Filed under: Sir Marshmellow Trowell
From The Journal Of Sir Marshmellow Trowell
Well, even if what follows is punished by the revocation of my hetero credentials, perhaps it’s a subject I’ve long ignored that should be brought up. Certainly, considering the latest updates from close quarters, it would seem yours truly is either a colossal retard (possible) or simply shitty at reading people (un-Fucking-likely.) This is one of those issues that requires a certain amount of diligence, because it is easy to misstate what you really mean, and only by the closest of attentions and the most fine of distinctions. To make this less of a whine and more of a statement, I won’t use myself in terms of examples. That would be silly, not to mention taking away from the overall point.
The first issue for me to disentangle is the connection between pleasing aesthetics and attachment. (Did you ever notice most people mistake attachment for love? 55 per cent divorce rate can’t be wrong!) Before trying to explain my own definition of love, consider the aforementioned sub issues. Now, in as much as the average homo sapien builds concepts into a framework of understanding, the parts are all we have until the whole is assembled. Pleasing aesthetics (commonly referred to as beauty) are nothing more than an unspoken acceptance of the physicality of existence. In as much as it could be said that an image pleases a viewer, it is only on the most surface level. It consists of some mix of expectations, experience, and lighting. Beauty is something to behold, except that it can only be experienced as a one-way communication. Beauty will speak, but never listen. I don’t trust beauty or physicality. That is why.
Now attachment is something else. Attachment is the tacit admittance that meaning can be found in an external source. It doesn’t have to be a person. It could be an idea, a sense of spirituality, an object, etc. Attachment is that first realization that something that is foreign to the internal individual self can be both symbolic in representation as well as implying a certain amount of necessity to the holder of the feelings of attachment. Actually to clarify, necessity is the wrong word. Desire would be a better distinction to draw here, because it does not imply the absolute nature of need.
Love, or the notion of love is a more intrinsic part of humanity than hatred, fear, or sadness in the human experience. How can that be true you might ask? Because humans would not have ascended the food chain and beaten back other challengers to the throne without some degree of love expressed in action. Hatred, fear, and sadness are just more roadblocks thrown up in the path of progress, lazy excuses for action that fails to succeed on merit and morality alone. That’s why the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Love on the other hand might be the one aspect of traditional Christianity that I have no quarrel with. Disregarding issues of truth and fairness in love and war, love changes life in every conceivable way. For instance, the expression of love can summon forth impossible, almost mythic acts of bravery; the external manifestation of of positive connections between an individual and the existence of the object of affection. (i’m breaking my own rule on clarity, but I’m not sure how else to explain it. In this case, consider affection to signify compulsive-based cognitive experiences relating to the ideal “love.”)
Romantic love is often a poor expression of the ideal because humans are first and foremost usually pretty lousy when it comes to the idea of singular experience that defies simplicity. That being said, it would be foolish to ignore something Hollywood has already made a bank on, so obviously, there is something to the idea of romanticism. It’s not dead. Just in a coma with a nurse pulling on the plug of the iron lung. (This would be a good place for my “what, me worry?” grin, but since you can’t see me, you’ll just have to trust me.) But these vapid distinctions make no real difference.
If I could be said to have any faith in anything, a dubious proposition on many levels, it would be that love is itself a pure expression of need. Of course, not a need in the same manner of food, water, etc., but in the sense of a psychological and spiritual blanket on a very coldly intellectual night. (Want proof? Every good love song mentions a change in temperature. Ah, we learn by experience friends and neighbors!) It is the bridges we build towards others rather than the defenses we put up out of misguided fear, arrogance, or ignorance.to keep us safe. (Besides, safety is a bit of a fascist idea. You aren’t safe. Ever. But sometimes, you’re safer than others. Ask any recently battered wife, or the guy nursing a broken heart and Jack Daniels wondering what some guy has that he doesn’t. It’s all the same ball of wax, the argument is only in degree.)
I’m not really sure that there is a better image or manner of defining “love” in my understanding, except to say that questioning it is more often than not a waste of time. Either you keep reaching toward something or you don’t. (Shit, see why dualism is such a heavy concept?) Now, people have millions of reasons for giving up, and you can’t really argue that any of them represent the wrong move to make.in a given situation. (You can, but it’s mostly really dull semantic arguments that go nowhere.) Restricting judgement in this part of the definition is difficult, but the only claim I can make is to my understanding of love, not it’s effects.
So many words, but so little said. Would a grand gesture be appropriate? No, not in this situation. Perhaps some adage or memory? Again, no, it is immaterial. The only thing I can say that might make some sense has already been said many times in many ways in this small space. Love is need. Need is existence. Existence is survival. “All you need is love.” And the guy who said that really was more well known than Jesus.
So where does that leave us? That “all you need is love” but sometimes that ain’t enough? Seems an awful petty conclusion, totally insignificant against the need that squeezes the soul and refines the senses. Do I believe in love? Like all others, I’ve seen it, felt it, ignored it, denied it, same as anyone else. I don’t know if iti qualifies as belief, but I do know that love and survival are the same thing. Perhaps it doesn’t conquer all, but it does make life a lot more interesting. That is worth the price of admission in and of itself, and we already paid that years ago.
