Back to jogging. I've started and stopped jogging so many times. Wish I could remember better why I stop time after time. But I'm not so great at recording my failures or remembering them. All in all not remembering all my failures in life may be a good thing. Maybe. But I guess I'd still, just barely, like to think not.
Now to jogging again, as usual I think, in order to sleep better. The pond digging reminded me, I think, of what a good thing daily exercise is, exercise that is, which isn't conventional weightlifting.
I live in suburbia not even a mile from where I grew up. Jogging in the area is a little depressing. First reminded of the paper route I was forced to have from 10 to 17 years old. The constant sleep deprivation. A very few nice memories. Remember wearing my walkmen entranced by music. Eurythmics, The Cars, Billy Idol... I recall one synthy instrumental in particular I had thought was by the guy who did the Miami Vice music. But I searched and searched and never found it. Finally tried to just recreate it, but I think maybe I need the specific hardware analog synths. Seems such a loss that no one is using analog hardware synths anymore...
Mostly though the newspaper route was just a depressing, ugly thing. Every single morning it was so hard getting up. Not like now, where I almost always just get up when I can't sleep anymore. Back then it was always force/fear that dragged me out of bed. Imagine 60 people angry that they hadn't gotten their newspaper that morning. Imagine my parents screaming at me as our phone started ringing.
Every single day, never a day off, for 7 years. On Saturdays I could at least come home and sleep in. A few years I wasn't forced to go to church and could sleep in on Sundays. But, I think the constant sleep deprivation--I needed so much more sleep than I was getting--caused sleep paralysis to run rampant on these weekend late mornings when I finished the route and came home and slept.
Waking up paralyzed wasn't much fun.
So I go jogging through the old neighborhood in the late night. Hate jogging during the day, hate to be stared at as I'm bouncing up and down, running much slower then I wish I was. So I go at night. I run out to the end of a long dead end street. The West Virginia hills going up high in the distance. Here still is a methodist church with a huge parking lot. I remember more than 20 years ago discovering they had put up a basketball rim in their huge parking lot. I went there and played on it a couple of times during the course of a week. And then came to find the basketball board taken down. Here I come by now, and still, more than twenty years later, the pole still stands, still with the supports for the board on it. The board clearly taken down because they didn't want some unknown kid hanging out in their parking lot.
More than 20 years later I'm still disgusted about it. Incredibly disgusted.
I get home and sit on the wall of my pond and rest. All three cats come running to be with me. I sit here out in the open where my neighbors can see me and think that probably my neighbors disapprove of how often I'll be out where they can see me. This is white industrialized society. You stay inside or in the backyard where you can't be seen. But our backyard is very small while we own a huge side lot, thus that's where the pond is, thus I'll be there a lot. It will take years for the trees I've planted to hide me. Neighbors probably will really disapprove of how often they may look out their windows and see me out there.
That's how I feel anyway. Like an oppressive weight pushes against me.
This is the song I wrote thinking of my neighborhood.
The oppressive empty feeling. House after house without a soul in sight. Here passes your childhood. It's not supposed to be this way. And there's nothing you can do to change it.
It gets dark at 4:30. You live on a street where the average age is 60. You know this because you did a survey for a science project. You sit at home wasting your evenings, wasting your youth, wasting your existence, watching Barney Miller and Alice, knowing how wrong. It. All. Is. You're just a little kid. And YOU KNOW.
The closest kid your age lives half a mile away and is mistaken by most to be mentally retarded. And because you're friends with him, you're ostracized at school along with him. You know damm well that's how it works, but you do the right thing and continue to be a friend to him instead of making fun of him like you're supposed to. And years later, the dumb ass just thinks you're crazy and dismisses you, because you're so far above what he can comprehend.
Strangely enough, now I've a seven year old nephew living in that same house I grew up in. He's been calling my mom day after day crying about how his other grandmother has been treating him. She's a dumb ass. The particulars aren't important. This seven year old is now meeting the world in all it's horror and he can't believe it. This is how people act?
I hardly ever see him thanks to my rightwing dumb ass brother-in-law but my wife, my mom, tell me that he's just like me. Maybe the genes run that strong. The first picture I saw of my grandfather I was so confused, wondering when I had worn such clothes and had a black and white picture taken of me. Maybe it's the house...
