I'm in a strange thoughtful mood tonight, doing a lot of thinking. I want to
scrape off some physical stuff and then dig deep into mental things.
Life now is pretty good, just finished my last class of the semmester on Monday
and now I just have work. Its strange to get home before sunset and to see
natural light in my house other than sunrise.
I get home about 5pm and go to sleep around 10pm, this gives me a lot of free
time compared to the 1 or 3 hours before sleep I had after work and school. Its
pretty nice to have all this time, but it causes me to think more and often
thinking as opposed to acting and doing brings me down a little.
I think the negative effects of weed are still lingering. I see myself making
more mistakes at work I normally wouldn't make. For example: One of the year
four students wasn't upgraded to the exchange system when we did the bulk
upgrade, so I upgraded her, but I sent instructions on how to access the new
system to her mail within the system which naturally she wouldn't be able to
get to, this was about a week ago. I never thought twice about it until today,
she walked into my office and asked me something about no access. I assumed she
was talking about not being able to access the network so I ran down to the
basement and double checked her status, everything looked ok so I ran back up
and got caught by the secretary who said someone needed help setting up a power
point presentation. So I set up her presentation, then left work as it was time
to go home.
I was on the final sidewalk leading to the train station, then it hit me. Holy
shit, the girl with the access problem was the girl was talking about the
exchange system, and I realized the instructions were sitting in a place she
couldn't access. My train was coming so I had to hop on board and hope that I
will see her again tomorrow to get this straightened out.
I want to blame weed for this mistake and mistakes like it that I've been
making the last few days; if weed isn't the problem then I am the problem. Its
depressing to think that I am the cause of my own problems, however, this may
very well be true. No, I must believe that I am the cause, it is the only way
for me to improve. If I blame weed then theres nothing I can do about it but
wait the side effects out. Even if weed is the cause I should still pretend I'm
the cause so I will be forced to improve. I need to slow down and think more at
work, no matter how trivial things seem.
---------------------------------------------------------------- Ok, now to
move on to some other stuff:
Its kind of strange to think that we have an effect on people. I don't think
like that. Isn't it just easier to act freely and then respond freely based on
the reactions of others. Wow I managed to make myself board, intresting.
How about a story, stories are fun!!
Everyday when I go to work I tend to ride in the same cars on the train. I am
starting to notice the same people riding with me in these cars, some people
adhere to strict routines I suppose. One young semi-attractive asian girl is
starting to get a lot of my attention. She always gets on at the West End stop
and gets off at my stop VA Medical. Every day for about the past few weeks she
has been exiting the train just after me. We walk at about the same pace, so I
end up being about the only person trailing her after the main hospital
enterence. Its kind of annoying, I try to walk slower but I hate walking slow.
I try to walk faster, but at that pace I will pass her too slowly. So I just
linger behind her, it makes me feel like a stalker or something, an
uncomfortable feeling. But today I got off my routine, I was late so I had to
take the second train from Parker. I had to ride the last car to catch it in
time. When I got downtown at Ackard station for the transfer to the blue line I
didn't realize it but by taking the last car of the red line I would be in the
last car of the blue line, which made me the closest to the crosswalk at VA and
as a result I was in front of the asian girl today. ...hmm I want to make the
facts of this story of my life have some kind of intresting conclusion, but
there really isn't an intresting ending, its just a mundane part of my life, I
will generate a story of fiction to satisfy my need for a satisfying
conclusion:
---------------------------------------------------------------
It was deep into the night. The great castle was surrounded by 10,000
bloodthirsty warriors who were waiting for the first glimmer of sunrise to
strike. The 200 men of the castle who hadn't deserted their master yet were
resolved to die glorious deaths defending that which they swore to protect.
Being their last night ever many of the men didn't hesitate to break open great
casks of beer normally reserved for visiting royalty and ate to their hearts
content. In a very drunken state these men began to dance, sing and smile
amongst their breathern. They were celebrating the eve of the day in which they
would enter into the void.
They never took their armor off, even while drunk, these 200 men were true
warriors even in a time of fundamental turmoil.
It was as if these men forgot the need to sleep, they continued partying
throughout the night.
