It was almost the vindication of the pain that I had felt. Less vindictive but transfered from the mind to the body. Psychosomatic. It had become apparent on my face. I felt the folds of my eyelids deepen. When I saw him, it were as if life - or rather the absence of it had left his eyes and I felt the same demise draw upon my eyes as well. Transference of decay. An excruciating hopelessness had dawned upon me. As if death could permeate through my reality.
She reminded her of the same precision of character as she had been before and joy. Joy was for an eternal glimpse - the nostalgic joy she had once felt before. Before defilement. Before impurity. Before the lost. And in that moment, that moment was sufficient to forget the pangs of current torment.
And she sobbed. Not as if the characters had done because of relief but because she was deeply affected by the death of a man with nothing but his repulsive self. How strong was his will to contain himself a beast to humanity and yet he declined morality - and for that she cried. She empathized his lost entity, his sanctity.
8.29.2011
5.30.2011
Humphrey Van Weyden
"I felt quite amused at his unwarranted choler, and while he stumped indignantly up and down I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was - the fog, like the gray shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the Unseen, and clamoring and clanging in confident speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear." (3)
"And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a gray primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands. How long this lasted I have no conception, for a blankness intervened, of which I remember no more than one remembers of troubled and painful sleep. When I aroused, it was as after centuries of time; and I saw, almost above me and emerging from the fog, the bow of a vessel, and three triangular sails, each shrewdly lapping the other and filled with wind." (7)
"I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, and tried with all the power of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that was rising around me. A little later I heard the stroke of oars, growing nearer and nearer, and the calls of a man. When he was very near I heard him crying, in vexed fashion, "Why in hell don't you sing out?" This meant me, I thought, and then the blankness and darkness rose over me." (8)
"I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness. Sparkling points of light spluttered and shot past me. They were stars, I knew, and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among the suns. As I reached the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter swing, a great gong struck and thundered. For an immeasurable period, Lapped in the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed and pondered my tremendous flight.
But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I told myself it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I was jerked from swing to counter swing with irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. The gong thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to await it with a nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I were being dragged over rasping sand, white and hot in the sun. This scorching in the torment of fire. The gong clanged and knelled. The sparkling points of light flashed past me in an interminable stream, as though the whole sidereal system were dropping into the void. I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened my eyes." (8)
'The Sea Wolf'
Jack London
"And I was alone, floating, apparently, in the midst of a gray primordial vastness. I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands. How long this lasted I have no conception, for a blankness intervened, of which I remember no more than one remembers of troubled and painful sleep. When I aroused, it was as after centuries of time; and I saw, almost above me and emerging from the fog, the bow of a vessel, and three triangular sails, each shrewdly lapping the other and filled with wind." (7)
"I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness, and tried with all the power of my will to fight above the suffocating blankness and darkness that was rising around me. A little later I heard the stroke of oars, growing nearer and nearer, and the calls of a man. When he was very near I heard him crying, in vexed fashion, "Why in hell don't you sing out?" This meant me, I thought, and then the blankness and darkness rose over me." (8)
"I seemed swinging in a mighty rhythm through orbit vastness. Sparkling points of light spluttered and shot past me. They were stars, I knew, and flaring comets, that peopled my flight among the suns. As I reached the limit of my swing and prepared to rush back on the counter swing, a great gong struck and thundered. For an immeasurable period, Lapped in the rippling of placid centuries, I enjoyed and pondered my tremendous flight.
But a change came over the face of the dream, for a dream I told myself it must be. My rhythm grew shorter and shorter. I was jerked from swing to counter swing with irritating haste. I could scarcely catch my breath, so fiercely was I impelled through the heavens. The gong thundered more frequently and more furiously. I grew to await it with a nameless dread. Then it seemed as though I were being dragged over rasping sand, white and hot in the sun. This scorching in the torment of fire. The gong clanged and knelled. The sparkling points of light flashed past me in an interminable stream, as though the whole sidereal system were dropping into the void. I gasped, caught my breath painfully, and opened my eyes." (8)
'The Sea Wolf'
Jack London
4.25.2011
Salvation.
