Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Wheels
I try to avoid narcissistic writing. I feel like I've been down that road before, perhaps a few too many times. The charged posts, the reflective and emotional ones, are always the most embarrassing to look back on. Like whatever I was feeling at the time seems so ludicrous now, insignificant. But that's the nature of context, and if we don't write it who's to say we'll remember? And I think it entirely possible that the ability to relate to the various incarnations of oneself is as important as the gift of relating to other people.
It's a part of a writer's condition, I think, feeling drawn to immortalizing a gesture or moment to compile something of a self-portrait. People say writing is therapeutic and I don't disagree. We're all fishes glittering about without a clue who we are or what's going on or how we can establish a benchmark of normality to mark ourselves against-- so we write to enact this journey of self-identification. But it seems to me like the whole thing is largely masturbatory. Look at Bloom and Zeno, two of our favorite journeyers. Look even at Odysseus. Nobody really ends up anywhere. It's tragedy. Then, however, I think that maybe it's the craft-- the process-- of writing that defines the journey as much if not more so than its actual history. There's something to be said about the fiction in nonfiction, also. How we say and what we choose not to. And how it relates and interacts so violently with the cerebral practice of putting words to paper.
But anyway, I try to avoid narcissism. I try to avoid the livejournal voice. But without it all I've got are ideas, and what's the value in those? There's a void in my blog writing where I think voice belongs, but we're talking about quite a monster here. What voice does in writing, to me, is give a personality and chronology (humanity) to the text. Good fiction establishes persona with a compelling voice (through word choice, sentence construction, syntax, form, etc. etc. etc..) but personal essay, and let's be real-- that's what this is-- when it has a voice that is honest and endearing it requires a substantial sacrafice on the part of the essaysit. For a voice to be tangible and relatable and real there's some required vulnerability, some terrifying risk.
So if I am to write about my life, like I've done before, from a place of truth... well
it's going to take some work.
Also: everyone should read xkcd. Check it and feel some good vibes to start this week with.
It's a part of a writer's condition, I think, feeling drawn to immortalizing a gesture or moment to compile something of a self-portrait. People say writing is therapeutic and I don't disagree. We're all fishes glittering about without a clue who we are or what's going on or how we can establish a benchmark of normality to mark ourselves against-- so we write to enact this journey of self-identification. But it seems to me like the whole thing is largely masturbatory. Look at Bloom and Zeno, two of our favorite journeyers. Look even at Odysseus. Nobody really ends up anywhere. It's tragedy. Then, however, I think that maybe it's the craft-- the process-- of writing that defines the journey as much if not more so than its actual history. There's something to be said about the fiction in nonfiction, also. How we say and what we choose not to. And how it relates and interacts so violently with the cerebral practice of putting words to paper.
But anyway, I try to avoid narcissism. I try to avoid the livejournal voice. But without it all I've got are ideas, and what's the value in those? There's a void in my blog writing where I think voice belongs, but we're talking about quite a monster here. What voice does in writing, to me, is give a personality and chronology (humanity) to the text. Good fiction establishes persona with a compelling voice (through word choice, sentence construction, syntax, form, etc. etc. etc..) but personal essay, and let's be real-- that's what this is-- when it has a voice that is honest and endearing it requires a substantial sacrafice on the part of the essaysit. For a voice to be tangible and relatable and real there's some required vulnerability, some terrifying risk.
So if I am to write about my life, like I've done before, from a place of truth... well
it's going to take some work.
Also: everyone should read xkcd. Check it and feel some good vibes to start this week with.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Heaven is a truck
You ever have an impossible feeling?
Like, this bit of pressure-- a surge or a pulse in the brain or the heart against the skull or ribcage when something that so desperately wants resolution can't possibly find it? A tic in every happy thought, a clause that despite your best intentions the thing you're after is just outside the realm of possibility?
Someone talk to me about reality.
About the fact that you'll never see me the way I see me. And maybe that's the best thing. That there are infinite incarnations of a personality that ebb and flux with the subjectivity of perception. Or about how when I say, "hey"-- you hear, "I'm judging," and what I really mean is "I love you. I would like nothing better than to love you." Because there isn't a truth we're working towards. Not in this lifetime. No collective can reach a universal truth, an objective conclusion about a personality or a sentiment or a sound or a feeling. We all move in different orbits, see things in slightly different shades. And the magical thing about that, about the 21st century human condition, is that none of us can possibly be wrong.
But then there are moments. Occasions of incredible consequence and potential in which whatever is going on up there suspends momentarily and allows a fleeting clarity. I don't what people call this-- but I think it friendship. And that there are people in this world I can share this with, I mean, it really qualifies everything, you know? It's the rarity that brings about the doubt and dark.
I wrote some poems today.
