Starcrossed

I put in your name
to find remnants of your fade
all of them dead ends
I suppose my slippery hands

Could have done better bringing you back.

Audio Stimulation Pt. 3

A cold, blue piano spreading its pathos under a crackling red hot guitar contemplation makes me think of night life in the city. Neon lights buzz under a cold, midnight blue.

Audio Stimulation Pt. 2

I love the fiery, metallic lightning that is an Octavia-distorted guitar lick. It makes me think of rage and passion and an erupting volcano.

Audio Stimulation Pt. 1

I love the cold cyclical whispering of reverb as it decays. It makes me see blues and it makes me think of Winter and contemplation.

Feelers

No one is a rock. It takes death to be a rock.

Good Facebook Status Messages

"I'm checking for bloody stools!"

"Just came down off of a great heroin trip!"

"Oops I think I ran someone over when I went to buy some cigarettes. It's okay though, I kept going."

"I ejaculated too early again. Oh well haha LMAO."

"My character is defined by automatic reminders and randomly generated suggestions and little images of drinks that I can send to people that they can't even drink woah hee hee hoh hah."

Notes In A Fog

Spider Eulogy from a Human Perspective: He died clinging to a wall above a toilet in a suburban household.

Spider Eulogy from a Spider Perspective: He died doing what he did best and believed in - climbing walls. Not even a severed leg kept him from scaling and building.

Dreams -

She stuck the black lab in the freezer because it keeps his behavior in line. I oppose the pragmatic approach to animals but I still eat hamburgers.

A green and red and yellow gleaming city of Rome on a sparkling ocean...as seen from the monolithic balconies of a concrete cruise ship.

Other thoughts -

From a pacifist: I do not possess, nor do I want the judgement necessary to condemn her for her downward spiraling life.

I have an extreme prejudice against imitation, though it does have its uses in the world.

Still In The Tumbler

I had one dream where I woke up within the dream, completely panicked that I couldn't tell reality from unreality. I began distinguishing certain things that seemed completely unreal, and then things where I might be conscious, such as instances of vibrant sensations such as taste. I then woke up from this dream completely disoriented, my head churning in all sorts of different directions. I realized that yes, this is the unmistakable feeling of the waking life. I am definitely conscious right now. It was troubling that I would try to separate reality with unreality within a dream though, when it all should be the musings of the unconscious.

This morning I awoke with the memory of a number of violent dreams. I was part of a video game in which I decided to commit murder with a .45. After the act, I decided I did not want this, but the police were on to me and I was running into impossible questions of logistics with moving the bodies with the help of my accomplice. I decided to turn back the clock. I would load a previous save where I didn't commit murder. Everyone will still be alive and the police will not want me for questioning. My accomplice liked the taste of blood, however. He threatened me with a gun. He killed an officer when she came to question us, and then I managed to kill him with a few shots to his chest. The wounds were gaping, and I saw that my weapon did terrible work. Everyone was now dead and I was disgusted by this. So I loaded a previous moment and it worked. All was better now.

I was also part of a squad and we were clearing out caves in some sort of Eastern city. Flashlights and shotguns and automatic rifles. There were also jets and motorcycles and men with flamethrowers. I plucked a man off a motorcycle and he turned into a toy that I threw into a bin.

I awoke not wanting to be part of these dreams. It is never a good sign when you are not happy with the dreams you have. Time to work on cognition in the conscious world.

I do have an internship now so I am not completely lost. But I still need money and I won't be payed for a month or so.

I worry that this is a nation of sadists and masochists and that the combination of these tendencies can only lead to degradation and destruction. We'll see I suppose.

I've grown tired of the Zoloft. But it has helped me greatly as well. Strange dichotomy. My health insurance is almost done, so I figure I'll get off the stuff slowly, and see what happens.

The Real Placeholder

I've got so many different substances in me constantly. I've got a Zoloft buildup, and now this antibiotic (the pills are huge) for this damnable bladder infection or prostate infection or whatever the hell it is. The doctor tells me not to drink caffeine, alcohol, or eat spicy foods, and I do all these things because they make life wonderful, especially at a time when emotions and thoughts are deadened. The bottle says not to take the pills within 6 hours of eating any kind of vitamin or iron or fortified product and I wonder how the fuck this is supposed to work seeing as how I'm supposed to take these things twice a day. I smoke grass and drink alcohol and I've got this damn head-killing Zoloft coursing through me all the time and I don't know what the hell I'm doing to myself. I tell the doctor I might need to get tested for STD's and we laugh about it and I pee in a cup and make an appointment for a blood test next week. I'm not sure what I would do if there's a positive.

The days are slipping past like velvet sheets and the job opportunities are slipping by just the same, and I still don't have one.

Life is strange, but it is made even stranger with these SSRI's, as I feel as a solid body with an observatory consciousness and that's it. I take up space, and I see, but barely feel or care about what grinds on. A spaceman underwater. Somewhat of an appropriate place but not quite, and nothing is really getting done. Whatever that means.

Eye of The Storm

I think I got tired of going crazy.

A Present To Me (Tightly and Beautifully Wrapped)

Brutal Legend is a succinct and humorous statement (in the form of myth) against everything that I find to be wrong with popular modern music.

Un Peu De Francais

Je suis l'etudiant de la philosophie terrifiant.

Witch's Moon

He would stand still and stare at something for minutes on end, including you. He would look right into your eyes and hold the gaze and freeze and it felt as if he were looking into your soul. He might have been. He was tweaking and drinking, so they said.