I continue to play the cello without needing willpower. The cello has no frets. This can be very frustrating. Each time you go to play a note your hand lands just a tinsy bit different on the string and the pitch is lower or higher. As a novice I'm forever off tune. It could be thought of as frustrating but at the same time, it's what keeps it interesting. Forever having to focus so much on the pitch of each note. Is it right? Is it low or high? You have to focus so much more, it seems to me, then with most other instruments. And so the thing that makes it so frustrating is also what makes it interesting, and keeps me playing.
I keep waking up to a nightmare. A real world nightmare. My best friend other than my wife has, it seems, suddenly turned into someone else. Suddenly I'm the enemy. And it hurts me so much to try so hard to be a good person, in general and very specifically to her, just to get this for my troubles. And still I worry so about her, but what else can I do? Each time I wake from sleeping, the nightmare anew, and is there something else I'm supposed to be doing?
No. It seems not. I'm just beating myself up.
I sleep and wake again, and repeat.
I sleep for an hour and wake again, and repeat.
It is at least a good sleep lately. I guess thanks to the physical activity of building the pond.
And so if she does nothing, I'll be left with yet another ugly memory for the rest of my life. A decade from now it will still periodically bite me. Jumping up out of nowhere. And I cry reading the end of Hobb's last Fitz trilogy.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
http://roadofentities2.blogspot.com/
Strange that found this blog interesting for a year or two. Going on and on about things that for the most part aren't actually interesting. Least I could see no reason to write of such things. Rambling on (and on) about spam email in a blog? Sorry but how is that not sad?
I had spoken to this person by email for more than a year. Then told her I wasn't going to email people anymore unless it was supplemented with some actual speaking. And sure enough, of course, I never heard from her again. Which wasn't even slightly surprising.
As such I'll give biting criticism if I want.
Somehow just perfectly represented a lost life, a life in the UK. With some focus on small things. UK bustops, etc. All about the UK. And a woman that... well does make sound files and is good looking. And does have deep thoughts, does like to think.
But still a total fail in my opinion.
I consider it unethical to speak by email with someone you wouldn't actually speak to. A dishonest act. A misrepresentation. An act of startling immorality.
And too much of my like of her was just symbolic, which is as I told her from the beginning, although not sure she understood. Symbolic of a life forever lost.
That should have been!
Like a ghost after I die perhaps I'll linger thinking this.
Represented by the one Hobb trilogy where at the end, he gets it back. The life he lost. He gets it back. Gets back his first love. 20 years later.
Hurts so much to read. Makes me cry. Because this never happens in the real world. In the real world it's always forever gone. Injustice is always forever. And the people who wrong us, never apologize, never see their mistake. So cruel to make a book where such incredible injustice is finally defeated.
Like holding some grand prize just out of reach.
See this?
You'll never have it. This is what will never be.
When very sick or very unhappy I like to watch a few certain fantasy movies and also now the two main Fitz trilogies by Hobb. The movies are The Dark Crystal, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, The Last Unicorn, Labyrinth, Python's Search for the Holy Grail and The NeverEnding Story. Childish I guess. As is rereading Hobb.
Have been rereading Hobb and watching these movies/having them play in the background as I'm very hurt by something someone did to me. Feel that a light in my mind has been switched off.
And what are the chances they'll apologize, they'll right their wrong?
I read Hobb's happy ending and it makes me cry. It seems downright cruel to me.
Strange that found this blog interesting for a year or two. Going on and on about things that for the most part aren't actually interesting. Least I could see no reason to write of such things. Rambling on (and on) about spam email in a blog? Sorry but how is that not sad?
I had spoken to this person by email for more than a year. Then told her I wasn't going to email people anymore unless it was supplemented with some actual speaking. And sure enough, of course, I never heard from her again. Which wasn't even slightly surprising.
As such I'll give biting criticism if I want.
Somehow just perfectly represented a lost life, a life in the UK. With some focus on small things. UK bustops, etc. All about the UK. And a woman that... well does make sound files and is good looking. And does have deep thoughts, does like to think.
But still a total fail in my opinion.
I consider it unethical to speak by email with someone you wouldn't actually speak to. A dishonest act. A misrepresentation. An act of startling immorality.
And too much of my like of her was just symbolic, which is as I told her from the beginning, although not sure she understood. Symbolic of a life forever lost.
That should have been!
Like a ghost after I die perhaps I'll linger thinking this.
Represented by the one Hobb trilogy where at the end, he gets it back. The life he lost. He gets it back. Gets back his first love. 20 years later.