Had a conversation with a non-English speaking Italian poet about how we have simultaneous timelines, each of us. At any given moment, besides the "reality" I'm living in, I'm playing through thousands upon thousands of parallel, equally plausible, existences. There's a temporal thing that happens when we think like this, when we leave earth for split seconds to explore the universe like it can't be seen here, now. I enjoy the escape, the search,
the knowledge that I will come to no conclusion. I am, we are, Joycian. The lifetime of no 21st century intellect or poet or scholar will result in any conclusion beyond that we aren't quite there yet. There's a lot of ground for humanity to cover before the period of self-realization, before we as Arhants walk together. But of you, reader, I'll see you when we get there. The universe has a funny way of carrying the one.
Someone, please, let's talk about reality.
Like, this bit of pressure-- a surge or a pulse in the brain or the heart against the skull or ribcage when something that so desperately wants resolution can't possibly find it? A tic in every happy thought, a clause that despite your best intentions the thing you're after is just outside the realm of possibility?
Someone talk to me about reality.
About the fact that you'll never see me the way I see me. And maybe that's the best thing. That there are infinite incarnations of a personality that ebb and flux with the subjectivity of perception. Or about how when I say, "hey"-- you hear, "I'm judging," and what I really mean is "I love you. I would like nothing better than to love you." Because there isn't a truth we're working towards. Not in this lifetime. No collective can reach a universal truth, an objective conclusion about a personality or a sentiment or a sound or a feeling. We all move in different orbits, see things in slightly different shades. And the magical thing about that, about the 21st century human condition, is that none of us can possibly be wrong.
But then there are moments. Occasions of incredible consequence and potential in which whatever is going on up there suspends momentarily and allows a fleeting clarity. I don't what people call this-- but I think it friendship. And that there are people in this world I can share this with, I mean, it really qualifies everything, you know? It's the rarity that brings about the doubt and dark.
I wrote some poems today.
Had a conversation with a non-English speaking Italian poet about how we have simultaneous timelines, each of us. At any given moment, besides the "reality" I'm living in, I'm playing through thousands upon thousands of parallel, equally plausible, existences. There's a temporal thing that happens when we think like this, when we leave earth for split seconds to explore the universe like it can't be seen here, now. I enjoy the escape, the search,
the knowledge that I will come to no conclusion. I am, we are, Joycian. The lifetime of no 21st century intellect or poet or scholar will result in any conclusion beyond that we aren't quite there yet. There's a lot of ground for humanity to cover before the period of self-realization, before we as Arhants walk together. But of you, reader, I'll see you when we get there. The universe has a funny way of carrying the one.
Someone, please, let's talk about reality.
Friday, April 17, 2009
"Maybe it's just the nature of people having a little faith"
It's another good day in a relatively good week. The window's open and I'm listening to this, smiling and warm. That link there is over a year old, but totally refreshing and wonderful to revisit.
It's the first midafternoon post from me in quite a while, and there isn't a whole lot to say other than that I like the shape things are taking. Everything the psuedopsychologists have to say about Spring and what it does has been pretty spot for me, far as I can tell. And it is quite possible that I couldn't ask for anything better right now. Sun and trees, pretty girls and happy faces.
Short post, this. More to establish a pace for getting this thing written on more frequenly than anything. You'll be hearing from me.
It's the first midafternoon post from me in quite a while, and there isn't a whole lot to say other than that I like the shape things are taking. Everything the psuedopsychologists have to say about Spring and what it does has been pretty spot for me, far as I can tell. And it is quite possible that I couldn't ask for anything better right now. Sun and trees, pretty girls and happy faces.
Short post, this. More to establish a pace for getting this thing written on more frequenly than anything. You'll be hearing from me.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Noise
I think it fine to say I've been hibernating.
Happy Easter, first of all. It was just before Christmas that we last spoke, dear internet, and the months between have had their share of ups and downs. The winter was dark and cold, and so perhaps was I. It was the best and worst of times.
I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. Don't you wish you could sometimes just get a transcript of what's going on in your brain, the opposing voices with their commentary and song? It's possible that this is madness, but I believe it equally possible that this is simply the postmodern human condition: this obsession with place, placelessness and rejection of place as a reality at all. Because I'm living this life, right?, and I feel like there is somewhere a moment for me to arrive where I say, "Ah, here I am, isn't it beautiful." We think in context of this moment which may or may not exist (in the trajectory of time or whatever) but consider its subjectivity and instability of location. I mean, what kind of reference point is the present? Show me a guy who can say, "I just have to hold out 'til this moment and everything will make all kinds of sense." Seriously, show me. Maybe aging is just figuring out, "shit, I guess I'm where I'm gonna be. Might as well take a look around."
