blood relation than it is not incest. When it comes down to it, aside from the age issue, it seems that Woody Allen marrying Soon-Yi is not so different from a man dating someone he met while dating one of his exes, who was perhaps friends with his ex. The fact that he watched her grow up is (yes, a bit creepy) not a convincing argument, because many people of the same age meet in childhood, watch one-another grow up, and then date or marry. The fact that Woody Allen did not molest her while she was a child or before she could consent to it makes his case, for all intents and purposes, not much different.

No one has a right to judge what should or shouldn't be the cause of happiness between two individuals. People have a right to consent to actions or not; and there are ways to prosecute individuals who impose upon the rights and autonomy of others. If Soon-Yi hadn't wanted it, she likely wouldn't have remained in wedlock with him for all this time, and she would have sought legal or police aid. She didn't, and they both seem happy, and that should be all that matters to us.

It wasn't any of this about which I was really very concerned. It was the fact that so many people seemed eager to discredit his vast body of art because of these personal actions. Following a long debate with a friend about the matter, I came home and jotted down the following notes...

Things that I would like to remember to consider if ever I write a more in-depth article on this matter:

-Moral relativism as an important issue for cultural consideration
-Separating character of individual from morals espoused by their art
-Difference between what the artist chooses to present as art, and what unfairly becomes considered in juxtaposition with his art when his personal life is exploited
-Should the knowledge that the artist's personal life may be public affect his choices in his personal life?
-Hitler and Charles Manson are not good examples of bad people whose immorality discredited their art, because their art itself was not considered "good" by a general public consensus
-Value of personal liberty & the right to happiness
-Value of subjective interest in a work of art
-pertinent questions RAISED by the work of art
-Horrible human beings who produced good art, and the importance in noting that their art remains influential
-Value comes from the art, not the person
-Artist makes conscious choice as to what views to present in his art and what views to exclude
-Does the individual have an obligation to act morally to a greater degree if he is in the public eye?
-Does his life become part of his art?
-If he is a bad person, but his art raises relevant questions, is it still valid?
-Is this ENOUGH to make him a good person?
-Utilitarianism: The people who gain from Woody Allen's art (laughter and happiness) amount to more than the people who are hurt by the choices he made in his personal life (being offended is not the same as being hurt, and is more a sign of close-mindedness than anything else, especially if the offense is great, because an individual should have enough going on in his own life to ignore actions of others unless they directly hurt someone or affect the individual in question)
-This doesn't support Bush's actions (even if politics are considered art, as was suggested by someone with whom I was debating) because, even if politics can be considered art, then Bush is either just the brush itself, with which his cronies are making art, or he is simply BAD ART. Furthermore, that which Bush PUBLICLY espouses is, to a logical mind, not positive.
-Does creating good art require an individual to sacrifice good in his personal life?
-Woody Allen criticizes/ jokes about pedophilia in his art (e.g., Bananas), and thus his art actively attempts to discourage the act, saying it is inherently bad, or evil (I forget the direct quote)
-Roman Polanski
-Bush example actually argues the OPPOSITE of my point (happy home life = not defamed), (unfavorable publicly-espoused views)
-If it makes Woody Allen and Soon-Yi happy, that should be reason enough
-Into him for his money? Does it matter? Seems unlikely, because she already had access to it anyway, being his stepdaughter.
-Anyhow, if money is what makes someone happy (or if it's what they think will make them happy), who's to say they should be denied that attempt at happiness? It's their own mistake.
-Woody's films point out the error of the individual
-And how human fault can lead to the individual being used as a tool for manipulation for various political or social ends

I don't have time to rehash my thoughts on this matter at the moment, but I've been surprised as of late how contrary my own views on personal liberties, morality, social norms, and the like seem to be to the rest of society's views. Sure, there are definite instances of abuse, or immorality, or things that are just plain wrong; but on borderline instances, it seems that these things should be looked at case-to-case. The bottom line is that none of us can pretend to understand what someone else's motives are, or what makes someone else happy, or what someone else might need. God knows that real, genuine love seems to be rare enough that we should rejoice when it is found by two individuals, even in such strange circumstances. The good that such a thing puts into the world is no doubt of more essence than the bad that the same thing puts into the world, for the latter is mostly in the form of judgment, and in that sense it is "bad" not on Woody Allen's part, for he is putting out very little negative energy himself. Rather, the "bad" is mostly on the part of the public. Negative judgment and worry concerning someone else's life seems to be a waste of energy, and seems to be nothing BUT negative.

My main point being? We would do well to pretend that words like "good" and "bad" are not part of our respective vernaculars while talking about other peoples' actions and while judging the ethical value of situations or scenarios. They serve only as scapegoats, red-herrings, or substitutions for actual valid arguments. Even those cases that are obviously "good" in the truest sense probably should not be referred to as such, so that such words are not used inaccurately, unfairly, by default, or for lack of more relevant things to say, at least in borderline cases.

My other main point being? Any kind of art that provides enjoyment, encourages happiness, incites laughter, and raises relevant social, ethical, intellectual, and political questions at the same time is relevant, regardless of the personal character of the creator. It is my opinion that, if someone is able to create work that does all of these things, chances are that he means well even in his personal life. The act of raising a whole slew of important questions is quite commendable, and I don't mean this in a Socratic sense. I think we should seek to raise a multitude of questions for consideration on all kinds of topics, whether or not answers are at hand or even possible. I don't think we should necessarily seek to prove that other individuals don't know anything, at least not in an aggressive and insulting manner (because what's productive in that?), but I do think we should question what each of us thinks we know. What matters is that it's not our business. It's Woody, Mia, and Soon-Yi's business, respectively. In my opinion, and I think fairly so, once the youngest party has reached a certain age (e.g., the age of consent), the age-difference issue is entirely subjective and should be considered case-by-case.

From another standpoint, if the personal life of Woody Allen is arguably considered PART OF his art, it STILL succeeds in bringing relevant issues and questions to the forefront; humor, even. As could perhaps have been anticipated, the humor is found in the over-the-top nature of peoples' reactions to the situation more than it is found anywhere else. Even if Woody's actions can be dubbed "wrong" (and I take issue with the very suggestion of this), they still cause a dialogue, and so long as nobody was hurt in the process in a SUBSTANTIAL way (I'm not condoning murder for the sake of causing a dialogue), this is positive.

Someone do us all a favor and throw words like "good" and "evil" out the window. Until you do, I'll just say that I think the most "evil" individuals are those most eager to pin the "good" or "evil" label on other human beings whose situations they know nothing about; George W. Bush, for example. It seems a pretty obvious red-flag indicating that that particular person is probably unwilling to take responsibility for his own actions or even consider the repercussions of said actions.

On Religion and Translation

2008-04-14T03:42:00.001-07:00

It seems entirely plausible to me that discrepancies between various and sundry theologies are simply the result of a series of loose or approximate translations, botched by a series of individuals; the utilization of overblown or excessive hyperbole, and perhaps the insertion of substitute names for those momentarily forgotten by the storyteller. It makes sense. If a mother wished to impart a moral lesson to her child, by way of a theological anecdote, she could easily achieve this end by telling a vague approximation of the story, using whatever names she pleased, and changing little details or adding her own ornamentations as she so desired. Enough renditions down the line, and as in a game of telephone the product barely resembles the original, if at all.

We fight wars over religious differences. Who can possibly make the claim that language has little importance in our world? In terms of how we use it, there may be arguably little difference; but in terms of what we make of it, and what we make of the subtle differences, the impact that it has is significant. One innocent mistranslation somewhere along the line could inadvertently be the cause of the death of millions.

So, yes, I think it's important to look at theory of meaning for language so that we can get to the heart of the matter and point out the fact that we actually have some common ground. The harder it may be for us to discover such a theory, the more able we might be to show that we all have something in common that is more biological than we realize. Whether we may be able to shed light on the nature of our similarities or the nature of our differences does not matter. Either may prove to be infinitely useful and enlightening.

The man who picks out a single word in the Bible as a means of making a point, especially if the "point" that he is making could determine the future of another (freedom or imprisonment, life or death, marriage or not marriage), is the man who puts his entire trust of morality and ethics in the hand of, perhaps, one man from somewhere in the prior chronology of translation, and his entire sense of morality could revolve around one decision made by that particular man, such as, "Should I translate this word in this way, or in this way? Both seem almost synonymous..."

Guess what? "Almost synonymous", a few times over, is the same thing as "entirely different".

And we justify killing and prejudice and racism and bigotry by way of quoting the Bible? Surely I'm not alone in thinking that this is a terrifying notion.

on inspiration, books, peers, and the self

2008-04-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

I find myself quite often having to defend myself for bouts of decisive solitude; and having to explain to people that, no, in my case it is not symptomatic of depression. One of the hardest things to express is that, in the case of my own particular disposition, the act of taking myself "off the map", as they say, is actually somehow a way to place myself in a context much larger than the social context. If I am an individual, reading things written in the past and thinking toward the future, then I am placing myself in the context of time: past and present. Whether anything I do will have any effect lasting beyond my death is beside the point. The actions itself are on this chronological plane, because my primary influences came prior to me on this plane. The context of time is significantly more vast than than the flat context of a social plane. In a strange sense, it is more social to stay home and read then to go out and drink in a bar. Additionally, the "conversation partners" found in books have arguably more to dispel, because they see things from a perspective that is necessarily very different from my own. Granted, there are many people from similar backgrounds, educations, income brackets, etc. who are very different (and of course people from different backgrounds and the like who are obviously very different), but when drawing from the past it is a given that they will be such; not a gamble. By "more to dispel", I only mean to say that they will more likely contain divergent opinions from one's own because they are created in such a different context, necessarily, due to the difference between eras. I don't mean to imply that individuals close at hand in the present have fewer interesting things to say than people in the past. It is simply that people in the past perhaps have things to say that one will less likely have heard before, or thought before, or even considered at all. I like the idea of exposing the self to opinions differing greatly from my own and from one-another, so that the choices one makes and the stances one makes can me most informed. Of course, this objective view is impossible to achieve in absolute entirety, because only certain texts were published in the first place, only certain texts survived the passage of time and the occasional book-burning or two, and of course because if the self is choosing what he reads, then he is still an agent that, to a degree, controls what he will learn, even if he is attempting wholeheartedly to be non-biased in his selection of texts.

I am much less easily swayed by a fear of being alone than I am by a fear of getting to some point in my life where I will be unable to be happy alone. By "alone", I don't mean "single"; nor do I really intend to say anything at all about how romance factors into the equation. Rather, I mean it as an expression of the state in which the individual is the sole motivator in his own life, and the self's most trusted and respected mentor. If the individual thinks of his own opinions regarding himself as being of the utmost importance (not out of egomaniacal attitudes or our of pride, but out of recognition of the fact that the self knows his own needs better than the other, which the exception of a few factors and cases), and if he chooses to surround himself with those who will allow him the maximum amount of growth towards being his best self, then a very positive state-of-affairs may manifest itself: one that is extremely encouraging to that individual, and in the way that is most appropriate to his or her own goals and aims. If the individual selects his or her peer group, conversation-partners, and confidantes based on who he feels will allow him to be his truest self and act according to his own most legitimate whims, then two things will happen: First, the other will encourage the individual's growth, and the individual, in turn, will more actively encourage his own growth. If the other also seeks large amounts of exposure to new ideas and also seeks mental and individual growth, then the same can happen in his case, in the same fashion. This sort of dynamic does not require that two people be at all alike. It requires only open-mindedness.

It seems to me that the greatest friend or colleague is the one who will be most understanding if his friend decides to go from being a doctor to being a circus-clown overnight: Not because he finds it amusing, but because he respect's the other person's ability to make his own decisions to that degree. So in this sense perhaps friends more different from an individual are most beneficial. If an individual has a friend who is very unlike that individual himself, then there will be no issues concerning feelings of abandonment if the individual no longer shares the same career, interests, or beliefs as the other.

All of this, of course, assumes that any given individual in question seeks to maximize his or her growth to whatever degree he or she pleases. Perhaps sometimes this is not the case, and if I am correct in positing this objection, then all of the above can be disregarded in said cases. Many people, it seems, are fully aware of what they want in life and aware of the way in which they want to grow, and yet very much afraid of actually reaching that point. Save for cases in which the individual has ill or malicious intent, this seems a mark of cowardice, and not contentment.

Although I write this while focusing primarily on an individual, I do not mean to say that I myself should be the sole beneficiary of such positive and encouraging relations between people. I mean just that every case of "I" (that is, every case of the self) should benefit from such. Everyone should be able to find inspiring company and in turn be inspiring to said company.

This, I think, is true of the social plane and the historical plane. It is simply easier at times to know that one will be able to act as he sees fit in response to said inspiration, without judgment, when the inspiration itself is inherently non-judgmental: e.g., inspiration found by way of reading a book.

The prospect of being surrounded by things that are all the same, in opinion, political stance, age, race, gender, world-view, cultural upbringing, religion, etc. absolutely terrifies me. I can't trust something if it is all I have ever known. And by this reasoning, can the individual really trust himself, if it is all he has ever known, and if it is what he has known best? What does it mean to trust the self? Does the self ever REALLY betray its own trust? I'm not sure. It seems a question that deserves further investigation and attention.

Our Inability to Cognize Distance and the Alienation Thereby Caused (unfinished)

2008-03-10T01:27:00.000-07:00

In an age in which various paradigms and enclosed "communities" are becoming increasingly overlapped, self-referential, and simultaneously contradictory, the only true reconciliation of concepts, notions, or ideas is to be found within the intellect. Even the intellect serves as its own part of a larger "community" of ideas. It is unclear whether the building-blocks of this "community" are the ideas themselves or the individuals themselves, but the two are inextricably linked anyhow and thus perhaps this question is not so important. It is becoming increasingly difficult for the individual to do anything outside of a context, and yet the individual's ability to understand exactly what that context consists of is virtually impossible.

A geographical location cannot be considered, in itself, a context. Most individuals exist simultaneously in multiple locales: That is, most of us have networks of friends and, in fact, lives in multiple places at once. They cannot be separated in concept, for they share the individual as a link between them, and that which the individual undertakes in one is directly influenced by that which he previously undertakes in another. Furthermore, the concept of distance and location is becoming more and more impossible to gauge, due to the fact that we are able to travel in ways that take away from us the ability to truly understand what distance itself means. When an individual runs, he is aware of the amount of effort required to get from point A to point B, and in this way the act of running is a physical connection between the individual himself and the distance itself. When an individual drives in a car, this connection is somewhat obscured; and when an individual is a passenger in a car it is even more-so obscured, and so on. There is less physical connection between distance (that is, space) and the self; and because the human being is not able to move, on his own, as quickly as a vehicle, he has a hard time understanding the vastness of the space over which he passes. The only cue he really has that made aid in the indication of such is the visual cue of the land passing by outside of the window, and even this is potentially deceptive because it utilizes one sense and one sense only.

Airplane travel aids in furthering the detachment of the self to the concept of space and distance, for the individual can in no way fathom the distance that he crosses in a plane: Not by visual cues, for the land moves so slowly below him that he cannot even have the slightest understand of the speed at which he travels; and certainly not by physical cues, such as necessary exertion of energies required to get from point A to point B (as with an indivual who takes it upon himself to walk or run across said distance). The only quantification that the distance covered in a plane has is that of money, and even this is contorted because there is not a direct relationship between distance-traveled and money-spent, although the distance does factor into th equation to varying degrees for various destinations. Yet so many other factors are at play in this kind of a situation that the individual cannot gauge or judge distance by this, either. He is given no choice but to place his trust in the hands of a larger system, that of geography as depicted by maps and numbers of miles. This leads to a feeling of submission to something larger that cannot be understood, and the result is that this process is alienating.

Other examples of realms that are becoming increasingly difficult to attribute any kind of boundaries to include realms such as that of morality, time, gender, race, and age.

The only apparent solution to this alienation, and this systematic removal of points of attachment onto which the individual can anchor his self-hood, seems to be the act of affirming the self within the self, and also with other selves, simultaneously taking into account subjectivity and objectivity. The act of searching for differences between one self and another is only a step toward further attempting to categorize the self in any number of groups or categories that do not seem to be categorical or definable at all. The largest downfall that the self may be subject to occurs when he makes repeated attempts to define himself by way of a group in which he sees himself as a member. This concept of being a member of anything smaller than humanity at large is illusory, and yet the act of attempting to do this is one of the most common phenomena of our present time. Even the concept of individualization seems to present itself as encouragement of group-mentality, for many so-called "individuals" view themselves as such just because they spend the majority of their time with other so-called "individuals", and in this way they are not individuals in the individualist sense at all because they define themselves by way of association with others.

On the Responsibilities of the Artist

2008-02-19T00:28:00.000-08:00

This world cannot survive on the concept of the "starving artist", no matter what romantic quality the notion has. We live in a time in which it is necessary that we do what we are most capable of doing (given our interests and talents and inclinations) in order to benefit the world in the way that we feel we, specifically, may best be able to. We need to view this time as an urgent time. We cannot afford the luxury of apathy. We cannot, for example, be content with being a "teacher" just for the sake of being a teacher - for the sake of taking comfort in knowing that we have a specified and defined place in the world - but rather we should be teachers in order to encourage excitement and passion for learning in our children and in the children of others.

There is nothing cutting-edge or revolutionary about being an artist just for the sake of calling yourself an artist. If you choose to dedicate your life to an art, you should know exactly why you have chosen to do so, and you should know what you want to say with your art, and you should dedicate hours of each day or any free moment you have available to your craft or your medium. If an individual only paints or writes or acts or takes photographs or plays his instrument once in a while, yet chooses to be an "artist" by title, so that he can really just be a burger-flipper and make himself more interesting or seemingly-progressive by labeling himself as such, he is running the risk of insulting both his craft and his culture. He is giving the artist a bad name, and god knows the artist already has a bad name.

The artist takes on the role of serving as a conscience: A conscience for technological advancements, a conscience for politics, a conscience for world events, a conscience for societal occurrences, etc. The artist takes it upon himself to serve as a mirror, on which the world may be reflected in a way that is honest. Art is an arena in which facts may be presented as they are, not as they have been chosen to be distorted. Art is feared, because it can expose some of the ugliest aspects of politics or humanity, and it can do so in a way that is able to effect people of all sorts and of all races and of all classes and of all sexual orientations.

This is a huge responsibility and it is a role that should not be taken lightly. To abuse this responsibility is not only to throw away an opportunity for positive influence, but it is also to aid in the death of the artist as a universal concept. True, the desire to create is innate, and cannot be removed from the human soul; but funding for the arts, and peoples' receptiveness to the arts, and space in which art can exist are all things that can be taken away, and they are things that will be taken away. The artist is already viewed as a threat to many corners of society, for the artist questions that which does not like to be questioned. To be a lazy artist is to be what these corners of society want you to be. To be a lazy artist is to deface what art should be and render it something more of a facade; something that is less threatening to political regimes or large-scale consumerist mentalities or giant corporations. This is what they want. Granted, they do not want you to be an artist in the first place, but if you must be an artist, they would quite you to be a lazy one.

If you even suspect that you may not be able to make a living off of your art, then why spend the time that you already know you must devote to work on something that you do not believe in; something that benefits humanity in no way? Sure, some people can't do much more than flip burgers, and that is all well and good because most everybody has to pay rent, but if you think you are capable of more, you should attempt to do more. If you think that you are capable of more, you have an obligation to do more. "More" can be any number of things. If you are personable and think that you can make someone's day better by kindly serving them coffee, then perhaps "more" is something as simple as being a barista. But if you think you could do something bigger, then you should. Even if art is your first priority, it is a given that paying rent is also a priority (albeit a lesser one), so why not make that which pays the rent (if it cannot be the art) something worthwhile and meaningful? There is no reason not to do this, and a fear that there will be no time for art is unjustifiable. Most jobs that are, as I have said, "meaningful", pay somewhat more than jobs of the mundane variety, and thus fewer hours will be required for a larger amount of money: money and time that can be spent on the creating of art.

