not only is it tremendously time consuming but perhaps not all that fulfilling....
In her coming book, "Alone Together"....
wasn't merely a distraction, but it was really confusing him about who he was....

"Alone Together". Post-industrial living. Awful. But people do still desire some aspects of how they once lived. A world where there was far more face to face interaction. Where your house wasn't a fortress and you didn't even know your neighbors. Where instead there was some meaningful connection and you interacted on a daily basis with the people whom live around you. A world where you felt connected to both nature and other people. Facebook and some other things online reveal this desire in people to have such a connection with others. But trying to get it there is like already being dead.

But, it's a good way to keep in touch with all the people that don't live close?

Industrialized society again. Always moving. And walled away in your fortress. TV, internet, car, no one you work with even lives anywhere near you.

What reason is there for me to speak to anyone ever?

Go to work. Slap on a smile. Go home. I don't exist.

...Van Gogh's unoccupired chairs pay respect to a tendency to avoid represtentation of the human figure. Gauguin is there, seated in his armchair, even if we cannot see him - according to this formula.

The breat in the two artists' friendship had become inevitable. When Gauguin decided to leave, he left the ruins of van Gogh's dreams of an artists' community in the South behind. "As you know, I have always considered it idiotic that painters live alone. It is always a loss if one is left to one's own devices", van Gogh had written to his brother, describing his longing for solidarity amongst painters.

"....sooner there will be nothing left... but empty chairs."

"In the 19th century there was an altogether new type of suffering artist: the lonely, lost, despairing artist on the brink of insanity...

"The 19th century was the inhuman century par excellence; the triumph of technology mechanized our lives totally, rendering us stupid; the worship of Mammon has irredemably impoverished mankind, without exception; and a world without God is not only the least moral but als othe least comfortable that can be conceived. As he enters the Present, modern man reaches the inmost circle of hell along his absurd and necessary path of suffering."- Egon Friedell

I guess I better write it down. Preferably somewhere I won't lose it.

The fictional book has a dystopia. There's no convincing the reader it's a dystopia. There's no carefully pointing out how certain actions much like what commonly occur in our own world are a big part of how it's a dystopia. There's no trying to convince the reader of what's right and wrong. There's certainly no grand scheme for fixing the whole world. There's just hero/s whom are finding ways to cope with the situation. Not exactly just merely surviving. But finding/applying positive coping mechanisms.

Along the way various insights may be included but never ever in a manner that they get in the way of the story at all.

It may be that to a large extent what could have been learned will simply fly over the readers head. Oh well. There is fiction and there's nonfiction.

...I think of Devo. And how their message, which wasn't really that hidden, (but was partially hidden as it would have pissed a ton of people off) was missed by almost everyone it seemed. Devolution. We're evolving into a stupider race. Our idea of a good time is getting drunk and laid. Being really (noncompartmentalizedly) smart is like having a disease.

They weren't hiding it much.

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Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
Happier than you and me
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
And it determined what he could see
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
One chromosome too many
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
And it determined what he could see
And he wore a hat
And he had a job
And he brought home the bacon
So that no one knew
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
His friends were unaware
Mongoloid he was a mongoloid
Nobody even cared

A guy has Down's Syndrome but no one even notices because everyone else is at about the same level. Endless such songs parodying everything in our culture that disgusted them and, for all their preachiness they might as well have been mumbling grocery lists.

So it flies over everyone's head. Oh well.

Vancian coping was stoicism. That's why it appealed to me so much.
Salvatore appealed to me in that the dystopia/versus the compassion of the hero resounded with my own life. His coping was also.. stoicism.

Another coping is turning things into the absurd. Another is focusing on the welfare of others instead of the self. (Thank god for children?) What else? Religion/mysticism/art..., love, well... then maybe endless others. Could say everything is a coping mechanism. But focusing on the coping mechanisms of 'the hero'.

The books that gave a euphoric feeling had the hero's with coping mechanisms that were new to me.

There is also Ayn Rand's heros. Her coping mechanism was thinking you're superior to others and that The Game is all there is. Endless competing against all other people. The individual against all others. That is Life. That is The Way. Love it. Become it.

Such is the coping mechanism of a monster.

There is also Milan Kundera's coping mechanism. His was showing that yes, he agrees, life is horrible. Look at this. See? I understand. I agree. But I'll go further. I'll show you that it's even worse then you thought. In fact it's so bad that what you must do is give up. And turn to relatively small bits of happiness. Like a nice hot piece of ass. A beautiful sunset. That's all one can hope for.

Kundera is probably right but a real hero would not agree.

Once I had a teacher who told a short story of how when he was a student he once sharpened his pencil and then the kid next to him bent over while seated at his desk. The back of his shirt rode up at this moment exposing his lower back and my former teacher on a sudden demonic whim launched his pencil at his exposed back. The sharp point of the pencil landed perfectly right in his lower spine, stuck and the kid began screaming.