But I don't know about this postmodern brain'a mine. Of ours. We've got the immediate thoughts. The it is a beautiful day today thoughts. On top of that we have the internal monologue, the my it's a beautiful day today, just like on my seventh birthday when we had a dinosaur theme and a scavenger hunt that everyone won thoughts. This is all well and good. We should be able to think in different time streams, travel momentarily to other points in our chronology and return having retrieved information without being loosed from the concept of present.
Then there's this other track playing, and I don't know if generations before ours really had it. We've got this metanarrative thing that pans in and out sometimes. I don't really know how to write about it, but it's that chime that reminds you that you're leaving earth for a second, whether zoning out or remembering something or whatever, an acknowledgement of disconnect and a question of what it means that you're where you are mentally at this particular moment. Right NOW. It's a small feeling, this.
Society exists for very specific reasons I think. It gives us something to cling to, compare ourselves with. Normality is a relative point of reference that provides context to our selves, allowing an easy construction of self. It keeps us self-satisfied and, perhaps more importantly, busy considering the aethetics of everything. Qualifying in terms of amount or duration or size or achievement or title. This isn't bitterness, I think the purpose is of quite some substance.
But, really, fuck all that.
Maybe we're all particles bouncing off each other and very subtley altering by scientific variable the course of whatever, the universe or something, I don't know. Maybe we live and die and nobody gives a fuck. Maybe our collective mind is driving the species and there's something very terrible about what that says of us, and something amazing about what we can do. Maybe it's all bullshit. Maybe life renews or maybe it doesn't and it's all meaningless. Regardless, I think we're missing the damn point.
What I'm talking about is that when I touch you, and you're beautiful, and in that moment we're something, I feel this incredible electric calm.
And maybe that's the fucking point.
Perhaps heavy on the psuedo-philosophy, this feels good. This moment we're having now. Start a blog. I want to read it. This is an exciting time and somebody has to write it. Might as well be us, yes?
All my love,
Mike
Happy Easter, first of all. It was just before Christmas that we last spoke, dear internet, and the months between have had their share of ups and downs. The winter was dark and cold, and so perhaps was I. It was the best and worst of times.
I've been doing a lot of reading and a lot of thinking. Don't you wish you could sometimes just get a transcript of what's going on in your brain, the opposing voices with their commentary and song? It's possible that this is madness, but I believe it equally possible that this is simply the postmodern human condition: this obsession with place, placelessness and rejection of place as a reality at all. Because I'm living this life, right?, and I feel like there is somewhere a moment for me to arrive where I say, "Ah, here I am, isn't it beautiful." We think in context of this moment which may or may not exist (in the trajectory of time or whatever) but consider its subjectivity and instability of location. I mean, what kind of reference point is the present? Show me a guy who can say, "I just have to hold out 'til this moment and everything will make all kinds of sense." Seriously, show me. Maybe aging is just figuring out, "shit, I guess I'm where I'm gonna be. Might as well take a look around."
But I don't know about this postmodern brain'a mine. Of ours. We've got the immediate thoughts. The it is a beautiful day today thoughts. On top of that we have the internal monologue, the my it's a beautiful day today, just like on my seventh birthday when we had a dinosaur theme and a scavenger hunt that everyone won thoughts. This is all well and good. We should be able to think in different time streams, travel momentarily to other points in our chronology and return having retrieved information without being loosed from the concept of present.
Then there's this other track playing, and I don't know if generations before ours really had it. We've got this metanarrative thing that pans in and out sometimes. I don't really know how to write about it, but it's that chime that reminds you that you're leaving earth for a second, whether zoning out or remembering something or whatever, an acknowledgement of disconnect and a question of what it means that you're where you are mentally at this particular moment. Right NOW. It's a small feeling, this.
Society exists for very specific reasons I think. It gives us something to cling to, compare ourselves with. Normality is a relative point of reference that provides context to our selves, allowing an easy construction of self. It keeps us self-satisfied and, perhaps more importantly, busy considering the aethetics of everything. Qualifying in terms of amount or duration or size or achievement or title. This isn't bitterness, I think the purpose is of quite some substance.
But, really, fuck all that.
Maybe we're all particles bouncing off each other and very subtley altering by scientific variable the course of whatever, the universe or something, I don't know. Maybe we live and die and nobody gives a fuck. Maybe our collective mind is driving the species and there's something very terrible about what that says of us, and something amazing about what we can do. Maybe it's all bullshit. Maybe life renews or maybe it doesn't and it's all meaningless. Regardless, I think we're missing the damn point.
What I'm talking about is that when I touch you, and you're beautiful, and in that moment we're something, I feel this incredible electric calm.
And maybe that's the fucking point.
Perhaps heavy on the psuedo-philosophy, this feels good. This moment we're having now. Start a blog. I want to read it. This is an exciting time and somebody has to write it. Might as well be us, yes?
All my love,
Mike
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