a Portrait of the Expressionist [as a young woman]

a true bohemian creates carnivals with every outing

2010-08-10T21:12:00.001-05:00

two &half sunsets ago, i went out to obtain groceries. i wound up chasing an impressive flurry of fireworks several miles out of town. all along the way, i saw east-facing cars wedged in pockets of gravel, flashing their hazard lights, as the people perched on them stared at the sight i was hoping to catch at its base.

when i finally found the source, the show was mostly over; there was a peculiar gathering at some Methodist church-cum-campsite somehow inspiring or inspired by the fireworks. considering the line of mostly-empty booths, the impromptu serenade of Pearl Jam covers by some guitarist with a folding-chaired audience, and the terrible steering of several giant gocarts, i would say this was some regular event. celebrating what, i've no idea, but i parked in some hopefully inconspicuous spot between a largish white building possibly used for washrooms and a truck that was also largish and white - i think i hoped my car, white but small, would be camouflaged - and wandered around for a bit.

there was definitely some sort of party happening. several sorts, actually, going by the multitudinous turnout. and the way that, even squinting in the glow of bonfires and the headlights of those leaving after the show's end, i could sort of suss out section breaks. there was a place with lots of decorated campers, one with various tents to their right, and a veritable sea of shiny darkened cars all over everywhere else. it was too dark to read the signs directing traffic or separating settlements, but it was almost like stumbling upon a convention for nomads. which, for all i could comprehend in the dimness, i had done.

aside from the confusion of chatter - and the certainty that someone from the prominent police presence was going to arrest me for Blatant Disregard of all the white-fonted signs capslocking about registration - my foray into the loud and multiscented was absolutely phenomenal. i knew no one, but this crowd, despite the glaring recognition that i did not belong, stood out amongst all the other throngs into which i've before stumbled; i walked away feeling phantasmagorical and so alive.

though i suppose the part where i sped around deseatbuckled on dirt roads for twenty minutes afterward, screeching along to Led Zeppelin and thrusting my head out of my car's sunroof, screaming ecstasy at the farmnight, had something to do with it.

(mission accomplished, by the way: i loaded $56 worth of food into the back of my bruised automobile; my, aren't a lady going to be gargantuan in a week)

where's the skill in catching fish that are clambering into your boat?

2010-07-10T00:55:00.002-05:00

every time i enter a bookstore, i add a truly distressing number of books to my Big Damn List which i will probably never be able to finish. and then i pause and consider all the literature, non-fiction, and bestselling entertainment that have so far been published. and all the interest-perking works that have yet to be contracted. and how no one since John Milton and other 17th century scholars with eidetic memory and absurd amounts of money has the time or the resources to track down and absorb all of the music, movies, television, essays, fiction, poetry, plays, visual or performance art, etc that has ever been and/or is currently being produced.

technology has caught up with the creatively-inclined inhabitants of wealthy countries, and so this last century has been spent self-publishing all sorts of projects that would never have seen the light of day even as recently as the 1920s, when the mostly white, mostly male, always affluent, and eternally erudite people of the world were the only successful artistic types. nowadays, anyone gets acclaim from numerous supposedly-prestigious societies that no one has ever heard of, and therefore becomes 'known' in ever diminishing bubbles of popularity that have no impact or resonance with the idea of mainstream society.

for example, how many names out of these current world poets laureate are recognizable by any majority? and how many people in those majorities can name poetry by those writers? what prestige is there in a manifold mediocrity?

i'm all for breaking down unfair boy's club boundaries, but whatever happened to the positive kind of standardization? the one that meant if so-and-so said you were worthwhile, that yes, objectively, you were? because i want to embody that, but i can't think of a single name newer than Sylvia Plath (of the 1950s, so 60 years ago) that provides instantaneous artistic acknowledgment; even if someone thinks she was shit, or only recalls her suicide story, she's still remembered by America's semi-educated masses. the only people with that kind of fame in the modern world are tween celebutantes and cultural douchenozzles.

without you, i'm nothing: six people who make me, every day

2010-06-23T15:19:00.001-05:00

not to my best friends, because they are obvious and anything i would say to them i hope they already know. anything i haven't expressed i could never admit.
this may sound sarcastic at times, but every word is sans cere.

****

1. you inspire me. conversing with you, i sit up straighter, shoot the shit sharper, and snark snider. i hope one day you'll realize how far you outstrip me, gather up your stardust and expand. i hope you never do.
i like to sift through your photographs and note how cohesive your composition never fails to be. i like to then look at my own photos and struggle with whether or not to throw them all out and pretend i never tried to overstep my point-and-shoot kodak limits in the first place.
nothing is healthier for a self-absorbed pseudo-artiste than to realize she's actually quite shit, and should go sacrifice her soul to a cubicle.

2. you bring out everything i fear about myself and make me love it. i am always at my most self-destructive around you, and i never am happier. you keep me honest; keep me aware that i am not a 'good' person and that Antihero is the archetype i am because Antiheroes don't want redemption.
i suspect one day you'll thinspirate yourself out of existence but the ride there will be exquisite [as will that trip from the Eiffel Tower].

3. you vindicate me. if i had been alone and overpowered by that incessant pressure, i may have cracked. i may have given up. i may have relinquished everything i stand for, and been led docile as they could have ever hoped.
but you finally, finally, came into my life, and regardless of my jokes, i would never have sought a replacement. you are my calvary, my confirmation, my compatriot.
i pray for you under onslaught of every word i cannot twist, every opinion i cannot reconstrue, every mark i cannot shape. but you are vibrant, and you are powerful; you have my dusty footprints to guide you if so you need them.

4. you are all the parts of me i left behind. you are that which curves my feet and directs my path. in no kind way, but all the necessary ones, you are what jolted awake my ambition, and the snark that fueled my flight away from you.
i wonder if you have found your own reasons to grow, or if you are still content in the squalor of your personality. many days, i do not care, but every day i inhale deeply the air that does not reek of our rotting.

5. you polarize me. with each callous phrase you utter, blundering your way to success with a carefully intuitive grasp of networking policies and a vast reserve of dumb luck, i burn colder and bluer. you are my moral south. in any situation, i recall you, the shadow in the mirror. always your black memory affirms the shades in which i must logically myself be cloaked, and i navigate accordingly.
i blush for the cruel mantle i fasten on your shoulders, but you forever bear it with little affect. one day, i would like to strip you of your many superciliious folds, and examine the creature that conceived of them. i expect, however, that it would resemble too greatly myself.

6. you dented my first fingerprints. an ever-warping kiln, you melted the very muscle from my bones, hoping to leave even them brittle and malleable. but clay hardens with pressure, and though your smudges disfigured me, i retained the shape with which i was born. in some ways, you gave me focus; by setting me up to swerve, you ensured i would never sway, and i thank you with all vindication for creating the very same black sheep that you shun.
i would say more, like that my gratitude extends to debt, but my continued willingness to pretend that i yearn to appease you makes us even. my capacity to respect a creature that refuses to acknowledge upon me any such similar courtesy is too limited for anything else.

consider this like those short answer paragraphs you had to fill out on exams

2010-05-22T01:09:00.004-05:00

there was a meme going around livejournal, involving a series of questions to write on. i decided to snag it and answer a few of them as a reminder to myself that i have investments here. maybe.

~

3) What is the difference between a dork and a nerd?
i always define nerd as someone connected with academic achievement or interest. loves books, etc. like Stephen Fry. dorks are people who like WoW and playing D&D and other such games. or reading/writing fanfiction. geeks, in turn, are those who like science, as opposed to just academics. science fiction, and robots, and technology, etc.

6) Do you think that sex addiction is real?
suppose that depends on how one defines 'addiction'. if you treat sexual desire/intercourse/etc as something one can crave and develop a psychological need for, then of course, like many other things, one can be addicted to sex. i doubt that is something people disagree on.

however, there is a far different stigma attached to being a 'sex addict' as opposed to someone who just 'fucks around' or is a 'slut'. maybe that's what people object to? because if celebrities in sexually scandalous situations can be spun as needing help, as having some sort of compulsion, then it can be said that he wasn't entirely in control of themselves, and therefore deserve less scorn that people who simply don't want to keep their junk in their pants. because of the high-profile nature of sex scandals, there is always a possibility that someone might say he/she is addicted to sex, but not actually be so?

then, of course that idea trickles down and re-erects (pun accidental, but rolled with) the stigma associated with sex scandals that aren't based in addiction or psychological dysfunction. and then those who actually do have some serious problem may not be able to get help.

8) Do you think that some people are not meant to be parents at all?
yes. parenting is a lifetime investment that involves not just birthing and feeding and teaching hygiene; a parent must prepare the child for 'normal' methods of social interaction, supporting oneself financially, making decisions based on rational principles in order to positively affect one's direction in life, etc. when you bring a life into the world, you take on the responsibility of setting it on solid ground and letting it run amok. there is no 'break it & buy it' policy on Life, but neither is there a reset button on the Soul. every idiosyncrasy a parent has is catalogued by the child for mimicking at a later date, until a severe introspective study provides the impetus to discard every terrible virtue imprinted on a person by a family member. assuming, of course, that the introspective study is something everyone undertakes (they don't).

a friend of mine answered it brilliantly, and so i shall simply steal an excerpt from her:

I think that parenthood is a calling, like becoming a member of the clergy, rather than something everyone ought to do to live a full life. Some children want to grow up to have a family and know it even when they're young; and even though it's much, much, much more encouraged and accepted in girls than it is in boys, I've known plenty of young men who strongly desired to have a family and are actively making plans to accommodate one in the future. I think that while many uncalled people thrust into that situation can adapt to it and become a passable or even great parent, people who don't feel called to start a family shouldn't feel any pressure to do so, or face any negative repercussion from friends, family, coworkers, strangers, or employers for choosing not to. We who don't want to be parents should never feel like we should.
[LiveJournal user laskuraska]

i don't answer the question under the belief that there's a parenting gene or anything, but there are people who just can seem to make responsible decisions, or who show concern only over their own well-being. and they should never be parents.

procrastination is a fairy godmother; enjoy her gifts

2010-05-02T21:33:00.003-05:00

yes, it has been ages. yes, i forgot you. no, i am not at all concerned by this. mostly because i doubt you, my Nonexistent Readers, are either.

regardless, i was reading the Aeneid a month ago, and there was an assignment for one of those 'reader response' journals, and i think i made quite a point during one of the 'entries'. i will therefore offer it as good tidings, and come up with something more recent in a few weeks.
end of term exams are nigh, and i haven't yet figured out if i shall be dining on dashed dreams after they've finished with me.

=

Aeneas Needs To Chill Out

Aeneas is continuously referenced as pious and righteous and all manner of bleeding kittens from his rectum, but there is a scene wherein even he winds up losing his seemingly endless supply of control – the slaughter of all those Italians before he finally fells Turnus. Is that a What The Hell Hero moment, or is it justifiable in the face of everything that’s just happened in the last few books?

Everyone can understand the feeling of losing control when under duress, and by this point, Aeneas was definitely cracking. Virgil notes that Aeneas’ anger was “excited by the treachery of Turnus, / whose chariot and horses have been carried / far off, and having often pleaded with / Jove and the altars of the shattered treaty” (book XII, lines 666-669). Then, the typically pious soldier goes berserk and starts slaying Turnus’ men. Virgil doesn’t seem to have a problem with the brutal warfare that Aeneas wages – and it’s not like he’d been a gentle person before, either – and one could suggest that the Italians and Etruscans brought Aeneas’ Mars-assisted wrath on themselves when they broke the treaty. I feel like seeking bloody therapy for his anger issues is against Aeneas’ own promises to the people he intends to live among. Killing everyone’s relatives isn’t going to endear you to the locals, which could cause him trouble down the line, whenever Fate decides to stop backing him. Not that he should have avoided bloodshed if anyone was actively attacking him, but Aeneas should have just gone after Turnus and Juturna. If his devotion to that death he sought to give had remained single-minded, I feel like this whole affair would have been done with so much sooner.

oh hey, i totally forgot about this blog

2010-01-28T04:15:00.006-06:00

The Fumes Of Sighs Sink Ships. original; prompt assignment; pg; 1073 words [written in like, 8 hours]
prompt: create tension or even contradiction between physical behaviour and dialogue.

=

The flock disperses, and you’re wresting free a notebook from your backpack when she’s suddenly glowing in front of you, dropping her book on your desk.

“Hi!” Her eyes are bright, her smile is downright luminescent, and she’s doing that tapping thing with her neon varnished nails like she’s nervous. Instead of responding, you cleverly gape at her, but you don’t seem to lose face; she’s not paying attention.

“So, you’re real good with this literary s…theory…stuff, right? Since I made sure to beat out the competition for your services, think you’d be willing to partner with me - help a buddy out?” her expression is cute, that head tilt furthering the effect of her lopsided smile, and you are a dirty disgusting sap.

“Oh, uh-yeah, uh…I’m all about enriching other people…and…Shakespeare.” You have no idea what you’re saying, but maybe if you smile the whole time, she’ll just go along with it.

“Fantastic,” she declares, and when an unsuspecting fellow classmate gets up to sharpen his pencil, she drags his desk over beside yours and plops herself down. Chin on hand and wide-eyed, she turns her ‘I am a fascinated pupil’ look on you.

“All right: Romeo and Juliet. Tell me about it…what’s the tragedy?” You are aiming for an authoritative-yet-friendly tone, and you think you mostly succeed, because she’s rolling her eyes but still smiling at you.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me?” She leans sideways, not breaking eye contact as her face gets closer, and then bats her eyelashes. You think you understand the joke.

Cautiously – because God, how embarrassing would being wrong be – you incline your head like you plan to impart something profound. Constructing something witty instead, you let your mouth hang open and try to remember to breathe through your nose; “What, have you never learnt by doing?”

She snorts, “Often.” Her chin takes flight from its perch on her palm, and she turns to squint at the potentially legible scribbles on the chalkboard.

You suspect there has been some miscalculation, on your part.

“So, why didn’t they just run away?” she randomly bursts, before enough awkward silence has passed for you to come up with something to break it.

As you have spent the last few moments silently self-berating for reasons you don’t quite understand, you have completely lost the thread. “…Who?”

