wrong. My body is telling me so. My very corporal reality is suddenly shoved, full force, into my face and I am made to inhale its noxious stink. The biggest bummer about being a human is, after all, our physical presence: the life of the body versus the life of the mind.
It’s very early morning now. I went to bed a scant couple of hours ago, but my body—as a result of illness—has awakened me. I tend to get more work done in the quiet hours of morning than any other time of the day, and I would venture to guess that this is because mornings are always reflective for me. It is at once rejuvenation and decay. Wherever the idea came from that “a new day is here” is a positive thing, I can’t say; however, the way I understand it: the sun awakens life, life happens every day, and every day has its own life. It is a birth in a way, but it is also (and at arguably a more personal level), we are all taking one tiny step closer to the end.
Where does that leave us? It’s a question in my mind that goes back to the question of what is innate in humanity. Are the good of humanity and the continuation of the species more important than the continuation of the individual? Is that built in? Can we say that it really all goes back to the biological necessity of growth happening as a result of decay? Topsoil is millions and millions of years of decay, and rot, and…fertilizer. The decay of the past feeds the present that grows to decay for the future.
Somewhere along the line, though, I think we figured this out. We figured out that one thing we absolutely can do nothing about is the ending of our personal existence. This basically split the camp into two distinct factions. First, the group saying, “Well, it’s clear that everybody dies, and that’s not good enough. Surely there’s more. We enjoy living so much that we’ll sacrifice the life we know for a life we are going to hope into existence.” Let’s call them the eternity team. How this works is that we are beings with a soul that we can know exists, and that we can use to talk to the higher being that is in control of our souls and what happens to them in the end. Free will aside, your god of choice is in control because he (or she) laid down the rules for you to live by. If you don’t live by his or her rules, then you lose the game. That’s control. At any rate, if you do play by the rules, your soul (which is apparently connected to your singular conscious self) will be moved to a place where time does not exist—at least in an earthly, logical, rational sense.
The other group would be saying, “Well, it’s clear that everybody dies, and that’s not good enough. I guess we’ll have to take the time we can be aware of and attempt to truly do something with it. Let’s call them the present team. It is an active acceptance of our present reality as the one we can choose to know completely about. Our bodies are holding us down. They are a constant reminder to us that one day we will not be able to actively accept the present reality, but the mind can make it’s mark. It’s the only way to ensure that your time on this world was not ill spent: actively engage in life. Enjoy the physical pleasures of the body while you can. You won’t be able to in a little while. Question daily why you are doing what you’re doing. You won’t be able to question soon. Invent the wildest adventures to go on. You won’t be capable of adventure soon. Make your mind your mark that sparks decay for growth. Break down with questions, and suddenly we’re back to the Greeks.
Which brings up another question: is our decay also our growth? Or, alternatively, is our growth our decay? We clearly haven’t gotten much past the questions of the ancients. Socrates, Plato, Lao Tzu, Socrates. These men were all asking similar, if not more difficult, questions over two thousand years ago. It is almost as if we were locked in a considerable struggle to retain the life of the mind. Some would say that based on how we still study these seminal texts in quest of questions that we are only trying to keep pace with the Greeks, but that their understanding of existence was far advanced from ours. Yet, we look around at ourselves, our fifty-six inch flat panel high definition television sets, our iPhones, our word processing programs, our music, our art, our buildings, our telecommunication networks, our indestructible materials, our destructive materials, our stand-up MRI chambers, our Green automobiles, our organic food, our food production techniques, our war making techniques, our Vitamin Water, our Emergen-C, and we call it progress.
We are simultaneously growing and decaying?
I think I’ve managed to confuse myself.
Maybe the best we can do is manage to confuse ourselves every day, develop the mind a little bit, and balance out the decay that happens in that day. Balance, and we’re back to the way of the Tao.
Since the world points up beauty as such,
There is ugliness too,
If goodness is taken as goodness,
Wickedness enters as well.
