Who To Blame?

I was on the bus this morning and this guy across from me wouldn't stop coughing. I declared a war on germs. My weapon: give everyone on the bus a cough suppressant. Although the germs are the true enemy, the humans are the inert vessels at which the virus highjacks to further their own cause. How do you fight germs without fighting people? Does the intention of the virus transcribe onto the human? Is the human in any way at all responsible for the viruses actions? In essence, is what the human being punished for a result of some type of carelessness that they engaged in to acquire the virus? Many things can result from ignorance - can ignorance be seen as a problem?

You can take the logic of this example and run with it. For example, many have defined religion as a mimetic virus that attaches itself to a host human. In the most extreme cases, we see the cause of religious fundamentalism as a seed of human intention and thought but we don't go any further and presume that perhaps it isn't the human that is causing the thought but rather the mimetic virus. Who do we persecute in this example? How much control do humans have over viruses? Should I punish you for coughing? What if the locus of control that incites these negative behaviours lies within an innocent host? How do we separate the two?

increase- eating and opening doors with non-dominant hand.
- positive thinking in neutral situations
- water intake
- journal reflections

decrease - bouts of rage
- chicken wing intake
- fat thoughts and fat foods

The Mulitple Realizability of Self Loathing.

I always wondered if my own dissatisfaction with my singing voice was at all any reflection or manifestation of a dissatisfaction with my Self? Perhaps only in fully accepting your person hood do your own perceptions of Self equalize and eventually grow to a pure acceptance of Self. In other words, the closer you are to being able to idealize your self in a 'healthy' way, the easier it becomes to develop an acceptance to a certain aspect of yourself like vocal expression. Similarly, it's like being dissatisfied with one's own grammatical style. These are just different ways of looking into a mirror.

the recursive nature of definitions. [epistemic regress]

We are consistently stuck in our search for meaning because of the recursive nature of life. Self similarity means things are almost the same but not exact. This is the basis of diversity upon which natural selection works. A process which like an algorithm shapes and contours evolution.
Try to define a word and you have to use other words. Try to define a concept and you will have to break it into smaller units. Ultimately everything is the same but just organized differently. A different pattern within the same entity. God is just a shape we choose to see within the static and noise in the universe because we are children of this pattern seeking game.

This phenomenon can also be termed 'epistemic regress' for the sole fact that definitions require definitions. We cannot define x by means of a natural language because language is recursive and self referential. The alternative is to define x using a method that doesn't rely upon a recursive process. T (time) is a major factor in recursion so much that if we do try to define x without recursion, then our definition of x will remain stagnant to the T that it was defined in. Recursion has allowed us to include the dimension of time in our definitions. In trying to define x=love -- in order to describe x we need to take an excursion into other concepts which takes t time. the time required to find some satisfactory definition is reliant about n number of concepts we choose to refer to. We want to point to x -- how can we do this without pointing somewhere else?

the high road.

i almost fell into love
the wall was too tall for me to climb
so i turned around

everyone was watching,
slandering my cowardice
but in my mind,
lack of incentive

i turned around and saw a great light
from beyond another wall
and made the climb
with shear force until my body bled
against the rough concrete

like a starving panther
i cared nothing for
the failure people had just seen in me
i lusted for what we all lust for
without any pretense

i heard screams from behind me tout with passionate ignorance
'why wasn't what lied across the other wall good enough for you?"
i replied:
"i will never know."
sometimes blind emotion is all that can make us realize what has worth
i stumbled blindly looking for worth until i felt it
this is why many of us would walk blindly on the face of a cliff--
because it made us feel alive somehow

I feel the reasons
but i don't know the reasons

she's beautiful in every way
but if you hold her too long
she burns you

how urban living is like data compression.

In cityscapes, the ability to occupy a point in space that defies gravity is a form of vertical expansion that is afforded by architecture. It can be seen as the physical instantiation of a data compression technique.

People can be seen as bits of data that require the occupancy of space. The horizontal axis allows us to spread out, but becomes inefficient after a specific tipping point. When we begin to occupy the vertical axis, we can fit more data into a smaller area.

