Food is a reward. It is a fact. And a holdover from days, years, decades of "discipline" (call it what you will, I've come to understand and know it by it's other name: abuse). I have managed to unwire many things hard coded into me and I am happy for that. It is one of the things that has been very difficult to dismantle. "You can eat when the work is done". The entire idea of getting caught eating. Getting caught eating first. I've been deconstructing why exactly it is I feel so uncomfortable eating around other people and I do know that has something to do with it.
Getting punished for eating or resting before the assignment is done. Even alone it is still enforced consciously to avoid the unconscious recoil. Even before cutting weight for the wrestling team and working to the point of exhaustion because getting caught in the house brought severe consequences for quite some time to the point where, and I will grant him this, my father would see me working and tell me it was okay to stop and I would insist on continuing because his word was not too be trusted. It plays back into the whole he says one thing and waits and watches and waits and then springs the trap the next day or two weeks off or two months off. Sycophant in a way. An issue of control.
How he used to strap a governor on my face. What the hell was he afraid of? We could've been friends. Left and right barrels with one trigger. Ah well. The point is this: artifacts. Afterimages that have refused to fade through the years and I have to remind myself there are many more to come and many more erasers to try. An aversion for food is very unhealthy. I will strive to continue to dissociate the two. Food is necessary and vital and has nothing to do with occupation, preoccupation, goals, failure, desertion of duty, breaks in time, success, or operations. If I am eating it is because I should be, not because I've somehow tricked my way into it or trapped my way to a plate or have let someone down by taking the time.
In the meantime while I try to enforce this very simple principle, I will continue to attempt to escape and nibble when I can. I understand it may seem strange, but if I ever eat with you heartily it's because it means a lot to me to be able to do so and I hope it comes across that way. I will be willing to do many other things with you before I will agree to eat with you at a table. There are still several more relics that need eradicated, raised, and (some) built upon. This one is the one that needs leveled to rubble first. A dead heat, but the one I want to focus first and burn away.
///Bonobo - "Pick Up" ...the loud minority...
///Tricky - "Overcome" nothing to gift, so ill gift you this, for now
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label anatomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anatomy. Show all posts
5/16/14
S'not All Guts and Glory
It isn't. I get overly dramatic. It is a study. It is very important to learn and understand appropriate responses, but the study need not dampen the human inside of you. The human inside of you should never need or be dampened.
To put the darkness forward is a matter of preference, not necessity. To attack every upcoming day is to ask for a war. Approach it analog. It's not coming at you digital. One or zero or one or zero. There is so much more that can be done.
The responses do push from one boundary to the other, but it is possible to find a zero beside the one, a one nestled in beside the zero, and start a new language. That's happy. Bad in a good way. It's easier to view digitally, but better to view analog.
Failure is vision. Wear your eyes. Use them or be prepared to lose them and cry through your nose because nothing is supporting your eyelids. Power chords. I know I get obsessed with damage control. It's only because damage is very difficult to control.
Damage requires a ton of run cycles and making plans A through G takes a ton of run cycles too. I do wonder what I look like from the outside in these days. It's a curiosity that demands attention. It's not all bad though. Don't let me get you down.
I have a lot of questions. As I'm navigating my way through the years and continuing to find new ways to look at the mission and questioning the mission and my own value within the operations frame works, I am finding light not easy to describe.
At least, not easy to describe better without using terms embracing negative pasts. It kind of strikes me as learning how to compose drawings using negative space. Instead of tracing the damage and the brush fires limits, tracing the brush.
Tracing the wild life instead of the pelts. Nature still speaks to me. Tech and currency still eats me. People continue to fascinate me though I find them terrifically repellent. I try to keep one ear on the ground and one up to the sky.
I have to reassure myself that I am fine. I have to maintain my distance. I cannot allow distance to dissolve. What I want cannot be obtained through casual means. It will take explicit and thorough aggression.
We are years away. It's not all guts and glory. Relax. Absorb and do not over think. It's not all bad. It's not all analysis. Do not remove the human from inside you.
///Bjork - "Hidden Place" im simply suggesting
To put the darkness forward is a matter of preference, not necessity. To attack every upcoming day is to ask for a war. Approach it analog. It's not coming at you digital. One or zero or one or zero. There is so much more that can be done.
The responses do push from one boundary to the other, but it is possible to find a zero beside the one, a one nestled in beside the zero, and start a new language. That's happy. Bad in a good way. It's easier to view digitally, but better to view analog.
Failure is vision. Wear your eyes. Use them or be prepared to lose them and cry through your nose because nothing is supporting your eyelids. Power chords. I know I get obsessed with damage control. It's only because damage is very difficult to control.
Damage requires a ton of run cycles and making plans A through G takes a ton of run cycles too. I do wonder what I look like from the outside in these days. It's a curiosity that demands attention. It's not all bad though. Don't let me get you down.
I have a lot of questions. As I'm navigating my way through the years and continuing to find new ways to look at the mission and questioning the mission and my own value within the operations frame works, I am finding light not easy to describe.
At least, not easy to describe better without using terms embracing negative pasts. It kind of strikes me as learning how to compose drawings using negative space. Instead of tracing the damage and the brush fires limits, tracing the brush.
Tracing the wild life instead of the pelts. Nature still speaks to me. Tech and currency still eats me. People continue to fascinate me though I find them terrifically repellent. I try to keep one ear on the ground and one up to the sky.
I have to reassure myself that I am fine. I have to maintain my distance. I cannot allow distance to dissolve. What I want cannot be obtained through casual means. It will take explicit and thorough aggression.
We are years away. It's not all guts and glory. Relax. Absorb and do not over think. It's not all bad. It's not all analysis. Do not remove the human from inside you.
///Bjork - "Hidden Place" im simply suggesting
8/23/13
You've Got Some Work To Do, Kiddo
I know. I feel like a fire wrapped in people skin. I borrowed some money to buy toothpaste the other day. Something felt wrong about it. Something felt wrong about the whole thing. Memories came pushing back the days afterward. Things I pushed away only recently and some things I pushed away years ago.