For is and is-not come together;
Hard and easy are complementary;
Long and short are relative;
High and low are comparative;
Pitch and sound make harmony;
Before and after are a sequence. -- The Way of Life, Lao-tzu
Growth and decay are married. The principle of non-action has nothing to do with not doing anything. It’s more about not making mental decision pre-emptively and developing the mind to be capable of making the right decision. The way of the Tao is active non-action. That’s what’s wrong I guess: I don’t get it, but I get it. I’m not supposed to get it am I? That’s good because I don’t get it. But it sucks because I don’t get it.
In the quiet hours of the morning a great violence is being done to my head. It is growing and decaying simultaneously. It is confused and learning to study its confusion.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
What's It Mean To Be
Free? Damn I hate questions. The questions answered with a simple “Yes” or “No,” unfortunately, do me absolutely no good—those are the questions we tend to gloss over anyway. There is very little to be gained from a question with a dichotomous answer. Even if one were to think in terms of mathematics, it is not so much that x=y, but WHY x=y that matters. Qualifications, I think it is, that drive a good question. Think of them as proofs, reasons, the becauses, the whatevers, and it is still all of these things that help us understand what a questions means.
To live as we please, pursuit of happiness and whatnot, is that freedom? Is freedom the same as being free? Can an absolute price be placed on freedom? Can freedom be determined by how much sass and backtalk we give to the authorities? Is he who’s free, he who can unfalteringly, unwaveringly stand behind his principles? Does freedom come at a price, or is the price already paid? Why is it that the people who oftentimes claim to be most free, most often fall into line with their pre-labeled identities? What is determined by freedom?
It frustrates me sometimes to ponder the intricacies of questions like these, if only because my head gets locked into abstractions and endless chains of referendums that send me spiraling into unconscionable depths of human pondering. We all have minds of imbalance, ranging from the hyper sexual nature of some to the hyper violent of others and the hyper narcissistic of most others. Perhaps it is precisely the thing we think allows this kind of thing that most hampers its most intense expressions.
Even the Beatles weren’t free. For all their wealth and money and fame, they were locked into a mode wherein they were only allowed to produce sometimes incomprehensible music for the masses. That kind of pressure produces results, it is true; however, it is not the kind of results that come from complete freedom. It is the results of adrenaline and the expectation to produce. One of the greatest things that ever happened was the break-up of the Beatles. Some of the greatest acts of freedom are the unfathomable acts of superhuman beings imposing their free will on the unwilling.
Do you see how difficult it can get? When a great act of freedom is also a great act of evil, it does not cease to be a great act, it only has that qualifier “evil”—I guess the same could go for a great act of selfishness. It is in this equation that we see how greatness is not altogether equivalent to good and bad, and thus all other associated with a generally determined qualifier of “good” or “bad” are called into question.
Is freedom really preferable to having somebody’s will imposed upon us? When we allow the human mind to sink to the depths of it’s depravity—which is at some level sanctioned by the term freedom—then we are asking to have the most heinous acts occur. Think of television. The most heinous acts are perpetrated on the minds of your average American by exposing it to the imposed will of some television executive trying to make his (or her) mark on the world. And it is by the same token that the imposed will of one is also their illustration of their better handle on freedom than you. They can do whatever the hell they want, and throw explosions at your face until you understand explosions, before you realize that the will you think of as your own is, in fact, not.
What are you doing? Are you actively involved in imposing your will, or are you passively accepting the will of others? We wind up doing a little bit of giving and taking I suppose. We accept the will of some—most often our parents I think—and impose our will on others, but even that seems to be an incredible cop out. “Yeah, I impossible my will on that SOB the other day,” but the next day there’s nothing to do but cry at my unwilling but unconditional surrender to some other’s will. The moment you lose everything, is the moment you gain something?
There is no such thing as passive freedom. One cannot sit idly on the sidelines of the freedom game and wait passively for the coach to give him the nod. When you have no friends you are free to do what you will with your time. When you have friends you are free to do what you will with their time. It seems slightly incongruous, doesn’t it, that freedom is possible in any situation. It is occurring to me that freedom is a complete farce and possible in any situation one can imagine—yes, even in captivity, incarceration, or all other forms of detention. Freedom is malleable, you see.