Filed under: Uncategorized
From The Journal of Sir Marshmellow Trowell
From an early age, I hated to answer any question that required a definitive reason for a given action, statement, or thought. Trying to resolve the idea of “why” seemed so abstract, so hard to translate into simple statements of cause/effect that the frustration of being unable to clearly express myself caused me to begin avoiding the question altogether. As I got older, I even developed a rationale to explain my hesitance; that anything so complex was not worth the time or effort to tell anyone. As an added corrolary, I convinced myself erroneously that even those posing a “why” question didn’t really want to know the long list of subtle motivations and hidden causalities that made up my conception of “why.”
This shaky premise altered the way I understood all human motivation, ironically reinforced by the sorry state of public school education that made no mention of anything remotely resembling any kind of usable approach to our shared philosophic existence. To combat this flaw in my ability to conceptualize meaning, I first turned to the many theories of self advocated by the dreamers, poets, and thinkers throughout history. While this was a pleasing diversion, the variation amongst the many theories made any kind of meta-theory synthisis impossible. There was too much to reconcile, and the volume of wildy divergent notations on the defined “self” prevented more than scattered thoughts brought on by meditation and daydreams.
If anything, this was a pleasent conclusion to arrive at. Don’t get the idea that this research was wasted in anyway. Instead, it forced a counter quest for something to bridge the many chasms between competing theories. To make a very long story short, it brought on the realization that the real meaning of the word “why” had nothing to do with the specificity with which it is so often used. Instead, I began to think of it as a means of reaching some sort of trusted certainty, a sort of vocal psychic plea for the impossible. Certainly, the current usage of “why” in the Western world uses an almost exclusively scientific basis for its application. Luckily for myself, my strident faith in the process of change made it easy to disregard any concern of current conditions, being that they aren’t fixed, even when common wisdom implies they are.
Back to my main point. As I stopped trying to avoid the complexity of “why” and focused on the possiblities and implications it represented, I forced myself to mentally note the how the question of “why” was asked, and what manner of expectation was being communicated by its usage. I won’t bore you with how this influenced my own view of human nature, but I have learned that static theory is unworkable at best and utterly destructive at worst. That’s another journal entry entirely. Sufffice it to say that if you listen to enough people in enough places for a long enough time, you will start to notice the variants in physical communication that accompany verbal communication. In short, humans are screaming from the deepest and most unknown parts of their psyche, and these screams are cloaked by so many factors it would be a travesty to offer an incomplete list. What’s important is the cloak is only partial, and if you can learn to disregard the petty attempts at hiding people behind inarticulate temporal facades, the static dissolves and what is left is the the summation of hopes, dreams, fears, and needs. I don’t mind saying that Maslow only had it half right, but then, he was a biologist cloaked by a psychological leaning. That in itself was quite a trick.
So, to sum up, “why” is, as I understand it, a conspiracy, a plot to escape the bounds by weakening the one part of humanity where internal balance is achieved. “Why” is the assassin of blind faith, a demand for some type of accountability to the process of existence, and an admittance that beneath all of the bullshit posturing and strategies for concealment, there is still one place where we as humans are the same. In an ever changing world, our desire for certainty, our craving to be sure of something, no matter how trivial, is not a movement towards enlightenment. It would be like expecting a tasteless desert to clue a person in to the fate hidden from view.
Lastly, less this be misunderstood as a gripe or depressing idea, consider that this line of thinking is really only a theory in itself, another attempt at assigning clarity and simplicity to the hunger for meaning. Asking why is just another way to simultaneously express trust and love in another person as well as the hope that perhaps, this will be the one in a million lottery ticket that will bestow long sought desires for certainty and understanding above and beyond need, all the way up to desire. Really, while there is no doubt we kudge beauty based on an individual ideal, what ties us together is the silent agreement that the beauty does exist. That is the value of why, but so far, that’s all I know…for unsure.
(these thoughts were inspired by the following passage from “another roadside attraction” by tom robbins. this excerpt is a conversation between Marx Marvelous and Amanda Ziller. it always comes down to the scientist and the mystic.
“But it seems to me that the real cop-out is to say that the universe has meaning but that we ‘mere mortals’ are incapable of ever knowing that meaning. Mystery is part of Nature’s style, that’s all. It’s the Infinite Goof. It’s meaning that is of no meaning. The paradox is the key to the meaning is of meaning. To look for meaning-or lack of it- in things is a game played by beings of limited consciousness. Behind everything in life is a process that is beyond meaning. Not beyond understanding, mind you, but beyond meaning.”