If you can afford to live without having to work, and if you choose to make art, then this is fine. But if you need to work in order to support yourself and your art, then getting a job that somehow benefits humanity in a more relevant way that renders you a part of something other than a machine whose parts are human beings is very reasonable, and the act of doing so requires no sacrifice at all. If anything, it requires less sacrifice.

We cannot afford to have lazy artists if art is all that they have chosen to do. We cannot afford to have art become something that is commercial and bland. We cannot afford to let art be a route towards social esteem and popularity and nothing else. We cannot let art be pursued only by those who do it in order to achieve some kind of status. We cannot afford to let art be separated from the arena of intellectualism. We cannot allow our art to be uninformed. We cannot use the "artist" label as a means by which to feign progressivism without really doing much of anything for the world except for supplying hungry capitalists with hamburgers. We can't afford to give the artist a bad name. The term "artist" should not be thrown around haphazardly. To be an artist is to take on a series of important responsibilities. We cannot forget this, or we will allow something else entirely to be superimposed over the concept of "art" itself, and the original purpose of art will be forgotten.

On the Search for Understanding

2008-02-16T21:12:00.001-08:00

Is it possible to come to understand what it means to be human? It seems that it would take lifetimes to even know which questions to ask, and if an infinite number of subsequent lifetimes might eventually cause us to arrive at some kind of an answer or explanation, it seems likely that this explanation will be as complicated as the question; as complicated as the subject that we begin with. Imagine a huge stadium, with a single pole standing in the center of it, and all the lights shut off. If individual after individual comes to the stadium and throws a stick in an attempt to hit the pole, he will neither know whether he has actually succeeded in hitting it (for it is dark and it is so far away), nor will he know what to do with himself after he has hit it. Furthermore, if an individual thinks to turn on a light, it will most likely be long after many sticks have been thrown into the stadium, obstructing the view of the pole altogether. If the pole symbolizes knowledge, then an attempt to come to know it will result in repeated attempts but confusion as to whether contact has been made. If the pole is exposed, it will be so cluttered in "sticks" thrown at it by humans that its true nature will be veiled anyhow. This is a poor analogy, but to some degree it illustrates the idea. The explanation of what human nature is will thus require another series of explanations, and so on (if you will, a figurative digging through the sticks), and by the time some kind of success is achieved, human nature will have changed so much that the results will not be accurate anyhow, nor will they be representative of human nature (unless there are those constants that remain true from generation to generation, not varying in degree and never shifting). A system as complicated as the system of the human being (mind, body, and soul) cannot be examined or understood except with a system equally complex, and it seems that, even if the desired result were to be achieved by way of millions of human beings working on answering different parts of the question ("What does it mean to be human"), there might not even a mind so advanced as to be able to comprehend and fathom this answer in all its complexities. The answer might be clear, but so complex that it makes no sense to us, although we have aided in reaching it through our work on various aspects of it. It seems likely that all the tools are here for us, and all the necessary answers provided, but it is too much for us to begin to understand the ways in which they all connect to one-another. Perhaps this complexity, and our inability to comprehend it except by the application of equally-complex-procedures or processes, is human nature itself, and perhaps in this way it is simple: Human nature is to be aware of the limits of its scope of understanding and yet to attempt to understand things anyhow; to attempt to break out of the constraints of the self and the constraints of society. This in itself is arguably something that not all humans undertake, for some seem to favor comfortability. And even if an individual does come to understand, perhaps it will be more on an intuitive level than anything else, and thus it will be impossible to express or explain to others. Furthermore, perhaps something about the nature of total and complete understanding leads the individual to be secretive about it; to see that there is no value in sharing the "secret" of existence with others (or even to see fault or danger in doing so). If this is the case, those who achieve ultimate understanding may never share what they know, unless they have conflicted interests that create a want for money and understanding both, but I find it unlikely that such a person with such divided interests will be able to come to understand much of anything at all.

On the Putting to Rest of Previous Pursuits

2008-02-15T23:32:00.000-08:00

To make the decision to dedicate one's life and one's time to one thing and one thing only is to systematically kill all prior attachments to every other thing that person has ever loved. It might be argued that: no, every thing that the individual has ever been passionate about is of importance, and these former passions must be honored, for such passions for such energy can be redirected and channeled into the one specific, chosen thing. This is false. Some prior attachments, if not cut off, will haunt the individual in the form of guilt, or in the form of incessant what-if's, sometimes to an increasing degree as the individual strays further and further from that original or former thing. The energy expended in such regrets is equal to or greater than the energy expended in the pursuit of the selected thing itself, and because of this, the individual's ability to pursue his selected end is inhibited; his focus clouded. Such a scattering of energies can lead to an absolute check-mate and standoff: A three-way hold-up in which each has a gun pointed at his head and each holds a gun up to another's head. In order to move forward, two of the three attachments (or however many there are, be they former objects of fixation, or passions, or goals, or ideas) must be gunned down, so that one and only one may remain standing. If none are gunned down, and all remain, each of these will exist in a constant state of fear, and each will vie for dominance over the others, sometimes in a sneaky manner, so that energy may be taken out of the pursuit of one as with a sieve, so that the individual does not even notice that his entire heart fails to devote itself to that thing. The slaughter of former pursuits must be merciless and must leave none standing. The more thorough this spring cleaning process, the more devotion the individual will be able to apply his chosen end.

We see these symbolic deaths in other arenas of our lives that are thought of as being separate from the arena of goal-making. We see this happen in relationships. When a relationship is started with a new individual, and when the self chooses to devote himself to this new person, he makes a conscious decision to one-by-one toss away residual feelings for people from his past so as to make room for love for this new person. This process may happen in several ways: It may be done in a method of reverse chronological order, killing off attachments to the most recent "exes" first, and then in time the exes of a more distant past, and so on. It may be done, alternatively, by order of necessity: That person from the past who is most in the forefront of one's thoughts, more than the others, must be disassociated from first, and then those who are less on one's mind may fall victim to this process of detachment, and so on, in decreasing order of presence-in-the-mind. This is because, in some cases, the most recent past-loves are the most thought of (particularly with individuals who tend to have predominantly long-term relationships); whereas for others there are specific people who are harder to disassociate the self from than others.

A goal, or an endeavor, is not so different from a romantic relationship. Many undertakings of the vocational variety are pursued as the result of a conscious choice to do so. The same may be said of romantic pursuits. On the other hand, many vocational goals are forged almost accidentally and subconsciously, mainly in those situations in which the individual finds himself extremely passionate about something, without seeing this passion slowly creep up on him, and finds himself in such a state of passion that he cannot stop himself from pursuing this vocational endeavor because his heart is already too much in it, by no choice of his own. The same happens in romantic relationships, when the individual finds himself already completely swept away by another individual without having premeditated on the notion or without having even predicted the notion.

The process of detaching one's self from former goals and pursuits, vocational or otherwise, is also similar to the process of "getting over" lovers of days long past. Pertaining to the method of this systematic detachment, the order of operations is much the same, and can occur in reverse chronological order or in order of descending importance, or impact on the self.

It would seem that there are healthy and unhealthy means of detachment from these former pursuits. Each detachment must be taken on as a task that must be done thoroughly, yet carefully, so that nothing remains of the desire for the former, and so that the process is clean and smooth. However, it must also be done in a way that pays enough honor to the former pursuit so that the self feels justified in this killing and feels at peace with the notion of moving on. I liken these detachments to death for good reason. Each detachment must be honored with a wake of sorts, so that the self's past interests are respected and laid to rest. If this is not done correctly - for example, if the self is too hasty in his detachments and too thorough in the process - the individual's sense of self will be scattered, and his acquaintance with his former selves will be either nonexistent, or chaotic, or of a hateful nature. The individual must take care not to detach himself from a former endeavor in any way that encourages a harboring of resentment of that prior pursuit or that prior self. This will defeat the purpose of the detachment altogether, for the energy that will be put into this resentment will be as powerful as the energy expended thinking about that past purpose before the process of detachment was undertaken, if not more powerful, and thus the balance of energies will be just as off-kilter (or even more off-kilter) as it was to begin with, when the need for detachment was recognized.

Perhaps there are some attachments that are beneficial and can serve as catalysts for future undertakings, despite the conflict of interests that may manifest. For example, there could be a situation in which the prior pursuit of a career goal was so traumatic that it actually gave the individual a kind of uncontested determination; a determination that the individual chose to apply to a new endeavor. In such instances, perhaps the memory of this previous undertaking should be retained, if it provides fodder for the present or future pursuits. The individual should take care to weigh the balance of the situation, however, and should hold onto a prior attachment such as this one only if it is deemed truly beneficial. In most cases, past attachments to pursuits or endeavors require a lot of energy and may take away from the present regardless of how much the regret of the past may stimulate future progress.

These detachments, or "deaths", should be treated as real deaths, in that that which is lost should be mourned, and should be celebrated. Furthermore, the past undertakings should not be thought of as concepts that must be replaced, but rather as separate entities that served their purpose, and inspired the individual, but are now gone. Just as an individual should not forget a beloved who has passed away, so should he not forget a former aspect of himself that he has buried and put to rest; but conversely, the individual should not dwell on the loss, but should accept it as a natural, albeit sorrowful, occurrence.

If the individual does not put to rest completely the notions of those things which he no longer actively pursues, he will be quite literally haunted by them. They will seek to take up his time and his attention. They will attempt to be prioritized as they once were. They will make him hate them when he acknowledges their existence, especially when he sees how little they resemble what he once did. The individual owes it to the honor of his own self, and to his past, to let them move on and to let them rest. It is common knowledge that the archetypal ghost can take massive amounts of energy from the individual that it haunts, as is well illustrated in the novel "Wuthering Heights", in which Heathcliff is haunted by the ghost of his former love, Cathy. He is haunted by her ghost because he asks to be. He cannot bear to part with her, yet seeing her in her ghostly form torments him because it makes him aware of the dissonance that exists between her form as a ghost and her previous form as a living being. The same thing happens to individuals who try to hold on to their prior career goals, or life goals, or plans. They will be pained to see how pale such undertakings have become due to their neglect, but they will still possess such love for them that they refuse to let them be at peace. Pursuits of the past must be laid to rest, for in doing so they are not forgotten. This process allows for the individual's energies to be applied to new, tangible pursuits: Things that are not tainted with regret or failure, but things very much alive and possessing much potential to flourish for many years to come.

On the Crystalization of Personality and Resulting Patterns of Behavior (unfinished)

2008-02-15T16:11:00.000-08:00

The passing of time unveils how the individual comes to know the self. This coming-to-know of the self is visible in the observation of the refinements that come about in certain behaviors of the individual. This means two things: A) In some situations, the individual may be rendered, over time, more likely to act in a specific way in a specific situation repeatedly, with less variation and with more consistency; or B) In some situations, the individual may feel more at liberty to act in a way different from the way he has acted in the past in a similar situation. Neither of these can be the case in and of itself, in the exclusion of the other, but the types of situations in which Phenomenon A will occur, as opposed to those in which Phenomenon B will occur are necessarily different sorts of situations.
The former occurs as a result of individual having become, over time, more familiar with his “personality”; one aspect of which is demonstrated in his predisposition toward forming certain kinds opinions or coming to certain types of conclusions on a whole variety of topics; or his tendency to act in a certain way in a certain type of situation. However, a familiarization with the self eventually can lead to an increase in confidence, which can subsequently render the individual more willing to relinquish the control that he has previously held over himself, free himself of self-imposed or society-imposed constraints, and in this way free himself from his binds.
Phenomenon A usually (although not in all cases) pertains to situations of opinion, whereas Phenomenon B more often pertains to actual situations in which opinions may be put into action. Phenomenon B can be more fluid (that is, the individual’s behaviors may be less predictable) because it has less to do with opinions, which become rather cemented and solid, for the most part, and more to do with situations. Just because an individual has strong, solid opinions does not mean that he or she will necessarily act in a given way in a given context 100 percent of the time. In fact, the stronger one’s opinions, and the greater the individual’s abilities are to connect his opinions in fluid network system, the more he will be able to see the infinitude of outcomes of his actions, leading him to understand that there may be, in some cases, enough variables to render his decision less important, and to render the force of chance more important. With an awareness of such, he may feel more at liberty to act randomly. Because of this phenomenon, the individual with a greater awareness of his self (including an awareness of his opinions and inclinations), and of his self’s interplay with the world surrounding him, may be less likely to act in a specified way in a specified situation, and more likely to act sporadically. My thesis, then, is as follows: A greater understanding of the self is not inextricably linked to a greater tendency toward certain behavior, unless this inextricable linkage is negative relation in which a greater understanding of the self leads to a tendency to act in a less predictable manner in specific kinds of situations.

February 2008

ON VACATION AND CIVILIZATION (2005)