Birds fly because of their instinct to forage and gather food, a mate, and young. They are slaves to their desires. Extinguish desires may well be the route to a genuine experience of the world. Then again, to desire is perhaps the most natural thing on the planet. We desire to eat. We desire to love. We desire to copulate. We desire. Those who don’t desire spend their days desiring to not desire. Language has the ability to mean everything and nothing all at once.
Is it possible to say something and nothing?
To live as we please, pursuit of happiness and whatnot, is that freedom? Is freedom the same as being free? Can an absolute price be placed on freedom? Can freedom be determined by how much sass and backtalk we give to the authorities? Is he who’s free, he who can unfalteringly, unwaveringly stand behind his principles? Does freedom come at a price, or is the price already paid? Why is it that the people who oftentimes claim to be most free, most often fall into line with their pre-labeled identities? What is determined by freedom?
It frustrates me sometimes to ponder the intricacies of questions like these, if only because my head gets locked into abstractions and endless chains of referendums that send me spiraling into unconscionable depths of human pondering. We all have minds of imbalance, ranging from the hyper sexual nature of some to the hyper violent of others and the hyper narcissistic of most others. Perhaps it is precisely the thing we think allows this kind of thing that most hampers its most intense expressions.
Even the Beatles weren’t free. For all their wealth and money and fame, they were locked into a mode wherein they were only allowed to produce sometimes incomprehensible music for the masses. That kind of pressure produces results, it is true; however, it is not the kind of results that come from complete freedom. It is the results of adrenaline and the expectation to produce. One of the greatest things that ever happened was the break-up of the Beatles. Some of the greatest acts of freedom are the unfathomable acts of superhuman beings imposing their free will on the unwilling.
Do you see how difficult it can get? When a great act of freedom is also a great act of evil, it does not cease to be a great act, it only has that qualifier “evil”—I guess the same could go for a great act of selfishness. It is in this equation that we see how greatness is not altogether equivalent to good and bad, and thus all other associated with a generally determined qualifier of “good” or “bad” are called into question.
Is freedom really preferable to having somebody’s will imposed upon us? When we allow the human mind to sink to the depths of it’s depravity—which is at some level sanctioned by the term freedom—then we are asking to have the most heinous acts occur. Think of television. The most heinous acts are perpetrated on the minds of your average American by exposing it to the imposed will of some television executive trying to make his (or her) mark on the world. And it is by the same token that the imposed will of one is also their illustration of their better handle on freedom than you. They can do whatever the hell they want, and throw explosions at your face until you understand explosions, before you realize that the will you think of as your own is, in fact, not.
What are you doing? Are you actively involved in imposing your will, or are you passively accepting the will of others? We wind up doing a little bit of giving and taking I suppose. We accept the will of some—most often our parents I think—and impose our will on others, but even that seems to be an incredible cop out. “Yeah, I impossible my will on that SOB the other day,” but the next day there’s nothing to do but cry at my unwilling but unconditional surrender to some other’s will. The moment you lose everything, is the moment you gain something?
There is no such thing as passive freedom. One cannot sit idly on the sidelines of the freedom game and wait passively for the coach to give him the nod. When you have no friends you are free to do what you will with your time. When you have friends you are free to do what you will with their time. It seems slightly incongruous, doesn’t it, that freedom is possible in any situation. It is occurring to me that freedom is a complete farce and possible in any situation one can imagine—yes, even in captivity, incarceration, or all other forms of detention. Freedom is malleable, you see.
Birds fly because of their instinct to forage and gather food, a mate, and young. They are slaves to their desires. Extinguish desires may well be the route to a genuine experience of the world. Then again, to desire is perhaps the most natural thing on the planet. We desire to eat. We desire to love. We desire to copulate. We desire. Those who don’t desire spend their days desiring to not desire. Language has the ability to mean everything and nothing all at once.
Is it possible to say something and nothing?
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Creaking fingers
crawl across the keyboard. It feels almost as if there is a literal layer of rust surrounding my joints that needs to be worked off, scoured and cleaned before any kind of acceptable motion could occur. Clearly nothing good will come of this. My body is in revolt against my mind. “So much things to say,” it’s been said, but how can one say things if one is unable to create the words.
