I've obsessed about it before in the abstract, lamenting how terrible it is that I keep falling into this habit of doing things because they are practical. Not thinking, not caring, and just dulling all my senses and enduring for the sake of a meaningless "path to the good life." You see, the basic question is, Should I focus on achieving a good status now, in order that I will have an excellent position later?
Should I put aside all my side obsessions and desires in order that I may adopt them later?
That doesn't make any sense. Not only will I lose all my familiarity with how to actually be interested in things, but I will have instead wasted a good portion of my life. And I have done it before and noticed how much it just doesn't work. For all the time I dedicated, I got so little reward out of it. Whereas if I had instead enjoyed my life for what it was, not only would I have learned more about myself and my interests and had a better time, I would probably be better off for having learned how to involve myself and experienced my interests.
I wanted so hard to be the ideal child. So I was. I performed very very well in school. I never neglected my family's wishes. I never transgressed in any real way. I didn't take risks, I followed most advice. I didn't disappeared off with my friends. I thought I had all the freedom in the world because I had great parents. But now I don't wonder if it was freedom to restrict myself and if I really had tried to do things in a better, more "me-central" way (learning about myself and my world through those self-experienced path of risks and failures) instead of more "future securing" way, I would have been just as constrained by them, under the pretense that I would have been "losing my chances at life." I sincerely doubt they would have acted that way, but it's something I must admit I'll never know.
And of course it seems like I am wrong to think I know better. To try other things when it is so clear that the "right" path is this dedicated, working, focused, preparation one.
And yet....
What that would mean is that it is no longer about the scores and the reputation and the usual objective measures of success. Instead it is about my own involvement, passion, and learning.
I can't help but be revolted. How can I claim such superiority over the "proper life." I'll just slam into a wall and fall all the way I have climbed, won't I? Isn't that what happens? And I'll have so many regrets, and I'll lose the life I could have had! That's what they always say, and they're right, aren't they? How dare I gamble with my life when I have been given everything so far, when I am playing with huge amounts of cash, and all the expectations of friends, family, and my future self.
But the more I stop and think about it. Really think, instead of my constant assumptions, it makes so much more sense. So much more sense to become the person that does what matters to them. So much more sense to pursue dead ends and risks and reap the rewards of understanding, experience, and passion. So much more sense to become the person that doesn't hide behind carefully planned statistical probabilities and instead actually lives. What life, what future, am I securing by this dead lifestyle of maximization of my position. What will I do with it, but continue thinking every year is a critical year to continue securing my future? What, in fact, would be the point if I never learn of myself, my interests, my personality, and my goals? How could I achieve anything but a safe life, secured from everything and sealed off from the things that I really hope for? Yes, I merely want a modest life. That makes no difference. I want a modest life where I am free to do with myself what I will. Not a modest life that is such a fortress of preparedness that all I do is reinforce walls and avoid actually making it livable inside.
How can I teach myself how to live that life of a nomad, wandering the world and picking the fruit I find, when all I know to do is lay bricks, one by one?
Well.
The first step would have to be to accept, with my heart, that I actually do want such a new lifestyle. I've talked about it before, but.... but to actually imagine, accept and desire it without crippling fears and the doubt driving me back to the "right" "safe" "proper" "best" path. (So obviously the right, safe, proper, best path! How can I deny it? How dare I deny it?) I have to do that first before I can progress to any degree. Then. Then maybe I can change how I think and go about things. Actually begin stepping out and just doing things without any promises and plans and guarantees and backups. Actually flourish and grow my life in unexpected and fascinating ways. Try things. Pursue things. Begin things. Really, really create and attempt and bring life to the things I want to do even now, but avoid because of the unknown and the lack of will to actually begin them. (That same lack of will I have talked about before. That same willingness to wait and go without. That same lack of ability to ever begin thing despite all the ideas and interest I have in them.)
I'll have to think on these things. I'll have to think for today, for the next week, perhaps longer. I'll have to be sure and to know. But once I do know. Once I am sure. Then nothing will be holding me back from changing who I am, who I want to be, and what I will become.
Would I be happier?
Edit days later: Oh god, so much fail. I just realized that what I am thinking about as I wrote this is essentially the exact same pattern of behavior as how I (hate how I) play videogames. I've been trying to beat life instead of live it. I try to find out what the objectives are, plan and hoard for them as hard as I can, and forget the rest. That is so effed up.
And I can say that is so wrong, but I don't know how to think any other way about it. Just how I fall back into the same habits about 5 minutes later in a game when I try to play it differently. Yes I can divert myself, yes I've been expanding how many things I appreciate and value and experience. But really really to change how I think and live and plan?
When I look at it that way, it seems like I'll never be able to. Small steps, Grey, small steps.
17 October 2012
14 October 2012
Reverie-smith
The airlock swung, the pressure broke.
The air flowed in, apparition,
and I flowed out, corporeal.
The mountain held still, and I stilled my self to face the mountain.
I didn't see it. I didn't notice it, but the atmosphere above, rolled past.
The clouds silent and formidable, the sky blue and invisible.
The powers of a turning sun.
My eyes swept the mountainside, my skin felt the cold intrude, soon seeping in, resting like a second skin around me.
My breath. In and out.
I watched the earth, the rock, the dirt, the creeping plants. My mind, dark and murky with thoughts of forces, time, and process. The air held still with me.
Then my attention moved to background. Foreground was forgotten, because
The clouds glided above with the majesty of of the ocean's leviathans.
Like they, sealed off - in sound, in space, in time.
With perfect grace and peace, the aggregates of wisps, the masses of drifts, moved above with unknowable purpose, indelible complexity, mysterious source.
Smooth, uniform rotation. Incalculable twisting and flow above me. And just as tranquil, slipping out of existence lengths ahead.
And I could tell that the sky flowed with the clouds. The air flooded, wove, and drifted with exactly the same size and silence, but beyond perception.
It was as if I could feel the earth rotating beneath me, perpetual.
The solidity of it. The immensity. The whole. Pivoting so steadily so as to elude all perception.
///////
It is one of those things that is something I want to do, but have not imagined, and so it remained impossible:
I want to be able to write in such a way that I can impel someone to dream. Most likely not by actually capturing the moment I experienced, but instead to bring out the imagination of another, so that they will create their own enactment of sanctity and sentiment. Use words that do not guide, but invite away. Use thoughts that do not describe, but liberate. Force the words downward, and thrust the reader apart from common tangibility towards the lucidity scattered and sown in their own minds.
Begin with seeds poor for their lives.... proffer them soil of possibility, give them suggestions of water, communicate opportunities overflowing with oxygen. Hint at bounty and sing of tactics. And watch them create beyond what I could give.
The air flowed in, apparition,
and I flowed out, corporeal.
The mountain held still, and I stilled my self to face the mountain.
I didn't see it. I didn't notice it, but the atmosphere above, rolled past.
The clouds silent and formidable, the sky blue and invisible.
The powers of a turning sun.
My eyes swept the mountainside, my skin felt the cold intrude, soon seeping in, resting like a second skin around me.
My breath. In and out.