Hurts so much to read. Makes me cry. Because this never happens in the real world. In the real world it's always forever gone. Injustice is always forever. And the people who wrong us, never apologize, never see their mistake. So cruel to make a book where such incredible injustice is finally defeated.
Like holding some grand prize just out of reach.
See this?
You'll never have it. This is what will never be.
When very sick or very unhappy I like to watch a few certain fantasy movies and also now the two main Fitz trilogies by Hobb. The movies are The Dark Crystal, Burton's Sleepy Hollow, The Last Unicorn, Labyrinth, Python's Search for the Holy Grail and The NeverEnding Story. Childish I guess. As is rereading Hobb.
Have been rereading Hobb and watching these movies/having them play in the background as I'm very hurt by something someone did to me. Feel that a light in my mind has been switched off.
And what are the chances they'll apologize, they'll right their wrong?
I read Hobb's happy ending and it makes me cry. It seems downright cruel to me.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Three important qualities of "mental illness":
1. An inability to effectively assess actual threats to one's self
2. Refusing to consider the possibility that you might be wrong about something
3. Having relatively little ability to understand one's self
One can by sympathetic to a lack in 1 and 3 but a lack of 2 leads to/ensures the continuation of 1 and 3. And it's very hard to be sympathetic to closemindedness.
Hard but not impossible. People want to be happy. Deciding that they must believe certain things in order for that to be possible is understandable. A lack of happiness can kill just as easily as "mental illness" can.
There is that, occasionally. But at other times it seems to be a sort of power struggle, where one person just wants to "win" no matter what. That if they admit they're wrong, then they are forever subordinate to the other person. Their mind, forever inferior.
The reality is that all of our minds are woefully falliable(sp). But to face this fact, is sort of awful for most people. To face how shoddy our own minds really are, can lead to a nihilism.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." Lovecraft
Yes, merciful. But to realize that the above is really actually true, is pretty awful. Rather than face it, we're generally quite closeminded.
1. An inability to effectively assess actual threats to one's self
2. Refusing to consider the possibility that you might be wrong about something
3. Having relatively little ability to understand one's self
One can by sympathetic to a lack in 1 and 3 but a lack of 2 leads to/ensures the continuation of 1 and 3. And it's very hard to be sympathetic to closemindedness.
Hard but not impossible. People want to be happy. Deciding that they must believe certain things in order for that to be possible is understandable. A lack of happiness can kill just as easily as "mental illness" can.
There is that, occasionally. But at other times it seems to be a sort of power struggle, where one person just wants to "win" no matter what. That if they admit they're wrong, then they are forever subordinate to the other person. Their mind, forever inferior.
The reality is that all of our minds are woefully falliable(sp). But to face this fact, is sort of awful for most people. To face how shoddy our own minds really are, can lead to a nihilism.
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." Lovecraft
Yes, merciful. But to realize that the above is really actually true, is pretty awful. Rather than face it, we're generally quite closeminded.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Been digging my pond. Two feet deep the earth turns into really hard clay and gravel. I'm having to use a pickaxe and really take hard swings to get anywhere. The shovel is all but useless. And I really feel physically good as a result. I sort of wish I could have lived in a world where such hard manual labor was a part of most days... I so like how it makes me feel. Occasionally I've tried to find exercise, weight lifting in particular, that successfully mimics it. But I haven't managed to do so. Weight lifting is too intense and too short. And spending hours on end just exercising, in order to achieve a physical effect is not so great. So much better if the exercise has some other purpose, if it's a part of real life, a necessity to survival, and/or something beautiful is getting built.
The video game Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has a middle earth setting. In some ways the game is truly a fail. I think they might have literally used 5 people total for all the voices. I think they may have a grand total of 4 tracks of repetitive music. And yet they have endless characters. And endless dungeons (which seem to just be repeated.) And the game can just go on and on and on. With annoying loading bars... And having to stand around and wait for your magic to repower so that you can heal yourself sufficiently.
Anyway, despite all the negatives there is just barely some kind of feeling of escape to this otherworld that is somehow enjoyable. Not sure what about it exactly it is. May just be a grass is always greener thing, that one forgets all the worries that would exist over there. The worries which get in the way of enjoying life, the same as they do over here.
There's something about the middle earth setting though where the worries disappear better. Something about life being more simplistic, thus having hopefully having less worries, while at the same time there still being plenty of mystery and plenty to hope for.
I think that's what it is, less worries and more hope. Somehow we think of middle earth and imagine less worries and more hope. Less worries perhaps because life seems more simplistic. More hope because of this great unknown out there with magic, etc.