2008-02-12T23:51:00.000-08:00

We, as members of the human race, are active and willing participants in what we so proudly and lovingly refer to as “civilization”. We speak of it with pride. It is the absolute sum of our ancestors’ toil, tears, premature deaths, and bloodshed. It is the culmination of years and centuries of trial and error, mistake and solution, shame and retribution, and also careful calculation. Thus, silently, we insist that it works. Not only do we stand behind its effectiveness, but we seem to stand behind the notion that it is the only option. Our reasons for this do not seem to have to do with necessity, but rather they seem to be built out of pride and the desire to have some sort of larger whole on which to cling. We seem to seek society and civilization’s support and encouragement and acceptance of our selves in the same way that we seek the same from our own peers and family members. We even fund it, through our tax dollars, and in doing so we put our trust into it. And so why should we not uphold it? Has it not served us well? Most would say yes, but how can this be known when none of us have any knowledge of what our existences might be like were it not present? And, despite the words that seem to show our support for it, do we actually love it as we really should, considering how much we put into it and how much we are a part of it (though perhaps not in the ways that we should be)? Naturally, we like to believe that we do not simply speak well of it because we have to. We like to convince ourselves that we truly are willing to stand behind all the praise that we allot to our society; that we believe it and that this belief is instinctual. Perhaps we need to believe that we do, in fact, think highly of it, because we need to be able to justify our participation in it, our work for its cause, and our lack of retaliation against it. Truly, the fact that it is so instinctual is what scares me a bit. The word “instinct” connotes a lack of premeditation on a topic, a lack of careful thought (or any form of thought at all), and a reliance on tradition without regard to situation or tangible evidence of cause and effect.
Not all of us participate in Civilization in the commonly-recognized way. There are the Amish. There are the Menonites. There are those who choose to live alone in cabins in the mountains, if they are fortunate enough to find property that they can afford in such rustic locales, or if they are sly enough to make their home on public land and somehow avoid the governmental radar and Eviction Man. There are those of us who choose an alternative route, in an attempt to remove ourselves permanently from civilization, but even in the act of refusing to be a part of it, we are further promoting it, for we are strengthening the line between it and that-which-is-not it, and making it more present and apparent simply by giving it something to be in contrast with. There are, too, those of us who leave one civilization in favor of another (or one country in favor of another), but in actuality, this seems to actually help that civilization which is left (and, presumably, despised or disliked) to flourish all the more, for it removes those members who would pose a threat to it (those who might be able to provide balance through their own defiance, or those who would dull the blade of that which they do not support) and it increases the predominance of the sort of mind that supports and creates the very entity that they so loathe. Furthermore, those Creators of the Loathed will have less of an awareness of the fact that their actions or ways are not fully supported, and because this lack of awareness denies them of their very conscience – one allotted to them only to their extreme dismay, but present nonetheless – and as a result of this, there might be less of a moral presence involved in their actions, and they might feel more able to do what they had done before (and what they had done that caused those who left to do so) since they will then face less criticism and anger in doing so.
It seems to me that there is something lacking in our civilization. This conscience, of which I just spoke, is part of this void, and the other part of it seems to be tangible products created by those who compose this conscience (when I speak of a “conscience”, I mean a collection of individuals, emotions, ideas, publications, teachings, etc. that counteract that which is predominant and keep in check the decisions made by those who support this predominant way of being): art, literature, love, philosophy, etc. These things do exist, but their importance seems to be too often ignored, or they seem to be too often turned into commercial objects used to in fact support the economy and, subsequently, the part of civilization that they originally were created in order to counter. Many things could be held responsible for this phenomenon (this commodification): Andy Warhol, because he mastered (and preached to others) just how an artist might turn himself into a brand or a product and make money by doing so, or the media, for blurring the line between entertainment and criticism/news. It is odd that the attachment of money to these armies of the conscience (do excuse) has, in many cases, lessened their influence and effect. It seems that the opposite should be the case. Instead, it seems that the result has been this: some artists, writers, and thinkers make a great deal of money, and get a lot of attention. Because of this, others are ignored, and therefore this conscience is less accurate, for it is representative of a smaller number of individuals/groups. Sickeningly, those of which it is representative must, therefore, also be those who are best at stepping on others to reach the top, those most concerned with money, those most conscious of what the targeted audience wants to see (and therefore much less likely to be controversial in any way), and those most willing to kiss ass. I’m not sure how most of us feel about this, but I certainly do not find this sort of person to be the sort best suited for the job of countering such large establishments/entities as the government or society or lazy, conformist modes of thinking.
What evidence, you ask, do I cite in order to conclude that civilization is lacking in some way? I suppose one primary form of evidence to this fact is this: such a thing exists as a vacation. If we lived in a society in which we were perfectly content, would we still feel the need to get away from it? Vacation seems to not only be an escape from the workplace, for again and again we hear the catch-phrase, “get away from it all”, when people speak of their reasons for vacation. They do not say, “get away from my job,” but “it all”. Unless I am mistaken, this means all of it, nothing excluded: everything! Does this mean that there is not one thing in our lives that we are able to consistently participate in without feeling the need to leave it? Is it simply that we require an outside perspective in order to make sense of the sphere of existence that we normally dwell in? The most likely explanation of the need for vacation seems to be this: we are not comfortable or satisfied with our society or our civilization.
Since we built society (we being the human race), should not we have built it in a way that we might be content with? Since we built it, does that not mean that we have (and have always had) absolute control over its form and its purpose? Why is it not enough then? Or is it too much? I am only able to draw from these questions the suggestion that perhaps we, even when given complete control, are not able to create what we want or need for ourselves. This leads me to assert that we must be unaware of what exactly we do want and need.
Perhaps we are better off creating for ourselves a world that is not comfortable for us anyway, and perhaps, then, my complaints are counterproductive. Additionally, perhaps we know this, and we are subconsciously doing what is best for ourselves as a human race. This could be the result of that concept of the collective unconscious shining through, and the presence of a care and compassion for the human race and for the future of the human race, existing within this collective unconscious. Let me explain myself. A state of discomfort could be a good thing for both the and for humanity as a whole, in quite a few ways. First of all, discomfort keeps humanity active. Think about a chair in a restaurant: If the chair is uncomfortable, we eat faster and leave the restaurant more quickly, or we seek a more comfortable chair with which to exchange the awkward one. If the chair is comfortable, however, we remain in it for long periods of time, even after we have become bored of it or idle in it, as long as we want, sometimes even long enough to fall asleep in it, just because it is more comfortable than most. Using this metaphor, we, as a society, have no other “chairs” to go to (aside from other civilizations or countries, something I already discussed, and many of which are very similar in make to the original), so we simply take breaks from the “chair” that is our society, and return to it again and again. What happens between turns in the chair seems to be essential and important, for we keep doing it. We seem to be sitting in uncomfortable “chairs”, and by my logic this would lead us to believe that we make more progress, and are less stagnant: we “eat faster”. But this metaphor seems to be almost too appropriate, for quick eating also brings to mind something else: poor digestion. We are, perhaps, working harder because we are not comfortable, but we don’t seem to be analyzing or justifying the work that we do. This seems to be a dangerous hypothesis.
Don’t we need to be uncomfortable in order to move forward; in order to progress as a society? Do we intentionally build ourselves a hell, so that we feel the need to leave it, solely because leaving it is the only thing that might keep us moving? Is not the movement out of a place a more desperate form of motion than any other? When we have something we feel strongly to be bad, are we not more motivated to change it? Discomfort makes us aware of the areas that desperately need attention and change, and it does so in a much more effective way than comfort ever could, doesn’t it? If we dwelled in a Utopia, we would see nothing that needed to be changed, and we would become bored, and it seems inevitable that this Utopia would be more of a Hell than Hell ever could be, simply because in Hell (that is, in a place of discomfort), we are able to be optimistic and we are able to have hope. These are two things that may be more important to all of us than the present actually is, and more important to us than comfort. In this so-called Utopia, all we are left with is fear and pessimism: pessimism, which exists due to the fact that the only direction we have to go is downwards (into a more negative, horrible state), and fear, because we have something that is as good as it can be and therefore we fear the loss of it. Any individual, it seems to be true, would rather be consumed by hope and optimism and upward progress than fear and pessimism and a feeling of lack-of-control and inevitable-decline.
But what if stagnancy is a good thing, and not a bad thing? What exactly takes place between turns in the “chair” of society (that is, during vacations), anyhow? Is it something more along the lines of rest and respite, or is it something more along the lines of mobilization: mobilization of thoughts, emotions, and needs, and the putting-into-order of these things? And what if the breaks taken from the “chair” (the vacations) are just turns sitting in other, more comfortable “chairs”? What if mental action requires physical rest? And what if the contrary is true? Do we not, then need both work and vacation, action and idleness; time to sit in a chair and time to be away from it? Perhaps balance is the key, and not a preference towards mobility or immobility? If this is the case, still something is awry, for the time that we spend on vacation is not remotely equal to the time spent laboring.
Furthermore, it seems that the exclusive focus on one kind of labor, or one facet of one specific branch of work, is limiting, and limited. Vacation (I dislike using this term because it implies that what happens during this time consists only of slacking, schmoozing, and wasting time), if participated in for longer periods of time, would lose the stigma that it has of being a time of idleness, for the human mind dislikes idleness, and individuals would fill this free time with work and action, therefore rendering this time not very idle after all. Even better, the work done here would be, perhaps, more meaningful, both to the worker and to the world as whole, for in his relaxation, the vacationer might contemplate where he might best apply his vacation-time work. Because it is entirely up to the vacationer, he is most likely to choose a vacation occupation that is most necessary, fulfilling, applicable, relevant, and useful. I do believe that each member of a society, if respectful of the society, and if optimistic as to the society’s potential, has in him a desire to better this society, and to work for the good of all. We need a break from society in order to possess this respect for it, and we also need a break from it in order to use this respect and apply it to whatever work we might do to fill our time. If the respect is great enough, the work will most likely be something that gives back to the said society, and in this way the exchange between individual and society will continue to flourish and be beneficial to both. If, however, the individual does not have a break from society (or “civilization), and if he is unable to find time to step away from it and see any importance that it has in his life, he will come to loathe it with all his might. My logic runs in parallel lines to a basic psychological principle that states that, when given a reward (such as a vacation), the recipient of the reward will gain respect for the person or thing that bestowed the reward upon him (in this case, society). I suggest that our civilization does not do enough in the way of rewarding the individuals that make up its whole being, and as a result these individuals are somewhat ambivalent towards it or even unappreciative of it, and feel no desire to give back to it or improve it, even though it is something that is truly theirs to use and possess and improve. Even worse, perhaps, they seem to take on the attitude that civilization, as though it were a human being in and of itself with emotions and personality all its own, feels entitled to something that each individual must give to it, as if in payment. The individuals, having not had time to reflect on why it might be respected and why it might actually deserve such payment, are not eager to fulfill this assumed entitlement, or even grow spiteful of the fact that Civilization seems to feel entitled, and they, therefore, do the minimum to give back to Civilization, or do nothing (if they can get away with it). It seems that they do not realize that they are unknowingly making the world in which they must dwell a more miserable and less inspiring/fulfilling place to be, which greater increases their desire for those much-too-short-vacations which are not what they should be and do not allow the individuals time to use them for what they really could be used for and certainly not time to gain a respect for that which they are vacationing from. As a result, this cycle continues, and the loathing of civilization continues, and the workers become more begrudging and irritated, and both Civilization and Individual feel that they are not receiving that which they want and that to which they are entitled. The outcome of such a cycle can only be a drab society, perhaps sprinkled with individuals who feel passionately that they must fight to keep it from being drab, yet these individuals also feel intense frustration, for they are surrounded by other individuals who, instead of sharing this passion, look at it as a weakness, or perhaps look at it as a respect for something that does not deserve respect (because it does not give them enough time of their own).
If we are, as we seem to feel, truly in control, why would we build ourselves something that we must run from? Is it simply because we are bored? Are we masochistic by nature, with innate desire to inflict pain on ourselves, because this pain gives us something to react to (and we react more strongly to pain than to joy)? Is the action of reaction the only way in which we feel truly busy or productive or useful?
Here I bring up another possibility. It seems that we build civilization in the image of ourselves, in order to accurately reflect ourselves. Is this because it is our selves that we most love to gaze lovingly upon, but this is not considered something that we should do, so we transfer the torch-bearer of the Self to that thing which is Society? What does it say about our feelings regarding ourselves if we must escape from that which represents us? It seems to say that we feel we must escape from ourselves, and in fact we do seem to feel this way (hence the use of alcohol and drugs and the existence of irresponsibility, tendency toward accusation and finger-pointing, and other means of escapism). Perhaps we intentionally build a civilization that serves as a reflection of our flaws, that we must escape from, so that we can deal with the acceptance of our own flaws in a way that lets us treat these flaws as something very much removed from ourselves. If this is the case, then it seems logical that we should keep doing so, unless it is healthier for us to deal with the recognition of our own flaws in a more personal way, acknowledging their attachment to our selves and acknowledging the fact that faults are our own. But perhaps we would not deal with these faults at all if we did not build ourselves reflections of them to gaze upon and run from. I suppose the danger lies here: the way we perceive ourselves differs from the way that we are in actuality. Because of this, we might build a society in a false representation of ourselves, and therefore our analysis of this society and its errors, and the relation of this society to the self (whether this happens on a conscious or unconscious level) might turn out to be misleading and also counterproductive. Also dangerous seems to be the fact that, since the conscience of society is impaired (as I said above), we tend to focus on the praise of our society. If we are praising a false representation of ourselves, we are being delusional and ignoring issues that must be addressed. However, if we are praising accurate representations of ourselves, this is just as unhealthy, for we are being entirely narcissistic.
If we do, in fact, create civilization in our own image, do we believe ourselves Gods, or like to think of ourselves as Gods? Just as God created Adam in his image, we create cities and systems in ways that seem to reflect ourselves. We seem to worship society, and in turn worship ourselves, and thus we practice idolization on a daily basis, but not simply idolization: idolization of the self. Nothing can be learned by looking only at the self. Since we do not truly understand the nature of society, nor do we like it (as is confirmed by the concept of vacation), we seem to be basing emotions as strong as those of faith on concepts that are unstable, and we seem to be building our lives and goals and heroes upon concepts that are convoluted.
This brings us to another point. It is apparent that vacation itself is often an escape not only from the social and mental aspects of civilization, but also from the physical manifestations of civilization: tall buildings, crowded streets, traffic light, loud noises, and similar entities. That is, we often go escape to nature. Since vacation seems to exist primarily to supply us with that which we are lacking, at least for a short while, it seems that nature must represent all that civilization lacks. If we build civilization in our own image, it seems that we must like to be surrounded by our own image. What if, then, nature represents or reflects some part of the self that we are unable to fully portray in the part of civilization over which we have control and artistic license (this part being our cities and social, political, or economical networks)?
Perhaps this is wrong and the opposite is true: we go to nature because it does not remind us of ourselves. Perhaps being in a place less like the self allows us to more clearly see the essence of the self, for in seeing what we are not we are able to better understand what we are. Perhaps nature serves as a marker which we are able to examine and with which we are able to measure just how much we have deviated from it; how unlike it we have become. This would explain why vacation often leaves us not rested but instead more depressed than prior to the vacation. Does vacation just remind the individual of how unnatural he has become, and how little he is able to relate to the natural world from which he sprung and from which he was born?
There is a different way to interpret our reasons for escaping to nature. Maybe we escape to the wilderness because something in each of us is aware of the narcissism of society and aware of the falseness of society’s portrayal of the self (existing because of the discrepancy between perception of the self and actuality of the self) and subsequently the convolution of this narcissism. If this is true, and if we are aware of this, it seems likely that we might feel the desire to go to nature in order to see a portrayal or the self that is not created by us, or by one of us, and is therefore completely honest (this is if nature is seen as a reflection of the self), or perhaps simply as something other than narcissism: something entirely unrelated to the self (this is if nature is not viewed as a reflection of the self).
Sometimes, we vacation to places that are not actually more natural than the place from which we come, but simply different from it: sometimes different to a very small degree, but just different enough to make us feel as though there has been a change. Taking into account this, and also taking into account our frequent vacationing into nature itself, it appears that the desired destination for vacation is, above all else, any place that is different. This makes sense, for a place that is different allows us to examine the self in a new way, or to perhaps get back in touch with the self. It is similar to the act of viewing a paper cutout of a certain color against a background of another color (or of the same color, if the surroundings were fashioned to represent the cutout). When the color of the background is changed, the cutout is emphasized and altered because of the now existent contrast where previously the contrast was different.
It is difficult to determine whether civilization or nature might better reflect the self. In both, we see ourselves in parallel form. In both, also, we see something that is not us, and this simple perception and the recognition of this dissonance, in a backwards way, also helps us to better understand the self. It must, therefore, be possible to get to know the self better in either the city or the country; in civilization or in nature. It also seems that an important factor in getting to understand the self is just the change of environment (the frequent instances of getting up from the uncomfortable chair and taking a break from its pain). How might the city man’s way of knowing the self differ from the country or forest man’s way of knowing the self? Are these two types of men able to coexist? What of the man who exists in both the city and the country: does this man understand the self better than either the city man or the country man?
If nature does, in fact, reflect man, by an equal degree to that by which civilization reflects man, then it must be concluded that nature is the most accurate reflection of the human race. I say this because nature is something not created by men, and therefore it is not built upon distorted or inaccurate views of the self or, even, overly-prideful or egotistical views of the self which are extremely inaccurate and cause the “reflection” to be something other than that. It becomes less of a reflection or a parallel and more of a foolish portrayal or twisted lie.
Perhaps we can learn more from nature, whether it reflects us or not, because we learn more, about our selves and about the world around us, when we are not simply gazing at our own reflection, no matter how distorted the reflection might be. What can be gained by looking at only what we are already familiar with (the self)? Nature provokes us to do otherwise.

Thus, we are not only active participants in the human race, but also in a long-standing tradition known as escapism, which is perhaps becoming less infrequent and more essential.

ON THE APPLICATION OF ONE'S ENERGIES

2008-02-12T13:54:00.001-08:00

If one devotes his life to a cause, must he choose between: a) living body and soul in a way that allows him to move toward his goal with every action he undertakes (if this is even possible), or b) divide his energies and live his life with an awareness of his tendency to repeatedly distract himself from his goal, and thus live with the guilt that he inflicts upon himself as a result of the faltering nature of his attention and work-ethic, or c) recognizing that even those actions that are seemingly ineffective - with regard to the attainment of his goal - may actually cause him to work more effectively when he is working directly toward his goal, because such "distractions" improve his mind, by supplying it with a diversity of stimulus on which to fixate, and refresh his attention-span by way of providing his mind with breaks that may keep the information and thoughts required in the process of working towards his specific end from becoming dull and from being abandoned altogether.

If the latter is the case (that is, if distraction is actually beneficial), then should distraction be sought out in extremes, or in ways that are purely mental, or in small quantities? Would huge distractions lead to huge amounts of mental rejuvenation, or must a balance be sought? Should distraction only be sought in the mind, and should every kinetic or tactual activity pertain only to the desired end? Or do activities and undertakings that extend beyond the mind, and subsequently to the body and one's actions, provide the mind with more inadvertent inspiration than thoughts alone? Can any of this be known, or must it be guessed at? And is trial-and-error even an option here, or will it create a pattern that may or may not allow for the greatest amount of productivity and may or may not be able to be altered or broken? As with most things, it seems that balance is probably best, although I must admit that I constantly wonder whether I should eliminate friendships that do not directly inspire me or aid in my work, even if the notion of doing so seems brutal and unkind.

Furthermore, if one's goals may (potentially) do any good for large numbers of people, or have any kind of positive effect on the world that might be more beneficial than friendship itself in some way, then doesn't one owe it to the world to pursue these goals instead of fleeting friendships, just because of the chance that they may be able to, in achieving or pursuing their goals, maximize their potential for positive influence on the world? Is the risk worth it? What if one fails in one's goals and also isolates his or her self? Then he or she has had no influence on others in a positive way at all.

Perhaps some people don't have much of a choice, and can only be pleasant company beyond a certain casual degree if they are simultaneously pursuing larger goals with potentially larger influence on mankind, because their disposition is such that they are unhappy or grumpy when not pursuing such things.

On an (almost) unrelated note, does prejudice stifle or feed the human will to produce or create? In a Darwinian sense, it seems that those who are persecuted are likely to want to reproduce in abundance (sometimes regardless of whether they can realistically support their children). Does the same happen with regard to ideas or creative/mental/philosophical endeavors, or does biology overshadow such "luxuries" as art and thought? Also, if injustice does encourage mental and creative progress, which in turn encourages cultural and political progress, then perhaps it is a positive thing in some way. I'm not saying that huge injustices or prejudices should be condoned or even tolerated, but this is still interesting to consider.

ON THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE, POSSIBLE WORLDS, AND IDEAL WORLDS

2008-02-12T13:53:00.001-08:00

Might the attainment of knowledge be potentially precluded by the search itself? It seems possible to me that knowledge - true knowledge - can only be arrived at by way of accident (although accident of the kind that has probability on its side and will most likely occur, unless it is actively sought out). It seems likely, too, that this knowledge, which is stumbled upon by the non-seeker, can only be stumbled upon as such if information uncovered by those who do seek is made available to them. Then another question surfaces: Must this knowledge be presented in a disguised form? I ask this because it is a known fact that the degree to which human pride keeps the common individual from being receptive to knowledge attained from others is quite extensive.

If this is the case, then a) knowledge, as an end-product, must be comprised of parts, and that b) these parts must be supplied by those who actively seek knowledge (perhaps aware of the futility of this search) and presented perhaps in a disguised form, and that these parts must be stumbled upon by someone who is inactive in the search for knowledge and subsequently, only by accident, and only by those who do not seek it out, can knowledge be obtained.

Another question that might be raised as an aside: If the seeker does not seek knowledge, per se, but rather scattered information, can he come to attain knowledge? My answer would be no, for if the seeker takes the time to think, "Why, I will not attain knowledge by looking for it, so I will look for it in pieces," then he is still consciously searching for knowledge and only succeeds in redirecting this process and, in doing so, masking his ultimate end. The seeker cannot work backwards: If he has begun his searching with a desire for knowledge, then he has already affirmed the fact that every action taken thereafter, however disguised, is in some way an effort meant to actualize this goal. These pieces, from which the mentally lazy may accidentally benefit, can only be produced as excrement forged in the process of seeking knowledge: Not knowledge as may be found in small pieces, but the grandiose, ever-discussed Knowledge, with a capital K.

The seeker, then, is able to continue this process of seeking only by telling himself one of two things (and if he does not, he will have a hard time justifying to himself the seemingly-pointless way in which he passes his time, and will, in finding that he cannot shut off his mind and halt its progress - however slow or misdirected this progress may be - wish himself peace in the form of mental quietude, or death, but will likely choose neither): a) that he will defy the odds presented by case-studies of brooders from the past, and be the first to come to some kind of end-point in this quest for knowledge, not through managing to stop his thoughts, but rather through the process of cognising itself, or b) that it is noble and altruistic to seek out knowledge and produce information that may subsequently be useful to those who do not yearn for the attainment of what it may give them (that is, some kind of epiphany), and that it is either his contribution to society and culture, or his obligation, or his destiny. It is almost impossible for a thinker in the truest sense (that is, the thinker who makes not only habit but also past-time or career out of such mental searching) to be ambivalent regarding the fate of his world, for it is only natural for one who spends so much time thinking about the intricacies of his surroundings to become inextricably attached, emotionally and mentally, to said surroundings. Furthermore, the thinker, through the process of considering all possible worlds, cannot help but imagine the best-possible-world of all of these, and he will make it his task to figure out how to make this world exist. Furthermore, he will be unable to imagine that this best-possible-world might only benefit himself (i.e., a tropical paradise in which food is plentiful and work is unnecessary, but only for him) because his thought-processes will inform him that the potential for the absence of guilt is, in itself, enough reason for him to wish such a paradise on all of his peers and cohorts, inferior or superior (or obliterating such concepts altogether) and thus he will idealize a world that is best for all, even if such a world might be possible only in lowering its perfection for him as an individual (for it seems there must be some limits on happiness for one if happiness must be had for all, just due to personal differences that exist between people and the need for compromise that such differences presents).

The philosopher may be further pained in realizing that the best possible world is not one that provides maximum happiness to everybody, and that the concept of love alone (and the subjectivity of its nature) is enough to keep the highest degrees of happiness from ever coming to exist, and furthermore he may be pained in coming to realize that the only recipe for an ideal worlds seem to be either: a) A world in which everyone has an equal level of happiness and responsibility, in which this level of happiness is as high as it can possibly be without infringing upon the happiness levels of others, or b) a world in which everyone reaches their peaks of happiness at different times, in perfect increments, so that the same number of individuals are happy all the time, and happy to the highest degree, and then later becoming less joyous so as to allow others to be their happiest for some time, in a cyclical manner. It is human nature to need some kind of occasional dominance or superiority to be happy, especially if they see others with power or superiority. Since we are already aware of such a concept as superiority, we as individuals will crave it, and we will not be content never experiencing it, and thus the second possibility for an ideal world (that supplies maximum happiness to individuals in various increments) most likely and realistic and applicable.

If we could all wake up in our respective time-zones one day and have no concept of inferiority or superiority, then we would never crave to experience the latter, but since the presence of human memory keeps this from being possible, we are left with no possible utopia except one that allows for rotating shifts of inferiority/superiority or dominance/submission, or we must create a world in which people truly feel that their lives are more meaningful if they are the underdog in either of these realms.

ON BEING A GHOST

2008-02-12T13:49:00.001-08:00

I watched a movie in my old bedroom on my laptop. A black and white movie. Black and white, but not old. New. I watched it, and my mind wandered from it as I tried to discern whether I was hearing raindrops or heavy footsteps behind the soundtrack to the film. Heavy clumps of rain, or the heavy clop of feet on cement. I couldn’t be sure, but as I looked out the window, half-anticipating the image of a man of some sort heading down the driveway in the dark, I imagined that I needn’t be afraid, because I no doubt looked like a ghost from outside that window, to someone looking in on me. I no doubt looked like a ghost, sitting there in the dark, lit up by the white glow of my computer, perhaps flickering a bit due to the movement of the film, sitting very still and looking very solemn as I did. It is comforting to realize that you look like a ghost to whoever might be looking in on you. It is comforting to appear frightening. It is comforting to appear unreal. It is comforting to be illuminated and fearsome.