We are each a void in this apathetic mass of humanity. It is not quite the effects of some kind of modern liberal enlightenment. We are no gods. We are only conditioned to believe that. Or to dilute reality with our gaudy lifestyles, our illusions of knowledge and independence. Our perpetual, predictable, ever present insanity and fallacies. And I am no exception. I process no judgments and reduce no one and everyone to an amassed generalization. I am victim to the same conditioning, addictions, and feeble attempts of pseudo intellectual babble. My neuroses comes from the anticipated experiences one should assume. But enough! Even I am getting irritated by my own existential posturing. We are no creators. We are not beauty, not death, not life, not war, not injustice or justice, not the arts. We are all simultaneously Hitler, Mother Teresea, Rimbaud, the Dalai Lama, the escorts on fifth avenue, mass murderers, and peacemakers. I have tired from the same compulsive cognitive pathologies of mankind - even the most vile of our kind - our sad addictions, accumulations of our own inane wisdom, our truly ephemeral intelligence. Accumulations of nothing! But I will never tire from watching individuals fall on their knees and submit wholly to the knowledge of humanity's fragility. We are only capable of failure, being our own facade to ourselves, surrounding ourselves with counterfeit illuminations. We are too weak to provide a limitless love. But there is salvation. And salvation will bring us to give a glimpse of this limitless love to others. Then we can laugh with every atom in our bodies - laugh with tears of joy. And perhaps God will smile at our new found strength in Him.
3.15.2011
Selective Memory
- A – B [SM] – Ce – Cb ->
The difficulty with memory is that it is highly selective and often grossly inaccurate. Memory is not like a storage box that holds snapshots of past events – recalling something is not the same as pulling out an album folder and searching through old photographs. When clients remember a past event they are recreating the past anew. It is their present impression of the past, not the actual past, that their memory search uncovers.
Clients’ memories consist of millions of events, impressions, feelings, and thoughts. Their memories exist like a giant tapestry so large that they can only see parts of it. The part they focus on is always a very small piece of cloth, and what they recall is often biased depending upon what they desire to remember and what they wish to feel at the moment…
Each time that clients remember, they change the past; they repaint what happened a long time ago with present brush strokes. The new picture is based on present feelings, thoughts, desires, and wishes. The actual past has long since ceased to exist for them; it disappeared in the distant past time and can no longer be accurately retrieved.
Some clients object to the idea that their picture of the past is based on present feelings, thoughts, desires, and wishes…
Rationally this is true; the past is unalterable, but the client’s memory of the past can be changed. The client’s view of the past is quite incomplete. Nobody can remember things exactly the way they were – human memory is too poor for that, and is selective as well. We remember what we choose to remember and forget what we choose to forget.
-McMullin (The New Handbook of Cognitive Therapy Techniques)
The difficulty with memory is that it is highly selective and often grossly inaccurate. Memory is not like a storage box that holds snapshots of past events – recalling something is not the same as pulling out an album folder and searching through old photographs. When clients remember a past event they are recreating the past anew. It is their present impression of the past, not the actual past, that their memory search uncovers.
Clients’ memories consist of millions of events, impressions, feelings, and thoughts. Their memories exist like a giant tapestry so large that they can only see parts of it. The part they focus on is always a very small piece of cloth, and what they recall is often biased depending upon what they desire to remember and what they wish to feel at the moment…
Each time that clients remember, they change the past; they repaint what happened a long time ago with present brush strokes. The new picture is based on present feelings, thoughts, desires, and wishes. The actual past has long since ceased to exist for them; it disappeared in the distant past time and can no longer be accurately retrieved.
Some clients object to the idea that their picture of the past is based on present feelings, thoughts, desires, and wishes…
Rationally this is true; the past is unalterable, but the client’s memory of the past can be changed. The client’s view of the past is quite incomplete. Nobody can remember things exactly the way they were – human memory is too poor for that, and is selective as well. We remember what we choose to remember and forget what we choose to forget.
-McMullin (The New Handbook of Cognitive Therapy Techniques)
3.04.2011
Unmerited.
Obvious lesson I already knew, but did not follow: unmerited bitching out at someone out does not make one feel better, it makes one feel worse.
"Judging others will avail you nothing and injure you spiritually. Only if you can inspire others to judge themselves will anything worthwhile have been accomplished."
-Peace Pilgrim
"Judging others will avail you nothing and injure you spiritually. Only if you can inspire others to judge themselves will anything worthwhile have been accomplished."
-Peace Pilgrim
2.16.2011
Monday Mornings.
Today I watched the pigeons of Bay 50th St. drink water from the melted ice.
Platform.
"My dear love. My dear love." She said.
Independence for S. Sudan like the birds of the wind. And the flag, it tosses and turns, flects of red, white, and blue with the sounds of loud construction.
We're building, rebuilding again and again.
New and old, old then new.
I'm late again. Everywhere.
Lost to the colors, sounds, words.
Pearl Harbor Effect.