He would say something meaningful and two minutes later recite the same thing back and you would realize he was just repeating lyrics to a song. It was hard to tell if he knew what he was doing.

"Yeah, he's done everything. It is hard to tell whether he is just fried or incredibly dumb or both."

He wandered the streets like a child at 11 o clock at night talking to whoever he could find. In the suburbs. I didn't even think that happened in the suburbs.

Somewhere along the way he lost his working conception of social conventions. He got into trouble with dudes and chicks just the same, and got a thrashing time and time again.

He turned to me and stared straight into my eyes and his eyes were intense yet vacant. He said to me, "Look it's the witch's moon." And I looked and the moon was a crescent and it must have looked damned beautiful to him. He laughed and continued holding my gaze, and held out his hand and gave me props like I used to in junior high and laughed again. I laughed, maybe nervously, but I don't think he picked up on it. I found him remarkable and pitiful at the same time. It wasn't a good feeling.

Drugs are like everything else. You can have way too much of them and that's a bad thing. And variety isn't really a spice of that life. You just mush your head up. But maybe he was happy. It was hard to tell. It didn't seem that way though, as he was yelling on the phone at the woman he divorced. And then he was eventually threatened with a call to the police.

Wasted

It seems I started drinking more after the Zoloft kicked in. And this reverses the effects. I was wasted all weekend, because I stayed at a house where the booze is plenty and there is a man that knows how to make great drinks. I drank for the sheer pleasure of sensations that a combination of flavors and good alcohol can generate. I then became drunk as a consequence. Being drunk was a side-effect from over-enjoying a good drink. That is how alcoholic drinks are meant to be consumed. Ideally.

I suppose in my stupor I wasn't hurt by the subtle hints of discomfort my family members sometimes show around me, like I usually am. I've come to terms with estrangement during this year. I'm becoming more and more eccentric as the months go on and strange situations pass. The word is out that I'm not entirely psychologically sound, and people are at an understandable loss when it comes to dealing with someone who might be becoming gradually more and more warped. "What is the boy thinking?", they must wonder. They aren't quite sure how to anticipate in social interaction. Worst of all, word is out that I am an atheist. In a fully Christian family, this becomes difficult. My grandparents seem to be the most dramatically affected. There was a visible change in their social interaction. At first sight, it broke my heart.

They are old-fashioned. They can't see how a person can sensibly believe that there is no god. I am okay with that. Christianity is all they know. And the problem with Christianity is that disagreement on fundamentals leads to the damning of the offender. It's not like we can do our own respective thing and continue on a normal familial relationship.

But I did say that the signs were subtle. They still try their best to act like they have always acted, and we can pretend that there is nothing there, nothing to be afraid of. People do remarkable things for the ones they love.

A Sad State Of Affairs?

The beach was gorgeous. The colors were soft and faded brilliantly, changing to a different set of luscious hues with each stage of decay. A lovely decay. Not paradoxical. The half-moon that remained after the last light glowed and dominated the star-spackled sky.

I suppose it is easy to revert to overly-flowery words and fairy-like poetic flair when describing a sublime state of nature. Nothing really describes the feeling of experiencing it, except the grandest, most ridiculous words at the edge of the spectrum of meaning, and I suppose this style is overloaded in such a way to make it cliche, but there's no other way. Such is probably the case with many profound moments. Feeling grows by such magnitude that it outlives the words.

It was a good beach day. But it didn't start well.

We had a cooler full of beer, and a handle of gin hidden in my clothes. We drank. We kept to ourselves. We were the least dangerous group on the entire west coast. But they descended upon us, because we looked suspicious. And thus we had to pour out the entire cooler of beers, and the handle, and the drinks we had. It made us a little sore, needless to say.

But sore about what? We were made to pour out all of our liquor that we had bought. Humiliating maybe. Even violating. Why were we picked on? Couldn't we have put the liquor back in the car and gone back to our spot?

Well we could go right back and take the liquor back, which people have undoubtedly done to warrant this precaution. Certainly we are good folk though? But they can't judge situations case by case. They have a set of rigid rules based upon an aggregate of fights, drownings, injuries, whatever else unfortunate that happens with drunkards. We simply have a body of conservative individuals with power who like life the way it is and who do not wish that it be deconstructed in any way by nuts. So goes the history of the universe. So are we to be chained to fools? Must we not enjoy ourselves because of the mistakes of imbeciles?

I felt indignant. We were simply innocents to be ground up in the cogs of a great machine set in motion long ago.

This concept extends infinitely. Where did it all start for it to lead to a policewoman standing over our blanket, demanding that we pour out our precious liquor? Blame it on her? She's stuck in the system. Blame the system? It is stuck within another system. Blame what? Where does it start? What is it to be angry?

I thought these things as I was driving home, feeling sorry watching the cars fight their way by. Why do these people treat each other with such disdain?

Too many questions that lead to an endless regress.

I reached home, bothered by these questions and a vague, recurring sense of disillusionment with humanity as a whole, and realized how sunburnt my face was, and how hot and achy it felt. Then I put aloe vera gel on it, and suddenly it felt great. At that moment, I realized why it is good to live. Most of it is summed up in the following:

There was a series of great minds that decided that sunburns and rashes suck balls, and this series of minds conceived and eventually produced a purchasable product that completely reverses the bad effects of these misfortunes.

The entire environment arranged itself into a living work of art that night, and experiencing those occurences is enough.