This time, her smile slow burns like acid. “Romeo? Juliet? The people in the play? ”

You have long suspected that you live in a Woody Allen film. Therefore, you are privy to the reason why he only makes movies, and never TV shows; the sheer amount of social incompetence involved in such a concept is too exhausting for any actor to maintain on a weekly basis. “Uh…why should they have to?”

She fixes her ‘see me unimpressed’ look on you, but you warm to your subject; this terrain is well-traveled. “Well, I mean…if you had gotten a boyfriend – a husband – would you expect to need to flee the country and your family just to live? No, you would not. And that’s the point; the feud between families was so bad that they couldn’t even associate with the same people. It was ridiculous and pointless.”

She snorts again, but Shakespeare seems to warrant less derision than you apparently did. “Worst. Breakup. Ever.”

“Well Romeo and Juliet died at the end, yeah, but they technically didn’t break up –”

“No not them. Although they weren’t technically really together, so I guess they never broke up either.” Her eyes have closed, and the heel of her palm is now supporting her cheekbone.

Your eyes shift to the bulletin board on the right of their own accord. “Uh, did you read the book? Because they got married.”

“Did you?” She shot back, eyes still closed. “Because their entire relationship was shorter than Kevin Federline and Britney Spears’ marriage.”

You are proud to not really know who she’s talking about, but her tone – and the fact that the professor will think she’s sleeping and mark the both of you down for it – has begun to grate. “Well since you know so much about it, why did you need my help?”

“I was sleeping during the lecture; I have no idea what we’re supposed to be doing. You’re the one who answers like, every question.” With each sentence, she looks and sounds progressively more like she’s falling back asleep. Her hair is a bit knotty where she’d tangled her fingers near the beginning of class, and she seems strangely duller than you remember her being just five minutes ago.

You still kind of want to help her out. “We’re supposed to analyze the varying…ah… opinions, I guess, of the characters on marriage and love.”

She lifts her head to stare at you with bleary eyes. “What opinions? Juliet tricks Romeo into marrying her because he wants to do her.” She does that snorting thing again. “He would have been better off staying with that Rose Lee chick, even if she didn’t put out, or whatever.”

That’s…an unusual interpretation. “Well no, he…I mean he liked Rosaline, but Juliet caught his eye because…um,” you have no idea what drew him to Juliet. Something about how she’d been shining bright – which is a weird way to say she was beautiful; it’s not like she would have been glowing neon or anything. “Ok, marriage is a long way to go for sex.”

“Well, you know; the things guys’ll do to get laid,” she says, flippant. At least she looks awake again. “Wait, is that why it’s a tragedy? Because everyone in those families was an idiot?”

You stare at her. She, finger-combing those snarls out of her hair, raises her brows, waiting. “...Yes! See, there you go! Impulsiveness with infatuation or with quarreling is much frowned upon by Shakespeare. Well done.”

She looks you up and down; only the one eyebrow still arched now, but doesn’t say anything. She just picks up her book and her bag, yawns, and meanders off. Around you, the classroom is a flurry of movement; the other students are packing away their books and laughing their way out the door. The class had ended at an unusually convenient time, allowing you to wrap up – sort of – your long, strange trip of a conversation before coming to a close.

this is a post of mildly-intellectual delirium.

2009-11-22T05:57:00.002-06:00

i have a fantastic relationship with myself. there rarely is any cognitive dissonance in my mind or soul, and my body and brain generally harmonize beautifully.

i think that's how many people start out, as children. all aspects of them understand when they are hungry and when they are tired and when they need to run around, and when they need someone soft to hold them, and neither mind nor brain have any compunction with this. all is well.

then slowly, often only subconsciously, one's brain realizes that one's body does not always come through when needed. that clever mental organ registers obstacles in a path, and charts routes around them, but the feet plod along, too large or too ill-coordinated to change course at the right moment, or to configure the correct trajectory adjustments, and the body stumbles. bangs its knee into a coffee table that the brain swears was just a little left of where those confounded feet were supposed to be. and if the mind is healthy enough, the brain figures out how to adapt to this realization about the body's limitations, to regulate the responses of the body and tune the reflexes in accordance with the way the brain processes stimuli. the soul copes, and all aspects melodize in sync once again, dissonance resolved.

then other people come onto the scene.

for some reason, many children come to believe that the views of society trump all other data/stimuli. in terms of sexuality, in terms of propriety, in terms of acceptable 'white' lies, in terms of acceptable 'blackballing' discrimination, etc. so if the body wants sex with men, or the soul is repulsed by an unwanted acquaintance, etc, society informs the brain that these needs and desires must be repressed, and whichever particular collective reality of 'the times' be maintained.

i never showed up for that lesson in civilization-building.

when confronted with constraints on my behavior, handed down to my brain from an entity outside myself, i would analyze each order. for every entreaty that was, once stripped bare of marketing, discovered to be bare also of logical structure, i tallied up another disobedience. in short, my rationally motivated mind realized that, if my body is not infallable, neither can my brain be. to all internal sectors, a message is conveyed - regulate how much the brain relies on input from other persons when formulating a decision. and that was all i needed to do. inner harmony stabilized, and checks & balances in place, i could get on with my life sans the identity crises that so commonly plague teenagers.

so i did.

i am the seagull... no, that's not it. i'm an actress!

2009-10-21T14:10:00.001-05:00

this is not a long post, but the quote is gargantuan, because the person who wrote the original is nearly as loquacious as i am.

****

once again Jacob, i love you, and your strangely philosophical recaps of a fucking tv show.

"Everything that rises must converge, and all that. Tending to one's own garden; being at peace. No, it sounds like settling when you say it that way. Living is not about complacency. But there comes a point when you realize some very important shit. I don't know all the things, I probably know very few of the things, but the things I know, which number exactly four, are as follows:
1) Nobody is watching you on secret cameras, so stop worrying about it. You'd be surprised how much pointless shame you can shed every day just by looking at the fucked-up thing you did and thinking about how fucked up it was for a few minutes. Then, drink a glass of water and get the fuck over yourself.
2) Your reputation is everything, but it's also totally recoverable. People are more worried about their shit than they will ever be about yours, and are looking for any opportunity to cut you a decent break, just so they don't have to think about you anymore. Your reputation is made up entirely of acts and behaviors, as perceived by other people (only the ones whose opinions are relevant). Do a thing enough times, and that's the person you are. Everything that happens to you from the direction of other people is entirely a reaction to this person. If you don't like those reactions, do a new thing instead, and after just a few times you will magically become a new person. Monitor the new responses.
3) Generally, we only look closely at the situation when it has become untenable. That's rough, because when the situation is untenable is precisely the point at which your best bet is to accept it as it is, and think about ways to change it. Instead, when things are bad is when we're most likely to wig out and act like idiots. You can't change what is until you're willing to look at what is, the ingredients and causes, and the ingredients it contains for the next thing. It changes every second, so you might as well be in charge of that and utilize your vast opportunities to choose the next what is.
4) Every minute that goes by, one of your futures dies. That's scary and it's sad, but it also means clarity. That sense of purpose S was talking about last week. Getting older means splitting less of your hope and energy into those million possible futures, and keeping more of it for yourself -- right now -- to keep moving forward toward what you really do want. And that's what Lily means. It's not about giving in, it's about giving up the maybes, one by one, until you become whole.*
*(This part will never actually happen, but you have to keep pretending it's going to, for your entire life. That's what Blair's Voltaire quote means: Hoe your own garden, for the rest of your life, because it is art, and it is very simple, and it is very hard to pull off correctly.)"
[TWoP recap of a Gossip Girl (yes you read that right) episode]

the thing about never being whole is what really gets me, because i interpret it like this:
being whole is about the essence of a person. the every reaction to any scenario. we are those little artsy coffee/tea mugs from Portugal; from the moment we are thrown into a specified shape, that is how we define ourselves. putting a handle on it, sticking it in the kiln and painting it, swirling little white spiral designs on the side, firing it up again, drinking out of it, etc - that's all a reaction to a mug. a cup. which really is still just clay, even if we never think of it as such.

i could go into Aristotle vs Plato, and the object vs the idea, but metaphysics is less important to my point than sociology. we label people. we set them aflame with the belief that they are how we perceive them, when really the perception only comes in after someone has moved, has acted, has shed light on a behavior and given our eyes something to work with in the first place.

i guess my point is this: to Live, instead of merely Existing, one must take charge of one's own movement. one cannot control how one comes out of the kiln anymore than one can control how light hits another's retinas, but one can manipulate the way shapes appear. failing that, one can affect the interpretation of an object, by confronting a person with differing images. one day you're a scrawny chessgeek with 42 posters of Jean-Luc Picard on your ceiling, and the next, there are three pairs of panties hanging from your bedpost and a Nobel Peace Prize on your wall. are you any more or less you than the day before?

sane, well-adjusted people do not concern themselves with the innermost thoughts and feelings of everyone around them. they are refractions of their parents and their friends, and will only ever focus on you when you give them a reason to. so show them someone you like.

when they intend to unname

2009-10-13T20:53:00.001-05:00

i am enraptured by the near-universal abhorrence of hipsters.

The problem with hipsters seems to me{sic} the way in which they reduce the particularity of anything you might be curious about or invested in into the same dreary common denominator of how “cool” it is perceived to be....One must start with the premise that the hipster is defined by a lack of authenticity, by a sense of lateness to the scene, or by the fact that his arrival fashions the scene—transforms people who are doing their thing into a self-conscious scene, something others can scrutinize and exploit. The hipster is that person who shows up and seems to ruin things—then you can begin to ask why this person exists, whether he is inevitable, whether he can be stopped, and what it will take.
["The Death of the Hipster"; Rob Horning]

simply put, hipsters are the grandchildren conceived by postmodernist bitchfest orgies.

Hipsterdom is the first "counterculture" to be born under the advertising industry's microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion. But the moment a trend, band, sound, style or feeling gains too much exposure, it is suddenly looked upon with disdain. Hipsters cannot afford to maintain any cultural loyalties or affiliations for fear they will lose relevance.

An amalgamation of its own history, the youth of the West are left with consuming cool rather that creating it.
["Hipster: The Dead End Of Western Civilization"; Douglas Haddow]

as with all grandchildren who've been immersed in a culture vastly opposed to the oft-touted world from their ancestors hail, the hipster movement possibly began as a way for those attracted to the lifestyle to immerse themselves in the glories of the past they've only known vicariously. somewhere down the line though, the presumably honest attempt to embrace the riches of experiences past turned into a race to collect the most pop culture references. hence the constant condescending sneer of hipsters: they can rattle off the names of more 1970s musicians than any classic rock aficionado, even if they know nothing about band members, lyrics, or guitar tabs, and that dearth of pointless, contextually nullified information is what gives them power. or something.

He’s the one / Who likes all our pretty songs / And he likes to sing along / And he likes to shoot his gun / But he knows not what it means
["In Bloom"; Nirvana]

it certainly gives them something to say anytime someone asks a member of the tribe a question. if the answer neither makes sense nor has any tangential relation to the topic at hand, the technicalities don't phase a hipster; true Art is not dreamt of in philosophy, but an awkwardly-cropped rendering of Sofia Coppola dressed as a pack of Parliaments in converses, printed out from the internet and pinned or pasted onto a dingy pair of cutoff jeans stolen from a hobo in NYC.

That there exists somewhere in the past an item, ostensibly useless to humanity now, that could become a necessary accessory, is only a matter of creativity and originality...looking even farther into the past to find something that could be a mark of hipness in the present.
["Hipsters desperately seek new anachronism to claim as own"; The Enduring Vision (satire site)]

but let it never be said that hipsters aren't aware of their own tragedy.

An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society....We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.
["Hipster: The Dead End Of Western Civilization"; Douglas Haddow]

whatever, hipsters; i maintain that there is always something unique and interesting waiting to be discovered and appreciated. there may only be five original stories ever, but the eyes that observe and are moved by them have yet to find a doppelganger. i've sifted through your last, lost generation and remain bored; i demand my beatniks back.

otherwise, i'll see you at the bottom.

the youth is starting to change / are you [Being and Nothingness]

2009-09-12T18:53:00.001-05:00

one of my favorite episodes of television, ever, is Firefly's "Objects In Space", written by the inimitably fantastic Joss Whedon. i have always adored finding philosophy in the everyday and the mundane (and, really, isn't that the point?); "OIS" is a study in Existentialism, which is a school of thought i'd salivated over long before i had ever discovered Whedon's peculiar space-western drama, so really this episode seems tailored to my adoration.

what i love most about "OIS" and masterpieces like it is that one can immerse oneself in it every year (every month, even, if one possessed a sieve-like memory) and come away from the experience with something new to ponder. The episode's surface premise is about a girl (called River); this is the story of how she finally folded into the family that found itself extending membership to her. this is the story of how she folded into the sense of self that started to surround her. this is the story of how she began building herself, more than simply a body, an object: this is the story of how people make themselves.

Jubal Early: So is it still a room when it's empty? Does the room... the thing... have purpose? Or do we.... what's the word?

the truly masterful aspect of the episode is that, with simple sidenote questions like that, the climax of the plot is basically an epic battle of philosophical wits between two highly intuitive characters, River the psychic with a fractured sense of self, and Jubal Early the bounty hunter who views all things as props on which he can potentially rest his goals. lurking beneath the plot, "OIS" explores how these two perceive the impact of functionality; whether or not an object's purpose emulates its essence, or if the two concepts are intertwined, but separate.

Jubal is driven by utilitarianism. The meaning of things is defined for him by the use they're put to. He can't see how River's claim on the room - its identity through her - can exist when she's not using it - the meaning of the space flows from its purpose.
[TWoP forum commenter Sandman]

beneath even that? the aforementioned coming-of-age story. existentialists insist that everything is absurd. meaning is always symbolic, always imparted. we are all just objects, making up aspects of ourselves to better relate to one another in the space we share. and yet, when no one else shares our space, when the room is empty, to whom do we relate? who are we when without an audience? is that even a valid question, or are we always performing, even for ourselves?