To struggle is sometimes more human than to celebrate.
Good aphorisms are like mountaintops, and the shortest walk between mountaintops would be a straight line…but for that one would need very long legs. My legs are short, but in my dreams they are long.
In my dreams my fingers don’t creak. They are well lubricated and consistently full of wisdom. In my dreams I don’t have arthritic hands. Older does not always equate to wiser. No matter how old my soul seems to be, wisdom comes hard, as if the wisdom of a new age leaps from mountain range to mountain range. Staring across great chasms of space is a difficult way to understand the world.
Great lives are like mountain ranges: most of life consists of the pass. “The son of the symbol-maker must die!” How true…
Be as dead to mankind as mankind is to you. I think I am incapable of originality. Or perhaps, more accurately, the originality has been sucked out of me. The only time I have any hope of originality is putting the pen on the page, but even then I am trapped. I am trapped by language. Put words together in a way that they have never been put together before. To you intrepid travelers in the world of the word, I bid you good luck. It is my guess, though, that perhaps you will find your fingers creaking with age and arthritis before you manage it. Even then, you might find your bowels rotting and a view of yourself from a spiritual plane having never written an original word in your life.
I move through phases, you see. Post-post Stucturalist Marxism Reactionismist. Modernism. Dadaism. Fascism. Leibowitzism. But youth is funny with its fickleness. SoactualizedamI that I can foregotraditionallanguage barriers like spaces and punctuation
Or
Even
Linebreaksinpages.
Un-something or other I something or other when I’m wandering somewhere around the illegitimate prince’s kingdom. The brain garbage seems to spew forth from cracks in the groaning joints:
But one must often work through the evil to harness the good. He who moves for right can come to no harm in a place where packs of wild dogs roam. We’re talking about killing gods here, because in a place where intent is the only rule, actions can be brutal.
Maybe a man can learn to decode the symbols of existence. What does it mean that almost all things work out mathematically, artistically, scientifically, historically, sociologically, statistically, and any other allys you can think of. Why does it work out? They all make a perfect kind of sense.
It’s not the past, as you may have believed, but the future. We are living in the future. It is easy to live in the past, for it is that which we understand. We moved through it, learned from it, and continue to learn from it. It is easy to live in the future, for it is that which we can plan for. We know what’s possible and think we can keep away harm. It is very difficult to live in the present. It moves around too much.
And yet it is in this time that our realities are at their most realistic real. Now! My fingers creak. Now! I feel the pain. Now! I move into the future. Now! I move into the past. Now! I seek a place of no pain. Now! I must be my most conscious. For there to be a future, I must make it through the present. To learn all I can from the past, I must live long enough to make a past.
“Slime monsters are eating my brain!” I cry. But pleasure works the same way.
We remember pleasures which give us something to look forward to. But can you enjoy the moment of pleasure that lasts only the moment? Can you enjoy the moments that will not happen again? Can you enjoy the moments that will never happen?
“A thousand attractive women want to have sex with me and pleasure me physically, financially, orally, and eternally.”
And maybe my fingers creak from all the scratching at doors to places I oughtn’t to be. The point of origin becomes the point of return.
Creak…
To struggle is sometimes more human than to celebrate.
Good aphorisms are like mountaintops, and the shortest walk between mountaintops would be a straight line…but for that one would need very long legs. My legs are short, but in my dreams they are long.
In my dreams my fingers don’t creak. They are well lubricated and consistently full of wisdom. In my dreams I don’t have arthritic hands. Older does not always equate to wiser. No matter how old my soul seems to be, wisdom comes hard, as if the wisdom of a new age leaps from mountain range to mountain range. Staring across great chasms of space is a difficult way to understand the world.
