a disagreeable blessing

a moment of bliss

it’s that time before consciousness of inarticulate awareness

it’s the dawn of self-consciousness,

I only just perceiving it is,

wherein all you understand

is the contented sentiment

of existence

before the spoiler of reflection

profundity is like a great smog,

the reaching ever further into the heavens

to drag them down into our heads,

the very thing which prevents us

from getting our heads 

into the heavens (cf. Chesterton)

as i lay in cool sheets,

the fan encouraging the breeze

to blow over my contented face,

i prolong the nostalgic experience

of existing as my primate ancestors

: a lack of that vile blessing, my mind

this thing called consciousness: on loss

Why do we get so upset about death?

If you’re religious, it’s likely that you hold some sort of belief in an afterlife that is actually an improvement on this one (and faith that you’ll arrive there), or at least some sort of hope (that is probably a reaction to the psychological stress of death awareness). If you’re irreligious, presumably you don’t believe in an afterlife but perhaps more of the pre-birth nonexistence continued post-mortem.

In either case, this trauma is clearly not caused by death. What is it caused by?

It must be caused by some consequence outside of the death.

I suggest it is merely the lack of their continued presence in our lives that causes such distress.

Likely we get so upset because we’re going to miss them. (And how.) But this doesn’t really warrant just how upset we get. I mean, we don’t rend our clothes and shave our heads when our friend moves away (though I suppose that’s because we hold onto hope that they’ll come back… hope sure is persistent, hmm? whether or not we feel it, it’s there in our subconscious, keeping us alive…).

So, really I think it comes down to irrational possessiveness:

we experience terrific suffering because something we have built our life around – our identity, our soul – is no longer there for us. We seemingly feel entitled to their presence, maybe even feel we need it.

Of course these aren’t thoughts we entertain, but rather the subconscious triggers for what we understand as a terrible loss.

I think the same goes for losing most anything we've come to find important, that we've come to attach significance to. Faith, relationships, mementos, items and idols of any sort – we can derive such awful suffering from such arbitrary and even inane things.

This isn’t to discount the emotions we do go through. They are terrible and they are real.

It’s more of an exploration of the consequences of this thing called consciousness.

may Fortune, sublime and capricious, have good things in store

I operate with an understanding that my goals will not be met.

This isn’t bad, I don’t think. I (accurately or not) understand that the things for which I aim now will be quite different in a year, in two years, and so on.

Goals are less destinations than motivations to get up in the morning.

And anyway, “the best laid plans…” right?

There is a difference between this sort of MO and the apathy that underlies the “American dream” (a dream now characterized by a lack of responsibility and the prerogative of egregious consumerism): the former excites at each opportunity, moving toward life; the latter ebbs evermore, putting to rest their vivacity.

While I like to think my verve is generally increasing, I’ll admit I share a hope with the other side: that fortune might arrive anon. I do have great things in my life, though – opportunities, abilities, resources, people – indeed, I live like a king. I am absurdly blessed and yet I still yearn for fortune.

Maybe true fortune would bring perspective on what I have, contentment.

Maybe this is the first thread of light, dawn on a fortune present.

Maybe that’s Providence.

It’s not that Truth is relative, it’s just nuanced… very, very nuanced.

History runs in cycles.

Before a paradigm shift (i.e. when the liberal mindset finds itself to be relatively neutral, and a neutral mindset finds itself to be relatively conservative, which I posit occurs once or twice a lifetime of some 70 or 80 years—note how conservative many senior citizens seem to be, though they picketed when they were in college), polarization increases drastically: if you see increasingly demarcated party lines, it’s just a matter of establishing what the shift will be.

People, conservatives especially, fear this paradigm shift. They fear it as the end of all things, armageddon.

While it certainly isn’t the end of all things (humans are far too adaptive for that), it is the end of a world, though notably not the world. (Interesting that they can reflect on armageddon in retrospect, as Vonnegut did in his anthology of the same name.)

In this new world, we will come to accept and compensate, to grow accustom to and make the best of.

And we will learn to love it (for better or worse).

And this new world will be, fingers crossed, a brave one.

The changing truth between these times isn’t relative. It's changing, hopefully maturing, evolving. In any case, it is nuanced…

Similarly:

I wonder if everyone’s favorite color is exactly the same? That is, the quale of the color is the same despite differing titles (e.g. how I perceive the color orange is actually identical to how you perceive the color blue only I’ve learned to label mine differently; both (this) happen(s) to be our favorite color[s]).

I wonder what the quale of your god is? I wonder if the giant anthropomorphic God you think you believe in is social construct to sociologists or cosmological oddities to astronomers or quantum strangeness to physicists or the sound of one hand clapping to the enlightened?

