When I’m drinking I can’t ever write anything coherent but I like to see what spills out of me.
Month: June 2018
Steam-of-nonsense
I went to walk along but when I did it wasn’t enough just to come and go as I pleased so when it broke down and the rough and tumble cut my teeth then I knew it was time to go like before all the nonsense of the flood that overtook my life in those days and left out all the parts of me that I thought mattered so I didn’t know anymore what to do with all the purpose-driven decisions now broken open by the emotional feelings and art that I didn’t understand but loved so much; I guess the true problem was that I wanted so badly to be God or at least not to die so that anytime I was confronted with my weaknesses or evidence of my mortality then I started to run in the opposite directions and away from my problems where I could at least get some satisfaction from my pursuit of the meta and existential Truth that I wouldn’t ever get and really only ever landed and dressed it in a worldly motivation for girls to love me and read my poetry and fuck away my fear of dying.
All art
Human communication, conversation, texting, messaging—all people sending their art back and forth.
Full send
A full send into a final deep sleep, stay awake as long as possible, filling each moment, and when you lay down to sleep you don’t want to do anything else, and fall asleep immediately and deeply.
Happy and loud
They were so happy and loud, we just listened.
Long summer days
The morning light comes early through my window. The long summer days are here.
Still there remains an inner void
Like someone said, “Every generation thinks they invented sex.” And every other great nation might very well have felt the same way, at least the upper classes. But they eventually realized, as we are now, that our external circumstances are arbitrary and still there remains an inner void. Which is when we feel the darkness and the dread, without even our earthly needs and struggle for survival to distract us, we start to think about philosophy. New needs arise. With power over our mortality, we begin to think, and discover too late that thinking is the worst thing to do. I believe we will endure a great intellectual depression, like diving deep in the ocean without a headlamp. When all this time we’ve been in a small boat on the surface. And at first the deep dark ocean will terrify us, until we reach the ocean floor and turn on a light, that was within ourselves the whole time, to illuminate everything.
Filmmaker
I love to watch movies. Maybe I’ll be a filmmaker someday.
Control
I have various experiences, some of which I like and some I don’t. I’m not sure that I have much control.
Listen to desires
I listen to my desires, and pay attention to the overwhelming ones, which are not always the first ones I hear. I have to sift through the base and biological and social, down to higher desires.
Art and artist
What is the art? Who is the artist? And how much do the answers to those two questions overlap?
Kids are smarter than us
I watched a video at the modern art museum where kids answered questions. The off-screen narrator asked the child, “Will we be smarter in the future?” The young Asian boy took the time to think in a very adult-manner, rubbing his chin and looking down. He looked up and said, “Probably smarter, because we learn more as time goes.”
Wise man
I am a wise man, yes. But can you tell me why that is, why I am wise? If not, do not call me a wise man. For you do not know.
Inconsistent
My inconsistency bothers me. I wish to be principled and constant, unwavering in my motivations and beliefs. But I change long-term as I learn, and in the short-term I am weak for the moment.
Real love
I love you for the same reason I love myself: you control the way I experience reality; you fill the contents of my consciousness.
Sci-fi as a device
It’s amazing how the sci-fi functions as a device to allow us to consider the concept that “this reality that we know isn’t all there is.” But if this were delivered to an audience via religion or philosophy, then people would disregard it. People disregard ideas about afterlifes and reincarnation and ideas about other realities that are present in religion and philosophy. They disregard because it has to do with their identities and beliefs. But the sci-fi devices of a brain in a vat or a computer-created world—these we can experience safely just as stories, without having to involve our philosophies and religions.
Causal prison
We were born into prison, bondage of cause and effect, we cannot break out of the time and space that we were born into, so that we will only experience the few causal reactions that are determined by the space and time to which we were appointed, and thus the short, subsequent period thereafter which would be our lifetime, turned out to be a prison, relative to the vast expanse of the rest of the universe that we cannot experience (unless we live many lives).
Chasing after the great book
I am chasing after the great book. I wonder about what the world would be if Homer or Aquinas or Voltaire or Hemingway had not written. And I am arrogant enough to wonder to myself, what if the great book is within me? And who am I to thieve the world of it and not pull it out of myself. Miles I have to go, indeed!