ON THE METAPHORICAL DRAGON

2008-02-12T13:47:00.002-08:00

in a world where man has long since gone, or where man has never existed, a dragon stands alone on a stone cliff overlooking a valley of lush falling waters, and ferns that open and close with the sun in a symbiotic dance, and scurrying animals that cannot be discerned from bits of brush blown by the wind from such a great height. the dragon is silent, and it is proud, and it lays its weary head on its talons and turns its head to scare away butterflies that greet its snout. it is weary of killing, and it is weary of hunting. it is weary of chasing down its food.   the dragon refuses to move. it lies still for hours, which turn into days and eventually into weeks. it's eyes become dry from lack of water, save that which falls on its glistening scales during midnight rainstorms. it cannot reconcile its soul with its ferocious body, and when it rains, the dragon is able to cry, because its tears are disguised by the rain. only the insects that swarm around the dragon's thinning body can tell the difference between the salty dragon tears and the fresh rainwater, and they bathe in the tears of the dragon and swim in it and when they leave they have absorbed some kind of blessing and fierceness that they will forever retain.  the dragon has never seen another dragon like itself. it has seen other scaled beasts, and other dragons, but none that it can fully relate to. the dragon has spent its life killing, as is expected of a dragon, but in each kill the dragon has difficulty coming to terms with the scope of his own power. how can it be that he, red-scaled ugly majestic beauty of a being, has the power within him to take the life of another? the days of taking lives in order to fuel his own, without finding anyone to give life to, take their toll on this dragon's swelling heart, and the more he killed and the more he sat alone and the more he contemplated, the more his heart felt too large for his body.   the dragon became unable to cry. he hoped for rainstorms so that he might again be able to weep, but the rainstorms did not come, and the tears did not come. he was hungry, but he did not notice, because there was a hunger in his soul far greater, and he knew he could not move until he was able to discern how this hunger might be fed. he watched lightning stretch from the eye of the sky down to the cracks in the earth, and it created more cracks in the earth, and it split trees into hundreds of pieces. the dragon, from his great height, watched the great trees fall, and the dragon watched an entire valley below him catch fire. it seemed that nature, too, had an ability to take life from the forest, and so in this way the dragon found an alibi in the lightning, and his growling belly found an alibi in the rumble of the dry nights.  as hard as it was for the dragon to watch his kingdom burn, it gave him a sense that he was a part of things. there was something bigger than him that could do more destruction than he ever could, and for some reason this convinced him that he should honor his own life and, in doing so, honor this bigger thing. honor the lightning and the mightiness of the earth and the earths temperaments. he crawled on his belly down into the valley, his wings too weak for him to fly, and he rested his long neck and nose in a swampy bit of water, his teeth catching grasses on them that he would have to untangle himself from. he drank the cool water of the stream there, and just across the stream was a wall of fire. it had burnt everything, all the way to the river's edge, and this river, that encircled what had been his kingdom - his jungle - was now a domain of fire, encircled all the way around by a river, and thus isolated to this specific area. the dragon drank from the stream, and blinked his eyes against the heat of the fire, and he could feel the water grow warmer even as he drank it. frightened fish swam below him, and he lifted his neck to the heavens that were lit up by flame and exhaled a long, mournful wail to the night.   the dragon caught some fish with his talons, and after eating until he could eat no more, he curled up near the fire and slept by the stream, knowing that the water near him would keep him safe from that which the lightning had ignited, so near to him.   at dawn, he awoke. the fire had died down, and remaining were smoking trunks of trees, and a few lone vultures screaming high above his tail, and a bit of pink visible through the smoke above. invigorated, he lifted his body and stretched. he was determined to live. but the only land he had ever known was burnt, and it was gone, and it was transformed. he did not know where else to go. and he did not know what he would do when he got there. and so he picked a direction, randomly, and lifted his tail proudly, and marched away from the dwindling flames out onto a vast playa, not sure whether he would ever reach water or food or nourishment. his pace was slow due to days of weariness and lack of sleep, and he lumbered on, empowered, toward an empty horizon in search of something that might remind him of the self that he had not yet been acquainted with. he lumbered off, and the sun burnt his scales and dulled them over their gleam, and he blinked his heavy lids and continued walking: the only dragon in the world to walk forever, somehow resilient and somehow determined to cover the whole world with his steps, not in order to find anything but more in order to make sure that he was right in thinking that he had nothing left to find now that his kingdom had been turned to ash, and coal, and one day into diamonds.  and what mattered was that he had some will to roam, even if he did not have any hope of finding something. perhaps this was why the quest was beautiful, because it meant that anything that he might find would be so startling and shocking in its existence that he would be rendered all-the-more delighted to find it, all-the-more awestruck, and all-the-more grateful. and what mattered was that he sensed that there might be something there. the evidence rolled off of his back like rain and did not matter to him, because what he felt inside was a discovery in itself, and perhaps he only wandered in order to create musings about his own internal discoveries, letting things find him if they would but never expecting much from anything other than his own self.

ON BEING ALL AT ONCE

2008-02-12T13:47:00.001-08:00

Suddenly, I am all things. I am an old woman running naked from a burning hut, carrying a child that is not mine but which I have found. I am an old woman with weathered skin, and I am crying for the child's loss of mother and father, not because I knew them and not because I am afraid, but because I am that child, and I have lost my parents simply by growing up. I am the child, crying too, not for the loss of my parents because I am too young to know, but because I am seeing flames for the first time. I am a neighboring villager who has forgotten how to cry, and instead of crying I am beating the dirt with my firsts and screaming, not because of the fire, but because the land is barren and the crops will not grow this year. I am beating the ground because the earth has failed me, or as is more the case, I have failed the earth in asking for it to provide that which it cannot. I am the earth, crying in the form of rivers that shoot over stone faces of rocks and fall recklessly on the rocks below. I am the rocks, and I am older than I know, and I have no hands on which to count my age, nor eyes with which to watch the sun come and go. Yet I feel the water on my back, and it reminds me that this - this is life, in every form, and so long as the redwoods die I will not forget that life exists. I am the redwoods, and when I was young I was surrounded by the others, but now I have grown so tall that I am alone up here in the air, and my years are passed by watching the birds come and go, and feed one-another, and flap their wings at one-another in attempted declaration of dominance of the sky, a realm unable to be dominated by any one being because it is all-encompassing. Most of all, I am vastness, and space, and something that is able to exist only in the absence of other things: something that fills space up with its presence and because the clouds make room for it, we know it is there. I am tiny, and I am humble, and yet I feel surrounded by things so much bigger than myself, and it is this state of being surrounded by things that have a sense to them, and an energy to them, that reminds me of the preciousness of everything that surrounds me. Not only stones come in the precious variety, but also experiences, and also people. And this gift is worth more than ten-thousand lifetimes of accumulated gold and riches because it is something that can be transferred to the rest of the world and to the people around me, not through trade or economy but through love.

ON THE INDIVIDUAL'S RELATION TO THE WHOLE

2008-02-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

if universal change happens by way of internal revolution in each individual who makes up this universe, then it would follow that universal regression happens by way of fearful backtracking within each individual. if the world is to be changed for the better, each of us will have to let go of our fears not by dismissing them, but by looking them face-to-face and using the understanding of what they are to fight them and to strengthen our ardency in those areas in which we have no fear. imagine what could be if each of us embraced absolute honesty and compassion, and created something every time we felt inspired to do so? what if there were no schedules to keep us from leaving classrooms and lying on the grass every time we felt the need to breath in some sunlight? we created things like schedules in order to maximize our cultural freedom by working together to accomplish shared goals. instead, our shared goals have become contorted, and although this perhaps makes us realize our individual goals with more intensity due to the obviousness of human desires for freedom, we forget the simple fact that individual life-cycles are the same as global life-cycles, just broken down in to smaller, more easily-examined segments. our individual goals are held back by the hours of work, but perhaps this is a good thing because it forces us to realize the importance of those things that are our own (and thus everybody's) that exist beyond the arena of scheduling: art, and conversation, and vision, and dancing. every interaction that an individual has with any one thing is an interaction with the entire world, because the way one interacts with one thing will affect the way that thing interacts with other things, even those things that the individual first mentioned will never ever see or know or witness. in this way, we are far more connected than we realize, and if we are able to let go as individuals of the need to witness first-hand exactly how and in what ways we are able to affect the world, then we will be able to focus that energy into our crafts and our words and our love and our selves, instead of into the act of grasping for footholds on cliffs that have none, because they are ever-changing. a foothold that exists one day will not exist the next, due to our own influence on everything and the subsequent influence that everything else has on each other thing. each of us creates the reality of our world, and sometimes we forget that. perhaps each person in the world and each being in the world is like one tiny cell in a larger organism, except the difference is that each of us cells is conscious and soulful, and thus the larger organism is conscious and soulful and as complex as the product of every mind and spirit in the world multiplied by every other mind and spirit in the world, and then put through a giant machine of circumstance and storm and seasons to render a result that changes as soon as it is manifested. the very act of something being created changes everything that came before, and changes the creators. just as that which is examined is necessarily changed due to its being examined, everything truth or thought that is spoken is, by nature, transformed upon its becoming a part of the world. people do not necessarily speak things in order to help others think about things that they have never cognized. instead, people, in speaking things to others, only make others reexamine or put into new words or recognize something that is already somewhere within their soul or psyche, and similarly the person who is spoken to may change the speaker's notion of that specific thought because his association with it and his idea of it is different than the speakers, and may come from the opposite direction of a line of reasoning, yet end up in the exact same place. and yet this place, too, is transient and is no longer the same place once the thought is spoken and heard. all of our thoughts and ideas are like some large swelling ocean whose shore is constantly being altered by the rearrangement of stones and sand and the decomposition of stones into sand (things broken down into parts) and the re-forming of stones over a much, much longer period of time. our sea is simultaneously boiling and freezing over, and for good or for bad it is as alive as it has ever been, because no individual can help but be a part of every other individual no matter how hard he tries to be insular. we are constantly and accidentally and purposefully reshaping one-another's minds and hearts, and in this way our selves and our beings are fluid and absolutely connected to one-another. each of us is one note on a violin string in a neverending symphony, and even if some notes are more noticeable than others, the symphony itself would not be the same with any one note missing, and the importance of every other note is affected or diminished or heightened when any one note is lacking. it is obvious, but it is important.

(October 2007)

ON DEJA-VU

2008-02-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

the most intense feeling of deja vu that i've ever experienced was, as is fitting, a kind that happened again and again throughout my life. i still experience it occasionally, and it's always so familiar that it throws me off for a moment. the paradigm that i know of what is real and what is life is shaken and i am, for a moment, in some in-between realm, where time is irrelevant and where logical thought cannot enter. it's not a deja vu of a place, or of a person, or any kind of sensory experience. it's a deja vu of a feeling, and of an inner murmuring that is so tangible and yet unrecognizable all at once. it is a feeling that is very-much there, but as soon as i notice it, it vanishes, like a deer that has been spotted by a hunter and decided to run. as soon as i focus the inner-dialogue of my mind on it, it flees to some earthy cave where it cannot be seen. but somehow its presence echoes after it is gone. like the sound of perpetually-moving hooves.  the strangest part of the feeling which i speak of is that it is something living and breathing and seemingly organic, existing within my mind but not created by my mind. it enters via its own will and leaves when i recognize its presence. the best way i can describe it would be to compare it to some kind of rambling series of sentences, overlapping one-another, in a language that i do not know but which is somehow familiar to me. words that are almost discernable, but which are just out of reach, like a word that one tries to grasp in order to make a point but cannot manage to summon from one's mental dictionary. imagine standing in a crowded room with walls that cause the words of the people to echo, unable to make out what they are saying, but able to recognize that they are not speaking english... it's something like that.   this feeling has come to me only at times when my mind is very relaxed and somewhat detached; in my most deeply meditative states of being. the most apparent time was when i had a canvas set down on the floor of my old livingroom at my mom's house in nevada city, some time in the cold of winter, on an afternoon when i was home alone. i had been painting for longer than i had in a while, hours for certain, and i had stopped thinking in sentences or thinking about my past or even thinking directly about what i was doing. i think my mind was absolutely clear, and my painting was directed not by my thoughts, but i swear by my soul. i've reached that sort of empty-yet-full place many other times, while playing guitar, or more often by composing piano pieces. i have one memory of writing a song at a point in my life when i was close to tears, on the piano, hitting the keys so hard that the joints of my fingers hurt, and whilst playing glancing out the window on the front door to see orange and gold leaves falling from the tree outside in a diagonal dance toward the earth.   yet i have not experienced that FEELING during all the times that i've been in that place or state of mind. it occurs rarely. it's as if i am turning a radio dial in my brain to a station that picks up the sounds of everything going on the world, ever, at any point in time, all at once. or it's as if i'm hearing some language long forgotten that was used to talk about things that we can't possibly talk about in any language utilized today. i think the deja vu comes from the fact that i seem to remember hearing similar sounds in certain meditative states long ago, when i was a little child, as i was drifting in to sleep or as i was waking. i've experienced it since while waking or dozing off, and the stark familiarity of it is so apparent and certain that it shakes me awake entirely in its total lack of foreign-ness.   i used to think a lot about how art is a more direct form of language that can be used as a filler for that which conversation lacks in its capacities. as if a child, before learning to speak, does not separate inspiration from love from thought from expression from emotion, but instead ties them all together and experiences them as one. perhaps if we did not categorize such things as expression and emotion and feel the need to either apply language to them or separate them from language, our actions would be truer to our earthly insincts or feelings. or perhaps our creations would be more directly linked to their inspiration, and would more directly affect the viewers or listeners or participants in whatever is being created or formed.   it's not so bad that there is a dissonance between feeling and word, or feeling and art, or feeling and thought; because we attempt to amend that dissonance, and in this act of attempting, we form beautiful connections and we create amazing things. or in this act of attempting, we come up with ideas, or express ideas, and these things in and of themselves are catalysts for positive change, and connectedness, and for making sense of the self and its place with - and not separate from - nature, and other individuals, and energy and love itself.  i used to talk a lot about how good i am at missing people, and missing places, and missing towns or forests or hillsides or moments. i think "missing" is the wrong word, because it has such a negative connotation. it is because of the amazing people i have known that i am able to recognize amazing qualities in the new people that i meet. and it is because of the amazing experiences i have had that i am able to know what is possible in the world, and know what humanity is capable of, and not settle for losing that idealism that i think is the fuel for change and progress. and i think progress is too often linked to a forward-motion, when perhaps more often it should involve a process of recognizing what really matters, and what really is meaningful, and sweeping away that which is not meaningful to make way for the new, or to seek further inspiration, or to seek exchange of ideas.  i'm not looking so much any more for understanding, or for certainty, or for peace of mind. i'm looking to fully delve and jump into the confusion of everything around me and let it take me under like violent ocean torrents and spit me out where it will, because any place that the tide takes me seems to be a place that has something to show me or something for me to experience. i don't want to hold fast to anything in my life: a place, or a person, or a notion of who i am. i want to be able to adapt as a bird does to new climates, and yet i want to fully be in and experience every place where i dwell or where my feet leave marks in the dirt. i want to learn a kind of respect for things around me that respects them for being comrades in this big circus that we are all a part of. and i want to encourage growth in others as much as i encourage growth in my self, even if that means cutting the cord and freeing myself from some safe womb in which i find myself. i don't want to fly from something once it starts to feel comfortable, but i don't want to use feeling comfortable as a reason to cease adventuring and growing and being in an absolute state of awe.  laughter has become a daily ritual for me, and in this i find a lot of peace. strangely enough, the thing that brings me the most peace of mind as of late is just the realization that things will happen to me that i cannot anticipate, and that however my story will be written will be honest and real in a way that it could not be if i attempted to direct its course. a river that takes its own route is far more beautiful than one shaped by man in order to be more condusive to bridges or roads or towns, for reasons that cannot be understood. there is no exact quality about that which is natural that makes it any better than that which is unnatural. but there is a certain beauty to chaos itself, and randomness, and uncertainty. and finding familiarity everywhere in this uncertainty makes uncertainty not an unwelcome thing, but something more like a necessary and comforting thing, as if every swell of a river is speaking in an ancient tongue and saying, "i told you so."

(October 2007)

ON EXISTENCE

2008-02-12T04:04:00.002-08:00

To feel and experience the past, present, and future in every second of every day, all at once... To slay time itself with an iron sword and lay the sword down in the moss by bare feet: a moss that will never cover the blade itself because it would take time to do that. And were has time gone? It is slain. It never was. It bleeds. And yet it always was; and always it will abide. I'm dreaming, these days, of vines and ferns, and wet soil that smells that way it tends to... Soil rich with worms and insects and whispering its secret to those who roam on it: Below it, deep below it, there is fresh water. I'm dreaming of loud birds breaking precious-yet-soon-forgotten silence with the beat of double-wings. Frightened animals running for cover and then forgetting that they are afraid and stopping to drink from a brook. Taking a second. Gazing off into the middle of space just to make room for a thought or a song. Dreaming of a hunger, and a thirst, and a silence and a calmness. Animals attacking other animals. Animals attacking men. Men fleeing and forgetting they are afraid and then stopping; making art and making poems and making love. Mud huts and raw sweat and fluid words and fluid tongues. The gritty, and the earthen, and the bark-laden, and the sorts of souls who look much like gnarled trees when standing, silhouetted, in a darkened forest of oaks.

AN ODE TO AN IMAGINARY WOODSTOVE

2008-02-12T04:04:00.001-08:00

my dreams take on many forms, and few of them are compatible to their full extent with one-another, but most of them embody concepts that i try to incorporate into my life in some fashion or other. usually i try to learn from the wisdom behind such dreams, and i try to grasp why it is that such things sound appealing, and then i try to apply this in a conscientious manner to my life and my actions and decisions.  one such dream is that of the hermit. the individual living alone in the woods, in some remote yet beautiful setting; choosing to be alone not as a last resort, and not as a knee-jerk reaction to the negative aspects of society, but rather for the sake of cultivating silence and introspection and other such things that aid in the process of creation. in this dream, i am in a small and humble cabin, in which stove and shower share a wall and in which my bed is a mat that i roll under my table during the day: a table that serves both as desk for a typewriter and table for my oatmeal.  i dream of singing at the top of my lungs at all hours of the night; of staying up by lamp-light reading philosophy and writing in the margins until the pages are wet; of writing out my thoughts and ideas and organizing them in some way that makes sense. i dream of long walks to nearby bodies of water, with a stick in my hand, drawing in the dirt at the shore of said lake or stream, and gathering pine cones in a sack as i make my way home. i dream of a loft, with pillows, and a window outside of which birds roost and perch.   it's not really so sad to think that this couldn't be shared with anyone. it would be shared with the self, who (so it has been said) contains multitudes. and it would be shared with the past selves, and the future selves, and the wind and reeds and cattails and rainfall. and, if in my seclusion i could muster up some recordings and writings and diagrams and pictures, it would be shared with whomever might come across such things after i am gone. furthermore, i would be able to entirely focus my mind on exactly which questions i deemed most important, and explore them as i so desired.  but here is the beautiful thing about this: it doesn't take absolute isolation to create such an environment or such levels of focus. it can happen amongst people, if inspiration is selected wisely and time alone selected similarly. besides, interaction with other human beings brings to mind notions that could not be mustered in thirty years of isolated thought. and when interacting with others, such notions can be shared and explored, and excitement can gain momentum, and emotions can be shared. what good is love if put only into one's work? that is a form of self-love, and although it is selfless in many ways, it does not bring the kind of laughter to one's face that can gain passion with every reciprocated laugh. the kind of laughter that exists as a response to another's laughter. the perpetual back-and-forth of such laughter, or joy, or pondering, or love, or curiosity, or excitement, is something that requires multiple souls.  let all of us be loving, social individuals; with hermit-like ardency, and hermit-like capacities for contemplation and imagination. then perhaps each member of the human race would love each other member more, and would love its own self more, and would have a better idea regarding where and why and from whence ideas spring, and, more importantly, toward what end they are collectively working.