Great lives are like mountain ranges: most of life consists of the pass. “The son of the symbol-maker must die!” How true…
Be as dead to mankind as mankind is to you. I think I am incapable of originality. Or perhaps, more accurately, the originality has been sucked out of me. The only time I have any hope of originality is putting the pen on the page, but even then I am trapped. I am trapped by language. Put words together in a way that they have never been put together before. To you intrepid travelers in the world of the word, I bid you good luck. It is my guess, though, that perhaps you will find your fingers creaking with age and arthritis before you manage it. Even then, you might find your bowels rotting and a view of yourself from a spiritual plane having never written an original word in your life.
I move through phases, you see. Post-post Stucturalist Marxism Reactionismist. Modernism. Dadaism. Fascism. Leibowitzism. But youth is funny with its fickleness. SoactualizedamI that I can foregotraditionallanguage barriers like spaces and punctuation
Or
Even
Linebreaksinpages.
Un-something or other I something or other when I’m wandering somewhere around the illegitimate prince’s kingdom. The brain garbage seems to spew forth from cracks in the groaning joints:
But one must often work through the evil to harness the good. He who moves for right can come to no harm in a place where packs of wild dogs roam. We’re talking about killing gods here, because in a place where intent is the only rule, actions can be brutal.
Maybe a man can learn to decode the symbols of existence. What does it mean that almost all things work out mathematically, artistically, scientifically, historically, sociologically, statistically, and any other allys you can think of. Why does it work out? They all make a perfect kind of sense.
It’s not the past, as you may have believed, but the future. We are living in the future. It is easy to live in the past, for it is that which we understand. We moved through it, learned from it, and continue to learn from it. It is easy to live in the future, for it is that which we can plan for. We know what’s possible and think we can keep away harm. It is very difficult to live in the present. It moves around too much.
And yet it is in this time that our realities are at their most realistic real. Now! My fingers creak. Now! I feel the pain. Now! I move into the future. Now! I move into the past. Now! I seek a place of no pain. Now! I must be my most conscious. For there to be a future, I must make it through the present. To learn all I can from the past, I must live long enough to make a past.
“Slime monsters are eating my brain!” I cry. But pleasure works the same way.
We remember pleasures which give us something to look forward to. But can you enjoy the moment of pleasure that lasts only the moment? Can you enjoy the moments that will not happen again? Can you enjoy the moments that will never happen?
“A thousand attractive women want to have sex with me and pleasure me physically, financially, orally, and eternally.”
And maybe my fingers creak from all the scratching at doors to places I oughtn’t to be. The point of origin becomes the point of return.
Creak…
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Welcome, My Pathetic
fallacy. It’s funny the way life gives us ample opportunity to understand its workings, and yet our ability to understand still falls short of the mark. The rain is coming down outside, falling in gentle sheets against the window. The sun has hidden its rays behind a wall of thunderhead clouds. People scamper to get out of the wet, and yet get pelted no matter what. Something in my head grays over, to match the grayness of the air. But it’s a busy grayness, not to be confused with fog. The rain is moving, the people are moving, the world is still moving: in a fog, all seems to stand still. This is locomotive grayness, a busy black-biled melancholia.
It’s not really raining though. As a matter of fact, the sun is warming my front porch up with its gentle rays and I watch people linger as they stroll—lingering together in the sunlight. Puffy clouds do their best to take up space in the sky, but their efforts are futile, so forceful is the gentle power of the sun—acting like a benevolent ruler, responding with kindness instead of aggression, wisdom instead of war, empathy instead of ignorance. You get to see all the colors in the world when the sunlight hits the street just right, and the air is comfortable enough to feel like you’re swimming in a luxurious lake in the middle of summer.
What’s interesting here is that they are both equally valid; meanwhile, they are both equally false. Their validity and truthfulness arise from their contemplation of a feeling. As a description of a metaphorically rainy mind, the first is completely valid, and if you are so happy the sun would be out even if it were raining, the second makes perfect sense. And yet, their falseness rings with the plain fact that I am sitting in my room and I have very thick curtains covering the window and I have no idea what the weather is outside. Fact and fiction are rolled into one.
It’s an unreal reality. This is probably one of the greatest mysteries of existence. The reality of our existence is, for the most part, undeniable, and the unreality of our experiences, of our emotions and the depth of effect these seem to have is almost incomprehensible. Do we know what love feels like? Yes and no. Do we know pain? Yes and no. Would we argue against the nos? Yes, but I know my defintion, and he knows his, and she hers, and she hers, and ad infinitum. I know my pain and you know yours. They are the same categorically, but different in reality. Unreal reality.