River experiences the Being, the Sein, of the object; she conceives of it in a way that brings awareness of the worldhood of the world. Early, however, seems to be approaching the world in a more utilitarian way, in that he understands objects to have an essence in the work that they do, in the way that they are used. What is interesting, however, is that Heidegger specifically says that the essence of a thing is discovered in its usage: a tree only becomes itself when it is transformed into lumber and built into a house, for example.
[TWoP forum commenter myspoonistoobig]

so who are people? when we are alone, are we the same as when we are surrounded by others, by their expectations? or does the definition of who a person is rely on actions, not perceptions; when i type this sentence, i am a Writer, and a Philosopher, but once i turn off my computer and go to sleep, do i cease to be either of those things?

some people embody this concept. they compartmentalize their own characteristics; work stays at the office, and family stays at home. they transform themselves, but are they different people or simply different aspects of the same creature? does it matter?

regardless of an individual's answer to those questions, "OIS" can stand in as a template for finding oneself. perhaps the point is not that River was right, or that the young are the most in-tune with the universe. this was her episode, after all; if she didn't win this time, then she would have remained a stunted child. what one takes away from "OIS", what i always take away, is that whomever 'wins', or is best prepared for life as an object, is the person who controls what characteristics one exudes. if i aim to be the object that is the Writer, then i embody that, and relate to other objects whilst demonstrating the functionality of a Writer. of a Philosopher. of any other definition i wish to have attributed to me. if i am an object to be used, than i determine for myself how and why i am wielded.

(the word Early was looking for is 'imbue' by the way).

occasionally, there is productivity

2009-08-23T03:28:00.004-05:00

strange, to be writing here again. i have been awash in a molten lavafall of academia. as proof, i offer a snippet of the loops my summer's been circling round me.

****

Whose Language Is It Anyway?

Long considered the ‘melting pot’ of the world, the United States is known for an interest in merging cultures and equalizing ethnicities – except where it doesn’t. Bigotry and ethnocentrism go hand in hand with the freedom peels America prides itself on, and nowhere is this dichotomy more evident than in the way native-born Americans seem to preoccupy themselves with their language. Often a complaint against an immigrant is over nothing more than a snide remark about the thickness of an accent, or the quality of stuttered English spoken by someone who has not long been in the practice of its use. Is this frustration racist, or simply fostered by a perverted sense of pragmatism; were English the official language of America, would the shared speech bring different peoples together, or simply make it easier for them to insult one another?

Upon initially delving into research for this topic, I expected to encounter many a demand for national uniformity, versus tales of discrimination and violated rights. In a few instances, I was right; author Ronald Schmidt, Sr. notes in his rather enlightening book Language Policy and Identity Politics in the United States, that there exists a lobbying group called ‘U.S. English,’ which has three goals: to make an official language amendment, to veto laws concerning the placement of multiple languages on voting ballots, and to constrain funding for bilingual education so that the programs are only short-term (31). This group, so explains columnist Guy Wright, fears that “this English-speaking nation [will be] turned into a poly-lingual babel” ( qtd, in Schmidt 31). James Crawford, author of several works on bilingualism and politics, scoffed at this suggestion. In an article called “What’s Behind Official English?” he points out that “98 percent of U.S. residents over the age of four speak English “well” or “very well,” according to the 1980 census…Under these circumstances, who would assert that “English is under attack” and needs “legal protection” from the ravages of bilingualism?” (171).

When I went in search of arguments for the other side, my first glance turned up mostly questions. According to Schmidt, “the most prominent and emotionally heated linguistic access issue has been that of providing ballots and other election materials in languages other than English” (19). The question concerning non-English-speakers is, in the event that an official language be set in place, how would that affect their civil rights? “Is knowledge of English a precondition for the exercise of these rights? Do the more general civil rights prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of national origin include language?” (Schmidt 19).

Yet more concerns of anti-English-only lobbyists are over the power that the government would be allowed in pursuit of “enforc[ing] this section by appropriate legislation” (“English-Only A Mistake” 139). Asked in a September 1988 editorial published on the subject:”Can legislature forbid he use of bilingual or multilingual signs…? What about hospital emergency rooms? What happens to someone who disobeys the law?” (140). These activists also claim that the amendment “will codify racial and cultural bias” (“Vote No” 141) by “sending a message that [America] doesn’t like people who don’t speak English” (“English-Only A Mistake” 140). However, even the ardent dissenters admit that “the legislature is unlikely to pass any draconian laws and, if it did, the laws would be vetoed” (140).

As if in answer to these concerns, a 1983 speech by then-Senator Walter Huddleston dismisses the importance of other languages in comparison to English – in the United States, anyway – by stating “so widely held is the assumption that English is already our national language that the notion of stating this in our national charter may seem like restating the obvious” (114). Huddleston furthers that the desire for an official language stems not from a sense of classism, but via a need to maintain our cohesiveness as a nation, and that ‘melting pot’ philosophy that has allowed the United States to merge together countless cultures and ethnicities into one American whole (114-115). His position is echoed by editorials on the subject of official language proposals throughout the years; from [SOMETHING] to earnest insistence that an officiated language will “work to the vast benefit of immigrants and others in our society whose prospects for livelihood too often are crippled by deficiency in the language that propels this country’s economic life and its major activities otherwise” (“Proposal 63” 136).

Even if the United States citizens all unanimously voted for an official language, the issue is further complicated by an extreme divide over which provisions should be included in such an amendment. An assimilationist perspective is one which believes any language that is not English, while entirely within a person’s rights to use, has no place in a public forum if English is the language of government and society (Schmidt, 149-161). One would seek to ensure that English was used in every aspect of public life, including the workplace with the secretary of state’s office or a polling locale as an aspect of that public arena. All other languages, an assimilationist would say, should be relegated to the personal aspects of our lives, and broken out only when at gatherings with family members or friends.

A pluralist, on the other hand, wants equal rights for all languages, believing that the First Amendment rights include the freedom to express oneself in whichever language one should happen to choose, and in any locale (Schmidt 147). Pluralists do not insist upon any loyalty to a person’s ethnolinguistic roots, but they view “requiring them to leave behind the social bases of their personal identity is destructive of their fundamental human and political rights” (Schmidt 146).

Proposals to institute English as the official language of America have been around for debate in Congress since April 1981 (Schmidt 28). In his revision of the Encyclopedia of Constitutional Encyclopedia of Constitutional Amendments, Proposed Amendments, and Amending Issues, 1789-2002, John R. Vile makes note of the first Bill’s divergences in the Senate vs. the House. “The Senate version of this amendment was fairly general, whereas the House version prohibited the use of languages other than English except as a means of teaching language proficiency” (174). Though some form of the Bill is continually reintroduced into Congress, the progression of English-only statutes has been all but halted on the federal level. Along the state level, however, English-as-official-language acts have been put in place by twenty-two states in the decade since the first introduction of the idea in Congress in 1981.

It seems clear to me that the nation would benefit from the stable sense of efficiency that an official language would provide. Instead of spending excesses of money and materials, and millions of minutes and efficacy translating every document or set of instructions, our resources could be better spent on building up multilingual education programs that help to transition non-English-speakers to an American way of life – one that includes participating in our unique dialect. What is called bigotry by those too afraid to offend other cultures to recognize pragmatism is simply the progression of a nation’s growth. As early as 1923, the United States was obsessed with making its own mark on the world, and with its own vernacular. Washington J. McCormick wrote “America has lost so much in literature by not thinking its own thoughts and speaking them boldly... It was only when Cooper, Irving, Mark Twain, Whitman, and O. Henry dropped the Order of the Garter and began to write American that their wings of immortality sprouted” (41). The first generations of immigrants acclimated themselves heartily to life as Americans, and the transition continues for every individual who becomes a citizen.

Works Cited

Crawford, James. “What’s Behind Official English?” Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official English
Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 171-177. Print.

“English-Only a Mistake: Amendment Sends Wrong Message to Tourists.” Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the
Official English Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 139-140. Print.

Huddleston, Walter. “The Misdirected Policy of Bilingualism.” Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official
English Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 114-118. Print.

McCormick, Washington J. “’American’ as the Official Language of the United States.” Language Loyalties: A Source
Book on the Official English Controversy. Ed. James Crawford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 40.
Print

favour rites

2009-07-26T04:03:00.009-05:00

when i was about fourteen, i remember being among a gathering of Christians discussing Jesus and his siblings. i could contribute with one thought only, as it reverberated within me so strongly it blocked out all other concepts; just how resentful of him must Jesus' siblings have been?

imagine it: light from a desert sunset spilling from the sunroof, pooling at the legs of the dinner table - or its first century equivalent - and Mary nags her daughters to quicker clean away the remnants of supper. "Jesus would have done it without being asked!" would she have needled? and Joseph; would he have overpraised Jesus' clever sanding technique on a cabinet meant for the richest merchant in town? "why can't you come up with creative solutions like that." or even "behold! Jesus saved the party, for now we needn't figure out who is sober enough to purchase and successfully return with more wine," must have been used at least once.

being Jesus' sibling would have been a nightmare.

not that parents don't try their best, mostly, but sometimes they cripple the children they aim to support.

i wonder if that's why the Jewish traditionally come of age at thirteen, and not when the last stirrings of pubescence finally subside, or the person in question is taught to drive; is considered old enough to marry and/or consent to sex, or old enough to vote. old enough to murder or die in the name of national symbolism. it's before all these milestones that a child begins to grow up, because it is around thirteen that parents are revealed as fraudulent gods. they are not perfect. they do not have every answer. they do not have A Plan, or if they do, the scenario is not necessarily the one which will best represent you and your talents/interests.

but what if they were gods?

there is a passage, in the unexplored wilds of the internet, that spins a fanciful reinterpretation of a semi-commonly known Biblical story. in the beginning, there was God, but there were also Angels, his beloved servants. one above a crowd blazed Lucifer, the Morningstar, and God cherished him, adored them all, and they worshipped Him. Harmony was.

then God did something unexpected. He took in His celestial hands stardust and spacerock, and fashioned a magnificent chamber, which He painted with colors and scents and leafy textures. in this spherical bedroom, He laid oh-so gingerly Man.

Space stretched out, and with it frolicked Time, and frumpled Man, so sensitive to such movements. Man giggled, and Man grew, and Man grasped a hold of Knowledge and clenched tight, while God's eyes twinkled. He visited often the colorful chamber, and Lucifer learned about distance. as Man grew outwards, so Lucifer grew downwards, sinking into sorrow, boiling into rage. perhaps envy had inspired his serpent's slouching toward Eve; perhaps pride, but it was bitterness that saw him flung from Heaven's turrets.

"Lucifer, Lightbringer, most glorious of Angels, you are the greatest of my servants, the most faithful of my creations. You have never veered from my commands. Ever you have obeyed my will. Now you come before me and speak the truth about Adam and his family, for they have defied me. They flout my will, they ignore my commands. In their hands my Plan for creation comes to naught.

"And yet I say to you Lucifer, Lightbringer, that were you ten thousand times as glorious, and they ten thousand times as vile, yet would they still stand in my esteem as far above you as the stars stand from the earth. For you are a servant, whose duty it is to obey my commands and carry forth my plans, and that is all you shall ever be. And Adam and his descendants are my children, who shall inherit my kingdom, and nothing will displace them from that right. For that is the nature of the servant and the child, of the master and the father. And now it is given unto you that you shall remain and accept your lot, and the rights of my children, or you shall depart from me into the darkness never to return.

"And I say further unto you Lucifer, Lightbringer, most faithful and glorious of Angels, that because you speak out of ignorance this once do I forgive you. But should you dare ever again to slander my children before me I will put you forth from my presence with my own hand, and neither your deeds nor your obedience shall stay my judgment. For it is not meet that a father should suffer his child to be slandered by a servant, even one such as you."

God had but sacked him. God had but castrated him. with derision and alacrity God had whipslashed awareness into Lucifer; there were to be no aspirations of grandeur for the Angels. Lucifer and his lot were servants first and always. simple, replaceable staff managing God's estate, and Man was the sticky child fingerpainting over the walls. is it any wonder that Lucifer revolted?

even if the myth is mere story, quite a thrilling tale it makes, and perhaps a heartwrenching one.

the quoted section is the 'sorrows of lucifer' work of gloriousness that a lovely creature calling himself Dzeytoun penned.

you know that i try / try to tell you the truth

2009-06-04T00:33:00.002-05:00

01. what is more difficult for you, looking into someones eyes when you are telling them how you feel, or looking into someone’s eyes when they are telling you how they feel?
i always look people in the eye when they're telling me how they feel. presumably as a sign of strength. plus, when i am talking i get all nervous sometimes about being looked into.

02. think of the last time you were really angry. why were you angry? do you still feel the same way?
i am always angry.

03. you are on a flight from honolulu to chicago, nonstop. there is a fire in the back of the plane. you have enough time to make one phone call. who do you call? what do you tell them?
there are so many things i would want to say, to so many people
...but they probably wouldn't pick up anyway.
so i would just text those i love who aren't local or known by a lot of people and tell them i love them and i will be dead soon. and then text Brandi and tell her to find my computer and how to find the passwords to everything that i own and to give them to Jamey. to whom i will give Megan's phone number and the things those passwords unlock, because he'll know what i mean by 'Speaker For The Dead.'
this is a really well-thought out scenario.

04. you are at the doctor’s office and he has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? what do you do with your remaining days?
i would only ever tell anyone if i needed to pull that card out in order to get something i couldn't just obtain another way.
i would get to crossing items off of my Cosmic To Do List. also i would make a will. then, on my last day, above scenario.

05. you can have one of the following two things: love or trust. which do you choose? why?
i would cheat and choose love, because with love, one trusts. not necessarily that everything is peachy, or one might 'trust' that one will be cheated on with a blond(e) or something, but to love is to do, and to know, and therefore is to trust, in self and in other.

06. you are walking down the street on your way to work. there is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. your boss has told you if you are late even once more, you are fired. do you take the time to save the dog’s life?
i would take a picture of the drowning dog, save it, and then get press coverage, wherein i reference my place of work and my lack of worry about my job stability over this deed i have done. then i would quirk an eyebrow and head off to my next shift.

07. you are unfaithful to your spouse/significant other. do you tell him/her? why or why not?
supposing i were ever actually to cheat, i would closely examine the circumstances and what i learned about myself and the relationship against which i acted. if i went further than a kiss/one instance or didn't stop because of my concern for my lover (or if it's a significant emotional affair), i would end the relationship, because i would clearly not be getting out of it what i needed. if the singular instance solidified my need for the person, i would perhaps inform them, but probably not. after all, that would typically cause the relationship to end/change, which i have in the scenario discovered i do not want.