(from p.335)
Sir Marshmellow Trowell
Filed under: Poetry
i’d elicit something resembling
your beautiful eyes
from the sunset over the water
where the music man plays
i’d call for something close to
the way you speak in the spaces
between words
that say “you’re getting to me”
when the meaning discovered
trumps an explanation offered
on paper plates that hold
your hand underneath extended
if we could talk in the late hours,
as the day sleeps peacefully
behind us, so consecrated,
i’d wrap your tongue around mine
what sort of frenetic activity,
there’s you; the preparation
for a hurricane,
and fierce against foolish thoughts
a time to wonder some foolish wonder,
exhibited only by devilish details;
if only you’d be fully persuaded that
feeling is honest; the way understanding is defined
so these foolish wanderings
on the borders of your soul,
lines of your trust slowly coming
into focus within your defensive posture
——
i’d elicit something resembling
the fear of unspoken lies
from the dead leaves still hanging
off the autumn trees
i’d call out for single favors,
translated by strange imagery into straight talk,
but i’d already used eight lives
in october of 2004
when you tilt your head back
to blow grey smoke at early skies
through your curled tongue, my glimpse
belies your perfect decadent imperfection
when we talk in the quiet morning
with the comforts of home
those artistic silences
where expectation and desire meet
all is calm and still with my private world,
to you, the science of movement
that cloaks your fears with misplaced
confidence in your ability to hide
some part of your spirit must escape
the attempted concealment, perhaps?
places where you elicit high screams
protesting; you can do better.
these foolish dreams, with titles
and desire spelled out, clarified; while
i walk on the borders of your soul,
you hesitate; can you tread on mine?
Filed under: love n' luck
Awakening to midnight, and the sensation that something is wrong. The nightmares hit again, but there’s nothing new in those images, just the same old tired psychological bullshit that was disregarded years ago. Nevermind that, for the moment, this tired and addled mind tries to recall what it was I was thinking about a the moment I fell asleep. Because Penn & Teller are still going on about bullshit in the bible, and the baseball game was rained out, and things are finally back to normal (for the most part, near as normal can be in the sense of not remembering what came about prior to now, but I digress.)
Still, from a purely considered context, it would be a stretch to deny that tonight, for the moment at least, there is nothing to be fucking bothered about, which in this world is rare, and what I would call temporary perfection of primitive motivations. (There is a lot on this world that phrase would be useful for description for, but that seems a verbose way of putting it.) More to the point, after subconsciously assuming the worst of the world and deciding to simply give up, the whole fucking situation seems to morph back into a more temperate climate, somewhat more hospitable to bouffant novelty than the previous weeks. Hardly anything more than a trifle, yet so much more comfortable in that vauge and amusing way.
So, the counterfeit contessa is marvelling at the astute realizations of marvelous marx (no relation to Karl) while the monte carlo sits outside, idling. It’s funny, did the astrophysicist alter the balance between endorphins and idealism? It’s either that, or my brains are just completely gone for the evening. And fuck, it’s 3 a.m. and it’s time for chilli.
Filed under: love n' luck
she moves so easily all i could think of was sunlight…
From the Journal of Sir Marshmellow Trowell
There isn’t anything to describe the gradual cessation of idealism that happens over the course of one’s life. We live in a society with startling contradictions, perhaps enough that cognitive dissonance has gone from being a problem to a life-skill. Trying to condense these contradictions into something resembling a simplistic version of daily Americana is impossible, but more and more, it becomes something that cannot be ignored, because it eats away at the outer-edges of individual reality that bind up the weltanshauung we all assemble over the course of our lives. Want proof that this is not only occurring, but having a negative impact on every man woman and child in the world? I submit the case of Bartholomew Halbersam. (Not his real name, but then, I don’t know his real name.)
Let us start by assuming we all build our world view on the basis of experience. (For those pop-psychologists out there, this means we are what we see, feel, hear, and smell.) All that consciousness means on a base level is a log record of experiences translated into a personality. That’s it. That is all you can ever hope to be. But this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, without it, the human race never would have ascended to the top of the food chain. The ability to alter reactions away from straight reactionary based behavior on a decision by decision basis is humanities only hope for some kind of a better world. (I do hate that term. The world is perfect as is. What we really want/need is better people. Take that you creationist motherfuckers, keep fucking with science classes in school and soon you’ll discover that evolution can be a double edged sword. Notice a lot of species no longer here? They chose the biological equivalent of species based suicide. Or humans hunted the to extinction. But I digress.)
So by understanding human action in terms of learned and copied behavior, it is a lot easaier to understand new experiences in the context of human life. Back to Bartholomew Halbersam. Bart exhibited a pattern of behavior that is best expressed as a normative reaction to unenforced stimulus. In English, monkey see, monkey do. No different than any of us, really. We watch, we learn, we act. End of story. (If you feel the need to start arguing for the idea of motivational behavior, feel free. I’ll listen, but I won’t agree. Moving on…) OK, let’s assume that the good Mr. Halbersam has begun acting in a mysterious way. We don’t know what has happened to begin this change, but it is clear to us all that he is acting differently than he has in the past.
Now, assume for a moment you are an inquisitive friend of Mr. Halberstam. You notice this change in behavior, and also the concurrent effects of the change. (For the moment, assume the effects revolve around money, or the lack thereof, and some unfortunate incidents involving violence ot person and property.) Now, how fucking long would it take to figure out how big of a fucking problem this is? (Now, here I will admit my own bias, as I have known at least 3 Bartholomew Halberstam’s. Watching them is like watching a slow motion train wreck, and all you can do is hope they don’t decide to take anyone else along for the ride.)