The general of the castle sat alone high in his keep. He looked down at his
men, but when he saw them smiling, forgetting their inevitable deaths he had to
look away. He felt a pang in his heart that it was his fault for getting into
this situation, as if just him being there caused all this. But he could not
let those feelings get to him, he had to find some way to get out of this
terrible situation. He stared at the sleeping enemy army intent on finding some
way.
Dawn was approaching fast, the sky lightened just a little, only the sober ones
noticed. The general opened his eyes and realized his fate, he had fallen
asleep. Without hesitation he bolted down to the front gate and ordered his men
to surround it.
All of them sobered up instantly, with death pressing in so close they had no
other thought but to achieve death.
Instantly, the morning sun flashed over the castle. Outside the gates a
terrible roar and then the enemy flooded in.
Men were being cut down one after another, the defenders fought with a
desparation that only someone resolved to die could muster. Within a few
moments 200 defenders had fallen to 150, and 10,000 attackers had fallen to
7,500. However, a few moments later only 10 royal guards and the general
himself remained.
The 10 guards fought viciously, once one attacker fell they immediatly struck
the next, like a chain, until small mistakes led each to their deaths one by
one.
Now only the general remained. With a bright fire in his eyes he swept his
sword hacking many enemy heads off. "Come on!!" he taunted. He fought with
utter conviction his only hope was to achieve a glorious death in this battle.
Many more enemies fell at his hand. However, his arms and legs began to feel
weak, he grew tired and collapsed, the enemy did not kill him but captured him.
An instant later the general was tied up in the middle of his field. His head
placed on a block. The axe came down. He died.
The dead general didn't notice, but the sun had set.
I am not sure what gives me the motivation to type this.
It is emotion, I am not sure what emotions are, but I know where this one came
from:
Beer + Pearl Harbor movie + me
I have the ability to pull myself out of my own emotions, to avoid them as they
arise, a natural instinct for me, to avoid getting hurt. But now, beer is
restraining that instinct.
Even after 23 years of life there are still things I am learning about myself.
Like a child learning to walk for the first time.
I'm not sure how to move from one mode to another. If I get lost within myself
then of course I loose some touch with the outside world, with people. Like a
war veteran who cannot leave the battlefield in his mind and return to civilian
life.
I can examine things all day but it will never lead to positive action outside
of here.
I am just grabbing things from the fluxuating stream of my mind. I want to turn
it into something that flows together nicely, but in order to do that I would
have to lie about my own thoughts, what a foolish thing to do.
This is what life is really, just a constant stream of information, we decide
to take pieces out of this stream and have emotions to them. Or to let our
subconcious take the pieces it wants out and then repress the unwanted emotion
it brings and let the built up pressure of this emotion come out in some way
that we have accustomed ourselves to accepting.
Ok, now just put 'I' in certain places and my attempt at extracting this 'I'
out of myself has succeeded. If I reach for it directly it runs away, only a
round-about method involving beer and an online place to type will let me see
me almost objectivly.
Life is a constant stream of information independent of me.
Life is a constant stream of information dependent on me.
I allow some part of myself to collect pieces out of the stream of life. These
pieces cause emotions which I immediatly repress by intellectualizing them, by
explaining them logically to myself; doing this disarms the 'feeling' of them
and gives me the power of total control over my actions. While some people will
act based on the things they feel, I respond to based on the things I think
based on the things I think I felt (but don't actually feel).
This is why I practice zen meditation and drink. By clearing my mind and
returning to a primal, animal state for only a few minuites I am able to see
the inherent beauty in emotions good and bad.
My everyday life is devoid of this raw emotion, I only get a processed version
of it. This helps me control myself in situations where emotions would
'control' my actions, such as strong anger or sadness. However, the unfortunate
side effect is lack of strong positive emotions such as extacy (not sexually
related) and happiness.
This is the sum total of my being.
I would love to continue in this introspective state for a while but I can feel
the effects of beer fading and my habitual state of consciousness coming back.
Good-bye for now.
I am sober now. I know everything I just typed but it brings up no emotion,
when I breathe I just feel air......
