I haven’t been much in the mood for writing. I have written a few posts, but none which I felt like publishing. In the spirit of writing I’ve decided to talk about the self.
A month ago I started reading Stanley Park by Timothy Parker. I haven’t gotten much into it; I can’t pick up a book without falling asleep after reading 10 pages. I’m not sure what the remedy is, but currently I cannot do a normal reading session. Mr. Parker had to make the antagonist’s name Dante, and have Dante’s chain called Inferno something Coffee… This is clearly a reference to Dante’s Inferno. Now I’ve never personally read Dante’s Inferno or any part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, other than snippets here and there in more philosophical references than English ones. Lazy as I am, I don’t have time to read Inferno to understand the reference in the book, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. I know that’s not something I should be doing, but the article itself was well written and concise and I got the gist of it. I feel I need to read this classic epic poem (Yes D I said epic and I used it correctly) since it is so interesting and entertaing. If I were going to hell I would be in the first level of hell and I would be chilling with all the greats I knew would be hanging out in hell. I’m cool with that decision, no need to baptize me or convert to any type of Christianity. I am fine with where in hell I’ll be going.
I watched Ides of March a couple of Saturdays ago; yes this is going somewhere and it is related; which was great and I mean great. It was great because the acting was good and the story was well written and well told and I realized that I really need to start writing again and something significant. On Saturday I also decided that I need to read and write more philosophy. I don’t need to be a university student or work within those realms to study it, so I picked up some philosophers I haven’t read and in an area I’m interested in writing something in. You need to read a lot in order to develop a well balanced perception of things and in a specific area, whether you agree with it or not. At the book store I grabbed Kafta and Arthur Schopenhauer and because I like to mix Western thinking with Eastern thinking, I grabbed Rebel Buddha by Dzogchen Ponlop. I always want to connect Eastern and Western philosophy into something coherent and logical. I’m not sure they can really be combined without it being more one thing than another.
One of the problems I grasp with Buddhism/Hinduism/Jainism (they have the same goal) is that our reality is false. Everything we see isn’t true. As a Westerner, I have a strong belief in science. I also believe that we truly are organic beings, and have a very determined sense of self. In Buddhism, I can’t accept that everything I see to be false. I just cannot embrace that mentality. My strong belief in this reality being real is why the illusion is so good, why everyone is participating, and why everyone continues to suffer and go through the cycle of rebirth all the time. We continue our existence in this state until we see the ultimate reality and the illusion of this world. It’s hard to believe that this beautiful organic planet isn’t real, that it doesn’t really exist. Majority of people experience the same subjective experiences. Descartes went through this, epistemology goes through this, as well as the whole Matrix metaphor. That there is a true reality; it just may not be this one, or that if we have complete faith in the Lord, what we see is to be taken as truth and not a falsity. The sense of self is the most puzzling of all things in the human universe, other than the purpose/meaning of life.
Somewhere in between I want to accept that what Buddha says as truth, but I also want to believe in science and its truth, plus the rational mind… provided that it’s actually rational. But can you accept Buddha’s teachings and still believe in this reality as truth? What I’m studying and interested in writing isn’t about merging the two ideas into one coherent one. I think Buddhism would lose its meaning if it were to be westernized – think yoga branding. I’m under the impression that people who have a yogic philosophy don’t really practice the real philosophy. All I can think of are those vegetarian hippie’s who’ve incorporated yoga to everything else they were doing. It’s too bad that yoga has been so westernized. If you research the history of yoga, yoga meditations weren’t to relax and get your body in shape, but as a ritual in order to achieve moksha/mukti/nirvana/siddha. I don’t know anyone who does yoga for these reasons.
I was going somewhere with Dante, but the idea escaped me. I think it had something to do with the Christian reality that this is real, that there is an afterlife and that afterlife is real, and that there is only one life and not a continual rebirth. There’s a perception that this reality carries over into a new reality that looks rather similar to this one. In hell people are punished, believing that our senses are the same immaterially as they are when we’re material. It didn’t occur to me that this is a contradiction until now as I wrote it. Maybe it’s more that images are being impressed into the “soul” and based on memory, they really think they’re being tortured. Now I’ve managed to find something else that makes Christianity irrational.
I was also going to go somewhere with how Plato discusses there being two realities. Plato loved being in the philosophical mind, but the organic body which houses the soul had organic appetites that had nothing to do with rationality. Plato is a Western thinker. I wonder how much influence Eastern thought had on the Greeks, since they were so close to Asia. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, what we see of truth are impressions of things. Which ties nicely that this world is an illusion. Plato’s thought on how to solve the problem is to make sure it is the philosopher kings who show the impressions and not those who want to manipulate people to feed their appetites with whatever it is they want people to believe so that they can get away with it. Currently in the news there is “Occupy Wall Street” which a ‘peaceful’ protest against the 1% of the population that is wealthy and the 99% of the human population that are the puppets in this world of greed. If I were taking a class, I would use this in an essay, because getting good marks in philosophy in exams is to tie in what you’ve learned and apply it to the real world. It’s food for thought. Always trust the ancient Greek philosophers. They are the forefathers of science and biology, amongst other things besides philosophizing.
I think that philosophy should be learned amongst peers and in a group setting. My only other option is to start taking some classes at the university. The problem is all the good classes are on during the week and not as a night class. The only problem with learning outside of a classroom is the loss of discussion, peer support and feedback and dialogue with the professor. You completely lose the feeling of community when you read on your own. Maybe something has been misinterpreted, or something confusing can be answered in a class. Or someone else’s opinions inspire ideas and thought. I learn through visuals. I have to visualize something to learn it. Like I did for too many exams, I wrote acronyms on my left hand. I could remember it, if I remembered what the order and the letter stood for. This never occurred to me until last week when someone asked me for a phone number and I had to dial the number in the air to remember it. They said to me “I didn’t think you were such a visual person” and laughed, like it was charming. I think my mom is like this. It would explain why I talk to myself like she does, but there could be a biological reason for that. Such as when you read something you process it in one part of your brain and when you hear something it gets processed in another part of your brain. It’s possible that in order to process a complete thought, it needs to go through two different places to be coherent.
Cheers to Thursday and probably the last day...
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Priorities Are A Funny Thing
It's only going to be the second week of August, but I already know what I need to do and I am more than ready to get back into everything. Summer is so lazy and free spirited and all about relaxing and having fun. When you don't have anything planned for fall or planned near future goals, you only wish summer would last longer than it does. Avoidance is not a wonderful thing. It's very damaging. It puts you so behind that you don't know where to begin again. Like all things, you have to figure it out on your own. If someone thinks they're steering you clear of you imminent life disaster, they're not helping you at all. In fact, they're making it worse. I know some people who need some steering, they're heading for mistakes they could avoid, but it's their life and they need to make them.
Comparing last fall to this one, I'm happy to say that for once since I was a university student, I know what I'm doing and it's a wonderful thing. Maybe it's not where I wanted to be two years ago, in fact it's definitely not where I wanted to be, but I've accepted it. They don't necessarily need to be lost forever, but they will have to stay where they've been put and that's that.
Have a wonderful weekend. I think the weather is going to be great. I would like to spend my evening sitting on some patio drinking sangria by the pitcher. I'm not sure if that's a possibility, but I'm hoping it could be.
Cheers!
Comparing last fall to this one, I'm happy to say that for once since I was a university student, I know what I'm doing and it's a wonderful thing. Maybe it's not where I wanted to be two years ago, in fact it's definitely not where I wanted to be, but I've accepted it. They don't necessarily need to be lost forever, but they will have to stay where they've been put and that's that.
Have a wonderful weekend. I think the weather is going to be great. I would like to spend my evening sitting on some patio drinking sangria by the pitcher. I'm not sure if that's a possibility, but I'm hoping it could be.
Cheers!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Marc Maron
Other than Woody Allen, I've just found someone else who's even more neurotic than me... Marc Maron.
I was just watching last night's episode of Conan, since the only other new episode on my PVR was Primetime Nightline: Beyond "Battle With the Devil". Now I started watching Nightline, but the images of real 'exorcisms' were freaking me out on top of my anxiety attack. I was trying to calm down and I knew this would give me anxiety and nightmares. I decided to switch to Conan. I made the right decision. Don't get me wrong I love Conan any day, but my other recordings tend to beat his episodes. Seth Green was funny, but Marc Maron retelling his hypochondria of mouth cancer killed me and made me feel completely normal. I had a similar hypochondriac moment when I was 16 when my lymphnodes in my armpits were crazy swollen I obsessed about having cancer. I later found out that outdoor cats carry bacteria on their paws and nails that when you get scratched it can cause symptoms like swollen lymphnodes under your arms. I got scratched by an outdoor cat. I felt more embarrassed than "a survivor of cancer."
