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Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
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Cons
- I feel like I'm cutting out alot of things from my life, such as people and recreational things that I love.
- I am still in school, which is occasionally validating but primarily something that I am simply very tired of.
- I smoke too much.
- I don't have the time to give my parents the love and support they deserve.
- I don't make quite enough money to do the things that I want to in my life.
- I am tired of stretching myself out between Boston and Andover
Pros
- I am very happy with my intellectual growth and my new found understanding of my self.
- My soccer skills have improved greatly since I actually played competitively.
- I am beginning to get back in shape with biking and frisbee.
- I am happy with my girlfriend, Kara, even though I don't have enough time to give her (so sort of a - as well as a +)
- I like my job again and have gotten my second raise, which is unprecedented.
- There is starting to be soccer on TV again.
- The friends I do have time to see are excelent and give me joy which is lacking in other places of my life.
- I am generally content enough to deal with my life.
Developments
- I have discovered the solution to the problem of reading Heidegger. Purely reading Heidegger will lead one to believe that they are absolutely crazy. This is because you can't simply read it, you have to experience it and make it a part of yourself. This is a new realization so I haven't developed it or "experienced" it much, but I am given heart that I'll be able to manage the task I've set out for myself.
- I love Nietzsche, even though reading him makes me crazy. When I can focus on the right parts I feel so much freer than almost any other point in my life. Everything else i invest time in feels insignificant in comparison.
- I am not an analytic person. This is not a problem, nor is it new, but I think I need to embrace more the fact that I have a tendency of looking at the bigger pictures. I think it is a source of strength to desire to give strength to the whole and I only lower myself by looking at small things.
- I have given up on politics. There are no answers in that realm of thought which do not entail that I compromise myself by disregarding every side of the disussion, so until I figure out a way not to do that, I will remain a political agnostic. I am also okay with this, at first my conscience aiched about it but now I am okay. I still have my morality and my thoughts and I can think a little about politics, but I can't be there right now.
- My conversations with strangers have been unfulfilling lately. Often a source of joy, they have recently been uninteresting altogether. The best I've gotten out of it is that "a girl like that will bury your nuts in the winter and give them shade in the summer". That was okay. One of the other guys who I had had a great time with, even given one of the stories I just posted, turns out to have been on drugs and is considerably less engaging when he is coming down.
C'est la view.
Ciao.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Ich Mochte in Berlin die neu Künst schauen. Berlin ist ein kultureller Mittelpunkt daher es ist auch ein Mittelpunkt für die Künste. Meisten Leute von Berlin haben nicht viel Geld aber wegen diese der Jüngen von Berlin sehr kreativ werden. Berlin ist nun ein gröβ Spieler am die Welt der Zeitgenössischen Kunst. Deutsche Künstlerinen bekannt weltweit für ihr Arbeitet in Skulptur, Anstrich, Fotographie, Filme, und Grafitti.
Also, ich möchte in Berlin am die Diskotheken tanzen. Die Diskotheken von Berlin ist nicht gleich die Diskotheken von der USA. Mein Freunde gehen zum die Diskotheken wann Sie Berlin gefahren und Sie sagen dir mich, “Du müsst die Diskothek in Berlin gehen wenn du wünschst Berlin erleben.” Der Musik is besser für tanzen und nicht ärgerlich wie in Amerika. Gleichlich das Erlebnis is besser, also die Mensche sind mehr freundlich als im die Diskotheken am der USA.
Endlich ich möchte in Berlin die East Side Gallery gehen wegen ist ein Sinnbild für der Ende am der Kalten Krieg. Also es gibt die viel schön Künst durch die Künsterinen von Osten und Westen Berlin. Mich für dies ist sehr interessieren weil ich denke der Ende am der Kalten Krieg ist ein schön Thema für Kunst. Ich würde sehr traurig bekommen wenn ich sehe der Wand aber ich würde glücklich fuhlen über ein neue Anfang für die Leute von Berlin und alles Deutschland.
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The Love (Loving Life) of Etienne Courtley
By Chris Craig-Comin
Preface to “The Love (Loving Life) of Etienne Courtley”
In “The Question Concerning Technology”, Heidegger uses a quote from Plato’s Symposium, which gives a general form by which all beings come into Being. According to Plato, “Every occasion for whatever passes over and goes forward into presencing from that which is not presencing is poiesis, is bringing forth.” (QT, 10) Heidegger thought that a thing can be brought forth to presence within itself (physis) , or it can be brought forth in another thing (en alloi). Out of these two conceptions of presencing, we can draw a semblance of the nature of the creative individual that is in Being.
By bringing forth out of non-Being, we practice an unconcealment. When we presence in the form of physis, when we bring forth what is within, we unconceal our self. We create our self. However, we do not merely create our self. We must also bring forth into other things, en alloi. In order to describe the act of bringing forth en alloi, Heidegger refers to the Greek term “techne” (QT, 13). Techne is the act of bringing things forth outside of oneself. It is the bringing forth of ideas and crafts. It is the bringing forth of the revelation of Being through the imagination of the human mind. Through techne, the creative individual presences himself to the rest of Being.
