The Rules Are Changing.

Change is an absolutely essential part of our being. If we didn’t change from the time we were children, where would we be? I think that the physical changes we go through are some kind of manifestation, or symptom if you will, of the change going on inside our heads—or maybe the change that ought to be going on inside our heads.

Most of ancient Greek thought, or at least my understanding of it—which is admittedly only limited, deals with the goal of life and being pretty sure that the goal of life is happiness. I think they are right, because everything we do, we do because we want something (and we’re leaving motives entirely out of the equation for the time being): we wash the windshield at the gas station because we want a clean windshield, we do the piled-up dishes because we want the dishes cleaned, we believe because we want to believe. Physical reactions reveal (at their most basic) some kind of desire, and (at their most complex) subconscious desires. For example, you might be cleaning the windshield because you want a clean windshield, but you might be cleaning the windshield because somewhere inside you, you realize that this is mom’s car and you’ve been riding it like a bucking bronco and the good guy thing to do is give it back to her in better condition than she gave it to you, and so you find yourself scrubbing the windshield. You might be doing the dishes because you want clean dishes, but you also might be doing them because you know how hard your spouse works and you haven’t done this little chore for him/her in a long time because he/she is usually the one that does them and so you find yourself doing the dishes. You might be believing because you want to believe, but, then again, you might be believing because there is something unfulfilled in you about how your own father raised you and you look to another father—“Our father’s are our models for God” (a quote which is best-known from the movie Fight Club—based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk who once did a reading with one of my professor’s from St. John’s University and Irvine Welsh)—and so you find yourself believing.

I guess the key difference between actions that we are performing to fulfill conscious desires are actions that we move through, and actions that we are performing to fulfill subconscious desires are actions that we find ourselves doing—which is a pretty huge difference. I find myself moving to Korea pretty soon. I certainly want something, but what is it? And, for that matter, why want it?

One of the things that has just simply struck me as I sit click clickety click clicking away here is that by accepting the subconscious as a reality, I am opening myself to a belief—however it might manifest itself—in some kind of pschyoanalysis (although I think it’s more like cultural criticism through an understanding of a cultural unconscious which is probably more Jungian than Freudian in its origin). At any rate, I guess I give the brain enough credit to, first of all, be able to keep some things from us.

All you really have to do is look at the processes of the body. You don’t have to think about how you’re defecating, and you don’t have to think about how to keep your heart pumping, and you don’t have to think about how to keep your legs moving, they really just continue to do their thing. The subconscious desires controlling all of those things can be accessed, though if you think about all the mystics out there that can control their heart rate or stretch their ligaments and tendons beyond all comprehension. It is a much taller order to get in touch with the subconscious. Given all that then, the unconscious sort of sits out their as this thing we can only ever poke at, and the best we can do is attempt to study it through culture and art—which is probably why these things are so important.

I find myself going to Korea for reasons I can’t comprehend. It’s what I want to do, and I know that much, but I guess I don’t know why it’s what I want. For those of you who have been introduced to it, I have that classic “go complex” common among young men in relationships and escaped prisoners. At the end of “The Trial and Death of Socrates,” that “dirty” old man gives a speech about what we’ll call his “No Complex,” where he has a voice inside his head that never tells him yes, but clearly calls out no to him when something defies logic or when something contradicts virtue. I guess you could say that I have an alternate consonant complex, and my unfortunate issue is that I don’t have nearly so good a reason to go…usually.

Subconscious, psychoanalysis, and cultural theory aside, when you experience déjà vu in the matrix, it means they’ve changed something, and I’m experiencing the kind of déjà vu of mind that reminds me of times of incredible change and growth in my life. Anytime there is extensive change and growth, the rules change. When there is a revolution, there is sudden change—no matter who wins—and the rules are irrevocably altered. When there is pain, there is sudden change, and the rules of your life are mutated to avoid that kind of pain again at all costs. When there is pleasure, there is change, and the rules of your life are altered to how much of that pleasure is acceptable without being excessive. Anytime the rules (or perhaps we could say laws) are disambiguated, change becomes the rule.

All that being said, the rules of this page are going to change in response to the action I am undertaking. The format will change to a word I’ve been toying around with: travelblog. It might even be updated more frequently than it currently is (let’s say maybe once or twice a week as opposed to once every two weeks) and will start to contain elements other than simply the thoughts as transcribed thru words on the page. It might start to contain pictures, drawings, paintings, elements of the written Korean language, and anything else that I find interesting in my travels. The world has started to present itself to me in pictures as well as words and I’m thinking about attempting to convey those pictures somehow—even though my formal physical art training is…what’s that physics word…negligible.

But here we go, I suppose. I’ve been fascinated by eagles lately, and hawks, and all large birds of prey I suppose. The eagle and the hawk are, for all intents and purposes, the top of the food chain, and yet it is entirely possible for us to take a gun out there and knock a couple out of the sky without a problem. It’s kind of a perspective readjustment, and it still doesn’t manage to make the soaring hawk any less beautiful than it is when it’s hunting and maintaining its own food chain. I guess we’re moving into a place where I will be maintaining my own food chain, with the full knowledge that something else is out there controlling the predator population. Once I was a hunter, and I feel like the season is opening again.