Cut out to Pittsburgh and a boy walking down Main street. I put the last of my money into buying a thermocouple for a water heater I was working on and I remembered the dream I had that morning of my teeth coming apart. My molar broke into quarters and caramel came spurting out in little bits of spray. When I ran my tongue across my front sheets, little white sheets came off and got stuck between them and I would tongue the stuck bits, but rub more off and then all that were left were pink and gray nerve ends and I couldn't close my mouth because the pain was incredible and the caramel made me salivate and it poured down my shirt front in a glistening tan and foaming mess and the heat of it and the wind blowing through the cave of my mouth burned the nerves until my eyes could only see white static and glimmer stars of blood cells pounding through the veins inside them. I remembered that dream and knew I had to find a way to buy some toothpaste.
The other memory that came back was of my dad screaming at me through my old cellular and the ear piece cracking. It was a train of threats and I remember the strength in my knees barely hanging on through it all. I was to change schools immediately or face the violent consequences he would bring my way for my poor performance. The second part of the memory was a part I hadn't recalled or even connected until that day. The school he was demanding I transfer to was one of the schools I originally pointed out and highlighted that I wanted to apply to in the first place two years before. It crashed in on me then. I brought them the list and they had to approve it because it was their money paying for the application fees and this one and that one got shot down and crossed off and shot down for one reason or another in their minds and based on that stupid ass college rankings book that was two years out of date at the time anyway (thanks public library). Remembering it, I simply shook my head. Wastes of brain space. Why? That still pops like a flickered light as the power grid compensates for outages miles away beneath a storm already come and gone from where you sit beneath its glow.
The air vibrates for a moment. The walls flex under the sudden pressure and creak and groan. Nothing happens. Everything doesn't fall apart. A tear came down my cheek from behind my sunglasses and I let it go. It was hot as hell and feeling it evaporate felt wonderful and cooled my skin. "Why?" I don't know. I never will.
There was a period of intense plasticity, three, maybe four, days long. Precipitated by several days of a slow decline in mental activity. It made me wonder if that was what peace felt like. Feeling like internal and external pressures and atmospheres were perfectly attuned. Like striking one face produced the right and singular sound on the other side instead of the rattle tin of snare wires. Confusion began to set. "What is happening to me?" And then it began to break apart like lake shore ice not quite in rhythm with the season turn at sunrise. Interference. I couldn't tell if I was happy or simply depressed to a blank slate or so far disengaged from my head that I could essentially remote pilot this body thing through what it was supposed to do and could dock it at my home address and step outside of the cockpit into dreams.
I don't know what it was, but in greater efforts (always greater and greater as time runs on) to manage myself I will add those sign posts to my warning lights. I don't know what they mean or what they signify, but it was disconcerting and disorienting a series of days as I've seen in a small while.
Spoke to a friend who is dating someone else now and I couldn't help, but wonder how the new was better than old. I gave it a further thought and it was tremendously obvious. I imagined the group photos and holiday visits and it was tremendously obvious. One of these things is not wired like the others. And now it is. I don't think, in fact I am near certain there is ... I want to date again. Do I hate companionship? No, absolutely not. Do you hate companionship? Yes, what kind of stupid question is that! I can't get through two consecutive hours of the day without thinking about breaking a slit into someone's skull with the blunt back end of a hatchet and shoving my penis into the slippery fat. How terrific would that be. I think about killing myself every day. I also think about living in the deep north forest ridges every day, so you sort it out.
Choke it down and hold it there. Inside is still a hidden place. A territory I am still investigating and mapping. Inside me I am snapping my fingers in front of my nose and patting my cheek and whispering "hey buddy, you in there? Can you hear me? Come on back. Come on back, kiddo. Stay with me, okay?" Things blear in and out and then stick for a while. I cannot live with other people for lengths of time. Not yet anyway. Still a lot of work to do. Inside is still a deeply hidden place and for now it has to stay that way.
Walking down that street along the sidewalk and nodding to the old men on their way to fish and spend bits of their pensions at the hole in the wall and smiling at the kids on their little bikes and the folks my age pushing strollers and dogs my little heart fell out of my chest and hit the pavement and rolled. It rolled like a tin can going tink a clink a link and as it went the brass compression ring broke off like a snapped rubber band. Flex tubing went one way, an iron washer went another. A welded chamber came loose and rolled in the chopped way a cube will into the gutter. An adapter slipped off its fitting. More brass tubing came loose and popped up into the air in front of me and a glass stator shattered. Filaments flew into the grass and oil splashed into the cracks of the cement. Rivets popped loose and sheet aluminum peeled away. My heart rolled and rolled until it was a hex nut spinning like a coin until laid flat between the lines of the crosswalk yards away.
I saw myself running and dropping to knees to scoop this piece and that spring and that cam and this bolt and that shard and that curly Q of pipe and with fingernails prying bits of staple and brad from pebbles at the lip of storm drain. What's missing? Haul it all home in the hammock of your T-shirt mid drift. Drop it all on the work bench and goggle up. Sparks chip into the air. The hammer, the drill, the saw, the shears. Open up the drawers of the chest of saved scrap. What's missing? What's missing?! Male to male adapters. Counter sinking threads. Punch sheared nails back through. More sparks. More acetylene. More current. Peen hammer curves. Female to male adapter. Hand tighten. Air hammer drill rusted bolt tops. Replace tubes. Connect battery leads. Respool springs. Adjust valve timing.
The whole thing made me laugh. The whole thing brought to mind the hilariousness of the notion of sewing your heart back together. The whole notion of "look into your heart." The whole highschool nonsense of the swooning "sewing my heart back together." Apparently distance is still a necessary thing. I don't know that it is something that can be outgrown or phasic. Why did you cut up your face? Because, in part, I'm tired of trying to explain it. Remember that Popular Mechanics gloss issue from way back when nuclear energy was front page everything and there was an extensive design study to find a way to warn future men about areas where spent materials were stored in a way that could cross all future language barriers and changes regardless of origin? I do and the whole thing makes me laugh.