In truth a relatively simplistic life doesn't necessarily mean one spends less time worrying. And tied into the hope part is that we imagine ourselves as some kind of special person. A hero. We don't imagine ourselves as Joe Schmoe getting killed by an orc while trying to take a crap in the woods.
Less worries, more hope.
The video game Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has a middle earth setting. In some ways the game is truly a fail. I think they might have literally used 5 people total for all the voices. I think they may have a grand total of 4 tracks of repetitive music. And yet they have endless characters. And endless dungeons (which seem to just be repeated.) And the game can just go on and on and on. With annoying loading bars... And having to stand around and wait for your magic to repower so that you can heal yourself sufficiently.
Anyway, despite all the negatives there is just barely some kind of feeling of escape to this otherworld that is somehow enjoyable. Not sure what about it exactly it is. May just be a grass is always greener thing, that one forgets all the worries that would exist over there. The worries which get in the way of enjoying life, the same as they do over here.
There's something about the middle earth setting though where the worries disappear better. Something about life being more simplistic, thus having hopefully having less worries, while at the same time there still being plenty of mystery and plenty to hope for.
I think that's what it is, less worries and more hope. Somehow we think of middle earth and imagine less worries and more hope. Less worries perhaps because life seems more simplistic. More hope because of this great unknown out there with magic, etc.
In truth a relatively simplistic life doesn't necessarily mean one spends less time worrying. And tied into the hope part is that we imagine ourselves as some kind of special person. A hero. We don't imagine ourselves as Joe Schmoe getting killed by an orc while trying to take a crap in the woods.
Less worries, more hope.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
The only way it can be "remembered" in a way that it's right there for you, readily available at all times, and not in the sense of remembering where you have to sit down and think at all really about it, is by having a classification system.
Do all people classify?
How much does the complexity of the classification system matter with regards to then becoming bored?
Does the owner of an intricate system stave off boredom appreciably better than someone who's system is perhaps vastly oversimplifies?
Is the "correct" classification system intricate? Or does everything reduce down into very few categories? Is it a lack to not be able to reduce much? Or is oversimplification the lacking?
To not classify is to more live in the moment.
To be busy remembering the past is also to more live in the moment.
To quickly glance at something, know you've seen it many times before and classify it and ignore it, is to live less in the moment. One does this enough and eventually there is nothing left. Might as well be a worm wiggling through homogenous material which supplies energy.
Do all people classify?
How much does the complexity of the classification system matter with regards to then becoming bored?
Does the owner of an intricate system stave off boredom appreciably better than someone who's system is perhaps vastly oversimplifies?
Is the "correct" classification system intricate? Or does everything reduce down into very few categories? Is it a lack to not be able to reduce much? Or is oversimplification the lacking?
To not classify is to more live in the moment.
To be busy remembering the past is also to more live in the moment.
To quickly glance at something, know you've seen it many times before and classify it and ignore it, is to live less in the moment. One does this enough and eventually there is nothing left. Might as well be a worm wiggling through homogenous material which supplies energy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHXqmTHUnA0
Like that deer hang out in our yard. This one isn't in a very secluded place but 75 yards down to the right there is a very small creek (not sewer water) with a ton of trees/vines, etc for privacy. Lots of deer hang out. Love it. Wonder if most of our mythical creatures come from real world creatures... Which brings up the question of just how old are myths about elves and dwarves anyway?
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Elf
There is a midget at work, I must say she's pretty grumpy, just like dwarves are usually portrayed in fantasy fiction. If she weren't a midget, I'm not so sure she'd get away with being that grumpy/rude to others.
Wonder if elves are inspired by deer? Or perhaps just types of people? Liberal tree hugger types, and perhaps artistic types and effeminate men, etc? Which leaves rightwingers as ogres, troll, and goblins I guess. Rightwingers generally don't read fantasy fiction. And they lockup their doors tight each night, with plenty of guns, by the bed. Not interested in finding out what might be out there.
Strangely adding one last bottom row of bookshelves really changed the effect. Now it feels like both walls are just a mass of books from floor to ceiling and I look at it and feel so much more sooooothed. This is the effect I had wanted in the first place but until adding this one last row it had seemed to completely fail in giving the effect I was hoping for. Vague though the effect I was hoping for is. Thus at the time I just dismissed it as a stupid, childish thing.