She said.
But what are words. Hieroglyphic symbols that produce sound to capture some type of rationale for what's really going on in our minds. And to convey that with multiple sounds to a specific rhythm. And each noise to capture emotions and then I will close my eyes around the 59 speakers. The stereos. And that damn nostalgia. For memories that never existed, the feelings that were never really there.
But with each new face we'll imitate those that have never happened, those events.
And be okay.
With perfect strangers we'll pretend what will never take place.
Random thoughts. Monday morning. With the earth inches towards the spring.
Platform.
"My dear love. My dear love." She said.
Independence for S. Sudan like the birds of the wind. And the flag, it tosses and turns, flects of red, white, and blue with the sounds of loud construction.
We're building, rebuilding again and again.
New and old, old then new.
I'm late again. Everywhere.
Lost to the colors, sounds, words.
Pearl Harbor Effect.
She said.
But what are words. Hieroglyphic symbols that produce sound to capture some type of rationale for what's really going on in our minds. And to convey that with multiple sounds to a specific rhythm. And each noise to capture emotions and then I will close my eyes around the 59 speakers. The stereos. And that damn nostalgia. For memories that never existed, the feelings that were never really there.
But with each new face we'll imitate those that have never happened, those events.
And be okay.
With perfect strangers we'll pretend what will never take place.
Random thoughts. Monday morning. With the earth inches towards the spring.
11.18.2010
Quondam.
You have transformed into the deepest void, an emptiness one cannot escape.
A man that no longer exists for himself.
And myself.
My movement, my speech, my body are uninhabited.
Hollow.
If I am so free, why do I feel that of death.
I have become null, my thoughts dejected.
A man that no longer exists for himself.
And myself.
My movement, my speech, my body are uninhabited.
Hollow.
If I am so free, why do I feel that of death.
I have become null, my thoughts dejected.
9.13.2010
Party in the USA.
We'll sit and paint our nails. Play our games. Use our bodies. Live extravagantly intricate lives with repetition. Or maybe we'll throw in a bit of impulse and spontaneity. So we feel better about our callous parottings. We'll use long words to explain the simple thoughts. Or just talk to ourselves. Get stuck in our own minds. And we live with no better way but to explain through the vanity of it all. And be judged or heard through the vanity of others. But we've all got something to say. Our own fucking stories. Oh yeah. And feel such an isolation that the only way to end it is to either end ourselves or connect with the others around us. And maybe we'll discover it was all worth love. Or some sort of religion. Where are you God? Or maybe we'll just play out personas of our insecurities. Become the people that we wish we could pretend. And we laugh. Hah, hah. It was just all one big joke. Waste our hours with the lavish we can't possibly hold for a minute. I'll judge you now. I'll tell you that I hate you or I love you. That it's okay we're all human. We're all so fucking human. Tell you you're a bitch. I'm a bitch. No but I'm actually quite lovely if you get to know me. Yes. That was a good day. Brush your teeth now and go to bed. Busy busy busy. But they'll be watching me. No one's watching you. At night you hear the echos of the screams of your miserable life. And that wonderful life. You'll replay it and fall fast asleep knowing you'll be just fine the next day. Galactic viewings from a spec of the earth. Come back down now. All better now. See moment of existential crisis over. Go to therapy for that depression. Come back alive. Or just drown out the noise with some liquids or pills or chemicals. Or just live. Whichever works faster. And you stab yourself in the back. Again. Do. It. Again.
Sometimes I wonder...
What did God see in us. Why did He think that we were worth saving?
Sometimes I wonder...
What did God see in us. Why did He think that we were worth saving?
9.11.2010
Synecdoche.
"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen. "
-What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours; all her loneliness; the gray, straw-like hair; her red raw hands. It's yours. It is time for you to understand this.
-Walk.
-As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time.
-Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44.
-What was once before you - an exciting, mysterious future - is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realize you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone's experience. Every single one. The specifics hardly matter. Everyone's everyone. So you are Adele, Hazel, Claire, Olive. You are Ellen. All her meager sadnesses are yours; all her loneliness; the gray, straw-like hair; her red raw hands. It's yours. It is time for you to understand this.
-Walk.
-As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time.
-Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44.
9.04.2010
5.10.2010
Compos Mentis?
It's that time of the year.
When school is over and everything is winding down.
And I evaluate my year.
It's been an insane year.
When school is over and everything is winding down.
And I evaluate my year.
It's been an insane year.
12.25.2009
Merely Fiction.
Run away to a field
and swim off with me
let's evade this life
with this foul final deed.