What’s funny is what lies beneath: a seeming universality of type of definition. Details differentiate specificity, but global concerns congeal. Studying history reveals universality of types. In the present we understand mainly the current moment, and its truth is based largely on feel. Future truth is best aided by the education of others to respect the past, present, and future, and search for understanding of the seemingly universal. The pathetic fallacy of me? My own sympathetic myth? My own empathetic erroneous belief? Love is out there begging to be understood…so real. But it’s possible to say that love is not real. Love is an idea about a feeling…a rather preposterous quagmire.
But bugger all that…I guess I’m an old romantic asshole at heart…and I really like the sunshine.
It’s not really raining though. As a matter of fact, the sun is warming my front porch up with its gentle rays and I watch people linger as they stroll—lingering together in the sunlight. Puffy clouds do their best to take up space in the sky, but their efforts are futile, so forceful is the gentle power of the sun—acting like a benevolent ruler, responding with kindness instead of aggression, wisdom instead of war, empathy instead of ignorance. You get to see all the colors in the world when the sunlight hits the street just right, and the air is comfortable enough to feel like you’re swimming in a luxurious lake in the middle of summer.
What’s interesting here is that they are both equally valid; meanwhile, they are both equally false. Their validity and truthfulness arise from their contemplation of a feeling. As a description of a metaphorically rainy mind, the first is completely valid, and if you are so happy the sun would be out even if it were raining, the second makes perfect sense. And yet, their falseness rings with the plain fact that I am sitting in my room and I have very thick curtains covering the window and I have no idea what the weather is outside. Fact and fiction are rolled into one.
It’s an unreal reality. This is probably one of the greatest mysteries of existence. The reality of our existence is, for the most part, undeniable, and the unreality of our experiences, of our emotions and the depth of effect these seem to have is almost incomprehensible. Do we know what love feels like? Yes and no. Do we know pain? Yes and no. Would we argue against the nos? Yes, but I know my defintion, and he knows his, and she hers, and she hers, and ad infinitum. I know my pain and you know yours. They are the same categorically, but different in reality. Unreal reality.
What’s funny is what lies beneath: a seeming universality of type of definition. Details differentiate specificity, but global concerns congeal. Studying history reveals universality of types. In the present we understand mainly the current moment, and its truth is based largely on feel. Future truth is best aided by the education of others to respect the past, present, and future, and search for understanding of the seemingly universal. The pathetic fallacy of me? My own sympathetic myth? My own empathetic erroneous belief? Love is out there begging to be understood…so real. But it’s possible to say that love is not real. Love is an idea about a feeling…a rather preposterous quagmire.
But bugger all that…I guess I’m an old romantic asshole at heart…and I really like the sunshine.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Learning to Read
me. I think it’s fair to assume that we all would like to think that if there is anybody who knows us as well as ourselves, then we haven’t met them…and that would be really awkward. In fact, whether we realize it or not, we all tend to think of ourselves as a tiny Atlas holding our world. This is probably because it is (by and large) a fairly well regulated truth that it all comes back to the “I”—survive and reproduce is all that comes standard. All that being said, it is rather unsettling when we shift the weight of our world from the back, set it on the ground, and take a long hard look at it. As it turns out, we have to learn to read our world (especially if we haven’t seen it in a while).
I can see a little bit of beauty in it. Walnut trees are growing up big and strong. The scent of massive fields of grass fills my lungs with the delicious flavor of dirt. The pungent sound of music fills the atmosphere with a measured beat. And if I hold it just right, it spins so nicely.
But there is pain. Ocean-like bodies of tears cover the surface. Deep crags criss-cross its surface tearing trails of uncomfortable time across the land. In true pathetic fallacy fashion, thunderheads crop up at the head of cold fronts and send life scampering for cover from the coming storm.