...story sort of "idea". A certain sort of people are working their way through a castle. They have this special weapon which they spike it into a door so that just it's tip is protruding into the next room. Then they pull the trigger and destroy whatever was in that room. They don't even check beforehand to see what they're destroying. They destroy the unknown. The unknown is mysterious and magical... and they have no respect for it at all. They have no interest in the unknown. Minds Closed. Not interested in learning anything else. Or particularly worried about excessive killing. So, there they are, working their way through a massive castle, stretching for miles.
-
Today I practiced my cello,
wrote 112, which I like, unfortunately my favorite sounding VSTs only do 12TET,
wrote a bit of story,
played Oblivion for an hour,
lifted weights,
watched some movies including rewatching The Last Supper, which I had liked so much before, geez I must have had more aggression in me back then,
and off to read more of George Eliot.
Like that deer hang out in our yard. This one isn't in a very secluded place but 75 yards down to the right there is a very small creek (not sewer water) with a ton of trees/vines, etc for privacy. Lots of deer hang out. Love it. Wonder if most of our mythical creatures come from real world creatures... Which brings up the question of just how old are myths about elves and dwarves anyway?
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Elf
There is a midget at work, I must say she's pretty grumpy, just like dwarves are usually portrayed in fantasy fiction. If she weren't a midget, I'm not so sure she'd get away with being that grumpy/rude to others.
Wonder if elves are inspired by deer? Or perhaps just types of people? Liberal tree hugger types, and perhaps artistic types and effeminate men, etc? Which leaves rightwingers as ogres, troll, and goblins I guess. Rightwingers generally don't read fantasy fiction. And they lockup their doors tight each night, with plenty of guns, by the bed. Not interested in finding out what might be out there.
Strangely adding one last bottom row of bookshelves really changed the effect. Now it feels like both walls are just a mass of books from floor to ceiling and I look at it and feel so much more sooooothed. This is the effect I had wanted in the first place but until adding this one last row it had seemed to completely fail in giving the effect I was hoping for. Vague though the effect I was hoping for is. Thus at the time I just dismissed it as a stupid, childish thing.
...story sort of "idea". A certain sort of people are working their way through a castle. They have this special weapon which they spike it into a door so that just it's tip is protruding into the next room. Then they pull the trigger and destroy whatever was in that room. They don't even check beforehand to see what they're destroying. They destroy the unknown. The unknown is mysterious and magical... and they have no respect for it at all. They have no interest in the unknown. Minds Closed. Not interested in learning anything else. Or particularly worried about excessive killing. So, there they are, working their way through a massive castle, stretching for miles.
-
Today I practiced my cello,
wrote 112, which I like, unfortunately my favorite sounding VSTs only do 12TET,
wrote a bit of story,
played Oblivion for an hour,
lifted weights,
watched some movies including rewatching The Last Supper, which I had liked so much before, geez I must have had more aggression in me back then,
and off to read more of George Eliot.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
practice cello-The sense of long term good (improvement over the long term) plus mostly enjoyable during but, over time the same mistakes get increasingly frustrating. Really a difficult instrument.
Long term-some
Short term-good
read book-has a sort of long term good. And good stories can be very enjoying but slight guilt about passiveness/life passing me by while missing "The Great Party", and can be a too immobile / unhealthy activity
Long term-some
Short term-good
write music-close to perfect indifference of others is an increasing negative. still really enjoyable though. Fueled by curiosity. I suppose others are ruining it though. Have to forget the existence of just about everyone on Earth to continue enjoying it.
Long term-? (increasing bitterness... no sense of achievement, becoming an ugly thing for me as I can't forget others complete indifference very often.)
Short term-very good
write stories-maybe causes the perception of a long term achievement but during the process the feelings of failure are so high.
Long term-good so far
Short term-some
watch TV-relaxing at times but eventually left with sense of uselessness
Long term-Except for the occasional movie, not good
Short term-some
play video games-the escapism is unfortuantely mixed with a feeling of ridiculousness of the uselessness combined with anxiety about not dying, etc.
Long term-not good, excepting Zelda I guess. (Why not put a lot more music, variation, and different voices in Oblivion, etc? How pitiful that 6 billion people. All these years and it's just devolved to military crap.)
Short term-some
Long term-some
Short term-good
read book-has a sort of long term good. And good stories can be very enjoying but slight guilt about passiveness/life passing me by while missing "The Great Party", and can be a too immobile / unhealthy activity
Long term-some
Short term-good
write music-close to perfect indifference of others is an increasing negative. still really enjoyable though. Fueled by curiosity. I suppose others are ruining it though. Have to forget the existence of just about everyone on Earth to continue enjoying it.
