say. Thank you, Bob. It is difficult to organize thoughts that are coming randomly. In the last five or six hours of my consciousness, and I would imagine that previous to that time while I was sleeping, my mind, as most normal human beings mind’s, has moved through an incredible range of reflective topics. The mind is an absolutely fascinating, unbelievably powerful, deliciously comprehensive muscle. It can be developed, as any other muscle to perform unrealistic feats.
I just thought about how you always give me what I need. Previous to that I was contemplating the budding trees outside my window and wondering why they can’t be like that always—and if I would appreciate them if they were.
When we are young, the mind is so supple. I remember a brief period of my life where I wandered around the world ensuring that I appreciated things as much as I ought to, and I say “things” intentionally: the ostrich egg on my table, the eyeglass case full of insight, and the plastic bottle full of life-giving water. But this is a double-edged sword because sometimes we ascribe to dear a value on things that do not deserve them: our cars, our jobs, our careers, the merchandise we’re selling, our TVs, and our iPhones.
And it’s funny the way history can move so slowly sometimes, moving like the last drip of molasses from the spoon, and then turn around the next day and move like a heavy metal guitar solo. I think it moves just right when set to the rhythm of the blues. But I have come so far from the boy I was only four years ago, and I have come so far from the boy I was only two years ago. The tumultuous upheaval of history can make a body somewhat seasick. Bill Martin and Bob Avakian would disagree with Stephen Dedalus in that history is not a nightmare that they are trying to wake up from it’s something they’re trying to learn from. Or maybe waking up is learning: “I have a vision, too.”
It’s that kind of music that just makes you want to put yo’ head in yo’ hands, and cry.
I like fixing things. Today I fixed the broken leg of my coffee table that’s been wobbling for well on a couple of months. Then, in a spirit of DIY, I went over to the door that has been hanging off of its hinges for the last week and fixed that son of a bitch, too. I forgot that this was something I used to do for a living when I was in college. Paint, patch, fix, mow, repair, install, and entertain. That’s what I learned how to do while I was learning how to read.
Fuck that pronoun “you,” it just means too much. You, who? It means absolutely nothing out of context. And indefinite pronoun they call it. It’s nice having a you, no matter who you are.
My arms felt longer than usual again yesterday. This is always an odd phenomenon for me to experience. I just get up, stand up, and there at my sides hang the longest appendages I have ever seen. I can scratch that itch on the back of my knee with ZERO effort. I can touch the ten-foot ceiling above my head. I can reach out and touch somebody’s soul. They are mystical, you see. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, I think it feels nice.
Decisions made in a rush can often be hard to keep to, if only because when you absolutely HAVE to make a decision, it is in the heat of the moment, and you are only doing what you feel is the best decision for that moment. The next moment you could realize that your previous decision was composed mostly of dogs bollocks and you immediately change strategies…difficult to stick by. I decided today that I would travel back to that place where I told everybody the truth all the time. My job makes me a liar. It forces my language to conceal as it reveals, and the true mark of professionalism is knowing what to conceal and when and how and what to reveal and when and how. Get some perspective.
I think I would choose to be a merman, even if it was against the will of god.
I’m just so happy when I see you happy. It’s kind of unsettling, and I think about the sublime. And I think about love, too. And I think about how terrifying beauty is so related to love is so related to Jimi.
To do what one wants, is not that the desire of most of humanity? You certainly don’t want to do what somebody else wants you to do, unless it’s helping you get where you’re going. We make decisions like that all the time. I don’t really want to do this, but I believe that it is moving me towards my ultimate goal, so I’m going to go with my intuition here and move in that direction. I just want to go with how I feel.
Like my only job here is to care for and covet you, dear.
The body has come back to me lately—funny how something like that can “come back”: my mangled right hand with the scar from twenty-seven stitches, the scar from skin grafting, and the thumb that you think is resting on top of the joint from that time you dislocated it wrestling in Oklahoma at the Junior Duals and never got it even looked at. I’ve lost a lot of weight…apparently. When I came to where I am, I wore a forty-four. When I got to where I’m at, I wear a thirty-six. I’ve lost eight inches off of my waist by doing next to nothing more than I usually do, eating healthier, and keeping my body’s well-being front of mind.