Scarier than the pain, and more blissful than the pleasure, is the fact that I have only recently seen these things and accepted them for what they are. You see, when you carry your world on your back, you wind up making it a burden and it starts to weigh you down. When you place your world in front of you and learn to read in Braille, you learn to read you. Right now I’m trying to touch the whole surface and read in every language I have.
When I say things, they mean two things: what I meant and what is conveyed. Sometimes I mean more than one thing, and what comes of the significance of adding a third layer?
I am reading between the lines of my world that I am a somewhat confusing character. Not overly complicated, you understand, but somewhat confusing nonetheless. Confusing because, perhaps, I am confused, and one of the most confusing things on the face of my planet is the nature of love. I have pondered and cogitated and wandered into fields of memory in pursuit of the idea of love, and as I delve deeper into its unexplored regions, I find the more I learn the more confused I get—sometimes I feel dyslexic.
Adore.
In the last four weeks I’ve added bulk to my oceans, taken cover from the storms, and ripped the surface of my planet apart. But I’ve seen the sun, climbed the walnut trees, filled my lungs with the flavor of dirt, and listened to the music on the winds. My world is going through a massive shift. A changeover. They now say ice ages can come on strong and fast, and violent atmospheric shifts can happen overnight.
I can see a little bit of beauty in it. Walnut trees are growing up big and strong. The scent of massive fields of grass fills my lungs with the delicious flavor of dirt. The pungent sound of music fills the atmosphere with a measured beat. And if I hold it just right, it spins so nicely.
But there is pain. Ocean-like bodies of tears cover the surface. Deep crags criss-cross its surface tearing trails of uncomfortable time across the land. In true pathetic fallacy fashion, thunderheads crop up at the head of cold fronts and send life scampering for cover from the coming storm.
Scarier than the pain, and more blissful than the pleasure, is the fact that I have only recently seen these things and accepted them for what they are. You see, when you carry your world on your back, you wind up making it a burden and it starts to weigh you down. When you place your world in front of you and learn to read in Braille, you learn to read you. Right now I’m trying to touch the whole surface and read in every language I have.
When I say things, they mean two things: what I meant and what is conveyed. Sometimes I mean more than one thing, and what comes of the significance of adding a third layer?
I am reading between the lines of my world that I am a somewhat confusing character. Not overly complicated, you understand, but somewhat confusing nonetheless. Confusing because, perhaps, I am confused, and one of the most confusing things on the face of my planet is the nature of love. I have pondered and cogitated and wandered into fields of memory in pursuit of the idea of love, and as I delve deeper into its unexplored regions, I find the more I learn the more confused I get—sometimes I feel dyslexic.
Adore.
In the last four weeks I’ve added bulk to my oceans, taken cover from the storms, and ripped the surface of my planet apart. But I’ve seen the sun, climbed the walnut trees, filled my lungs with the flavor of dirt, and listened to the music on the winds. My world is going through a massive shift. A changeover. They now say ice ages can come on strong and fast, and violent atmospheric shifts can happen overnight.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Metaphysical
masturbation. Rather more specifically: the self-pleasure of investigating and attempting to define the things beyond the physical world. A book sits atop a stack of other books on my desk. It is a specific book: Marxism and the Call of the Future by Bob Avakian and Bill Martin. It can be described: conversations on ethics, history, and politics. It has weight. It has length and breadth. It is a slightly burnt orange cover with a red dot in the center, covered by a painting: suprematist composition #56 by Kazimir Malevich. It is 314 pages. It is a series of planned conversations between the two authors. It was printed by the Open Court Publishing Company of Chicago and La Salle, Illinois. It’s about the new bend to Neo-Marxist critical theory based mostly on Mao. The Library of Congress categorizes it as being about: socialism, socialist ethics, revolutions, and history. But the question is: what does it mean?
The blessing and the curse of metaphysical inquiry is that it is individual as well as universal. Contained within the physical realm are laws by which all “things” must abide: the law of falling bodies, inertia, the law of conservation of mass, the law of conversation of energy, and a whole host of others. Outside the physical realm, things are both individual and universal. It becomes each individual’s personal journey to attempt to define the meaning of his or her own existence. This is a slightly different take on “What is the meaning of life?” because it takes the focus off of meaning and places on the attempt to define—effectively making it active, where it had been passive before.