Long term-? (increasing bitterness... no sense of achievement, becoming an ugly thing for me as I can't forget others complete indifference very often.)
Short term-very good
write stories-maybe causes the perception of a long term achievement but during the process the feelings of failure are so high.
Long term-good so far
Short term-some
watch TV-relaxing at times but eventually left with sense of uselessness
Long term-Except for the occasional movie, not good
Short term-some
play video games-the escapism is unfortuantely mixed with a feeling of ridiculousness of the uselessness combined with anxiety about not dying, etc.
Long term-not good, excepting Zelda I guess. (Why not put a lot more music, variation, and different voices in Oblivion, etc? How pitiful that 6 billion people. All these years and it's just devolved to military crap.)
Short term-some
Thursday, June 10, 2010
A big hearty fuck you to all of you who were too weak to do anything but assimilate in this dystopian society. Too weak to be good. Too weak to break free. Too weak to do anything but adhere to the most crude, selfish, short term motivations. Too weak to be friendly, open, honest. Too weak to be anything but a mere survivalist. Focusing almost solely on just surviving with a few crap diversions thrown in, finding at most one person you'll be real and meaningful with, if even that.
You've made the world the piece of shit it is and you're too weak to face what it is. Too weak to see what it could be. Too weak to do anything but find a way to be happy in dystopia. And thus it won't change. It will never change. You'll only look for change when you run out of food and shelter, otherwise you'll put up with anything. Short of being literally beaten to a pulp there's nothing too crude and meaningless for you that you won't convince yourself is just fucking great.
You have no scope of mind. No ability to see that there must be more than just surviving and some meaningless diversions. But you're slaves who won't revolt. Who've tried to convince themselves this is all for the best. You won't do a goddammed thing outside the social norms.
Lady at work's boyfriend is going to become a coal miner. He'll be working 6 days a week, which with his commute added in will each be ten hour days. Reminds me of asking my mom about my grandfather, asking what he was like. She answered she didn't really know, he was always at work until he was killed in the mines when she was 16. This lady at work's cousin has already been killed in the mines. What does she think? "When it's your time, it's just your time." As if there's nothing that can be done to change the situation. Nothing to do but meakly agree to be a slave and try to convince yourself it's all for the best.
Another woman is planning on becoming a coal miner, again working 6 days a week, like her husband who already does so. She believes that we exist to work and wouldn't even know what to otherwise be doing. The idea of spending time not working is shameful to her. She's a perfectly evolved prole. One of many. Such is our evolution.
Things were actually better in old England compared to here today in America where now everyone is a worker. Most of the people now crowing at the top of the pile of dead human corpses all work long hours also. They mostly got to the top because they worked their asses off. Because that's what they like to be doing. Their job is their life and so it is for pretty much everyone. In old England you had far more people who were free to just be idle. People who just inherited fortunes. Yes, the majority were stuck in virtual slavery but at least a very few had free time for art.
Now most of the people who potentially could have sufficient free time to make some beautiful thing, some thing beyond mere survival, got in such a position exactly because they liked working so hard, and thus like robots continue working so hard, accumulating massive wealth they don't even know what to do with. Wealth and free time is now far more likely to be wasted on people who have no idea what actually to do with either other than to try to make sure others see how rich they are. The inequality and injustice of inherited wealth was actually better than this.
And so we evolve to love doing nothing but working absurdly long hours in jobs that shouldn't define us, but more and more, do. More and more of today's slaves want to be slaves. Those who don't being far less likely to successfully reproduce.
The happy man is defined by his job and wouldn't know what to do if he wasn't working. The happy man doesn't hardly speak to his neighbors and likes it that way. He's got his food, shelter, sex and TV, what else could he need? He sees anyone step outside the social norms and he thinks they must be nuts or possibly some kind of criminal.
...The above was written with a temperature of a 102 a bit after taking 2 lortabs. After getting the irregular heartbeat I started eating grilled cheese sandwiches as they're such a comfort food for me having grown up on them. As a result I caught the flu and felt all around awful. Really, really bad.
Anger, frustration, hatred. Such may be all incredibly crude, violence based feelings, but it's probably just too much a basic part of who we are.