Similarly, when we furnish our homes we often try to make the best use of vertical space by using shelving that occupies the vertical access. This is all likely part of our ontogeny with dwelling in mountain caves. We realized there was some type of correlation between safety, efficiency and the vertical axis.

The next step in our ontogenetic relationship with the vertical axis is space colonization. The vertical axis is far more complex since its relationship with gravity is different. Much of this is a matter of understanding the physics of being able to escape the petri dish that gifted us with the minds to be able to escape it.

still

when i look into the mirror
sometimes for that split second
i don't know who is looking back at me

now illuminated
after finding a good angle,
i begin to speak my mind
and wonderful shapes exit my mouth

orbiting around your head
funneling
into your ears
you start to listen

my truest angles
eclipse
all of your
misconceptions of me

only when everything becomes still
can i stop looking for an answer

more than we know.

i'm an agnostic
who feels holy
from time to time

i think that our memories
are what most people call God

when a split second
means more to you
than an entire year
has ever meant to you
in retrospect

when you smell, touch, or see
something
that makes you travel time

when you see a friend
you haven't seen in years
makes you feel
like no time had passed at all
since you last embraced them

when you feel exactly how you
can't feel right now
reading this..

when the magic isn't there
but will be some day soon

this is where
I can place my beliefs

pray like hell because hell praise

back.

it's me
that's crawling to you


i turned away from you
out of cowardice

when your finger met my back

i broke

because i realized
you never turned yours

is being cultural?

Are you willing to admit that your being in itself means absolutely nothing without culture? Life doesn't seem like a closed system -- it is. These very words will most likely read as morose or even nihilistic -- but ask yourselves why first.

I'm willing to bet that the eastern philosophers were closer to whatever 'truth' people seek. "Peace comes from within, do not seek it without". These witty aphorisms
go against the very concept of how being is so dependent on culture. Then where did we go wrong? Was culture inevitable? Is culture the bitter aftertaste of a medicine that if not taken, we would have faced extinction?

Why do you give a care? Is it because you are 'here'? Is your being hanging on the thread of some delusional belief bedtime story you tell yourself at night? Fiction is a large enterprise in culture -- the stories we tell ourselves to buffer ourselves from the dark void of meaninglessness. If anything can bring meaning to one's life, than why do we have such pathetic organizations such as islam, christianity and judaism? Is this the epitome of human experience and meaning?? Is this how humanity best shines? I'd be willing to guess that the real truth people have within is 'no' -- their excuse is that those organizations are the only things they have ever 'known'. People should know more. But if you close off your mind, nothing and everything is possible.

So open wide and swallow bitter taste of a lifeline in which you have no choice but to take membership in -- but just think what Being would feel like without culture. I dream about it.

why truth's never align perfectly.

your mind squints,
our smiles hide beneath lies
shaped by delusions

grace,
a light from within

struggles,

wheezing through our chest
towards our mouth
shining
past our teeth

and the shadows they cast

are our truth

composing life.

don't talk to me about composition, i've composed myself -- all twenty-eight years of it. sure, i've made a few grammatical errors on the way, a few bummed notes and i've had to try erasing a few broken hearts but only ended up making a mess smearing the colours. my decisions have been my instrument and the colours have derived from interactions within a sea of possibility I like to call chance. i've missed some chances, i've fucked up some others but life never stopped in light of those. i continue to bounce around like frequency forever refracting in darkness and light. sometimes i prefer darkness because i love the mystery of bumping into a miracle i will never be able to define. yes, the darkness is my friend because things sound better in the dark and i live for sound. most of the time i do feel like a note within a gigantic chorus of a world in which i inherently and inexplicably bump into others that i harmonize with. i've been in love three times and each love was a different interval. my first love was a sixth -- stable but uneasy. my second was a third -- pleasing to the ear but untamable and deceptive on the pythagorean level. my third was a perfect fifth - balanced and natural but far away from home (wherever that is). so i've compromised each step of the way. my friends and family, well, we are full chords and i seldom consider myself the fundamental note (since they tend to carry me). i love the sound we make because, unlike love which on the temporal level is very rapid (think 64th notes), friends are lingering and fermata-like because the distance between us never finds us yearning or awkward. i'm going to go rest, the next movement starts early tomorrow.

the nature of a question.

why must you go?
the emotion is sadness
because i miss you
i miss you because
you made me ask why

you're broken.

be reckless
let your true self shine
you're going to want to make
a nice girl
fix you

you're broken
but that's who you are

turning on.