In this light, it is the role of the individual, artist, and poet to bring about this presencing of Being, by unconcealing components of reality for the rest of humanity to experience. We can see a definite affinity to this idea in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. In “The Idea of Order at Key West”, Stevens writes “And when she sang, the sea, whatever self it had, become the self that was her song, for she was the maker.” (37-40) In the footnote it is pointed out that the Greek word for poet, poietes, also means maker. Thus, the poet is to be considered the maker of what is, by enframing that which is and bringing it forth into presence. The poet takes that which it experiences and makes it a part of itself and, in doing so, it makes what it experiences real.
This sort of presencing through poetry requires an openness to the occurrences around oneself which allows for one not to be a mere receptor to the presencing of being, but an active creator within the realm of Being. One which is capable of bringing forth in the forms of phsysis and techne. This sort of openness can be seen in the writings of many of the authors we have read this semester. In “Kafka and His Precursors”, Borges exhibits this sort of openness when explaining that it was not the precursors of Kafka which determined his identity, but Kafka himself, who chose his own influences. Similar openness can be found in the stories of Marquez, Wolfe, Tolstoy, and Hemmingway. Each one of these writers exhibited a clear sense of their openness to the reality around them which provided a firm grounding for their own individual creation of reality, through their writing.
It is my hope that a similar sense of openness to reality can be seen in the following story. The main character, Etienne Courtley, is one who is constantly aware of himself and his surroundings and finds in both the inspiration for his attempts to presence his own self-identity within the flux of existence and the weight of gravity. However, he might not be portrayed completely enough because, well, I need practice with fiction.
“Domination of Black”(lines 33-36), by Wallace Stevens-
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks.
I felt afraid—
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.
The Love (Loving Life) of Etienne Courtley
Etienne Courtley was a deeply superstitious person. Of course, all people are so, it is simply de classe for one in modern society to admit that their beliefs might be of such a nature. The more externally centered, spiritual faction of society would have you to believe that their beliefs transcend from upon high, making them much more concrete and truthful than any debase notion of significant chance. While the equally externally centered, temporal faction of society persists that their beliefs and practices are based on the sound evidence provided by strict analysis of the manifold. Their beliefs could never be superstitious since such rigorous consideration leaves no room for the unquantifiable and indefensible notions of fortune and fate, which managed to have slipped out of the irrational mind during its fall from spirit to material. Etienne Courtley however, was a deeply superstitious person.
Some of his superstitions were based on the shared folk superstition which had casually accrued and been equally casually accepted by society, at large. An opened umbrella, indoors, was more than enough to make his spine shiver and occasionally brought about a rare show of open reproach on his part, while he was likely not to put forth the slightest verbal objection against the perpetrators of far more inexcusable offenses. Not walking underneath latter’s is merely a matter of common sense. However, Etienne had also accumulated an assortment of superstitious practices which were far less common, if they were shared by any other individuals at all.
At one point a friend of questionable rationality but remarkable instinctual understanding had told him that the human mind naturally works in cyclical schema’s. Ever since he taken the utmost care to ensure that he did not come and go to a place by the same route. At times this meant taking the most absurd last minute detours, merely to prevent the drastic repercussions which would surely result from such a deviation from his minds natural activity. While riding his bicycle, he refused to wear a helmet, since that sort of admission of his own mortality was a most certain invitation for the inner-bureaucratic mechanism of fate to thrust his fragile material into a most unpleasant and prolonged period of intensive care, ending inevitably in his return to the great spirit which had thwarted his attempt at life.
In general, Etienne’s life could be considered largely neurotic. However, this was no matter of discontent for him. In fact, Etienne truly would not have had it that his mind work in any other way. While being subject to the spastic throws of sporadic internal assertions meant that he was often very unreliable (unless one were relying on being completely in the dark as to whether or not there expectations would be met in accordance with any semblance of their original intent), it also meant that Etienne could, without a bit of self-contradiction say that he had never lived a single day in exactly the same way as the one before it. Therefore, he took offence (in much the same vain as the umbrella incident) when even the mildest of acquaintances would chance to utter the statement “same shit different day.”
Understandably, this sort of behavior rubbed certain structured individuals the wrong way, but Etienne’s intentions were of the best-nature and this was generally understood by even the strictest adherents to moral codes that do not permit even the slightest bit of a sense of humor. Therefore, Etienne was allowed the freedom to maintain a certain individualism, which is not permitted to the majority of people in our society. Or at least, that was what he thought. It is entirely possible, either that everyone is granted this freedom and it is only a select few that take advantage it, that everyone indeed acts in just the same way as Etienne, or that no one is granted such freedom and that Etienne held his beliefs in a delusional state of naiveté. Regardless of which of these possibilities might be the case, Etienne remained an individual; a self-aware individual and an individual who constantly questioned his own nature and placement within the world.
Etienne treated his self as a phenomenon in it of itself. An object which might be observed and examined. If his self were acting in a way which his self did not approve of, then this way of acting could be observed, analyzed, and manipulated so as to be better aligned with his general conception of how is self should act. However, despite this continual self-analysis, Etienne was never quite able to grasp a complete understanding of his self. He was constantly plagued by the sense that there was a direction and a form of his self that remained hidden from observation. He was quite sure that if he could unlock the secret to discovering this form then everything in life would open up to him and that he would become privy to all of the great secrets of the unknown. As soon as he attained the ability to observe his complete self then the great depths of existence would become understandable in just the same manner. But something always remained missing and he would be forced to continue searching for the elusive key of life.