LOL, such absurdity. Such pain caused for no real reason at all. What would be more ridiculous than that?

How about some really smart philsophical type person spending decades ruminating on a bunch of actions that are the equivalent of that? In effect pondering and pondering, attempting to understand the thought processes of the kid who threw the sharp pencil. Absurdity cubed.

You could call it projection. I can't quite call it anthropomorphisizing. Not quite anyway. Mr. Smarty Pants Philosopher just can't quite comprehend a vacuum.

The Absurd

The Absurd is when through perfect logic and perfect memory we realize that life is meaningless and futile. This is with respect to the finality of death and perhaps also with the results of successfully "defeating" the unconscious.

The absurd, with a small 'a', I'm defining as when outside of the above universal concerns we realize that our actions are nonsensical/illogical. This absurd though may very well be part of a necessary reaction to The Absurd.

I'm defining absurd in general here as something that doesn't make you laugh. Humor is that which we find unexpectedly wrong. The absurds are too serious to really be so unexpected to the vast majority of people. The exact situation of the absurd may in one sense be totally unexpected but we classify it as a thing which on some level we are expecting as a possibility; that class being the breakdown of that which makes life have meaning.

('have meaning' versus "nonmeaningless"?)
Thinking too fuzzy to say for certain at the moment.

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With respect to Campbell's Monomyth. What percentage of aspiring writers are would-be hero's of that myth? 5%? 95%? Depends on how mono it is?
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In some ways I wonder if in general these associations of the likes of Campbell or say Zizek just go ridiculously too far. Are we really learning anything? I mean, I can then read some simple little thing and my mind can then jump to endless meanings but then, well, what? It adds a great richness I suppose; a whole nother level of understanding... And it seems to give a template which makes a lot what seemed maybe random not actually so random.
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It is something other than the antihistamine and anti-inflammatory properties of tylenol pm at least partially. Two days in a row and I was still still swimming in mud at 2PM.

I want to write of The Absurd and perhaps absurdities scattered throughout our way of life in general, of utopia and the faults within our social systems and our DNA.

Referring to the previous post this Artaud fellow sounds... I want to use the word absurd (language isn't sophisticated enough or I'm not) but it is a different thing than what I just referred to above so I'll say ridiculous. Similarly Spurious and myself and for that matter Kafka in his blog. All seemingly ridiculous. But the thing is they're all setting their sights very high.

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Every night we sleep and forget, we are then reborn anew. To the extent we sleep like crap this process doesn't correctly take place. Not only do we physically then feel like crud, not only are we mentally tired, but we haven't forgotten.

In one sense not forgetting can mean seeing The Truth a little bit too clearly. In another it means stuck in seeing things the same way. Because we haven't forgotten we aren't so able to approach the problem from another direction, thus we might only spin our wheels.

Through insomnia we can feel like shit and thus we are spurred to creativity. Through pain (not too much though or the wrong kind...) we are spurred to find a change, we are spurred to creativity.

But really insomnia is a lousy way to go about it; as our minds are weakened. We may have forgotten with good sleep but our minds just work better with good sleep.

I've had insomnia a good bit of my life. I would like to defeat it once and for all. Going to start taking Tylenol PM more often. Was just taking it maybe twice a month. Supposedly it's no big deal to take it every night. I won't quite go that far but i shall start taking it much more often. Also will do a few other things. Blueberry smoothies used to put me to sleep...

Had a serious withdrawal from sleeping pills 18 years ago and have very seriously wanted to make sure that never happened again. Tylenol PM though is just some acetaminophen and dipenhydramine.

I'm curious what role inflammation can play in insomnia and histamine. Supposedly the sedative effect of dipenhydramine has nothing to do with it being an antihistamine. Not convinced. It has seemed that taking a massive load of antioxidants has helped me sleep in the past...

Good post summarizing the stuff I've been thinking about lately

Etc.
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Started trying to actually write fiction yesterday. Descended into deep depression for my troubles, ended up thinking of the levels of suicide. I don't have any normal go-kill-myself-suicide in me. I defeated that I think permanently about 18 years ago. But there is stuff like driving down the road and wishing you might wreck the car and die. (I don't wish that.) There is kind of wishing you'd just get some disease and get the pointless boring absurdity over with. Or, working at a hospital, here and there in the past having wished I was a patient, I have done those a few times. Some kind of creeping suicide. I'm in a good mood at the moment as it's morning. Takes a long day of contemplation (futilely trying to write fiction for example) to reach the point of thinking enough, compiling enough of the pointlessness, etc of it all.

But I won't ever do such a thing. No worries there if anyone happens to be reading this blog (which was essentially meant as a private matter exactly so I wouldn't have to worry about such misunderstandings. Endless misunderstandings possible through reading all this.)

But the blog was ultimately a vague experiment and it can go where it may.