He said as he lit his cigarette. Front of mind: historical materialism. What am I to you? How are you? Would you?
I love those very brief moments in my life when the brain can rattle along its merry path unencumbered. There is an incredible freedom in it: skipping down a dirt trail through the mountains.
Maybe I’ll teach high school in Oregon, I thought to myself.
History is moving quickly now, and I’m strangely comfortable with its velocity.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
It's Hard to Know How to
feel. Right now I’m experiencing something that is disturbing me at a fundamental level. There is a sense inside me that I ought to be feeling a certain way, which is to say I think I feel pretty bad. Now, the disturbing part is that I’m sure I know if that’s the appropriate way to feel. It is a strange disconnect.
But it always begs further questions doesn’t it? Why do we feel in the first place? Is our emotional or psychological or intuitive feeling any different from a hand re-coiling from a flame, a tongue in the throes of jouissance from some delectable dish manufactured from loving hands, or eyes burning from looking at the sun? Can we separate the way we feel?
Perhaps brain-mapping can tell us things about what parts of our brains feel. As a matter of fact, I’m sure that somewhere, somebody has already strapped a willing test subject to a table, attached diodes to his head, and has screenshot after screenshot of how the brain feels. I guess I’m a generally distrusting person, and I’m sure that these brain mappings have some validity; however, the question for me is how we ought to feel, which is an entirely different thing…I think.
When I get spitting bacon grease on my lightly haired torso, I ought to feel a little sting. When we kill somebody brutally by bashing in their cranium with the broken leg of a coffee table, we ought to feel remorse. When we taste something foul, we ought to spit it out. And yet there are exceptions to every rule: people who cannot feel their skin, sociopaths, and people with no taste.
It’s not an exact proportion, you understand. It’s not like a one-to-one correlation where for every one sociopath there is one person who feels what he ought to, but there are certainly enough of them out there that their level of aberration is at least somewhat suspect. Like they ought to be there. Filling out the an Aristotelian spectrum of sorts, where the two ends would be feeling wrong at the wrong time in the wrong way (either in excess or deficiency) and the mean would be feeling the right thing at the right time in the right way. But, as always, the difficulty here is having the right perspective on where the two ends are so you can have a somewhat vague idea where the mean might be.
Here’s the rub, as the bard once called it: with the conglomeration of events from the past fortnight—including but not limited to exhaustion, financial crises, knifings, shooting, emotional crises, and insomnia—I really ought to feel like I’m losing my mind. My ex-girlfriend’s stalker got stabbed in the kitchen of the restaurant he works at. True story. I have had zero dollars in my pocket and negative funds in the bank for longer than my stomach thinks advisable. A drunk man ran into the wall in front of my house as he was being chased by the police, got out of the car and started unloading a clip on the red-blue-flashing cars around him. It is STILL a not uncommon thing for me to be awake for more hours consecutively than can be contained in a day. Even when I get into bed I have to budget in an extra hour for the time it will take me to fall asleep—and pray to god that’s enough.
But I’m surprisingly comfortable in this place.
I feel most comfortable in a place where things are not making any sense. I feel most alive when I cannot control the future. I feel most at home when I don’t know where home is. I feel most in control when things are spiraling out of control. I feel most sane where it’s farthest away. It all feels most natural.
That’s why I guess it’s hard to know how to feel. I have to take into account how I feel about how I feel. I don’t know how to feel things in a normal way, but I have to trust in my feelings.
Acting. That’s what it is. We’re all acting—in a very stage way. The job of the thespian is to put as much of themselves into this character as they possible can in order for it to come off right. If they don’t invest enough of themselves, the character is rendered flat on the stage. If we don’t give enough of ourselves to the characters we’re playing, they are rendered flat in history. Curiously, thespians change characters sometimes three times in a year. I would argue we do the same in existence.
I have changed characters a couple of times at least, and I’m still looking for that starring role in existence. Consistently strive to be the magnificent man. Question where appropriate. Listen where appropriate. Direct where appropriate. Take direction when appropriate. I’m not sure the magnificent man knows how to feel. He seems inhuman. And we are human, all to human.
I’m not sure the magnificent man knows how to feel.