On a particularly rain soaked day in April, Etienne stepped out underneath a street-side awning, rolled and lit a cigarette. (Bengali Tiger Hunter Story) However, no longer than a second after he had swallowed the first harsh drag of unfiltered mortality, did a very small piece of puddle succumb to the overwhelming weight of gravity and plunge through the air, meeting its long awaited demise in the direct confrontation with Etienne’s all too young cigarette. Although the arch-sentimentalist might softly croon the loss of such a maligned, unfortunate bit of drip, anyone who truly understood the internal dynamic of the drips drop of hydrogen and oxygen (both descending from the great extinguisher itself, the Ocean, whose depths we know nothing of) would know in their heart of hearts that that piece of puddle took the greatest of joys in the fulfillment of the extinguishing cycle.
At first Etienne was incensed by the injustice which had been done by this ill-willed piece of pond. He lifted his head to the sky, so as to curse it for its infidelities, but as soon as he raised his glance, the sight and sound of it all pushed any such angst and desire from his mind. The falling pieces of the seas, which had just a second ago put out his false fire, now revealed to him the full breadth of their nature and beauty. Refracting the filtered light of a clouded sun into harpsichord splinters of shining beauty, the alpha curves and omega points crashed through him, off of the fragile awning, and all around him, drenching all in the cleansing rain which has become a myth in the modern world. Far from melting under it’s acidic force, the falling sea and sky lifted Etienne up, off of the dirty street corner and onto the plain where man, land, sky, and water are one and the same.
Standing by the ocean, Etienne became full of the sense of its bigness and his own bigness for being able to take it all in. For being big enough to cope with the idea of standing next to its deepest darkest depths without his knees buckling under the gravity of its magnitude. Out of this strength sprung the inspiration for Etienne’s intrepid journey into the depths of his self and the reclamation of the knowledge which is held when we are as infinite as the crashing surf and the blackness of the stars and the middle of the Earth. Out of this strength came the realization that Etienne must travel beyond his self in order to discover the truth about his self.
Riding the wave of inspiration which was drawn from the crashing of sky and earth, Etienne found himself boarding Northwest Flight 32879732, overnight from Boston to Rome. He found seat 18G and securely buckled himself in, far before being instructed how to do so by an artificial looking flight attendant in a small screen on the back of seat 17G. Etienne had always felt most comfortable when strapped into moving objects.
For the most part, the flight was a smooth one. Etienne made light conversation with a few of the people around him before settling down to being excited and anxious. He tried to read but was unable to concentrate. Instead he wrote several poems and the beginning of an essay in which he was determined not to use any personal pronouns except as nouns. After working on the essay for a little while he spent the rest of the flight trying to look over his neighbors head and out the window at the great mass of blue that refused to show any sign of movement whatsoever. A solid mass of morphing stillness. Mixed with cloud cover, the mass become a maze of possibilities and permutations and Etienne did not even notice the passing of time or even consider exactly how far he had come before a quirk in the internal make up of the pilot of Northwest Flight 32879732 was brought to light which would thrust Etienne further into the mass of blue by drawing his attention back to his immediate surroundings and the realm beyond his self.
The pilot of Northwest Flight 32879732 was most certainly a lover of all things land. Entranced by the notion that the great Ocean had committed the most audacious of sins by daring to wash away any part of his beloved Terra Firma, the pilot rounded the far Western tip of Europe, where the Ionic and Mediterranean meet the pernicious North Atlantic and promptly entered into a nose dive. The pilot had carefully, unconsciously calculated the trajectory which would rain upon the great Ocean the optimal amount of pain and suffering: the great revenge of all those who love land and hate seeing it washed away.
As the plane careened out of the sky, Etienne’s thoughts first went through the reassurances which all minds prepare for individuals who must have a rational explanation for what it is that is happening to them and how it is not as much of a problem as it seems. It’s just turbulence, don’t worry the pilot will right this all. We’re just riding the edge of a jet stream. Everything is okay. But soon these sort of explanations lost their weight as the angle of descent increased in simultaneous correspondence with the speed and the lack of oxygen flow to Etienne’s brain. At this point, his thoughts turned to love ones. Who will remember me? Who will be at my funeral? Will anyone even notice that I’m gone? But eventually even these questions faded as he looked out the window and saw how startlingly close they had become to the great Ocean. For an eternity and then a split second, Etienne watched the oncoming field of deep dark blue and then the plane hit.
This event did not make as much of an impact on him as he had expected it to. It was great of course, but it was without the drama that one had become accustomed to, having been steeped in thousands of years of fantastic imaginative fiction in which every event must fulfill the entire capacity of the human psyche’s intake of sensation. As a result of realities anti-climax, Etienne was able to collect his thoughts without too much difficulty. For a moment he started to look around the cabin of the plain, which was completely torn apart. In general, what he perceived was helplessness on a fairly large scale. But before he could dwell on the idea of helplessness for too long, the plane shifted which caused a subsequent shift in his mind.