It is very cold now. When I woke up it was about 65 degrees, very warm. It felt
like I was in some kind of dream, sun just now rising, all the leaves are off
the trees, yet it is warm. So of course I didn't wear a jacket to work.
However, on my way back home it was about 50 degrees, but it felt like 40 with
the high winds. Waiting for those trains and walking to my car, it was pretty
shitty.
Its strange how temperature effects your outlook on life. There were probably a
million things going on around me as I was walking to my car, but I only
noticed the cold. If it were comfortable out I would have been able to enjoy
the sky, or take another second to admire the hottie in front of me.
Consciousness is very arbitrary isn't it. There is a huge array of things
happening around us all the time, but we only choose a few parts of this to be
aware of and call it consciousness. Its kind of like one of those pills that,
when submerged turn into an animal or some shape. We can only see the pill and
not the entire animal it represents. Wait, that was kind of a crappy analogy.
Consciousness is like being close to a very large mountain. You can only see
the part of the mountain your near, you have no idea what the entire mountain
looks like.
However, with proper mental training you can see the entire mountain no matter
where you are. You can be aware of all sensory data inside a moment but the sum
of this will only remain with you for that moment. Later on you may remember
that you saw the mountain but not be able to remember what it looked like. Kind
of like remembering that you got drunk the night before but not remembering
anything you experienced.
You can even turn consciousness on itsself. Consciousness admiring
consciousness. The awareness of being aware. Kind of like what I am doing now.
Pointless.......I can describe how the car works all day, but I don't have the
tools to repair it.....yet I can still drive it somehow.
For the past few days and particularly now I've had a general feeling of
restlessness. It feels like I am in an unfamiliar pitch black house with the
vague notion of having some sort of goal but not knowing what it is or where it
is exactly; I am feeling my way along the walls of this house blindly.
I tend to get this feeling a lot in my free time and especially winter. Its too
cold to want to do anything outside really and I'm out of school for a few
weeks. Just nothing to do I suppose. Logically, I should be able to find some
other task or goal that could satisfy me, but I seem to have no way of
discovering what it is. Kind of like being stuck on an island in the midst of a
great void, I can see solid earth in the distance, but have no way of
traversing the void.
When I was at work I had no notion of this feeling at all, when I was coming
home, same thing. But about an hour after I got home the feeling enveloped me.
I don't have the power to control it the same way I can control anger or other
emotions, it just seems to linger. I can't control it because it isn't really a
true emotion, its just a light sensation, a lesser emotion. Like a small thorn
in your foot that hurts enough to be annoying but not so much that you can't
walk normally and is stuck so deep that you can only keep walking as you hope
it will come out on its own.
This time I am in a drunken state. Beer allows you to live two lives in the
same life. A fourty changes you into another person. I feel the beer seep
between the cracks on my physical brain, it changes them into something else.
Something they were not intended to be. Drunk, I can see light shining the
shadows of existance, while darkness eclipses over the light of existance.
Everything is inverted.
This inversion allows me to see true happiness for a while. When you spend your
life acting one way 5 days out of the week beer allows you to see the final 1
or 2 days in a different light.
But enough about beer right? Noooooo
Beer is a very narcissistic substance. It likes getting attention for itsself.
It likes feeling likes being associated with the greatist stars in the
universe, people.
I wonder if I can make a drunken run to wal-mart to get groceries tonight. Hmm,
there are many factors we must consider:
1) Can you maintain? yes
2) Can you alighn your thumb on a static position on the steering wheel and
then alighn your thumb with the happy white dashes on the road? yes
3) Can you spell alighn right? no
4) Can you navigate a shopping cart? no
5) Can you alighn your thumb on a shopping cart hand rail and line it up with
the tiles on the floor? yes
6) Can you maintain your shopping cart and not hit other people? yes
7) Can you find your wallet and operate a credit card machine?
i think so, maybe
OK, I AM READY FOR A TRIP TO WAL-MART!!!!
but I am going to take about an hour to maintain a little
This battle will be a memorial service to all the dead hommies in my family
line. (wal-mart is the battle)
I'm not sure if I am writing this for myself or other people. If you (yes as in
you yourself) are reading this then it is for other people, if no one else
reads this then it is just for me as I am typing this this very second. (does
that make sense)
Creative writing, it consumes you:
---------------------------------------------------------------
Part I
I awoke on a single wooden board. I tried to open my eyes but I could only see
white, so I shut them immediatly. I could hear the sound of waves crashing
nearby clearly. I felt my arm fall as if I had no control over it. It was
instantly shocked, electricity, I was certain. A second later I realized it was
icy water.