I watched the earth, the rock, the dirt, the creeping plants. My mind, dark and murky with thoughts of forces, time, and process. The air held still with me.
Then my attention moved to background. Foreground was forgotten, because
The clouds glided above with the majesty of of the ocean's leviathans.
Like they, sealed off - in sound, in space, in time.
With perfect grace and peace, the aggregates of wisps, the masses of drifts, moved above with unknowable purpose, indelible complexity, mysterious source.
Smooth, uniform rotation. Incalculable twisting and flow above me. And just as tranquil, slipping out of existence lengths ahead.
And I could tell that the sky flowed with the clouds. The air flooded, wove, and drifted with exactly the same size and silence, but beyond perception.
It was as if I could feel the earth rotating beneath me, perpetual.
The solidity of it. The immensity. The whole. Pivoting so steadily so as to elude all perception.
///////
It is one of those things that is something I want to do, but have not imagined, and so it remained impossible:
I want to be able to write in such a way that I can impel someone to dream. Most likely not by actually capturing the moment I experienced, but instead to bring out the imagination of another, so that they will create their own enactment of sanctity and sentiment. Use words that do not guide, but invite away. Use thoughts that do not describe, but liberate. Force the words downward, and thrust the reader apart from common tangibility towards the lucidity scattered and sown in their own minds.
Begin with seeds poor for their lives.... proffer them soil of possibility, give them suggestions of water, communicate opportunities overflowing with oxygen. Hint at bounty and sing of tactics. And watch them create beyond what I could give.
Can I Convince You?
Can I convince you
that it is a good idea to want my last words to be, "I used to be a thing"?
It means so little, and yet so much.
I could ask on and on, what /is/ a "thing"? What makes a thing a thing? And what am I? What makes me, me? And what is being, and what was I being? And how? And what does it mean?
It is personal, and something I remember well. Strangely. I don't know why that phrase said to to me (perhaps once, perhaps a few more times) remained with me days after. Nor why I am able to recall it now, hundreds of days later. Nor why it contains so much lightness of nature in my mind.
It is positively absurd, in much the way life defies meaning.
It doesn't try to be more than it is, it makes a simple statement. It can mean more to you, if you so wish. It is surely unusual and contains meaning at least for me, and maybe objectively. And that, really is what I find most of my life to be about. That strange interplay of what has meaning to me, and what might actually have meaning. For others, for the universe, for time, for reality.
I laughed. I laughed at the pure idea of it. I laughed of the context of trying to communicate. I laughed at the success and the failure. I laughed at being alive. I laughed at the instance and the echoing truth that applies everywhere. I laughed at me, I laughed at the universe, and I laughed at where they become one.
that it is a good idea to want my last words to be, "I used to be a thing"?
It means so little, and yet so much.
I could ask on and on, what /is/ a "thing"? What makes a thing a thing? And what am I? What makes me, me? And what is being, and what was I being? And how? And what does it mean?
It is personal, and something I remember well. Strangely. I don't know why that phrase said to to me (perhaps once, perhaps a few more times) remained with me days after. Nor why I am able to recall it now, hundreds of days later. Nor why it contains so much lightness of nature in my mind.
It is positively absurd, in much the way life defies meaning.
It doesn't try to be more than it is, it makes a simple statement. It can mean more to you, if you so wish. It is surely unusual and contains meaning at least for me, and maybe objectively. And that, really is what I find most of my life to be about. That strange interplay of what has meaning to me, and what might actually have meaning. For others, for the universe, for time, for reality.
I laughed. I laughed at the pure idea of it. I laughed of the context of trying to communicate. I laughed at the success and the failure. I laughed at being alive. I laughed at the instance and the echoing truth that applies everywhere. I laughed at me, I laughed at the universe, and I laughed at where they become one.
11 October 2012
Optimistic as All Struck
It is too bad that most often I do not choose to, or do not get a chance to put down my thoughts when I am noticing the good about me. I don't know if it will work, but I'm going to try to do a little of that now.
It's very tempting to fall back onto the same things that have awed and inspired me before, and there's a good chance that I'll do it again, but I want to try and capture it in a new way and explain it in a way that I haven't thought before.
So this time I won't be starting with how complex the world is. Nor how science lets me see more than seeing. Not with the light of the clouds, the quirk of a video game, the feel of the breeze, nor the elements of taste in a cup of tea. (Though I heated up a cup for the sake of this little endeavor)
What's unexpected then? what can I surprise myself with? What have I not tried before?
This is exactly what I am asking myself. I have all the confidence in the world that I can start anywhere. I'd start with the most extreme examples (of mediocrity, of negativity) if I didn't think it cliche. No, I'd rather settle on something more unusual, less grandiose, and perhaps a bit bizarre. (err, I mean intriguing)
Ecology.
You'd think it would be one of the things that I'd always start with, for things that amaze and inspire me, but I seem to rarely give it as much serious thought as I really really ought. The enormous contradiction is that I want it to be my life's work, and yet I haven't put nearly enough thought into phrasing coherently what exactly makes it endlessly fascinating. What spark of impossible reality blooms in the field.
That itself is part of why I believe ecology is my calling. While many other subjects -- indeed, I'd theorize all subjects -- delight and engage me. I can't recall a time when ecology had to be explained or unlocked for me. The real energy of physics had to be translated and brought to life. Oh, it was! Vividly and marvelously, but it wasn't always that way. The sheer size and majesty of space I recall visualizing for the first time in front of an exhibit inside, I think, the San Francisco Tech Museum. The delight of words and multiple meanings is something I am coming to enjoy deeply, but I still find it finite and variable, it doesn't have the solid, impenetrable wonder that other subject do (, yet!). Philosophy is impressive and pure enough, and it is something I have great expectancy for how universal and beneficent it will prove to me to be, but I do not have any certain answers within it, and perhaps I never will. I feel it is still too new prospect for me. Countless other subjects I have a huge appreciation for (geology, mathematics, videogames (read: interactive media) history, programming, art) and yet each I cannot help but notice how I gained that appreciation. What I changed from, to, and what entirely new areas it opened for me. I can speak of how I was aware of so little before, or cared so little for before I knew them better, and how much that has changed! But first I should look to the original thing I set out to do. (Maybe a few hours from now I can start on that, and I would very much like to write of that, it's too true.)
Ecology. Ecology just, completely, automatically is so very very interesting. I cannot say why life is specifically so much more fascinating to me than the abstracts of how things happen in physics, or the building blocks of chemistry, or the elusive truth of words. Perhaps it is because of the same reason I am fascinated with motion. It is so mysterious in how I cannot pin down exactly everything that is causing the things I observe, and yet.....! And yet I know that everything is there, all the information is there in front of me. And with such absolute certainty and clarity. And with such beauty. Beauty in how it all comes together. Beauty in how it can all be taken apart. And beauty in every step in between. The higher levels of the idea, the execution, the act of taking it apart itself. Everything, everything is beautiful and everything merges and winds together. Inseparable and yet we /can/ artificially separate it. And I can’t tell if doing so makes it more or less beautiful. Probably both at once.
Ecology is like that... like that simple example of motion, only infinite beyond understanding.