At this point, bring together the other strands of this discussion. Patterned thinking and the absorption of any surrounding idea or behavior matched with a person either genetically predisposed to depression or depressive motivations with a self-concept (or identity, mutually acceptable here) formed in an overly stressful or hostile environment means one thing. Watch the fuck out.
One additional notation on observed human behavior.Some people may be really offended by this, but fuck you, if you can’t learn to laugh at humanity, well, you’ll miss out on a lot of really funny sights. Levity aside, today was the day I realized that somewhere out there, there lives someone who is an unattractive person in every imaginable way. They are displeasing to the the eye, the ear, the nose, and the mind. In every way that one person can repel another, this person indeed repels all others. This person is mean spirited, obnoxious, completely unsympathetic to the rest of humanity, and a disgusting physical specimen. In short, someone you would assume is completely alone in the world. Now for the part I still cannot understand no matter how many times someone tries to explain it. This foul excuse for a human is married. With children. And, in all likelihood, the have a job making a decent, middle class sort of living. I try to accept that people like this exist, and that there is some sort reason that so many of them can crowd into such a tiny geographical region. But I will never understand it.
If my life amounts to nothing, as long as there is still a difference between the failed spirits and the hardened hearts, and yours truly, there will be nothing to regret. My only firm belief is that passion of any expression of the conscious ideal should only be caged when it proves dangerous to others. The rest of it is the only thing that can never be taken from an individual. There is a fatal flaw to this sort of theorem, but now is not the time to discuss it. Unfortunately, it is enough to know the flaw exists. We’re back to cognitive dissonance. The grand catch-22 of our shared existence is that the more simplicity would suffice, the more complexity is employed.
Honestly, can it be claimed that the accumulation of reactions and the repeated parsing of standardized images in a neverending effort to satisfy the only thing that will never be found anywhere amongst this species. Certainty. So relax and remember that uncertainty isn’t something to be feared, but to be embraced. Idealistic for sure, but these explorations into the ping pong balls bouncing through the brains of Sir Marshmellow Trowell. And yet, people still take the time to ask. Bugfuck crazy some say.
“…meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
At least I’m sure it may be so in Denmark:”
(“hamlet” act i scene v)
Sir Marshmellow Trowell
p.s. Every time I read even a single line of Shakespeare, I understand what language could be. Also, today, some asshole in a Porshe Carrera got so mad at me for tailgating his slow ass (yeah, he was in the damn left lane) that he made me flip him the bird. Anyhow, this aging acolyte switched lanes and stared at me as I passed, mouthing a very bad word and a location where I could utilize this word. Mind you, he’s driving a Porsche. I drive a fucked up Toyota Camry held together with bumper stickers and duct tape. Who should be chasing who? So, I offered him a Hawaiian Aloha hand signal. Then he zoomed off looking pissed. Now, if he had driven that fast to start with, he never would have gotten the finger. Oh well. And that is how a day that started with me getting the finger ended with me giving the finger, then going home to read Shakespeare and eat the best spaghetti dinner I have ever cooked. To top it off, I worked a Shakespeare reference into a story about giving a septuagenarian the finger. This was a very strange day, and I can only hope the next few days get even stranger, just to keep up the drama. Is that masochistic or simply enjoying the irony that comes my way? Elvis Presley never did drugs.
Filed under: love n' luck
Discombobulated around the premises, it would seem a virtual certainty that if my present knowledge, aquired via a long phone call late last night had been in my possesion a month ago, there might have been a lot of saved heartbreak and worry. One of those peculiar moments when things clarify enough to glimpse the sordid truth of the situation, whereby someone reveals more than they intend while making a dangerous assumption that secrecy has been maintained. Needless to say, moments like these call for the arrival of white riders on clean horses bringing word of triumph from far away lands. It would appear the game, once thought completely over, has been extended (for all I can tell indefinitely.) A shot of confidence carried over, not from something as simple as the good word, but from the overall complexity of divining purpose in the spaces between the words.
In a sense, pulling away an actors mask to show the world a totally different person can be a thankless task, but the ultimate payoff comes not for the one in question, but for the one doing the pulling. Sure, it would be so much easier on all concerned to accomplish this basic task in anyof a million other ways, but the depressed mind doesn’t respond to idealism, only to shared misery. Still, since I am fairly certain that the one in question doesn’t read these little postings, we can play those ping pong games all day, back and forth until that slip eventuates a change (or chance, I am above all else an equal opportunity offender) for some kind of forward movement. In another sense, hair still grows and yesterady was a damn good hair day.
All of these conflicts and improprieties extend past what can be seen/felt to a new paradigm that normalizes relations between the uncouth (me) and the available (Ms. Mysterio) until it is as natural as breathing. However, with the revelation that my own choices are the only germane point of contention, I still can’t help but wonder what the final result of these musings may be. I know, I know, I can be a genuine son of a bitch when I want to. But then, what else can you do in situations such as these? Time is short, and the illustrious Mysterio is all fucked up waiting for something that donesn’t seem to be coming. And to think, it was so recently that fellatio and cunnilingus were the primary subject of discussion. That makes me laugh, and you should laugh too, because it’s funny. Now go fuck yourselves, because it feels so much better than slitting your wrists.