But it always begs further questions doesn’t it? Why do we feel in the first place? Is our emotional or psychological or intuitive feeling any different from a hand re-coiling from a flame, a tongue in the throes of jouissance from some delectable dish manufactured from loving hands, or eyes burning from looking at the sun? Can we separate the way we feel?
Perhaps brain-mapping can tell us things about what parts of our brains feel. As a matter of fact, I’m sure that somewhere, somebody has already strapped a willing test subject to a table, attached diodes to his head, and has screenshot after screenshot of how the brain feels. I guess I’m a generally distrusting person, and I’m sure that these brain mappings have some validity; however, the question for me is how we ought to feel, which is an entirely different thing…I think.
When I get spitting bacon grease on my lightly haired torso, I ought to feel a little sting. When we kill somebody brutally by bashing in their cranium with the broken leg of a coffee table, we ought to feel remorse. When we taste something foul, we ought to spit it out. And yet there are exceptions to every rule: people who cannot feel their skin, sociopaths, and people with no taste.
It’s not an exact proportion, you understand. It’s not like a one-to-one correlation where for every one sociopath there is one person who feels what he ought to, but there are certainly enough of them out there that their level of aberration is at least somewhat suspect. Like they ought to be there. Filling out the an Aristotelian spectrum of sorts, where the two ends would be feeling wrong at the wrong time in the wrong way (either in excess or deficiency) and the mean would be feeling the right thing at the right time in the right way. But, as always, the difficulty here is having the right perspective on where the two ends are so you can have a somewhat vague idea where the mean might be.
Here’s the rub, as the bard once called it: with the conglomeration of events from the past fortnight—including but not limited to exhaustion, financial crises, knifings, shooting, emotional crises, and insomnia—I really ought to feel like I’m losing my mind. My ex-girlfriend’s stalker got stabbed in the kitchen of the restaurant he works at. True story. I have had zero dollars in my pocket and negative funds in the bank for longer than my stomach thinks advisable. A drunk man ran into the wall in front of my house as he was being chased by the police, got out of the car and started unloading a clip on the red-blue-flashing cars around him. It is STILL a not uncommon thing for me to be awake for more hours consecutively than can be contained in a day. Even when I get into bed I have to budget in an extra hour for the time it will take me to fall asleep—and pray to god that’s enough.
But I’m surprisingly comfortable in this place.
I feel most comfortable in a place where things are not making any sense. I feel most alive when I cannot control the future. I feel most at home when I don’t know where home is. I feel most in control when things are spiraling out of control. I feel most sane where it’s farthest away. It all feels most natural.
That’s why I guess it’s hard to know how to feel. I have to take into account how I feel about how I feel. I don’t know how to feel things in a normal way, but I have to trust in my feelings.
Acting. That’s what it is. We’re all acting—in a very stage way. The job of the thespian is to put as much of themselves into this character as they possible can in order for it to come off right. If they don’t invest enough of themselves, the character is rendered flat on the stage. If we don’t give enough of ourselves to the characters we’re playing, they are rendered flat in history. Curiously, thespians change characters sometimes three times in a year. I would argue we do the same in existence.
I have changed characters a couple of times at least, and I’m still looking for that starring role in existence. Consistently strive to be the magnificent man. Question where appropriate. Listen where appropriate. Direct where appropriate. Take direction when appropriate. I’m not sure the magnificent man knows how to feel. He seems inhuman. And we are human, all to human.
I’m not sure the magnificent man knows how to feel.
Monday, April 7, 2008
The State of The...
Revolution. It occurred to me the other day that it is possible there might be some misunderstanding of this word revolution. Its two definitions are related, you know. The one I think I am guilty of bending most of my thought toward is the violent upheaval and movement of people: 1917, 1789, 1618, 1776. I think it is precisely because there are more of these revolutions of the people than there are of the sun. In almost any part of the world, at almost any given time, no matter how tiny or internationally insignificant the country, a revolution is being led against the ruling imperialists. I think that if the matter were looked into, there has been a revolution somewhere in the world every year, at least once a year. It’s funny, but there are very few revolutions that happen in the same year. Interesting. Sometimes revolutions LAST for more than a year, but generally speaking there are not more than one in every year. Some years there are no revolutions. I feel like the mean here (in a very Aristotelian sense) is one per year.