I think my anxiety attack this evening came about by me cleaning the only clutter in my apartment, my unused kitchen countertop. I like to rationalize everything. It gives chaos control. Putting order to the chaos of the counter had the opposite effect on me. I have no idea why.
I ran out of thoughts. If you have the time, see if you can find the Marc Maron interview from last night's episode of Conan. I couldn't bare to delete the episode. They made a joke about fanatical HP fans committing suicide, and then an HP fan threatened to jump from the rafters until Andy Richter came to save the day wearing a Batman mask and cape like the live action TV show from whatever decade. I <3 you Andy, but holy shit, you in that Batman mask took my breath away. Conan's reaction only added to how I also felt about it. You should look that up too if you can find that too.
God bless Conan and Andy Richter and America.
I was just watching last night's episode of Conan, since the only other new episode on my PVR was Primetime Nightline: Beyond "Battle With the Devil". Now I started watching Nightline, but the images of real 'exorcisms' were freaking me out on top of my anxiety attack. I was trying to calm down and I knew this would give me anxiety and nightmares. I decided to switch to Conan. I made the right decision. Don't get me wrong I love Conan any day, but my other recordings tend to beat his episodes. Seth Green was funny, but Marc Maron retelling his hypochondria of mouth cancer killed me and made me feel completely normal. I had a similar hypochondriac moment when I was 16 when my lymphnodes in my armpits were crazy swollen I obsessed about having cancer. I later found out that outdoor cats carry bacteria on their paws and nails that when you get scratched it can cause symptoms like swollen lymphnodes under your arms. I got scratched by an outdoor cat. I felt more embarrassed than "a survivor of cancer."
I think my anxiety attack this evening came about by me cleaning the only clutter in my apartment, my unused kitchen countertop. I like to rationalize everything. It gives chaos control. Putting order to the chaos of the counter had the opposite effect on me. I have no idea why.
I ran out of thoughts. If you have the time, see if you can find the Marc Maron interview from last night's episode of Conan. I couldn't bare to delete the episode. They made a joke about fanatical HP fans committing suicide, and then an HP fan threatened to jump from the rafters until Andy Richter came to save the day wearing a Batman mask and cape like the live action TV show from whatever decade. I <3 you Andy, but holy shit, you in that Batman mask took my breath away. Conan's reaction only added to how I also felt about it. You should look that up too if you can find that too.
God bless Conan and Andy Richter and America.
Monday, July 4, 2011
The GQ Man
Today I happened to read my GQ I bought because Alex Skarsgard was on the cover. Of all the magazines I've bought or read, this is the first time I've read the majority of the articles. This is a feat in itself. How is it that a men's magazine is more entertaining to me than a woman's magazine? Maybe it's the wit, the lack of articles on spas and hot vacation spots I can't afford and may never be able to. Or the humanitarian piece about women in poor countries and so on. The stuff that makes me flip pages. Or better yet is the pages long on a perfume or some new beauty treatment. Put me to sleep already.
The article titled "'The Taste That Dare Not Speak Its Name" by Devin Friedman captivated me, in that it never occured to me until now about distinctions that exist that I never put in this light (like going to Mexico or Australia.) It's about the middlebrow. It entranced me. Here's the letter commentary I would send to GQ about this article:
I think the middlebrow is a phenomena that only exists between men when it comes to culture. If it applies to women, it must be a small population. I would think this population would be socially elite women, extremely intellectual women and weird hippie artists that somehow make their non-sense sound poetical and intelligent that you can't tell whether they are genuine or real nut jobs. I don't care to find out either. I'd say the majority of the women in North America are "middlebrow". That we all tend to like similar things, yet can be so completely different from each other. Like some middle ground woman culture. This language we all relate to.
If a woman calls herself highbrow whom is intelligent and dresses extremely well, chances are her face isn't attractive. If the same woman is beautiful and dresses just as well, she's probably faking her intelligence or is too arrogant or dumb to realize she isn't. If a woman is lowbrow and unintelligent, she's probably some kind of social trash. I'll exclude the names we all know. If she doesn't think she's lowbrow, she's probably, excuse my language, a dumb slut. Even she can't appeal to the middlebrow of woman culture since she probably thinks she's better than every other woman. This doesn't matter if she's smoking hot or "woman, I don't care how comfortable you are with your body, your confidence is mesmerizing, but please dear Jesus, put on some clothes, I don't need to see that."
And then there are those mouthy sluts who don't take shit from no one, that you can't help but admire, even if they aren't the smartest. It is its own breed of feminism. Not an admirable one, but one you can respect.
I do believe that there are probably a good amount of men who are secretly middlebrow men and always will be. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of douche bags out there. They appear highbrow and then you realize that they think they are, but really they're not. I won't classify those ones, but they may be overly preppy, obsessed with UFC or want to look like a UFC fighter or they pose as intellectuals who aren't all that intellectual and immediately despise you if you're an intelligent woman and show just how dumb they are.
In regards to Feist. I'm not against any man who likes/loves Feist, but if you're a single guy, wearing tight fitting pants and layering a cardigan over a button-up shirt, I'm inclined to think you don't like women, if you know what I'm saying. It's one of those things where you lie and say you're girlfriend made you go with her to a Feist concert, and it was an "okay" time, but really you fan girl screamed inside and tried not to sing the lyrics you totally love. It's okay. It's even more okay if you're married. I think men secretly need a woman so that they can enjoy these things and it being okay. And if a man never enjoys middlebrow things and only the lowbrow, then there's something wrong with him. I can't remember the name of the author who wrote a book on the things white people love, but Wes Anderson and Coen Brother movies are great. And there's nothing wrong with liking them. A middlebrow man is a modern man and is a more real man than any Neanderthal who only loves the lowbrow.
And that's as far as my thoughts went. It needs some serious polishing, but this was the jist of the ideas I had circling my brain this morning. I'll have to give it a go and then submit it. If anything, I could use the writing practice.
Anyways...
Who and where are these GQ men? They can't live in Saskatoon. I have yet to meet a well dressed, intellectual man who isn't a gentleman with his friends, but is gentlemanly enough to not share details and even though women know men are disgusting, they keep it to a minimum like a real man should. I've yet to meet one in Saskatoon. I'd be surprised if there were any in this province or even in the prairies. I thought I met one once. He was close, but no amount of womanly polishing could take the disgusting 13 year old boy out of him. It's not charming. If you're a woman who finds this charming, then you have poor taste in men. That's okay. Everyone deserves love even if they aren't a GQ man, and he wouldn't be every woman's type or taste either. That's okay. The less I have to compete with, the better.
And then there are those almost GQ men. Manly, gentlemanly, not afraid of the middlebrow, but don't openly admit it, that need a wardrobe polish, but they're just not into reading and have no intention of changing it, even though there is nothing wrong with reading books or engaging intellectually with the world. If I had to choose, it would be this one over the dirty adolescent boy who talks about masturbating, farting, talking about woman derogatorily in a negative way (since admiring a good looking person and their "assets" is totally normal.) and whom are entirely selfish and unwilling to change. I would always pick the stubborn gentleman who's an idiot over the man boy idiot, who will never grow up and be a man.
Thinking about it, Mr. Darcy and none other than Colin Firth, I think he is the perfect image of a GQ man. Both as the character and himself. Wanting a GQ man isn't being overly picky, but a matter of preference and taste. This isn't being narrow minded, only living somewhere where there isn't many around makes me look pickier than I really am. I think it's a prairie thing. I'm not asking for much. Taste, intelligence, a little sensitivity and that true understated manliness that you so commonly find in a cowboy. Like an urban cowboy who went to university, but didn't only take commerce classes, but also didn't graduate with something that doesn't pay the bills and doesn't sleep with every woman that throws themselves at him... Enough about that! He won't be found here. I'd be surprised if I found him.
The article titled "'The Taste That Dare Not Speak Its Name" by Devin Friedman captivated me, in that it never occured to me until now about distinctions that exist that I never put in this light (like going to Mexico or Australia.) It's about the middlebrow. It entranced me. Here's the letter commentary I would send to GQ about this article:
I think the middlebrow is a phenomena that only exists between men when it comes to culture. If it applies to women, it must be a small population. I would think this population would be socially elite women, extremely intellectual women and weird hippie artists that somehow make their non-sense sound poetical and intelligent that you can't tell whether they are genuine or real nut jobs. I don't care to find out either. I'd say the majority of the women in North America are "middlebrow". That we all tend to like similar things, yet can be so completely different from each other. Like some middle ground woman culture. This language we all relate to.