Filed under: travel
No rest for the wicked, that much is known. Without going into the audacious details of this illustrious weekend, it would suffice to try and recall the minutiae that slips away in a fog bank that rolled in early Saturday and has only recently moved on to other parts. Before it returns, and it will return, I should note that sometimes, movement is the greatest drug ever invented. Getting out of this hideous hole, especially after the Friday disappointments, was the best idea I’ve had since building the perfect sandwich. While much of that is due to artificial constraints and my own remarkable timing, this weekend brought back a glimpse of the great times to be found amongst the lowly, in both of the happy little towns and communities to be found on Virginia’s highways. Again, there is not a single problem that can’t be solved with the correct application of asphalt and mile markers.
As for the assembly of zombie-children, it boggles the mind that the overall plus/minus is so off balance, what with the latest technology and gadgets working toward achieving balance. Now, the space between ideas is invisible, but the links between said ideas are long, curved, and securely attached to the duplicitous theories of uninformed neophytes all desperate to kiss my ass or lick my flip-flop in a self-defeating attempt to catch my eye. I am under the impression that they mean well, but truth is, I just don’t care about it anymore. Ah, we are many with our vagaries and encumbered nature, our dark eyes and devilish smiles. Crazy doesn’t really begin to describe this current incarnation of my own design, but it is a good start. You can go anywhere with that sort of tag, and while waiting for my hair to lengthen, the discovery of expensive product driven ideologes is matched by the heart warming development of easy walking and calm seas. Like the man says, it ain’t what you find, it’s where you find it that matters. All hail the boy with the skylined brains. He’s so cute!
Filed under: talking pizza boxes
Way too far from sober to do anything but ask questions. And not the obnoxious questions, but the questions that keep me talking to microwave pizzas and trying to arrange hot dogs diagonally on pieces of toasted rye bread. The first question I have is who invented the microwave pizza. I asked the empty pizza box, but the only answer it would give was “I used to have sauce and cheese in me, but then you cooked my innards and ate them without so much as an understated apology.”
Now, I odn’t know about you, but I’m not in the habit of taking guff from an empty pizza box. I looked it straight in the eye and said “Well, you know what? I own you, and if I want to take out your delicious pizza center and nuke it, then that is exactly what’s going to happen. And you know what else? Your warm pizza center went down like the fucking Titanic. Right now, it’s slowly being turned from pizza to number two by my digestive tract. So why don’t you take your comments about me and my eating habits, place them gently in a soda bottle, and insert the bottle sideways into your anus.”
The pizza box actually seemes to look nervous! (How fucking wierd is that?) Anyways, it glanced around furtitively and replied thusly; “Now, I think you need to back the fuck up before I kick your ass for disrespecting Mama Celeste. I know, you think your a motherfucking comedian, the cool guy, whatever, just grabbing the pizza from me and eating it like it ain’t no fucking thing. Yeah, you best check yourself before I need to get belligerent up in this motherfucker. Also, you think just because I’m a six inch wide square box that I can’t start some shit? If I were you, I’d be real careful about going to sleep tonight, lest I decide to come in and take a dump on your chest.”
This just totally shocked me. I mean, what could I say? The empty pizza box was making all kinds of threats, and I was really getting worried that some of them were less threats than promises. Plus, I wanted to eat another Mama Celeste microwave pepperoni pizza, but having two boxes would make it almost certain that they would gang up on me and threaten more violent acts of retribution for eating out the delicious pizza core. That seems like such shit. I tried to explain that, saying “Look, I appreciate the work you do in getting a delicious pizza from the factory to my plate, and I have never said that you don’t work hard. But I do own you, and you will do as I say or so help me god I will kick the shit outta you.”
Well, to make a long story short, I had to dispose of the box. I didn’t even mind the argument, I just got tired of the physical threats. I mean, seriously, nobody should have to take that whilst in their own home. This is my castle son! The funniest part of the whole thing was that I did end up cooking (well, microwaving, that’s almost cooking)a second Mama Celeste. This time however, the box couldn’t not have been more polite, and dare I say, funny. First off, the second box complimented my taste in microwave pizza, and that really made me happy I was eating this particular brand. How often does packaging tell you what a smart and good person you are just because these mini-pizzas were on sale? (Actually, that happens a lot, but most people don’t read packaging that way.)
Well, it’s almost one in the morning, and I really need to sleep. The eyelids are definitely getting a bit droopy and heavy, but before I go, I’d just like to say thank you to the Mama Celeste Microwaveable Pizza Company. You make one hell of a delicious mini pizza, and your tiny chunklets of pepperoni are a joy to nibble on. You saved me the trouble of cooking myself a gigantic chicken Parmesan submarine sandwich, which is a fair amount of trouble when there is no oil for the deep fryer. Also, you are an excellent celebratory accoutrement, seeing as how there are two things to celebrate on this cool water evening. Anyhow, just so you know, I took the garbage out and tossed it in the can to make sure the kitchen remains quiet while I am asleep. I hate having to do it so early like that, but there is no way I can have chatty pizza boxes keeping me up all night, asking all kinds of foolish questions and shooting me dirty looks from across the room. Now if I can just get the box of minute rice to stop bitching about being stuck in the closet, then everything will be ok. “Hey! Shut the fuck up before I lose my patience and stomp you out. Sit where you’ve been placed and serve your purpose.”