On The Silver Hill

We found ourselves on the top of a grassy hill in the middle of the night, the moon high and bright and shining on the long blades of grass, lighting it up a metallic silver that stressed the contours to the bottom. She had become fat and bloated and looked at me with a tortured face that said more than she could have produced with language. I dropped her and she tumbled down the hill and I ran after her, mortified that it could happen. As she rose to her feet, sobbing, she glared at me in revulsion and I apologized with cries of mercy. Remarkably, she forgave me right away. Emotional dreams linger in the memory. They say a lot.

There's an adjustment period for some people in adopting anti-depressants. The mind seems to strive to maintain an equilibrium, and when that equilibrium is disturbed, there comes panic, much like that sharp stab that comes before almost losing your balance. I'm in the middle of that stab. I'm hoping I don't lose my balance, and that the stab goes away. Now I remember why I never gave the Paxil a chance.

I play the guitar to push it out of my head. For the moment at least. A lot of guitars have a feminine shape. Like a woman's body. I wonder if this is what attracts them. As when dudes are attracted to a woman with a banana or a popsicle. I take care of my guitar as if it had consciousness. It was realized by a series of great minds, so I suppose I am in a relationship with those minds as they speak across times long past. I agree with them when I play. I say yes to their arguments when I jar the strings, when I manipulate waves, and create churning electronic oceans that ebb and flow in and out of my ears.

I say yes to other men's arguments when I listen to the music they produce. And my yes is said with more force when I adopt their techniques and styles. It is so with all things. All things are a progression of yes' and nos towards life, survival, success. Abundance. Whatever it is. A logical progression of ons and offs branching out like vines and leaves towards the sun.

Men who agree in key fundamentals bond together and form bands and these bands attract fans that also agree in a magnitude that varies according to circumstances. This is where an argument becomes a force that spreads out, creating mountains and valleys. New realizations of fundamentals, when used effectively, translate to greater force. A force grows weaker as it disperses over time and space. Take an overabundance of imitators and hacks and you get a probable sign of energy decay. Energy decay results in a blunting of the argument as it disperses and becomes confused and vague, and the scavengers carry it off to feed themselves.

This is the problem I have with modern popular culture. I could be wrong about this. But I can't afford to doubt. Because I would lose my self. My self is built partially by antagonism against current culture. It is hard to validate a truth in the scientific sense. That is, empirically, concretely. But there is conviction.

Ah, anyway. At least the dreams are vivid.

Negatives

"You know, you can't have reverence for all life. You try to hug a tiger and you might find yourself munched."

"Yea..."

"Just sayin'".

Illusory?

Technology. Evolution. These things say to me we really do move forward.

It breaks my heart that I won't be able to see it to the end.

Or will I?

Killing The Beast

The only word I can think of to describe this summer is "disjointed". Everyone is busy with their lives and instead of one continuous experience it all seems as a fractured series of pictures. Some of them are pretty, and some are ugly.

I'm in the process of killing a monster with the aid of another monster. A monster that is less evil, but monstrous nonetheless.

For years and years I fought against the ever-evolving and mutating fiend that was a product of bad genes. Generations and generations of bad behavior gone uncorrected and unmitigated: generations of men that were fighting shapeless wraiths that seemed to come out of the void and they were too proud to say or do anything about it. A long line of nutjobs served their sentences in silence, a string of suicides dotted along the family tree. Who knows where it all started. It no longer matters. And now I'm paying for the silence and the repression. But I am interested in stopping it.

I don't feel guilt or shame for being wretched, like they did. My dad is a collection of exploding nerves, sometimes completely nuts. I see this now. I have surveyed the previous generation and I have seen what damage this genetically contagious aberration has wrought. I have felt what it is to panic for no clear reason at all. This is the nature of the monster that has rested in the deep shadows of my mind. It wasn't until I was completely alienated from all of humanity when I decided to kill this disease with something equally undesirable, but less evil: apathy. Apathy in the form of drugs. Zoloft.

After a few weeks into the medication, I sat on my couch feeling absolutely nothing, and I decided how monstrous that feeling was, and how at the same time it was such a relief to not have to worry about going mad for the moment. I couldn't bear any more of whatever that feeling was that was growing more and more prevalent in my thoughts. That feeling of stark fear and revulsion of life itself.

A friend told me that when I got on this medication everything would be dead. He told me how awful it would be, and that how he himself felt so much better after he got off it. I told him at the time (without knowing whether it was true or not), that I preferred to feel dead, rather than whatever it was that I was feeling. I could say now that it was in fact true. I feel relief. I feel alive in this apathy. And then after the apathy, well, then we rebuild from the ground up. Hopefully.

As for this summer, I have the recurring image of "The Graduate" in my head. It's a good movie. Dustin Hoffman gets out of college and he comes home to his family and is completely alien to them, and completely lost. And I see him floating around in the pool in the backyard, staring into space, completely numb, and I think, ah yes isn't it the truth?

I wasn't worried about where my life was going to go as I was getting to the end of college. But now as I sit here and realize how open-ended it all really is, and how high my expectations for myself really are, well, I don't know. Life is a continuous freakshow.

