Filed under: Philosophy
As long as everybody does the same thing, everything should be fine. The first miscreant will probably be treated with a certain amount of forbearance, both for breaking the agreed upon standards of behavior as well as reminding the rest of the people that there is but one way, and that way is the natural order of life. I admire the forthright talk. Admiration may not be the same as belief, but nothing is perfect. I suspect that the problem is rooted in the tendency of power to coalesce in irregular shapes, leaving odd marks on the widest possible number of people. There are limits, antithetical ideals pursued at great cost, not to mention those unable or unwilling to choose this “all of the above” standardization. Oftentimes they are identified by code of dress, conformity to the competing structure, giving most of their faith and a good portion of their money in order to see if the impossible is a term for the dictionary or the history of Western Civilization course that can be taken down at the learning annex. Me? Who knows? Would it matter if either camp was right or wrong? What would that even mean in these strange circumstances?
By nature, the aggravation is just a dynamic that has consequences in the same vein as a broken leg or shatter pelvis. I myself have never gotten past the superiority of qualitative thought, if only because we all try to privilege our own skills and defame the unnecessary. The whole idea is built upon competing interests without a thought or care vis a vis the macro picture that arises from such humble origins. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The average American family of four loves to eat ground beef. The suburbs, red in tooth and claw…
For a moment I got lost staring at my mostly full pack of cigarettes and debating which one to smoke next. I settled on an average looking cigarette in the middle of the pack; to my chagrin, it was excessively average, and was soon lost as I tried to pry it out of the crowd. I picked the first one that fell out and prepared to smoke. Just before lighting the cigarette, I got to wondering if it were possible to find something other than an average (or plus or minus more than 3 standard deviations…what is the deviation between many class A cigarettes? in any given pack of cigarettes. Most products vary in quality from good to bad, mostly clustering in the middle, neither all good nor all bad. Cigarettes don’t seem to work that way. I smoked the cigarette knowing I was smoking the best that Richmond Virginia had to offer. Every single part of me hopes that these are not what they refer to as “salad days.” My logical side says it just might be, but to understand that, I would have to answer a question often thrown around the public domain, and now is no time for any of that foolishness. What does it all mean?
(That is not a gesture of grand eloquence. Just another reformed head case rummaging through a bin at a discount store and wondering how four walls and high ceilings came to mean the hearth of yore. Cigarettes mark the time, and even the perfect jacks only burn once. Equality on a mass scale. Who’d a guessed Phillip Morris was in the business? Serendipity at the very moment of conquest.
Plenty of music around here, though to be honest, quantity hasn’t seemed any more useful than alchemy on the ragged and scripted bring down before things reboot come next Thursday. The old saw that you can’t please everybody at the same time seems adequate, if we only make discounted comments and recriminations while recreating something that just recently held the attention of the present before curling up into a ball when addressed as the past. Scumbag gamblers don’t even take bets like that, and for good reason; why put money down on an unwinnable bet? With as much certainty as the occasion permits, I can only say that there are reasons for almost everything under the sun. Coda: They aren’t all logical, and most of them only makes sense in specialized contexts. Other than that, no worries on the prairie, smooth seas and calm waters, et. al.
I made circular motions with my car, looping from a parking lot in Burke to a gigantic and sundry super center in Fairfax. None of it had anything but the typical phases of longstanding addiction to movements that served as placeholders in the universe of movement. Looking back, it all seems to robotic, like some involuntary thrust or muscular contraction. Frankly, I’m amazed the whole facade has maintained such grace and beauty for so long under conditions that would beckon only a sadist or perhaps someone so twisted around by all the things that don’t make sense that they mistook a stand of trees for the whole forest…
I’ve got a holster full of lines and a gun made of glass. The lines make desperation out of calm weekday afternoons, and the gun is just for show. I keep it pointed at a doll dressed up to look like a faceless stick figure tattooed on the wall. I can’t remember who it was that drew him on the wall, but I suspect his motives (whatever they might have been) were mostly pure. Anyways, it is lost to the past at this point, which ties up our flawless and certainly incomplete paradigm with a bow made of tense in a box struggling for the right verbiage to escape its status as a proper noun. The laity is not pleased, always demanding more than a general layout of the first few floors. Even if more information were available, it would still be a reliable quest for the next big thing, the next harbinger, the next pattern of osmosis that comforts the weak and simplifies the complex. It is madness, and the disease is spreading like a zombie wild fire.