Well, off to dream about my baby and the advice I got from two pears sitting in a fruit bowl earlier this evening. Seeing as how you have to take the good with the bad, and the pretty good news from this afternoon, it would seem things are swell, at least for the moment. But I gotta go, a packet of artificial sweetener told me it knows winning lottery numbers and I need to find a pen.
Filed under: love n' luck
Well, silence is one answer. On behalf of Foolish Industries, parent company of all things zany, wacky, and offbeat, let me offer a heartfelt thank you to the makers of Vicodin and Flexeril. While driving home in a daze trying to remember how this all started, the early beginnings of a Cure song happened over my radio. Without any obnoxious and obviously homosexually depressed rantings, it brought back the one memory that could have possibly reminded me that the answer to the question is silence. Not only did this reinvigorate my dead tired mind and heart, it also replaced the idea that this was somehow more than just a temporary setback in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, there will be allowances for the times I must, how do you say “crash” and forget these important reminders, but overall, for someone feeling as devastated as I, there is a certain joie de vive to my temporary insanity.
An explanation: If you remember, I have made more than a passing remark about my distrust of dualism, the crutch of much of classic psychology. It is a foolish idea, constrained by the very definition encased in the subject. With dualism, there is happiness and sadness. Love and hate. Up and down. Together or alone. However, by letting dualism rot in the corrupted pit it belongs in, a sort of transcendence of the soul is possible. Instead of a philosophy based on comparisons (i.e. defining something by it’s opposite) there becomes a more singular focus on the strength and prescience of a given experience. Oppositional relationships are not diametrically opposed to each other, nor are they simple aggregate groupings that can be dismissed with a simple one word title.
Instead, it is the very depth of experience that comes into play. By depth, I also mean strength or subjective impression. For instance, instead of trying
to relate to an event in your life by looking at the supposed opposite, rearrange the meaning so that the event is considered a unique experience that has an opposite force. I sense I’m losing my audience, let’s try this again. Imagine you get a raise at work. Assuredly, this feels good, especially if you like what you do and feel you are under-compensated. To experience the increased recognition and, of course, remittance, you feel some of joy. Call it happiness or any other synonym, you are feeling a positive emotional reaction to both the idea (i.e. what a raise means) and the practice (i.e. what elements change because of this idea) of a raise. Now, one step farther; you relate this joy to other times in your life happiness has knocked on your emotional door. These comparisons, refined through a context of a million other personal and individual mental/emotional filters can be said to explain both how you relate to a given situation/emotion, and how you act. (OK, that is the closest I will go to dualism in the general, forgive me Dr. Russell!)
However, the same structure can be observed in a reaction to negative stimuli. (Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with my tale of heartbreak, I have a whole other example.) Let’s say, for arguments sake, that you wreck your car. Further, the car was wrecked because of someone else’s actions, not through any fault of yours. I would guess anger and shock would be the two most prevalent immediate emotional reactions, assuming there isn’t any blood flowing and the other guy is still in one piece. But how defined are these reactions? What is the strength of the anger you feel? How surprised are you? Again, these answers obviously differ from person to person, each filtering the events through a melange of factors and histories.
So, I’m guessing there is someone asking “What does that prove?” Don’t worry, we’re getting there. One more thing first; and that is the idea of causation. In a scientific sense, there is no such thing as past or future. The only verifiable, repeatable, measurable timeframe is the present. However, we use the idea of cause and effect to locate the direction of entropy. In other words, each event has to have a cause (perhaps many causes) and each cause generates an effect. The sticky part comes when you try to define cause and effect without self referencing them. Give it a try one time when you can’t sleep. It might help.
At any rate, determining primary/secondary/etc. causes to any given event is often times impossible, because there are so many unknowns that will never be known. (Lemme get all Dick Cheney for a minute, it has to be more fun than being me today…)
“As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.”
(donald rumsfeld, press conference 2.12.2002)
OK, but really, when am I ever gonna get another chance to quote Rumsfeld? So, back to cause and effect. All of this goes to saying that while we can certainly say x causes y, we can never really be sure. And now for the grand point that ties the room together, in the parlance of our times. If cause and effect can’t be defined, then, at best they constitute a theory that can not presently be verified. If you combine that with the disavowal of
dualism, then you begin to see that the world is at once intricate and complex and extremely simple at the same time, as well as every possible conjunction
in between the two extremes. (See, farther and farther from dualism.Am I a man of my word or what?) Now try to imagine that your life, rather than a series of events assigned a place in the narrative structure of your life (what you might call your internal biography) is really a matter of genetics, subconscious and conscious decisions, and happenstance. Force yourself to let go of the pattern thinking we all condition ourselves with, though only briefly, and see your life as a series of moments with only a partial connection between each moment.