If a woman calls herself highbrow whom is intelligent and dresses extremely well, chances are her face isn't attractive. If the same woman is beautiful and dresses just as well, she's probably faking her intelligence or is too arrogant or dumb to realize she isn't. If a woman is lowbrow and unintelligent, she's probably some kind of social trash. I'll exclude the names we all know. If she doesn't think she's lowbrow, she's probably, excuse my language, a dumb slut. Even she can't appeal to the middlebrow of woman culture since she probably thinks she's better than every other woman. This doesn't matter if she's smoking hot or "woman, I don't care how comfortable you are with your body, your confidence is mesmerizing, but please dear Jesus, put on some clothes, I don't need to see that."
And then there are those mouthy sluts who don't take shit from no one, that you can't help but admire, even if they aren't the smartest. It is its own breed of feminism. Not an admirable one, but one you can respect.
I do believe that there are probably a good amount of men who are secretly middlebrow men and always will be. Don't get me wrong, there are tons of douche bags out there. They appear highbrow and then you realize that they think they are, but really they're not. I won't classify those ones, but they may be overly preppy, obsessed with UFC or want to look like a UFC fighter or they pose as intellectuals who aren't all that intellectual and immediately despise you if you're an intelligent woman and show just how dumb they are.
In regards to Feist. I'm not against any man who likes/loves Feist, but if you're a single guy, wearing tight fitting pants and layering a cardigan over a button-up shirt, I'm inclined to think you don't like women, if you know what I'm saying. It's one of those things where you lie and say you're girlfriend made you go with her to a Feist concert, and it was an "okay" time, but really you fan girl screamed inside and tried not to sing the lyrics you totally love. It's okay. It's even more okay if you're married. I think men secretly need a woman so that they can enjoy these things and it being okay. And if a man never enjoys middlebrow things and only the lowbrow, then there's something wrong with him. I can't remember the name of the author who wrote a book on the things white people love, but Wes Anderson and Coen Brother movies are great. And there's nothing wrong with liking them. A middlebrow man is a modern man and is a more real man than any Neanderthal who only loves the lowbrow.
And that's as far as my thoughts went. It needs some serious polishing, but this was the jist of the ideas I had circling my brain this morning. I'll have to give it a go and then submit it. If anything, I could use the writing practice.
Anyways...
Who and where are these GQ men? They can't live in Saskatoon. I have yet to meet a well dressed, intellectual man who isn't a gentleman with his friends, but is gentlemanly enough to not share details and even though women know men are disgusting, they keep it to a minimum like a real man should. I've yet to meet one in Saskatoon. I'd be surprised if there were any in this province or even in the prairies. I thought I met one once. He was close, but no amount of womanly polishing could take the disgusting 13 year old boy out of him. It's not charming. If you're a woman who finds this charming, then you have poor taste in men. That's okay. Everyone deserves love even if they aren't a GQ man, and he wouldn't be every woman's type or taste either. That's okay. The less I have to compete with, the better.
And then there are those almost GQ men. Manly, gentlemanly, not afraid of the middlebrow, but don't openly admit it, that need a wardrobe polish, but they're just not into reading and have no intention of changing it, even though there is nothing wrong with reading books or engaging intellectually with the world. If I had to choose, it would be this one over the dirty adolescent boy who talks about masturbating, farting, talking about woman derogatorily in a negative way (since admiring a good looking person and their "assets" is totally normal.) and whom are entirely selfish and unwilling to change. I would always pick the stubborn gentleman who's an idiot over the man boy idiot, who will never grow up and be a man.
Thinking about it, Mr. Darcy and none other than Colin Firth, I think he is the perfect image of a GQ man. Both as the character and himself. Wanting a GQ man isn't being overly picky, but a matter of preference and taste. This isn't being narrow minded, only living somewhere where there isn't many around makes me look pickier than I really am. I think it's a prairie thing. I'm not asking for much. Taste, intelligence, a little sensitivity and that true understated manliness that you so commonly find in a cowboy. Like an urban cowboy who went to university, but didn't only take commerce classes, but also didn't graduate with something that doesn't pay the bills and doesn't sleep with every woman that throws themselves at him... Enough about that! He won't be found here. I'd be surprised if I found him.
Back Log
I wrote a handful of blogs and never published them. Today I managed to do so. I wrote them in the last 60 days. I know. It’s bad. I have a hard time going home and having the energy or attention span to turn on my computer and post. I’ve been writing, juts not blogging. After sitting at a desk in front of a computer for 6 hours a day, the last thing I’m interested in, is sitting in front of a computer at home.
Yesterday had some miniscule minor event happen. I went to Superstore to go grocery shopping and en route about a block maybe a block and a half, at 3:00pm, and a very large jack rabbit jumped out in front of me. I obviously went out of my way to not hit it, but it came towards me and I had to swerve even more. The last thing I want to do is hit a rabbit in the year of the rabbit. That has to be unlucky. I also almost ran over a magpie. That can’t be good either. Killing things unnecessarily is bad karma. I can’t even kill a spider. I can imagine how racked with guilt I would be if I ran over something I think is cute.
Not to mention I need to stop with the vampire stuff because in my half sleep state I managed to sleep walk about vampires to the point where I said “I rescind my invitation to all of you”. I didn’t remember until this morning which was entertaining. I do some funny stuff in my sleep. It was more like I woke up with the door closed at 4 in the morning and then realized that it wasn’t just in my dreams but something I actually did. I don’t think I would ever rescind my invitation to Eric Northman, unless he had every intention of killing me.
I didn’t reread my previous unpublished posts, but I’m almost certain they’re overly philosophical.
Yesterday had some miniscule minor event happen. I went to Superstore to go grocery shopping and en route about a block maybe a block and a half, at 3:00pm, and a very large jack rabbit jumped out in front of me. I obviously went out of my way to not hit it, but it came towards me and I had to swerve even more. The last thing I want to do is hit a rabbit in the year of the rabbit. That has to be unlucky. I also almost ran over a magpie. That can’t be good either. Killing things unnecessarily is bad karma. I can’t even kill a spider. I can imagine how racked with guilt I would be if I ran over something I think is cute.
Not to mention I need to stop with the vampire stuff because in my half sleep state I managed to sleep walk about vampires to the point where I said “I rescind my invitation to all of you”. I didn’t remember until this morning which was entertaining. I do some funny stuff in my sleep. It was more like I woke up with the door closed at 4 in the morning and then realized that it wasn’t just in my dreams but something I actually did. I don’t think I would ever rescind my invitation to Eric Northman, unless he had every intention of killing me.
I didn’t reread my previous unpublished posts, but I’m almost certain they’re overly philosophical.
Irony
I love irony. Irony is charming in its own right. Irony in stories and story-telling and movies makes one think that this would only happen in a story. The funny thing about irony is that it happens all the time.
Like how I’ve managed to write a few blogs now, but I never posted them and that’s irony in its own right because clearly it doesn’t matter if someone is reading it, it’s just that I’ve put the thought out there. Which is ironic since that is the intention of blogging since it is meant to be seen, it’s supposed to be public.
About a month ago I was in knee deep of irony and it was exhausting. When something gets disrupted once, maybe twice, even three times, I’ll put in a fuss, but after the fourth time, it’s just no use any more but to laugh about it and to accept that the opposite is going to happen when it shouldn’t.
Usually when a moment is ironic for me I say “of course”. And then it drags me into the line from Le Divorce where Naomi Watts’ character says “‘Of course’ The French always say "of course" to everything. Like everything is absolutely normal. C'est normale. Mais bien sûr. l'll never say, ‘But of course.’“ Because irony to me seems so normal. To expect or hope for everything to go smoothly is really the lie, and the reality is that it never goes smoothly, which is why you would say “but of course.” How could it be any other way?
Today’s ironic moments: the office phone lines being down yesterday and today. But having my phone rerouted through Calgary so that I could receive phone calls only to say “our phone lines are down” which defeats the whole purpose of the phones being down.
Another ironic moment: someone managed to jam every printer upstairs printing the same drawing. Oddly it was the same picture. How could only one picture cause the same jam in 3 different printers simultaneously? To top it off I called in for maintenance and happened to say the wrong printer unknowingly. The tech comes to fix the printer that I named, but then has to do another work order on the printer I meant to have fixed. After he leaves I have someone tell me that the printer that I called to be fixed, that I didn’t mean to get fixed got jammed again and needed a tech. How ironic.