Something else happens once a year. The earth revolves around the sun—the celestial nature of revolution. Recently, I have begun to think that the revolution has to be less about movement within the revolutionary track, but movement from the inside out. Our tendency is to think that when we perform some kind of revolutionary act, we are moving things along, but that has a very static definition to me in that evolution is not within the realm of circulation. It is rather more wave-like. We’ll try a couple of things, oh, nope, we’ll take a step back, re-evaluate, try a couple more things, and, BAM!, we got us a keeper. Waves. Not teleology.
And I guess that’s the nut, right there. An unfortunate amount of thought by revolutionaries in the modern age is bent toward the idea that what they are doing, they are doing as a very final form. What this creates is the idea that this revolution means to put itself on an entirely different track from the last regime. Now, the unfortunate problem with this is, of course, that they are wrong. There is only one historical track. It moves around and around, unceasingly. I guess this is where historical dialectical materialism really comes to the fore and lets us know that the reason for its importance lies in the fact that its only purpose is to use the things we cannot change to throw the state of history into an entirely new track: communism.
There is no denying the slightly utopian aspect of communism; however, for those who understand it, sacrifice is actually built right in to the structure, and with the world community working together to make everybody better, it is difficult to say that this is not the ideal. If it were possible, we ought to have it. If it were possible.
I feel I’ve diverted every so slightly…and yet not. At any rate, I’m beginning to think of climate change. When does the earth’s climate change? It changes most drastically when we are nearer or farther from the sun in our revolution. That, generally, creates pretty drastic climate changes for the entire world—the equatorial regions excepted—and produces an extraordinarily wide variety of environmental changes. And good god the variety of storms they produce (I guess that’s a pretty good metaphor for what the mini-revolutions are like: storms of various strengths: April shower, thunderstorm, tropical storm, hurricane, tornado, etc).
What communism is talking about is impossible, and that is unfortunate. It is talking about permanent, variable climate change. How can something be permanent and variable? It has to exist in two states, first of all, like the world and the people on it. The world, for all intents and purposes, is permanent. We could kill the goddamn thing, and it would still continue on its maniacal track around the sun. It would just be a big dead universal weight, but it would continue. And yes, the sun will eventually explode, but it will take far longer for it to happen than anybody can imagine. I mean we can put a number on it, life five billion years, but that means earth is currently halfway through its life expectancy. I guess when the universe gives birth, its offspring have a ten million year life expectancy, and that’s comforting in a lot of ways.
At any rate, this permanent variability and its ability to exist simultaneously in two seemingly contradictory states is the key to communism: it takes history, the present, and the future into all accounts it needs to settle. It would move all the world a permanently variable position one step closer to perfection.
Revolution, therefore, is not movement within the realm of history, but movement outside of history. Being completely unprecedented. There are unprecedented people who have had this revolutionary effect on history. The ideas are permanently ingrained, the state of them are variable. It is kind of problematic in that we have seen how an individual can step outside of history and affect all times (PPF) because we have also seen how it would be beyond impossible that an entire world of people could take the same track. (Camel through the eye of a needle, anyone?) Groups can break the bonds of history, somewhat, but the harsh reality of things is that to move the entire world to a state of mind where everything needs to be done for the good of everybody else is impossible and impractical.
It is rather disheartening to think that the best we can do is throw pebbles at the revolutionary track of history once we’ve stepped outside it, but I guess the goal is to build your strength so that you can throw boulders at it in the hopes that it will create such a block that the flow will be permanently and variably carving new tracks of history. But we do have to step outside in order to aim.
I plan to have an effect on history. I am in the middle of a revolution right now. All my will is bent on breaking the cycle and stepping outside. I guess I’m not even worried about the idea that I am twenty-four years old and have no reason to believe I will be successful in my quest. It is with an eye to the past and an eye to the future while taking the present into account that I make my way through my existence. I am practicing right now. I am working on being permanently variable. I am working on being X: everything and nothing, what you want and what you don’t want, anger inducing and pacifying. I’m practicing for the big games. And every revolution there is a new season, a new opportunity to win the championship, a new opportunity to throw boulders into the ditch carved by inappropriate understood historical revolution.