Darkness. Fear. I opened my eyes for the first time, I was in a large wooden
room. I was suspened on an old wooden board that must have been soaking in this
small wading pool for eternity.
There was some event going on, I couldn't quite put a finger on it. Happy
sounds, laughter, calming music. Very hard to focus in. Suddenly, the walls
caved in. It was the shape of the inside of a pirate ship, wooden, dark, brown.
A ghostly pirate emerged before me. He spoke in strange words. I couldnt
understand, but from him I got emotions, these emotions showed me the way. Salt
water rose, there was no way to get out so I just swam deeper and deeper, in
search of the feeling of a low light in a small room underwater with a being
inside.
After swimming for many hours I finally breathed again, deep water into my
lungs. I wanted to freak out, I wanted to go into spasms, but I was locked in
place. I found the low light room with being. I reached out and touched the
indiscribable light.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Part X
I awoke for the first time and found myself at my grandads house. NO lights
were on. It was a low blue, like that of a black light execept a little bluer.
My grandad wasn't there, he has been dead for a few months now, it still makes
me sad. He was a great man, I never visited him often. He was a good person, I
should have been there. A true human being who would tell it like it is and
give you shit if it wasn't. I will meet him in the end.
There was a party going on. I couldn't see any faces except one. Yes, her face,
Chelsea. I talked to her as if I was talking to myself, fulfilling, pointless.
We went into the bathroom that had a washing machine and dryer and a small
window with a green tint at an impossible angle. A sink so small, white,
nothing holding it up. A small worn red chair I used to place my feet on when
shitting as a child to reach the seat. Aussie shampoo in the bathtub the made
me think of exotic foreign lands as a child. I went into all these memories and
then it was me and Chelsea in the low blue light of this room. I was holding
her head, her beautiful hair in my hands, she was smiling at me. I pulled her
in and kissed her. Suddenly I was floating, nothing mattered, no memories, just
the then and now.
I rose outside of the house above the center of the patch of land between my
late grandad's house split in half. Below I could see the war happening. An
opposition of one house and the other house, yet I couldn't see fighting. It
was just a party and there was a small fight, half the people went to one
half-house, the other half went to the other half-house and nothing came of it
forever.
So I am reading this book. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle repair. A good book,
the author Peircing takes a novelistic approch to philosophy but he also
combines this with very concete explainations of what he feels and why he feels
this is right. It makes his philosopy easy to understand unlike those tiresome
books like Ayn Rand's Anythem.
Its really intresting.
So I am drunk now. It feels so liberating, in this state. These days it seems
the only way to relieve tension of the real world.
On the train today in the predominatly black part of Dallas (Oak Cliff) I had
the pleasure of hearing a small child ask his parents "Whats that white boy
doin on the train?" as I entered the car at 'my' station. Then the parent went
on to describe why white people ride trains too. Its kind of strange being in
that part of town, its like a foreign country, usually I am the only white
person on the train.
Something I noticed is that down there people are real. They aren't like up
here in the rich (by comparison to oak cliff) white north dallas area where no
one talks to each other on the train like a bunch of robots. Down in Oak cliff
people still remember that they are human. I walk down to my train station and
a random (black) person will say 'hi' to me. Up here in north Dallas you are
lucky if any one of the white people will even look at you. Its strange. I am
starting to notice this more and more and it has totally changed my views on
reality in general.
Before now I had just been living in my little part of upscale white land. Up
here you forget that you are human. When exposed to an environment where people
actually treat each other with decency in Oak Cliff of all places I begin to
see the diversity of life; its like opening a gateway to a new world.