It seems almost inconsequential, doesn’t it? What is the difference after all between asking somebody what the meaning of life is, and attempting to define the meaning of life? Did you see it? Did you catch the subtle shift? When that particular question (“What is the meaning of life?”) is asked, the questioner is immediately asking their interlocutor for and outsiders perspective on the definition of “what it means to be me.” Let’s say Bill and Dave are chatting away, sitting at a high-top, somewhere off of 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, and Dave says to Bill, “What’s the meaning of life?” While what Bill says will no doubt be of some interest, may even involve caring or loving, and might be extremely witty, it will not the meaning of life. It is the meaning of HIS life.
That is where metaphysics turns the screw and gets unique, because while it is an individual’s meaning of his life, it is a universal question, and that’s where the ATTEMPT to define really comes into play. While some of what Bill says might be amalgamated into the collective knowledge about existence that Dave has, it is the asking of the question that is even more important, because it is his action in attempt to understand the universal question. One of the things that Avakian and Martin observe is that one of the most misunderstood aspect of Neo-Marxist theory is the revolution is not the answer, it is the question, and answers are to be found in the aftermath. Things suck. How about a revolution? Now, what did we learn from our revolution. The revolution, as an active entity, is the quest to find meaning (asking the question) without being passively told what meaning might be (listening to the answer).
By no means does this privilege one to the other. Oftentimes the answer is incredibly helpful for the understanding of existence, and anytime answers are excavated from somebody else’s experience, there is much value. However, one cannot find answers, one cannot get answers, one cannot inch closer to understanding without the inquiry.
If I ask more questions I will be doing nothing more than sifting through more rocks in search of the elusive fossil. The more I sift, the more I will find.
Sift on unceasingly.
The blessing and the curse of metaphysical inquiry is that it is individual as well as universal. Contained within the physical realm are laws by which all “things” must abide: the law of falling bodies, inertia, the law of conservation of mass, the law of conversation of energy, and a whole host of others. Outside the physical realm, things are both individual and universal. It becomes each individual’s personal journey to attempt to define the meaning of his or her own existence. This is a slightly different take on “What is the meaning of life?” because it takes the focus off of meaning and places on the attempt to define—effectively making it active, where it had been passive before.
It seems almost inconsequential, doesn’t it? What is the difference after all between asking somebody what the meaning of life is, and attempting to define the meaning of life? Did you see it? Did you catch the subtle shift? When that particular question (“What is the meaning of life?”) is asked, the questioner is immediately asking their interlocutor for and outsiders perspective on the definition of “what it means to be me.” Let’s say Bill and Dave are chatting away, sitting at a high-top, somewhere off of 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, and Dave says to Bill, “What’s the meaning of life?” While what Bill says will no doubt be of some interest, may even involve caring or loving, and might be extremely witty, it will not the meaning of life. It is the meaning of HIS life.
That is where metaphysics turns the screw and gets unique, because while it is an individual’s meaning of his life, it is a universal question, and that’s where the ATTEMPT to define really comes into play. While some of what Bill says might be amalgamated into the collective knowledge about existence that Dave has, it is the asking of the question that is even more important, because it is his action in attempt to understand the universal question. One of the things that Avakian and Martin observe is that one of the most misunderstood aspect of Neo-Marxist theory is the revolution is not the answer, it is the question, and answers are to be found in the aftermath. Things suck. How about a revolution? Now, what did we learn from our revolution. The revolution, as an active entity, is the quest to find meaning (asking the question) without being passively told what meaning might be (listening to the answer).
By no means does this privilege one to the other. Oftentimes the answer is incredibly helpful for the understanding of existence, and anytime answers are excavated from somebody else’s experience, there is much value. However, one cannot find answers, one cannot get answers, one cannot inch closer to understanding without the inquiry.
If I ask more questions I will be doing nothing more than sifting through more rocks in search of the elusive fossil. The more I sift, the more I will find.
Sift on unceasingly.
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