Instead of concrete abstract laws of physics there are (just as absolute) laws of nature that are ever modifying themselves. Instead of one action, there are a thousand, all in unison and all in complete /perfect/ opposition. Everything is a horrendous accident and yet, so completely at the same time a marvelous plan that cannot fail. Life acts miracles, but only because we don’t understand it. It can surpass insurmountable odds, but only because we are so limited in our own imaginings. Life acts so definitely and so lifelike, and then turns around and acts so very un-lifelike. Fragility and immortality. It is so impossibly imaginative because it is so very very mindless. Yes, there is the wonder of how fractals and geometry and numbers emerge from randomness. But it’s so much more than that. It is such a fantastic wonder, but how extremely limiting a wonder when life does so much unimaginably more. We haven’t even dreamt up 99.9999% the formulas and mathematics that life has, why stop and wonder at the phi we found in a sunflower?
How very very humbling, and yet how very very empowering ecology is. We can tinker with it, we can even improve it with our mindfulness. And I can laugh and say we can never improve it because we do have minds. We do optimize and plan, and look how life manages so much better because it absolutely does not optimize and plan. It ends up optimizing, but only by avoiding optimizing. By being imperfect, yes, but also by dealing with the inherent random disasters that all life must be able to accommodate for.
I’m speaking of genetics. I’m speaking of behavior. I’m speaking of interspecies interactions. I’m speaking of all the strange subsystems that emerge and blend and make up the way it interacts. Life probably (provably?) interacts with ever increasing levels of complexity too. There is the obvious answer of replication, single cells, multiple cells, colonies, and gaia-like proportions, but I think that too is perhaps too limited a view. It plays with it’s own laws of genetics, it’s own limitations of individuality, (both individual and species scales) it’s own systems of systems of systems.
And everything can teach us something. New ways to think, new levels of interaction and thought and logic. We can use the results, divine the sources, combine the parts, and tease apart rules. Strangely, we can do that. Maybe through tricks of our own minds. Maybe because we are part of nature herself and we can never escape her just as she can never escape us. I don’t understand how we can do it, just as I don’t understand most of what and how and why she works. But it’s that motion. The answers are there, present in the processes everywhere around us. Back through time, now and forward. Always moving, changing, reforming, always the same and yet never ever ever one thing.
It's very tempting to fall back onto the same things that have awed and inspired me before, and there's a good chance that I'll do it again, but I want to try and capture it in a new way and explain it in a way that I haven't thought before.
So this time I won't be starting with how complex the world is. Nor how science lets me see more than seeing. Not with the light of the clouds, the quirk of a video game, the feel of the breeze, nor the elements of taste in a cup of tea. (Though I heated up a cup for the sake of this little endeavor)
What's unexpected then? what can I surprise myself with? What have I not tried before?
This is exactly what I am asking myself. I have all the confidence in the world that I can start anywhere. I'd start with the most extreme examples (of mediocrity, of negativity) if I didn't think it cliche. No, I'd rather settle on something more unusual, less grandiose, and perhaps a bit bizarre. (err, I mean intriguing)
Ecology.
You'd think it would be one of the things that I'd always start with, for things that amaze and inspire me, but I seem to rarely give it as much serious thought as I really really ought. The enormous contradiction is that I want it to be my life's work, and yet I haven't put nearly enough thought into phrasing coherently what exactly makes it endlessly fascinating. What spark of impossible reality blooms in the field.
That itself is part of why I believe ecology is my calling. While many other subjects -- indeed, I'd theorize all subjects -- delight and engage me. I can't recall a time when ecology had to be explained or unlocked for me. The real energy of physics had to be translated and brought to life. Oh, it was! Vividly and marvelously, but it wasn't always that way. The sheer size and majesty of space I recall visualizing for the first time in front of an exhibit inside, I think, the San Francisco Tech Museum. The delight of words and multiple meanings is something I am coming to enjoy deeply, but I still find it finite and variable, it doesn't have the solid, impenetrable wonder that other subject do (, yet!). Philosophy is impressive and pure enough, and it is something I have great expectancy for how universal and beneficent it will prove to me to be, but I do not have any certain answers within it, and perhaps I never will. I feel it is still too new prospect for me. Countless other subjects I have a huge appreciation for (geology, mathematics, videogames (read: interactive media) history, programming, art) and yet each I cannot help but notice how I gained that appreciation. What I changed from, to, and what entirely new areas it opened for me. I can speak of how I was aware of so little before, or cared so little for before I knew them better, and how much that has changed! But first I should look to the original thing I set out to do. (Maybe a few hours from now I can start on that, and I would very much like to write of that, it's too true.)
Ecology. Ecology just, completely, automatically is so very very interesting. I cannot say why life is specifically so much more fascinating to me than the abstracts of how things happen in physics, or the building blocks of chemistry, or the elusive truth of words. Perhaps it is because of the same reason I am fascinated with motion. It is so mysterious in how I cannot pin down exactly everything that is causing the things I observe, and yet.....! And yet I know that everything is there, all the information is there in front of me. And with such absolute certainty and clarity. And with such beauty. Beauty in how it all comes together. Beauty in how it can all be taken apart. And beauty in every step in between. The higher levels of the idea, the execution, the act of taking it apart itself. Everything, everything is beautiful and everything merges and winds together. Inseparable and yet we /can/ artificially separate it. And I can’t tell if doing so makes it more or less beautiful. Probably both at once.
Ecology is like that... like that simple example of motion, only infinite beyond understanding.
Instead of concrete abstract laws of physics there are (just as absolute) laws of nature that are ever modifying themselves. Instead of one action, there are a thousand, all in unison and all in complete /perfect/ opposition. Everything is a horrendous accident and yet, so completely at the same time a marvelous plan that cannot fail. Life acts miracles, but only because we don’t understand it. It can surpass insurmountable odds, but only because we are so limited in our own imaginings. Life acts so definitely and so lifelike, and then turns around and acts so very un-lifelike. Fragility and immortality. It is so impossibly imaginative because it is so very very mindless. Yes, there is the wonder of how fractals and geometry and numbers emerge from randomness. But it’s so much more than that. It is such a fantastic wonder, but how extremely limiting a wonder when life does so much unimaginably more. We haven’t even dreamt up 99.9999% the formulas and mathematics that life has, why stop and wonder at the phi we found in a sunflower?
How very very humbling, and yet how very very empowering ecology is. We can tinker with it, we can even improve it with our mindfulness. And I can laugh and say we can never improve it because we do have minds. We do optimize and plan, and look how life manages so much better because it absolutely does not optimize and plan. It ends up optimizing, but only by avoiding optimizing. By being imperfect, yes, but also by dealing with the inherent random disasters that all life must be able to accommodate for.
I’m speaking of genetics. I’m speaking of behavior. I’m speaking of interspecies interactions. I’m speaking of all the strange subsystems that emerge and blend and make up the way it interacts. Life probably (provably?) interacts with ever increasing levels of complexity too. There is the obvious answer of replication, single cells, multiple cells, colonies, and gaia-like proportions, but I think that too is perhaps too limited a view. It plays with it’s own laws of genetics, it’s own limitations of individuality, (both individual and species scales) it’s own systems of systems of systems.