The one that got me thinking was the book I had bought the day after my Dad passed. It’s called The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman. Needless to say I can’t remember what the sleeve said the story was about. Sometime last week I decided that after I finish Jane Eyre, I’m going to read this one. The book is about death and family; about a journey; about fulfilling wishes that normally aren’t humanly possible and so on. I’ve managed to read half of it in less than two days which is unusual for me. It’s not a thick book, the font isn’t too small. Of course the last section I read mentioned fate, which I like to ponder on now and then. Was there a reason that I bought this book on that day and am now only reading it? Maybe it hasn’t shown its full irony since I haven’t finished it. Or maybe it is coincidence. There’s something behind it. I can’t explain the feeling. Like I couldn’t explain the feeling of how vehemently I needed to buy The Alchemist and how strongly I felt about the book during and after my reading of it. I felt the same way about The Miniaturist too, but that was the summer prior to starting university. Something about philosophy was gnawing away at me before I even ventured to take a class in my second year.
It wasn’t until my second year that I decided to take philosophy to fill my schedule because I thought I wanted to minor in anthropology originally. But when I took a class not by Anderson, I realized that you had to write a paper and then present it to the class. After the first day and the syllabus I dropped the class and started searching for a new class to take that was in the same time slot. Some classes were already full and I happened to think “hey, let’s see what these philosophy classes are all about.” Turned out I fell in love with philosophy. It seemed so normal. So fitting. Like it was meant to be in my life the way it is in my life. Is this book that I’m reading prior to my next journey that could be next year? That would be too hopeful. I don’t think I’ve lived long enough to speculate anything of that nature. At any rate I’ll probably be doing the same thing next summer as I’m doing now. That would seem right. Absolutely normal. As if there was no other answer, but that one. When would it ever be something else or something exciting?
Like how I’ve managed to write a few blogs now, but I never posted them and that’s irony in its own right because clearly it doesn’t matter if someone is reading it, it’s just that I’ve put the thought out there. Which is ironic since that is the intention of blogging since it is meant to be seen, it’s supposed to be public.
About a month ago I was in knee deep of irony and it was exhausting. When something gets disrupted once, maybe twice, even three times, I’ll put in a fuss, but after the fourth time, it’s just no use any more but to laugh about it and to accept that the opposite is going to happen when it shouldn’t.
Usually when a moment is ironic for me I say “of course”. And then it drags me into the line from Le Divorce where Naomi Watts’ character says “‘Of course’ The French always say "of course" to everything. Like everything is absolutely normal. C'est normale. Mais bien sûr. l'll never say, ‘But of course.’“ Because irony to me seems so normal. To expect or hope for everything to go smoothly is really the lie, and the reality is that it never goes smoothly, which is why you would say “but of course.” How could it be any other way?
Today’s ironic moments: the office phone lines being down yesterday and today. But having my phone rerouted through Calgary so that I could receive phone calls only to say “our phone lines are down” which defeats the whole purpose of the phones being down.
Another ironic moment: someone managed to jam every printer upstairs printing the same drawing. Oddly it was the same picture. How could only one picture cause the same jam in 3 different printers simultaneously? To top it off I called in for maintenance and happened to say the wrong printer unknowingly. The tech comes to fix the printer that I named, but then has to do another work order on the printer I meant to have fixed. After he leaves I have someone tell me that the printer that I called to be fixed, that I didn’t mean to get fixed got jammed again and needed a tech. How ironic.
The one that got me thinking was the book I had bought the day after my Dad passed. It’s called The Waterproof Bible by Andrew Kaufman. Needless to say I can’t remember what the sleeve said the story was about. Sometime last week I decided that after I finish Jane Eyre, I’m going to read this one. The book is about death and family; about a journey; about fulfilling wishes that normally aren’t humanly possible and so on. I’ve managed to read half of it in less than two days which is unusual for me. It’s not a thick book, the font isn’t too small. Of course the last section I read mentioned fate, which I like to ponder on now and then. Was there a reason that I bought this book on that day and am now only reading it? Maybe it hasn’t shown its full irony since I haven’t finished it. Or maybe it is coincidence. There’s something behind it. I can’t explain the feeling. Like I couldn’t explain the feeling of how vehemently I needed to buy The Alchemist and how strongly I felt about the book during and after my reading of it. I felt the same way about The Miniaturist too, but that was the summer prior to starting university. Something about philosophy was gnawing away at me before I even ventured to take a class in my second year.
It wasn’t until my second year that I decided to take philosophy to fill my schedule because I thought I wanted to minor in anthropology originally. But when I took a class not by Anderson, I realized that you had to write a paper and then present it to the class. After the first day and the syllabus I dropped the class and started searching for a new class to take that was in the same time slot. Some classes were already full and I happened to think “hey, let’s see what these philosophy classes are all about.” Turned out I fell in love with philosophy. It seemed so normal. So fitting. Like it was meant to be in my life the way it is in my life. Is this book that I’m reading prior to my next journey that could be next year? That would be too hopeful. I don’t think I’ve lived long enough to speculate anything of that nature. At any rate I’ll probably be doing the same thing next summer as I’m doing now. That would seem right. Absolutely normal. As if there was no other answer, but that one. When would it ever be something else or something exciting?
Introspection of Nothingness In Death
I started reading a philosophy anthology I bought a year ago. I finally cracked it open and I’m delighted by my initial readings. I’m only into my first essay, but it has been enough to get my noggin going, hence the title. This is my very informal introduction into my very short essay on the nothingness of death.
This is a very general broad statement that I am neither entitled to make nor make the assumption without and concrete evidence, but I’m going to make it anyway. I think that we all describe nothingness as blackness. That non-existence is a place void of light, an absence of light, and a portal of nothing. This thought of nothingness has all kinds of errors. I think these types of thoughts stem from trying to imagine or picture what nothingness could be. It is a way to understand what we cannot understand. I’m not going to delve into the preposterous notions of near death experiences and the phenomena that surround it with psychic evaluations and supernatural events. I’m going to look at it from a purely scientific stand point.
In regards to death, we either believe it is to no longer exist as we were to say, human, but either people believe after this there is nothing or after this there is an afterlife. Neither need be proved one way or the other to suppose that what happens after this is an impossible feat by anyone to make. Anyone to say that they know what happens in death is a fool and only fools believe fools. The state of nothingness is not a state. Nothingness has no states or properties. It has no existence. So if you were dead you wouldn’t exist in nothingness, you would not exist at all. To think you will be existing nothingness is to assume that nothingness exists, therefore you would exist. That is true of an afterlife. It cannot be a dark place because you still exist, just not in the same physical sense you had once existed before. That being said, nothingness is not black or dark, it’s void of anything and everything. It’s really a metaphysical headache. The way the brain understands things is that if there is one thing, then there has to be an opposite, and if there is an opposite, then we can gather that there is an in between so to speak. We all know this to be true. To argue against it would be silly.
Death is not nothingness; it just is the absence of life. Although it makes sense to think that death would be nothingness, we cannot assume that to be dead is to be clouded in dark. To believe nothingness exists it to believe that nothingness it exactly what it is not. To exist means to be something that is tangible, something accessible, some place that can be visited in one way or another. And that is what takes away from what nothingness means.
The dictionary meanings are interesting. They read as follows “the state of being nothing”, “something that is nonexistent: a view of humanity as suspended between infinity and nothingness”, “lack of being; nonexistence: The sound faded into nothingness”. All referenced from Dictionary.com. The last one, the description or example to emulate nothingness is entirely wrong. Sound doesn’t fade into nothingness, there is always some remnant of its vibrations still rippling in the universe in one way or another. It’s a poor example to use. That’s the problem with a lot of things. They make sense, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily true, just that you can see the thinking behind it. That is the problem with the human brain. People say all sorts of things that can be logically understood, but not logically sound. I don’t know if that’s language, or our thought process or the combination of both. It is an interesting topic nonetheless. I should have taken logic in my third year, because I think my papers would have greatly improved by this asset I didn’t find an asset when I had first taken it. To get back to what I was saying, all kinds of people have these delusions and because they make sense they think they are right and
these people you cannot argue out of their belief because they are fools and to argue with is like arguing with a rock. I think that the human race has this informal and internal knowledge that we all seem to possess. Maybe we learned it somewhere; it just did not get added to when we could understand more intellectually deeper thought. I have no idea. I have no intention of examining this, but in philosophy you can. It is like there is some unwritten rule that if you can argue something and it is logical and logically sound it can be permitted as a truth. Technically I could explore this without any real hard science to back it up. I don’t think science could define what death and nothingness is either. If there is nothing to tangibly examine, then nothing can be learned from it. I’m boldly going to say that science is the study of events i.e. cause and effect, although Hume would say we couldn’t predict/determine nor see what really is the cause of any effect. The outcome could change at any point of time and that not all things are predictable 100% of the time. Unless its theoretical, and then it’s straight hypothesizing based on equations and physics and whatnot and then well, it’s not hard science anymore.