There is a pattern of some concern circulating around the sky and occasionally making a appearance as some quasi serial entertainer looking to reverberate through the local time frame. I can’t pin down the locale from which this pattern escaped from, but the local institution for critically depraved can’t be ruled out. Like everything else in the world, the sense of scale is the giveaway to the wonderfully magnanimous and crudely apportioned pattern tracing the inverted reaction of faulty chemicals when applied to flesh and bone. The lab is small and insecure, the results often questionable or worse yet, non-repeatable. Amazing the work they are doing to improve all of these tactile weaknesses, but more amazing still is that the work continues, and the amorphous nature of the quest barely registers surprise when the guests take a tour of the facilities. You’d think that something would have to give eventually, but you would be wrong. Wrong in time, wrong in interpreting some necessity when none such constraint exists. If you choose to export a pattern that links behavior and chemicals with untested population controls, the results will speak for themselves because the dead fuckers can’t. The war marches onward, not to success, just to continuance. I myself had a hard time coming to terms with it, but that passed. Everything always will.
In such a cynical and disjointed sensory experience, geography is radically altered, rebuilt in the image of a being unseen except when called out by the non-believer. I seriously doubt that the cyclical nature is a coincidence, but am not skilled in the higher math that would essentially verify the feeling of dread anytime THEY get in the way of US. There are no words that can express the awe of the machinery when glimpsed from this jaded viewpoint. Most of what this factory produces wouldn’t even have a market except for its construction out of the bombed out wreckage of airplanes and tanks. Happy slogans didn’t appear until much later, when the sensibilities of the civilians had softened to such an extent that rainbows and flowers were no longer reserved for gays and lovers. There is probably a damn good explanation for all of this metamorphosis, but the research department stopped returning my calls and denied my request for further information. I suppose we will all figure it out when declassification arrives in the form of the passage of time and the death of the effectuals. Control is effervescent, like smoke, or steam.
While all of this plays out as only the grandeur of the biographers can testify, I can’t shake the feeling that all of this has played and replayed so many times the only reason we don’t know for sure is because it would shatter the glass below our feet, which, oddly enough, has gotten thin enough to see through. Under the glass is neither the wonderful world of color and sound nor the defanged brutality we emulate on computers but don’t dare to live. Like some mythical beast still searching for its creator, the whole race stumbles and falls down repeatedly, pressing onward for reason that couldn’t be articulated for a variety of reasons. Moreso is the fear that even prior knowledge cannot protect the innocents nor nourish the hungry. The real fear is that the meat-grinder requires constant sources of discontent and seemingly impossible hypocrisy or everything stops. Patterns are tough to shake, because patterns represent comfort.
Lucky for all involved, we have the medication to fix all of these problems, and any new ones we discover along the road. The addicts won’t admit that distraction is not a solution, but that inconvenience can wait for another time when solutions and hammers are one and the same. Maybe the revolution will offer succor to the blameless…or maybe fighting for an illusion does not compel the vision of reform into being. What does it mean if people say that disaster is averted? From here, it would seem it is too early to avert anything other than our own glance into the mirror, where we can find out if we’ve saved the best for last. Nothing ever ends. Medicate as necessary.
Filed under: thoughtful trips
I have terrible music playing as loud as it possibly could go. The speakers are weak, but Palmer overcomes the tasteless morning so we can as one wake up and laugh at all the incredibly inconsequential twists and turns that will, as he so eloquently put it, “sign out in a box.” (r. palmer “woke up laughing”) Nothing here makes the same case for logic that seemed so strong last night, but the difference is softened by the arching over-reaction offered as a plea to stony voices refusing to speak from hundreds of miles away. We all know that absolutely everything takes time; I feel like we agreed on that stipulation months if not years ago. Why all the fuss now? The whole damn day is an argument for birth control and cotton sheets.
Notwithstanding the music that still overpowers any other sense, everything seethes in the bright heat with an effect that is determinedly holistic. Given the periodic pullback regularly turning neat little derivatives into complicated bifurcations, combined with the lack of Sherpa to guide us through the questions and answers, and we’ve discovered wet sand in the castle on the beach. This must be why nobody quests for intelligence. It would be difficult to describe and almost impossible to undertake, but the real problem is the inherent lack of value in the quest itself. The vast majority of conceptualizations of the chalice are analogous to the usage of tools in the modern work place. The design has changed without altering the connection between car and driver; pardon the crudeness of the metaphysics in contention.