Something else happens once a year. The earth revolves around the sun—the celestial nature of revolution. Recently, I have begun to think that the revolution has to be less about movement within the revolutionary track, but movement from the inside out. Our tendency is to think that when we perform some kind of revolutionary act, we are moving things along, but that has a very static definition to me in that evolution is not within the realm of circulation. It is rather more wave-like. We’ll try a couple of things, oh, nope, we’ll take a step back, re-evaluate, try a couple more things, and, BAM!, we got us a keeper. Waves. Not teleology.
And I guess that’s the nut, right there. An unfortunate amount of thought by revolutionaries in the modern age is bent toward the idea that what they are doing, they are doing as a very final form. What this creates is the idea that this revolution means to put itself on an entirely different track from the last regime. Now, the unfortunate problem with this is, of course, that they are wrong. There is only one historical track. It moves around and around, unceasingly. I guess this is where historical dialectical materialism really comes to the fore and lets us know that the reason for its importance lies in the fact that its only purpose is to use the things we cannot change to throw the state of history into an entirely new track: communism.
There is no denying the slightly utopian aspect of communism; however, for those who understand it, sacrifice is actually built right in to the structure, and with the world community working together to make everybody better, it is difficult to say that this is not the ideal. If it were possible, we ought to have it. If it were possible.
I feel I’ve diverted every so slightly…and yet not. At any rate, I’m beginning to think of climate change. When does the earth’s climate change? It changes most drastically when we are nearer or farther from the sun in our revolution. That, generally, creates pretty drastic climate changes for the entire world—the equatorial regions excepted—and produces an extraordinarily wide variety of environmental changes. And good god the variety of storms they produce (I guess that’s a pretty good metaphor for what the mini-revolutions are like: storms of various strengths: April shower, thunderstorm, tropical storm, hurricane, tornado, etc).
What communism is talking about is impossible, and that is unfortunate. It is talking about permanent, variable climate change. How can something be permanent and variable? It has to exist in two states, first of all, like the world and the people on it. The world, for all intents and purposes, is permanent. We could kill the goddamn thing, and it would still continue on its maniacal track around the sun. It would just be a big dead universal weight, but it would continue. And yes, the sun will eventually explode, but it will take far longer for it to happen than anybody can imagine. I mean we can put a number on it, life five billion years, but that means earth is currently halfway through its life expectancy. I guess when the universe gives birth, its offspring have a ten million year life expectancy, and that’s comforting in a lot of ways.
At any rate, this permanent variability and its ability to exist simultaneously in two seemingly contradictory states is the key to communism: it takes history, the present, and the future into all accounts it needs to settle. It would move all the world a permanently variable position one step closer to perfection.
Revolution, therefore, is not movement within the realm of history, but movement outside of history. Being completely unprecedented. There are unprecedented people who have had this revolutionary effect on history. The ideas are permanently ingrained, the state of them are variable. It is kind of problematic in that we have seen how an individual can step outside of history and affect all times (PPF) because we have also seen how it would be beyond impossible that an entire world of people could take the same track. (Camel through the eye of a needle, anyone?) Groups can break the bonds of history, somewhat, but the harsh reality of things is that to move the entire world to a state of mind where everything needs to be done for the good of everybody else is impossible and impractical.
It is rather disheartening to think that the best we can do is throw pebbles at the revolutionary track of history once we’ve stepped outside it, but I guess the goal is to build your strength so that you can throw boulders at it in the hopes that it will create such a block that the flow will be permanently and variably carving new tracks of history. But we do have to step outside in order to aim.
I plan to have an effect on history. I am in the middle of a revolution right now. All my will is bent on breaking the cycle and stepping outside. I guess I’m not even worried about the idea that I am twenty-four years old and have no reason to believe I will be successful in my quest. It is with an eye to the past and an eye to the future while taking the present into account that I make my way through my existence. I am practicing right now. I am working on being permanently variable. I am working on being X: everything and nothing, what you want and what you don’t want, anger inducing and pacifying. I’m practicing for the big games. And every revolution there is a new season, a new opportunity to win the championship, a new opportunity to throw boulders into the ditch carved by inappropriate understood historical revolution.
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