But while in Montana I did become very drunk with my brother and I convinced him to climb this large hill that was about a mile behind our house on state land. My brother wanted to bring his shotgun, as there were wolves in the valley, but we were drunk and our parents were concerned about this, and so we set out with him carrying a knife in a sheath. The sun was going down and we climbed over a low barbed wire fence, and crossed two ravines and countless shrubbery and eventually made it to the top of this hill, tired and sick as hell. But there was something at the top of the hill. Something intangible but meaningful nevertheless. We decided to climb that hill. And we walked very far and we brought our guitars and a camera. We took our shirts off and climbed to the top like a couple of freaks. We made it. We had the idea and manifested it successfully, and in my intoxication I embraced it all the more. And I suppose that's a good start for a paradigm.

The architecture of my mind has changed drastically this year. It is violent change. But welcoming.

Spring Wonder

There are several families of crows scattered around the area, their nests perched high up on the taller trees. The baby crows get big fast, until they are just as large or larger than the mother. They sit up on those branches with their mouths open, waiting to be fed.

Now the interesting part is when the mother gets there. She starts cawing louder and louder and faster until it becomes a wretched garbling and then she urps up in the baby's mouth. You can hear this ghastly racket all the way up the street.

What I can't help but wonder is what sort of weird, hellish experience the baby goes through when the poor bastard experiences this for the first time: his mother screaming at him and then garbling and warbling and yacking at his face.

I suppose birds think about it differently. But me? I think it's a funny practice. I get to cracking up every time I hear one of those crows hacking. I don't see why you have to yell and make a big racket when you're regurgitating lunch. I'm sure they'd gladly explain if they could though.



Afternote: The screeching happened to be coming from the baby. In the context of the situation, this makes more sense. He was screeching for food. But what silly images a misunderstanding can generate!

Let It

Their fighting began as I finished playing; there was a moment of overlap as my notes crackled quiet under the ceiling fan and their scorching-hot shouts spilled out into the night air. We greeted each other on the airwaves. I was leaving and they were coming. I left pacified, having worked out the tension with music, they arrived enraged, both cascading with anger as their mutual feedback signals collided. Having been pacified, I regarded the couple passively, philosophically, sympathizing with whatever disagreement they were having with something almost bittersweet. Having been enraged, they regarded sounds and sights with severe irritation, becoming insane with the bad feedback.

Dogs barked. People stood at their windows, listening. They waited, the muscles tensing in their backs as the shouts grew more intense. They wondered whether they should wait, or to call the police, before it was too late. They were waiting for a crash. Breaking glass. Something to tell them what to do.

The humid night air was electrified with the threat of violence. Of the expectation of a terrible event. Of the expectation of the expectation of others. We were all communicating with one another in our own isolation, in our collective imagination.

This country is wound tight, winding tighter, the fabric pulling dangerously taught around some unseen force, revolving, as a stick in a tourniquet. You see it in faces. In the eyes...glistening furrows indicating converging pressure. Or on the freeway, the lines of cars whipping tight, speeding up, shrinking closed. They're all acting cornered, whether they are being cornered or not. The hair up on their backs, their teeth bared. Sighs and hunching shoulders.

Well, it can't be all that bad. It comes in waves. Like nausea. There comes the periods of intensification, and then it relaxes. And repeats.

I was almost run off the road today. But it's alright. I'm here to say that it is alright. So being here is something. Or else it would be nothing. And there wouldn't be a problem anyway. Eh, I've dispersed out too far to say anything else interesting.

Imaging Nightly

Like a whip of molten metal
red hot as it whips
solidifies to steel when it cracks
sends sparks into the black
melts red-hot again
light flickers off the end
as it cracks again like a scorpion's tail

He cracks it again
searching a crevice for meaning
and, finding nothing, whips it back
leaving another wink of light
followed by the search of another crevice
searching, searching

Scrutiny: high and low
and high once more
the whips spiral up in an oscillation
of progressing note couplets

Stark fear of an existence without meaning
sending brighter sparks
in hopes of finding the way

He cries more sparks
as the molten whip cracks
and finds yet another empty hole
on the wall behind the black veil

Meaning hides
smaller than a needle
in a void larger than a stack of hay
winking back
at the steel whip

He knows its there
begging to be found.

Them

The concrete out in our backyard is white and pock-marked. Surveying the ground while standing yields nothing, other than spotting crushed twigs here and there, or small scattered dried-out berries, or dead bees.

If you lie down, however, such as on a lounge-chair, you find that there are perhaps thousands of tiny orange insects feverishly scurrying from here to who knows where. I did this accidentally one sun-baked afternoon while sunbathing. As I lied face down I gazed passively at the ground, studying the pock-marks, and I found them. It felt strange discovering this finer layer of life on our concrete floor, because I generally take care to avoid disturbing any kind of creature's life...even insects. Now here was a population of orange insects that covered the floor of the entire backyard. All those times coming out of the pool, creating whole lakes instantly, flooding tons of creatures, and then evaporating within minutes. I began to become conscious of where I was stepping. And then the longer I remained standing (and thus unable to visually acknowledge these creatures), the less I thought about the creatures, until I forgot they were there again, up to the next time I was to lay down and rediscover.

I felt what it was to be a cloud. To gaze over an entire population, cast a shadow, to rain down on them powerful floods of water from seemingly nowhere.

They have an incredible land-speed, considering the proportion of their bodies to the landscape. And what a strange landscape. Huge craters everywhere, in all directions, going on for what seems like eternity. A white, bleached, eternally-flat surface. They have learned to navigate between the craters with their characteristic speed. Here and there is a strange plastic ravine, where seams in the concrete exist. They congregate at these ravines, where there is darkness and moistness and probably plant growth and other forms of life. Here is a strange world of craters and inexplicable shadows looming over the landscape unexpectedly, sometimes dropping a great deluge of water forming lakes instantly that evaporate instantly.