We'll inhale all the death
to keep the colors alive
if only we can flee
in this doting reverie.
How I wish to return
the seductive powder, liquid dirt
but foremost your tasty skin
truly bitter to begin with.
We lust after the danger,
the volatile mess our mission
and the love it was real
as a figment of merely fiction.
and swim off with me
let's evade this life
with this foul final deed.
We'll inhale all the death
to keep the colors alive
if only we can flee
in this doting reverie.
How I wish to return
the seductive powder, liquid dirt
but foremost your tasty skin
truly bitter to begin with.
We lust after the danger,
the volatile mess our mission
and the love it was real
as a figment of merely fiction.
12.13.2009
Western.
It's riveting how fragile we are. The idea of invincibility is so embedded within our minds; to think that, we are strong, we are secure, we are idealized.
There's a whole community of bloggers who post religiously everyday, what they wear, what they eat, who they're with. We occupy our time believing, learning, trying to believe we know and we hide behind our micro communities and music, books, intelligence, and what not. Yet, our world can be shattered so easily. Ten extra pounds and I turn into an insane, insecure, psychotic bitch. Small red dots on the face and you feel like a nobody. Tight relationships can easily be broken and dependence or the notion of independence that we pretend to have can leave us feeling at such unease.
I played god for a second. I watched myself in a cycle of catastrophes one after the other. I watched myself become a mess and as I watched myself, I pitied the entirety of it, I pitied humanity. I live in a city where people make everything into an art. The preparation of food, the tight knit community of eco-bikers and vegans, the musicians drowning themselves in drugs, blue-collars, white-collars, fashion-martyrs. And I thought, we're so fucking pathetic how we make ourselves an identity through inanely ridiculous patterns of life and lifestyles. It's so funny watching crazy fundamentalist Christians talk about killing gays and watch guidos talk about whatever the fuck. And yes we're all just as bad.
We lock ourselves in patterns of exercise and school, food and sleep, work and family, yet a small mishap along the way of our routine and it's emotional disaster. And death. Some Iranian girl got shot in the face. And I'm detached. I never knew her. We take numbers and statistics and look at them like hieroglyphics and interesting conversation topics. We make imitations of life and films and let them fuse into our cultural perspective veins. We place literature and language, science and philosophy onto the pedestal of our lives. But behind all this shit, we're all just delicate insecure bitches. How fragile are we? What's more sad, people who are fighting to survive with a complete idea of who they are, or people who have no idea who the fuck they are but have the luxury and comfort ability of life?
In the meantime. I'll continue living my little fragile life. With my organic shit and politics, yoga and useless jobs, my stupid guitar and stupid aspirations. Because that's western for you right there.
There's a whole community of bloggers who post religiously everyday, what they wear, what they eat, who they're with. We occupy our time believing, learning, trying to believe we know and we hide behind our micro communities and music, books, intelligence, and what not. Yet, our world can be shattered so easily. Ten extra pounds and I turn into an insane, insecure, psychotic bitch. Small red dots on the face and you feel like a nobody. Tight relationships can easily be broken and dependence or the notion of independence that we pretend to have can leave us feeling at such unease.
I played god for a second. I watched myself in a cycle of catastrophes one after the other. I watched myself become a mess and as I watched myself, I pitied the entirety of it, I pitied humanity. I live in a city where people make everything into an art. The preparation of food, the tight knit community of eco-bikers and vegans, the musicians drowning themselves in drugs, blue-collars, white-collars, fashion-martyrs. And I thought, we're so fucking pathetic how we make ourselves an identity through inanely ridiculous patterns of life and lifestyles. It's so funny watching crazy fundamentalist Christians talk about killing gays and watch guidos talk about whatever the fuck. And yes we're all just as bad.
We lock ourselves in patterns of exercise and school, food and sleep, work and family, yet a small mishap along the way of our routine and it's emotional disaster. And death. Some Iranian girl got shot in the face. And I'm detached. I never knew her. We take numbers and statistics and look at them like hieroglyphics and interesting conversation topics. We make imitations of life and films and let them fuse into our cultural perspective veins. We place literature and language, science and philosophy onto the pedestal of our lives. But behind all this shit, we're all just delicate insecure bitches. How fragile are we? What's more sad, people who are fighting to survive with a complete idea of who they are, or people who have no idea who the fuck they are but have the luxury and comfort ability of life?
In the meantime. I'll continue living my little fragile life. With my organic shit and politics, yoga and useless jobs, my stupid guitar and stupid aspirations. Because that's western for you right there.
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