08. are you the kind of friend that you would want to have as a friend?
absolutely. and no, i am not just saying that, because i would even take the crazy bits.

09. does love = sex?
hahahahaha no.
however, to be 'in love', as we colloquially coin it, one must have that layer of sexual attraction/intent, or the feelings stirred are simply of (committed) fondness for/attachment to the person.

10. when was the last time you told someone honestly how you felt regardless of how difficult it was for you to say? who was it? what did you have to tell the person?
i tend to be honest when confronting. it's when i have curled inward, because i feel confrontation would be pointless or my desires unachievable, that i speak in riddled truths.

11. what would be harder, for you to tell a friend you love them or that you do not love them back?
the former. one gives me power, and the other places it in the hands of whomever i am hypothetically confessing to.

12. excluding romantic love, when was the last time you told someone you loved them? who were they to you?
Brandi, earlier today.

13. imagine: it is a dark night, you are alone, it is raining outside, and you hear someone walking around outside your window. who do you wish was there with you?
someone wielding a crowbar. or maybe a Spartan warrior.

would you give a homeless person CPR if they were dying? why or why not?
of course. uh, the dude's homeless, not Hitler. presumably.

you are holding onto your grandmother’s hand and the hand of a newborn that you do not know as they hang over the edge of a cliff. you have to let one go to save the other. who do you let fall to their death?
both. i don't care enough for either to wrench my arm out of its socket.

are you old fashioned?
in what way?
i don't know what that means, contextually: be more specific.

when was the last time you were nice to someone and did NOT expect anything in return for it?
i don't really believe in altruism, so technically no one does, ever, but i regularly act kindly toward people with no other conscious motive then to help them (and therefore feel like a good person, which raises my self-esteem, which makes me happy, which is for my own benefit)

which would you choose: true love with the guarantee of a broken heart, or never loved at all? why?
if your heart gets broken, is it really 'true' love?
and i would always choose to never love anyone at all, because then anything could happen and it would slide off of my merry sociopathic shoulders.

are you scared of spiders?
not usually.

would you go back in time if you were given the chance?
i would want to know how that affected the timeline(s) as i know it/them now, beforehand, but probably yes.

what are your plans for this weekend?
working.

ever been swimming in a lake or a river?
yes.

last person you drove with in a car?
uh...Manduh? Brandi?

what did you last buy?
gasoline.

what radio station(s) do you listen to?
ipod.

are you afraid of the dark?
not really, other than the random bouts of paranoia.

do you like Chinese food?
if it tastes good, yes. =]

is there anyone you wish was still in your life?
yeah

was this the best year of your life?
not finished yet, come back later.

who are your best friends?
Brandi, Sam, Jamey, Erika.

is it easier to forgive or forget?
isn't it 'forgive AND forget', as in 'one who does not forgive dwells on it and eventually snaps and mutilates the offender, who by now has no recollection of the offendee or the offense itself'?

are you jealous of someone?
in an abstract way.

what last made you laugh the hardest?
i don't remember

would you live with someone without marrying them?
i have roommates.

have you ever had a dream about people you love dying?
no

who was the last person you cried in front of?
i don't do that.

have you ever changed clothes in a vehicle?
yes.

who was the last person that made you feel safe, why?
that's a loaded question i shall pointedly not answer.

have you ever broken someone’s heart?
all the time.

have you ever dated someone older than you?
yeah.

do you believe everyone deserves a second chance?
no

one questions 'how to leap' and 'why' but never 'from where to what?'

2009-05-20T14:47:00.006-05:00

a thought came to me today, while, as most do, i was amidst a task mundane. the simplicity of my work gave it ample spare space in which it settled, and still nests in my cerebellum; which am i, entirely faithless or utterly gullible?

one cannot have it both ways, after all, but i seem to vacillate on a scale in every given situation.

i would like to think i am not taken in like a fool, that i am of strong and skeptic mind, and that i follow logic and practicality to their conclusions before making mine.

i know that is not the case.

when someone lays down a statement as fact, i take it automatically at face value unless some instinct insists i disbelieve - what proves to be - the illusion. i latch on to the paranormal and supernatural with excitement and awe. i obey the heartstrings of my hopes and paranoia, churning my own insides at their whims.

it is this struggle to find poised balance on that scale which leads me to write this out. i have no answers for myself, only more concerns.

i abase myself before a God, but alternate complacent assurance with prideful hesitancy. the best argument i have heard for the Universe as nothing but a meshup of physical systems was something said about finding it a relief to assume life is not simply a test, and my response is only that one can learn a system's rules, and perhaps strategize to one's favor a handful of times, but one can manipulate a personality much easier, and with more regular results - especially when that personality provides one with tests by which to cheat.

even my faith in myself is skewed and circumstantial. is this a matter of pride? do i let my assumption that i can outwit, outcharm, or outsass my way around all obstacles overtake my ideas about what i believe in? should i do so more often, or less so? just how much should pride/faith inmyself should be a part of my worldview, and how much should i sacrifice to my God? or, if one takes the Atheistic standpoint, how much of my intention should i sacrifice for the (good)will of other people?

Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem. ~ MICHIO KAKU, Wired Magazine, Aug. 2003

2009-05-04T12:32:00.006-05:00

lazy entry today. though i find myself boastful i have remembered to update at all. such low standards!

If we could travel into the past, it's mind-boggling what would be possible. For one thing, history would become an experimental science, which it certainly isn't today. The possible insights into our own past and nature and origins would be dazzling. For another, we would be facing the deep paradoxes of interfering with the scheme of causality that has led to our own time and ourselves. I have no idea whether it's possible, but it's certainly worth exploring.

CARL SAGAN, NOVA interview, Oct. 12, 1999

the rest is all just me pontificating as usual. is also copy/pasted, because my facebook message conversations are like this by nature.

****

i assume that Time is the fourth dimension, and subscribe to the block theory that it's like space; we cannot be in more than one area of the dimension at once, and therefore cannot know both past and future. since we're in the middle of the tesseract though, instead of masters of it, as we are the third dimension, we can't see beyond the trees we've past and the ones we're currently staring at.

from that standpoint, time is a measurement not of the volume an object takes up, but the distance between the initial displacement of empty space and the replacement of it (as far as we can understand it, anyway). would manipulating the past then be like affecting an object's mass or girth: impossible (without understanding how to manipulate quantum mechanics)? we instead manipulate our recollection of time, via apologies and histories, much as we blur our account of space with guesstimates and analogies.

that's just talking about the actual possibility, though, not the potentiality.

i suppose the point of time travel (and anything into which effort is put) is to ensure that something of ourselves gets left behind, becomes irrevocably entangled with the universe as is, and therefore finds immortality. and for those who can't actually claim eternity through Achievement or Attachment (which leads into my presumably professional assumptions about human nature + moral psychology, as opposed to this topic, so i'll not detail that) time travel would just be an extension of faking it.

therefore, to answer your question, a perfect paragraph, short though it may be, is technically all we ever strive for. what do you expect to be written in your eulogy, a character testimony which only a relative few will ever hear, as opposed to your obituary, which seeks to notify complete strangers in few words and with little effort, that you have died, and perhaps they might give a shit (forgive morbidity) as opposed yet again to encyclopedic entries, which would detail your relevance in terms of objects/thoughts/etc that you have gifted to the general populace.

my questions are thus: for which reasons would we attempt time travel? to cement our place in the global history, or in the memories of those we have loved? and if we could all access time travel, would we learn to distrust even our own experiences in the face of the outside world? how would we relate to one another if everything was in flux? would we be bolder, knowing that we could simply buy a do-over? or would we cradle more closely our moments with one another, and a lover's promise become "i would never relive this day"?

soon, robotic beings [or zombies] will rule the world, and none of this'll matter

2009-04-24T20:37:00.001-05:00

today's anthropology discussion has my mind attempting to secure the gold medal.

roll your eyes and navigate away from this page if you can't sit through three paragraphs of this before i get to the topic at hand, but i just want to interrupt myself to interject that i think it's rational enough to believe in God and evolution. few people would disagree that evolution is the right course of scientific thought, but many have gotten it into their heads that once someone adds God to any equation, the person who did so expects everyone else to stop working with numbers and watch a bunny pop out from the other side of the equal sign.

one believing in God does not change what happens in the equation, only how the equation itself came to be. as no one really knows what inspired the Big Bang, God is as viable a source as 'one day the not!universe got really really bored...'.

i suppose the real dilemma comes in trying to figure out what to do about studying the origins of the universe if they did actually happen to be caused as opposed to random; some cosmologists might find themselves unable to continue working on their projects if even one answer was supernatural.

i suppose there's always evolution to fight about, which is the track i intend to switch to after this horrific excuse for a transition sentence is out of the way.

****

someone says "evolution" and i think of Darwin (and for some reason that puts me in mind of the Dewey Decimal system) and primates and the ol' Neanderthal vs. Cro-Magnon debate. i think of the only way we'll ever see it in action; through adaptation. i consider global warming and how which species will weather the storm (which is perhaps two puns for the price of one!) ahead.

what if it happens and all of our predictions turn out incredibly wrong? we wonder about our species and how it will evolve, but what if it develops all of these different traits - more alleles, a third strand of RNA - and eventually Homo sapiens sapiens splits into other subspecies? will it be, instead of environmental factors, due to a long line of the same sociological choices, like vegans propagating with vegans and producing children who eventually stop having canine teeth? or who's teeth and digestive systems develop into something more herbavoric than what we have now?

****

it's not just the future that's murky; the past is all in a fog as well. there are all sorts of wild theories about how modern-day humans got so modern (dandruff shampoo and the invention of the banana daquiri), but even the prevailing theory is mired in debate.

personally i think what happened was the RAO theory, except i would account for the differences in specific traits via a moderate level of interbreeding with the Neanderthals. i don't think there was enough mixing of subspecies to go the Multiregional route, however, because there just aren't enough people walking around with clearly Neanderthal traits.

i mean to say, the structure of modern-day human bodies is anatomically Cro-Magnon. if there was a significant amount of interbreeding - so much that a new species emerged in the wake of the other two - there would be evidence of it in our general population, not just in specific areas. unless i am much mistaken about the theory, the MRE posites that Neanderthals (and perhaps H. erectus?) mingled with the Cro-Magnons all over the globe, and that we have slightly varied traits (what traits, i'm never quite sure, which may be my problem) because of it. Were two different subspecies with subtle but noticable differences in cranium, shoulders, pelvis, leg proportions, etc to interbreed, i would expect their resulting children to have more than little variances; i would expect some people to have a longer skull and others to have a shorter one. i would expect variance to be everywhere, including bones, and therefore obvious in bone structure. i would expect this to be reflected in today's population.

****

evolution - we know it's about natural selection and the phrase "survival of the fittest" and the consequences of mutation. we know it's our only response to an ever-changing world, and that all evolution does for us is help us catch up, not keep up. we know it's involved with genetic drift and we can trace the matrilinial heritage of a species back to its ancestral representative millions of years ago, and plot a timeline of the past's changes.

we don't know how to plot the future. we don't know what sparks a new species from an old one, or where the biological lines blur between two already existing ones.

what is evolution, really? will we ever get the chance to find out - before it happens to us?

the child is grown, the dream is gone

2009-03-18T20:36:00.008-05:00

i felt the need to jot down the following observations i and a conversational partner made today, but i am too lazy to actually restructure the comments we said into paragraph format. therefore, you, Nonexistent Reader, shall simply have to muddle through the discourse.

Laskuraska:
Remember when cartoons used to have jokes in them that were meant for adults?
I miss that
New cartoons don't usually have them
but the older ones did, and watching them as an adult is just as fun

Zen:
well i love Butch Hartman cartoons
like Danny Phantom
Fairly Oddparents
they've got that thing where the audience isn't just kids but teens and adults too
not as cracktastic and glorious as Freakazoid or The Animaniacs, but they're the classics, so, you know.

Laskuraska:
yeah
Animaniacs was fucking great
I miss that show too
the thing is though- I don't want them to try to make new ones.
They'd ruin it ;-;

Zen:
indeed
the era has passed
it's like getting ska bands back into pop culture

Laskuraska:
yeah

Zen:
you can't. the need for them in america is gone
you can fuse some of the reggae sound, but the personality of america has changed

Laskuraska:
the question is what do we need right now, really. We're not getting it or we'd be less violent anf ig'nant.

Zen:
grown up.
indeed

Laskuraska:
We need to find out what we need and take it.
Maybe we need a big bowl of post-post rock
lol
whatever it is we need, it
's probably not here yet.
Someone needs to make it.

Zen:
hahah
we're just getting into post-postmodernism
give us time

Laskuraska:
hahaha
Yes. We're not ready for that many post-posts.
And see here is my issue with calling stuff "modern" or "post-___".
Now modern means like 60 years ago, and we're post-post-modern, And that's rediculous.
I mean, modern is supposed to be a word that refers to the state of the world right now, in'nit? As in "in modern times we use hummers instead of cars usually."
"- because we is ig'nant"

Zen:
pretty much yes
it was also supposed to be about the mindset though
instead of reminiscing about "the good ol' days" it was about moving forward
1950s was the supposedly Golden Era Of American Advancement
everything was supposed to shape up and we'd defeated the economy and hitler and we were heading to the stars
it was all go go go
until we realized some of us were falling behind
and some of us were chained to the floor
and still more of us said 'fuck you stars' and went off slamming their doors, playing loud music and practicing their Pretentious Twat Smirk in the mirror while salivating over "art" from marcel duchamp

Laskuraska: hahaha yes.
A few of us tried to build elevators
but they were like "hey no blacks and women allowed on my elevator" and then the other white guys pissed on the engine and broke the elevators because that's what you get for being a giant dick.
And the Asians were like "Hey can we not live in concentration camps anymore? The war's been over for like ten years"
and the white guys who peed on the elevators were like "Ok guys come on out"

Zen: precisely
you stole that from a history textbook.

i wonder what our descendants will say about post-postmodernism, once society has grown enough to shed the cultures of this era and don the idiosyncrasies of the next.

my fair lady

2009-02-25T13:54:00.011-06:00

once, i laid down the bill for some customers, discretely as any dutiful waitress, and by some chance glanced down at my fingers, still gripping the corner of the bill holder. one of the men already had a hovering hand awaiting my self-removal from the tableside, and i recall thinking about the image in my mind of a thick hand on a bill vs. a smaller, softer one with chipped polish on the fingers instead of hairy knuckles. the juxtaposition seemed strange to me, like my hand shouldn't have been on it. it took me a while to realize why, but in all my time as a waitress, i have only rarely seen a woman pay for the food when her company also included at least one grown man.

my own father fits the same profile, so i suppose my socialization is to blame for why the reversal of roles would stand out to me. i don't assume something so daft as that a female breadwinner (or bread-payer-for, at any rate) would destabilize society, but it would certainly break a mold i still have yet to see reshaped.