As the music crescendos, mirrors appear opposite my eyes, and one of those hideously short but intuitive periods of question answer (what might be called confession to a soul less accustomed to blasphemy!) occurs like ringing light. Everything ricochets back and forth, gaining speed and shedding exclusivity. Nothing needs to be said or thought. What could any voice possibly add to the growing space required to defend every last decision, even the ones that only mattered to miscreants and troglodytes. Above the noise and behind the thoughts passes an idea that stands out from the general throb of the mass. Nobody can hear enough to glean the distinction. All the participants in my mind grew frustrated as one and chose tobacco. To serve the master required my practiced role as go between. The great outdoors is the only place to make a mess on the inside of someone’s lungs. We just don’t do it in here.
(later)
Joe Henry accidentally left on repeat while I daydream about coincidence. The last few images dissipated in the ninety plus degrees swirling around excitedly on the outside of the glass dividing the cool interior from the raucous heat. This is the weather that turns errors into tragedies. There is none of that laying around here, thanks be to christ and the eight armed fellow, just flavored sugar cola and some detritus that speaks as a witness to what has kept me immobile much of the year. Someone left some words hanging in the air a few days ago and now they fill up a corner of the ceiling, word balloons with a little bit of helium keeping them up in the air. Everything feels recent, crammed together without the necessity of order to pave some simplicity into the equation. Until just a few seconds ago, I was seriously considering carving some random letters into the wooden coffee table. Whether I had a reason or not was the only thing keeping me from looking for the chisel and carving a vowel right into the center of the wood.
My confusion and internal disarray at the bounty of choice beckons more laughter and my professional grim smile to revel in the fortuitous condensation of chance encounter. Like finding some song playing quietly in the background of your favorite hero’s moment of glory, I felt for a shovel to dig into more genuine moments of sound. I could most easily cognate the imago of myself when the right music played. With nobody here to speak over the brilliance, it was as good a time as any to let it sink in. Theres still no Sherpa here to guide either a choice or a journey. At the same time, I cant help but feel we are in no way on our own in attempting to locate the means and ends. That stands as a confident gesture on this dry day, with its bright sun and parched territory. Over and around, occasionally through, often times in combinations of methods used to temper the enthusiasm on singular focus, but always overcoming something. Admirable if you happen to be part of the solution. Obviously, if you aren’t, laziness could well be a supreme attribute. Who could have guessed? Meh…the odds weren’t THAT bad….around here. Ha!
Now that the piano has reached appropriate levels of volume and personification, it feels cool in here. Quickly tripping through a set-list of daily moments, spot checking the nature of each strand as it connects to the others, feeling around for the strength and flexibility so as to discourage the possibility of sudden catastrophic failure. The salacious mood alters parameters like reflections in a murky pool. By exchanging strings for keys, the energy level was shot with sugar and re-engineered by the addition of smoke and water soluble chemicals. The effect will come soon, for now is the liberation of the lost morning songs that only make sense under a heavy coat of paint to hide the sharpest edges. The community is saved in the image of the creator, the man or idea that fixates a sovereign, a lodestar that doesn’t lead the people into more of the same loose ends that first alerted us all to the possibility that nothing is is quite what it was theorized to be.
Our ultimate effect might be similarly unidentified. In the pseudo dark of a day hidden behind curtains to halt the unrelenting heat and energy beating down, there is rapid discussion between a boy and a shadow, the boy locked into whatever it is between argument and discussion. Here is just notation, sly smiles and the music that bled into the background. In the grip of a monster wearing a mask that taunts and jabs from way across the room, the investigation halts for a moment to condense the sensory information into a narrative. All of this has been beaten before, and will be beaten again. For a moment, the ends cease to matter, amongst the hits and insuflation that rapidly tore at my established normality. I’m trying to talk to a shadow, and here you sit, asking me to explain why. I couldn’t do you that favor, not even if I wanted to do. Maybe I don’t. What’s a fool to do with an unresponsive shadow and so many questions? I got nothing…maybe to explore the space between the two, and ask for more time to heal. Now walk, now run, now crawl. Now ask.
Filed under: Philosophy
I lost track of time in a haze of my own making. Technically, it would qualify as a feat of engineering, a most peculiar feat of sculpted conscience, the type of achievement wholly created as a pro forma argument applied ex post facto. Without the latin chicanery, squeeze the overall picture into a smaller space and cram the details into a brief paragraph describing the scene for all of those who look upon it after we’re all dead and new people live in our houses. If that day never comes, we’ll just open the whole thing up to guests off of the streets. It would be safe to say I haven’t felt like this in a long time. Maybe the curtains were parted just so? More recently; where is it that things like this occur? Events move at a pace similar to a violent crash and disorderly recreation of of a prefabricated scene. Even the cries for help seem off-putting and perhaps pre-recorded.