ON THE DOORS TO THE SELF

2008-02-12T04:03:00.001-08:00

there are lots of little rickety doors into my head and my heart and even my sleeping thoughts. they're hard to get into. some have peepholes, by way of which i can predict one's entry, and some do not. some people open them without effort. others cant seem to find the knobs. some knock and then turn to walk away. some don't knock at all and open the doors with ease and stroll right on in. i hand out keys, and then i change the locks. sometimes i hand out keys to which there are no corresponding doors. the doors can be kicked down, and sometimes i'm so impressed with the sheer gall of the kickers that i don't bother to put the doors back up. i don't mind so much that some kick down the doors and only stay for a time. curiosity is a powerful thing and some of the most interesting rooms or buildings that i've been inside of haven't necessarily been buildings that i want to stay in. sometimes people have other buildings or rooms that call them back. sometimes people are looking for a room they will never find. sometimes people can't decide on a room. and sometimes people want to see every room in the world before they decide what they like. some people don't like any of it.  it's none of my business how long someone stays. i'm glad to have people and friends in my life regardless of the outcome of anything. things are as they are, and will be as they will be. and it is, and will always be, the way of things.  as much as i'm coming to accept surprise visits and brief stays, from friends or lovers or those that resist definition, i'd love to meet someone who would kick down a door, or kick down all of the doors, and refuse to leave. or someone who would give me reason to ask them to stay. or reason to block their exit. someone who finds another way in besides the front door. someone who doesn't need a door to get in because they are already there.  i'm not worried that it will never happen. maybe i used to be, not so long ago. a few years ago, even. but as of now i look forward to life and i enjoy the uncertainty of things. uncertainty is the only certainty i can count on. and i'm eager to see the rest of my days unfold.

ON PREFERRING SOLITUDE

2008-02-12T04:02:00.001-08:00

i'm so used to being alone these days that sometimes i wonder if would acclimate well at all to the alternative. i've turned people away who wanted to be a part of my life, as friends of lovers, by throwing the "i really want to be alone right now so that i can be productive and stay focused and get a lot of work done and really figure out what i'm all about" card at them, and when i throw such a card i know full well that i mean it. but at the same time i have an inkling of suspicion that some kind of golden and glimmering balance does exist between the solitary kind of productivity and the kind of productivity found in camadaderie. i know that i can't go without the former (solitary productivity) for very long without jumping right out of my skin, but i have only several times found a good kind of productive camaraderie in any kind of a relationship other than in a friendship. which i think is why i tend to choose singledom over coupledom ninety-nine times out of one-hundred. i place my own work and goals too high on the ladder of priorities. and i think maybe that's a flaw or a sign of an overactive sense of pride.  despite this, i boil over with excitement when i think about the possibility of there existing some kind of relationship that is mutually inspiring, and that also includes mutually inspiring sex and mutually inspiring conversation; and yet allots time for mutually valuable solitude for both parties.   there's something to be said not only for using time alone in a productive manner, but also for wasting time alone (by way of reading or listening to music or taking walks or getting lost or stuffing feathers into pinecones); and similarly there is something quite wonderful to be said of wasting time with someone else (by way of watching films or telling stories or walking around or getting lost or making out or scratching each others' scalps or what-have-you). in fact, the latter (time wasted with another) is one of my favorite things in the world.   and so it seems that, when given the options of time spent alone hard at work, time spent alone spacing out, time spent with someone else hard at work, or time spent with someone else spacing out, nothing is a waste. i think the best combination, though, includes an increased amount of time spent alone working hard, a decreased amount of time spent alone spacing out, and an increased amount of time spent with another (or others), perhaps split pretty evenly between that which may qualify as the space-out and that which might qualify as hard work.  so, i've often concluded that solitude used well is anything but a waste of time; and i've just as often speculated that camaraderie, given a specific spin, has the ability to inspire the diligence needed to move mountains or build pyramids. maybe it actually has more inspirational force than the solitary mind, because Love or Affection is standing around saying, "hey, man, i've got your back. don't think about it. don't question it. move mountains, baby"...  despite all of this, i still tend to choose to be alone a lot of the time, and yet i still tend to seek out individuals who inspire in me a will to be diligent, both when i am around them and when i am not; both in the areas of recreation and in the areas of work (what the fuck does this word "work" mean? when i use it, i like to think that it applies to that which is meaningful but requiring of effort, and not that which is a pain in the ass and requiring of a cubicle. but my definition conflicts with that of many).  i've learned something interesting about myself. in the mornings, before i have my coffee, i'm generally grumpy. in the mornings, before i have some breakfast, i'm almost necessarily grouchy. perhaps undetectably so, but nonetheless apparent to me. but if someone is in my bed, and if that someone is someone that i don't regret finding next to me when i wake, then i don't need coffee or food right away, and i am not grouchy or grumpy at all, either detectably or otherwise. perhaps that means that i'd do okay if one day someone were to wander into my life. it's a nice thing to ponder.  friends and people in my life bring me joy, as does the act of working hard on things that matter to me (music, writing, art, my education, etc.). the kinds of joy are different, and cannot exist without one another, and inspire and feed into each other. to live alone for a whole life by choice is to be a fool; and to forget the importance of spending quiet nights with only the murmur of one's own thoughts is to forget what it is to exist. which is abominable. so there it is. friends, lovers, and space to be alone. wonderful and non-opposing forces in life. thank god, no?  because really, i want to roll around things in my own mind and roll them onto the plates of other minds, and roll things out of other peoples' heads and turn them over in my hands.

SCIENCE FICTION

2008-02-12T04:00:00.001-08:00

the world's bigger than i sometimes realize. it's so big, in fact, that its size is irrelevant. and so in that way it becomes small again. just imagine that. like one of those shitty science programs from the early nineties, a camera zooms in on a view of the globe, zooms in up close, and then zooms out, this time further than before, until the world is so small that it cannot be seen.  i can't stop listening to this brian eno song called "dead finks don't talk." i can't stop staying awake all night. i can't stop yearning for adventure. i can't stop feeling extremely pissy and anxious, and yet at the same time extremely warm and awestruck. i want to throw myself into the kind of world that is perceived as far too big, and then, square foot by square foot, make it smaller and smaller until my years and days are up.  sometimes i want to be done thinking about love. love is something bigger than any person and bigger than the very globe whose size we have already pondered. it's huge, and yet it's so huge that it cannot be seen. we know it exists all around us, and yet the frustration found in trying to tangibly feel it or trying to point it out and say, "hey, that there... that there is love... i knew it was here somewhere," causes us to create things that attempt, or momentarily succeed in, the obliteration of it. violence and anger and rage and numbness and what-have-you.   the moments of greatest awareness and love that i have experienced have been in the most vile of situations. men dying and oozing pus and coughing up shit on sidewalks somehow make me aware of a kind of love that isn't situationally bound, or bound by any kind of prejudice. that, right there, is a love that doesn't care about physical beauty. it's a kind of love that pays attention to that which is ugly. we hate seeing these things, maybe because we hate realizing that these things incite a feeling of love in us. we hate to love that which is vile.  perhaps the most noble thing in the world would be to refuse to let your love be bound by any one person. this kind of love would be huge, and would be spread out evenly amongst all people and all things. and yet for the people in one's life, this kind of love would be so minute that they wouldn't be able to feel it. is it better to isolate love to specific areas, or to have it be an all-encompassing blanket-like entity, free of discrimination, and blind to wrongs or rights? i want to find something specific in this world that i might feel deserves my fully-focused love, but the entities that i like the most are also the most free with their own love. or they are the things that are hardest to see the love within, because they don't speak of it. people can be like this. or huge fucking glorious deserts can be like this. they don't speak of love, so it's kept sacred, and something in the silence of these entities keeps the power of love itself fully intact. you can sense it, but it is not yours, and you can trust it more than the love of any other, but only with the knowledge that it will not be yours. perhaps you trust it BECAUSE OF the knowledge that it will not be yours, or at least not yours alone. in fact, it will only belong to a specific individual if that individual represents, in the eyes of the lover, the entire world. maybe we trust this kind of love the most because we are aware that love, even our own, cannot be given to one person alone. we can be faithful in action, but love itself seems something that is wild and cannot be held within any kind of boundaries.  maybe this is the kind of love we are, societally, growing towards. the irony is that, if fully manifested in everything, this kind of love would result in the altogether absence of any kind of preference. so would we sleep with everyone around us, or with no one at all? imagine a situation where the latter were the case. the human race would die out, because we would love each other so equally that we would be unable to decide who to sleep with.

ON AN AUDITORIUM

2008-02-12T03:56:00.000-08:00

i feel like life is kind of like a big auditorium, into which randomly selected people have been shoved, and not told why... and so for a while they try to figure it out, and for a while they kind of freak out about it, and then eventually they decide to make the best of it. they start to talk to one another, and they form connections with each others, and sometimes they sit in groups in the corners of the auditorium at night and light candles while poking each other in the ribs and laughing about it. they sneak off to make out under the bleachers. and sometimes the room is shaken as if by some unanticipated earthquake, and new people are let in, and new people are born, and the people get curious about what is outside and they start digging... their varying styles of escape-attempts are mimetic of what we might call "religion", perhaps. they walk away from one another, and eventually they walk back, just because the auditorium is so small... maybe they won't walk back while looking each other in the eye, but they will at least pass each other on the way to other people, and sometimes they will high-five and other times they will smile, and still other times they will not look at each other but they will think of each other and slews of memories regarding each other as they pass.

ON THE STRENGTH OF THE CREATIVE FORCE

2008-02-12T03:55:00.001-08:00

something surges out of the self, but really more out of the world... and it's such a wild child that you don't really want to guide it, but feel you should........... if for no reason other than to get the other mothers off your back about the matter... but in guiding it you don't want to stop its dance (so barefoot and naked that it's almost crude). a torrent of energy emerges. it comes from nowhere for it has always been there, but it is a change in form from what it used to be.... once the body no longer grows upward, the self must grow inside, and the heart must grow and the mind must grow and because the space is so limited there, they must grow together.... and then the guitar abilities must be expanded; the fingers stretched; the rules broken; the strings bent; and the brushes/words/thoughts/connections spun all up together where they are wont to be, and then dragged apart like two siamese twins who only want to look at one-another, but can't, because they're adjoined at the head. because there's nowhere to put that energy except for everywhere, and this realm must grow to accomodate. it'll grow and stretch but cannot break because the boundaries of this realm also accomodate reality. i don't want to waste a wind...

A THINKING-BACK

2008-02-12T03:54:00.002-08:00

the hours and minutes run parallel to my thoughts of you and i think of them as train tracks upon which maybe someday some train will reach some destination - a destination with an essence not glorified or saturated in expectation but simply fitting and true and lined in trees whose armor is the most amazing-smelling bark the world has ever had to wrap its nose around in order to sniff. i'd hang every notion i've ever contrived about the world from its branches and would have to tell you nothing of these things, for you would not ask, and the colors of these things would change along with the light of the morning and the setting glow that would relent and make way for the dominion of night. i would line up my reasons and toss them at you with no intent of harm just because all of them and all the reason i possess tells me they are yours to somehow understand. i've been to this place and in it, the train silences its whistle, and the tracks have no need for grease, and the conductor at last is able to rest his legs on soil instead of on machinery. i've been to this place because i have chosen it, and because i can fathom nothing preferable to it, and because it is the only place in which my self as a child might be just as content as my self as an old woman with birch-bark hair at last grey. i've been to this place because i want it to be a place that you, too, might want to dwell, and i've sewn flowers to the ground and i've tied stars up to the night and i've wrapped birds around the trees because the place i picture you most at home in is one containing all of these things and all of everything. you are all of everything to me and i only hope that my silence does not speak otherwise.  i can bring all the mountains to the banks of this place if some shelter is required; raise the elevation if some snow is desired, yet only in my will and only in my intent and not in anything tangible enough to stand above all in the world that is tangible. this is because the world is so piercing to the tongue that it humbles me, and i am just a representative of it. i want to represent all that i love in the world, and i want to give you all that i love in the world even if i am only a carrier of this. if needs be i will walk back down the tracks alone, but at least i will have taken you to such a place.   you would find this place on your own, and this place is a mindset and a peace and a calmness and nothing that can be chopped or divided or written of because to write of it would be to write of all things. to write of you would be to write of every angle of the world. and yet all i have written about the world is all i have written about you, because the face of every mountain that hits my eye in a way to cause it to blink is the face of every encounter with you i have had. i would adorn the world to make it further remind me of your beautiful precious adorned soul. the river adorns my mind with santity and in sanctity i want the weave of your arms.

ON ENERGIES OF THE SELF

2008-02-12T03:54:00.001-08:00

sometimes i think it's love, and sometimes i think it's a furor of expression or of the need to express. really i think they come from the same place. really i think they're kind of the same thing. whatever it is, it has the effect of making me feel as if i were rolling down a hill, never stopping; anticipating where i might land or what tree i might roll (fast) into. the anticipation directs the manner of the fall, and the speed and blur of the fall affects my response to whatever it is that i might hit. whether i hit it or not is not the issue. it's about the things that rush through my head and heart as i am seeing the world at 360 degrees and bashing my head into things; and it's about how i treat these things after they have rushed from my head or heart and into my consciousness. we're all rolling around together and in that way we are all side by side.   these things are the plasma of the blood that keeps my ears pounding as i sleep, and when i feel love i feel its ability to be eternal, and i don't doubt that potential because i am not able to. and i have tried. but trying to squelch something like a fondness that exists in the heart, or trying to squelch that willingness to try to look at others' hearts, is something none of us should waste our time doing. it is a knowing that tells me of the worlds potential for absolute transformation. perhaps the transformation has already happened at the core of some of us, but we can't keep that to ourselves.   i think human beings have a drive to create and build and discuss and love and screw and paint and sing because that thing - whether it is love or a creative energy - is something too magnificent to be snuffed or contained or enclosed. that's something worthy of absolute celebration. let's just stop worrying about the fact that we're all going to die and do what we can to make that feeling eternal, even if we ourselves cannot be.  i feel love and when i feel it, i want the whole world to feel it, and i want my fingers to channel it into everything they touch. when this doesn't happen, i try to lock it up, but osmosis is a reality and is not appropriated for science alone.

ON A FELLOW NAMED "BROOD", AND HIS DISRESPECTFUL TREATMENT OF FLOORMATS

2008-02-12T03:53:00.001-08:00

So you know the place i speak of... It's mostly warm, sometimes dark, and inhabited by the annoying and sniveling man known as "Brood". Brood, right little motherfucker that he is, comes and goes as he pleases. He doesn't wipe his feet, and you can't decide whether to be excited about this or really bummed out about it. you don't know whether to have empathy for your welcome-mat or your carpet/wood-floor. and you don't know whether having the poor bastard's measly footprints all over your maple stomping ground is worse than having your welcome-mat read, "welcome home, sludge", when read as if it were one of those sentences formed by way of reading half words and half little pictures (they used to have those in those kids' magazines in the doctors' office and dentist office waiting rooms, and they used to have pictures of umbrellas and such. you would phonetically say the word that the picture brought to mind in conjunction with the letters and half-words and whole-words surrounding it. oh christ, what were they called? and dear god what was that magazine called?), or the other way around. do you like overtly-wordy sentences? i do.  Anyway, my point, which has devolved into something to which capitalization does not frequent, is something along the lines of this: you can choose whether Brood is a welcome guest or not, and frankly there aren't many times when he really should be (especially since it was he himself who thought he was welcome in the first place, and not you). Brood won't listen if you tell him nicely, so it is up to you and up to me to chuck whatever we can at him (socks, hairspray, violins, whatever) until he leaves. Also, you can lock the door to Brood, and they make these nifty things that you drill into your door that allow you to lurk whoever's knocking and either deem them worthy of entry or not. Lock your door, dudes, and if Brood knocks, tell him to take a hike and don't waste your good river-stick by giving it to him for a walking-stick.

ON THE ACT OF DREAMING

2008-02-12T03:51:00.001-08:00

so the science of sleep kind of attempted to do this, but with more of a focus on the aspects of the dream world in reality and less of a focus on those aspects of reality that appear in dreams, and in what ways they do so...  my thought is this... do you know the feeling i speak of - the feeling had by the dreamer in the midst of a dream - which is as if the absolute relevance and significance of the dream (and of reality itself too) is figured out and understood? the dream contains events and interactions that are of a nature we might consider "odd" in real life, yet in the dream these odd elements are never questioned. there must be a reason behind this lack of need for questioning... perhaps the reason is that we are somehow aware more of the connection between events and fantasies (perhaps even the connection between people, as boundaries between individuals seem to be broken down in the dream world and affinities between multiple people are made quite clear), and this awareness of connection between different entities, ideas, emotions, and elements allows us to experience events that make perfect sense, taking into account these connections, whereas they would otherwise not. i really feel that, in every dream, i am aware of factors that make perfect sense and help explain things - big things - in a way that is both gripping and fascinating. nothing is mundane in my dreams. every tedious event has a larger significance, and every significant events is, although sometimes more obtuse or less shocking, equally important to the smaller events. i feel at ease in dreams, even those that frighten me or those which deal with difficult subject matter, because i experience a general sense of purpose, and every event seems to happen for a reason - each event is a little necessary part of a larger, linear puzzle - and i never doubt that the end conclusion and result of all the events and all my thoughts regarding these events will ultimately be revealed. herein lies the problem: i don't like waking up because it keeps me from solving the puzzle that seems so profound at the time of REM. furthermore, upon waking, the sense of purpose and fate and logical-connectedness-between-events is lost. things seem so much more up in the air and daunting and, often, less exciting in reality. but i feel that dreams are very much a part of reality. we spend 1/3 of our life dreaming. it makes sense to assume that the events in our dreams are, in some unconscious sense (and any of us who know anything about the psyche know that our unconscious mind has almost as much effect on our actions as our conscious mind, perhaps more.. i don't know) we are effected by the lessons learned in dreams, ideas composed in dreams, and events experienced in dreams. so the great mystery, which is the question of where our dream come from and from what source they are derived, is of great importance when this is taken into account. if dreams have a huge effect on our unconscious mind, and if our unconscious mind has a huge effect on our actions, then whatever puts the dreams into our heads has a lot of power over our actions. i like to think that, when i dream, i am somehow more connected to the entirety of my mind; perhaps even to the minds of others and hopefully to the soul of the world in general. i like to think that events in life will gain the significance and connectedness that events in dreams seem to have, and that the act of dreaming perhaps guides the dreamer by setting said dreamer's unconscious mind on the track that will help make the dreamer's life what it should be or what it can, gloriously, be. the fact that we understand so little about dreams is comforting to me. i think that which i consider to be the closest thing to god that i have ever experienced has been most present in my dreams, and i carry this sense of significance into my waking life when i have dreams that seem beautiful and profound. if all of us had beautiful dreams as we dozed, and if all of us were able to better understand them and able to remember the FEELING they were able give us, even after we awoke, perhaps we'd put more stock in reality and we'd aim to make life as exciting and open-ended and limitless as the dreamscape.