***This was the end of my essay which I didn't conclude. Too much time has passed to even maintain the same tone. But I'm sure what I said can be somewhat understood. Maybe not. I wrote it so it makes sense to me.***
This is a very general broad statement that I am neither entitled to make nor make the assumption without and concrete evidence, but I’m going to make it anyway. I think that we all describe nothingness as blackness. That non-existence is a place void of light, an absence of light, and a portal of nothing. This thought of nothingness has all kinds of errors. I think these types of thoughts stem from trying to imagine or picture what nothingness could be. It is a way to understand what we cannot understand. I’m not going to delve into the preposterous notions of near death experiences and the phenomena that surround it with psychic evaluations and supernatural events. I’m going to look at it from a purely scientific stand point.
In regards to death, we either believe it is to no longer exist as we were to say, human, but either people believe after this there is nothing or after this there is an afterlife. Neither need be proved one way or the other to suppose that what happens after this is an impossible feat by anyone to make. Anyone to say that they know what happens in death is a fool and only fools believe fools. The state of nothingness is not a state. Nothingness has no states or properties. It has no existence. So if you were dead you wouldn’t exist in nothingness, you would not exist at all. To think you will be existing nothingness is to assume that nothingness exists, therefore you would exist. That is true of an afterlife. It cannot be a dark place because you still exist, just not in the same physical sense you had once existed before. That being said, nothingness is not black or dark, it’s void of anything and everything. It’s really a metaphysical headache. The way the brain understands things is that if there is one thing, then there has to be an opposite, and if there is an opposite, then we can gather that there is an in between so to speak. We all know this to be true. To argue against it would be silly.
Death is not nothingness; it just is the absence of life. Although it makes sense to think that death would be nothingness, we cannot assume that to be dead is to be clouded in dark. To believe nothingness exists it to believe that nothingness it exactly what it is not. To exist means to be something that is tangible, something accessible, some place that can be visited in one way or another. And that is what takes away from what nothingness means.
The dictionary meanings are interesting. They read as follows “the state of being nothing”, “something that is nonexistent: a view of humanity as suspended between infinity and nothingness”, “lack of being; nonexistence: The sound faded into nothingness”. All referenced from Dictionary.com. The last one, the description or example to emulate nothingness is entirely wrong. Sound doesn’t fade into nothingness, there is always some remnant of its vibrations still rippling in the universe in one way or another. It’s a poor example to use. That’s the problem with a lot of things. They make sense, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily true, just that you can see the thinking behind it. That is the problem with the human brain. People say all sorts of things that can be logically understood, but not logically sound. I don’t know if that’s language, or our thought process or the combination of both. It is an interesting topic nonetheless. I should have taken logic in my third year, because I think my papers would have greatly improved by this asset I didn’t find an asset when I had first taken it. To get back to what I was saying, all kinds of people have these delusions and because they make sense they think they are right and
these people you cannot argue out of their belief because they are fools and to argue with is like arguing with a rock. I think that the human race has this informal and internal knowledge that we all seem to possess. Maybe we learned it somewhere; it just did not get added to when we could understand more intellectually deeper thought. I have no idea. I have no intention of examining this, but in philosophy you can. It is like there is some unwritten rule that if you can argue something and it is logical and logically sound it can be permitted as a truth. Technically I could explore this without any real hard science to back it up. I don’t think science could define what death and nothingness is either. If there is nothing to tangibly examine, then nothing can be learned from it. I’m boldly going to say that science is the study of events i.e. cause and effect, although Hume would say we couldn’t predict/determine nor see what really is the cause of any effect. The outcome could change at any point of time and that not all things are predictable 100% of the time. Unless its theoretical, and then it’s straight hypothesizing based on equations and physics and whatnot and then well, it’s not hard science anymore.
***This was the end of my essay which I didn't conclude. Too much time has passed to even maintain the same tone. But I'm sure what I said can be somewhat understood. Maybe not. I wrote it so it makes sense to me.***
TheThings I Cannot Do
The thought of putting a hard-boiled egg on a salad seemed like the most repulsive thing ever. Today I had my first spinach salad that I kept the sliced egg on. I have converted with the rest of the people. Now I wouldn’t eat this on a regular basis, but I’m no longer squeamish about this. Next time I see a Nicoise salad on a menu, I’m going to order it. I don’t think I’ll be changing my mind about lobster though, unless I’m on the East coast and it’s right out of the ocean on to my plate fresh. Every time someone orders one and forces me to have some, I never like it.
Speaking of seafood… I miss the ocean. If I moved somewhere right by the ocean, I would buy a house as close as I could to the beach. I’m sure I’d go swimming and body boarding a lot. It’s one of those things people would say, if you lived there, you wouldn’t use it. I think that’s true for some people, but not me. If I’ve managed to get up at 5 every morning to walk to work, then yes I think I would go to the ocean frequently. Before the Pelicans moved in on the river, there were droves of seagulls and I mean droves of them. I’d fall asleep to the sound of seagulls, I would wake up to the sound of seagulls and in my bathroom I would hear regular birds out the window. It’s a really strange phenomenon.
Speaking of seagulls… someone told me today that they would like to kill a whole lot of them… he was referring to them situated over a dump and not the water. He had heard that if you put baking soda on their food, they would explode, even if they were in midair. I’m sure it’s more like their insides would burst and they would drop dead. Either way, I don’t want to witness such a horrible thing, scavengers or not. Their eating habits are only a product of the environment we have created. Crows eat McDonalds off the road too. I think they’re disliked for other things like eating baby birds and eggs and making a racket.
Speaking of McDonalds… Now I’m hungry for a burger and there is no time to make one at home tonight because it’s the first night of softball. I’ve been craving a burger since Monday. There are no close fast food joints within walking distance of me and hell no I am not going to the foot traffic one on the corner of 2nd and 22nd street. It is ghetto as shit. If there was sketchy place to be in downtown Saskatoon, it would be that McDonalds and the portion in front of it and then slightly passed it next to the only locally owned 24 hour family restaurant. I’d pass the downtown bus stop at night time before stopping at that McDonalds after the white collar employees have left the downtown area. Now that it’s nice out, I’m sure they’re sitting at the very few patios we do have. I think there is only 2 patios in the downtown. O’Shea’s and Flint, and Flint is so small, but they have the Montreal thing where you can open the whole front of it.
I feel like a weirdo that I’m counting down to EUFA. I was super sad that there isn’t any world soccer tournament this summer. I don’t think any world cup at work will ever match last year’s. It was a blast. Now I hope during EUFA, that f*cking octopus isn’t “predicting” what matches will win. I’ll be pissed if I see that cute octopus selecting Spain again. I’m sure I’ll flip. I’ll flip so much that I’ll do the D/G family thing and actually flip a table over. I hope I have so much rage that I’ll do a Thor and flip over the biggest and heaviest banquet table over that has the biggest celebration feast on it and I ruin all that great food because of that octopus. I’m sure this would be funny to see… considering my spaghetti arms think 20lbs is heavy. You don’t even want to know how I fair trying to lift a 50lb of potatoes. I won’t be saving lives in a fire. I’m sure I would think I’ve accomplished this major feat and then realize I have moved some 6 steps and the whole building collapses in front of me.
I’ve seen that I’ve written the worth of a two page essay, but I’m in no rush to get through this, although my stomach is really sad that I’ve eaten a spinach salad. I hope that this passes because I kind of want to play soft ball. It was the egg I swear! Thinking about it, my salad came from Wal-Mart, and the spinach probably wasn’t washed to Canadian FDA standards, which means of course I would get ill. Please no salmonella for me. I like working. The prospect of sleeping on my couch in my j’s watching movies and reading is really tempting… but not at the price of food poisoning, which is a terrible thing to have. This word grammar checker is killing me. Everything I have written is grammatically wrong, some fragment needs revision. Reconsider blah blah blah. Sometimes it sounds right and I ignore it. And then on essays I would frequently read in the margin “this sentence is awkward”. Clearly my head doesn’t think grammatically correct. I usually proof read before I publish. Always catching those spelling errors that somehow spell check doesn’t correct.