I remember one night
where my childhood went
to sleep
and never woke up

it was in the summer
1994
i remember the floral print couch
between the ferns
the windows were open
breeze and sun were coming in
brighter than it ever does now

i woke up feeling
a weight on my chest
my eyelids lost their elasticity
a new sort of darkness
and my pores
were crying oil

like a switch
my adolescence
flicked

and a new part of me was turned on

your structure.

Most people dress the part, but cannot play the part. It's easier to alter your surface structure than to change the structure of a deeper sentiment such as your personality traits. Does fashion offer an accurate representation of personality traits?

Fashion is a form of hyper representation that attempts to express the self. Along with this, it leads to a type of hyper judgment. Obviously, as social groups grew in complexity, it became increasingly difficult to know everyone on a deeper level. One of the bases upon which fashion emerged was perhaps through the need to facilitate a quick route towards finding shared characteristics and common interests among a growing number of individuals. When you step onto the subway your attention is focused on iconic stimuli such as symbols, logos, etc. Unless you engage in conversation with a stranger, the only other way to gain some type of impression of them is through how they represent themselves in an aesthetic sense.

We are increasingly becoming a culture that is 'brand' obsessed. I often find scribbles in my own notes that express things such as 'find your brand', 'make yourself into a product' -- because this is how people are taught to consume and process others. We are becoming highly dependent on representing ourselves as brands.

Do we sacrifice originality for acceptance? Or is there some type of functionality to brands we embody? UGG's -- do these straddle the side of function more than form? Who creates the semantic meaning of this brand? When we see others wearing similar brands, there is a sense of unconscious calm and safety via familiarity and identification. We might go as far to say that we share reasons for wearing the same brands. If we believe these to be sound reasons, then we project that same reasoning onto others we perceive embodying them.

Conformists don't move -- they stay safe. The outliers or 'freaks' risk exclusion at the price of having a more developed sense of individuality.
Most of us aren't who we appear to be -- fashion is just an extension of our dreams, expectations, and wishes. I recall that certain groups are represented through the colours of their shoelaces -- with considerable overlap. There is ambiguity on this level for not everyone wearing green shoelaces knows that they could represent environmentalist attitudes. Perhaps these shoelaces could also represent people who love unripened banana's!

I often think about how I represent myself and whether or not I do a sound job of it. What I conclude is that through the emergence of social complexity the need for fashion to express the self grew. It's taxing on the brain to be able to memorize so many human-like features of a nude body and rely on faces alone (visually speaking). The addition of this fashion 'surface structure' will continue to emerge and take on new forms as social complexity grows even deeper requiring even further disambiguation.

don't be an expert lover.

it's not your lovers job
to know everything about you

this would jeopardize
the fuel in which loves depends-
mystery.

you should know just as much
about your lovers psyche

as you do of your parents
sex lives

you know it's there
that it's important somehow

but you wrap it in plastic
and put it in the back of your mind
and hope it doesn't rot

summer love will rescue you.

it's hard to breathe when
the air is so dry

you fight hard to find
a way through the cold (winter)

you should feel happy
being alone

you will always be alone
and when you aren't
you will be laying next to him

having second thoughts
like you tend to do

resenting
what you used to love about him
but not knowing the exact reasons
why

feel existence.

i want you to sit in your room completely alone in complete darkness
for the entire day.

feel existence

we have it wrong.

oh magnus,
why is it that those of us who say goodnight the most end up sleeping the least?