Immediately he began to enact a plan for how he was going to bring the parishioners of Northwest Flight 32879732 out of the airplane before they might meet their fate at the unforgiving hands of Neptune. He told himself that he would have to pull everyone out of the plane, onto a hand fashioned raft, and back to firm land. Another shift in the plain’s position told him that he must hurry if he were really going to pull this off. With a course of action fully visualized, he briefly fumbled but eventually managed to unfasten his seatbelt, then reached through resistant liquid for the life preserver. With another shift in the planes position, his mind and body began working double time. In the thrill of this glorious effort, he felt what was at first a glimmer, but then quickly become a burst, of understanding. And then in one glorious moment it all become clear.
Amidst the mass of inseparable, confused moans of fear and desperation emitted from the mouths of the parishioners of Northwest Flight 32879732 who had retained consciousness, despite the trauma of the catastrophe, one simple voice could be heard, without equivocation. As a single plane of light came through the cabin from the pilot window, emulsifying the travesty, to be viewed in some unknown realm of posterity. One final phrase could be discerned over the wailing of the sorrowful passengers and its distinction was the last note the parishioners of Northwest Flight 32879732 were able to hear before the plane fully submerged and the red-tinted water came up to wash away the last remnants of airborne sound.
“AT LAST IT IS MY TIME TO SHINE!”
Appendix A:
The poems written by Etienne Courtley on Northwest Flight 32879732:
Some Solace For a Sorrowful Subjectivist
Of all the untruths, you must pick a truth
Choose wisely for it is your reality
Change your reality when your soul moves
Fear not the path of wandering
α Ω
The Beginning End
Personification of color. Physicality of Human thoughts. Juxtaposition of the fight and the conclusion unending. Simultaneously forming the whole of the unformed, non-personal, physical reality . Resisting Death with life.
The Doubting Mind
That which does not rest upon infidelity laden laurels is the doubting mind.
The Russian
I met a Russian on Newbury Street.
I didn't feel like talking to anyone.
I didn't ask for him to sit down on the concrete slab next to me.
He was going to a funeral on monday.
He was going to bury his father on monday.
His father knew that he was going to die.
So he sent for his son and asked him to go to the bathroom of their club and lift up
a broken tile next to the toilet and take the gun which he had used to kill when necessary.
The next day his father died while trying to take a shit.
So you see, the whole story revolves around the toilet.
He is going to bury the gun with his father.
He has no use for such things anymore.
He once fought the Taliban in Afghanistan in the name of the glorious Soviet Union.
He has no use for such things anymore.
I had nothing to say at all.
The Cardinal
The last words the cardinal uttered were an expression of longing for the days in which
he flitted about from tree to tree in the forest of his adolescence. He lamented over
whether or not he had wasted his time waiting for the winter to come and his red coat to
fail him. Like a beacon of light cast across calm waters, he stood out brazenly among the
naked forest in which he had lived and loved and gasped his last breath of regret and
became a splotch of red on an otherwise ivory winter floor.
Liars and the Soothsayer
I met a man at the library.
He told me that I should be a politician.
He told me I have the right smile.
I hope he is a liar.
________________________________________________________________________
Appendix B:
The incomplete essay written by Etienne Courtley on Northwest Flight 32879732:
Among the vast complexities and permutations of the all; a single point becomes an I. Among the infinite I’s that have existed, exist, and will inevitably exist, this one I charts it course of realization, revelation, and determination. It realize an intricate and unending web of possibilities. An entire tapestry of existences, flowing haphazard and forcefully without intention or direction.
While many I’s content themselves with the pastime of riding the tide caused by the ripples in this tapestry, this I decides to become a thread of its own. A force within its self. This I observes the character of the threads which are flowing around it and decides which character it would assume. It is an actualized I. An I that has a self as its motor rather than the current of the all.
This I might propel itself counter to the tide in which it writhes but it must do so if it is to be is own I instead of the ever- threatening They of the tide riding I’s. though along with them, The I that is a self must pass on their offer and resist their demands, for an I is a terrible thing to lose/ After all, it is the I’s that have caused the ripples in the tapestry; not the They. It is the I’s that carry the world on their shoulders.
The tapestry must continually ripple if it is not to become dusty and moldy. The unmoving tapestry becomes both-bat to be devoured. Subject to external carnivores and internal cannibals, the stagnant tapestry is bound to disintegrate. The tapestry depends on the I’s and it gives them much fuel if they can only find it. This fuel is found in the space between the threads. It is the nourishment that the I needs for life, sustenance of the great powerful self, but it is not found when the I looks only at single threads. This is akin to suckling on barren teats. The I must find in the tapestry a map to its own nourishment and be unable to be deterred in its seeking.
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Half-Tuesday, Half-Wednesday
Jeffrey Adams left Boston at 1:45 am on a Tuesday night which was quickly turning into Wednesday morning. He was in a state of limitedly controlled delirium as a result of the evenings activities. Driving north towards New Hampshire, he managed to acutely maintain the designated speed limit. This was not a night in which he hoped to tell a police officer his life story, only to discover that his life and the officers did not come into complete alignment.
Flipping the dial on the radio from left to right he eventually found a station which could suitably carry him home. A snide sounding DJ’s unmitigated review of an unknown bands sophomore album intermingled with driving beats and jangling back noise until he pulled off the highway, onto the final stretch before his home.