That is what is going on in my head most of the time. It is admittedly a partial theory, but it is all I’ve come with so far in my life and experiences. The things that seem to hold me (as well as most of the world) back are the refusal to see that just because something exists in a certain form does not rule out existence in another form, or with different traits and flaws, or under different circumstances. The lives and moments that are the most wasted are the ones trapped by their own logic. I know, it seems backwards, but it isn’t.
Lest anyone accuse me of hubris, I won’t belabor the specific comment that I include myself in the group of flawed and searching people. I’d love to claim
my awareness of the problem gives me some kind of insight into trying to solve it, but that would be a pretty straight up lie. What it all comes down to, at least for myself is to just continue my wandering and hope that at some point, this all begins to make sense. The Fool isn’t greedy, not trying to get rich, just trying to be good enough for whatever comes around.
One last thing that’s been kicking around my head over the last few weeks and then another attempt at sleep. The longer I sit and daydream about what I want out of life, the harder it is to really answer the question. Most people don’t really put what they want out in public, seemingly they prefer to hide their ambitions as if this was some sort of solution to a great problem. It isn’t. (Of course, another explanation would be the old standby, fear of failure.)
Whatever, every single human fails at 99% of everything they will ever try in life. Thing is, if you manage to succeed at the other 1%, that is all anyone will remember. It is a strange world we live in. But back to the main point; Realistically, there are plenty of “things” I could desire, like paying off those bastard credit card companies, or the asshole student loan people, fixing my wreck of a car, getting more bumper-stickers, etc., but really, those are all kind of temporal in the negative sense of the word. Realistically, I could cut my hair, buy a suit and work and make money doing something, but to what end? Seems a little self-defeating if you ask me. In the meantime, my greatest asset really is my freedom. I make no apologies to anyone for doing what I want, when I want, within the parameters of work of course. Once I get my mojo back, things will even out. They always do. In the meantime, I will make my depression karma payments and try to figure out what happened and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. (That seems so psychologically healthy for once.
Not that it makes any of this any easier, but at least a decent perspective hasn’t left. Well, nothing like writing something intensely personal and then
posting it for all to see. Someday I’ll have to tell everyone why. (I’ll tell you that the answer is not masochism. That’s a joke. Or was it? Ha!) OK,
false bravado aside, off to try and sleep. Let’s see, I’m up to 38 hours at this point, so here’s hoping. Like I said many many words ago. Thanks generic
flexeril maker, you are the fucking bees knees. The cat’s pajamas. And if you actually help me sleep, then I will be most appreciative. Most appreciative indeed. (MYB)
—————————————————————
“And then came lo mein
and going insane
at the chinese cafe way downtown
i was steamed i was fried
but you stood by my side
when i had my nervous breakdown”
(robert earl keen)
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
(oscar wilde)
Filed under: love n' luck
Well, silence is one answer. On behalf of Foolish Industries, parent company of all things zany, wacky, and offbeat, let me offer a heartfelt thank you to
the makers of Vicodin and Flexeril. While driving home in a daze trying to remember how this all started, the early beginnings of a Cure song happened over my radio. Without any obnoxious and obviously homosexually depressed rantings, it brought back the one memory that could have possibly reminded me that the answer to the question is silence. Not only did this reinvogorate my dead tired mind and heart, it also replaced the idea that this was somehow more than just a temporary setback in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, there will be allowances for the times I must, how do you say “crash” and forget these important reminders, but overall, for someone feeling as devastated as I, there is a certain joie de vive to my temporary insanity.
An explanation: If you remember, I have made more than a passing remark about my distrust of dualism, the crutch of much of classic psychology. It is a foolish idea, constrained by the very definition encased in the subject. With dualism, there is happiness and sadness. Love and hate. Up and down.
Together or alone. However, by letting dualism rot in the corrupted pit it belongs in, a sort of transcendesence of the soul is possible. Instead of a
philosophy based on comparisons (i.e. defining something by it’s opposite) there becomes a more singular focus on the strength and prescience of a given experience. Oppositional relationships are not diametrically opposed to each other, nor are they simple aggregate groupings that can be dismissed with a simple one word title.
Instead, it is the very depth of experience that comes into play. By depth, I also mean strength or subjective impression. For instance, instead of trying
to relate to an event in your life by looking at the supposed opposite, rearrange the meaning so that the event is considered a unique experience that has noequal and opposite force. I sense I’m losing my audience, let’s try this again. Imagine you get a raise at work. Assuredly, this feels good, especially if you like what you do and feel you are undercompensated. To experience the increased recognition and, of course, remittance, you feel some leement of joy. Call it happiness or any other synonym, you are feeling a positive emotional reaction to both the idea (i.e. what a raise means) and the practice (i.e. what elements change because of this idea) of a raise. Now, one step farther; you relate this joy to other times in your life happiness has knocked on your emotional door. These comparisons, refined through a context of a million other personal and individual mental/emotional filters can be said to explain both how you relate to a given situation/emotion, and how you act. (OK, that is the closest I will go to dualism in the general, forgive me Dr. Russell!)