The tension between this backwards country and where I want to be pulls apart my consciousness. Are you supposed to be upset with the people that don't know it any other way? Is there a right to be upset? Wrong question entirely. You can feel whatever you want to feel. By being human and conscious at all you are given the right to emotion. Hate has external vectors to it, though. That's the difference. The very important difference. We've got some work to do, I know. Everything has been heavily jammed up. Between questions sparking forest fires of speculation and what ifs and more questions and dead zones and containment and management there has not been a lot of processing power left over to engage with society and decoupling is threatening and I can feel it climbing through the insides of my bones and bleeding into the streams inside my muscles and stable air is gaining turbulence and I am trying to correct. I won't be privilege to some phases of interactions until the work is done and I don't know when that will be. Trust sweetheart, I know. Before you can get back to creating, we've got some work to do. Goddamnit! I know!!!!
///Flying Lotus - "Orbit Brazil" Still building my new ship. Still collecting parts at the orbital yard. Dreaming about the empty space between stars and nothing more than the tick and whir of life support systems to nod my head to sleep to.
Cut out to Pittsburgh and a boy walking down Main street. I put the last of my money into buying a thermocouple for a water heater I was working on and I remembered the dream I had that morning of my teeth coming apart. My molar broke into quarters and caramel came spurting out in little bits of spray. When I ran my tongue across my front sheets, little white sheets came off and got stuck between them and I would tongue the stuck bits, but rub more off and then all that were left were pink and gray nerve ends and I couldn't close my mouth because the pain was incredible and the caramel made me salivate and it poured down my shirt front in a glistening tan and foaming mess and the heat of it and the wind blowing through the cave of my mouth burned the nerves until my eyes could only see white static and glimmer stars of blood cells pounding through the veins inside them. I remembered that dream and knew I had to find a way to buy some toothpaste.
The other memory that came back was of my dad screaming at me through my old cellular and the ear piece cracking. It was a train of threats and I remember the strength in my knees barely hanging on through it all. I was to change schools immediately or face the violent consequences he would bring my way for my poor performance. The second part of the memory was a part I hadn't recalled or even connected until that day. The school he was demanding I transfer to was one of the schools I originally pointed out and highlighted that I wanted to apply to in the first place two years before. It crashed in on me then. I brought them the list and they had to approve it because it was their money paying for the application fees and this one and that one got shot down and crossed off and shot down for one reason or another in their minds and based on that stupid ass college rankings book that was two years out of date at the time anyway (thanks public library). Remembering it, I simply shook my head. Wastes of brain space. Why? That still pops like a flickered light as the power grid compensates for outages miles away beneath a storm already come and gone from where you sit beneath its glow.
The air vibrates for a moment. The walls flex under the sudden pressure and creak and groan. Nothing happens. Everything doesn't fall apart. A tear came down my cheek from behind my sunglasses and I let it go. It was hot as hell and feeling it evaporate felt wonderful and cooled my skin. "Why?" I don't know. I never will.
There was a period of intense plasticity, three, maybe four, days long. Precipitated by several days of a slow decline in mental activity. It made me wonder if that was what peace felt like. Feeling like internal and external pressures and atmospheres were perfectly attuned. Like striking one face produced the right and singular sound on the other side instead of the rattle tin of snare wires. Confusion began to set. "What is happening to me?" And then it began to break apart like lake shore ice not quite in rhythm with the season turn at sunrise. Interference. I couldn't tell if I was happy or simply depressed to a blank slate or so far disengaged from my head that I could essentially remote pilot this body thing through what it was supposed to do and could dock it at my home address and step outside of the cockpit into dreams.
I don't know what it was, but in greater efforts (always greater and greater as time runs on) to manage myself I will add those sign posts to my warning lights. I don't know what they mean or what they signify, but it was disconcerting and disorienting a series of days as I've seen in a small while.
Spoke to a friend who is dating someone else now and I couldn't help, but wonder how the new was better than old. I gave it a further thought and it was tremendously obvious. I imagined the group photos and holiday visits and it was tremendously obvious. One of these things is not wired like the others. And now it is. I don't think, in fact I am near certain there is ... I want to date again. Do I hate companionship? No, absolutely not. Do you hate companionship? Yes, what kind of stupid question is that! I can't get through two consecutive hours of the day without thinking about breaking a slit into someone's skull with the blunt back end of a hatchet and shoving my penis into the slippery fat. How terrific would that be. I think about killing myself every day. I also think about living in the deep north forest ridges every day, so you sort it out.
Choke it down and hold it there. Inside is still a hidden place. A territory I am still investigating and mapping. Inside me I am snapping my fingers in front of my nose and patting my cheek and whispering "hey buddy, you in there? Can you hear me? Come on back. Come on back, kiddo. Stay with me, okay?" Things blear in and out and then stick for a while. I cannot live with other people for lengths of time. Not yet anyway. Still a lot of work to do. Inside is still a deeply hidden place and for now it has to stay that way.
Walking down that street along the sidewalk and nodding to the old men on their way to fish and spend bits of their pensions at the hole in the wall and smiling at the kids on their little bikes and the folks my age pushing strollers and dogs my little heart fell out of my chest and hit the pavement and rolled. It rolled like a tin can going tink a clink a link and as it went the brass compression ring broke off like a snapped rubber band. Flex tubing went one way, an iron washer went another. A welded chamber came loose and rolled in the chopped way a cube will into the gutter. An adapter slipped off its fitting. More brass tubing came loose and popped up into the air in front of me and a glass stator shattered. Filaments flew into the grass and oil splashed into the cracks of the cement. Rivets popped loose and sheet aluminum peeled away. My heart rolled and rolled until it was a hex nut spinning like a coin until laid flat between the lines of the crosswalk yards away.
I saw myself running and dropping to knees to scoop this piece and that spring and that cam and this bolt and that shard and that curly Q of pipe and with fingernails prying bits of staple and brad from pebbles at the lip of storm drain. What's missing? Haul it all home in the hammock of your T-shirt mid drift. Drop it all on the work bench and goggle up. Sparks chip into the air. The hammer, the drill, the saw, the shears. Open up the drawers of the chest of saved scrap. What's missing? What's missing?! Male to male adapters. Counter sinking threads. Punch sheared nails back through. More sparks. More acetylene. More current. Peen hammer curves. Female to male adapter. Hand tighten. Air hammer drill rusted bolt tops. Replace tubes. Connect battery leads. Respool springs. Adjust valve timing.