ON LIGHTHOUSE KEEPING

2008-02-12T03:48:00.000-08:00

there was a little boy who lived with his grandfather by the sea. in the early mornings, the boy would wake and go to the shore of the ocean to watch the water rise and fall. he would wake early, just before the sun came up, so that he could be back in his room and pretend to have been in bed by the time his grandfather awoke and began to grind his coffee. each morning this happened, and each morning it was the same: the boy would rise, and he would sit and watch the ocean and sometimes draw animals in the sand with a piece of driftwood. each morning, he would walk back, and reach the door of his house, and shake the sand from his shoes next to his grandfather's fruit-tree orchard, and then he would tiptoe into the house, quietly open his door and close it, and sit in silence until he heard his grandfather stir.   it was in this time that he did those little things that eventually shaped him into the man he would become. sometimes he would open a notebook and draw the birds he had seen picking up scraps of sea-creatures from the rocks. sometimes he would close his eyes and imagine what sorts of shores lay further across the water. and sometimes he would open a book and read short stories of the kind that he most enjoyed: beasts, and demons, and bloodthirsty monsters, and the sorts of things that would freeze his clean blood cold and make him feel secure in the normalcy of warmth that he normally felt enclosed in, that was so far from that sort of cold. sometimes he would just lie in bed, and doze off for a minute or two before again waking, and between his lids and his eyes would flash images of things he had never seen yet suspected might exist, because the power of the ocean reminded him of the potential for power in all things in the world around him. because he was young, and because he hadn't seen much, he imagined that the world around him was stocked full of the most horrific things, and the most violent things, and also the most forgiving and beautiful and vibrant.  it wasn't that he was afraid of what his grandfather would say if he found out that the boy was making these walks to the ocean. it was that this - this watching of the sea - was something all his own, and he knew that if his grandfather knew about it, he would stop going: not because he would get in trouble, but because the sea wouldn't look the same to him.  his grandfather never asked him about the pile of sand by the roots of his fruit trees. the pile grew and grew until all that could be seen above it was the fruit itself. one walking past might assume, if having no understanding of such things, that apples and pears and peaches grew out of mountains of sand. and thus said passerby might come to assume that the sand in those parts, so near the ocean, contained nutrients more conducive to the birth of colorful fruits than any other kind of soil around. said passerby might assume that the sand had such power in it that the trees themselves would have no need for oxygen, for they were breathing in a magic that was more than any lung could ever hold.   when the rains came, the sand grew wet, and the boy went outside with a spoon and a rake and a shovel. he shaped the sand into a castle, and inside the castle were the fruit trees, their trunks freed and provided with air and yet enclosed in something majestic by nature and created by the boy's sense of wonder and that sense of wonder in and of itself. in this way, the materials needed for the building of a most beautiful kind of shelter came from none other than the boy's imagination and his inclination towards curiosity and his dedication to his own private and secret mode of passing his early morning hours.

NINJAS AND NOMADS

2008-02-12T03:47:00.001-08:00

my fingers are ninjas, and they are nomads, and they are nimbly fighting the forces of numbness and ambivalence in the world one word, note, hug, and object picked up off the ground at a time. they clasped hands eagerly when i was just born, and they cried as they clasped. now they clasp objects, and stones from the riverbed (making room for other rocks to make their beds there), and invisible things snatched out of the sky and made to exist here on land. they trace patterns in the soil, and they dig trenches in the sand, and they form snow into little mounds and turn the snow into ice, melting it with the heat from within them and then allowing them to freeze harder in the winter airs yet to come. now, they reach around to touch things, and to touch the wind out of the windows of cars, and to touch instruments and make them less foreign, and to touch one-another in solemnity. now, they curl against my body as i sleep, and they stretch like yawning cats as i wake, and they drum against my palms to the songs that brew themselves in my head and die in my head, not needing to escape because they have lived for a second within the framework of my mind. we are soldiers, every one. and our weapons dance in our eyes, for they are our souls. and we shine like lighthouses across the bay and skip our lights out across the water to one-another so that we may bring the ships of other hearts to our shores for some time. we are noiseless beacons, and we grow ideas in our minds every day out of little seeds put there by the world around us, and these ideas grow larger, with many-a-limb, and they stretch their arms out and dig their roots down into our hearts. some of our ideas are secrets, and these are the elms by vacant shores that see the lights across the water and say, "i hear your silent siren call but i am here, and you are there, and i am content to be here on this beach alone." we are beaches, too, and the sands that lay atop us are each fragments of thoughts and memories and smells and tastes. none of these are ever totally gone, though they may dissolve into the swells of the ocean or they may be carried to other shores, or they may sink deep into the earth over thousands of years and melt in the core of it, for the earth, like our bodies, has flames in its heart, and it burns and melts that which enters there: not to destroy it, but to transform it. and the things that we let into our hearts are transformed if they catch word upon the wind of the temperature of our embers. we are burning up so that there may be heat around us, and we are hot to the touch so that our hearts may be treated with care, and our fires die down but this is a gift to the darkness, so that it may roam and, like the sun and like the fire, have its day too. if the fire in the earth dies down, as one day it might, it is to let the stars shine brighter: to let those things which are father away make their presence known. if the fire's embers wane, it is to let the moon reflect itself on our eyes and bounce back to the sky with a glow too small to recognize, but there nonetheless. if our hearts did not burn, there would be no snuffing, but their would also be no sense of relief found in the snuffing because there would be nothing to compare the silence and the darkness to. darkness, why the long face? you are a canvas on which the stars may be painted. darkness, why the frown? you are the river in which the planets may swim. darkness, why the fear? you are that which allows the lone wanderer to see the stars and find his way home to his own fire, in his own stove, by his own bed, under that tree that he watched grow as he watched himself grow. darkness, celebrate yourself for your own respectful withdrawl as you appreciate the light for its willingness to sleep. our hands cannot reach up and grab the light from the sky, but they can create the light themselves through the implementation of tools around them, and in this way they only hope to imitate the stars, at best, and in doing so to let the stars know that it is they who, amidst darkness, lead them home to that place where they may dig deep into wet soil and plant something there and watch it grow as they watch themselves, growing still.

once again i'm hearing the call of the fields and the call of the wanderer and the call of late winter nights. my feet cannot stay in one place, and the earth shifts below them. once again, i'm hearing the call of the stillness of those late hours in which all things shift as we sleep, in which minds turn themselves around like a sailor learning to jibe for the first time, and the seasons walk away and new ones walk up when we are not looking. winter taps one on the shoulder, and suddenly his presence is there, and the air is cold. he is bright, but he is dark. he is silent but every molecule of air is full in the space that he clears out before him. he is a rogue, and a wizard, and from his wand comes snow, and it greets only those mountains that grow tall enough to meet it as it falls. once again, too, to honor the notion of duality, i'm feeling the pull of the pressing-in, the weight of the cold as it pushes us back into our places and tells us that we need not roam because we are already where we belong. it is as if the cold is whispering to us, "this is my time, and these fields are my fields, and if you care to walk upon them you shall become as still as the frozen blades of grass around you." once again i am feeling the call of home, and bed, and memories; and i want to clear my mind of all that is my own and take in the words of writers long gone, and the words of the natural world around me, and the words of old folk singers from years long past, and the words of philosophers and scholars and chemists and gurus and hermits. i am feeling the call of the hermit, and yet i am feeling the song that only a group can sing because it contains such elaborate harmony. i am feeling the pull of the ocean even though i cannot see it, and the time is nearing when i will untie my little boat and push off from the rocks and set out into the sea and sail until i can see no land on any horizon. i crave the sanctity of vastness, and emptiness, and i crave the humbling laugh of the ocean and the tides. i crave the unknown, and the letting go and submitting to the forces that be: those that will take me to whatever shores they will. i crave adventure of a solitary sort, and perhaps i will tell stories of my internal wanderings or perhaps i will not. some things can only be shared with the wind, and the wind whispers secret things that are only shared with the soul and with no one else. the trees bow down toward the feet of the snow somewhere, in a place i've been but left, and the snow numbs the trees as they bow. the trees thank the snow for its freezing properties, and welcomes the cold embrace, for the embrace is one of such cold that the tree is allowed to sleep and rest and recharge in a way that it would not be capable of were it not for the snow's urging of stillness upon it.

ON FACETS OF THE SELF

2008-02-12T03:46:00.001-08:00

we need to learn to anchor our hearts to our bodies, and our minds to our hearts, and our souls to our minds, and our hearts to our souls. we need to tackle problems that are bigger than our selves, because a mind working with another mind increases the chances of gaining some sort of understanding, exponentially. when i feel that whatever anchor in my own self has become caught on the rocks of my being, or when i feel that it has fallen off entirely and dropped to the sea-floor below, i look not back towards some part of my life in which i experienced comfort, for comfort is not there simply because it has passed. instead, i look back, prior to my own life, into the lives of others. into their symphonies, and their novels, and their essays, and their paintings, and their words and their stories. and i look at present outside of my own life. into other eyes, and other hearts, and other stories. tonight, i look to nietzsche. other nights, i look elsewhere. i look to any figure who reminds me that the essence of being human is something bigger than any one individual, and to fully understand the very ingredients of which we are made, we must look outside of ourselves. for evidence of what humanity is can be found within each of us, yet not one of us can entirely sum up any aspect of it on our own. i look to artists and musicians and writers and philosophers and thinkers, of the past and of the present, not to better understand my self but to fill in the blanks of understanding that i cannot find within myself -- understanding of humanity, and of passion and drive and inspiration. my soul is hungry for knowledge and experience and adventure, and even in knowing that this hunger will never be fed completely, i search on: not for a specific person or a specific sentence or a specific chord, but for the infinite slew of things that do nothing but feed the fire of my hunger to seek out more.

one of the pains of consciousness is the inability to discover and uncover everything that is there to be found. but the pain of not attempting to explore the world is an even greater breed of pain. and it is when we find something that makes all corners of our being - heart, mind, body, and soul - come together in some kind of harmony that we feel joy, and the memory of this joy causes us to seek out new discoveries and new worlds existing within other places and other people and other experiences. once one small intellectual or creative discovery has been truly made, the human being will not cease to crave more.

the downfall of innate curiosity and the soul's inclination to roam is the phenomenon of distraction. the self knows the pain of the delay in finding something that sparks something within the self, and it knows the pain of redundancy and regression. it knows the pain of loss, and the pain of things being ephemeral, and the pain of coming to know the exact proportions of the space between individuals; or the exact dimensions of the space existing between intention and output, or thought and expression, or love and portrayal of love, or sadness and tears, or joy and laughter. the fact that we cannot express anything in an entirely pure form is perhaps why some of us, needing so desperately to express the dances that occur within our souls, try so many mediums, and why we destroy our art or take back our words when they realize that they do no justice to what has happened within.

but the fact that we continue to attempt expression is our saving grace. and our failure to do so only encourages our souls to feel, in the hopes that they will feel something that cannot possibly be expressed in any way other than that which is entirely pure and perfect. if we are lucky, our lives will become our opuses, and our finest brush strokes will be that love which is conveyed in the purest and most impossible-to-doubt kind of way.

it is strange to me that the act of being born is, chemically, the act of becoming separated: separated from the mother and father (being parts of them that are removed from them and gain the ability to walk away from them and choose to accept or dismiss them), separated from the earth itself, and separated from others. one day each of us will return to the earth. our job while we are here is to feel, and to experience, and to translate these feelings in ways that are able to touch the souls of others and change them, and to translate these feelings in other ways that may exist beyond the lives of others. if each of us learns to create love, and convey love, and give love, then we will pass it to all of those around us, and to our children. equipped with love, and equipped with their own ability to create love, they will eventually pass a stronger kind of love on, and so on through the generations. we are afraid to do so because doing so, to all whom we know, means setting aside our desire to be separate entities, and doing so means being willing to become a part of everything around us, in ways that we will never know, and to lengths and degrees that we will never fathom.

ON GATEWAYS

2008-02-12T03:40:00.000-08:00

and right now it comes to mind that perhaps life contains rows and rows of haphazardly-placed gateways. the secret, maybe, lies in realizing that these gates are not there in order to be opened, for they are already open. energies so often spent trying to figure out how to open the gateways, or how to keep them from shutting, or how to leave through gateways already entered, are perhaps better applied to the act of simply walking through these gateways, and having the gall to walk through those that might be harder to squeeze through, or those that are so overgrown with vines and ivy and flowers that the enterer cannot see what lies beyond. the gates are already open, and they always have been, and they always will be. what exists beyond the gateways is entirely pliable in essence because that which exists beyond is entirely subject to the attitude and openness and willingness of the enterer. i've spent too much time thinking about what i fear could exist beyond certain openings, and i've spent too much time worrying about whether or not some of the gateways will slam shut and trap me inside. the truth, maybe, is that each gateway leads to a different portrayal of the same thing. maybe they all just lead to some large open field, and the pathways are interconnected beyond the creaking hinges of the entrances, and that which might be found on the other side is no better or worse when entered into by way of one gateway than it might be when entered into from another. the only wrong choice is to attempt to board up past gateways, for doing so is the equivalent of closing off entrances to places in which you already exist and always will exist, and thus forgetting the manner of the entering. doing so is the equivalent of deeming one path better than another. but who's to judge one tree-lined walkway with a cedar canopy as better than another tree-lined walkway bathed in the leaves of a liquid amber? every route is scenic, so let's enjoy whichever we take: the one nearest and thus most convenient, or the one seemingly most terrifying due to its exceptional darkness, or the one most colorful, or the one towards which the wind seems to blow us. all that is required or asked of us is that we walk, dance, skip, jump, and move our feet; and that we remain open to awe and conscious and contemplative and appropriately respectful as we make our journeys. my path will cross other paths and it will even cross paths that i've already been on, and the wanderer who has traveled for years is no more legitimate than the wanderer who has traveled for only a day or two, for each wanderer might end up in the same clearing at some point, or see the same creatures stroll by and skit away into the brush, and each wanderer is equipped with different rations of food and different amounts of water and different walking-companions and different fondnesses for different paths of the past. and this is how we grow from one-another, and this is how the forests and woods grow around us and alter us permanently in a fluid and ever-shifting way.

let us grow like the trees: up towards the changing sky; accommodating to different feathered beings that might take shelter in our branches; adaptable to the loss of limbs from time-to-time; planted firmly in a soil whose nutrients are not of our own making, but the making of everything else around us; permitting the heavy blows of the wind, and the ax, and the falling limbs of other trees; stooping under the weight of rougher years and reaching again for the sky when we have found a balance amongst our branches that enables us to once again stretch out toward the stars; unsure of what exists above us in the place toward which we grow, but eager to grow on just in case we might find something there that changes the colors of our leaves. and nothing that we grow toward will be regrettable, for it will become a part of us and nourish us, and if it knocks us down or sets fire to our roots, we will either be resilient and overcome such flames, or others will grow stronger due to the light that our inflamed trunks allows to reach the rest of the forest due to the space cleared in the sky by the absence of once-existing limbs that had once blocked out rays of sun from other trees. the individual trees themselves may not be old, but they are all a part of something older than any one part of it: a network of underground root systems that is far more intricate than any one tree will ever be able to comprehend. in this way, the most gnarled tree can be the most beautiful, or the most timid birch can be the most bold, and nothing will ever be the same as it was the day before because no day goes by without some other entity changing or altering the network beneath the earth that stretches for inches, feet, or maybe miles toward the hot core at the heart of the planet.

ON KINDS OF LOVE

2008-02-12T03:38:00.001-08:00

every kind of love is valid, and every kind of love exists forever in some manner or other, even if just in its occupation of the realm of memory. the sort of love that can be translated by way of music is a particularly beautiful kind.

it may seem on the surface that human beings have, to a large extent, forgotten how to love. this might be the conclusion that one would reach after a half-assed observation of the species. but i'd like to assert that humans are perhaps just as capable of loving as they have ever been. the problem is simply that each person encounters so many people, of so many different kinds, and experiences so many different breeds of love, and thus doesn't know what to do with the floods of love that come to the heart. love is too often stifled because so much time is spent worrying about how one kind of love will affect other kinds of love, and how one kind of love will affect another person.

the answer seems not to be anything resembling the "free-love" movement of the sixties. rather, it seems to be this: consciously attempting to acknowledge, give, recognize, and experience love of all kinds, and exercising honesty in all realms as a necessary accomplice to love itself. i'm not condoning having multiple relationships of a romantic or sexual nature at the same time. i'm condoning loving people in platonic or brotherly ways and recognizing friendship and acquaintanceship and brotherhood and the like as valid forms of love.

people seem to be lonely so often because they forget that the love that comes to them from friends and family are just as important and real and nurturing as the love that hits like a stampede and lights the soul on fire as it runs around burning and crying out. the latter is a primal need, and the former is no subsitute for it, but the former is just as important in other ways.

(September 2007)

ON TIME SPENT ALONE

2008-02-12T03:31:00.000-08:00

My own realizations shock me sometimes. The topic that my thoughts always come back to is the topic of solitude, not in a general sense but with respect to its importance as a catalyst for creative endeavors. I know that there exists some kind of a balance between interaction with others and solitude, and I know that both are equally essential in their own right for the creative individual, but something about the former leaves me nauseous at times, and longing for time alone, and this longing for time alone is a thinly-veiled longing for creative output and intellectual input. Interactions with others leave me hungry for something, and this something makes itself known in a fierce way that keeps me up at night stressing over nothing in particular, but everything at once.   Does being a creative individual (and i mean this in a broad sense that encapsulates all mediums and art forms and that counts intellectual pursuits as creative pursuits, for the soul of the artist and the soul of the intellectual are, in my opinion, necessarily inseparable) require a degree of self-loathing in order for the creator to be productive? If I find myself in a place where I feel too much comfort, I begin to despise myself, for in this comfort I am not driven to write, and I am not driven to learn, or compete, or to make music, or to move forward in the career world with the kind of passion that I want to possess. I crave this kind of unsettledness, and I crave this sense of urgency. I crave this sense of "something is not right" and "something needs to be done". for this is the drive that causes me to create, and to write' and this is the drive that gives birth to passion in the soul. I feel more lost when I do not feel this drive, for when I feel content, I forget where I am on the path of my life, and where I am becomes more of a point surrounded by nothingness than a specific point on a line, or a ray, that links my past to my future. I cannot exist as a point, no matter how euphoric the nature of that point is. Rather, I need to exist as a ray, constantly looking toward the future and, somehow, constantly fearful of the future (although not in a way that overwhelms me and renders me stagnant). I need to exist as a ray pointing toward the future, fearful of the future in a way that makes me constantly aware of the importance of doing those things about which I am passionate. I cannot exist in a way that allows me to forget about my reasons for educating myself and writing and making music. I need to constantly, or at least sporadically, feel ill at ease and uncomfortable, for in this uncomfortableness I am reminded of the need to push on, and continuously work on things, and continuously search within my own mind for truth, and continuously create. I need to constantly or sporadically hate where I stand with regard to myself and my peers, so that I constantly feel inclined to work harder. I must keep doing this in order to feel happy, even whilst knowing that I will never reach a point at which I will feel proud of my work, or satisfied with my work; at least not for long. It is strange that the artistic and intellectual drive is such: Even while fully aware that that which is created will never be satisfactory for the individual who creates it, the individual himself cannot help but continue to try to make something that satisfies his own judgment. Logically he is aware that this is impossible, yet he fools himself into thinking that he could be wrong, and subsequently presses on again and again, always dissatisfied, and always eager to try to make something better, or to do more, or to work harder, not because he thinks he can ever be content (for he does not want to be content: as an artist, contentedness is the equivalent of death), but because he hates himself when he is not working, and because he loathes his past creations, and only in working does he feel he is moving beyond this level of productivity and quality that he so despises. In seeing end products of new projects, he does not find contentedness or peace of mind. Only in the act of working itself does he find any sort of solace or quietude of his inner-voice.  The artist and the intellectual know this, and if they are one and the same they know this all too well. This individual, an embodiment of the mind and the soul and the heart, and the desire of all three to break free from something that they know they are forever trapped inside (perhaps this thing is he body itself), is fully aware of the futility of all of his efforts, not in the minds of others but in his own mind, for he will never create something that will render him content enough to cease his efforts. He is aware of this, yet he continues, for he knows that not attempting is worse than seeing a series of failed attempts forever until his death, and he cannot bear not to attempt to defy the limitations of his own body and mind any more than he can bear not to sleep or eat. In fact, sleeping and eating sometimes come secondary to the artistic drive.   The artist/intellectual has within his soul an infinite well of creative energy, despite his body's finite supply of physical energy, and the two are constantly at odds. The individual hates these limitations. Just as art in general is perhaps an attempt to defy one's own mortality, the daily acts of creation and thought and analysis are each respective attempts at defying the body's own needs for rest and sleep and quietude. In this day and age, these acts become not only attempts to defy the body, but attempts to defy the structure of society, and the conventions of how one is supposed to live.   The artist reflects upon the large machine that is the economy, the political world, the media, the world of pop culture, and collective conscious, the world of science, and the world of religion, and the world of technology (and so on in this fashion) in such a way that is unpleasant in the eyes of that which it depicts. It shows a side of things that are perhaps otherwise hidden, and it often shows a negative side of things. This is as necessary for the advancement of the sciences and culture as institutions themselves, but despite the necessity of such a process, it is hated by those who see themselves reflected as a result of the process. The artist and the intellectual fight each day for survival, emotionally and physically, and constantly run the risk of being exterminated. The artist and the intellectual must fight many fights: the fight to stay alive and afford to eat (a fight imposed by the difficulty of finding work and simultaneously making art), the fight against the monotony of the job required in order to do so, the fight against the inner-critic and his hatred of the self, and his hatred of the self's work, and his hatred of the self's lack of productivity (often due to previously mentioned job and the need for such in order to survive), the fight against the rest of society's persecution. Much of society hates the artist and hates the intellectual, for he represents something uncomfortable (which makes sense, for his very existence is the result of discomfort and the tendency to create this discomfort for himself on purpose), and also because the artist and the intellectual expose to the rest of the world truths about their own nature that they themselves where unable to see for themselves. This is the ultimate slap in the fact, for it shows those who are content to be stagnant and comfortable that they should not necessarily be so content to be as they are.