And everything can teach us something. New ways to think, new levels of interaction and thought and logic. We can use the results, divine the sources, combine the parts, and tease apart rules. Strangely, we can do that. Maybe through tricks of our own minds. Maybe because we are part of nature herself and we can never escape her just as she can never escape us. I don’t understand how we can do it, just as I don’t understand most of what and how and why she works. But it’s that motion. The answers are there, present in the processes everywhere around us. Back through time, now and forward. Always moving, changing, reforming, always the same and yet never ever ever one thing.
05 October 2012
Not hiding
There's no need to hide my tears.
I can walk right by someone, with tears still on my face, look them in the eyes, smile, and they won't even notice that I've been crying.
I will, in the midst of my distress, wish that I could talk to someone - tell someone I'm upset. And then I try to visualize it, and realize that I don't want to hear from anyone, and I don't really desire anyone to know.
"It's okay." I know.
"It's hard." No, it really isn't.
"You're a good person." Yeah, well, that isn't really the problem and it doesn't really help.
"You'll be okay." I'm aware, I'll agree in about a minute.
"I'm here for you." I don't think you can help.
*Comforts* I feel awkward and like I've wasted your time.
*Listens* Now I feel stupid and like I've wasted your time.
"There are other things that are more important." Yeah, I know, I'll be back to normal in a bit.
"Aww, don't cry." This feels more meaningful than being back to normal. But it's wrong and unbalanced if I were thinking straight. I don't want to feel bad about this because I know its not reasonable or practical or helpful. I don't want to be normal either, but it'd be better I guess. Better because it'd be more acceptable. Better because I'd get something done. Better because it's reasonable, practical, logical, and stable.
So what /would/ help? It's not from the responses. I already know pretty much all the angles and ways to look at my situation. I already know what I feel and what I should think and why.
What I do want, is to be understood. Not to be comforted, but to actually have someone know what I'm experiencing. I justdon't think know no one would understand the in's and out's of how I feel, and it'd be just a painful inability to communicate for both of us if I tried.
It doesn't stop me from wanting to be understood.
(I can even articulate the exact combination of thoughts and emotions that cause me to be upset. I can even describe and bring out the looming fears and sadness and how they affect me. I can even pinpoint the way they cross and scrape and why it affects me so. But it wouldn't do any good. I could get someone to understand the cause and the things I care about and why, but not the depth nor the ripples nor the roots that weave in and out and bind it and suspend it. Let alone someone being prepared or wanting to understand.)
I can walk right by someone, with tears still on my face, look them in the eyes, smile, and they won't even notice that I've been crying.
I will, in the midst of my distress, wish that I could talk to someone - tell someone I'm upset. And then I try to visualize it, and realize that I don't want to hear from anyone, and I don't really desire anyone to know.
"It's okay." I know.
"It's hard." No, it really isn't.
"You're a good person." Yeah, well, that isn't really the problem and it doesn't really help.
"You'll be okay." I'm aware, I'll agree in about a minute.
"I'm here for you." I don't think you can help.
*Comforts* I feel awkward and like I've wasted your time.
*Listens* Now I feel stupid and like I've wasted your time.
"There are other things that are more important." Yeah, I know, I'll be back to normal in a bit.
"Aww, don't cry." This feels more meaningful than being back to normal. But it's wrong and unbalanced if I were thinking straight. I don't want to feel bad about this because I know its not reasonable or practical or helpful. I don't want to be normal either, but it'd be better I guess. Better because it'd be more acceptable. Better because I'd get something done. Better because it's reasonable, practical, logical, and stable.
So what /would/ help? It's not from the responses. I already know pretty much all the angles and ways to look at my situation. I already know what I feel and what I should think and why.
What I do want, is to be understood. Not to be comforted, but to actually have someone know what I'm experiencing. I just
It doesn't stop me from wanting to be understood.
(I can even articulate the exact combination of thoughts and emotions that cause me to be upset. I can even describe and bring out the looming fears and sadness and how they affect me. I can even pinpoint the way they cross and scrape and why it affects me so. But it wouldn't do any good. I could get someone to understand the cause and the things I care about and why, but not the depth nor the ripples nor the roots that weave in and out and bind it and suspend it. Let alone someone being prepared or wanting to understand.)
04 October 2012
Coll
I'm hearing crazy amazing science facts and I'm laughing and smiling and clapping my hands at how interesting and amusing and fun it all is.
So why am I the only one doing it? Didn't everyone hear that? Isn't the universe crazy? Isn't it interesting? Isn't it fun? Why isn't everyone filled with glee at how incredibly insane reality is?
Am I wrong? Are they wrong? What is wrong?
What is wrong?
What is wrong what is wrong what is wrong
Why can't I learn about this stuff all the time. Why don't I.
Dammit.
I hate this.
So why am I the only one doing it? Didn't everyone hear that? Isn't the universe crazy? Isn't it interesting? Isn't it fun? Why isn't everyone filled with glee at how incredibly insane reality is?
Am I wrong? Are they wrong? What is wrong?
What is wrong?
What is wrong what is wrong what is wrong
Why can't I learn about this stuff all the time. Why don't I.
Dammit.
I hate this.
22 September 2012
Blight
Every time I do turn to the things I call important and meaningful, I delude myself. Those books with theatrical endings, those movies with morals that manipulate me to tears, those songs with perfect righteous messages of truth, they are all hollow. Works of art, of course they are nothing. They cast a story, a conflict, a thought, and ideal as if it were so simple. Of course it seems meaningful when it is all one side. And of course, all my infatuation with perspectives makes the world seem full with meaning. It is just picking out paths that follow consistency down an infinite tunnel that disappears into the abyss. Those threads, I create. They are not there, I imagine them. I think they come together to make a wonderful picture. Of course they do by placing them and picking them out so carefully prejudiced. If, instead, you look at all of it, everything together, all you would know would be a mess of nothing on top of nothing on top of nothing. Everything blends, not into an orchestra, but into a pitiful destruction of all that might have been beautiful about it. And it takes all the good mixed into it along, crushing and dragging it down with the rest.
The sooner I give up on my laughable obsession with meaning and ideals the happier I'll be. No, not happier. I'm happier living such lies. But what contradiction. I seek truth, I tell myself, but want to turn away.
I should stop all of it. All of the useless searching and desire. I have enough, more than enough as it is. I am fortunate to have such a place in this world. And I should attend to it instead of wasting it. Do what other people do, indulge myself awhile in tangible pleasures. Feed the basic human needs. I have neglected them, told myself I didn't need them, tried to live apart. But I'll just ruin myself this way. I'm just a primal human and I should act it. Give myself pleasure by pandering, go ahead and seek attention, stop questioning, always be right, believe I am the center of everything, take whatever I want, mindlessness isn't bad, don't worry about honor, progress, or transcendence.