****

as a child, rarely ever did i dream of marriage.

actually, that's not true. i never imagined my wedding, which is what one hears about little girls, isn't it? a mother walking in on her daughter, all overdolled in makeup until she resembles more a clown than a lady, stumbling around in too-big heels and a trailing dress, and she doesn't frown at the hurricane that's blown through the room, but coos because her little girl has been properly socialized, and in the end that's the only job of a parent.

but such a comment is for another post.

i wonder how many girls thought about marriage, as opposed to the ornate quality of their wedding decorations. how many pondered who would raise the children; whose job would be the force behind any migration of familial location; who would do the driving and the paying and the speaking to members of society outside the family unit. because that's as much a matrix of choices in marriage as is picking apart one another's guest list when planning a wedding.

all this post-postmodern world has bequeathed to its generations is the cliquifying of individuality, the recognition of even the most obviously androgynous traits (and those who insist on viewing them as such) to the LGBT community's claims department, and the polarization of all behavior any woman exhibits (or inhibits) in light of the 'type' of woman it makes her. to someone with only two decades marked on the bingo scoresheet of life experiences, even the willingness to wear an engagement ring, as opposed to the demand that her fiance wear one as well, is some Epic Revelation Regarding Her Opinions Of Her Ancestors' Fight For Her Right To Be Masculine.

not-so-secretly, all i want to be is me, and to hell with gender roles and societal expectations, but even i can squint through my cloud of idealism well enough to recognize reality right before it boxes my ears. history is a tale spun by the victors, and if we aren't always fighting then the story isn't deemed interesting enough to tell, so sometimes we just make it up.

it's because we cannot let anything exist without letting everyone dig a fingernail into it that my marriage - assuming i ever actually meet someone i could imagining myself willing to spend a lifetime With Me as opposed to just around me, like my dearest and most prized friends - would be niggled at and prodded with and stipulated upon before i even agreed to undertaking it.

which, ok: writing the fine print before signing to the contract is always a wise idea, but i wonder just how many more conditions are set nowadays than in ye oldedayes, because so many women are under the assumption that if they list a quota on how many hours a week their husbands must allow them outside working and shopping, that they will be doing the foremothers of feminism proud. in the end, though, they're still defining themselves by their relation to men; drinking vodka martinis instead of beers on a raucous night out because they hold themselves at a higher class than men; wearing high heels and a slinky dress to work because they happen to have bodies that are less aesthetically awkward than men; hiring someone else to raise/watch/interact with the children because they refuse to be held down by domestic responsibilities any more than their masculine counterparts.

perhaps i am putting more thought into this than required (wouldn't be the first time i stuck philosophy in where it wasn't recommended), but i imagine the utmost a woman can do for marriage, or feminism, or for anti-discrimination movements anywhere, is to refine her self-concept (and her intentions, and certainly her values) internally.

****

if i marry, it won't be because that's 'what you do' or because i intend to listen to any biological clock, or because i am secretly waiting for the one person in all of creation who, by his battered lonesome, can finish my puzzle better than the jagged pieces i collect from everyone else who has ever influenced me.

if i marry, i won't change my name, and i won't ask my fiance to change his - not as some vehement feminist message about how i am tied but not bound, but simply because i've actively struggled against letting other people drape names on me like mantling.

unless it was a clearly superior last name, that is. then i would change it just to introduce myself and hear the syllables roll around in my mouth.

if i marry, i won't quit my job to raise children, and i won't pawn them off on a daycare center. mostly because i don't really want children (i rather expect to be an atrociously-tempered, inconsistent, impertinent mother, and why, if i could avoid it, would i burden anyone with whatever psychological scarring that would cause, thereby creating a vicious serial killer?).

if i do end up reproducing, my husband can take off time or work from home and rear them, because he would be the one who'd begged for them in the first place.

if i marry, i won't keep an immaculate house. i wouldn't even have a house, since i much prefer more cramped dwellings like inner-city apartments (i can sacrifice living in a tenement, though). i would wash dishes if what i needed at the moment was unclean. i would sweep/vaccuum if i couldn't walk barefoot across a floor without wincing at the sensation of dirt squishing itself between my toes. i usually don't ever really clean until i get disgusted or i find myself in an obsessive-compulsive fit of tidiness. instead of worrying about what a 'bad' wife that might make me, i just chalk it up to artistic nature and move on.

if i marry, i won't have dinner waiting on the table precisely at mealtimes. mostly because i don't have a set meal time, i just eat when i am hungry, but also because if anyone's going to be enforcing a family dinner, it's whomever happens to be the better cook.

if i marry, i will continue to have friends my husband doesn't share, and probably a few he hates. as i imagine he will. i never understood couples whose lives suddenly revolve around one another, who think love is spending nearly every waking second together. nor can i understand why they are so shocked that the spark dies after being throttled for twenty years.

...and so many other stipulations, but after a while that just becomes another random list, and not something that matters to this post.

so, yeah, I felt so scared

2009-01-27T21:24:00.003-06:00

why, i wonder, are our lives so defined by cycles?

wake, shower, eat, brush teeth, go [to work, to school, to ever-present errands], return, eat, vegge out, sleep, wake...repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

glance, see, dilate pupils, smile, prowl, approach, negotiate, take, have, lose/break, cry, scowl, leave, glance...repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

breathe, cry, eat/sleep/shit, discover, laugh, love, grow, bleed, break, heal, learn, [live], migrate, procreate [, teach, settle, fade, wither, decompose]...repeat.
repeat.
repeat.

all we can hope for is that we are not hamsters in wheels; fixed.
roll down every hill, tumble blindly past each valley - enforce a cycle
move the subject forward.

get on with the fascination [each another's audience]

2009-01-17T23:57:00.011-06:00

i wrote the following at 5am last week. the editing of my rough draft was a harrowing process, involving many a threat to just trash the whole thing and drop out of college. to forget i that i ever had such aspirations.

are all writers this self-loathing?

also: the title is a line from an Arctic Monkeys song.

****
it's the red wine this time, but that is no excuse

you're going to tell Angie, because how could you not? Angie has always been privy to your blackest secrets (not your deepest, necessarily, but certainly your darkest) because Angie is the only person you know who could understand them, implicitly.

Angie used to fuck around. with men, with women, with random streetpeople she'd found in bars. with you, a few times, in the beginning. with acid-laced cigarettes, with vodka and anti-depressants; with rusted chains and never-dulled knives; she fucked around with everything she could mix and match. now she's on the up-and-up, with a brood of fresh-faced children and a handsome man with his hand on her lower back, steering her away from her demons.

you aren't so lucky.

or perhaps that's not fair; can one really blame luck for events that unfold because of one's own decisions, hastily-made as they might be? of course not. in the end, it's not luck - good or bad - that has you pressed between him and the creaking door of his flat, the shadows not distorting either of your faces enough for you to pretend confusion. you know exactly whose nimble fingers are rubbing circles into your spine. further: you know exactly whose aren't.

thinking of Andrew is probably not the best way to lose oneself in emotion, because it's David's fingers that entertwine with yours, David's skin getting grazed by silver and diamond. in an instant, the only thing flooding you is shame. you're flushing so fluorescently your mind supplies a bizarre image of yourself at this moment, glowing a vibrant red only observed by thermal vision. you imagine also, however, that David can see it (surely he must be able to feel it? you're so hot. you're burning with it - a twisted, post-modern interpretation of the scarlet letter, you suppose, but it's your brain, so you'll just chalk it up to something peculiar and repressed, and move on).

and perhaps he really can see it (you wouldn't put it past David to harbor superpowers, not after the way he'd sunk into your heart, even mere moments after you'd met him) because he's pulling away, palms cupping your neck, thumb tracing your jawline, and his hands are so cold you think it might be enough for you to just fling yourself on him, push out every last tendril of fever, until you've stopped shaking and can finally rest.

but the moment is over, perhaps (it never is. wasn't over the second after the second you met him, isn't over two years later, won't be over in twenty years' time) and he whispers your name with an entirely different timber than the one he'd used a minute ago. the black pools of his eyes have contracted, and you see a nightmare version of yourself - puffy-eyed and faintly squarish all around, (and oh God is that how he knew!? did he feel you bloating, gaining, the curse of your shattered self-control in times of panic?) - reflected in his irises.

he whispers your name again, and how is it that you don't even much mind how, tangled as you are, you can smell the merlot that accentuates every syllable rolling off of his tongue? there's something tranquilizing about his scent that you can never seem to bottle. you've tried, of course; mumbling half-remembered jokes he's made like mantras, grasping for anything to wield against that never-ending penchant for self-destruction that used to surface mostly when you were out with Angie. you suppose there's some dark irony in the fact that she got better after a few weeks of inpatient rehabilitation, and you just got worse.

Angie can't be your lifeline anymore. even if the anchor she'd provided had only tied you to a life of coke, larceny, and overdue rent, she'd been something to cling to when nothing else quite took the edge off. Andrew was supposed to be her healthy replacement. the solid food to which a child progresses in the natural order of things. what he has become is...what has he become? he's been supportive in all the right places, and repremmanding in every proper situation. he has entirely lived up to expectations. once again it's you that misses the mark.

"Mara!" David again summons your attention, and your obediant neck swings up to re-meet that nightmare version of yourself. you never could deny him more than twice. when you blink him into focus, the room is spinning. you really shouldn't have had that wine with dinner; mere affectionate friend or not, you've forever had trouble keeping the world behind him from sneaking away even without added distractions.

he lets leave a hand from its post holding up your jawline to brush your bangs from your eyelashes, and you start at the ice of his touch. you shiver, hoping the violence of the motion will shake free your fidelity from its cobweb cell.

you bat his hands away, an half-hearted attempt to push him the rest of the way off of you, and twist the knob, to place wood and stairs and miles of concrete between him and yourself.

in the end, you forget everything but your quest to catalog the various shades of his freckles.

the over-long buildup to behavioural modification

2009-01-01T16:44:00.007-06:00

one : i have a livejournal (please don't mock me) which i use embarrassingly often. i don't actually ever post or comment in any of the various communities i have joined. i can sit all day reading from communities where those who post do so to make note of some event that has happened, some emotion they needed to remember, some thought they needed to call attention to, because of its importance. because, for a second, it defined them. their reactions to such moments are the epitome of humanity, and i love to immerse myself in it, and write about every tangent these confessions lead me down. {1}

but i never reveal what i think, even in commmunities about politics, or art, or music. among those who offer up their hearts, i lurk, on the brink of social interaction. previously, i have dared not inch a toe forward. now, i am determined to leap.

two : i must renew my commitment to Buddhism, and resolidify my trust in the God who's company i seek with it. i have toiled away for eons, handmolding my Zen into perfect rigidity. now i must build upon the foundations that i have left for cobwebs, before any crumbling of those stones which buffer me from all manner of howling winds.

three : i pledge to invest myself in my own academia. for too long have i let myself just topple from platform to platform, only picking myself up from the ground long enough to toddle straight off to lower heights. if i ever indend to accomplish anything, much less make of myself value via Achievement, i need to start climbing.

four : i will write more. i cannot grow into greatness if all i have to show for myself are fleeting fancies of faerietales and other flashes of fiction. {4} i cannot allow myself to put anything off, but i must improve myself in every fashion - particularly because i assume this mantle of Writer, and Philosopher, and Artist. i can't think of a single definition for any of them which includes a pervasive and ever-present slothfulness.

five : i shall not merely listen; i shall hear.

{1} and that is what i love about the Internet.
i can be completely alone, in a city where i know not a soul, and log on and immediately feel at home. at ease. surrounded, by the like-minded, by individuals so far outside my normal sphere of influence i would never be able to encounter (much less learn from) otherwise.
{4} i fear i have already damaged my Writer Muscle; caused it to atrophy beyond any level where i can retain full use of it again. further, i often read back on slop i've written and doubt i have ever even known such a thing.

why the list of literature in The Canon is interpretive

2008-12-10T15:30:00.001-06:00

recently, i heard mention of the grapes of wrath as a fantastic work of cultured something or other.

no. not so, kool-aid.
at 18, i was instructed to read it, for my AP English class, something that pleased me mostly because i love literature like fanatic groupies love rockstars. literature is my Aragorn. this particular bit of paper, however, was nothing like Of Mice And Men, that soundbox which encased my heartstrings for Steinbeck to pluck as he chose. i don't know what happened between writing the two works, but a book that acts as victrola for too-finely tuned violin music did not inspire from this Shieldmaiden any sort of fondness. what it did inspire, in the november 2006 that first saw me hurl a book across a room, was the following:

A Waste of 619 Pages

John Steinbeck disappoints me. His work, The Grapes of Wrath, was supposed to be some amazing piece of literature that “galvanized” [1] the millions who read it. At the time, I didn’t even know what ‘galvanized’ meant (“to stimulate somebody or something into great activity”), but I expected to glance up from the novel in thought and suddenly be overcome with the feeling. An emotion did slap my face while I read, but it was far less pleasant and more idenifiable that whatever ‘galvanized’ was. That emotion was annoyance.

Here, in this novel, dozens of little plot turtles plodded along, waiting to be snatched up and turned into eloquence. Unfortunately, the only thing snatched away during my experience was my eager desire to read this book. Then I found out that either all the critics in the literary world are liars, or Steinbeck needs a new theme. After reading my 3,458^th thinly veiled ‘I hate Capitalism,’ I became convinced that it was that latter one.