Well, I think I am hyping it up too much. I do see a lot of bad things down
there I dont see up here. Like the scraggly looking women strung out on what I
can only guess is crack singing off key loud enough for everyone to hear. Or
the homeless people who beg you for a few quarters so they can buy some food
and then get pissed off when you deny them. It can get pretty depressing at
times. I can zone them out a lot of the time, but sometimes it gets to you.
There isn't really any solution or answer to this dispair is there? Its just
something you live with, you accept and move on.
There is no solid yes or no. Just some metaphysical 'mu' of not yes, not no,
yes, no at the same time. People try to tell you everything is yes and no. Like
a light switch off and on. But there are some things that require another
answer, something beyond yes and no. Something in the middle of yes, no, not
yes, not no. Nothing nothing. Do you understand?
----------------------------------------------------------------
My parents just called me, its strange to talk to them while drunk, it feels
very awkward.....
Isn't that the meaning of life? TO come close to loosing it and remaining on
the edge. Riding the edge of experience out on the train of conventional
existance.
To have great challenges appear before you and overcome them one by one.
The cold, sadness, encapsulation. The fact that there is nothing around you and
you must create an intresting existance around you to survive.
What does beer really do to your mind. Is it really anything at all? Is it
anything that wasn't there anyways? I dont think so.
When drunk do you realize anything that wasn't there always, anything that was
naver there, outside your perception. Do you realize anything that never
existed around you that you never paid attention to.
Beer just opens things that were always there. Things that never got enough of
your attention. A new way of looking at an old thing. A way of looking at
something that brings out its hidden properties.
But its always there, its always around you never mind your mental state.
The real challenge is to find it in everyday life. In normal life.
Man, I have really been writing in this thing a lot lately haven't I?
I just because of this damned christmas break. I have no projects due, no
studying to do. Nothing besides the transendental few hours of work Monday -
Thursday.
I have so many skills, but I can't find anything worthwhile to use them for.
Usually school gives me the goals, no problem and I easily take it from there.
Its ironic how finding the problem is harder than solving it. I spend years and
years learning how to deal with problems, but hardly any time learning how to
find or create them.
Its a fatal missing link in the system. All this information sits on an island
by itsself with out any way of being connected to the mainland. A tree falling
in a forest and no one around to hear it. Useless.
They should make a college course called "How to entertain yourself, finding
and creating problems on your own". It would take life and break it down into
its most fundamental pieces. These pieces could then be arranged to create the
'bridge between the island of knowlege and the main-land of usage' outside of
work and school.
Hmm, thats actually a good idea. Thats the problem I can solve!! The problem is
the absense of a scientific way to create problems to solve. I need a new sheet
of electronic paper.
Forward (before the begining)
I am writing this primarily for myself. In fact the actual act of writing this
took place by the use of the process it will describe.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Preface (the begining)
In everyday life we find our selves caught up in activities. School, work,
tasks placed before us. Challenges to overcome.
These can be things as large scale as major projects for work or school, going
to the grocery store to get food, or small scale things like deciding which way
to walk as another person heads in your general direction. Things like this
come to us almost incessantly, a seemingly never ending wave of activity that
each of us deals with one way or another.
But there are times when this pseudo-constant wave of activity ceases. This
time seems to come about instantly, with no premeditation. We may find
ourselves working, working, working, and completing every problem presented,
expecting the next problem to come right along, but it doesn't. We are left
hanging in a very strange place, there seems to be no where to go, nothing to
do, a void. The point of this book is to fill this void.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 1: What exactly is a problem?
A problem is an entity that causes you to act in some way. The root cause of
any activity we perform is a problem. Ask yourself why you do anything at all
and if you think hard enough you will discover that it is because of a problem,
a problem is not necessarily a bad thing. Think of it as more of a neutral link
in a chain. For example: I eat because I am hungry. Being hungry is a 'problem'
which is resolved by eating. Or I talk to this person because of some seen or
felt emotional desire. The emotional desire is a 'problem' which is resolved by
talking.
You can think of a problem as being the root in a hierarchial tree with all
possible actions being the leaves.
The important point is that there needs to be a problem for there to be action.
No matter how spontaneous an action seems there is always an underlying cause,
a problem. Without a problem there can be no action.