There is no reason to try my best. Just get by. There is no reason to act like love is anything more than a simple satisfaction of a selfish need. It is a waste of time and energy to seek higher pleasures. It's foolish and presumptuous to suppose that I can be better. I'm just more delusional. That doesn't make me any worse either. I'm just the same as everyone. Just the same. So why antagonize myself, why pretend that there is more and I'm some wonderful martyr seeking out truth. Isn't that exactly what your fanciful journey is about - avoiding the lies. Well you know what is definitely earthly and true. Why am I still looking instead of tending to it?
I should be doing all the things I know I should do. Not because they are more worthwhile, but because that is something that is tangible and planned out. Get those grades and points not because they matter, but because they will get me a comfortable life. It won't be one wrapped in epiphany (what a joke) and it won't be the most luxurious (I never wanted that) but it will be pleasant and that's the best this world has to offer.
What are ideals but things to make us feel better. I've seen how time after time morals and truths are presented as absolute, even when they are directly contradictory to other equally perfect ideals and truths. Yet I ignore that and believe them anyway? I might as well join up with religious fanatics, it would give me the same kind of fulfillment. No, these are the things that I decided not to enjoy. Arbitrarily, but it is so. So I will stick as close to the truth as possible. Not the idyllic kind, but the reliable kind.
Stop thinking. Just act. It has served you well, and will always. None of this turbulence that could cast me away at any time. None of this higher-order tinkering that could just mess something up. Just do enough to get by and close your eyes from the dazzling promises of "higher things." They don't exist, and even if they did, they could just as easily rend and raze you and all that you have carefully built.
////////
How much do I believe what I just said? A lot. Sometimes I wish I didn't think it or at least could laugh and ignore it. Instead it lives on inside of me, complete and smug that it is so impenetrable. It's buried and covered and surrounded by more worthwhile perspectives. It doesn't intrude much on how I think, except when I want it to. But it certainly exists, and a lot more undeniably than many of the other worldviews I prefer.
And, consistent with what I think is right, I preserve it despite how much I sometimes think it poison.
I can't say that I can give perfect letter to why is is wrong or at least why I don't believe it. But I don't, and I know I don't, and I hope I never do. What I know instead are beautiful wonderful things in this life. Some of them are ideals. Some of them are perspectives. Some of them are crystallized emotions and spiritual "epiphanies." And all of them make me who I am. They are found, collected, treasured, and made mine. They are the things that guide my life instead of that thing.
Still.
I live with the knowledge that haunts me.
The sooner I give up on my laughable obsession with meaning and ideals the happier I'll be. No, not happier. I'm happier living such lies. But what contradiction. I seek truth, I tell myself, but want to turn away.
I should stop all of it. All of the useless searching and desire. I have enough, more than enough as it is. I am fortunate to have such a place in this world. And I should attend to it instead of wasting it. Do what other people do, indulge myself awhile in tangible pleasures. Feed the basic human needs. I have neglected them, told myself I didn't need them, tried to live apart. But I'll just ruin myself this way. I'm just a primal human and I should act it. Give myself pleasure by pandering, go ahead and seek attention, stop questioning, always be right, believe I am the center of everything, take whatever I want, mindlessness isn't bad, don't worry about honor, progress, or transcendence.
There is no reason to try my best. Just get by. There is no reason to act like love is anything more than a simple satisfaction of a selfish need. It is a waste of time and energy to seek higher pleasures. It's foolish and presumptuous to suppose that I can be better. I'm just more delusional. That doesn't make me any worse either. I'm just the same as everyone. Just the same. So why antagonize myself, why pretend that there is more and I'm some wonderful martyr seeking out truth. Isn't that exactly what your fanciful journey is about - avoiding the lies. Well you know what is definitely earthly and true. Why am I still looking instead of tending to it?
I should be doing all the things I know I should do. Not because they are more worthwhile, but because that is something that is tangible and planned out. Get those grades and points not because they matter, but because they will get me a comfortable life. It won't be one wrapped in epiphany (what a joke) and it won't be the most luxurious (I never wanted that) but it will be pleasant and that's the best this world has to offer.
What are ideals but things to make us feel better. I've seen how time after time morals and truths are presented as absolute, even when they are directly contradictory to other equally perfect ideals and truths. Yet I ignore that and believe them anyway? I might as well join up with religious fanatics, it would give me the same kind of fulfillment. No, these are the things that I decided not to enjoy. Arbitrarily, but it is so. So I will stick as close to the truth as possible. Not the idyllic kind, but the reliable kind.
Stop thinking. Just act. It has served you well, and will always. None of this turbulence that could cast me away at any time. None of this higher-order tinkering that could just mess something up. Just do enough to get by and close your eyes from the dazzling promises of "higher things." They don't exist, and even if they did, they could just as easily rend and raze you and all that you have carefully built.
////////
How much do I believe what I just said? A lot. Sometimes I wish I didn't think it or at least could laugh and ignore it. Instead it lives on inside of me, complete and smug that it is so impenetrable. It's buried and covered and surrounded by more worthwhile perspectives. It doesn't intrude much on how I think, except when I want it to. But it certainly exists, and a lot more undeniably than many of the other worldviews I prefer.
And, consistent with what I think is right, I preserve it despite how much I sometimes think it poison.
I can't say that I can give perfect letter to why is is wrong or at least why I don't believe it. But I don't, and I know I don't, and I hope I never do. What I know instead are beautiful wonderful things in this life. Some of them are ideals. Some of them are perspectives. Some of them are crystallized emotions and spiritual "epiphanies." And all of them make me who I am. They are found, collected, treasured, and made mine. They are the things that guide my life instead of that thing.
Still.
I live with the knowledge that haunts me.
19 September 2012
Enterprise
I want poetry, I want salvation.
All day today, from the moment I woke up, and probably to the moment I sleep, I will have been doing. I woke up realizing I had three major assignments and a whole host of smaller things to take care of within the next three days' time. From then on, it was focus, productivity, or at least multitasking. Even when I stopped paying attention, I was reading more profitable material than I usual divert myself with. In short, I wish everyday were like this day instead of the nothing I usually engage in.... except....
It is a hollow wish. "I wish I were more productive. I wish I thought profoundly more often." Of course I wish these things, but there is a missing component. A why or a strength of mind or an emotion that is not behind this "desire" - in truth I cannot call it a desire because it is missing this critical component-I-cannot-name.
I do not feel proud, exhilarated, or successful despite how admirably I worked, dedicated, and accomplished my tasks. The same way I don't feel bad when I, rationally evaluating, have atrociously wasted my time. (I ought to think it is atrocious, but I definitely don't) One use is better than the other, but merely by default.
But now... now I am pensive. Absorbing all around me twofold. This is what I seek and desire. Not productivity or lack thereof, that is meaningless in comparison to the matter of how I engage in either.
However, I choose to go to be social and sacrifice this perfect profoundness I now possess. Because it is good for me, and this frame of mind will just have to wait for an unscheduled time.
//////
Today I felt the most like who I think I am, or who I used to be, or who I normally am, whatever,
I don't know anymore.