ON FIGURATIVE SUNLIGHT

2008-02-12T03:26:00.000-08:00

why do i see people with the sun in their eyes become so saddened by the world around them? it's because they have the sun in their eyes. but it's these people, who know the sun is in their eyes and yet refuse to look away, that end up knowing the sun and its magnificence better than those who don't bother to look, or those who look for a second and then look away once they realize how much it hurts, or those who look into it and refuse to really see it for what it is, or those who let themselves be blinded by it and refuse to believe that anyone else can see any of it for more than a split second because they, due to their blindness, no longer can. i've known all of these people and it is those who look into it yet refuse to be blinded by it - those who look into it and refuse to look away - that come to truly know the beauty of their world and the meaning of their world in the most astounding way. once they get used to the glare i know that they'll forget how much it can hurt and they'll dance with the others who have sun in their eyes, too. once they look at it they know there is no looking away and they know that there's no going back. perhaps they could go back if it weren't for the fact that they know that doing so is foolish and silly. but they do know this fact. and they won't look away. and it's these people who realize that they were born with the same sunlight running through their blood and immersed in their words and seeping out of every piece of the world around them.   and if they look away, they'll remember what they saw, and maybe the loss of that will pain them until they look into it again. and if they are blinded by it, maybe the last image of what they have seen will be enough to sustain them even if things seem dark. and if they refuse to look, maybe they will gaze in awe and wonder at those who are bold enough to do so, and maybe this wonder and awe will sustain them and the knowledge of something better will keep them moving until they have the courage to try to look themselves.   but what it boils down to is the truth in the following: i have faith in those people who have faith in other people, and who have faith in themselves and in the potential of human interaction and in patience and in effort. i've lost lots of pieces of sunlight in my time and i know that they're never really gone, and they're never really snuffed. and the light that's left to absorb is infinite and can make that which is lost, in time, fondly remembered due to its ability to remind the self of the inifinitude of that which is left to experience.

(February 2007)

ON THE CONCEPT OF HOME

2008-02-12T03:23:00.000-08:00

i have been thinking of home these days. when i find pieces of things that feel like home, i think of it. home is such a transferable concept. it seems to be something mostly kept close to the self, lodged somewhere inside the psyche, known better than one's own self and loved more than one's own kin. my home exists somewhere between here and nevada city, although not in any actual town or field between the two. it exists more in a place between the two, written on a scale of importance. it exists in the connections i form between the life of my past and the life in which i now live; the life of my future, too. it's not a melancholy feeling, because it's not something i necessarily want to pin down. more so, it is a feeling of excitement. i hold onto things of the past like relics that i observe but do not touch. their place in the layout of my life shifts with each new experience. something once deemed of utmost importance takes a seat behind something new, and then that something new ultimately takes its seat behind the old if it proves to be less significant. the present always takes the front seat, by default, like a cocky child, because the present is unlimited and therefore, in the imagination, it is infinite and it is infinitely greater than anything prior to it. i hold onto the future like a thing that is almost tangible, yet in a way that i cannot yet observe. it seems that the self is so eager to ascribe this feeling of "heimweh" (home-like) to everything it encounters, that home becomes a colorful jumble in which there exists some carefully orchestrated yet fluid balance between the ever-present and the ever-elusive. the elusive is viewed as something familiar: something totally definable and totally discernible. this is because of the very fact that it is elusive. its elusiveness renders it infinitely powerful and important.  point being, i've not been sleeping much lately because my mind has been trying to process what it has known, and subsequently trying to counter this with what it realizes it cannot know, and lastly with what it may one day come to know. i'm okay with it.

(January 2007)

ON SOMETHING AND NOTHING

2008-02-12T03:19:00.000-08:00

I look around at others who are my age, and I know that any one of them might be able to say, “I don’t know what I want”, and truly, completely mean it; but something feels amiss in my psyche, in a way that transcends the meaning of that simple youthful utterance. I know what I don’t want, and I know how to turn any thing into exactly that, so that I might want nothing; and so it is not that I don’t know what I want, but rather it is that I want nothing, and I want one thing to exactly the same degree (or lack thereof) as another. But I find nothing itself to be, by definition, quite boring. Herein lies the dilemma: I cannot just choose, out of all the “gifts” of life, nothing. Why not? Well, due to an absolute and penetrating fear of being incorrect about something’s apparent “nothingness”. What if I were to write something off as nothing without realizing that it is, in fact, something; that it does, in fact, have some value? Can there be a thing that seems completely devoid of value and worth upon first examination, but possessing difficult-to-find qualities that, in the magnitude of their something-ness make up for the overwhelmingly nothing-like quality of the things observed upon first examination?

It seems impossible to be sure that something is entirely nothing without fully examining it, as unappealing as the prospect of examination might at first seem, due to the subject’s boring nature. However, it seems necessary, for peace of mind and for the sake of making sure that nothing in the world is neglected in this search for somethingness in the world around me. Thus, it seems that the only thing to do is to, piece by piece, look carefully at everything around me, and take care to strive to know the complete essence of every single thing, so as to not miss any scrap of somethingness that might exist therein. The question, then, has to do with the order of operations involving this examination process. Where does one begin? Does one choose to first look for somethingness in whatever thing seems most likely to possess somethingness? If so, how is this determined? Does one choose to first look for somethingness in everything at once? If so, how can this be done thoroughly?

Let us say, for the sake of discussion, that we find the one-at-a-time method of examination most useful and appropriate in this tiresome search for somethingness. But where does one begin? But which nothing is better than any other nothing? It seems my only option here is to continuously choose one nothing, try it on, hope that it might surprise me and turn itself into some kind of something, and then wear it for eternity if it does and discard it if it doesn’t. If it fails to prove to me that it is any kind of something, I will repeat the process, until death if I have to.

Amidst this cycle of hope and disappointment (the latter appearing in the disgusting form of boredom itself), there is one salvation and one solution to complete idleness and monotony: The imagination. The imagination has this amazing power of fixating on things whose beings are not entirely known, and doing two things: 1) choosing to ignore those qualities or characteristics that are displeasing and exemplary of the nothingness within the thing, 2) glorifying those qualities or characteristics that are pleasing in any way at all, even if only due to the act of following number one, and 3) imagining any number of even more glorious characteristics that might be attributed to the thing, until an awareness of the thing’s entire being is present within the imagination. This awareness is based on only a tiny percentage of truth, and the majority of it is the result of imagination, but it is a phenomenon that leads me to suspect the following: The more active and powerful the imagination, the more dissatisfied the individual will be with the reality of situations; because the individual who is able to imagine something to be glorious will be that much more let down when he finds his imaginings to be ungrounded in reality altogether.

Nothingness is not the absence of everything, but rather equal degrees of everything (and thus nothing spectacular). Nothingness is not the absence of anything interesting, but rather the absence of that which I sense is possible in individuals: the essential, vital, urgent, quality that is the only thing providing me with any hope for humanity or any desire to continue to investigate the world around me.

I search for something more than this nothingness because I sense it exists. It seems that one does not look for something that he doesn’t think exists. For example, would someone look for car keys if they never had car keys? Presumably not. Would someone look for a killer if someone is not killed? Presumably not. Similarly, would someone look for something-ness if there was not need for it, or evidence of it, or a use for it, or a necessity for it?

A FICTION ON MEANNESS

2008-02-12T02:57:00.001-08:00

“Man’s inclinations do not naturally lean towards the good, and it is to our benefit to stop trying to convince ourselves otherwise.”

Nights like tonight, she concludes that she does not want friendship from anyone. Conversation, perhaps, with respected elders or authority figures or family; but nothing with anyone from whom she has nothing to learn, or anyone from whom she can learn only those lessons having to do with her own inability to tolerate the ignorance and irksome natures of other people. She knows these well enough, and does not care to be reminded of them, for in the process of being reminded she has to deal with such behaviors yet another time too many. Furthermore, she does not want to have anyone in her life who calls her “baby” or “babe” or “darling”, because she knows that the nature of her heart is not to produce behaviors that others might find endearing. The minute she become somebody’s “darling”, she does everything in her power to convince him that there is nothing endearing about her countenance or her demeanor; that beauty itself is a threat and not an endearment. The more she is adored, the more she wears a scowl, in order to drive men away. If this fails, and if a man is attracted to her scowl, then she finds him to be pathetic, unless he is attracted to it because of the wickedness in his own heart and because of his giddy delight that he experiences in finding hints of wickedness in the heart of another, especially in such a thinly-veiled (and thus somehow more cruel) form. She is able to love a man only when he knows that she would like to use him, and even then only when he responds to this knowledge by using her in return; for her nature is to use, yet her nature is also to be disgusted by any man who allows himself to be used without returning the favor in a like manner. And so she falls in love only with wicked men, and despises men who love wickedness because their hearts are too good.

The only kind of love she has known has been cold, and wicked, and has been with men who did not love her well enough because she was not yet either of these things, and so she spent her days striving to be so; not in order to be loved, but in order to understand those beings whom she had loved, and in order to understand love itself.

She felt that the sort of love that existed in the trenches of her heart was the truest kind, for she believed that it was only worth looking for truth in places of darkness. After all, she reasoned, the answers existing out in the openness of the light have already been seen by man, with little difficulty; and, she mused, judging by the actions of man, little truth or wisdom has been found there. But what answers might await discovery in places of darkness? Countless answers, she reckoned, and their powers are nowhere near finite. Whatever they may be, they have yet to be seen, and in this way they hold more promise than those answers already found. Who knows what piece of wisdom might be found that, coming from such a realm of darkness, might be able to change the very thought processes of the human race, and cause some kind of much-needed global turn of events? And who can say that the wisdom existing in darkness might necessarily be used for a dark purpose? We certainly don’t always use love for good, or laughter for good, or even kindness for good. Every one of us knows a man who has used kindness for his own ends, selfishly and unabashedly, at the expense of another, and for most of us this man is our own self. Is it not better to come to know that which is dark, and cruel, and to seek wisdom there, and to then use this wisdom for good? It seems that good can be drawn from evil just as easily as evil can be drawn from good, and the process of the former is more amiable because it results in good. Furthermore, isn’t it better to be surprised by an amiable outcome in such a way as this than to expect the good and experience only the bad? Malleable men are best convinced that darkness will descend upon them, for if they are convinced of such, they might be inclined to lift at least one finger in order to try to change that which seems to be their imminent fate. Give them a chance to play Gods and they will jump at it, especially if in jumping they may protect their own livelihoods. Do not convince malleable men that they are headed toward good, for they, satisfied and self-assured, will cease to strive for anything at all, and will become both lazy and stagnant. There is no surer way to ensure a society’s downfall, and hasten the journey there, than to convince its members that they are bound for utopia and glory and good.

ON LOVE

2008-02-12T02:52:00.000-08:00

Love seems to possess a bountiful inventory, and it seems to embody any number of traits within itself, all at once, yet it seems to be entirely without a face. Love has arms that do not let go of their prey, and Love has a pelvis with the force of the oceans and the magnetism of the earth, and yet it is without eyes or mouth.

Yet we, carriers of love, are possessed with things such as eyes and ears and mouths, and thus we are able to feel Love with our senses, and we are able to express it in forms such as music or works of art: forms that Love itself could not hear or see, but forms able to be experienced by other carriers of Love; other individuals. And thus we, as beings, are able to share love with one another and know one another through love more than we are able to share love with Love itself, or know the nature of Love itself. We cannot love the notion of love, for it pains us. Nor can we understand the notion of love, for its power lies in its elusiveness.

Love wears a broken watch that he is constantly attempting to wind, but in winding it he foolishly neglects his most important duties.

ON DIFFERENT KINDS OF MORNINGS

2008-02-12T02:50:00.000-08:00

I awoke one morning and felt that it was a morning different from the other mornings. The act of waking felt much like it might feel to be pulled violently from the womb, if the womb could exist within the belly of a bird, emerging through skin and through feathers and into blinding brightness. There was nothing pleasant about it, but once birthed I knew that the process of finding my way back into the womb would be much more difficult than the birthing had been, especially since my birthing had rendered the womb still and the bird cold. In waking, I had destroyed not only my initial protection, that early nest of a womb, but also the very being that was meant to protect me as I grew accustomed to the world and as I dried. She was the one who was supposed to wash me clean.   The choice between womb and world was not mine to make. It was something else that took me from sleep a hand or some other angry force and I had no choice but to accustom myself to the new world in which I found myself. That I had awoken thousands of times before was of little importance to me. So new I felt, and so disposable the past. I had no qualms with leaving it be. It might rot or be disposed of by another, and I would not object. It felt so disconnected to me, and because of this I felt no loyalty to it, and felt in no way responsible for the removal of its waste. It itself was waste. I was no more eager to associate with garbage than I was to associate with my memory itself. And so I chose to reject it, as if it were not mine, and as if its bestowal upon me only insulted me and made a fool of whatever callous soul saw it fit to do such bestowing.   And so there were four casualties honored at the wake: a bird, a womb, a past, and a goddess. Her name was Muse, and she reigned over the memory. I took it upon myself to kill her and reassign her. I endeavored to create a new kind of inspiration that would not rely on the foul solace of the past (for such reliance would only be attempted by a weak soul), but which would take advantage of the disassociated irrelevance of the future. I would inspire or create art that spoke only to the present, and not the past, and that would disregard all manner of connotation or history. I made this choice, but I made it by default, for there was no second option. I had killed my history and I had destroyed my tolerance of connotation, and so there was one route and one route alone that I might be at liberty to take.  How many, privy to the superiority of the dream world, submit to its lucrative arms for an eternity? This would have been I, Had I not been pulled in such a way by such a force. How would such eternal sleep look on the outside? Would it look like death, or like unending sleep? The body and mind both forget the need for food and nourishment when sleep is the master at play. What if this need does not exist in the dream world? What if it is only in waking that we fool our souls into thinking that they must take a body and take care of this body? What if it is only in allowing our minds to wake into the realms of our bodies that we allow our souls to eventually die with these bodies? If I could sleep forever, I am convinced that my soul would live on somewhere else and perhaps not even notice the decline of my bodys ability to function, or even its eventual death.   Perhaps the wombed bird was asleep when I was born. Perhaps the force pulling me from its womb was a result of its will; and of its desire to keep its soul living and set it free from the confines of body, wing, and talon.

(July 2006)

ON THE BODY AS A MACHINE

2008-02-12T02:43:00.000-08:00

I was once told, "The human body is a machine. It needs to be maintained." The comment was made in reference to the importance of adequate nourishment and rest, but I immediately applied it, just for fun if for no other reason, to other aspects of the human being. The idea of the human body as a machine both disturbed me and comforted me. Perhaps the disturbance that I felt was partially due to my awareness of the latter of these two emotional responses (the comfort).   It is easy to see where the feelings of comfort stem from. The machine is something that we are very familiar with. It is what we rely on when our own abilities to lift or process or manufacture fail us; or when we want to transfer a number of tasks to another [entity] in order to give ourselves more time to do what we choose. Not only does the machine fill in for us when we are incapable or unwilling; it also serves as a companion of sorts: one whose failures have a specific cause that might be investigated and eventually rectified. The shortcomings of the machine are never the machine's own fault. They come about due to the passage of time and time's wear on the machine, or inadequate maintenance on the part of whatever human being serves as caretaker to the machine. We are forced to see our own mistakes through the failure of the machine: either we did not take decent care of it, or we did not build it correctly in the first place, or we bought the wrong part for it, or something of this nature. As opposed to the exposure of mistakes that comes about through interaction with other peers (friends pointing out shortcomings, inability to reconcile differences, inability to make a significant other happy, or inability to express one's thoughts lucidly), the machine's exposure of human error is kind and impersonal. The human seems happy to acknowledge his errors when it is a machine that exposes them to him; whereas he resists acknowledging individual flaws that are pointed out by a friend or coworker. Perhaps this is because the machine does not judge. The awareness that another living individual can see one's flaws - especially when that which is visible on the surface is probably far less severe than that which exists internally - is quite embarrassing or frustrating. Perhaps because others are, in many ways, mimetic representations of ourselves, the awareness that another sees our flaws is similar to our own eventual awareness of our flaws. We are hesitant to become aware of our own flaws because such awareness or acknowledgment is admission of some failure. It makes sense to guess that the human psyche has a natural aversion to the admission of defeat. It seems that such an aversion might be necessary, taking into account the evolutionary goals of mankind, to progress as individuals and as a species. If the human race is less willing to accept that it functions within boundaries - that it has limits and is capable of failure - it is less likely to give up on whatever endeavor it undertakes.   The transfer of tasks from mankind to machine-kind is an interesting transpiration for a number of reasons. Does this transfer actually benefit mankind by giving the human mind more time and space to roam? Or does it just allow the mind to be free of preoccupations that it perhaps should not be free of: That is, necessary ideas that should be taken into consideration and applied frequently to all cognitive processes? Are there certain thoughts that we should hold on to as our own and avoid surrendering to the machine?