The stoplight at the T intersection which marked the one dimensional crossroad of Jeffrey Adams’ route home held green as he and a large white 16 wheeler made their way through. The jangling ride which Jeffrey had reluctantly made was near its completion.
However, a change in the winds managed to penetrate the steel, plastic exterior of his automobile and Jeffrey felt himself pulled at a tremendous rate by the wake of the truck who had been his companion at the crossroad.
The truck began to plummet down the street, which began to take on the most daemonic of features. Turns which had once meandered their way through the dimly lit industrial complex had malevolently turned into the most treacherous hair pins. The trees which lined the road assumed a conscious state of being and half reached out to grab the two vehicles and half tried their hardest to push them on at an every faster pace.
No longer in control, it became clear to Jeffrey that his destiny was no longer in his hands but had become irretrievably intertwined in the bedeviled intentions of the driver of the truck which had now gone from unmarked white to a glaring shade of red.
Onward and onward they went, racing the limbs of the trees and the limits of time. No matter how fast they traveled their wheels held the ground no matter how sharp the turn. Both his car and the top-heavy truck began to heave back and forth, to the left and the right, but were nevertheless held fast to the ground.
The race went on for what could have been years when the truck and Jeffrey’s car came around what was by far the most maddeningly perilous turn yet. Jeffrey was sure that this would be the end and they would both be peeled off into the trees which had been reaching out and finally this hell-ride would be over. But despite their ferocious speed they both remained on the road.
Immediately following the turn the road straitened out but their speed did not decrease in the slightest. In fact, they only managed to go faster. The small grey car following the bright red truck, hurtling down the road which now resembled Jeffrey’s neighborhood. Faster and faster they came, so fast that every thing which had been so menacing turned into a serendipitous blur. The furious kettle of flames which were flashing red and black all around them turned to the brightest of whites.
Jeffrey was sure that he had died, but then, as fast as the entire death race had started the truck traveled over a short rise that dropped into a dip and promptly lost its grip on the road, flying through the air like a fish out of the water and finally coming to an earth-shaking crash on the cold unforgiving asphalt.
No sooner than this had happened did Jeffrey’s car come to a stop. The world around him had turned back to the one with which he was familiar, but he was not given the opportunity to realize that he was once again on solid ground. Without knowing what was happening, Jeffrey was filled with the energy for actions which he had no idea were even possible. At a speed which was almost as great as the one which the whole ride had taken place at, he jumped out of the car, ran across the street, and up to the window of the decimated truck.
The sight which came to his eyes was not that of a grizzled man with a mesh hat, flannel shirt, and jeans, but rather the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A crest of auburn brown hair rounded out around her shoulders and she was wearing a white fishnet dress which was woven with the most splendidly bright rubies that anyone on this earth has ever seen. Although the scene around the truck was one of mayhem and destruction, the image of bejeweled woman and her eyes which coolly looked back at him without blinking filled him with such a calm that he felt as if he would never have another care in the world.
Knowing immediately what to do, Jeffrey walked around to the other side of the cab, opened the door and climbed onto the passenger seat. He looked at the woman who had brought him here for a brief moment, looked around at the surrounding devastation, then pulled her out of the driver seat and to the bed at the back of the cab where the two of them laid down and feel into a restful sleep.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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My under cover intelligence gathering has told me that this city seems to be going through a generally unsocial period. This is a phase which Boston periodically goes through and it is probably a result of the cold of winter(Did anyone know that the last two weeks of January and the first two of February was the coldest thirty day period in recorded Massachusetts history, but anyways...), but if anyone is feeling the thaw out and wants to hang out, even if just to inform me that Boston was not unsocial and that it was just me, I would most likely love it since, well, I love most everyone and have just become to awkward to try to get in touch with people. It seems like the longer I put it off, the harder it becomes. So... I'm not a big fan of this social quicksand, so I'd love to be thrown a rope at some point. Blah, but everything's great in my life. School is going on far far far too long but I still kind of love it. I went to Rome over spring break. It was amazing. In general, I love life, but I want to share that shit with people so yeah.
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, October 11th, 2006
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I am happy with my life in the same way that a snail must be. I haven't had an interesting or inspiring thought or experience in well over two months. For two weeks I was excited about a peace march through Roxbury and Dorchester, but that planning has fallen through. I am somewhat in love with a few things and they are...
Fall... Sweatshirts (not sweaters, although, HEATHER, if you read this, I would like my grey hoodie back)... Kara... Deutsche... Ernest Hemmingway... and Avacadoes...
I went to Maine this past weekend and had pretty much the time of my life. We rode our bikes around an island at night and during the day, made rock sculptures on the beach with the waves crashing around us, tromped through the woods to listen to accordions, guitars, drums, and voices, scrambled to the top of abandoned World War II bunkers, and made delicious meals with sweet potatoes and fried banana's.
I live at home with my parents. I have a relatively normal sleeping schedule, although I can feel my life slipping back into crazy mode in a way, which vaguely resembles quicksand. I still work at Chansky's. I do not see enough people that I want to, but it seems very difficult to balance work, schoolwork, commuting, and trekking out to see people. I want everyone to be all in one place, but I think when that happens I never seem to be there. I miss being called regularly to hang out. It's not all that bad this way, but sometimes it's nice to feel invited. Then again, I'm not really sure what there is to be invited to. But, as always, life is a two way street, so I'll probably just call some people.