The whole thing made me laugh. The whole thing brought to mind the hilariousness of the notion of sewing your heart back together. The whole notion of "look into your heart." The whole highschool nonsense of the swooning "sewing my heart back together." Apparently distance is still a necessary thing. I don't know that it is something that can be outgrown or phasic. Why did you cut up your face? Because, in part, I'm tired of trying to explain it. Remember that Popular Mechanics gloss issue from way back when nuclear energy was front page everything and there was an extensive design study to find a way to warn future men about areas where spent materials were stored in a way that could cross all future language barriers and changes regardless of origin? I do and the whole thing makes me laugh.
The tension between this backwards country and where I want to be pulls apart my consciousness. Are you supposed to be upset with the people that don't know it any other way? Is there a right to be upset? Wrong question entirely. You can feel whatever you want to feel. By being human and conscious at all you are given the right to emotion. Hate has external vectors to it, though. That's the difference. The very important difference. We've got some work to do, I know. Everything has been heavily jammed up. Between questions sparking forest fires of speculation and what ifs and more questions and dead zones and containment and management there has not been a lot of processing power left over to engage with society and decoupling is threatening and I can feel it climbing through the insides of my bones and bleeding into the streams inside my muscles and stable air is gaining turbulence and I am trying to correct. I won't be privilege to some phases of interactions until the work is done and I don't know when that will be. Trust sweetheart, I know. Before you can get back to creating, we've got some work to do. Goddamnit! I know!!!!
///Flying Lotus - "Orbit Brazil" Still building my new ship. Still collecting parts at the orbital yard. Dreaming about the empty space between stars and nothing more than the tick and whir of life support systems to nod my head to sleep to.
9/4/10
Cum, the Internet, Other Disappointments (Plus 200), and Friends
200th entry. Glad I got that announcement out of the way before I forgot. It's been five years with you. That ties the record for the longest relationship I've ever had. They've been pretty good years, but this isn't a retrospective so I won't dwell on it.
You should know I tried to write a poem with the title "Cum", but I couldn't create anything more charged than the title, so I didn't. Sometimes you run into words like that in the English language, words that command so much attention and make people perk up and look for context clues instead of actually reading the text and before you know it you've completely lost them because, for whatever reason,you're content doesn't line up with whatever expectations they've come to harbor in connection with your title. I'll write a retrospective for the next entry mainly because I'm pretty sure I won't have much else to say as I've been gripped by the past recently. Maybe I'll write that poem anyway and just make it light hearted. I think that's a good way to both combat the "must read for juicy bits" response and also reward both the readers and the flybys.
On to my terrible internet connection. It was so bad over the past two days that I literally was not even able to open my email. You know when you get so mad that actually mash your fist into your keyboard hard enough to break the fucking thing. That's how mad I was. If I was not head over heels in love with my computer monitor and also too poor to replace it I probably would have hurled it straight out of the window hard enough to lay a 22" square dent in the door of the shed behind my house. A friend commented that though the speed is slow I "have done a lot with it" and I wanted to say well "for fucks sake, just imagine what I could fucking do if I didn't have to settle for third rate everything in this fucking world." Seriously. I was enraged, not by his efforts to offer encouragement, but by the framing of what has become typical of my life. Ghetto rigs. McGuyver set ups. Pulling magic out of my ass hole. Call it what you will, but I cannot wait for a phase of my life when I actually have the god damn tools I want and need already at hand to do the things I want to fucking do. No more of this having to work a three mile solution out of a 100 yard walk because no one is willing to give me the god damn keys to the front gate.
I've had some really fucked up dreams lately. I'll curb the swear words from here on out, or at least try to.
So the original Cum poem was going to be about how self destruction creeps into life, but is a necessary element of life. Self destruction, I think, prevents wholesale destruction if the person purposefully destroying their self can be isolated or at least properly contained. I'm pretty sure if I left myself to its own devices it would turn into a thing bent on dismantling life and civilization as we know it. To prevent this from happening I have to actively dismantle its constructions through every means necessary. Think of it as an atom bomb. Every single day my brain is refining fissible materials and building detonators and stranding wires and explosive plates and turning bomb housings and working out the science of sending the world to its grave and every day I have to go in and turn out all the filing cabinets and shred the research and trash the labs and sabotage the refineries and explode the stockpiles. My self hasn't gotten it right yet and I'm happy for that, but also ashamed that its even become a necessity. Sometimes continued success is thanks to my own efforts and sometimes it's due to bomb range and laboratory accidents and machine malfunctions. The result is the same though. Furious action leading up to an explosive and small and temporary victory and phenomenally steep come down, because I've both succeeded and failed yet again. I suppose the easiest solution would be to simply have all of the technicians brought before a firing squad and kill them outright, but unfortunately the crew working the device committee and labor union are also responsible for the non-lethal non-destructive life sustaining committees. So when is the need to eliminate a threat greater than the need to preserve a life? I don't have an answer for that, but I'll let you know when I do.
I'm sad now. I don't know why. I do know why. Part of me just left. He was disgusted. I'm disgusted too and angry and now sad that I'm by myself again. He'll be back later. We can't really stay mad at each other. No, wait we can. I just realized that we're usually pretty mad at each other. It just so happens that we're also usually in agreement on most things, with the exception of this and some other stuff. I'm the optimist. He's the deterministic pessimist. The realist. The public relations manager is not in at the moment, but should be back shortly.
I sometimes wish my friends would tell me what they think and why they don't tell me when their visiting, but then I remember that they must have their reasons and that I don't know what those reasons are because no one has ever fucking told me. When I think about the spectrum of existence I get the feeling that there's nothing in the middle of mine and I think that hole is what makes people apprehensive. I don't have a hard time feeling. I have a hard time feeling by degrees.