The things I cannot do amongst the already impossibly long list like whistle, fly, touch my toes, breath under water, hurl a boulder, live forever, teleport to different locations… is I cannot access blogger, or obviously any social networking tool, but any video of any kind, no matter if it is work related. If it comes from an external source, there is no way I will ever view it whilst sitting at my desk even on my own break. There are also moments where I would like to say “listen here bub, no” or “that’s nice”. I realize saying that’s nice always sounds sarcastic unless it’s followed by a “that sounds nice” or “that sounds really nice”. “Oh yeah” is my tried and true for all kinds of “that’s nice” and “I’m so not listening” or “you know what I could really go for is something to eat like…” it’s not because I’m not interested, well if you’re someone I don’t particularly like talking to or being around, then yes I’m not interested, but it’s I want to be in my own thoughts right now or do something else. Sometimes “oh yeah” really means “oh yeah”, especially with an inflection, like I’m asking a question.
Speaking of seafood… I miss the ocean. If I moved somewhere right by the ocean, I would buy a house as close as I could to the beach. I’m sure I’d go swimming and body boarding a lot. It’s one of those things people would say, if you lived there, you wouldn’t use it. I think that’s true for some people, but not me. If I’ve managed to get up at 5 every morning to walk to work, then yes I think I would go to the ocean frequently. Before the Pelicans moved in on the river, there were droves of seagulls and I mean droves of them. I’d fall asleep to the sound of seagulls, I would wake up to the sound of seagulls and in my bathroom I would hear regular birds out the window. It’s a really strange phenomenon.
Speaking of seagulls… someone told me today that they would like to kill a whole lot of them… he was referring to them situated over a dump and not the water. He had heard that if you put baking soda on their food, they would explode, even if they were in midair. I’m sure it’s more like their insides would burst and they would drop dead. Either way, I don’t want to witness such a horrible thing, scavengers or not. Their eating habits are only a product of the environment we have created. Crows eat McDonalds off the road too. I think they’re disliked for other things like eating baby birds and eggs and making a racket.
Speaking of McDonalds… Now I’m hungry for a burger and there is no time to make one at home tonight because it’s the first night of softball. I’ve been craving a burger since Monday. There are no close fast food joints within walking distance of me and hell no I am not going to the foot traffic one on the corner of 2nd and 22nd street. It is ghetto as shit. If there was sketchy place to be in downtown Saskatoon, it would be that McDonalds and the portion in front of it and then slightly passed it next to the only locally owned 24 hour family restaurant. I’d pass the downtown bus stop at night time before stopping at that McDonalds after the white collar employees have left the downtown area. Now that it’s nice out, I’m sure they’re sitting at the very few patios we do have. I think there is only 2 patios in the downtown. O’Shea’s and Flint, and Flint is so small, but they have the Montreal thing where you can open the whole front of it.
I feel like a weirdo that I’m counting down to EUFA. I was super sad that there isn’t any world soccer tournament this summer. I don’t think any world cup at work will ever match last year’s. It was a blast. Now I hope during EUFA, that f*cking octopus isn’t “predicting” what matches will win. I’ll be pissed if I see that cute octopus selecting Spain again. I’m sure I’ll flip. I’ll flip so much that I’ll do the D/G family thing and actually flip a table over. I hope I have so much rage that I’ll do a Thor and flip over the biggest and heaviest banquet table over that has the biggest celebration feast on it and I ruin all that great food because of that octopus. I’m sure this would be funny to see… considering my spaghetti arms think 20lbs is heavy. You don’t even want to know how I fair trying to lift a 50lb of potatoes. I won’t be saving lives in a fire. I’m sure I would think I’ve accomplished this major feat and then realize I have moved some 6 steps and the whole building collapses in front of me.
I’ve seen that I’ve written the worth of a two page essay, but I’m in no rush to get through this, although my stomach is really sad that I’ve eaten a spinach salad. I hope that this passes because I kind of want to play soft ball. It was the egg I swear! Thinking about it, my salad came from Wal-Mart, and the spinach probably wasn’t washed to Canadian FDA standards, which means of course I would get ill. Please no salmonella for me. I like working. The prospect of sleeping on my couch in my j’s watching movies and reading is really tempting… but not at the price of food poisoning, which is a terrible thing to have. This word grammar checker is killing me. Everything I have written is grammatically wrong, some fragment needs revision. Reconsider blah blah blah. Sometimes it sounds right and I ignore it. And then on essays I would frequently read in the margin “this sentence is awkward”. Clearly my head doesn’t think grammatically correct. I usually proof read before I publish. Always catching those spelling errors that somehow spell check doesn’t correct.
The things I cannot do amongst the already impossibly long list like whistle, fly, touch my toes, breath under water, hurl a boulder, live forever, teleport to different locations… is I cannot access blogger, or obviously any social networking tool, but any video of any kind, no matter if it is work related. If it comes from an external source, there is no way I will ever view it whilst sitting at my desk even on my own break. There are also moments where I would like to say “listen here bub, no” or “that’s nice”. I realize saying that’s nice always sounds sarcastic unless it’s followed by a “that sounds nice” or “that sounds really nice”. “Oh yeah” is my tried and true for all kinds of “that’s nice” and “I’m so not listening” or “you know what I could really go for is something to eat like…” it’s not because I’m not interested, well if you’re someone I don’t particularly like talking to or being around, then yes I’m not interested, but it’s I want to be in my own thoughts right now or do something else. Sometimes “oh yeah” really means “oh yeah”, especially with an inflection, like I’m asking a question.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
A Mix of Things and My Birthday Wishlist
It's been ages since I last blogged. I'm using my sister's iPad. It's nifty, except it doesn't play flash video which is the biggest drawback of the product, and it needs a hi-def camera like the iPhone 4.
My trip in Toronto has been a blur. It feels like I've been gone for 7 days and not the 4 ive actually been. I've been shopping, stocking up on my spring office clothes. I bought 6 dresses... On top of the other 2 I bought that I haven't worn yet. All I can say is that vie picked out a lot of pale pink and florals... Speaking of florals, J and I were in Yorkville, checking out this guy's store who is no longer going to carry women's clothing and he was selling off his designer jeans at 70% off. I snagged a pair of skinny jeans from Australia. No one will be finding these in Saskatoon. Saw a skull ring and thought of D. The ring is worth $1400 so no I wasn't going to gift that one. It reminded me of the one I saw in France that I wanted but couldn't afford because it was 1600 Euro. I'm still thinking about it. I may still think about it years from now.
In Yorkville we walked by a tight/nylon store... I basically died. It was wall to wall tights. All shapes, colours and patterns. I snagged a regular black pair, a black snakeskin one and my favorite ones ever... White floral ones. I'm basically wearing these tights with all my dresses... Can you wear the same patterned tights more than once a week???
Earlier in the day J planned to have our hair blown out at the Holt Renfrew salon. It was raining so I just had it done straight as usual. After we looked at all the clothes. I don't know if it's just me, but everything is boho/indie style... And drab colours. I drooled over the Marc by Marc line and this to die for light coral colored dress.
I don't know how I forgot about why we went to Yorkville. I wanted macarons, J took me to Morroco which is a beautiful designed restaurant with a very tasteful chocolate dessert menu. I had a Crocque Monsiuer... Gruyere I love you and the salad dressing was delicious! We snagged some macarons on the way out. They only had 12 kinds... Pale in comparison to the 50 kinds in Pele in Cannes. I said nix to the praline, and found out these delicious cookies are made with almond flour. Didn't know that. I guess I can eat almond flour sans allergic anaphylactic reaction. I guess I can eat a purely paleo diet and can try making pancakes with almond flour now.
We left Yorkville, went the Eaton centre on Yonge Street. Nightmare. I never ever ever ever want to go to Yonge street again. For reasons I can't blog about. You can tell I'm from the parries...
We ended up taking the subway... It was packed... Like a semi full of pigs crammed in one place. It was a long 12 stops. Had to transfer on to an East bound train too. We ended up going out for supper. I think we took in an earlyish night maybe. I've forget.