I am still catching up to the greats. I can feel myself understanding more of Nietzsche. Even writing some of his ideas, only to discover that he had already written them before. I read Nietzsche and discover what I have only fumbled with in my own mind, articulated so clearly!
Yet I have one advantage: I have come after these great minds. I have the distinct advantage of being born at such a time that it is possible for me to read them, as well as the greats before them. Whereas they only had the advantage of reading their own predecessors. So if we assume that at least some knowledge is passed along and built upon in human history, then I have just slightly more intellectual wealth to draw from. Thank god it has been recorded! And woe for what has not.
And I cannot skip ahead. There are still things that can only be understood in the present lifetime, things that must be felt and seen and experienced in the real present. So that it is not possible just to read the last great and understand everything. Still I must read everything. So in this way I have a disadvantage, or, a greater challenge rather! In that I have more to read, more greats before me than had Nietzsche, owing to the addition of the few greats after his lifetime and before mine.
Tragic, that it is necessarily an individual endeavor. For even if I do write the great book that I am chasing after. It will only contain a fraction of the truths. The other truths must already be present in the heart of the reader. So that the great book that I hope to write is really only the key to a larger enigma. The key alone is a beautiful work of art. Like looking upon the peak of a tall mountain. But only the actual climb partaken in, only therein does the whole truth reveal itself.
Ubermensch
What if the ubermensch is she who understands higher truths yet understands that her role in all of existence is lesser? So she has to play the role the best she can, even though she knows the higher truth and that this life is just a spatiotemporal slice of the whole, but still her place is here and now. Like having the mind and soul of a god, but still the body of a human. Could the human form even contain that.
Per usual, Nietzsche precedes me and articulates this better than I can in The Birth of Tragedy:
“Suppose a human being has thus put his ear, as it were, to the heart chamber of the world will and felt the roaring desire for existence pouring from there into all the veins of the world, as a thundering current or as the gentlest brook, dissolving into a mist—how could he fail to break suddenly? How could he endure to perceive the echo of innumerable shouts of pleasure and woe in the “wide space of the world night,” enclosed in the wretched glass capsule of the human individual, without inexorably fleeing toward his primordial home, as he hears this shepherd’s dance of metaphysics? But if such a work could nevertheless be perceived as a whole, without denial of individual existence; if such a creation could be created without smashing its creator—whence do we take the solution of such a contradiction?”
I can’t think of what I’m trying to say
I used to be critical of those who would claim to think of great thoughts but then say, “I just can’t articulate them.” I used to think that they didn’t really think great thoughts at all, they just wanted people to think they did, without having the obligation of proving it via articulation. But now I believe that these people really did have great thoughts. I believe that they were thinking of the ineffable and universal truths, truths that cannot be articulated in our empirical world. Truths like the Dionysian musical mood and the way that love feels. But these are not the truths that are valued in this world, so those that can think and feel great thoughts but can’t articulate them, these people are treated dubiously by the rest of the empirical world. Many of these must be the great artists. Those who were forced by their genius into outlets that were not conventional or orthodox. But what else would we have them do! There were no other vehicles from the other worlds, of which they thought (or more accurately, felt and believed), to our world here. It is the people who have the gift practical thought and articulation that thrive in the empirical world where they know how to speak the languages—mathematics, science and all other studies of the natural world—that hold sway over cause and effect.
Practical and abstract truths
Practical truths are the truths from this world and abstract truths are the truths from other worlds. Practical truths are popular among the majority for their applicability to our first plane physical world to which most humans are still evolutionarily addicted.
And abstract truths are popular with the minority devout religious, drug addicts, hermits, scholars and philosophers—wise men that rise up and out of the physical plane in this one world where we presently live and up through the mental and spiritual planes to discover the other worlds. In these other worlds, abstract truths are the fundamental principles of life.
These wise men, who have traveled to other worlds in their minds and souls, they must first have experienced something in the physical world to allow them to rise up. They may have encountered mind-altering drugs or many years of formal education or devout religious meditation—anything that would have given them access to the second mental plane and the third spiritual plane and these “other worlds.”
One
Let us assume there is a whole pie that represents the primordial Oneness. And each individual real empirical person is a slice of the pie. What if the slices weren’t equal so that some people had a larger slice of the primordial One than others. The biggest slices of pie were the most woke spiritual leaders like Buddha and Jesus.