Everything just carries a scent, humping fatigue across an unknown territory. Recent travels became volatility templars, etched glass suggesting some long forgotten important event that occurred in the past. I’d laugh if it turned out that it was the recent past, as sure as I am that anything no longer connected to the present is fair game for interpretation as a resonance echo. The words fall apart, Im failing to describe the right sort of picture. I went in for the happy yellow and came out with a violent red. How the fuck does that happen more than once? There must be something funny about what I’m seeing; I can’t stop laughing. The pip squeak levee brigade managed one long standing feat, and amongst the sun and beer the only sticking point (aside from the pain. It’s righteous at this hour, thanks to an infusion of balms that soothe and caress’.) Lately, the reservoir is fuller than anticipated… is it in the realm of possibility that the morphology accompanies another overall change, a la a quiet moment in the past that kind of soured me on the whole “walking the line” sort of deal.
It must have been quite a feeling to deliver that bad guy speech in Scarface. I smile when the tension gets like that, mostly because my sense of humor edges into the serious when some kind of confrontation sours the air. Its like Henry III said…(warning…I might have the wrong Henry. I”m talking first Plantagenet. I like balls with my king. Interpret that however you think is most apt.) “use all your voices. When I bellow, bellow back.” (lion in winter)
So I bellow back. He may not be the deposed King of Nigeria’s bastard offspring, and there’s almost no money involved, but I admire the son of a bitch all of the same. It’s asinine to take that away from the moment, considering especially the various evidence that the advice might not be all that relevant to the moment. We are all playing a role in the great cosmic joke that is as fraught with frugal hypocrisy as with cheese whiz style thinking the expands to consume. In many instances and almost every conceivable circumstance, we perform to a key long ago introduced during some prehistoric group think combining elements of the telephone game with a variant strain of follow the leader. Organized into enormous the strangely decentralized groups, the principle of leadership gets sacrificed to Marshall McCluhan. What a dick.
So, having moved from small internalizations into the realm of cosmic theology, I can’t help but wonder what all of this is, and from whence to proceed. I’d jockey for a position, but nobody seems able to explain what it is that I’m supposed to be tracking and killing. My only true heroism funny enough to remember came at the moment when everyone wanted a cigar. We didn’t have any, so we all smoked a cigarette and ruminated on our failings. Membership dues are high for a group like that, and right now is no time to be making expenditures. Tomorrow ain’t looking any good either. Hysterical jester’s are no match for cynical fools, but as the hour lengthens into a more ballsy approximation, the match evens out. Getting past the hour is tough. At 3 a.m., everything is quiet except for the wailing sirens. Is that a reminder or a warning? More importantly, at what cost do we hazard a guess? I constantly worry that relativistic theory will eventually destroy the earth through a series of disquieting comparisons. There will be politicians to label it a victory, and ample demonstrators demanding we acknowledge it as the last defeat. The arguments will be severe. People will probably get violent. I’ll probably wait out the fight, because neither side seems right, then decide both parties are retarded for fighting over a meaningless aspect of philosophical differentiation. Stupid fuckers. Maybe…
To avoid ending on such a problematical point, maybe there is a moment in which to identify a new plan, or at a minimum, something tangible with which to measure progress. Relativity, much like dualism, seems a dead end…while that is as open to change as anything else is such multi-phase space, the dreams speak of something deeper. The haze is strong, and my tired eyes are blurry and full of that shit that grows overnight in the corners; ostensibly due to some strange evolutionary quirk as yet unexplained. Fucking odd part of the equation is the off balance intangibles, the deeper conclusions pulled out of the situation that vary by observer. These are the high times for the blind, and salad days for the deaf.
This computer is telling me it needs to restart in order to finish installing some program I didn’t know I needed. I gotta laugh, because my money was hoping to pause. Restarting seems like some strange re-vrginization process, and I don’t want any part of that. As it is, I can barely remember what it was I was talking about. Sleep should be good tonight. Where was all of this going? That’s right. Only time will tell. Is it bad that I’m humming Palmers “Woke Up Laughing” over a televised montage of disaster footage? Is it cruel to be ironic?
“You make yourself a fortune out in Hong Kong
You sit at home and wonder whether you were wrong
You take a small vacation just to keep sane
You find on your return your home has blown away
You meditate, you make haste
You run a risk, you come late,
You pay a bill, you lose face
You’re not fully unaware
Your star or your fate
If you fall do you break
You go to war, you make love
You sign out in a box”
(robert palmer “woke up laughing”)
Wow. That is enthusiastically bad. True junkie behavior. The things we could say if not for the things we have to say. Miracles are so totally tangible in this kind of world. That should say everything right there. It should, but it doesn’t. Still we must laugh. It’s easier for some than others. Ha.