(July 2006)

IF I WERE TO OVERSIMPLIFY

2008-02-12T02:40:00.000-08:00

Darkness seeps in through the walls, and you become aware of it, as much as you know that darkness cannot seep through anything, for it is already there when everything else is shut out. It is the other things – everything else – that seep into its domain, and sometimes the darkness is hospitable and other times it is not. Darkness is that which forces us to decide whether we must dig things up from the back of our brains that we have tried not to think about, or whether to shut off the brain completely. Sleep is the decision to shut off the brain. Insomnia is too much of the act of dredging, and the results thereby caused. It self-perpetuates. Lateness to work is that which results from the sleeping realization that shutting off the conscious brain is not such a bad thing, and that it is, in fact, preferable to the contrary (wakefulness).

Nighttime is “Oh, God, I’ve not wanted to be alive even once today until just now, and now the unfortunate truth of the matter is that my being awake at such a late hour will cause me to be late for work tomorrow, or absent at work tomorrow, or just mentally absent at work tomorrow, or absent at every part of work except for the three-foot-radius area that surrounds the espresso machine.”

Dreaming is the act of addressing a pressing matter (or sometimes multiples of such) that has not yet been fully explained or presented. The pressing matter is certainly pressing, and the urgency real, but the details are missing prior to action. The ardency with which the matter is addressed is admirable, and since there is no concrete way in which to address the matter due to its absence, most of the addressing is, by necessity, hypothetical, and therefore as perfect and efficient as can be imagined. For that which is only imagined might as well be imagined to be the best there isn’t (but could be, if efforts were worthy and sufficient).

Day is the distraction of the brain by way of little tasks that claim to be pieces of bigger tasks, but which for the most part seem to just be distractions. Consciousness and wakefulness are forums in which one undergoes the replacement of these little tasks with other little tasks, sometimes because certain replacement-tasks are deemed more worthy, and other times because one grows tired of a task and seeks a change, even if this change takes on the form of regression.

Work is getting to your espresso machine on time, and becoming familiar with the rate of the second-hand and minute-hand and the fonts used on the various clocks around the office. Work is not being allowed to replace tasks with other tasks. Work is wanting only to replace tasks with more-worthy tasks but having to settle for web-surfing or computer solitaire. Work is the plugging-in of a tube to your heart and slowly draining fluid from it, in such a way that you don’t notice it being done until, at a later point in time, you call upon the powers of the heart and find them gone.

Love is the discovery of reserves of heart powers that one didn’t know still existed. Love is the state of being thrilled over the discovery of such powers, and as a result wielding them recklessly and all-too-quickly, just because they feel so good when held in the palm of the hand. Love is the tears shed when such powers are exhausted, because the weeper has just witnessed the beauty and glory of his own might, and sees that, in the end, this beauty and glory existed only for its own sake. And love is the realization that beauty and glory, existing only for their own sake, are amazing things in and of themselves. Love is the willingness to wield things recklessly even if there is no possible gain. Love is not directed at a person, but instead at the world, and often through somebody who embodies some aspect of that world. Love is preferring to be in the arms of somebody that you hate, but love, than someone you like, but don’t. Love is a silver tiger with iron teeth and a beautiful arched neck that is bleeding. Love is the tiger gnashing his teeth despite the pain and refusing to sleep it off. Love is the willingness to respect the fight, and yet recognize what is lost in the death. Love is the act of mourning what can never be born, yet what might have been possible. Love is idealism, and idealism is art, and art is love. Love is the deepest, most sorrowful cry whose cause is not realized; whose parent is appalled.

ON HELIUM

2008-02-12T02:38:00.001-08:00

You are the high-pitched voice inside a balloon
That is only let out in a quick rush of air
And that causes the head to become light.
You are not the voice when it is let out;
But rather when it is still silent, still
Within a red sphere,
And waiting. You are the waiting.

ON SHORELINES AND JAWLINES

2008-02-12T02:28:00.000-08:00

The mouth of the ocean, and the mouth of a person, both open and close. And both allow the dead and the living to enter and exit through the opening. The mouth of an ocean is the doorway through which fish swim in order to roam the sea, and the doorway through which fish then swim in order to spawn, and in order to die. Surrounded by teeth, the mouth of a person is a gateway. Surrounded by sharp rocks, or rocks ground to sand, the mouth of an ocean is a gateway. The mouth of an ocean holds within it those fish that we will eventually hold in hungry mouths; and the mouth of the ocean opens and closes with the changing tides and the varying and constantly-changing shorelines and rock-collections and moving earth.

The mouth of an ocean takes in water, the vehicle and catalyst for life; and the mouth of a person takes in water, too. Clouds weep above the ocean, and eyes weep above the mouth. The mouth of a person takes in nourishment, and takes in other tongues, and outputs languages and shouts, and stifles those noises that seem more animal because man likes to think that he has evolved beyond that which is animal and primitive and crude.

The human mouth will cease to open and close one day, because it’s mode of opening and closing is limited. The ocean contains a jaw that needs not sockets, and it can open and close in any number of swells and shapes. It will not cease to open or close for a long time. The human mouth will take in air, and will take in matter. The mouth of the ocean will take in all of these things, in all of their forms, most of them the outputs of ocean-creatures who are, themselves, living and dying and procreating. Both the teeth of the ocean and the teeth of man are broken down by the harshness of the world. And yet the teeth of the ocean, when broken down, can be lain upon in the sun and dreamed upon in the sun.

Strange, it seems, that we consider ourselves so different from the earth, with its broken and shifting jaw; and stranger still that we consider ourselves so different from the animals around us, with their varying shapes and sizes of jaws and varying uses for said jaws. I would imagine that man only becomes aware of the similarity between his own jaw and another creature’s jaw when he finds his limbs held between clenching teeth and when he fears for his own life. But such is the selfish nature of man, and in such a way does it blind him and put him at risk.

The jaw is, since primitive days, the bringer of death. It can kill and turn its prey into nourishment. It can also separate one life from another life in chewing the umbilical cord and allowing that life which is new to isolate itself from that life which is less new. The jaw is also a vehicle for love, whether it is utilized in sex or whether it is put to use for speech or for song or for poetry, all of which translate love into some other state so that it might be taken in by those who are willing to receive it.

The jaw also opens to announce fear, or to call out a warning. It is the small and insufficient opening through which the soul tries to escape but out of which nothing so huge and majestic as the human soul could ever really fit. And so in attempting to yell out those things about which we care the most, we fail to express the essence of the soul, and instead what comes out, at times when we most want to shout out or cry out, is a mangled, high-pitched, and abrasive sound known to most of us as a scream. A scream is a sound that reminds us of the pain of not being able to take our soul out of our own body and hand it to someone else, or show it to someone else, or turn it into our craft, or give it to the world. This pain of great, and when the sound resembling this pain is heard, those around the man who stands, mouth open, screaming, cover their ears. The pain of the soul is too much for them to hear, or they do not want to be reminded of the pain of other souls because they are so aware of the pain of their own.

ON WAR

2008-02-12T02:20:00.001-08:00

I have never seen a man enter battle, but I have seen a man leave it. Death was streaked across his face like war paint, and when his brothers looked at him for a reaction of some kind, he was worn and aged. His brow seemed to refuse their inquiries, and his eyes looked away.

With the end of one fight, when we are rendered disarmed and impassioned, there begins another, in which the only weapons we have are those that we can create ourselves: love, and words, and music, and art, and compassion, and ideas, and inspiration. And the very things for which we are fighting are the same as the tools with which we fight. So if we lose this battle, we will lose our weapons for future battles. We will be powerless against invaders of our homes.

I know that, if I lay down my sword and cease to the only fight I’ve ever known, my eyes will act much in the same way as those of this man when facing his brothers for the first time after battle. Death will not streak my face, save for some sort of symbolic death, but my eyes will do the same. They will look away, and they will look inward. They will look inward until they catch fire, and they will shine like the sun through a magnifying glass. They will scorch my soul there, where it lies trapped within.

I do not want to lay down my sword. And I do not want to fight for anything but those things in which I most believe. But I do not know which army to turn against. And I do not know which way to march. I would rather die in battle than never fight, but I would rather not fight than fight the wrong army. And so I stand, in the middle of a million loves and a million soldiers and a million flags and a million dead bodies. I look around at my surroundings, and I ponder things. Sometimes I slip up and move in one direction more than another, and then the balance is gone, and I receive a flesh wound.

IN DEFENSE OF SADNESS: THE PERSECUTION OF THE EMOTIONALLY "ABNORMAL"

2008-02-12T00:32:00.000-08:00

If an individual sees it fit to be what is viewed as “morose” in disposition, in a world of injustice, poverty, egotism and discrimination, two things come to mind: 1) it may be absolutely justifiable and, 2) it may be no one else's business. However, since the world at large seems eager to make it everyone's business, I find myself inclined to provide this individual with some form of a defensive argument.

It must be granted that individuals make their decisions in life based on one, several, or all of the following: prior experiences and upbringing, genetics, personality, or natural inclinations. Whichever of these might be the cause of said decisions, it is as unfair to criticize someone for being morose as it is to criticize someone for celebrating a particular religious holiday or for speaking a certain language. The nature of one’s religious leanings, or an individual’s native tongue, are as randomly-determined as one’s emotional disposition, resulting from a slew of factors that pertain primarily to the geographical location and time of one’s birth. One might object to this comparison and say, “No, you have absolute control over your feelings and outlook; or if not absolute control, then at least some ability to change them,” but this argument would only serve to strengthen the parallel that I have here drawn, for I would respond by saying, “Yes, but you can also choose to change your religion or change your primary language, yet we do not criticize those who do not. On the contrary, we view it as a testament to one’s culture and upbringing if they do not change their religion or language. How is one’s emotional outlook any less of a link to cultural heritage, especially considering the fact that a large body of evidence that has surfaced which succeeds in linking such things as depression to genetics?”

Just as the acceptance of a variety of languages and religions does much in the way of enriching our world, culturally and socially, so does the acceptance of a wide range of emotional responses and tendencies. Similarly, just as an openness in talking about one’s religion might encourage open-mindedness in the world in general, and just as an eagerness to speak in one’s own language (even amidst those who do not understand it) might broaden individuals’ respective concepts of the world, so might candidness and openness about one’s emotional inclinations (and, most importantly, the reasons behind such) lead to greater cultural diversity. Furthermore, if emotional responses of differing kinds are accepted and addressed, leading to this increase in cultural diversity, there could occur a subsequent increase in our tolerance of others, and a propensity toward inventive, new ways of approaching problems that may surface in the world around us, whether they be of a global or personal nature.

Instead of acknowledging or accepting abnormal psychological responses, we stifle them; even when they are absolutely non-threatening and show no sign of contributing to animosity or violence. We view depression as a disease that must be cured (by way of prescription drugs and psychotherapy), which shows that we are quite aware of its prevalence, yet at the same time we refuse to acknowledge it as a legitimate excuse for failure in the workplace or the educational system, save for those cases that are so severe that hospitalization or drastic measures must be taken. The result of this refusal to acknowledge it is two fold: In one case, it causes individuals to hide their emotional struggles so as to avoid being viewed as “flawed”, which in turn causes said individuals’ failed undertakings to be attributed by various authorities to other factors; factors that may have nothing to do with the individuals’ various emotional states, such as laziness or lack of regard altogether. This is tragic, especially when the emotional states which inhibit the individuals’ productivity result from phenomena which are some variants of antitheses of such things as laziness or lack of regard: perfectionism, or the cultivation of cripplingly high standards for one’s undertakings. In some cases, the victim of this phenomenon might actually begin to believe that he is lazy or that he just does not care, and then in thinking he is such, he will become so. The second phenomenon that occurs when an individual’s emotional state and its subsequent effects go unrecognized is this: Suppression of the individual’s emotional sensitivities and emotional needs causes a build up of anxiety or sadness that exists below the individual’s exterior, invisible to others, snuffed to such a degree that it builds up over time and results in some emotional explosion that is actually extremely detrimental (this might exist in the form of an emotional breakdown, or a violent outburst, or an attempted suicide, or a total and complete loss of will altogether). In this situation, the career (be it vocational or educational) is often damaged or put at risk, leading to loss of confidence, and ultimately to a downward spiral of perpetual failures, increasing in their degree of negative impact and long-term-impairment.

This suppression of emotional nuance could be avoided if said nuances were accepted and (I know it sounds extreme) perhaps even celebrated. Individuals should not be left with the following three options: a) Absolute secrecy regarding one’s emotional state and total suppression and avoidance of emotional displays, b) Secretive seeking of aid and attempts to downplay one’s problems and keep them separate from the sphere of one’s work and duty, or c) Either submitting entirely to one’s emotional whims and allowing them to take over the self completely, eventually leading him to his downfall; or grossly exaggerating one’s emotional whims, so as to get help that is of a degree obvious and serious enough to render his problems worthy of others’ acknowledgment and attention, so that he might be taken seriously and, in being taken seriously, keep the repercussions of his emotional problems from being attributed to such things as laziness or lack of work-ethic or, even worse, lack of regard. The first two options, A and B, only lead to isolation and an eventual increase in difficulty dealing with the problems, and the third option, C, can result in a loss of pride and a delay in one’s endeavors, or even a victim mentality that may keep the individual from challenging himself or even being aware of the extent of his own abilities. None of these actually succeed in fixing the problem in question, and all of them are the result of our society’s unwillingness to view emotional difficulties as normal. The fact that our society creates a world in which emotional sensitive individuals are more likely to fall subject to stress or anxiety or depression than perhaps ever before, and at the same time becomes less and less willing to address said problems in a way that shows respect for the causes of the problems (and less willing to acknowledge that a logical and rational being might be subject to said problems, if not even more predisposed to said problems) is absolutely inhumane.

More respect, too, must be paid to these individuals’ cognitive abilities. It must be granted that people, for the most-part, act as they see fit, so long as they have fully developed senses of morality and logic. Not only does the individual likes to make the right choice, for the sake of being right, but he also likes to improve his life. Just as an individual would not be likely to choose something like homosexuality, especially considering the amount of difficulty that such a choice will provide him with (in the form of prejudice and bigotry), neither would an individual likely choose something like depression, that will also unquestionably cause him great difficulty. But, like the individual who is homosexual, the sufferer of depression (or any other emotional “disorder”) does not like to think that he must be cured of this “ailment”, because it is who he is and it is who he has always been. The individual does not desire to be what he is not, for presumably he is what he is because it is the result of not only genetics but also upbringing, or experience. The individual is not inclined to regret what he naturally is, except when others imply that he has due cause to regret it, and even in this case the regret it unnatural and, therefore, often expressed in the form of shame or anger or depression.

If you are of the opinion that depression is some kind of a choice, then in criticizing it you are paying no respect to the depressed individual’s ability to reason and make logical decisions. We give credit where credit is due for some emotionally-rooted decisions, yet not for others. For example, if the individual chooses to put his or her self before another, or before a particular cause, it is most likely because the individual has seen need to do so. Perhaps the individual has seen fit to do so in the past, either for survival or for salvation of the ego when the ego has faced a risk of some sort. Or perhaps the individual sees fit to do so in the present, because of his observation of facts and the attention that he has paid to his emotional responses to said facts. If an individual sees it fit to be somber, and to not feign glee at all times, and to find an element of annoyance in the fact that some individuals seem to uphold unrelenting joy as their top priority in life, it is that individual’s choice to do so. Odds are that this is not accidental, and that this choice has its roots in extensive networks of thought, introspection, experience, emotion, or perhaps even the trauma of a difficult past.

Some might find it not only a mark of ignorance or an oversight of obvious saddening facts to act gleeful at all times, but might even go so far as to view it as a sign of disrespect. To most, it seems absolutely heartless to repeatedly grin and laugh at a funeral. Some extend this phenomenon and consider it heartless to laugh in a world in which genocide takes place on a daily basis. This is the result of the differing scope of sensitivities amongst individuals. Furthermore, happiness despite the abundance of potentially-depressing events might be viewed, by some, as malicious; as voluntary and willful oversight of obvious injustices, and as an example of a kind of focusing of energies that is selfish and unkind. Perhaps to exploit one’s own happiness, whilst simultaneously criticizing the sadness of others, is in some sense to ignore the concrete and very real causes of sadness in the world today; and, in ignoring them, perhaps it allows them to continue. Happiness alone is no a crime, and it in fact can lead to happiness in others (and in this way is altruistic); but happiness that is simultaneously coupled with criticism of legitimately-founded-sadness is horrendous and cruel. The experience of happiness should not be suppressed (just as the experience of sadness should not be suppressed), but neither should it be displayed in ways that are offensive to others any more than sadness should be displayed in ways that are offensive to others. The latter is frowned upon, whereas the former is all but encouraged. This obsession with being perceived as happier than one’s peers is almost a statement of greed and thirst for power, for this dominance of one demeanor over another demeanor is not so different from the dominance of the ruler over the slave. After all, the man who says to the depressed man, “Nay, I am happy,” only serves the purpose of making the depressed man feel more like an anomaly, and because of this he will most likely become more inclined to withdraw altogether into his sadness, rather than to seek to change it by way of engaging in the world around him and respecting his own needs and desires and goals. In this sense, perhaps it is worse than a simple ruler-and-slave dynamic, for it is more like the dynamic in which the ruler kicks the slave for allowing himself to be a slave in the first place.

This lack of toleration regarding emotional troubles is a kind of discrimination. People who are sad are considered sick. Depression is considered an illness. Consider this: At some points in the history of the human race, homosexuality was considered an illness; something that needed to be cured. In the eyes of many, it still is a disease. People who are depressed are taken advantage of, and they are insulted for being so, which only perpetuates the cycle. Sadness is portrayed in the media via disrespectful stereotypes, and this is tolerated. It is pointed out by the chiding words of one’s peers, and this is not only tolerated but often dismissed as “attempts to help” the sufferer. Sadness is a thing that, if accepted and considered normal by one’s peers, is less likely to crop up in the individual. If pointed out and criticized, it will appear more and more frequently, and it will probably eventually appear alongside a breed of anger that comes about due to the sufferer’s awareness of this lack of acceptance.

Additionally, at what point does a "disorder" cease to be viewed as such? How many individuals - that is, what percentage of the population - must exhibit certain symptoms before that which is "abnormal" is viewed as "normal"? Not only is it impossible to determine the degree to which such things as depression and anxiety affect our co-inhabitants, but it is almost discouraged to even consider that a large percentage of us may be affected by it. Perhaps this is because it would be an admission of the error of our ways: Evidence of the shortcomings of our society. It seems clear to me, though, that the doling out of prescription drugs is a far worse solution than the attempt to view it as something not only normal but perhaps even understandable or even reasonable.

Just as it is argued by many that homosexuality is not a choice, I argue that sadness is not a choice. Anyone who is criticized for his or her sensitivity to the harsh realities of the world is no less a victim than the homosexual who is criticized for his or her sexual preferences.

I find it important to add the following: A hypocrisy is exposed here. Society as a whole (namely, drug companies and the media) view depression (for instance) as a problem. Yet it seems that they know the extent to which there is just cause for its prevalence, as is evidenced by the lack of attention paid to seeking out its cause. Particularly in America, a country overrun by ardent advocates of the "fix-it" mentality, if there is a problem, the cause is sought in order for the solution to be found. In this case, it seems that the cause is obvious, and the avoidance of discussion pertaining to the cause is a means to a solution to the entirely unrelated problem of our slumping economy, by way of providing drug companies with business and boosting sales therein. This is a double-edged sword, and it only serves to delay the search for a solution - on two fronts - and instead focus on the yearly incomes of the higher-ups. Both problems will eventually worsen. The economy cannot be sustained in this way forever, because emotional instability will only worsen if its causes are ignored, and although this will at first provide the drug companies with increased sales, it will ultimately result in much worse phenomena: Phenomena that will have direct effects on the economy, and every other factor of our ability to function as a whole. If we are unable to function as individuals, we will not be able to function as a larger network of individuals, just as a wall cannot be built of bricks if each brick is at risk of falling apart.

(January 2008)