Thursday we got out too late and we didn't get out until 1. We wanted to go to the nail salon, but they weren't open yet. We had the intention of going to AGO, but they close at 5 so we didn't go. We ended up going to the same mall on Yonge Street but from a different street. We went to The Bay. The only Bay in Toronto to sell high end fashion. Beautiful store. They were selling the same brands, but whoever picked the collection picked colour and it made Holt seem not as nice to me. Went to Zara, epic fail... Over priced and somehow I went up two sizes since last May. I'm not so sure about that. Either way, it killed my self esteem.
We came back, grabbed Ollie and went to get our nails done. I loved the girls at this salon, they were so much fun. I got Monica, who J loves. She loves Ollie. She calls him rabbit. And all the girls talked about getting his nails done, he started putting his feet up like he wanted to get them done. J said he has no money and she's not paying for it so he didn't get some nail treatment.
We ended up lighting some candles and listening to the Black Keys and relaxing before going out. Nothing overly exciting. I'm not complaining. Drama drama drama drama...
We went to Niagara Falls yesterday. We scoped out some old house. I was in the mood for exploring. I was told there is an IHOP in Niagara... Only to not go to it. So rude. We went to the casino. I lost money. We headed back. Took an early night in.
Today we went to AGO early in the morning. I'd been waiting two years to see this place and I was sadly disappointed. Sorry K... There was just way too much contemporary Canadian art. 3 floors to be exact. Too much. I did enjoy David Blackwood's earlier works. The aquatint and etching was beautiful. The details were amazing. Then there started being too many portraits and I didn't like them. I thought there would be more modernism, some surrealism, and more Italian portraits.... No. I saw one Cezanne, one Picasso and a handful of Monets. I was pretty sad. It had a great collection of religious carvings. Phenomenal. I also loved the arc part of the gallery on the second floor. It was the front of the building and they had wood sculptures on the wall, that were beautiful. I could have stayed there for an hour, provided in would be the only person there. There wasn't any pop art. No Goya, no Degas, no Dali, no Mannerism, so sad. They also had a great collection of Chinese snuff bottles. So exquisite. And the architecture of this place is art alone. I prefer the National Gallery of Canada to AGO. I think there would have to be an exhibit that I would want to see to make me go again. I probably will.
We then went to Queen St. W and ate a Fresh. When I get back home I'll put the link in. It's a vegan restaurant. I loved it just as J knew I would. I fell madly infatuated with a 6'1 maybe 6'2 long haired blonde guy of an appropriate age, meaning he must be my age or a year older. He had bad posture, but even with a mustache, he was so pretty. If I had seen him on Wednesday I would have asked him for his phone number. Now I'm going to wistfully day dream about my fantasy relationship with a guy I don't know or know his name. I'm kind of sad.
Enough of Toronto. I'm now going to compose my birthday wish list for next Saturday:
1. I want to wear a floral dress in cowboy boots and ride a unicorn. Now a white horse with a very nice fake horn will do too. I want a photo opportunity. But alas there is no greenery in Saskatoon and I wouldn't be able to get photos done.
2. I want to eat be transported to a candy/ice cream shop and have whatever I want. Something between that Beyonce music video where she's in a giant champagne glass filled with what I presume is actually French champagne, and the Willy Wonka chocolate bar shop that Charlie visits at the beginning of the movie, and purchases a simple bar, goes outside an unveils that he hasn't received the golden ticket.
3. I want to suddenly be watching a parade from a balcony of some big city, kind of like the Thanksgiving one they show on TV in New York city.
4. I want a huge bouquet of helium filled balloons. Or end up somewhere like in My Best Friend's Wedding and the little brother and his friends are filling balloons and the room is filled with hundreds of balloons in a white tent. Or while dancing have a giant net of balloons fall from the ceiling. Either way I want balloons.
5. And last but not least I want that cute blonde guy to be in Saskatoon for me, for my birthday, miraculously.
This sounds like either a music video/art video/movie... And that's what I want it to be like. Just like a movie. Completely unrealistic and whimsical. I really want that unicorn. If I had to pick I would pick the unicorn with the cute guy riding in on it... With his long locks blowing in the wind, holding a huge bouquet of helium balloons in pastel colours just for me. That would be so awesome. I hope I dream about this tonight.
Since I know i will forget talk about this... I love Tangled. It's so great. What came to mind after watching it after the second time, I realized that Rapunsel is really psychologically messed up. She was kidnapped, stuck in a tower for 18 years, held prisoner by a witch pretending to be her mother who was really using her, and then after 3 days she's normal, living happily ever after with no issues. If this were real life, she'd be on all kinds of prescriptions. She would have to be one of those people afraid to go outside. Have major trust issues, yet she still meets not prince charming, because Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert is a regular schmoe. Well not really. He's a bandit and an orphan. I don't think that's normal either. I'm going to have to revisit the Disney princess movies and make a synopsis ofnhow many of these princesses have issues which are clearly not an issue in a children's movie. Another project on the back burner. If it's related to movies, I just may do it.
Since this is an epically long blog post, I'm going to peace out.
Happy Easter to all of you and eat lots of yummy Easter candy.
My trip in Toronto has been a blur. It feels like I've been gone for 7 days and not the 4 ive actually been. I've been shopping, stocking up on my spring office clothes. I bought 6 dresses... On top of the other 2 I bought that I haven't worn yet. All I can say is that vie picked out a lot of pale pink and florals... Speaking of florals, J and I were in Yorkville, checking out this guy's store who is no longer going to carry women's clothing and he was selling off his designer jeans at 70% off. I snagged a pair of skinny jeans from Australia. No one will be finding these in Saskatoon. Saw a skull ring and thought of D. The ring is worth $1400 so no I wasn't going to gift that one. It reminded me of the one I saw in France that I wanted but couldn't afford because it was 1600 Euro. I'm still thinking about it. I may still think about it years from now.
In Yorkville we walked by a tight/nylon store... I basically died. It was wall to wall tights. All shapes, colours and patterns. I snagged a regular black pair, a black snakeskin one and my favorite ones ever... White floral ones. I'm basically wearing these tights with all my dresses... Can you wear the same patterned tights more than once a week???
Earlier in the day J planned to have our hair blown out at the Holt Renfrew salon. It was raining so I just had it done straight as usual. After we looked at all the clothes. I don't know if it's just me, but everything is boho/indie style... And drab colours. I drooled over the Marc by Marc line and this to die for light coral colored dress.
I don't know how I forgot about why we went to Yorkville. I wanted macarons, J took me to Morroco which is a beautiful designed restaurant with a very tasteful chocolate dessert menu. I had a Crocque Monsiuer... Gruyere I love you and the salad dressing was delicious! We snagged some macarons on the way out. They only had 12 kinds... Pale in comparison to the 50 kinds in Pele in Cannes. I said nix to the praline, and found out these delicious cookies are made with almond flour. Didn't know that. I guess I can eat almond flour sans allergic anaphylactic reaction. I guess I can eat a purely paleo diet and can try making pancakes with almond flour now.
We left Yorkville, went the Eaton centre on Yonge Street. Nightmare. I never ever ever ever want to go to Yonge street again. For reasons I can't blog about. You can tell I'm from the parries...
We ended up taking the subway... It was packed... Like a semi full of pigs crammed in one place. It was a long 12 stops. Had to transfer on to an East bound train too. We ended up going out for supper. I think we took in an earlyish night maybe. I've forget.
Thursday we got out too late and we didn't get out until 1. We wanted to go to the nail salon, but they weren't open yet. We had the intention of going to AGO, but they close at 5 so we didn't go. We ended up going to the same mall on Yonge Street but from a different street. We went to The Bay. The only Bay in Toronto to sell high end fashion. Beautiful store. They were selling the same brands, but whoever picked the collection picked colour and it made Holt seem not as nice to me. Went to Zara, epic fail... Over priced and somehow I went up two sizes since last May. I'm not so sure about that. Either way, it killed my self esteem.
We came back, grabbed Ollie and went to get our nails done. I loved the girls at this salon, they were so much fun. I got Monica, who J loves. She loves Ollie. She calls him rabbit. And all the girls talked about getting his nails done, he started putting his feet up like he wanted to get them done. J said he has no money and she's not paying for it so he didn't get some nail treatment.
We ended up lighting some candles and listening to the Black Keys and relaxing before going out. Nothing overly exciting. I'm not complaining. Drama drama drama drama...
We went to Niagara Falls yesterday. We scoped out some old house. I was in the mood for exploring. I was told there is an IHOP in Niagara... Only to not go to it. So rude. We went to the casino. I lost money. We headed back. Took an early night in.