I dream about things. About tiny rooms and lying in bed with someone and sadism and being awful and being loved regardless and making something, making anything, with another person and being naked and great and taking off the mask that hides the teeth and the showing the smile behind that stretches from ear to ear for all of the reasons that are on their face unacceptable for reasons I'll never agree with and I wake up from the dream and wonder if I will really be single. And then I wonder if the rest of me will allow that to change. I know the answer is no, but can you fault me for wanting it to. I tear myself apart, but they're there. The upside is I'm always in orgy. The downside is none of the attendees are there because they love each other. And I'm rambling so I'll go do something else because I already know I'm running straight for a dead end and I have an irrepressible fear of corners.
///30 Seconds to Mars - "From Yesterday" Sometimes when I fall asleep and wake up into dreaming the world is big and beautiful and unlike the life I left I am moved to a state of utter bliss and so thankful that a thing like sleep is a part of day to day life.
You should know I tried to write a poem with the title "Cum", but I couldn't create anything more charged than the title, so I didn't. Sometimes you run into words like that in the English language, words that command so much attention and make people perk up and look for context clues instead of actually reading the text and before you know it you've completely lost them because, for whatever reason,you're content doesn't line up with whatever expectations they've come to harbor in connection with your title. I'll write a retrospective for the next entry mainly because I'm pretty sure I won't have much else to say as I've been gripped by the past recently. Maybe I'll write that poem anyway and just make it light hearted. I think that's a good way to both combat the "must read for juicy bits" response and also reward both the readers and the flybys.
On to my terrible internet connection. It was so bad over the past two days that I literally was not even able to open my email. You know when you get so mad that actually mash your fist into your keyboard hard enough to break the fucking thing. That's how mad I was. If I was not head over heels in love with my computer monitor and also too poor to replace it I probably would have hurled it straight out of the window hard enough to lay a 22" square dent in the door of the shed behind my house. A friend commented that though the speed is slow I "have done a lot with it" and I wanted to say well "for fucks sake, just imagine what I could fucking do if I didn't have to settle for third rate everything in this fucking world." Seriously. I was enraged, not by his efforts to offer encouragement, but by the framing of what has become typical of my life. Ghetto rigs. McGuyver set ups. Pulling magic out of my ass hole. Call it what you will, but I cannot wait for a phase of my life when I actually have the god damn tools I want and need already at hand to do the things I want to fucking do. No more of this having to work a three mile solution out of a 100 yard walk because no one is willing to give me the god damn keys to the front gate.
I've had some really fucked up dreams lately. I'll curb the swear words from here on out, or at least try to.
So the original Cum poem was going to be about how self destruction creeps into life, but is a necessary element of life. Self destruction, I think, prevents wholesale destruction if the person purposefully destroying their self can be isolated or at least properly contained. I'm pretty sure if I left myself to its own devices it would turn into a thing bent on dismantling life and civilization as we know it. To prevent this from happening I have to actively dismantle its constructions through every means necessary. Think of it as an atom bomb. Every single day my brain is refining fissible materials and building detonators and stranding wires and explosive plates and turning bomb housings and working out the science of sending the world to its grave and every day I have to go in and turn out all the filing cabinets and shred the research and trash the labs and sabotage the refineries and explode the stockpiles. My self hasn't gotten it right yet and I'm happy for that, but also ashamed that its even become a necessity. Sometimes continued success is thanks to my own efforts and sometimes it's due to bomb range and laboratory accidents and machine malfunctions. The result is the same though. Furious action leading up to an explosive and small and temporary victory and phenomenally steep come down, because I've both succeeded and failed yet again. I suppose the easiest solution would be to simply have all of the technicians brought before a firing squad and kill them outright, but unfortunately the crew working the device committee and labor union are also responsible for the non-lethal non-destructive life sustaining committees. So when is the need to eliminate a threat greater than the need to preserve a life? I don't have an answer for that, but I'll let you know when I do.
I'm sad now. I don't know why. I do know why. Part of me just left. He was disgusted. I'm disgusted too and angry and now sad that I'm by myself again. He'll be back later. We can't really stay mad at each other. No, wait we can. I just realized that we're usually pretty mad at each other. It just so happens that we're also usually in agreement on most things, with the exception of this and some other stuff. I'm the optimist. He's the deterministic pessimist. The realist. The public relations manager is not in at the moment, but should be back shortly.
I sometimes wish my friends would tell me what they think and why they don't tell me when their visiting, but then I remember that they must have their reasons and that I don't know what those reasons are because no one has ever fucking told me. When I think about the spectrum of existence I get the feeling that there's nothing in the middle of mine and I think that hole is what makes people apprehensive. I don't have a hard time feeling. I have a hard time feeling by degrees.
I dream about things. About tiny rooms and lying in bed with someone and sadism and being awful and being loved regardless and making something, making anything, with another person and being naked and great and taking off the mask that hides the teeth and the showing the smile behind that stretches from ear to ear for all of the reasons that are on their face unacceptable for reasons I'll never agree with and I wake up from the dream and wonder if I will really be single. And then I wonder if the rest of me will allow that to change. I know the answer is no, but can you fault me for wanting it to. I tear myself apart, but they're there. The upside is I'm always in orgy. The downside is none of the attendees are there because they love each other. And I'm rambling so I'll go do something else because I already know I'm running straight for a dead end and I have an irrepressible fear of corners.
///30 Seconds to Mars - "From Yesterday" Sometimes when I fall asleep and wake up into dreaming the world is big and beautiful and unlike the life I left I am moved to a state of utter bliss and so thankful that a thing like sleep is a part of day to day life.
8/15/10
Where the Lost Things Go
Is sort of where I've been. In and out of dreams and stuff. I literally woke up in the middle of the night and there were kittens all over the floor so I did what any reasonable person waking up in the middle of the night to find balls of kitty cuteness everywhere: I started flailing around the floor trying to get them off of me. Turns out they weren't real. And it turns out I sleep on the floor. Hopefully that'll change soon.