However, the same structure can be observed in a reaction to negative stimuli. (Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with my tale of heartbreak, I have a whole other example.) Let’s say, for arguments sake, that you wreck your car. Further, the car was wrecked because of someone else’s actions, not through any fault of yours. I would guess anger and shock would be the two most prevalent immediate emotional reactions, assuming there isn’t any blood flowing and the other guy is still in one piece. But how defined are these reactions? What is the strength of the anger you feel? How surprised are you? Again, these answers obviously differ from person to person, each filtering the events through a melange of factors and histories.
So, I’m guessing there is someone asking “What does that prove?” Don’t worry, we’re getting there. One more thing first; and that is the idea of causation. In a scientific sense, there is no such thing as past or future. The only verifiable, repeatable, measurable timeframe is the present. However, we use the idea of cause and effect to locate the direction of entropy. In other words, each event has to have a cause (perhaps many causes) and each cause generates an effect. The sticky part comes when you try to define cause and effect without self referencing them. Give it a try one time when you can’t sleep. It might help.
At any rate, determining primary/secondary/etc. causes to any given event is often times impossible, because there are so many unknowns that will never be known. (Lemme get all Dick Cheney for a minute, it has to be more fun than being me today…)
“As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.”
(donald rumsfeld, press conference 2.12.2002)
OK, but really, when am I ever gonna get another chance to quote Rumsfeld? So, back to cause and effect. All of this goes to saying that while we can certainly say x causes y, we can never really be sure. And now for the grand point that ties the room together, in the parlance of our times. If cause and effect can’t be defined, then, at best they constitute a theory that can not presently be verified. If you combine that with the disavowal of
dualism, then you begin to see that the world is at once intricate and complex and extremely simple at the same time, as well as every possible conjunction
in between the two extremes. (See, farther and farther from dualism.Am I a man of my word or what?) Now try to imagine that your life, rather than a series of events assigned a place in the narrative structure of your life (what you might call your internal biography) is really a matter of genetics, subconscious and conscious decisions, and happenstance. Force yourself to let go of the pattern thinking we all condition ourselves with, though only briefly, and see your life as a series of moments with only a partial connection between each moment.
That is what is going on in my head most of the time. It is admittedly a partial theory, but it is all I’ve come with so far in my life and experiences. The things that seem to hold me (as well as most of the world) back are the refusal to see that just because something exists in a certain form does not rule out existence in another form, or with different traits and flaws, or under different circumstances. The lives and moments that are the most wasted are the ones trapped by their own logic. I know, it seems backwards, but it isn’t.
Lest anyone accuse me of hubris, I won’t belabor the specific comment that I include myself in the group of flawed and searching people. I’d love to claim
my awareness of the problem gives me some kind of insight into trying to solve it, but that would be a pretty straight up lie. What it all comes down to, at least for myself is to just continue my wandering and hope that at some point, this all begins to make sense. The Fool isn’t greedy, not trying to get rich, just trying to be good enough for whatever comes around.
One last thing that’s been kicking around my head over the last few weeks and then another attempt at sleep. The longer I sit and daydream about what I want out of life, the harder it is to really answer the question. Most people don’t really put what they want out in public, seemingly they prefer to hide their ambitions as if this was some sort of solution to a great problem. It isn’t. (Of course, another explanation would be the old standbye, fear of failure.)
Whatever, every single human fails at 99% of everything they will ever try in life. Thing is, if you manage to succeed at the other 1%, that is all anyone
will remember. It is a strange world we live in. But back to the main point; Realistically, there are plenty of “things” I could desire, like paying off those bastard credit card companies, or the asshole student loan people, fixing my wreck of a car, getting more bumperstickers, etc., but really, those are all kind of temporal in the negative sense of the word. Realistically, I could cut my hair, buy a suit and work and make money doing something, but to what
end? Seems a little self-defeating if you ask me. In the meantime, my greatest asset really is my freedom. I make no apologies to anyone for doing what I
want, when I wnat, within the parameters of work of course. Once I get my mojo back, things will even out. They always do. In the meantime, I will make my
depression karma payments and try to figure out what happened and how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. (That seems so psychologically healthy for once.
Not that it makes any of this any easier, but at least a decent perspective hasn’t left. Well, nothing like writing something intensely personal and then
posting it for all to see. Someday I’ll have to tell everyone why. (I’ll tell you that the answer is not masochism. That’s a joke. Or was it? Ha!) OK,
false bravado aside, off to try and sleep. Let’s see, I’m up to 38 hours at this point, so here’s hoping. Like I said many many words ago. Thanks generic
flexeril maker, you are the fucking bees knees. The cat’s pajamas. And if you actually help me sleep, then I will be most appreciative. Most appreciative indeed. (MYB)
—————————————————————
“And then came lo mein
and going insane
at the chinese cafe way downtown
i was steamed i was fried
but you stood by my side
when i had my nervous breakdown”
(robert earl keen)
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
(oscar wilde)