Granted, Steinbeck touches on several interesting topics. Key word there, by the way, is ‘touches.’ As in ‘barely glances at it,’ or ‘briefly considers veering off the dead-ended Anti-Capitalism trail to pace other pastures.’ Former preacher Casy spends a lot of time organizing strikes that worsen the economy or praying over the dead and performing other priestly rites. Whenever he can escape the obligations he takes on, Casy takes a second to ponder the Over-Soul[2] and how we’re supposed to act when little pieces of our friends and countrymen are in our minds, influencing our subconscious descions.

For the most part though, Steinbeck just forces socialism-love down the throats of the thoroughly Capitalistic consumers who supplied his salary by using said despised economic system to buy the book in which he bashes the whole process. I’m relatively[3] certain that The Grapes of Wrath was simply a cathartic (though decades-late) retribution for failing Civics.

I understand that Steinbeck endured some of the worst aspects of Capitalism, but all at the fault of Steinbeck’s own generation[4]; the overspeculation by all parties, the uncontrolled inflation, the use of credit lines as toys, and the overall irresponsible excess of the 1920s caused the Great Depression more than anything. Pure Capitalism is not to blame, for the industrial capitalism eapoused by Adam Smith calls for an “Invisible Hand” that would force everyone to, by acting in their best interests, actually perpetuate the common good[5].

I think if Steinbeck actually understood the theories behind Captialism, Socialism, Communism, and especially the latter’s contrast to its root, Marxism, then he would have written a truly fantastic novel. As it is, I’m surprised Ayn Rand didn’t send her Objectivist friends to his house to beat him up. Later, recouperating in the hospital, he could appreciate the irony of their collective action.

1. on the back of the Penguin book, The Grapes of Wrath is described as “The Pulizer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression, a book that galvanized – and sometimes outraged – millions of readers.”
2. reference to Transcendentalism.
3. relatively meaning as certain about the truth of the following statement as the idea that molasses grows on trees.

4. Steinbeck was born in 1909; he would have been a teenager during the Roaring Twenties, and it was those younger generations that were most fashionable and radical, as the old ones were still recovering from the Great War.
5. by ‘best interests’ Smith meant in the long run, not just whatever’s interesting or wanted, but what’s needed. His capitalism works (splendidly) off of the definition of ‘best’ as what is of the highest quality or most suited to need.

two years later, and my disdain remains the same.

one does not compartmentalize oneself unless one believes the self has no potential

2008-12-04T22:15:00.002-06:00

there is, it is said - by two people, no more, that i know of - something called the Quantum Theory Of Relationships. the addage goes: " [i] can't observe a relationship without changing it. If i stop to think about the whys and wherefores, it's destined to fail. i'm happy to let what happens happen for the moment." {http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html#2231860428554564075}

as i have my own ideas about the cosmic jokes that interfere with personal interplay (refer to the post where i posit that interpersonal relationships are simply facets of economics in a social market), i find anything intriguing that differs from what i conceive as fact. particularly when, as is the case here, that differentiated opinion is so blatantly Stoic.

a Stoic, you see, was invented in classical rome, by a manchild who blinked balefully at the world, and attributed to himself such importance that he imagined all misfortunes flocked to him. it was a curse of fate, he assumed; a displeasurable happenstance mapped out in the cosmos. but, he decided, one whose ill effects could be sidestepped. simply pack away all emotions, advised the Stoic, and treat each event as though the world weighing upon your shoulders will be joined by moons and stars.

essentially, the basic solution for someone who struggles, insisted those who peddled Stoicism, is to assume a grand design where all success is sabataged. and then to soldier onward, a shining star braced for expansion, for explosion. for death.

you see, Stoicism is secretly simply a crass bastardization of Zen Buddhism, an aspect of the philosophy i for which i find myself especially fond. guising itself as defeatism, it claims honor and fortitude in the face of pain. i doubt an epistemology which encourages overpersonalizing entropy and hiding from life experiences can be considered inspiring or hero-making, but Stoicism has garnered quite a following for itself, as observable by the quote that inspired this post.

i suppose the only good thing to come of that epidemic known as Stoicism is that now it has infested the emotastic blogosphere. perhaps there will be an end to those who formerly released tedious tantrums to cope with the lack of higher brain functioning that would have enabled them to blossom in the wake of frigid failures? may they cling to Stoicism like parasites, and the comfort of the ensuing silence will spare the rest of us from remembering them.

hmm. i had intended, i confess, to conduct this entry in a far different direction, but i suppose i got on the wrong train. i imagine no irretrievable loss, however.

all our stars are fallen embers

2008-11-08T17:45:00.000-06:00

watching that Doctor Who episode "Turn Left" today, i contemplated destiny.

in the episode, a character's life is altered by one choice, by the simple decision to turn right instead of left, to be goaded into a safe lifestyle by her mother instead of believing in her luck and forcefulness to get her from uncertainty to where she wanted to be. because the show in question is of the science fiction genre, this It's A Wonderful Life plotline showed a dystopic diversion from what we the viewers know of the show, and in that one instant everything shifted. she stepped sideways; another realm took place of the one destined for her, and everything went to hell because of it. she never reached the stars, and so they plummeted without her to help hold them aloft.

“But all around the downpour of stars went on. And then the starless patch began to grow, spreading further and further out from the center of the sky…With a thrill of wonder (and there was some terror in it too) they all suddenly realized what was happening. The spreading blackness was not a cloud at all; it was simply emptiness. The black part of the sky was the part where there were no stars left. All the stars were falling."
- C.S. Lewis

someone once said that the idea of falling stars was a chilling one. "Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out." - Anthony C. Clark writers terrify with that thought, with the presentation of a celestial orb snuffed out. we fear this presumably because we always imagine them as beacons, cheering us up and guiding us home. guiding us to destiny.

but what happens when they fade out? we're not always watching for them; we spend our lives looking at our feet, carefully placing one in front of the other. so there is plenty of time for the stars to sneak away with our dreams when no one is paying attention. what destiny can manifest without the lamps to guide our feet toward the paths we must take?

worse still is the sinking of reality when one remembers that light takes oh so very long to travel, in a vacuum; by the time we're made aware of them, all our stars are long gone. all our dreams are dead. those guides are nothing but remnants of old ghosts.

so what of Destiny? as far as i know, i am certainly no fictional heroine. there is more chance that we on Earth will find a way to reverse global warming and the damages of pollution than that i shall voyage among the stars in a magnificent timeship piloted by a wonderful - yet terrible - and delightful man. i have little chance for anything fantastical in my life at all, let alone so much otherworldly adventure. what destiny is there, in this existence we know as reality? here, the celestial bodies are but residual glow from simple space gas, which itself has already burnt into Nothingness. so what of our hopeful guides can be found, when they have long since been absorbed into The Dark?

step sideways.

a plea for us all to get our heads out of our asses

2008-10-22T15:15:00.001-05:00

i have a bone to pick with the psychiatric industry. i will use Borderline Personality Disorder {BPD} as a primary vessel for my arguments, as well as refer to Alcoholism/Addiction, and probably mention a few other diagnosable ailments in passing. as always in this blog, i do not proclaim to have a degree in anything (yet) other than my own bullshit (in that, i have a PhD) and the research & deductive analysis involved in writing these articles are made on my own presumably limited resources.

this particular entry is not about complaining or declaring that i have a better way of doing things than the way my nation chooses to solve its problems now [1]. with these words, i put to (digital) paper what has been floating around in my mind for a few years; i aim to point out what i see as logical holes in our consideration of the mentally disenfranchised [2].

that disclaimed, i write.

****

i read somewhere that BPD is often prescursed by emotional trauma, like abuse or something. and while my father was certainly a perfectionist, one to crap on my sense of self-worth if i made a blunder or spilled a drink or misacted in some way, i doubt that occasional belittlement - even by a figure central to one's childhood - would cause anything overtly psychologically dysfunctional in a person but a low sense of self-esteem [3].

i have, in light of noting that mental illness appears to claim a particular 'type' of person over all others, always wondered what exactly is it that - provided both subjects were raised in the same environment - inhibits one person's ability to maintain full control of ones mental faculties and reasoning centres, yet does nothing to anothers?

i recently read this one wikibook article thing that inspires me to dissect this into something more understandable to me (the following is an excerpt from the article/book/thing "Dialectical Behavioral Therapy/Borderline Personality Disorder/Bisocial Model" {http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dialectical_Behavioral_Therapy/Borderline_Personality_Disorder/Biosocial_Model} and the empasis is mine):

BPD results from a biological predisposition to emotional dysregulation combined with certain dysfunctional (invalidating) environments which interact over time. The characteristics of BPD begin developing during childhood because the fundamental inability to regulate emotions is exacerbated by an invalidating environment. The vulnerable child fails to learn how to identify feelings or regulate emotional stimulation. She does not learn to trust her private experience as valid and real. BPD individuals fail to learn how to tolerate emotional distress.

As adults, BPD individuals adopt the characteristics of the invalidating environment in which they grow up. Looking to others for accurate reflections of reality and oversimplifying the ease of solving life’s problems characterize this self-invalidation.

Oversimplification of life’s difficulties leads to unrealistic goals. Those with BPD tend to have an inability to use reward instead of punishment for small steps toward final goals. When they fail to achieve these goals they are filled with self-hate.

part of the reason i believe that certain psychological disorders are in actuality psychochemobiological or neuropsychological or whatever the proper term for it would be, is because of phrases like "high-functioning" and "low-functioning" and the idea of a "disease" that has a "cure" vs. an "illness" that is "managed." when i say bring up such phrases, i don't mean the colloquial (and often incorrect) usage of the terms, but the defined codes under which they are applied in professional circles; sometimes people with mental illness get better - for ever - and sometimes they don't get anything but control, cleverly disguised as a heavensent cure - until the next time they end up in inpatient services, and are made to feel as though they have brought their circumstances upon themselves.

i keep coming back to that question: what separates the "crazies" from the "disaffected?" what is it that causes the formulation of conditions like BPD, where a person's entire worldview - even the reasoning she uses to sort out appropriate responses to stimuli - is shaped by the disorder, and why that mysterious Whatever sows severe illness in one person, but minor neuroses in another?

i can only imagine that there is a factor inherent in the individual's biochemistry that - at best - increases the risk of something going sideways in the person's psychological development. there have already been statements tossed around about "predisposition" to Alcoholism or Addiction, {http://neuroscientificallychallenged.blogspot.com/2008/06/impulsivity-and-predisposition-to.html} though the probability of that increases especially when a direct ancestor has struggled with either, and any adverse affects on the brain have been presumably passed down via damaged genes [4].

if that is so (that some people have neurochemobiological predispositions to certain psychological states, that is) than one can logically assume that such predisposition to psychological disorders extends beyond a tendency toward addictive behavior. this is further confirmed by the studies suggesting that some mental disorders are not only biochemical in nature, but genetic as well {http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/08/18/genetic-link-for-bipolar/2771.html}.

to tie this in with what i was originally rambling about: if it is true that some people relate to psychological disorders unusually because they are either predisposed to be vulnerable to that particular shade of illness (i.e. an inborn tendency toward addictive behaviors) or because they have a gene that hardwires their brains so that psychological dysfunction is - for them - normal (bipolar disorder, other mental illnesses associated with a person's biochemicals or neurons), then why is it that - as explains the article [5] i will quote after this sentence - most clinicians and doctors treat mental disorders as if they are indicative of a particular individual's personal failures, especially brain "software" illnesses like personality disorders? {http://news.thresholds.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=11198&cn=4}

"Mood swings in the context of borderline personality disorder are thought of as 'software' problems brought on by changes in the patient's perception and appraisal of their social situation. This is in contrast to bipolar disorder patients whose mood swings are thought of as occurring due to brain chemistry problems (e.g., a 'hardware' problem)."

if i understand what i read correctly (and i like to think that i do) then when someone has a genetic defect that causes her brain to process its own chemical regulation incorrectly, which in turn causes her to undergo intense sessions of mania or depression, that's acceptable, and she should be comforted and assisted, but if someone has developed an inability to process and react to stimuli with the degree of reason deemed socially acceptable [6], causing her to undergo intense sessions of existence at varied emotional extremes, that is shameful and stigmatized. how does this make sense?

"A personality disorder is a very rigid pattern of inner experience and outward behavior. The pattern extends across most of the person’s interactions, continues for many years, and differs from the experiences and behaviors usually expected of people. The rigid traits of people with a personality disorder often result in unpleasant experiences, which may cause psychological pain and social or occupational difficulties. Personality disorders typically become recognizable in adolescence or early adulthood, although some start during childhood (APA, 1994).

Personality disorders may disrupt many aspects of a person’s life and may also bring pain to others. They are among the most difficult psychological disorders to treat. Many sufferers are not even aware of their personality problems, and they fail to trace their difficulties to their rigid style of thinking and behaving. It has been estimated that between 4 and 15 percent of all adults may have a personality disorder (Link, 1997; APA, 1994)."

so declares the wikibooks article titled "A Textbook On Recovery Psychology/Unit 2/Ch3Personality Disorders," {http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A_Textbook_on_Recovery_Psychology/Unit_2/Ch3_Personality_Disorders} emphasis once again mine. from my research on personality disorders, the problems seem to stem (as said the first article i quoted) from a combination of stressful or invalidating environmental experiences, the exacerbation of an individual's innate personality traits, and the way they all play into each other, until the individual in question learns a deviant version of behavioural codes and contexts that seem perfectly reasonable to her.

one could contrast this historic refusal to understand (or even to seek out, in some instances) the underlying causes in the development of a personality disorder to the worldwide race to "cure" Autistic people of their natural brain biochemistry. explains the fact sheet at autism-help.org (empasis always my own):

"A genetic basis for autism has definitely been established and at this stage it appears that multiple genes may be responsible. There is currently no genetic test that can be done to detect autism.