That.... simple state of action, all logical but unthinking. I was doing my work because I had to do my work. It made sense, it was right, there was nothing to think about, just do it because it is required. I call it practicality, when I refer to this... just... obviously right actions that I do without qualm or reflection. And then when I got distracted during the day a bit, it was just good and nothing fantastic nor terrible. And when I started to feel like doing something meaningful, I did, but it was more fanciful then serious or thoughtful. And the conversation I had that night about interesting, serious topics with some acquaintances was just that.
Interesting.
That was it.
I came back to spend most all the evening catching up and preparing for tomorrow after wasting some time being lazy. I worked, listening to Imogen Heap and it reminded me strongly of how I like it now in the same way as I liked it back when I first heard it. And then the lyrics started to play in my mind,
That's the way it was with me. Life was pleasant and I knew my place in it. But it was also vacant and I didn't need anything more than just acting for practical reasons and trusting that that would be what was best. That was what life was about, right? Doing what was obviously right and getting ahead while you could so you could coast through any problems that might arise.
Getting the chance to store up chances and good fortune so that you can call upon it any time you wanted or needed. That was what life was about. And life was good.
And tonight I don't think I can call upon much to contradict that. Except I still have a small part of me that wants more. And now I feed that part instead of tucking it away.
I don't just smile vacantly at my reflective thoughts, pleased but placid. Now I draw them out and mark them and interpret them. I write dissertations and investigations. I feel pangs of poetry in certain thoughts that hang in the air. And I work myself up over desires that I can't fulfill perfectly because of a conflict between reason and sentiment.
So I was so virtuous today. And yet, how soulless compared to the days I buried myself in musing and inclination.
And still I know how terrible it would have been if I had spoken those words of sparking purport. How much I would have strayed from being practical and taking care of things I need and have to take care of. How much danger and harm I would have started towards doing myself.
But still, it can only to be said ill that I am here, now, typing these parched words instead of trying to sift the deluge of thought and catalyst and vitality and sincerity that proliferates when I summon the thoughts forth.
////////
And yet. Yet now that I have returned to sound judgement and practicality and my old self. While that other part of me exists, the one that whispers this isn't all there is to life. There is another part of me that whispers, "yes it is." For all of your passion and truth, it is but fantasy. A land of pretend for the sake of a teenage mind, sick with irrationality and seeking for something that isn't there and never will be. Pretend. Not profoundness. All of that struggle is for lies. Oh it's fine to keep going along that dead-end path, but it will only run out eventually. All of that passion and care and inspiration is falsehood born of a fevered mind. You'll come around eventually. You'll forget that silly game and leave behind your childish wonder.
(Nooo nooo noo, don't let it be true, don't fall for a vacant life, don't go back to never touching anything, never being touched by anything. Somebody, something, stop me)
TL;DR
*frustrated* It's not /fair./ I want to /talk./ I want to /think./ But all today I had things to attend to. And now I have to sleep. Because those are things that are /normal/ and /necessary/ and why can't the other things be just as important. I mean they are (and more so?) but they don't get the same free ride.... It's so unfair I can't even think about this because it's late. I'm not tired, but I have to go to sleep. *frustratedfrustrated*
And this practical necessity. It will never end.
Prepare. For what?
All day today, from the moment I woke up, and probably to the moment I sleep, I will have been doing. I woke up realizing I had three major assignments and a whole host of smaller things to take care of within the next three days' time. From then on, it was focus, productivity, or at least multitasking. Even when I stopped paying attention, I was reading more profitable material than I usual divert myself with. In short, I wish everyday were like this day instead of the nothing I usually engage in.... except....
It is a hollow wish. "I wish I were more productive. I wish I thought profoundly more often." Of course I wish these things, but there is a missing component. A why or a strength of mind or an emotion that is not behind this "desire" - in truth I cannot call it a desire because it is missing this critical component-I-cannot-name.
I do not feel proud, exhilarated, or successful despite how admirably I worked, dedicated, and accomplished my tasks. The same way I don't feel bad when I, rationally evaluating, have atrociously wasted my time. (I ought to think it is atrocious, but I definitely don't) One use is better than the other, but merely by default.
But now... now I am pensive. Absorbing all around me twofold. This is what I seek and desire. Not productivity or lack thereof, that is meaningless in comparison to the matter of how I engage in either.
However, I choose to go to be social and sacrifice this perfect profoundness I now possess. Because it is good for me, and this frame of mind will just have to wait for an unscheduled time.
//////
Today I felt the most like who I think I am, or who I used to be, or who I normally am, whatever,
I don't know anymore.
That.... simple state of action, all logical but unthinking. I was doing my work because I had to do my work. It made sense, it was right, there was nothing to think about, just do it because it is required. I call it practicality, when I refer to this... just... obviously right actions that I do without qualm or reflection. And then when I got distracted during the day a bit, it was just good and nothing fantastic nor terrible. And when I started to feel like doing something meaningful, I did, but it was more fanciful then serious or thoughtful. And the conversation I had that night about interesting, serious topics with some acquaintances was just that.
Interesting.
That was it.
I came back to spend most all the evening catching up and preparing for tomorrow after wasting some time being lazy. I worked, listening to Imogen Heap and it reminded me strongly of how I like it now in the same way as I liked it back when I first heard it. And then the lyrics started to play in my mind,
It's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all, I don't want to feel like this, Yeah,
No it's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all,
I don't want to feel like this, so that makes it all your fault.
Inside out, upside-down twisting beside myself,
Stop that now; you're as close as it gets without touching me,
Oh no, don't make it harder than it already is,
Mmm, I feel a weakness coming on.
That's the way it was with me. Life was pleasant and I knew my place in it. But it was also vacant and I didn't need anything more than just acting for practical reasons and trusting that that would be what was best. That was what life was about, right? Doing what was obviously right and getting ahead while you could so you could coast through any problems that might arise.
Getting the chance to store up chances and good fortune so that you can call upon it any time you wanted or needed. That was what life was about. And life was good.
And tonight I don't think I can call upon much to contradict that. Except I still have a small part of me that wants more. And now I feed that part instead of tucking it away.
I don't just smile vacantly at my reflective thoughts, pleased but placid. Now I draw them out and mark them and interpret them. I write dissertations and investigations. I feel pangs of poetry in certain thoughts that hang in the air. And I work myself up over desires that I can't fulfill perfectly because of a conflict between reason and sentiment.
So I was so virtuous today. And yet, how soulless compared to the days I buried myself in musing and inclination.
And still I know how terrible it would have been if I had spoken those words of sparking purport. How much I would have strayed from being practical and taking care of things I need and have to take care of. How much danger and harm I would have started towards doing myself.
But still, it can only to be said ill that I am here, now, typing these parched words instead of trying to sift the deluge of thought and catalyst and vitality and sincerity that proliferates when I summon the thoughts forth.
////////
And yet. Yet now that I have returned to sound judgement and practicality and my old self. While that other part of me exists, the one that whispers this isn't all there is to life. There is another part of me that whispers, "yes it is." For all of your passion and truth, it is but fantasy. A land of pretend for the sake of a teenage mind, sick with irrationality and seeking for something that isn't there and never will be. Pretend. Not profoundness. All of that struggle is for lies. Oh it's fine to keep going along that dead-end path, but it will only run out eventually. All of that passion and care and inspiration is falsehood born of a fevered mind. You'll come around eventually. You'll forget that silly game and leave behind your childish wonder.