I wonder, too, what your happiness is? I wonder if it’s American gratification or Asiatic honor or Platonic eudaimonia or utilitarian welfare or if it exists at all?

Truth must be very, very nuanced.

“like ghosts in a fishbowl”

As I run through city-bright streets, I realize I’m chasing something with which I’m entirely unfamiliar (and so it is with dreams when, conscious of your unconsciousness, you realize you don’t know how you came to be where you are).

Aspirations are apparitions of potentiality (and realization is fleeting).

: Striving so hard after something, a context, in which you have not existed before but believe whole-heartedly (or not) that it will be better than now.

(Or believe, anyway, that it is something different than now, something toward which you can move, if only to keep you moving.)

Often I find that my goals, however articulate, are not my dreams:

I dream bigger than the context I hope to realize.

What if, though, we find ourselves with goals met?

Aspirations achieved?

Dreams realized?

I suspect we'd be dead or dying.

[untitled]

I want to hide myself from Nature

(I am not magnificent),

that creature of unmatched sublimity.

And as I remain unseen,

I will remain unseeing.

I have yet to learn how to see:

my heart needs teaching,

my soul yearns for understanding.

I desire such intimacy with her,

so I flee back to my sanctuary,

alone.

There is unbridgeable distance between us.

A terrible desire to be one

with what have become my surroundings.

union,

indwelling,
community

(but with existence itself).

http://vimeo.com/27307766

why playing The Sims is the worst possible use of your time (and why I play The Sims)

“Sitting around watching tiny virtual people succeed in their fabricated lives does not get old,” promised a friend of mine. Indeed, I fear she captured a more profound lesson than she anticipated.

I’m sure it comes down to our obsession with instant gratification—in simulated reality we can grow up, get a career and achieve all of our wildest dreams in one [real] day! None of this working hard or biding time in commitment, instead we watch our skill meters fill up, make passes on the virtual dimes down the street, and, most fantastically, look for interesting and fulfilling career opportunities listed in the paper until we get exactly what we want.

There is nothing beneficial in living this virtual life.

Some games, I would argue (perhaps only to justify my playing them), better some skills. Time management games force you to deal with stress and quickly assess situations (I’m not sure why anyone would play a game in the “time management” genre—sounds like waking up to me). RTS games require quick strategizing, cost-benefit analysis, short- and long-term planning, and so on. RPGs require… not much. Anyway, RTS games can be good to play. The Sims, however, is a series of directions that keep your sim “alive” and doing your every un-actualized desire. It is similar enough to real life that the skills it might develop are ones that, if you don’t already have them (which you realistically might not given that your playing the sims), you might not survive. At the very least you’ll probably smell bad and have a diet that consists of Mountain Dew, Doritos and pizza rolls.

OK, the diet thing doesn’t sound that bad.

And, admittedly, it isn’t that far from my diet.

Still I desire to live a meaningless life in a tiny virtual reality in which I am God.

I can turn free will on and off, give and take away, create and destroy life. I can do anything I want.

It feels good having power.

It’s [emptily] encouraging accomplishing everything.

It makes me happy.

(It's funny that I have an option such as this--I have the time and resources to waste my life. What a blessing...)

And so I go, watching life pass by my virtual self and me (incidentally, both playing computer games).

everyone is wrong about something

We all have opinions and beliefs, knowledge, perceptions of Truth, conceptions of reality and perspectives on metaphysics (however inarticulate). We have learned many things through personal experience, others’ experience, education, tradition, and so on.

At first thought, we don’t think we’re wrong about any of them
(why would we maintain inaccurate positions?).

At second thought, we know we're wrong about something

(we just don’t know what, but we know we don't know everything).

I think this is an interesting dichotomy, one that should make us more humble and open to differing ideas.

Yet it doesn’t.

And so we remain closed off and unvaryingly wrong about something.

why i listen to hip-hop music

There’s something so humorously right about listening to hip-hop while rolling and bouncing in my long, awkward body. A catchy beat supporting a steady flow leaves me no choice but to thoroughly embarrass myself.

I suppose this is cultural self-deception. Trying to be cool, we, while among friends anyway, imitate pop-culture icons by pretending we know what ‘thug’ is and singing along with the challenges of being a pimp. I have to say I don’t know anything about most of the content of hip-hop music, but maybe that’s why it’s so entertaining. I mean, if I actually could relate to the challenges of pimping, I’m guessing I wouldn’t be able to listen to it so casually. Perhaps it is actually profound commentary on life to those who can relate. Suddenly when you hear the plastic body rattling on the low rider rolling past, you have to consider that it might be an intensely reflective time of solitude.