Considering the creature's speed, and their lifespan, perhaps there is a time dilation. Perhaps the looming shadows come slowly after all, to be seen in the distance, like our clouds. Maybe the creatures take cover when a great foot comes down, or a birthing lake. Maybe it all happens slowly, as a rising tide. Ah but I'm expecting too much of these little creatures.

I ignore them, while walking in the backyard. I have to. If I was to avoid them, I would have to avoid everything. Who knows what I destroy just by breathing. There are multitudes of creatures yet smaller, microscopic creatures, continuing on into what seems like infinity, all carrying out their lives in what seems to us alien landscapes. It does blur the line between them and, say ants, which I avoid to disturb, or even plants for that matter, which I must walk on constantly during the day. It makes me reconsider my attitudes, to be sure.

But maybe out of inertia I'll continue to do as I do, to respect that which I visually acknowledge.

I'd like to know what these creatures are. It would pay to know an entomologist. I don't though. There's always the internet. Too lazy. It is late now. Sleep.

Wave Manipulation in Cycles

I suppose it started with one of our early ancestors finding that he could produce his own noises to mimic those beautiful noises in nature. Maybe as he began to speak and exercise reason and become self-aware, he realized he could tailor his own sounds and create. Maybe he started whacking something with a stick, producing rhythms, and began vocalizing simple melodies. Eventually someone figured out that vibrating a string made a pretty cool noise, and then look: the string produces different tones depending on how much length the string has to vibrate. And then they began to systematize it, master it with mathematics, and well this tonal range is structured, it has rules just like everything else. Frets can modify the length of the string by depressing it into a groove. Then the melodies became more varied, creative. You can take a simple concept or idea and apply it and derive and derive and soon enough you've got a whole branching, flowering structure of variances, of something searching and reaching for the light so to speak. Like a great tree growing out of its seed. Its blueprint. And then woah, these tones can form into clusters and you've got harmonics. I'm guessing harmonics came after the melody, but I really have no idea. Now what's going on here is essentially wave manipulation. The vibration of the string is displacing the air around it ever so slightly, and energy is transferred over all the adjacent particles in the sonic shape of the vibrating string, the frequency of which produces a certain tone when it vibrates those little hairs in our ear, after finally reaching it. This wave of energy emenates out until it disperses and to such a minute amount that it cannot be picked up; but out it goes somewhere...where nothing is wasted. There are different dynamics going on with an electric guitar, where the pickups and an amplifier are doing the work to get the sound out, as opposed to a hollow body that bounces the sound and amplifies it that way. But in the end it is the same basic principle.

And here we are going around generating strange topographies in the ocean around us. In the end we are still fish, just swimming around in a less dense ocean. It is still all connected.

These topographies can be comprehended, and not just in a linear fashion. It seems we do listen to something beginning to end, but we must take into account different instruments, and so in addition to an X axis and Y axis there is a Z axis, and we are given a sensation of being in a space over time, made even more vivid with deeper textures. Beat, melody, harmony...primitive rhythm and intricately weaved textures. These landscapes each say something of their own. Some take the time to say something new and exciting, while others are simply banalities: regurgitations, nothing more than echoes of something else. We construct these things to search for meaning. Because meaning functions similarly to a physical house, for our minds. To build a symphony is to build a certain structure to be lived in, to shield us from that terrible, alien, raw existence. We use a certain set of tools and principles to build these structures, in accordance with physics and syntactical laws of understanding. We pick up tools from others, what others have done before, in following a branch of an ancient train of thought set into motion long ago. It is cyclical, but seems to move in a progression, like a slinky.

It seems we can imbue these collections of notes with our own emotions. Our fingers move a certain way, in a certain fashion, and this effects the note spacing and intensity and all the sort, and it translates to emotion that we can pick up on. Nothing is wasted. Everything is connected. A good theme to remember. And there are plenty of modes of interpretation too. All the great works offer an infinite collection of interpretations, so that each man can live in his own private sanctuary of meaning when listening. And a collection of men can agree on a certain meaning and it becomes a discourse. Maybe eventually an institution. A larger, more potent statement of meaning, amplified even more with more voices.

And all these disturbances of the air we can alter in so many ways. Tone, noise distortion, instrument variance, bass, treble, middle, and so much more. It is a good time to live, to have inherited this monstrous chain of events.

I haven't written in a long time. I suppose the longer one waits, the longer things build up and the more one has to say when they finally do say something. These ideas are constructions in themselves. A different kind of symphony. It is still a structure, a structure I have made physical with these words. I have used tools and concepts that have slowly become available to me, all in a framework made up by the current age I live in. These ideas are truth insofar as they at least resemble what is really there. But in the end it is me just trying to say something, making an argument, exercising my ego. I'm trying to make something physical so that I can look over and decide whether these principles and concepts are things I want governing my thoughts. I suppose I'm ok with it for now. I suppose I'm not yet going mad. Madness is a collapse of a crucial structure of meaning, of the faculty to correctly make structures. And I seem to be making them still, along with everyone else. I think.

Whatever the case, it felt good.

If The Tight Rope Walker Stumbles

It started on the leg. On the knee. Yes, this feels like a spider. This particular sensation is that of eight legs moving in tandem. I touch that spot on my knee, I push the jeans down a bit on the center of the sensation and the sensation migrates further downward. Yes, this was no trick of the body. Not a muscle spasm, or inexplicable tickle. This is a spider.