To some extent I've been avoiding negative thoughts lately and instead enjoying small things. Doing so reduces tension and makes the days pass nicer. And also removes my motivations, my sense of direction as far as writing. Removes my purpose for being eventually.
So that eventually I apparently use feeling awful as fuel to help me try to remember. Including anger because it is an awful feeling.
Something vaguely like that.
You've made the world the piece of shit it is and you're too weak to face what it is. Too weak to see what it could be. Too weak to do anything but find a way to be happy in dystopia. And thus it won't change. It will never change. You'll only look for change when you run out of food and shelter, otherwise you'll put up with anything. Short of being literally beaten to a pulp there's nothing too crude and meaningless for you that you won't convince yourself is just fucking great.
You have no scope of mind. No ability to see that there must be more than just surviving and some meaningless diversions. But you're slaves who won't revolt. Who've tried to convince themselves this is all for the best. You won't do a goddammed thing outside the social norms.
Lady at work's boyfriend is going to become a coal miner. He'll be working 6 days a week, which with his commute added in will each be ten hour days. Reminds me of asking my mom about my grandfather, asking what he was like. She answered she didn't really know, he was always at work until he was killed in the mines when she was 16. This lady at work's cousin has already been killed in the mines. What does she think? "When it's your time, it's just your time." As if there's nothing that can be done to change the situation. Nothing to do but meakly agree to be a slave and try to convince yourself it's all for the best.
Another woman is planning on becoming a coal miner, again working 6 days a week, like her husband who already does so. She believes that we exist to work and wouldn't even know what to otherwise be doing. The idea of spending time not working is shameful to her. She's a perfectly evolved prole. One of many. Such is our evolution.
Things were actually better in old England compared to here today in America where now everyone is a worker. Most of the people now crowing at the top of the pile of dead human corpses all work long hours also. They mostly got to the top because they worked their asses off. Because that's what they like to be doing. Their job is their life and so it is for pretty much everyone. In old England you had far more people who were free to just be idle. People who just inherited fortunes. Yes, the majority were stuck in virtual slavery but at least a very few had free time for art.
Now most of the people who potentially could have sufficient free time to make some beautiful thing, some thing beyond mere survival, got in such a position exactly because they liked working so hard, and thus like robots continue working so hard, accumulating massive wealth they don't even know what to do with. Wealth and free time is now far more likely to be wasted on people who have no idea what actually to do with either other than to try to make sure others see how rich they are. The inequality and injustice of inherited wealth was actually better than this.
And so we evolve to love doing nothing but working absurdly long hours in jobs that shouldn't define us, but more and more, do. More and more of today's slaves want to be slaves. Those who don't being far less likely to successfully reproduce.
The happy man is defined by his job and wouldn't know what to do if he wasn't working. The happy man doesn't hardly speak to his neighbors and likes it that way. He's got his food, shelter, sex and TV, what else could he need? He sees anyone step outside the social norms and he thinks they must be nuts or possibly some kind of criminal.
...The above was written with a temperature of a 102 a bit after taking 2 lortabs. After getting the irregular heartbeat I started eating grilled cheese sandwiches as they're such a comfort food for me having grown up on them. As a result I caught the flu and felt all around awful. Really, really bad.
Anger, frustration, hatred. Such may be all incredibly crude, violence based feelings, but it's probably just too much a basic part of who we are.
To some extent I've been avoiding negative thoughts lately and instead enjoying small things. Doing so reduces tension and makes the days pass nicer. And also removes my motivations, my sense of direction as far as writing. Removes my purpose for being eventually.
So that eventually I apparently use feeling awful as fuel to help me try to remember. Including anger because it is an awful feeling.
Something vaguely like that.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
I've said I don't believe in willpower, that instead one should find a way to do things so that they enjoy what they are doing right then and there instead of focusing off in the distance to some great time achievement which if it ever comes anyway actually will be quite hollow.
That thing off far in the future will be hollow anyway and long term willpower doesn't really work anyway.
But, there is something to be said for short term willpower. Just a smidgeon anyway. A short term willpower that puts one in a position to better enjoy themselves day after day over the long term.
So some willpower isn't a bad thing, if understood that you aren't planning on relying on willpower over the long term. That instead you are hoping this short term willpower will lead to changes that will better enable you to have immediate enjoyment at whatever activity you're trying to improve at/learn, etc.
But just a tiny bit. Still should be primarily about immediate enjoyment. And if it isn't, understanding what stands in the way.