Sci-fi hero
Fantasy and sci-fi provide solid frames for the hero. In realist fiction, by contrast, the setting is presumed to be one very like the reader’s. So that heroes in realist fiction seem to be better than the reader, even though they were given the same circumstances to begin with. The reader must swallow the hard pill for himself or herself when regarding the hero, “He or she is like me, yet he or she is so much greater than me. What have I done to be inferior?”
On the other hand, fantasy and sci-fi are explicitly non-realist. So that characters in fantasy and sci-fi are not presumed to begin with the same circumstances as the reader. The characters are different enough so that the reader will identify with them to a lesser degree, but still “human” enough to teach lessons and carry themes that the reader will be interested in. This way, the heroes in fantasy and sci-fi are able to go above and beyond normal human standards, exemplifying the height of human aspirations, without upsetting the reader for his or her own inferiority.
For example, a story in the future can have a hero that has more knowledge than the modern reader. The modern reader won’t take offense to this because the hero is in the future and human civilization “has had more time.” Another example, an alien hero from another planet can be stronger than the physical reader. The physical reader won’t take offense to the alien hero because the alien hero is literally a different species and “has a different body.”
Of course, a major task the fiction writer undertakes is to make her characters seem real. In this respect, sci-fi and fantasy also give a great answer. For if the reader is to say, “That character is not realistic!” And the reader feels uneasy because of it. “Well, of course not,” the writer would say. “I’ve been explicit about that! This is a different time and different world about which I am writing. It is only tangentially similar to the world you know.”
Sickness
I have the sickness. One day it will kill me. For now it makes me live.
Need it new
I can’t have what I want. I need it new. It gets older and older every time.
Liberation
If it doesn’t matter, there are two sides of that coin. In one sense it’s depressing because there seems to be no goal or purpose. In another sense it’s liberating. If there’s no purpose then we’re free to do whatever. And we know what feels good and what we like. So it’s like we got access to a free amusement park ride. Like a ferris wheel is never going to go anywhere. It just spins on its axis. But it’s at least fun to ride.
We will die
We’re going to die and everything else will move on and it won’t matter. So let’s take advantage of it while we got it.
Ubermensch
Now that god is dead, and we are morally bereft, these new values of the Ubermensch must be motivated by a love of this world and of life.
This
It is this, here and now, that we have. All the other-worldliness that my catholic mother promised me may not be. We have these days and these bodies to live. That was our philosophy. Why we danced and loved and created and did all that we could. Even if it wasn’t much. We were justified in that we were making do with what we had. So that when we were exhausted, we were satisfied, and did not need anymore and could sleep. And at the end of a life, we hoped to feel the same: satisfied, and ready to die.
I think of death
I think of death and remember that life is precious.
I think of death and see a bug crawling on a blade of grass and it is so beautiful that I start to cry.
I think of death and pay attention to my senses. It is a marvel that I can experience the physical world this way. I imagine what it would be like to have no more sense experience. I remember that life is precious
I think of death and am grateful. I have already lived such a great life. I picture my loved ones and our moments together.
I think of death and write, in an attempt to live on past my time.
I think of death when I am exhausted and beaten. I wonder if I might welcome it now. No, even this I can endure. And death will be a whole other life when it comes. This, even painful and downtrodden as I am, I prefer this, just so long as I can go on living.
Sleep is death, wake is birth
The next day we would live that day over again, and over and over until we died. For we died every night, and awoke every morning, reborn.
restless
I can judge from my bed in the morning, how soundly I slept. Either my sheets are tossed and my pillows scattered, or everything is neat and tucked in.
Death
When my time has come it will have come, and that will be the end of it. I will not fight it. I will do my fighting before it comes.
Forgotten
I remember the times that a name was “on the tip of my tongue,” as they say. I remember ideas that I had in the shower but forgot to write down after I got out and dried off. I remember what it’s like to be in bed and in love, but not really. I really only remember the generals, and not nearly everything. I really only remember that I have forgotten.
Caught up
I got caught up in the world and decided not to fight it for once. I let my unconscious body take over.
Life and writing
I live and I write. I live because I have this lifetime, no matter what. I write because I can’t shake the need to do something more. I do not live to write. I do not spend my time to achieve some earthly goal. I spend my time for itself, for enjoyment and curiosity. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking I spend it just for writing, or for something else ulterior.