My first impulse is, "you gotta keep cool, man". I am in the middle of a philosophy lecture. A room of maybe 20 people, where strange heebie jeebie movements will get noticed. I don't want to interrupt the professor's train of thought, and at the same time I am trying to concentrate on a theory of meaning that interprets meaning as usage for any given language. I decide to forget the spider. The sensations aren't as pronounced, and I figure if I don't move, he has no reason to bite. To my right is an acquaintance I met before, he is listening to the professor and does not notice. To my right is a girl moving her legs back and forth, fidgeting, rubbing, but she is listening as well. All is still right. I keep still and quiet and listen and try to think about words and theory.

Ah, here he comes. He peeks his head over the ridge of my jeans. He has emerged on top, and is supposedly coming to meet his transport. I have no idea how long he has been on me. Maybe I picked him up an hour ago lying on the park bench and he has remained somewhere convenient until now. Or maybe he just found his way from the seat, on which he found himself an hour before when the last student dropped him off. It doesn't matter. His body is black and his abdomen is a hairy blood red and his eyes reflect a green metallic luster and he looks absolutely poisonous. Now I cannot control my outward appearance as much. I am gazing intently down at the crotch of my pants, my eyes bugging. To an observer it may seem something is wrong. But no one has seemed to notice yet. I advance my pen towards him, to push him off my lap, and he raises his little black front legs in protest. I begin to realize that I am losing my train of thought, and the professor is continuing in his lecture further and further away, beyond the blur of my peripheral, and soon I will be lost and this lecture will have been a waste of time. I've got to get rid of the spider and return to concentration but I cannot bear to crush him. After all, we've been through so much...me and him.

I finally push him off with my pen and he disappears below. I check the ground around me, and the chair, but he is nowhere to be seen. Dubious, yes, but he is gone for now, and I must continue to concentrate. Words, usage, clusters of agreed-upon thought in a language community, conventionality; words are like tools, forged with purpose and ends, to be used in certain contexts and situations, to further actions. A static theory eventually develops into a dynamic one, as understanding grows. The ideas are beautiful. The class ends and I wonder, "well if I was a spider, I would hide in the large, soft gray structure near where I landed". Damn, my sweater. I look down at my crumpled sweater and there he is, sitting right on top. I am partially glad because this spider has become a bit of a legend, and I thought it would be a shame to leave him to his pitiful devices in relation to a large, alien void full of stomping feet.

Papers have been graded and we must collect them. Now there is the task of somehow retrieving my sweater without shaking or crushing the spider, getting my paper, walking out with the sweater, and dumping him somewhere safe outside. I pick up my sweater and examine it rigorously. I lost him. I turn it all over and hold it with my index finger and thumb, as if it was soiled, and place it on a nearby chair. I grab my paper and retrieve the sweater and proceed carefully outside, still holding it as if it was soiled. All the while students are brushing past me, in a hurry to get to their cars, probably wondering why this nut is blocking their way and fussing so much with his sweater. I finally get outside and walk a ways, relocating the spider and taking care to keep him in sight and safe. I realize that if he gets to my hand and is given the possibility to bite it, something bad and medical-related might happen. He almost looks like the bastard that bit Peter Parker. Maybe I should let him.

I reach a nice cluster of bushes beside the path to the parking structure that seems to have a fair amount of shelter and so blow him off the sweater with a puff of breath, and there he goes.

At this point my head is really off balance. I try to juggle the spider and the concepts I have just learned, and the memories of class and afterclass...what happened to the professor, or my aqcuaintance in that class that I forgot about, but he's ok I saw him talking to some chick outside, and that girl sitting next to me that was giving me looks. I had tried to look over inconspicuosly to see what she looked like, caught a bit, I think she was a babe, but where did she go?

It is getting cold and I put back on my sweater and head for the crosswalk. I am almost to my car. I stand on the corner and take a look around. The sun is getting low and orange. Cars are driving by, people I could know and love or know and loathe and they are all ghosts behind tinted glass, oscillating orange reflections of the sun that flicker to white and disappear. I look down at the street. I look up. The walk light is on, and about to go off, I need to get across. I feel I am just stumbling along, my thoughts are in full motion...too dense, too free to grab onto. I make it across the street and look up again, and there, a girl walking on the other side of the street, the sun catching her face. She is gorgeous. She is far but I can tell she is gorgeous by the shadows under her brow, cast by a good facial structure. I can tell by suggestion. She is gazing in my direction and my first impulse is to quickly look away. I smile down at the street, but I am thinking, why look away, why look away man. Smile. Something other than retracting. Maybe next time.

I finally get to my car and close the door and it is silent and I am amidst my own elements. I start up the engine and the familiar music comes on and there is the drums and the bass and the guitar and the man singing and I drive away from the sun, up into the Laguna hills on the 73. My mind is quieting down and tuning to the music and I watch the light-soaked hills with their houses, their windows reflecting back bright orange squares, and I listen to the dull roar of the wind outside the windshield. Everything is level again, and I think to myself, "Ah this life".

Extrapolate Kindly

I saw this exhibit at the Exploratorium. I was completely stoned out of my mind, but thinking very clearly. I suppose.

It had to do with a magnet. There was some magnetic material under a microscope, and as the magnetic field was increased with a knob, it attracted more material, which darkened the viewfinder of the microscope.

Now as this material darkened the viewfinder, there was something very important happening. There were tiny geometrical shapes, that gradually grew more and more numerous and dense and it was happening in a very organized, crystalline pattern.