That thing off far in the future will be hollow anyway and long term willpower doesn't really work anyway.
But, there is something to be said for short term willpower. Just a smidgeon anyway. A short term willpower that puts one in a position to better enjoy themselves day after day over the long term.
So some willpower isn't a bad thing, if understood that you aren't planning on relying on willpower over the long term. That instead you are hoping this short term willpower will lead to changes that will better enable you to have immediate enjoyment at whatever activity you're trying to improve at/learn, etc.
But just a tiny bit. Still should be primarily about immediate enjoyment. And if it isn't, understanding what stands in the way.
They can be suspicious or they can be trusting.
They can be stingy/selfish or they can be giving/altruistic.
Full of fear or strong.
Small minded, seeking wealth/materialistic or wise, searching for peace, moral pride, friendship.
Bigoted or not/able to accurately assess people or not. (The worse one is at assessing the more suspicious/hateful they are.)
They can be stingy/selfish or they can be giving/altruistic.
Full of fear or strong.
Small minded, seeking wealth/materialistic or wise, searching for peace, moral pride, friendship.
Bigoted or not/able to accurately assess people or not. (The worse one is at assessing the more suspicious/hateful they are.)
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
A sort of humility perhaps with a trace of something that's perhaps the extreme opposite. But on both accounts my words fall short.
My stepfather had no toys growing up and instead found some rocks which he cherished. I had grown up playing with matchbox cars. More humble still, to play with nothing at all but your mind and a pen/word processor. To just dream, and write the dreams down. What more humble endeavor to pass your free time could there be?
It is a sort of giving up on the grand party, or a sad understanding that there is no happiness greater than what one can do simply within one's own mind, safely away from the unpredictability of others. And, the predictability of eventual ugliness from them. A greater happiness than any other, and yet the most humble sort of play.
Writing down your daydreams. And no dreams of getting published. No dreams of fame intermixed. Just right at that moment the enjoyment of whatever daydreams.
And, at the same time, a strange mystical belief that by writing them down and making them more concrete (even if no one else ever reads them) you make them in some way real. A belief that there are gods/infinities of life and if it's dreamed it will Be somewhere someday. Like I once believed that all the worlds of Jack Vance MUST be real, somewhere, someday, somehow. That simply by writing them down they became real.
Such a belief is anything but humble. It is mystical and nuts. But it is somewhat back in the distance. This godlike belief. But I've heard it said--not put quite put so clearly--by others. Famous writers, some musicians..
This latter belief is far back though. Dangerous maybe to think on it too directly. Might shatter it into absurdity. Very dangerous. But on the other hand, may wake up in 5 weeks with no idea why for a short time I had been able to write without trying to use futile willpower. Instead enjoying it right NOW. As one should do, or shouldn't bother at all.
The humility of just dreaming and the immediate enjoyment of so doing is at the front. Is it alone enough though without that other bit?
I shall not think about it.
My stepfather had no toys growing up and instead found some rocks which he cherished. I had grown up playing with matchbox cars. More humble still, to play with nothing at all but your mind and a pen/word processor. To just dream, and write the dreams down. What more humble endeavor to pass your free time could there be?
It is a sort of giving up on the grand party, or a sad understanding that there is no happiness greater than what one can do simply within one's own mind, safely away from the unpredictability of others. And, the predictability of eventual ugliness from them. A greater happiness than any other, and yet the most humble sort of play.
Writing down your daydreams. And no dreams of getting published. No dreams of fame intermixed. Just right at that moment the enjoyment of whatever daydreams.
And, at the same time, a strange mystical belief that by writing them down and making them more concrete (even if no one else ever reads them) you make them in some way real. A belief that there are gods/infinities of life and if it's dreamed it will Be somewhere someday. Like I once believed that all the worlds of Jack Vance MUST be real, somewhere, someday, somehow. That simply by writing them down they became real.
Such a belief is anything but humble. It is mystical and nuts. But it is somewhat back in the distance. This godlike belief. But I've heard it said--not put quite put so clearly--by others. Famous writers, some musicians..
This latter belief is far back though. Dangerous maybe to think on it too directly. Might shatter it into absurdity. Very dangerous. But on the other hand, may wake up in 5 weeks with no idea why for a short time I had been able to write without trying to use futile willpower. Instead enjoying it right NOW. As one should do, or shouldn't bother at all.
The humility of just dreaming and the immediate enjoyment of so doing is at the front. Is it alone enough though without that other bit?
I shall not think about it.
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