(Nooo nooo noo, don't let it be true, don't fall for a vacant life, don't go back to never touching anything, never being touched by anything. Somebody, something, stop me)
TL;DR
*frustrated* It's not /fair./ I want to /talk./ I want to /think./ But all today I had things to attend to. And now I have to sleep. Because those are things that are /normal/ and /necessary/ and why can't the other things be just as important. I mean they are (and more so?) but they don't get the same free ride.... It's so unfair I can't even think about this because it's late. I'm not tired, but I have to go to sleep. *frustratedfrustrated*
And this practical necessity. It will never end.
Prepare. For what?
15 September 2012
A Difference of Existence
How am I so different that I think
if people knew how I thought,
they would become hostile ---- ?
I think caring more about ideals than the present moment's impression makes me seem like an shortsighted zealot to others. I think finding purpose only in intellectual pursuits makes me seem inhuman and dangerously naive to others. I think letting on that I am truly indifferent on social acceptance labels me as a sociopath. I think thinking of emotions as undesirable makes others think I'm unstable and immoral. I think taking everything seriously would make me aberrant and ostracized because of the basic disconnect and misunderstanding. I think if everyone knew how I analyzed and reasoned everything it would make them think I'm unemotional and robotic.
Thinking death isn't inherently bad, emotion isn't inherently good, art isn't inherently valuable, sex/drugs are neither moral nor immoral, nothing is completely evil or good, sadness is to be cherished, to hate is always wrong, trying is more important than being right, happiness is not inherently valuable, science/math is thrilling.... that I hold ideals so highly, adhere to them despite conventions, don't have regrets.... makes me estranged. That other people do not agree, chills me. That I ask "why" is one of the things most important; but when it isn't considered irrelevant, it is considered dangerous, misleading and corruptive.
I'm aware most people would just be bewildered at me and then proceed to not care, but that is almost as bad.
So I go about, knowing that I fundamentally can't communicate what and why I think/believe/act/care and knowing that if I tried, I would appear to others as strange and better discounted, or a twisted creature masquerading as human.
This would seem to come some from my family acting/believing they aren't normal socially. Except it's beyond that. Instead, I believe I can get along with others as much as I want and even better if I wanted to any more than I do. No, this is about how I don't share (even the same type of!) thoughts, reasons, beliefs, emotions, ideals. In short, I do not have in common everything that I think makes me "me," with anyone. I like to learn and mimic and imagine others' sets of fundamental worldviews, but I keep finding that there is nothing fundamental to them. Importance and cares vary, are arbitrary, or unconsidered. I could accept it if they were unknown or developing or even just... missed.
No progress, no improvement, no goals, ignorance, irrationality, external validation, aesthetic values, emotional judgments, current religious values, no consistency, no permanent ideals, no reasons for existing, no importance of understanding, no permanent values for right and wrong, and no desire to find out what makes anything, true real, or the definition of ... anything. And even when pressed, there is no feeling of discomfort at these omissions. Sometimes there is just mild curiosity, sometimes there is pure dismissal, other times it is distrust or belittlement, but worst of all, I am the one in the wrong for caring.
Trying to do better is optional and not fundamental to just... living.
So that is accurate, but leaves out how I care.
I am the only one that wants to be whole, in a world of ever-shifting fragments. Calling them "Fragments" makes it sound disturbing, but it is not at all. In fact they are delightful and enticing. They only become frightening when I realize they are hallucinations. Constantly. Everywhere. Forever. Without a source, cause, or reason.
They cannot be avoided, and mock me with their presence.
I search for something to hold on to, to climb, to create, to see...and I can feel myself. But each time I polish something to where I am surprised and pleased, I notice I have chips and smudges I didn't see before.
I play with the apparitions and ignore their calls to never stop looking away from their shimmering color. I go back to working at my porcelain limbs, but it is a forlorn task. And I can't escape the suspicion that there is no way for me to tell if I appear like a flurry of sounds and color to everyone else too, and have only fooled myself into thinking I am made of solid glass prisms.
......
One of my ideals is that I reason, question, and correct everything, including what and who I am. Yet, my ideals also demand that I always adhere to them, so to discover flaws in the very foundation and framework for who I am, is troubling to say the least. Besides that, there is the problem of if I can even meaningfully validate, question, or think about such fundamental axioms that define who I am.
And still, I have left out perhaps the most important part of the picture. All of this, while true, ignores my intrinsic, instinctual rejection of even the thought of being understood completely.
A little history:
It used to be, for me, that .... everyone is alone. It's the way life is, that we do the best we can with what we know... What we know of the world around us, of the people around us. You just do what you can, acting alone, because that is all you can work with. Trying to force in things existing beyond and between us results in distorted beliefs like ghosts, gods, and glory. One of the reasons truth is valuable is because it is permanent, unlike everything else. The only reason emotions, passions and ambitions have value are because they are attempts to reach beyond ourselves or motivation to understand truth and reality and what is and what makes things be. We all have the same shared reality, but we all are different in how we apprehend, approach, and deal with it. We are all individual, in every sense of the word. We think individually, act individually, want different things, and communicate on different levels. Art then, only serves as a way to record one's own section of reality in a better way than other mediums or methods. Works of art are inscrutable, just as we are basically inscrutable to one another.
And then a lot of that changed. I started to think that even the basic, incommunicable things that we experience might be shared, taught, and communicated with some luck. I thought that art wasn't just a personal task, but a message replete with meanings that could be teased and discerned. I thought that maybe we shared a fundamental desire and dream as human beings. I thought that philosophy might actually examine and begin to give some answers that everyone could agree upon, even if the answers were only what the questions were. I thought of society not as something that existed by requirement for allotting needs, but as something that could improve the lives of each of it's members many-fold their abilities individually.
And I found myself riddled with flaws I didn't know were there and abilities and cares and sentiments I didn't know I had.
I like the way I think. I wish other people thought like me. So what is it about the idea of someone else knowing how I think that is shudder-inducing?
If someone knew my thoughts, they could hurt me. They could manipulate me. There would be nothing to stop them from destroying me. My mind is all I have. If the world turned upside down tomorrow, I would still be who I am because I would still have my thoughts, my cares, and my values. If everything stopped making sense and became irrational and meaningless, then, even though I would be crushed with confusion and chaos, I would have something to rely on. Some place to begin putting the pieces back together. I would not go insane.
My mind is both the only thing that I can control and count on, but it is also the only thing that links me to the outside and lets me do, think, apprehend beauty, truth, meaning. But if someone knew me, really understood how I think, they could rip my ideals to shreds, tear down the framework from which I can think, act, and exist within. If I lose myself, then I might become everything that is wrong. It isn't like I would become evil, but... everything I understand, know, care about .... everything that makes life worth living could be taken from me. And I might not even know it was happening. Everything could become meaningless. Not in the "universe contains no meaning sense" but in that I couldn't notice what meaning was in front of me, nor would I be able to create or imagine meaning of any kind. If I can't count on having my own mind, then yes, yes all my values, everything I know, count on, believe could be destroyed and everything I fear, hate and think is wrong could become true.
