by vertices on Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:44 am
Essentially, after a while, life becomes a parody of itself, with all the swings through daily existence and the different caricature happenings. In nothing else is the path from A to B so convoluted in so many pointless ways. But still, it *is* just A to B. Birth -> death. That's all folks. It's not mystical.
I feel that remembering B is kind of silly without remembering A, though. As if death is something so mystical, or as if it's something we've never experienced! There's a lot of little interstitial deaths that don't even get markings anyway--you know, like every dreamless night of sleep. It's actually really unremarkable, but I suppose the funnier part about death is that there wasn't really "life" in the first place, so much as the appearance of life. The illusion that it's somehow different than non-life. It's not.
And I suppose it's a bit confusing to think, and to really know that all the letters I'm typing here are warring synapses, and there isn't any free will about it. Because if I tried to stop writing, which would already be done for reasons that ruin the whole point of this example, I'd stop myself for reasons like some extremely minor OCD tendencies ("finishing what you start"). It's kind of like rolling dice in that it's not really random at all, but there are enough factors at play that you're not actively considering most of them. You just see the end effect. Free will is another "end effect", it's a magic trick with a very boring explanation.
Life and humans themselves are an end effect. Just kind of a purposeless, expanding loop running for no real reason in some corner of the universe. It only really even qualifies as a pale blue dot if you look nice and close. Mostly it's just empty space. And us too; just empty space. Thinking in this way is, of course, a rather thinly veiled coping mechanism. As if it's any more palatable just because it's so plainly vapid. Ignorance is really the key there, but the problem is the ignorance is a default state and you can't just take it back.
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by vertices on Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:25 am
Three houses stood there on the bay, where lazy-late the sun would set. Not off by more than a minute or two, but nobody needed that kind of drama. The people, they had things to do. Like children; the children needed to play. But the dog just lazed; too old for that. He was nine just like the kids, but kid-years didn't work that way. The working men were off at work; these houses didn't buy themselves. Except for one, perhaps? Nobody knew what it was for--not friends, not trends, not books nor shelves. The blinds stayed drawn like iron bars, they never twitched inside their frame. Those white-strip lats shone bright in sun, but ever still they would remain. And no-one noticed all the same. People, being what they are, have certain proneness to mistakes. A senile bag in the middle house was all the people that it takes. For always she felt cold inside, and so she left the heater warm. But this old bag was hard of sight, and not so good with thinky things. So with the heater heating swell, she hobbled off to get some sleep. The heater, fallen on its side, made hot the furry rug beneath. And so a fire started up, as this old bag was counting sheep. The blaze swept quick throughout the home; a life of trinkets kindled well. And two adjacent houses joined. Now three, they stood there on the bay. They stood ablaze in fiery hell. From the leftmost no-one came. The kids had gone inside for lunch. Now all their toys were obstacles in trying to escape the flame. The dog, he tried to get away. But for a house he had been kept--he couldn't make it to the bay. And from the middle house, there came not a peep. The old bag had stayed in her senile sleep. But the house on the right burned slowest of them: no trinkets or paintings or junk on the wall. And as the white blinds still outshone the flame, the front door creaked open. A person had lived in the house after all. She ran to the sidewalk and looked a bit fazed, and watched her bare house burning up in the blaze. With some time, no houses would stand on the bay. And only the girl would survive on that day.
Last edited by vertices on Tue Nov 22, 2011 9:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by vertices on Mon Nov 21, 2011 6:21 am
On occasion I will have a dream which shakes me even after I've been awake for some time. Invariably, I'll dream of places which are far away or people being people as I only wish people could be. Or waver wistfully between life and death, somehow really not feeling dead for a while. I'll dream on a cool wave of summer, floating on a sea of grass which is evenly green. And I'll dream satisfaction, where even satisfiction is not just a dream. I can't really say why I'm sure that life can never be that kind of thing. And maybe someday I'll just be so insane that even life can seem like a dream. But as of yet, I always wake up. And I always regret that life as a dream isn't life at all.
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by vertices on Sat Nov 19, 2011 11:03 pm
Well, Thanksgiving is coming around.
This holiday is a little bit of a schizoid nightmare, or even a nightmare for anyone who hates family togetherness really. There's nothing that makes me feel American quite like sitting around a table with thirteen people whose company I don't particularly enjoy, with the common purpose of becoming as fat as possible within the span of a single meal (and its leftovers).
And after Thanksgiving--bide your excitement--it's only a short month until Christmas. That's a bit of a perverse way to put it though, of course, as anyone who lives in this neck of the woods understands that Christmas started about a month ago. December 25th is, if anything, an end-of-Christmas recognition ceremony, and they made sure to save the most annoying part for last.
And if all that weren't enough, the end of the year will come with the annual ritual of mass drunken inanity, when legions of New Year's babies will be conceived, and when others may attempt to drum up the resolve to become marginally less obese in time for Thanksgiving.
And that's the essence of the social dynamic: to placate the individual with the promise of material things, pleasure and attention just well enough so that they never have to think, or develop any individuality, or try to make sense of the things that they do. Because you don't need to really think to squeeze out babies, and you don't need to really think to gorge, fester, wither and die anyway.
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by vertices on Sat Nov 19, 2011 8:57 am
As a consequence of lacking a concrete sense of self, for some reason, I find myself wanting to be too many things; things which I am not or can't really be, and may even contradict each other. Especially around the time I am exposed to those things, I become attached to them and build fantasies around them, but this only lasts for a brief period of time until they are replaced by nothing, or by something else.
For example, if I watch a movie with a character that stands out in some way, and whose personality and general presence I can somehow appreciate, I end up wanting to emulate that character or their environment. My fundamental beliefs about things begin to waver and then I start to not know what is mine and what is stolen from the character or the setting or whatever else.
This happens with all sorts of things, not just people. If I listen to music, I want to create music, if I read books, I want to write books. If I watch moves I want to make movies, and if I play games I want to design games. The problem is that I don't really have these interests when I am not constantly exposed to them. The drive is reflexive and not innate.
So I do too many things and never enough of them. I start too many things but never finish. And in the same sense, with my personality, I am attempting to be or become too many things at the same time, and the failure to do so only leaves me with frustration and pain. I feel incapable of being something, if anything, because I can never focus on one thing long enough to be it.
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