I suppose it raises a question about our reason. Do we simply just create an overlay to understand this chaos? "Was the exhibit rigged to pull that trick?", I thought with a dash of paranoia, "or is this simply happening of its own accord with the magnetic field?" Are we simply experiencing what the world already is: perfectly ordered? Or both. Could be both. Reason. Gravity. Laws. Are we crystallizing as a species? As an organism? Seems we have a long way to go.

And I was pretty stoned.

Some Fragments To Clean Up And Dispose Of

• Change continues to loom ahead like a towering cluster of black clouds, threatening rain. I think change causes anxiety or excitement because change is a transition from the routine to the unknown.
  
• Fear or delight in the unknown depends on a person's charge. Contemplation of the unknown inevitably causes scenario contemplation and contingency plans and all sorts of theories and stories unfold of what will take place and what will happen. A negative charge will lead to terrifying visions of failure and catastrophe. That's where the fear comes in. A positive charge will be the amusing contemplation of possibilities and potential for growth and expansion. Take walking into a huge, dense forest, never before visited. The negative will say, "Jesus, what kind of awful creatures and follies lurk here?" The positive will say, "Well, perhaps there is treasure or some sort of hidden paradise."
  
• I happen to be negatively charged in confronting the current unknown, unfortunately. And so it is a source of discomfort, and not anticipation. No, there may be a mixture of both. Of the positive and negative. Maybe there is some anticipation involved.
• I fear that some of this philosophy has over balanced-against the poetry, but I am slowly recovering some of it as well. I grasped philosophical reasoning, rationality, and though I am grateful for what I learned, I did not care for the world it invites, therefore I will slowly let some of it go, and retain what I want to use.
• When a person's foundations crumble away and they are left floating, they tend towards nihilism, the floating ideology, the nothing. It is an uncomfortable state for a person used to foundations, though it is hard to be truly and purely nihilistic.
  

Pretty Tired

This gaming blog has given me things to think about. And I wonder where it will go when traffic starts. I think I sort of rushed into it. It feels like a burden at times, a burden that I have to constantly maintain. I fear it will grow heavier as traffic increases.

If that's not enough, there's school. I have another paper to write. Almost done with these damned papers. Just a few more months and I'm done. But I'm growing increasingly tired the closer I get to the end. Now I just feel like it is all a waste of time. I've learned what I can, and now I can't really pay attention to anything else. I'm just sitting in class doing who knows what with my thoughts. Is anything sticking anymore? Now it is just hoop jumping. Essay writing, test taking, grade getting. I need to be out there with the music, with the writing. Ah, these institutions. These units and prestige and degrees and expectations. What is it we are after? Why these chains?

It is what is. That is the simple answer. Any other way and it would be that. Which it isn't.

There were those who began doing things a certain way and then it began to solidify and further solidify and then crystallize and now no single thing can be separated from the system without altering a whole network. And maybe even that is too much.

And here we are. Just enduring and toiling through whatever this is. Being aware of all this doesn't do anything advantageous at present, because the aware end up being the same as the unaware: we both must bite down and do. But there is hope that the aware have the advantage of the future.

Big Changes

Big changes, big changes, big changes. Well, in the coming months anyways. It always comes in big fat stressful clumps. Crumblings of the earth all stuck together and one piece makes it over the edge and then it all has to go. I wake up stressed out and I don't even know why.

Part of that change is that I'm getting serious about the writing. I don't like getting serious about the writing because using a talent to make money exposes the nerve endings to the commercial world, where it is about different things than just the writing. Image. Connectivity. Exposure. Traffic. All this stuff I don't know a thing about, being the person I am.

The amount of power you hold determines how much of yourself you get to actually show. When you are the bitch, you've got to put on the mask, because the boss might can your ass if he doesn't like your face. It depends.

So I got a new blog. It is going to be about gaming. And I will get paid for it. Decently if it does well. Check it out. I'm still working on it. It might not live up to potential for a month or so. But I hope it will be decent when it gets going.

RIGHT HERE>>>>> !!!

Classroom Writings Pt. 1

I made some notes in a notebook I have for "Kantian Ethics" that have nothing to do with Kantian ethics, they just have to do with things that I thought of that were stimulated by the lecture.

The notebook has a black cover that is heavily scuffed. Turning it into the light yields a sudden materialization of all sorts of clouds and crescents and scrapes. And a subtle dent in the middle. The pages are bound by a spiral wire that runs through perfectly-cut holes in the paper, perfectly-cut holes that are perfectly-spaced to accommodate the spiral loops. The spiral is closed off by the bending of both of its own ends. There are three larger holes cut and spaced perfectly to accommodate larger spiral rings in a larger binder. Protection. It is a perfected design that can be stamped out in seconds by a perfected machine and the whole image is absolutely beautiful. This is the magnificence of humanity. Right in our faces. Bees have their stingers. Roses have their thorns. Rattlers have their venom sacks. We have reason. It categorizes and standardizes and extends out and expands to manifest technology. It probably operates on similar principles as those lower creatures, just in a more complex way.

The notebook contains notes on how to write a short story. It also contains notes on Moral philosophy, and finally, the aforementioned Kantian ethics, which is actually a part of Moral philosophy.