In other news, the world is a fascinating and gross and scary fun place. I've sort of been in a project gridlock again. Turns out the answer to the gridlock was... I completely missed that. The source of the gridlock was that I've been looking for a place where I can simply spew information and I haven't been able to find one. I feel like my head is so pressurized with stuff that if I were to sneeze I would blow my fucking brains out.
In using google reader I feel there is an obligation to only share the things that you think other people may find interesting or helpful or possess some sort of value to them, be it comedic or otherwise. Therefore, if I am sharing things there, I am basically saying to people who follow me: I think you might like this. I ran into a similar jam when I found myself clicking the "like" button for every single thing I came across. The thing is, I do sincerely like the things that other people are sharing, but is the "like" button supposed to be reserved for the things I cherish?
For the most part it seems a fallout of the amplification syndrome for text based communication. I only type in "lol" when I do laugh out loud. I laugh a lot. Other people don't laugh so much. Am I obligated to adjust my own inputs to help people feel less patronized. I'm not trying to be creepy, but somehow I feel like others might misunderstand that I laugh easily as me buttering them up for ulterior motives. Not true. I just love to laugh and I love to like and I love to share.
To solve this problem I joined twitter. However in joining twitter, where I hoped I would find a fantastic outlet for the bits of things that keep firing off in my head that eventually stifle my ability to focus on anything, I ran into the same problem pretty much instantly. Am I just the guy with no filter? No. At least I don't think so. I filter a lot, it's just that so much more is generated that is interesting to me to say and hear aloud and hear other people say. I don't really want attention or specific responses or responses at all. I just want to see it outside of my head to remind me that my brain is still working and that I am not talking to myself. But therein lies another problem. Is it not okay to talk to myself. I hate talking to myself actually. I prefer to spit it out and then read it somewhere else so that it at least feels like I'm not talking to myself and that way I can sort out who is who upstairs. It keeps things organized. My major concern then, in this rambling analysis is that in being myself I will distance everyone because there is so much chatter and not all of it is important or relevant to them. In fact, probably twenty percent is relevant to other people. You people. The rest is important to me. None of it is garbage. I just don't have enough storage space to keep my mouth shut. And I am a little sorry for being so. A lot sorry.
Well, to help curb the rush I've decided to start a comic:
I have no idea what it will be about specifically, but mostly it'll just be where I talk to myself about all of the things that I don't talk about here (because I want this to be interesting to other people).
Life is full of so many questions and very few easily digestible answers.
with some exceptions. Mainly I was thinking about the whole "when is an artist an artist" question. That's when it struck me just how obnoxious a question that is. To ask for a definite quantitative boundary between the artist and the non-artist is to ask the question of if you cut a distance in half an infinite number of times, when do they touch? People have asked me if they were writers before and I've always said "you're a writer when you know there's nothing else you really want to do." I think a better answer, now that I've mulled it hard over the last few weeks is that you're an artist when you can solve art problems to your own satisfaction. You're a writer when you can solve writing problems to your own satisfaction. Same thing goes for photography.
What I'm saying is, if you wake up one day and you say to yourself "I want to paint a portrait" and then you sit down and paint a portrait and you finish it, if the thing you have when you are done makes you happy and satisfied that it is a portrait then you are a portrait artist. If, when you finish, you look at the thing and you say to yourself "it is like a portrait, but not what I would call a portrait" then you are not an artist yet. If you sit down to write a story and when you are done you yourself cannot without a doubt call it a story of whatever length or genre then you are not a writer yet. If you sit down to write a program or perform some chemical solution or diagram some molecule and when you are finished you are not satisfied with the result then you are not whatever it is you set out to be just yet. Maybe satisfied is the wrong word there. If you are not contented with the fullness of the work, allowing for individual levels of mastery, then you are not whatever it was you set out to be that day.
So now I know. I am an artist, but I am not a photographer. I am a writer, but I am not a scientist or an accountant or a manager. I am an athlete, but I am not in great physical condition. It's made life a lot easier to understand and has helped take the hesitation and judgement out of things. The community be damned, and I mean that in the nicest way, when it comes to personal qualitative judgments. I finally understand that if I keep looking to the community for approval I will never get a defacto answer until I'm dead and gone, and quite frankly I can't really wait all that long.
Anywho, where the lost things go is where I've been. I didn't bring anything back, but hopefully next time I'll spear myself a fine trophy to prove I was there.
///Luke Slater - "Stars and Heroes"
Something has just occurred to me as I close this entry; if I have no followers on twitter I have an infinite jar to pour the excess in. Maybe that's an answer. The funny thing is we're talking this over right now and there's an argument happening and I really just wish I could have a moment of quiet at an hour as late as this.
In other news, the world is a fascinating and gross and scary fun place. I've sort of been in a project gridlock again. Turns out the answer to the gridlock was... I completely missed that. The source of the gridlock was that I've been looking for a place where I can simply spew information and I haven't been able to find one. I feel like my head is so pressurized with stuff that if I were to sneeze I would blow my fucking brains out.
In using google reader I feel there is an obligation to only share the things that you think other people may find interesting or helpful or possess some sort of value to them, be it comedic or otherwise. Therefore, if I am sharing things there, I am basically saying to people who follow me: I think you might like this. I ran into a similar jam when I found myself clicking the "like" button for every single thing I came across. The thing is, I do sincerely like the things that other people are sharing, but is the "like" button supposed to be reserved for the things I cherish?
For the most part it seems a fallout of the amplification syndrome for text based communication. I only type in "lol" when I do laugh out loud. I laugh a lot. Other people don't laugh so much. Am I obligated to adjust my own inputs to help people feel less patronized. I'm not trying to be creepy, but somehow I feel like others might misunderstand that I laugh easily as me buttering them up for ulterior motives. Not true. I just love to laugh and I love to like and I love to share.