A love letter – February 5, 2017
I love you. At first, I ignored you because I couldn’t risk getting close to you, actualizing my love, whether it was requited or not; the fall would have been too far. Then second, I ignored you because I wanted to say I love you but couldn’t because I wasn’t worthy of you. So I went away to improve myself. But am now realizing there is much more to improve before I am worthy of you. And it’s going to take time. And I can’t stand to be near you in the meantime. Because it only makes me want you more. And I can’t stand to hear about the other people you’re with. And I know you need a lot. And I want to become all of that. But it’s going to take some time. And even if on your doorstep years from now I’m still not enough, I’ll have to live with that. And if you’re with someone else, I’ll have to live with that too. And if you didn’t even want me in the first place and even after all my work you still don’t want me, well I suppose it might kill me and if it doesn’t at least I’ll have something to do until I get too old to love anymore. But right now I can’t say I love you and mean it, and that’s the only way I can stand to be with you. Oh, and one last thing: thank you. Most of the time it hurts but to love like this is I think the closest thing to the meaning of life I’ve ever felt.
The Chameleon
The Chameleon was born in India. His father was a tradesman and his mother was a servant. He had one brother who was a troubled child and went to jail at age fourteen for murder. The Chameleon became a Buddhist monk. He achieved nirvana at age sixteen, on the same day that his younger brother committed murder. Some people in the village said that the soul of his brother’s victim inhabited his body after he reached nirvana. It is possible that many souls entered the Chameleon’s body that day.
It was expected that when the Chameleon came down from the mountains, his nirvana would mark a point of departure from the world. This has always been the case for Enlightened ones before. For the Chameleon, however, his nirvana marked a point of deeper entry into the world. He became curious about all the lives ever lived. He spoke with the old wise men about it. They were deeply unsettled.
In a discussion with one old wise man in particular, the old sage said that he believed the Chameleon had not completed the nirvana, but had stopped just before, right when he experienced the potential power of the Enlightened one, and then stopped himself just short of the permanent break with his worldly senses. The Chameleon was power-hungry—the old sage did not say this, but he believed it and kept it quietly to himself.
The Chameleon decided he would set out to travel the world, unknown to all those around him. He would take on different disguises, some said he even changed his physical appearance. And he changed his mannerisms and emotions and mind in order to become as many people as he possibly could, assuming their identities completely.
The center point of the wheel where the spokes of all other identities connect. At one point on the outer rim, the Chameleon only knew himself. He could see the points to his left and right, but he could not understand them. And the points on the other side of the wheel, he could not even see. When he experienced nirvana, he entered into the center of the wheel, from here he could become anyone, moving freely from the center to points on the outer rim, where the One true identity experiences time and space in different individuated bodily forms in the physical world.
–
I was really enjoying quite an ordinary day.
Gang gang gang
A group of pseudo-intellectual and affluent types who go gallivanting around without any sort of a moral compass.
Constructed
Everything I see in the city is constructed by man. Even the plants are placed there.
People
I was bored of normal people. People who knew they weren’t spectacular. I wanted to achieve something, anything, just so I could break through to the group of people who had done something and were proud of it and knew who they were and were happy to be among people like themselves.
Watching
I am amazed by the diversity of my experiences over the span of just a few days. I am healthy then sick, satisfied then wanting, in touch then out of it, hungry for love and people then alone and fine with it. The only consistency is that I am watching always. Now I question even that, for if I weren’t watching, would I know I wasn’t? I can’t know i I missed something if I did. So maybe then: I am watching then not watching, until I am watching again.
Mental framework
I get a mental framework to really conceptualize the world so I can make some progress and talk about it, but then all of a sudden I’m thinking only in terms of the framework and missing other things.
Beautiful depressed
On a beautiful morning like this, I wonder how could I have been so depressed last night?
True
What if it’s all true? Everything that anybody’s ever believed or known is true, simply because there was a reason for it. If the truth is just whatever is. So that whatever is, is true, whatever it may be.
I do this to myself
I do this to myself. I get so caught up with everyone and fall in love and make friends until I’m not myself anymore. So I go away to be alone until I’m sick and tired in cold sweats in bed on Saturday night and I say to myself, I need to love again. And so I go out and the whole song and dance starts over again.
Everywhen
For a while I ran from it, across space and time. When I realized it would be the same, everywhere and everywhen, then I started to make progress.