I still haven't gotten to the notes that I made. They are as follows:

• Why can we tell someone we are getting bogged down in a sentence and have it make sense? Isn't a bog a physical object? How does a figure of speech work? In short: abstract concepts. Language is modular and fits around these concepts.
• Sometimes someone bites off more than they can chew in the classroom and argue themselves in a corner, and the professor cuts down their philosophical assertion. I get nervous with these people. It is like watching an inexperienced tight rope walker. They got themselves on the rope and it was their prerogative to get up there but I still don't want to watch them fall.
  
• The professor gave an example of the absurdity of a moral code built on empirical facts. In other words, external states of affairs. She thought it would be a little odd if she based her moral beliefs on what deers do. I thought this was funny. I think anything that can jump really high is a moral creature by necessity. Deers can jump very high. I think deers are pretty moral then, and thus I have no problem with basing my moral beliefs on them.
  
• If everyone was suddenly very intelligent, nothing would get done. Maybe. That's a stupid one.
  
• The problem with modern media is a vicious cycle. Generally, mediocre art and music is easily marketable for some reason. Maybe because it is simple. Easy marketability means cash magnet. Money is generally subsistence. And someone needs to subsist to produce things. The more means of subsistence, the easier it is to produce things. And so the mediocre multiplies and thrives. This might not just be a modern problem. But great works do sometimes punch their way through. But it is tough. Too bad.
  

It is these musings that occupy my head instead of what I'm supposed to be learning. Don't get me wrong, Kant is very interesting. But classrooms are tough these days. It is like walking past a slat fence and catching glimpses of something behind it. The continuity of the glimpses through the slats is enough to provide comprehension of the image beyond, but barely. Well in this case the slats would be all these thoughts that just pop up without asking.

I don't know how I get through these classes. I don't really remember.

Another rat might be dying.

Oh Well

To hell with privacy. This time I'll expose my neck to the maulers.

Blonde Beauty

She was a creation of several different ideas formed from impressions I have had of women I have come across in my lifetime. Her eyes were a ghostly gray-blue...I remember this much. She wanted me and I wanted her and we met lying on the floor and she whispered something provocative into my ear and I answered: "But I do not want to debase you". Then she cast away my fears. And we were ready for whatever it was we were going to do, and by the time the scene had radically changed and I realized that she was gone it was too late and I couldn't bring her back. I awoke wanting to be put back in that dream.

That Sinking Feeling

I suppose I'm supposed to be writing more.

I've been looking into freelance writing. I even signed up with a freelance writing site. But when I signed up all these weird advertisement messages came up and then someone called me and talked to me for half an hour about what sounded like another of those damn internet pyramid schemes where you have to refer a bunch of suckers and advertise and it has nothing to do with writing and gawd I just want to write and get paid for it. What is with all the sharks coming out of the reef all of a sudden? It is a bad feeling. Like I've stumbled into the feeding grounds and they're grinning their big jagged white shark smiles. Why do all the internet jobs have to feel like a sham? It's just an extension of everything that's already here. But everything seems so sleazy and all that plastic business language has to be plastered all over everything.

Opportunity with a big O. Really? Does that sentence mean anything at all?

I bet the logicians and the linguists would have a field day with that one.

Cheers to writing. And whoring talent to function as a sign post to the nearest place where you can buy stuff.

A Magical Visitor

Ah look down yonder! Something swirls delicately in that there toilet bowl! What can it be?

A seahorse? A baby squid? A blossoming tadpole?

Oh, no, it is just a collection of snot caught in the current.

It's Kinda Your Fault

"I was crossing a crosswalk this afternoon and some dickwad goes way over the line."

"What did he do?"

"He slammed on his brakes and almost hit me, and then leaned out the window and cursed me!"

"What in the world were you doing?"

"Well I walked against a no-walk sign."

"But then you asked for it!"

"Well no, here's the logic: He had to pay for a person in the way so he had to stop and feel the fear of almost hitting a person. I payed for a car coming straight at me so I had to flinch and feel the fear of almost being hit by a car. So in a way, we both received our own mutually incurred punishments, and that was that. He didn't have to curse me. He went above and beyond what was required. So that hurt me."

"But you were breaking the law, and he was just doing exactly what he needed to do. So he kind of earned that extra remark."

"Well, you've got a point."

Getting Things Done

When there are a lot of things to do I often choose to do something other than those things and let those others sort of languish there. The thing I choose to do is usually unproductive as opposed to the others which are all probably considered at least minimally productive. Meanwhile the anxiety builds and deadlines approach sooner and it is an unhealthy and counterproductive habit.

The whole time I've been sitting here trying to figure out what I should do first, or at least what I should write about instead, there has been this thudding going on above the ceiling. I figure it is vents contracting or the wind blowing and tune it out for a bit. It goes on. Background noise. But then I turn off the music and sit and listen to it, and the more I listen the more the possibility that a rat has been caught in a trap and is trying desperately to flap itself free becomes real. And what was once just a droning background noise has suddenly dominated completely my thoughts, and I become transfixed with the idea that there is a rat dying just above my room, a breathing creature with a subjective experience, experiencing what it is to die. Caught in a crushing metal device for no reason at all, just because it gave off the smell of something good to eat. But the creature doesn't know reasons. It only knows that terminal fear. The thudding is beginning to quiet down. The whole thing is like the progression of some sort of morbid song.

Sometimes contemplating certain aspects of reality is unbearable. And that short list of things on my to do list becomes unbearable as well. Everything becomes cast under this unbearable light when you reach a mood like this. It doesn't take any sort of cheering up to cure it. It just takes time for it to pass.

I hope I'm just mistaken and those thuds were nothing but structural groans. Waste of a post.