There is much much research and discussion on possible environmental causes that could affect brain development, and many researchers believe that the causes of Autism Spectrum Disorders will prove to be an interplay of genes and environmental causes. It is theorized that these multiple “causes” interact with each other in subtle and complex ways, and would thus explain the wide range of differing outcomes and behaviors in each individual. ... Another non-medical view is that there is no one condition called autism. This view was put forward by autistic author Donna Williams. She presents a holistic model called autism as a fruit salad model and demonstrated how the severity of someone's autism could be linked to their degree of co-morbid communication, sensory-perceptual, gut/immune, neurological integration, mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders a person inherited or developed, coupled with cognitive and learning style differences and unusual personality trait collections"

until hollywood endorsed Autism, it was considered similar to retardation, and is still linked to Dennis Hoffman and to little kids screaming and bashing their heads into walls, as a survey of my own conduction discovered [7]. few other mental disorders could be so lucky as to have the muddled alliegence of a community on the outside of the Autistic one, clamoring to be let in so those well-meaning but ignorant outsiders can "cure" the Aspies (nickname the Autistic Spectrum community has cheerfully foisted upon its members with Asperger's Syndrome). and yes, that is fortune: most of the mentally ill are shuffled off to asylums or thrown in hospitals until they agree to be corralled into 'proper' modes of behaviour [8].

circling around yet again, i iterate: how can we decide that the mentally ill - those who are truly afflicted, and not the "high-functioning"elite simply prone to breaking from societal norms when stressed - are responsible for their own foibles when we are increasingly being handed proof that there is something larger involved in the entire affair than just people behaving badly? this calls for research. and when i say "research" i do mean the gathering of properly explained and understood information from the subjects themselves, via ethnomediology {http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/CURRIC/soc/ethno/intro.htm}.

[1] i will not hesitate to say that i totally am the most fantastic and capable person ever and should undoubtedly be elected Ruler Of The Universe, however
[2] how's that for a politically doublespoken euphemism?
[3] which isn't really a symptom of dysfunction in itself so much as a burden born upon anyone who has ever been made to feel as if her best effort achieved less than what it should have been able to, regardless of whether or not she could have actually achieved more than she did. nevertheless: digression
[4] not to say that the individual is damaged from birth, though i suppose the theory is that the brain is, which is why i don't know how else i would explain away how scientists have made the connection
[5] written by two people with the letters "PhD" after their names, by the way. here's hoping that's indicative of a doctorate degree in psychology, as opposed to my dad's master's degree in engineering.
[6] or, in some cases, simply with the only reaction that has been deemed acceptable in those circumstances.
[7] that sort of image was what 44% of the people i surveyed thought of when i mentioned Autism. classy.
[8] but that is a rant about the foolishness of touting some so-called social norm and shunning anyone who might possibly deviate from it as eeeevil or hopelessly deranged, and therefore quite off-topic, as is my anger about the public's attempt to "cure" Autism, the way they wanted to erradicate left-handedness and any form of sexual expression that wouldn't fit in the 1950s vanilla lifestyle of rich, white, and oppressive.
and yes, i say that as a middle-class white girl barely hurtling over 20 years of life, with virtually no experience outside of my parents' income bracket, not including my intellectual and emotional ennui or that week i spent homeless.

the history books forgot about us [didn't mention us, not even once]

2008-10-12T13:24:00.002-05:00

i have mentioned that i hate romantic comedies.

i hate that they put the characters through the wringer and then refuse to explore the psychological implications of anything that just happened
i hate that they assume a flowery monologue and a backdrop of earnest pop song and dizzying cinematography will cure all ills
i hate they they create a person to act as romantic foil, then crumple her/him up and toss her/him aside and don't even have the decency to pretend that they aren't brutally sacrificing her/him to the alter of Twu Lwuv.
i hate they they teach society that it's morally acceptable - even perfectly reasonable - to wrap yourself around someone who loves you just so you aren't stuck in a room with yourself, realizing what a complete shitbag you are, will you wait for the one you really want to have an epiphany wherein it becomes clear that s/he is really choosing between a life of looking at oneself in the mirror, of listening for life and hearing only oneself, and letting another person's babbling baggage distract her/himself from her/his own self-loathing.

and yes, that really is what i see when confronted with hollywood's answer to the need for human connection; a society reared to manipulate other people into giving them value.

i think that's partly why i believe in God.

which, yes, is a strange segue, but the thoughts follow each other fluidly; my goal is Jesus, and the path i walk to Him is Buddhism (the philosophical kind, not the religious belly-rubbing one). regardless of whether or not there is a god, or anything after this life at all, in Jesus, i have a sort of guarantee that someone gives a shit. that i do matter, even if it's only to Him, even if i don't do anything to make history remember me at all, there's the idea that someone out there sees me and feels for me and aches when i cry.

so even if there is nothing out there, i can take comfort in imagining this individual watching my life and throwing Vengeful Popcorn Of Smite at the screen when things don't go my way, even if if takes a while for the instrument of my defense to snowball into the properly devastating effect that i would desire.

and if all i really have after i die is a wood box lined with linen, at least i will be well-versed in pretending that i am significant to someone.

all that you have of home

2008-10-02T07:24:00.003-05:00

if you could take a potion to erase your most desperate fixation on whatever most obsessive addiction, would you?

i don't mean vicodin or alcohol, no heroin junkie stories tonight; i refer to chemical dependence. the University Of Virginia Health System Website declares that chemical dependence is a term "used to describe the compulsive use of chemicals (drugs or alcohol) and the inability to stop using them despite all the problems caused by their use. used to describe the compulsive use of chemicals (drugs or alcohol) and the inability to stop using them despite all the problems caused by their use." in that context, the question i pose may be moot, because the whole point of the term is that one literally cannot find it within oneself to unlock the shackles that bind them to the substance that haunts one.

what i propose, however, is a psychological question: if those shackles fell off, if one could with a word remove that mental block that made it impossible to even dream of a life outside one's dependency, would one suddenly find oneself equpped with all the weapons needed to stage a revolt, and sieze back control of one's life? would all things immediately seem brighter, more vibrant, more focused, and no obstacle too fantastic to sidestep? or would one shrink back into the fold of that addiction, seeking its familiarity, its double-bladed protection and whimsical promises?

what is it that would be stripped away, assuming only one thing is the major force exerting its pull upon a person; how would the other factors of one's livelihood and temperment pick up the slack of the newly vanished? is there but a sole component buried in the entanglement of yearning and desperation, the merger between reckless extravagence and self-made prophecies of worthlessness?

could a formula be concocted to errode that which ties one most suffocatingly to one's acursed weakness? for how long would it work, and in what manner; would a person have to direct the flow of the cleansing liquid, like a guru guiding a soul through the unblocking of wretched chakras?

would it matter? would the thing that plagues deepest be conscious, a compulsion, not a circumstance; a choice? it is said that chemical dependence is the worst form of addiction, because the psychological need is near indistinguishable from the physical. what if one could flood clean all traces of the latter, obliterate the rembrance of peace coming from relieved muscles, but the taste of necessity still lingered, glutinous and firm as plaque?

what if, in the end, one would glance between the steep, shadowed ridge to rigoured recovery and the smooth silver slide back to old standbys, and flee to find solace in the ever-familar ghost of cold nails scarring skin and synapses?

the answer may just be that one Occam could never gleen, for its sheer obviousness; one's addiction is to submit, to sink one's soul into the chemical embrace with all due abandon. all is hopeless when that erstwhile paramour's love was never the strived-for goal, but simple scenery on the path to oblivion.

word association meme

2008-09-07T16:28:00.002-05:00

from AMA.
what images come to mind when one mentions vicious?
...strong?
...weak?
...beautiful?
...pain?
...sex?
...wrong?
...right?
...politics?
...religion?

here are mine:

vicious

strong

weak

beautiful (i couldn't pick just one)

pain

sex

wrong

right

politics

religion

the economics of society

2008-08-21T01:52:00.011-05:00

i fancy myself Socrates tonight, so this post shall in part take on dialogue form, though not with the same teaching methods as he employed.

for our first segment; the initial conversation:
mon amie (2:28:06 AM): are you looking forward to going back?
self (2:30:56 AM): sort of
self (2:31:00 AM): i have people i miss
self (2:31:24 AM): but i don't really attach to physical things. Buddhist, after all.
self (2:31:33 AM): life goes on, whereever you are.
self (2:31:48 AM): do you really feel unattached to people?
mon amie (2:32:04 AM): (people as an example?)
self (2:38:14 AM): ...i feel like i have to work myself to exhaustion to incline other people to attach to me.
self (2:38:25 AM): and even then it doesn't always take.
mon amie (2:40:25 AM): wow.
mon amie (2:40:31 AM): my computer is so LAME.
mon amie (2:40:40 AM): i didn't even see your i/m's and now i feel bad.
mon amie (2:40:58 AM): do you feel like you always need to keep in touch and other just don't reciprocate? i get that, really.
self (2:41:53 AM): mhmm.
self (2:42:42 AM): it's more than that, even when first becoming acquainted with someone, i can't turn the person into a friend, unless he or she pursues me.
self (2:43:16 AM): i don't know how, or what's so disenchanting about me, but i am just not someone with whom other people want to associate.
self (2:43:28 AM): unless i have something outside myself to trade.
mon amie (2:43:40 AM): do you think of that of me?
mon amie (2:43:44 AM): wait:
self (2:43:52 AM): so they stay mere acquaintences, because i have nothing of myself to offer that would endear me to them.
mon amie (2:43:49 AM): do you think about that from me?
mon amie (2:44:01 AM): i feel like i can't word that right...
self (2:44:57 AM): i think i understand what you mean...
self (2:45:02 AM): let me explain myself.

the second, the pontification:
self (2:45:32 AM): my view of human interaction is that it's all based on a system of trade. stop me if you've heard this particular rant before...
mon amie (2:45:21 AM): go on.
self (2:47:25 AM): there are levels of association. Acquaintenship: when one meets another, and finds that person has frequent fun parties, or access to movie tickets, or something entirely impersonal, and it's just an informal trade of goods.
mon amie (2:47:02 AM): well put.
self (2:48:25 AM): i knew a guy, i would always get gasoline at his store, and pay in cash. i became recognized by him, and we would engage in hellos and howareyous. that's the Base Acquaintence.
mon amie (2:47:55 AM): i had that, too!
self (2:48:41 AM):
self (2:48:46 AM): see? truth.
self (2:48:49 AM): anyway.
self (2:50:41 AM): the other kind of Acquaintence is when the exchange is of services. someone shares your love of Lost, etc. it's still impersonal enough for the service to be interchangeable; you can get that fandom feeling from all sorts of other people, but this person happens to be closest.
mon amie (2:50:26 AM): what happens to be closest?
mon amie (2:50:31 AM): the tandom feeling?
mon amie (2:50:42 AM): fandom*
self (2:51:49 AM): the person.
self (2:52:19 AM): for example, say you met someone in one of your classes who likes Lost, and you chat about it sometimes.
mon amie (2:51:51 AM): ahh, gotcha.
self (2:52:54 AM): it never occurs outside of those first few minutes of class, and you could chat about Lost with anyone, but she's readily available
self (2:52:56 AM): mhmm
mon amie (2:52:48 AM): yes, i had those quite frequently.
self (2:54:15 AM): of course, those are the most common sorts of interaction.
self (2:54:46 AM): we have venders who sell us our groceries and our gas, and technology has recently put a barrier between we and them.
self (2:55:09 AM): so our forms of interaction come mostly in what cannot be dupilcated (yet) by machines.
mon amie (2:55:35 AM): what do you mean by duplicated?
self (2:57:05 AM): ...synthesized?
self (2:57:25 AM): instead of human to human contact, the internet itself speaking to us?
self (2:57:46 AM): as opposed to the individuality no one has yet been able to replicate in robots.
self (2:57:52 AM): sorry if i get scifi.
mon amie (2:57:39 AM): robots not being able to feel, etc.?
self (2:58:27 AM): mhmm
self (2:58:37 AM): or come up with entirely original respones.
self (2:58:41 AM): responses*
self (2:58:45 AM): they cannot improvise.
self (2:58:52 AM): nor opinionate.
mon amie (2:59:22 AM): and by having non human interaction, we are just leading to more seclusion amongst each other typething?
self (3:04:16 AM): i believe so.
self (3:04:28 AM): that is another ramble, however.
[from there, our conversation derailed, so we shall leave it where it was]

et en fin, the lecture:
as there are Acquaintences, concerned with those goods and services provided externally and impersonally, there are also Friends, whose interest is determined by what a person sells of him/herself.

again, as with Acquaintences, this grouping can be split into two categories, the Status Quo Friend (SQF) and the True Friend. the former is thrown into a relationship with another person by circumstance. one could enjoy another's sense of humor, or feel capable of conversing for hours on any subject, and thereby create a sense of kinship with that person. not only is made an exchange of, perhaps, laughter, but also of the possession most widely prized by mortals: time. the commodity then, is internal, for the good provided is something unique to the vendor. however, though a bond is formed, it can be severed at a moment's notice, with a whithering word or a distasteful deed.

that brings us to the final level of social interaction: True Friends (TF) [it is so-named only because i could not formulate a less clichéd term for it in the little time i alloted for this post].

the final level is categorized when bits of self are included amongst the goods traded. energy, empathy, and
experience are the most commonly offered services, initially. eventually, however, so much is constantly whirring back and forth that the involved parties simply set aside aspects of themselves for the sole use of one another. only amusing anecdotes are traded with a SQF, but every experience is detailed for the benefit of a TF.

further, a branch of the TF category applies to those labelled as Significant Others; persons are given such a title when the aspects reserved for them encompasse the entirety of another.

therefore:
that is why, some people attach easily to others, and create an assembly of aloof admirers, while others have a cadre of close companions. just as in the real world market, people are an assortment of traits and tradeable services; depending on who's looking, and for what, each individual's worth can be reduced to the state of his/her inventory.