The absence of problems is manifested as boredom. We find ourselves in the void
of nothing. We have the desire and the capability to do anything, the problem
is that we cannot find anything to do. We find ourselves stuck on an island of
capability with no way to reach the main-land of action, this bordom is all
because there is no 'problem' to bridge the gap. If we had a way to generate
problems we would have the power to remove bordom at a whim.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 2: Finding problems
Everything is quiet, nothing is going on. Take a second, turn off any music or
sounds, the TV, imagine there is no one around you and just look around. Just
breathe in and out a few times, focus as hard as you can on the feeling of your
breath moving within you. Do it now.
What did you see? Was there anything there at all besides your breath?
Ok, now turn some music or TV on. Pay attention to people around you if there
are any.
What did you see this time?
Can you believe that just a few seconds before you were totally absorbed in you
breath, then absorbed in things going on around you and now absorbed in reading
this? You probably even forgot that you were actually reading, the effort your
brain is going through just to understand these words can seem like nothing
sometimes. There is no end to how many things you can experience from the
perspective of where you are now.
Whether your aware of them or not, infinite problems constantly exist around
you, always just waiting to be used. The air is full of them at any given time,
you just need to be able to catch them and formulate them into something you
can work with.
In day to day life these problems will throw themselves right into your lap in
an easily digestable manner. But when you are in a period of 'downtime' you
need a very rigorous method to find problems successfully. Like any hard
science there are a number of steps you can take to do this any time you want:
1) Devote your entire existance onto your breath for a few seconds to clear
your mind. Its hard to find good problems when you are focusing on how board
you are. You must forget that you are board.
2) Break everything around you into a hierarchy, think about how everything
around you is related. This hierarchy can be based on either your physical or
your mental surroundings, it can't be made up from nothing it must be based on
the here and now. It may seem silly at first but this is a problem itsself
requiring the action of great thought to solve.
3) Hopefully, through the process of constructing this mental hierarchy you
were able to discover some problem that needs your attention right now. If you
were unsuccessful simply change your surroundings and make another hierarchy.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Chapter 3: What the hell are you talking about this is total bullshit (the
conclusion)
Damn, you caught me. This is total bullshit, I'm not going to lie. I just made
this 'book' up now as an attempt to alleviate my own bordom. However, in the
course of doing this I realized the 'problem' of wanting to play command and
conquer, to resolve this problem I must play it.
--------------------------------------------------------------
(the end)
And thus begins a holiday within a holiday. No school, no work, 5 days. Then 2
days of work and 5 more days of absolute holiday.
I'm already getting a little wacked out.
And then it all came together. Two strands of lighting, together at once for
just a second in time.
Breath felt the air. As one with nothing. A sharp steady stream into one point
in space. A single infinitely small point.
So what does it mean. All around me is chaos, things moving so fast I can
hardly see them. Yet at this place its the calmest its ever been. Like the eye
of a storm, for a moment. Brain flooded with beer, nothing else coming in. Why
is this the eye, why can't everything else be the eye?
This is just a small point in space, that im in, for now.
Everything else, i can see the evil in it. Its so messed up. But now is so
clean and pure.
I must sound like a retarded poet. It dont make sense, it wont make sense. Its
just now, standing above on the highest cliff, just before sunrise. In the
stillness of the morning. A light mild breeze. Looking straight out into the
forest.
Fuck everything else. These words help me feel now.
The silences in-between notes, this is where I am.
Man, I have some serious problems dealing with people. I realized it today.
I just got home and was going to get my mail. Suddenly I heard "hello". I knew
without looking up that my neighbor was saying hello to me, but I didn't
answer. It was said in the tone that someone who stumbled upon an unmoving body
on the ground would use to ask if it was alive; like they didn't want to assume
that I would respond. "Hello???".
I must seem like some kind of zombie to my neighbors. But I really don't have
any intrest in communicating with them, I prefer to live in my little imaginary
'hermit cave' where neighbors do not exist and I can rest peacefully, alone.
The mere act of them trying to communicate with me destroys this little fantasy
and now I'm back in reality for a little while. I need to repair this fantasy
as soon as possible.