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I recently read on a bumper sticker the truism:
"'The only way to live above the law is to be honest.' -Bob Dylan"
With that said, I honestly intend to write a handbook for living above the law, honestly. All that is necessary to do so is to optimalize the way you live your life and not get fucked in the process.
I drove like I never have tonight. Honestly, assuredly, every shift on cue and each turn on point. I knew my direction and I followed it. Every beat picked up the one before it and carried me further, faster. The bends in the road only built up my speed untill I reached the driveway of my intent, to the sight of a dark window and the call of the bullfrogs, matching my notes, beat by melancholy beat. It's no way to live your life, passing from built up moment to built up moment, but at some point we all have to go for the gusto at one point in our lives. Even if we fall flat on our face, we still have to try again.
If anyone is still reading, I am doing well. I'm more or less happy with the things that I am pursuing. I have accepted that for a little while I have cut off my ability to optimalize my exploration of the world and myself, but there is certainly an open book in front of me with alot of pages devoid of text. Both of my homelifes are tolerable to good, which is far more than I can say about other times in my life, so that's cool. I think I would like to see more people but I'm not sure. It's possible that limiting who I see is fine, but I can never stay too closed off for long.
I want to take Kung-Fu lessons with Butch at Jamaica Pond. I want more friends who play Futbol. I am going to be a real vegan again. Or at least a real freegan. I'd like to play more chess and I would like to write more letters. SOS.
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Comments: Read 8 or Add Your Own.
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I have rediscovered a love for things. It's a tenuous process and my grip on it all is precariously weak, but it is all resurging. I've been spinning out inane yarns about new-found energies and latent well-springs of newness, but it's all been pretty dispassionate up untill this point. I have discovered new words, transcendental, from the last turn of the century, which give me hope for this particular turn of the century. It probably won't be for 15 years from now, but we will realize that everything in the world is actually changing and not in the way that it was changing ten years ago, but in a wholy new way. An insurgency of voices is going to be unleashed and it doesn't matter at all whether I want it to happen or whether or not I have anything to add to it, it's just going to be there. A few great people and a whole lot of bridled energy are going to vastly shape a new epoch of history, temporally disconnected and historically unbiased, based purely on the impetus' which burgeoning minds will be creating for themselves. I guess I don't really have a choice in the matter, but neither do you, we'll all be there as living souls or rotting corpses.
Personally, I have to make myself a personage. I am plagiarizing the term, but from a source which has touched me more than any other since, well, since a long time ago. I have all the swirling molecules of a personage building somewhere, but the definite form and content that they are to take are so unknown that I can only feel comfort in the knowledge that I wll eventually form a swift hammer of a personage, destroying and creating everywhere I go and feeling the constant pangs of spirit which unnavoidably light up my existence. Arrogance and egotism are not things to run away from and neither are pain and misfortune. When I walk into a room and turn on a light, plunging into the lightness, I will see all of the shining faces: the mistrusting beautiful poor, self-loving, generous wealth, free-thinking, slow moving freedom, and high-minded, unhappy, intellect, all walking in stride, antithesis of the negative space that makes up the area around them. A definite something that I can build on to continue my thrust away from the nothingness that engulfs and enrages exhaustedely sedate, dreamless nights. Waking the next morning to discover the empty feeling that I dreamt the night before, but all that is left now is the ensuing task of getting out into the day before it passes into night, having wasted the positive space of illumination, falling to retreat from the innevitable hardships of the world outside, without technicolor, day-glow, night crushing imagery, meant to imitate life and art to make life more manageable but ultimately less meaningfull. Somewhere in all of this is the personage that I will become and I don't feel the need to worry about anything but that for the moment. All I can hope for is for someone to stand on my shoulders as soon as I've stood as tall as I can. Then and only then, having seen the feet of the greatest heights my binocular foresight can reach, will I be able to rest on my laurels and rest for a few minutes, ending the fight against exhaustion and timidity. Accepting old age on a porch, with a few teeth, less friends, and a view down at the pedestrians passing by.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, April 12th, 2006
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A feel like a dehydrated sponge, thrust into the water of life, soaking it all up. When I'm at full size, watch out world....
I am jealous of passover. I do enjoy going home for Easter. It is nice to see family and eat nice food, but it seems like a very different experience, with much less meaning. My hippie church used to have a seder (well I guess they still do, but I haven't gone in years) but it always felt pretty forced. I guess multiculturism tends to be pretty forced. I'm starting to think that people just need to be what they are. It's nice to be understanding of diverse traditions, but the line between that and appropriation is a tightrope.
I'm trying to find my place in the world again. I can feel myself emerging from the shell I've been in for a few months, but the world that I'm coming into is not entirely familiar to me. I guess I just need to go forth and see what it all brings me. I need to put myself on the line with all of my might; suck out the marrow, etc... My shoulders have been sore. I'm secretly very tense and my back consists entirely of knots. I might try yoga. My bike needs work. It might need a complete overhaul. I have alot of work to do and all of my roommates just came home, making it very difficult to concentrate.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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I have silly slipped across this evening.