To solve this problem I joined twitter. However in joining twitter, where I hoped I would find a fantastic outlet for the bits of things that keep firing off in my head that eventually stifle my ability to focus on anything, I ran into the same problem pretty much instantly. Am I just the guy with no filter? No. At least I don't think so. I filter a lot, it's just that so much more is generated that is interesting to me to say and hear aloud and hear other people say. I don't really want attention or specific responses or responses at all. I just want to see it outside of my head to remind me that my brain is still working and that I am not talking to myself. But therein lies another problem. Is it not okay to talk to myself. I hate talking to myself actually. I prefer to spit it out and then read it somewhere else so that it at least feels like I'm not talking to myself and that way I can sort out who is who upstairs. It keeps things organized. My major concern then, in this rambling analysis is that in being myself I will distance everyone because there is so much chatter and not all of it is important or relevant to them. In fact, probably twenty percent is relevant to other people. You people. The rest is important to me. None of it is garbage. I just don't have enough storage space to keep my mouth shut. And I am a little sorry for being so. A lot sorry.
Well, to help curb the rush I've decided to start a comic:
I have no idea what it will be about specifically, but mostly it'll just be where I talk to myself about all of the things that I don't talk about here (because I want this to be interesting to other people).
Life is full of so many questions and very few easily digestible answers.
with some exceptions. Mainly I was thinking about the whole "when is an artist an artist" question. That's when it struck me just how obnoxious a question that is. To ask for a definite quantitative boundary between the artist and the non-artist is to ask the question of if you cut a distance in half an infinite number of times, when do they touch? People have asked me if they were writers before and I've always said "you're a writer when you know there's nothing else you really want to do." I think a better answer, now that I've mulled it hard over the last few weeks is that you're an artist when you can solve art problems to your own satisfaction. You're a writer when you can solve writing problems to your own satisfaction. Same thing goes for photography.
What I'm saying is, if you wake up one day and you say to yourself "I want to paint a portrait" and then you sit down and paint a portrait and you finish it, if the thing you have when you are done makes you happy and satisfied that it is a portrait then you are a portrait artist. If, when you finish, you look at the thing and you say to yourself "it is like a portrait, but not what I would call a portrait" then you are not an artist yet. If you sit down to write a story and when you are done you yourself cannot without a doubt call it a story of whatever length or genre then you are not a writer yet. If you sit down to write a program or perform some chemical solution or diagram some molecule and when you are finished you are not satisfied with the result then you are not whatever it is you set out to be just yet. Maybe satisfied is the wrong word there. If you are not contented with the fullness of the work, allowing for individual levels of mastery, then you are not whatever it was you set out to be that day.
So now I know. I am an artist, but I am not a photographer. I am a writer, but I am not a scientist or an accountant or a manager. I am an athlete, but I am not in great physical condition. It's made life a lot easier to understand and has helped take the hesitation and judgement out of things. The community be damned, and I mean that in the nicest way, when it comes to personal qualitative judgments. I finally understand that if I keep looking to the community for approval I will never get a defacto answer until I'm dead and gone, and quite frankly I can't really wait all that long.
Anywho, where the lost things go is where I've been. I didn't bring anything back, but hopefully next time I'll spear myself a fine trophy to prove I was there.
///Luke Slater - "Stars and Heroes"
Something has just occurred to me as I close this entry; if I have no followers on twitter I have an infinite jar to pour the excess in. Maybe that's an answer. The funny thing is we're talking this over right now and there's an argument happening and I really just wish I could have a moment of quiet at an hour as late as this.
7/19/10
Post-Meta-Psuedo Garbage Nonsense
Nearly a year and a half after the fact, I think I finally understand it. A while back, I flew into an absolute rage over an interpretive classroom discussion about Paul Auster's novel City of Glass and how everyone was going on and on about post-modern this and post-modern that and how the book was a post post-modern deconstruction of post-modernism. Then began the talk of the meta-text and the meta-narrator and, for all I care, the twice baked potato and the refried bean. For me, the entire thing hit a boiling point of ridiculousness that has irritated me to this day.
The main thing that absolutely grated me was the lack of creative thought going into the delineation of what is clearly one period of literary construction shifting into a new period of construction. Is the next period going to be meta-post-post-modernism? I feel like a huge part of what is confining the ability to meaningfully describe and analyze literary constructions is that the people who are doing it are being grown into a more and more strictly controlled framework of knowledge. Unfortunately as the tags used to describe the framework are simplified from exacting coordinates into smears of qualitative judgments they become strung together into descriptors for increasingly complex scenarios of literary construction and then you end up with a cloud of tags instead of analysis of an authors's work. And then, peering into the tag cloud and seeing that it is full of largely meaningless word associations in the context of describing what, in this case, Paul Auster's novel does, frustration takes root (at least it did for me).
But also, I think, even more than that, language is becoming more and more compartmentalized so that every single individual scrap of information is developing its own term. Its the opposite of 1984 and Newspeak. I guess as the body of discourse grows, it becomes inevitable that the words and terms and phrases needed to navigate it will grow in complexity and number, but when does that turn into picking tags out of a hat and saying: okay, that's that. That's what it is and it's no longer up for discussion.
That's necessary to an extent because otherwise the body of literary production would quickly out grow the ability to describe its functions, but I suppose my major concern back then was the arbitrary nature of the tagging. The descriptive term seemed to be affixed simply because it wasn't anything else entirely, so clearly it must be post. Which is okay in some respects, but once the thing that was like nothing else began to be emulated how can they also be post-*? They can't be post if they are happening now and in the same vein of the thing like no other thing before it, but like many things after it.
To the point though, I finally understand it. The tagging is not necessarily an effort to describe the thing it is affixed to, as it is an effort to DATE and LOCATE the thing and establish it's relative relationship to the other things surrounding and drawing from and contributing to it. And that's why calling something post-* meta-* and "whatever else describes a relationship of one thing to another"-* is important. The volume of things being produced and the ever increasing pace of new voices and shared information and production is why they are largely meaningless as explicit descriptors beyond the simplicity of "this came after that, but before the other thing." Their use and over use is more a symptom of growth and discussion than it is an indication of a lack of questioning contributors or thoughtful contributors more interested in the material being analyzed than sounding vague chic.