While I've been shedding the security of leading a life that was founded in the unchanging geology of practicality, I am astonished at how ideals, emotions and spirituality can enrich and shed new kaleidoscopes of experience. But they are new and infantile and I cannot be sure they won't turn on me. I don't fully know what they are. While my practicality is perhaps the only thing dependable, it is shallow compared to ideals.The pillars I build upon are not things I can do without. I can question them, but only just. If I lose them, if they were subverted damaged or dismantled, then I don't know what will happen to me.
I'd have wrong values. I'd have no purpose. I don't know what I would be. I'd stop being me. I might not notice, I might not care, but to me, now, that is worse than death. To have no control, to hate myself, to not know I was so wrong. I guess it wouldn't matter, I would have stopped existing, at least in what I perceive to be "I." If I stopped being, thinking, as I do now, then the "I" now would be gone.
Do I have so little self confidence and self understanding that I think someone could do that to me? I don't know. I don't know myself completely. I don't know which values would trump the others. I don't know the reason for many things I do find so important. I'm not infallible. I can only begin to fathom, begin to speculate on who I am now. Beyond that, if someone changed who I was, (or changed how I change who I am).... I can't trust myself. I could not trust myself. Once my core values fell. Once my reason was sabotaged even for a moment, then everything that built upon that would unwind. I'd say you can't sabotage reason except everyone around me doesn't even notice how much they lack and violate it. So either I am cut of a different cloth, or I am a few steps from a slide into nothingness. Nothingness that I wouldn't even notice I was in, nor would I have any reason to climb out of.
09 September 2012
One Chance
If you have not, you must play it.
It isn't long, but you should set aside as much time as you need to complete it.
It is free, it is contemplative, it is shocking, it is sad, it will haunt you.
It is worth your time.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555181
>
As I started to play it, I suspected it was what it appeared to be, but I was not at all sure. After all, it would be incredibly unusual for me to come across such a thing. As I always do, I tried to see every corner and every object, person, and scrap of information, but this time it was in conflict with the growing certainty that what I did could be a one way trip. So I didn’t take up a women’s offer to enjoy ourselves.
I dreaded what I felt sure would happen. Our discovery would go wrong. I saw the planes fly overheard with a fear just beneath the surface of existence. Shortly after, it was confirmed. So then there was the choice left – the world was ending. Should I try to save it? Should I enjoy what time I had left? Should I care for the people I could? Or should I care for the world? Those questions were asked and cast aside because there was really only one questioned that mattered. What was right, what mattered?
So I went to work.
Each day, I tried to find out if there was something else, something I was missing. And each day things were frighteningly the same. While everything fell apart around me, I did the only thing I could do: go on. My wife became hysterical and lost her mind. She was a wreck, merely pieces of someone who had once been. My child was worried, neglected, and constantly on the precipice of finding out exactly what was happening. My colleagues were dropping like flies, losing hope and losing themselves to the apocalypse. And what of me? I might very well spend my last days on earth in a pursuit that would go nowhere.
My wife killed herself and my only thought was, “I hope my child didn’t see any of it.” That night we slept in a cursed house. Me fearing that something horrendous would happen. The scientists coming in a mob, an insane intruder, and monsters of every kind haunted me.
As each day passed, I knew what I was doing was the only real option, but on the last day I faltered. Shouldn’t I spend this last moment with my child? Silence. Then, hesitantly, but firmly the answer returned. No. What was right now was right all along. What mattered was the effort, the striving, the attempt. What mattered, even if it was hopeless, and I was the only one left to try, was that I do everything I could. Even if I knew 100% it would end in failure, it mattered above all else, literally above all else, that I do everything I possibly could to fight and to recover what was left. So I turned my back on my child.
She ended up coming with me. She waited by the door, slowly turning an ashen grey as I lost myself in formulas. In an impossible turn of events I succeeded. I had a cure. With nothing left, but my small triumph and a little time, I took my child to the park and we spent our last moments there. Alone in a dead world. Maybe it was kinder that she wouldn’t survive to see the aftermath. It was certainly a mountain of unknown, fear, and desperation that faced me now. I was probably one of a handful in the entire world left. Maybe the only one left. Still. Those last moments were beautiful, and I was so grateful to have a chance to enjoy them. And … what can the living do, but go on living? [ErgoProxy]
It isn't long, but you should set aside as much time as you need to complete it.
It is free, it is contemplative, it is shocking, it is sad, it will haunt you.
It is worth your time.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/555181
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As I started to play it, I suspected it was what it appeared to be, but I was not at all sure. After all, it would be incredibly unusual for me to come across such a thing. As I always do, I tried to see every corner and every object, person, and scrap of information, but this time it was in conflict with the growing certainty that what I did could be a one way trip. So I didn’t take up a women’s offer to enjoy ourselves.
I dreaded what I felt sure would happen. Our discovery would go wrong. I saw the planes fly overheard with a fear just beneath the surface of existence. Shortly after, it was confirmed. So then there was the choice left – the world was ending. Should I try to save it? Should I enjoy what time I had left? Should I care for the people I could? Or should I care for the world? Those questions were asked and cast aside because there was really only one questioned that mattered. What was right, what mattered?
So I went to work.
Each day, I tried to find out if there was something else, something I was missing. And each day things were frighteningly the same. While everything fell apart around me, I did the only thing I could do: go on. My wife became hysterical and lost her mind. She was a wreck, merely pieces of someone who had once been. My child was worried, neglected, and constantly on the precipice of finding out exactly what was happening. My colleagues were dropping like flies, losing hope and losing themselves to the apocalypse. And what of me? I might very well spend my last days on earth in a pursuit that would go nowhere.
My wife killed herself and my only thought was, “I hope my child didn’t see any of it.” That night we slept in a cursed house. Me fearing that something horrendous would happen. The scientists coming in a mob, an insane intruder, and monsters of every kind haunted me.
As each day passed, I knew what I was doing was the only real option, but on the last day I faltered. Shouldn’t I spend this last moment with my child? Silence. Then, hesitantly, but firmly the answer returned. No. What was right now was right all along. What mattered was the effort, the striving, the attempt. What mattered, even if it was hopeless, and I was the only one left to try, was that I do everything I could. Even if I knew 100% it would end in failure, it mattered above all else, literally above all else, that I do everything I possibly could to fight and to recover what was left. So I turned my back on my child.
She ended up coming with me. She waited by the door, slowly turning an ashen grey as I lost myself in formulas. In an impossible turn of events I succeeded. I had a cure. With nothing left, but my small triumph and a little time, I took my child to the park and we spent our last moments there. Alone in a dead world. Maybe it was kinder that she wouldn’t survive to see the aftermath. It was certainly a mountain of unknown, fear, and desperation that faced me now. I was probably one of a handful in the entire world left. Maybe the only one left. Still. Those last moments were beautiful, and I was so grateful to have a chance to enjoy them. And … what can the living do, but go on living? [ErgoProxy]
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