I have discovered that I have a soul.
I have discovered that therefore, you do too.
I have some doubt in my mind.
I have watched the light creep through the window.
I have not seen the sun rise in an awfully long time.
I have one and only one material attachment.
I have many material accoutrements.
I have a desire to have less of them.
I am not the sum of my experience.
I am one in a vast number of influences upon my own life.
I am in love with the sun.
I am interested in loving more things.
I am not afraid of many things in the world.
I am afraid of many things in my head.
I am not afraid of spiders.
I am afraid of glazed donuts.
I am only in possession of irrational fears.
I believe that there is a truth in the world.
I believe that sleep is necessary.
I believe that I wish it were not so.
I believe that we are what we make ourselves.
I believe that the world is what we make of it.
I believe that people should be positive.
I believe that there is a point to life.
I believe that irrationality is the only thing keeping people from going insane.
I believe that many people are insane.
I believe that the world is insane.
I hope that I will be remembered when I die.
I hope that I have something new to offer for the world that is insane.
I hope that I will live long and be irrationally happy to the very end.
I hope that my presence in the world does not over stay its welcome.
I hope that people do not overstay their welcome in the world (though they probably already have).
I hope that I can in some way make someone happy.
I hope that everything that I am doing is not in vain.
I hope that my passionate disavowal of regret will carry through into old age.
I hope that I will be remembered when I day.
I hope that I will not forget the deaths of others.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Pigeon-holes are not very comfortable places to be.
When you need to stretch your limbs.
This message comes to you by air.
Precariously tied to flying ankles.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, February 28th, 2006
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It seems that I only update on this thing at pivotal periods in my life. I suppose time will tell if this is a pivotal period in my life, but it feels that way at this point. Tangient: Livejournal just auto-saved my post, if that had happened the whole time then you all would have read alot more of my shit. Back on track, just like ten yard fight, so what if its in my eyes, so what if its in my eyes.
Anyways, the more things change the more they stay the same. I'm feeling a reoccuring theme in my life which is that as soon as I open myself up to things it all just shoves itself right back in my face, but I think that I can gauge my maturity on the fact that in the past, when faced with a dissapointing experience like this I would have just shut up, stayed in my room for two months, and whined for another six, I am now feeling resolved to only make myself more open and make it more and more possible to experience life in the way that I did for a few brief moments.
Intellectual pursuit, and analytic questioning are all well and good in an academic setting, but I really need to keep that shit clean and dry of my personal life. Alot of people think that I'm this cool open guy, maybe less than was the case a few years ago and maybe everyone knows this now, but I really am one of the more closed people that there is. Tangient: I keep feeling vibrations and hoping that it's my phone, which is pretty annoying, both in the fact that I can react to a phone that way and that I wish it was ringing. Back on track, actually, there's no more track. I guess I just need to let people into my life a little bit more. You can only run away from things so much before you just run out of steam.
I'm very predictable, I always resort to the same things that make me feel comfortable. Maybe that's one of those things that I do that I assume isn't something everyone does but but actually is, in fact, I'm sure that everyone resorts to the past for comfort when the present is upsetting and the future is terrifying, so, I guess it's okay. Yeah, it's okay.
It's come to my attention that there are some odd coincidences between my current situation and the situation of a friend of mine who I've always noticed some odd similarities with. I've felt some odd friction with said person as a result of a way I acted, which was not actually a big deal in even the least bit, but in my head has been turned into this monstrously constructed affront on all sensibility. Anyways, I hope that he's able to deal with the curveballs that life throws him, and that he takes heart in the fact that life is beautiful. In fact, it's silly to confine a statement, which I feel to be so consequential to life in general, to just one person. I hope that everyone that reads this, steps out of their life for just a minute and realizes how beautiful life is. In the highest of squalor, during the pinacle of sadness, life is entirely beautiful. Take heart in that, please.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, January 26th, 2006
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The religious are throwing there last stones in an attempt to hold tight to their last grips on humanity. The ancient rights of God are being thrown out but the last to stay are the ones fighting the hardest. It may as well be the change in the weather, as much as any change in human condition which has conducted the human course in the direction that it has come.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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The direct connection between the works of the past and the works of the present necessarily dictates the work of the past, present, and future equally as each person in the past, had a predecessor on whose terms were determined the basis of the present persons judgments of the world were influenced. Thus there is a constant interplay between the past, present, and future which causes a sort of timeless state in which human judgments constantly rotate between various interests which perpetually affect each other. The result of this humanistic system of revolutions, transcending the time space continuum, is the progress of human nature.
Note that the highlighted portion of the circle contintually faces in the same direction, even though it is rotating centrifugally around an access. It is this limit which is placed upon our experience that allows for us to perceive that we are progressing in a fixed direction. However, in actuality, we are just going around in circles, repeating the same mistakes which have always been made.
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Sunday, January 8th, 2006
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Stand up with me, all! Come break bread and be merry. Dont worry about alcoholism worry about how you are going to spend your last day alive. As we all know, the world is going to end any minute now, but before it does, let's all make the most of it and come out and be the friends that we all know we are to each other. Make the most love that you can, on the floor, couch, standing up. we will all be together and we will all make the most glorious love imaginable. The glory of God's light shining down on us and reminding everyone that we were once beautiful, are beautiful, and will forever be.... beautiful. Bask in this light with all of us. Come one, come all, at the drop of hat, bring all of the love you can bear and drink all the beer you can stand (and if you can't stand up, you can always sit down). We're all missing something and odds are that something is someone else and we'll all be there.