G’s can ruminate on human nature too.

They just like a heavy beat to back it up.

I still want to learn how to dougie.

And while I’m dancing [read: flailing about], maybe I’ll learn a thing or two about the [metaphysical] street.

i awoke next to my lover. i was content.

My waking hours are comprised of striving for so many things. For grand aspirations, careers, lifestyles, habits, relationships, experiences, money, food, shelter. Yet I find that the things after which I strive are only supplemental to that which I really want.

I really want fulfilling relationships.

While fulfillment comes from many things,

and sometimes dreams realized are fulfillment deferred,

there is an ever-progressing satisfaction borne from community.

A feeling based on completion, yet experienced in this active sense:

perhaps we are, as we will be, as we have been—

there are undeniable consequences of being born.

The satisfaction of true and open relationship lays bare the yearnings of my heart and the quiddity of my soul: I exist in relation to others.

i hope for things sometimes.

A giant once ate me.

I had met him on top of a hill near a lake. Apparently he too had seen how close the clouds looked to the ground there. I still want to touch a cloud. And I want it to feel like nothing else (unfortunately I don’t have the imagination to dream of what that cloud might feel like).

Thinking I might be able to finally reach up and touch the clouds, I paddled my little rowboat from the opposite shore of the lake from where I spotted the hill and the clouds. I landed on a rough beach below the hill. I clambered out, pulling the boat a little further up to make sure it didn’t float away, and eagerly traversed the hill. It was far more tiring than I imagined and by the time I got to the top I was dead tired.

Laying in the grass with a cool breeze blowing over you is like nothing else.

As I reclined in the grass, I reflected on how romantic it is to think about laying in the grass but when you actually do it it’s itchier than you remember and you feel a little damp when you get up. That’s the last thing I remember thinking anyway.

The next thing I knew the clouds were gone and there was nothing beyond the sky but sky. No space. No stars. No redshift of fleeing galaxies, and nothing more than what is here and now. It was contentment, but in a fettered way. I wanted there to be something more than this context to aspire to, somewhere to put my head and yet I was comfortable no longer needing to fit that place into my head.

Just then a booming voice announced in shockingly distasteful language a certain disappointment that the clouds were as far away as ever and that there’s still no reason to lift your little hand or mine to try to steal the stars.

The giant was saying this to me.

He realized as I did that we were both hoping for the same thing: what we knew was unreasonable. It was a masochistic pursuit as we anticipated the sure disappointment to follow.

And he realized this, and he recognized that compassion comes in many forms.

First he tried to raise me up as high as he could reach.

Then he tried to throw me (I was actually pretty close).

Finally he suggested I close my eyes and imagine what it would be like, that that is perhaps as close as we will get to realizing such an unreasonable dream. And as I closed my eyes, I felt my hand close around a star and I realized that my dream no longer was to feel that cloud. My dream was to capture that which no longer existed, something beyond experiencing the cloud. I wanted not to touch the cloud and allow it to remain, but I wanted to cage the star.

And as I put the star into my pocket, the giant released me from this captive world in a mighty crunch from his jaws.

And that’s when I woke up, my small boat rocking with the waves as a light wind stroked my face.

I still want to touch the clouds.

And close my hand around a trembling star.

And while I close my eyes and see these things,

still reason takes hold.

But I must allow myself to be released from this captive world

time and again.

But everything must belong somewhere.

a brief change of pace: the TSA and grayscale erotica

I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that airport security has become oddly erotic.

As I stood like a cholo (per the directions on the TSA Advanced Imaging Technology and the chorus of a Chicano rap hit), compromising my morals and sure that whatever was being enjoyed on the other end would end up on the Internet, I reflected on how unprepared I was to be seen in such a compromising position. I mean, if I had known I would be seen in such a state I might have done a few pushups before going through security.

To be fair, I cannot imagine getting mentally prepared for a work day full of viewing the, statistically speaking, undesirably nude masses of Americans going through security. I fear that the bad taste left in my mouth from a majority of the participants in what I’ll call the largest sex scandal deemed not only lawful but actually important would spoil whatever dimes might pass through the grayscale de-sexualizer/de-humanizer.

I also wonder how much the employee sitting behind that desk viewing those images is expected to enjoy his or her job…

While I didn’t mind standing with my elbows up and legs spread, aware that someone judged to be psychologically well enough to view those images was getting to know the crevices of my body, I could certainly understand how some people might feel uncomfortable.

Anyway, I went in and out with a smile.

I also made sure to wink at the camera during the experience—eye contact makes it more personal.