"Disturbia," or "An Account Of An Epic Battle Between Man And Nature"

2008-08-18T16:48:00.004-05:00

last night, i went to a hookah bar.

not alone, naturally; some friends had bought two hookahs and were passing the hoses around. one actually paid me a dollar to get me to drive out there and join them. :-) drole and unfulfilling as the tobacco has always been, i puffed it down dispassionately and saved my greed for inhaling the pleasure of their company. soon i was lazily soaring amongst the exhaled vapors that spiraled beyond the black of the midnight sky.

until surprised shouts and the splatter of water on pavement attracted my attention.

someone had found a frog relaxing on a cobblestone, possibly enjoying secondhand smoke. the discoverer of said amphibian, in his determination to display his dominance over nature, had been the source of that kerfluffle that distracted we smokers from our socializing.

now, here was a man in his mid-thirties, who had apparently grown weary of the leftist propaganda which declares that we of the species homo sapiens have a derelict duty to defend and even doctor our animalian brethren of earth. from his actions, i deduced that he had long ago uncovered the terrible treachery of our conservationist-leaning citizens - they were spies. they sought to rid Earth of men and their straight-laced family values by discouraging admittedly random but entirely couth acts of discrimination and violence, and replace the good denizens of America with stepfordian hippie robots! this intrepid soldier of humanity about whom i tell these tales immediately rejected the brainwashing of PETA and declared himself a vigilante against all bestial usurpers of Man's Worldly Throne, and that included preventing the hookah-loving frog from undermining mankind by infiltrating America's youth!

i deduced this, because only such a backstory as epic and obviously heroic as that could explain what he did next.

unsheathing water from the plastic bottle-shaped container in which he carried it (by way of cap-twistation) this Knight Of Man reacted to that slimy sight with battle-honed reflexes; he took his flask in his mighty fist, raising it above his shoulder, and tilted it a sweeping 180 degrees! as God had flooded the world to rid it of people-vermin, so our fantastical protagonist flooded the sidewalk.

the frog jolted under the assault, twitching this way and that. our hero was ever-cunning, however, and shook his canteen, in a long, decided motion, and the water scattered on the ground like machine-gun artillery. the frog, that vile, pestilent purveyor of doom, was instantly surrounded. it slipped, crashing sideways into the jagged cement, flailed desperately for a few moments, then was engulfed by the rising tide. peace was once again restored to the universe, and the relieved chatter of satisfied youth drowned out the final keening of that amphibious anathama.

i'm a penny in a diamond mine

2008-06-04T18:01:00.005-05:00

i have come to realize that people don't like me.

they like how i treat them, sure. they like that i look into their eyes and cock my head to catch the nuances of their words. they like the sensation of intensity slathered all over them, of seeing their reflection in my irises so clearly that they could use it to preen. and they do, naturally.

but me, myself, this person who makes them feel like they might suddenly understand what it means to be larger than life, to be the epicenter? i don't think anyone really knows who that is. including me.

but my lack of a well-refined, uncontradictory ego is not the concept i aim to explore. it is that realization of mine on which i plan to pontificate today.

people don't like me. they like how i treat them. they like that i don't see their bank accounts or their clothes or significant others. or, more accurately, that i see all these things but choose to put them aside, and focus instead on Who these people Are. i don't care about their socio-economic status or the grades they had in school. i find the experiences of the inhabitants of their family tree pointless and irrelevant. and i really couldn't care less about designer handbags or armani tuxedos. in a sense i am Tyler Durden, though i don't devalue individuals and slopping them all into the same vat of stanky mystery meat. i don't even liken each person to a favorite stuffed animal or some other much-beloved object. i don't see them as extensions of anything at all. just themselves.

it's a part of my ethics, you see. treat human beings like human beings, with intrinsic value. not as symbols of something else, or in light of connections to things entirely outside themselves. apparently that's a novelty to most people. why it should be so rare to find oneself treated as a human being, with inherent value, is beyond me, but it is considered such. in truth, i have found few others who view other people as i do, tragically enough.

i provide people with a sense of validation when i talk with them, about their problems and their wants; their hopes, dreams, aspirations. when i am genuninely interested, facinated, even, in what we're talking about. and people hope it means something more, that it means i care for them, specifically, and more seriously than for anyone else. because than they can lock that validation up in a box and carry it around in their pockets. which, really, speaks volumes more about them than it does me.

the ever-growing list of things to do before i die

2008-04-07T11:47:00.009-05:00

-- write a book/article/essay that impacts the world
this is my life goal, so it's natural place is first on my list.

-- visit the Cappadocia Cave Hotel
it's this epically fantastic hotel carved into the Yunak Evleri mountains, in Turkey. the pictures i have seen of it are simply breathtaking. i will probably never have enough money to go there, but God it would be magnificent. something that makes me understand why some women will do anything to date a rich, doting man.

-- live in New York City
if i can make it there, i can make it anywhere, yes?

-- join the Mile High Club
preferably after having just jacked something massive, a la Gone In 60 Seconds or those Ocean's movies. i hope to one day have so much adrenaline pumping through my system that i actually get stoned. or die. the rush would be worth every possible consequence.

--go bungee-jumping
life is just not an adventure without free-falling ("out into nothing")

--work with the Peace Corps
sometimes i wish that they accepted people who hadn't gone to college. no. not sometimes; it would be a good idea. too many unqualified people running around? give 'em something to do. give 'em purpose. what better reason to live could they possibly think up than Helping People Not Starve/Die In Some Other Entirely Preventable Disease & Neglect-Related Way?

--dance the night away in a high-quality Las Vegas club
something about the thought of techno throbbing through my limbs is irresistable. i do it all the time, privately. in my dorm room where no one can see this strange creature wiggling around with her eyes squeezed shut against reality, shiny blue iPod clenched in her fist like she could just absorb it through her flesh if she tried hard enough. i love music. i would do potentially anything to never have to sense silence. some big anonymous party would be a perfect place to just...flow. feel the mass rhythm. i could totally sneak in, too.

-- backpack across Europe
i would potentially not stay in a youth hostel, but some cheap hotel, or in a rental car or something, but i want to go. the ruined Colusseum, the oxymoronic entrance of the Louvre, the moors of Scotland, the mountains of Austria and Switzerland, the cobbled streets of Prague, the cultured architecture in general; the photo op alone would be worth the journey.

--have an intellectual conversation with a foreigner in a cafe
technically i have done something like this, but somehow i imagine myself speaking Latin while i do this. of all the strange, random wishes, this is the one i see myself checking off the list first.

-- visit Africa
part of my quest to travel, to know the world. and then figure out what i need to give it.

-- own a pet Siberian Husky
he will have blue eyes, and be so cuddly when he's a puppy. i will read journals, or edit articles or something, and sip my chai with him forever curling up in my lap. i will raise him to never lose that trait, and eventually he will grow large enough to occasionally be my pillow.

-- have someone speak Occitan to me
i hear it's a most beautiful language, and i almost don't care what foul things he or she would say to or about me (only i do because i would probably understand enough of the corrupted French to figure out what was being said). i just think closing my eyes to a song softly sung in that language would be like meditating with Vivaldi playing in the background; bliss.

the list is far from over...

footnote: i have noticed that much of what i seek is based on some idealised notion or another. i would apologise for my blatant Transcandentalist Romanticism, but i am also a Cynic forever perched on the edge of misanthropy: there will be no apologies for being myself.

what's love got to do with it?

2008-04-06T13:17:00.002-05:00

love is a burden. love is a curse. love is lying, crumpled, plastered, on a dusty floor.

i will not have it [no mas, señor]

children waiting for the day they feel good

2008-04-03T15:54:00.005-05:00

people run in circles. humans are a race of packs and classes, conformity a security blanket out of which not a one can manage to grow out.

i was scrolling through my friends' myspace profiles, as i sometimes do, and adding to my ever-growing collection of music the songs on their profiles that i enjoyed. nothing out of the ordinary, except me.

like moving backwards on an escalator, i can see everyone in my life as they shift from one thing to another. crappy minimum-wage job to something more specialized; a shared three-bedroom household is reformed to accommodate visitors instead of boarders, while cockroaches greet their new flatmate. the higher up i get, the faster they flit, these people with whom i shared months, sometimes years, of life. shrunken figures scampering to the next "big thing," the newest "big break," that will provide them everything they want, though they shuffle slower after each change of plans.

i click through these pages of people with thousands of friends and millions of comments, and wonder just how many of those conversations are between the same three persons. how many of these oh-so-close acquaintances look right through one another? i always thought it was something unique to me, that, packed into claustrophobic spaces of however degree, i was continuously as alone as though i had never felt any other human presence beside me. recent conversations aim to convince me otherwise. i never gave them much credence before, as everyone who insisted loneliness was simultaneously ingrained into some sort of clique or club; there was always a place for them to return at the end of the day, no matter how unsettled they felt at that day's apex.

i suppose now that i am the fortunate one. though my shambled society is small, it is genuine.

why yes, this is what passes for an introduction post 'round here

2008-04-01T11:39:00.011-05:00

the soundtrack to my life (unless i don't know myself at all, which has been known to happen)

one: "(I'd Start A) Revolution" - Aimee Allen
"Up all night, I waste my time / I am fine, but a day behind / Up all night feelin' stupid 'n' happy / But the days are overlapping"
i am convinced that i could rule the world. i am just...too lazy. and like the speaker of the song, my schedule is never in synch with the rest of the world.

two: "The City Is At War" - Cobra Starship
"Oh, pretty please, it breaks my heart to see another tragedy / She finally got her picture on TV / Come on, live it up while you can / But always in the end, no you don't get another shot"
this sort of sums up how i see most other people. attention whores in the sell-your-soul-for-any-scraps kind of way. all so desperate for that momentary fame.

three : "Paralyzer" - Finger Eleven
"And I feel awkward, as I should / This club has got to be / The most pretentious thing / Since I thought you and me"
the lyrics are slightly sarcastic, and fit my boredom with everything. i also tend to read good/bad/neutral qualities of people immediately, and when meeting new types, i know that, even if my interest has been caught, it takes quite a bit for me to find anyone fascinating, so i walk into situations with my paranoid eyes wide open and well aware. which was possibly the most confused statement ever. hmm.

four: "Tuesday Afternoon" - The Moody Blues
"The trees are drawing me near, / I've got to find out why. / Those gentle voices I hear, / Explain it all with a sigh."
this perfectly captures both my penchant for daydreaming and my love of simplicity.

five: "Mary Jane's Last Dance" - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
"You never slow down, you never grow old / I'm tired of screwing up, I'm tired of goin down / I'm tired of myself, I'm tired of this town"
simultaneously meloncholy and energized, this is totally the type of dichotomy (feel-good music with lyrics about dissatisfaction, for example) that features prominently in my life.

six: "New Slang (When You Notice The Stripes)" - The Shins
"I'm looking in on the good life i might be doomed never to find. / Without a trust or flaming fields am i too dumb to refine?"
i can't seem to stay away from these lonely indie songs. this is kind of where my life is at, however. dissatisfied with how things have gone. the perfect song about my struggle between the idealistic worldview in my heart and the cynical pragmatism with which i must act.

seven: "Big Lie, Small World" - Sting
"I hit the postman, hit your lover / Grabbed the letter, ran for cover"
it just fits my neuroticism. i would have instead included "Fool In The Rain" by Led Zeppelin, but i find it more than probable that i would get arrested for antics similar to this.

eight: "Heaven Beside You" - Alice In Chains
"Do what you wanna do / Go out and seek your truth / When I'm down and blue / Rather be me than you"
this fits my cynicism. i am bitter and i snidely sneer enough to prevent me from ever being a proper hippie; i am a bitch. regardless, i will not change myself on other peoples' whims, often to the detriment of my relationships.

nine: "Creep" - Radiohead
"I don't care if it hurts, I wanna have control / I want a perfect body / I want a perfect soul // I want you to notice / When I'm not around / You're so fucking special / I wish I was special"
sums up my goals and self-image quite succinctly [don't respond by telling me i am pretty. i will shank you].

ten: "Nightblindness" - David Gray
"Where we going to find the eyes to see / The bright of day // I'm sick of all the same romances / Lost chances / Cold storms"
this song is full of understated desperation. this is how i worry, when i do, about my future and my life. when i look around and realize i missed several opportunities, or when my finances are tighter than usual, and i can feel myself slowly edging toward panic, i feel nightblind.

eleven: "Just Like The Movies" - Regina Spektor
"Don't say goodbye like you're burying him / 'Cause the world is round and he might return // But if he loves me then why does he leave?"
as with most songs about relationships of mine, this one describes the disconnect between my perception of interactions i have, and how those people see me in return. i am used to caring far more for my friends and the like than they for me. i am always abandoned in the end. >sigh<>

twelve: "Falling From Grace" - The Gentle Waves
"If I could tear my heart / And keep it miles apart / From love of beast or man / And never give a damn"
this was originally "Hide And Seek" by Imogen Heap, because i, like everyone else who makes pretensions on this song, am moved and spoken for by her electronified voice. however, this fit better. i would like to approach life with this kind of contented detachment.

thirteen: "Transatlanticism" - Death Cab For Cutie
"The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row / It seems farther than ever before / Oh no. // I need you so much closer"
it could work for my estrangement from society itself, but this is my God song. i never worry that God isn't there, only that i am far from Him, or that i, with my corporeal body, am trapped on the other side, where i cannot be properly abstract and entangled with the Universe. this is that sorrow that comes from being unable to hug the person that matters more to me than anything and everything, not because there is a rift, but because there are simply 'too many miles to go before i sleep,' to borrow a phrase.

fourteen: "Tyrant" - The Bravery
"I'll believe anything that you want / You gotta teach me how to live / Cause you make me wanna die / You took it all, now you're all I've got"
i hate how quick i am to assume people are good-hearted, well-intentioned, etc. how willing i am to believe lies. i think my interpersonal intelligence must be abhorrently low.

fifteen: "Keeping It Together" - Katy Rose
"Because you stabbed me with your lies / You're not the only one that's broken...// And I'm never ok / Cause I'm pretending like I'm keeping it together / Cause I'm pretending like I'm keeping it together / And they'll never know "
this reflects how erratic my moods are, and yet, how disdainful i am of addiction, losing control, etc. it's hard to explain quite how well this fits me in my confused, psychotropic moods.

sixteen: "With A Little Help From My Friends" - The Beatles (as performed by Joe Anderson, Jim Sturgess & Dormmates)
"(Does it worry you to be alone) / How do I feel by the end of the day / (Are you sad because you're on your own) / No, I get by with a little help from my friends"
my friends are my life. they are amazing people and i love them more than they will ever know.

seventeen: "Ocean City Girl" - Ivy
"Ocean city girl / Is fading / Ocean city girl / Is saying goodbye"
i would die like this. other than that, this is just really a beautiful song.