When you get into a group discussion about these things, over simplifications happen and thats when the relational tags begin to be characterized by their interpretive content instead of their connective tissue and you run into things like "that's what it is and that is that", where the things identity is really a matter of opinion and not a matter of course. With relational things it's a matter of perspective. Am I looking north or am I facing south, am I upwind or downwind or in another state altogether. When questions start to point to things like what does it smell and taste like, what does it do, what does it make, what is the sum of its pieces, relational orientations (and by extension the tag system) isn't much help, but is easily misappropriated and taken to task on issues and ideas it might've been meant to solve at its start, but issues and ideas it is hard pressed to positively impact now.
I hope I put my revelation into some meaningful sentences. At least now I know why I was so angry and disappointed almost a year ago. Sometimes it takes a while to see the value in what you would flush away as a token gesture. Sometimes there really is no value and it's a virtual artifact that's simply comfortable to the touch, but once in a while as you turn it over in your hand it becomes clear, at least to you, why it's still circulating from one hand to another.
So Paul Auster, I apologize. You're not a hack. You just filled the plate with more food than people could digest and some of them threw up. You're not around to clean it up, and you shouldn't have to. Governing an audiences reception and analysis of what you do is about as realistic as driving a car by standing on its roof rack and pointing your fingers. The best any of us can do is to let them drive where they may and, if it get's interesting, hold on for the ride.
///Talvin Singh - "Light" Bubbly, but smooth, like a mimosa. Pleasant and unobtrusive and better than that track on Classical Thunder your mom sent you in the hopes that it would somehow feed your brain with genius. Turns out the jewel case made an okay mouse pad once it got good and scuffed from performing coaster duty. Put away the mail order meditation music. Pick up some Singh and enjoy your working, hopefully fizzed, lunch break.
The main thing that absolutely grated me was the lack of creative thought going into the delineation of what is clearly one period of literary construction shifting into a new period of construction. Is the next period going to be meta-post-post-modernism? I feel like a huge part of what is confining the ability to meaningfully describe and analyze literary constructions is that the people who are doing it are being grown into a more and more strictly controlled framework of knowledge. Unfortunately as the tags used to describe the framework are simplified from exacting coordinates into smears of qualitative judgments they become strung together into descriptors for increasingly complex scenarios of literary construction and then you end up with a cloud of tags instead of analysis of an authors's work. And then, peering into the tag cloud and seeing that it is full of largely meaningless word associations in the context of describing what, in this case, Paul Auster's novel does, frustration takes root (at least it did for me).
But also, I think, even more than that, language is becoming more and more compartmentalized so that every single individual scrap of information is developing its own term. Its the opposite of 1984 and Newspeak. I guess as the body of discourse grows, it becomes inevitable that the words and terms and phrases needed to navigate it will grow in complexity and number, but when does that turn into picking tags out of a hat and saying: okay, that's that. That's what it is and it's no longer up for discussion.
That's necessary to an extent because otherwise the body of literary production would quickly out grow the ability to describe its functions, but I suppose my major concern back then was the arbitrary nature of the tagging. The descriptive term seemed to be affixed simply because it wasn't anything else entirely, so clearly it must be post. Which is okay in some respects, but once the thing that was like nothing else began to be emulated how can they also be post-*? They can't be post if they are happening now and in the same vein of the thing like no other thing before it, but like many things after it.
To the point though, I finally understand it. The tagging is not necessarily an effort to describe the thing it is affixed to, as it is an effort to DATE and LOCATE the thing and establish it's relative relationship to the other things surrounding and drawing from and contributing to it. And that's why calling something post-* meta-* and "whatever else describes a relationship of one thing to another"-* is important. The volume of things being produced and the ever increasing pace of new voices and shared information and production is why they are largely meaningless as explicit descriptors beyond the simplicity of "this came after that, but before the other thing." Their use and over use is more a symptom of growth and discussion than it is an indication of a lack of questioning contributors or thoughtful contributors more interested in the material being analyzed than sounding vague chic.
When you get into a group discussion about these things, over simplifications happen and thats when the relational tags begin to be characterized by their interpretive content instead of their connective tissue and you run into things like "that's what it is and that is that", where the things identity is really a matter of opinion and not a matter of course. With relational things it's a matter of perspective. Am I looking north or am I facing south, am I upwind or downwind or in another state altogether. When questions start to point to things like what does it smell and taste like, what does it do, what does it make, what is the sum of its pieces, relational orientations (and by extension the tag system) isn't much help, but is easily misappropriated and taken to task on issues and ideas it might've been meant to solve at its start, but issues and ideas it is hard pressed to positively impact now.
I hope I put my revelation into some meaningful sentences. At least now I know why I was so angry and disappointed almost a year ago. Sometimes it takes a while to see the value in what you would flush away as a token gesture. Sometimes there really is no value and it's a virtual artifact that's simply comfortable to the touch, but once in a while as you turn it over in your hand it becomes clear, at least to you, why it's still circulating from one hand to another.
So Paul Auster, I apologize. You're not a hack. You just filled the plate with more food than people could digest and some of them threw up. You're not around to clean it up, and you shouldn't have to. Governing an audiences reception and analysis of what you do is about as realistic as driving a car by standing on its roof rack and pointing your fingers. The best any of us can do is to let them drive where they may and, if it get's interesting, hold on for the ride.
///Talvin Singh - "Light" Bubbly, but smooth, like a mimosa. Pleasant and unobtrusive and better than that track on Classical Thunder your mom sent you in the hopes that it would somehow feed your brain with genius. Turns out the jewel case made an okay mouse pad once it got good and scuffed from performing coaster duty. Put away the mail order meditation music. Pick up some Singh and enjoy your working, hopefully fizzed, lunch break.
7/3/10
dear (______):
Dear Savage Garden:
You know that song you made called "I Want You?" Yeah that hit that almost made you into a one hit wonder. That one. So two minutes and forty seconds in, what the hell happened? I know tribal chanty beat breaks were all the rage, but putting one into that song makes about as much sense as female circumcision. Check minus.
You know that song you made called "I Want You?" Yeah that hit that almost made you into a one hit wonder. That one. So two minutes and forty seconds in, what the hell happened? I know tribal chanty beat breaks were all the rage, but putting one into that song makes about as much sense as female circumcision. Check minus.
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