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Comments: Read 6 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, December 1st, 2005
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The world seems to have stopped turning while no one was looking.
Bored? Hell yes, I'm very bored.
Back and forth, back and forth.
Nothing has happened in months! Probably since... Shit, I can't even remember the last time something interesting happened in this city. But, the grumblings are there, and that gives me some hope for it all. People might not be doing anything but they seem to be noticing that nothing is happening. Man, let's fuck some shit up. Tear it right the fuck up. Go write some wOrds on a wAll or something. It might not be my thing, but it sure was more interesting when it was some peoples things. Words, Art, Music, it's all so fucking stale. All I smell all day is stale bread and a little bit of mold.
I haven't been to a show since August, I would certainly like to do that too. My bones are creaky and my muscles are sore. I need a good stretch.
I guess I'm just adding my voice to the choir.
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, November 14th, 2005
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This weekend I was reminded that death exists. But there is so much life!
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, November 9th, 2005
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I wonder if people will analyze the online journals of people as evidence of their personal genius. In the past people wrote letters, we all know that, and now people analyze those letters for insite into who they were and what they were thinking about. I shudder to think that my earlier livejournal posts will be documentation of who I am, but I suppose they will provide some useful information. If nothing else, they will (hopefully)show that I developed my ideas and my vocabulary. But, in general, it seems pretty unfortunate that this is the evidence of our lives. I guess there's no way around it, but it seems like online communication is so much less valuable than the old-fashioned pen and paper variety. We don't REALLY think about what we write with these keyboards, there is so little realness in all of it. When you put down words on paper, you know that as long as that paper exists, that that idea will exist with it. If the technological infrastructure was destroyed, any words put down on this computer will become just another memory of the people who have taken it in at one point, vanquished to the realm of intangible ideas and eventually, forgotteness. Unless one of our ideas is so great that it will live on in the human soul without the necessity of documenation, then they will be forgotten. We are only mortal when we are not remembered. Everyone is necessarilly immortal while they are alive because they surely know that they exist at least in some sense. We are immortal after we die as long as our family and friends have a memory of us. But our mortality is realized when the people who remember us are no longer living. When our ideas are no longer in the world, then neither are we. Eventually, all humans will die out and then the true mortality of humans will be realized, but untill then, only the immortal ideas will survive. Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, DeVinci, Milton, Galileo, Darwin, Marx, Kant, Lincoln, Monet, Freud, Jung, Dali, Picasso, Ghandi, Warhol, King Jr, Kennedy, and the people of our lifetimes whose ideas are destined to outlive us, have all achieved an immortal place in the history and present of humanity. Maybe livejournal fits into that somewhere too.
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Comments: Read 18 or Add Your Own.
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For a while I was fighting a losing battle. There were maybe four days last week where my head was just beating me into submission, but I seem to have come through it alright. The problem remains though, that my extended isolation has left me without the social skills which I once held to be such a valuable part of myself. I can pull off passing, menial, and superficial contact to some degree, but any attempt at something meaningful has generally sent me falling onto my face. I find myself walking away from every would be interesting or meaningful conversation hitting myself on the forehead for my lack of adeptness and general failure to be cool. I used to be cool. I could pretty much pull off anything in my life. Sure there were deficiency here and there, but I could usually handle myself. I will be able to handle myself again, I'm sure of it. It's just a matter of reaching out and being confident in who I am. That has become difficult over the past few months. Turning 21 has been a shock to my system which I have not been able to recover from. On my 21st birthday I actually felt older. Birthdays have never actually meant anything for me in the past. They never signified the passing of time or the maturation of my self. They were just a day that I got all my friends together and celebrated life. This year, I felt older. My past role as the care-free, exuberant youth with good social skills and the ability to fix his mistakes or at least make them seem inconsequential was over. So now where do I stand? Well, this state of the union address leaves me with a few things I suppose. I know that I have needs that are not being met. I know that I have to accept that I'm getting older. I don't think that's something that is really supposed to bother someone at my age, but I guess I was born with the inherent predisposition towards a mid-life crisis at any age. I just wrote chrisis. That's pretty fucking apt. But really, things aren't as bad as they may seem. I feel like I am regaining the strength I once had in dealing with the events of the world without completely introverting them. Without allowing the whole world to be swallowed up by my mind in an attempt to explain it all. I do not have to understand the way everything works. I don't even really have to understand how I work. There are many things which just are the way they are and I can accept that and try to reinsert my self into the normal world of human beings. I'm tired of being a coward, so I'll stop. Maybe someone will help along the way. My parents help, but you have to push away from that. You can't live your life with the security blanket of parental love as your umbrella from the troubles of the world. I need to proceed for the most part without their help. I know this now. I feel stronger now. Going back and reading what I just wrote made me feel stronger. Whatever I do, will be good and it will be okay. Now I just need to figure out how to begin.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 10th, 2005
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chriscraigcomin's journal