Today we went to AGO early in the morning. I'd been waiting two years to see this place and I was sadly disappointed. Sorry K... There was just way too much contemporary Canadian art. 3 floors to be exact. Too much. I did enjoy David Blackwood's earlier works. The aquatint and etching was beautiful. The details were amazing. Then there started being too many portraits and I didn't like them. I thought there would be more modernism, some surrealism, and more Italian portraits.... No. I saw one Cezanne, one Picasso and a handful of Monets. I was pretty sad. It had a great collection of religious carvings. Phenomenal. I also loved the arc part of the gallery on the second floor. It was the front of the building and they had wood sculptures on the wall, that were beautiful. I could have stayed there for an hour, provided in would be the only person there. There wasn't any pop art. No Goya, no Degas, no Dali, no Mannerism, so sad. They also had a great collection of Chinese snuff bottles. So exquisite. And the architecture of this place is art alone. I prefer the National Gallery of Canada to AGO. I think there would have to be an exhibit that I would want to see to make me go again. I probably will.
We then went to Queen St. W and ate a Fresh. When I get back home I'll put the link in. It's a vegan restaurant. I loved it just as J knew I would. I fell madly infatuated with a 6'1 maybe 6'2 long haired blonde guy of an appropriate age, meaning he must be my age or a year older. He had bad posture, but even with a mustache, he was so pretty. If I had seen him on Wednesday I would have asked him for his phone number. Now I'm going to wistfully day dream about my fantasy relationship with a guy I don't know or know his name. I'm kind of sad.
Enough of Toronto. I'm now going to compose my birthday wish list for next Saturday:
1. I want to wear a floral dress in cowboy boots and ride a unicorn. Now a white horse with a very nice fake horn will do too. I want a photo opportunity. But alas there is no greenery in Saskatoon and I wouldn't be able to get photos done.
2. I want to eat be transported to a candy/ice cream shop and have whatever I want. Something between that Beyonce music video where she's in a giant champagne glass filled with what I presume is actually French champagne, and the Willy Wonka chocolate bar shop that Charlie visits at the beginning of the movie, and purchases a simple bar, goes outside an unveils that he hasn't received the golden ticket.
3. I want to suddenly be watching a parade from a balcony of some big city, kind of like the Thanksgiving one they show on TV in New York city.
4. I want a huge bouquet of helium filled balloons. Or end up somewhere like in My Best Friend's Wedding and the little brother and his friends are filling balloons and the room is filled with hundreds of balloons in a white tent. Or while dancing have a giant net of balloons fall from the ceiling. Either way I want balloons.
5. And last but not least I want that cute blonde guy to be in Saskatoon for me, for my birthday, miraculously.
This sounds like either a music video/art video/movie... And that's what I want it to be like. Just like a movie. Completely unrealistic and whimsical. I really want that unicorn. If I had to pick I would pick the unicorn with the cute guy riding in on it... With his long locks blowing in the wind, holding a huge bouquet of helium balloons in pastel colours just for me. That would be so awesome. I hope I dream about this tonight.
Since I know i will forget talk about this... I love Tangled. It's so great. What came to mind after watching it after the second time, I realized that Rapunsel is really psychologically messed up. She was kidnapped, stuck in a tower for 18 years, held prisoner by a witch pretending to be her mother who was really using her, and then after 3 days she's normal, living happily ever after with no issues. If this were real life, she'd be on all kinds of prescriptions. She would have to be one of those people afraid to go outside. Have major trust issues, yet she still meets not prince charming, because Flynn Rider/Eugene Fitzherbert is a regular schmoe. Well not really. He's a bandit and an orphan. I don't think that's normal either. I'm going to have to revisit the Disney princess movies and make a synopsis ofnhow many of these princesses have issues which are clearly not an issue in a children's movie. Another project on the back burner. If it's related to movies, I just may do it.
Since this is an epically long blog post, I'm going to peace out.
Happy Easter to all of you and eat lots of yummy Easter candy.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Supermoon Weekend
Of all the romantic comedies and chick flick movies and novels I've read, they all have one thing in common: the woman is an emotional train wreck and is no younger than 28, if not in her early 30's. So does that mean that typically most people actually find the right person they want to spend their life with once they hit that age? That all this love we experience in our teens and early twenties is doomed to fail? Or is the typical teen romance novel where fate brought the two star-crossed lovers at a young age and they are to spend the rest of their lives together?
There's this notion at a young age of Disney princesses, Romeo and Juliet and for all those following our new star-crossed lovers Edward and Bella. Even Belle in The Beauty and the Beast is 21. You get the notion that you're supposed to find your true love by the time your 21. And then you watch all these chick flicks and read all these chick lit books and its turned out that what they've been forcing down us is wrong and they're just retelling the same princess true love stories all over again, only that you'll be much older when you find it and when you do find it, you'll be blind, you may even miss it and then, voila at the end, you realize you're meant for each other, and there's nobody else for you. And then the story ends and you picture that they'll get married, have babies, buy a house and spend the rest of their lives together and one of them will eventually get sick and die and then the other to die shortly after. Think of the ladies from Sex and the City. They're all older. Is this even realistic?
Does anyone ever tell a true account of love? Of romance? Do we even want to read it? Do really only read them because we all lack romance in our lives and it's the only place we can get it? I can only think of two true love stories that are realistic: Elegy and Closer. And for some reason, what comes to mind is this movie from the 60's or 70's, which has dialogue and setting like a play, and it's about this group of gay men who are celebrating a birthday and it's all fun and games, alcohol and dinner, and as the tension builds up, so does the physical atmosphere as it storms outside and they play this game that suddenly rips these men apart and they go on about love and how lonely they are and the lengths we go to for appearance when we're all just broken underneath. Even Holly Golightly has some serious issues. But she finds her prince who loves her for exactly who she is. What's real and what's not?
With the divorce rate at what it is, is it because people aren't working at their marriages? Or is it because we're all romanced by these ideas that don't actually exist? Obviously it exists. I've seen it, but I rarely see it, do you? Are we all romanced by romance? Or are we finding people because we don't want to be alone? There are always these fantastic lines used in chick flicks. In The Wedding Date, "I'd miss you even if I never met you." Runaway Bride, paraphrasing that we're only mistaking attraction for love. I think true love is tragic, and it doesn't last, which is why it's true love and that's why we fabricate that these people live happily ever after. True love is an idea. An idea of perfection. Perfection doesn't exist. So therefore it doesn't exist, and if it does its doomed for failure because nothing that intense can exist at all times, because no one would be able to function in a relationship like that for the rest of their lives. Are we really just looking for a best friend? Anyone who's read the romantic poetry, we all know that it's tragic, and heartbreaking and everything less than lovely. I love you as big as the moon. My love grows for you like the ever expanding universe. My love for you consumes me like a blackhole. Our love is so big that when we die we'll be constellations and be together forever. The one I always picture, "I love you and all your reincarnations and every life we live we will find each other and be together in this eternity and the next." Maybe the majority of people don't feel this intensely, which is why they're always in a relationship and always find people. Maybe majority of people are fine with the next best thing and this is as good as it gets. That must be what it is.
I'm going to pick a toxic and awful example of true love. Don't hate me. I think Ronnie and Sam from Jersey Shore are the perfect example. It doesn't work because it's too intense. A lot of the time passion is described as fire. This makes me think of what I read about the Chinese Zodiac element fire characterization: "In Chinese Taoist thought, Fire attributes are considered to be dynamism, strength and persistence; however, it is also connected to restlessness. The fire element provides warmth, enthusiasm and creativity, however an excess of it can bring aggression, impatience and impulsive behavior. In the same way, fire provides heat and warmth, however an excess can also burn." With intense emotion obviously there is too much to burn which is why it doesn't work because the energy needs to be spent somewhere and there is no way that you can be making love and feeling love all day long and not have friction. The fire element is described the same way by the Tarot. I think there is some truth to this.
Even Sarte and Simone didn't believe in marriage. They made long-term leases on each other. They even discussed the idea of jealousy and disgust when describing love. I didn't keep that anthologie. It was probably one of the few essays I enjoyed from that class.
You can even think about love on a psychological level, think Oedipus or Freud. Or a physiological level, based on endorphins, making an emotional connection to perpetuate the species, to bond and create loyalty so that you know that the woman isn't going to make babies with someone else... blah blah blah. Even the sciences have a stake in this discussion.
Maybe it's everything. Maybe it's science and psychology and philosophy and fiction.
On a side note:
Yesterday's full moon was considered a supermoon. It is the closest to the Earth that it has been in 18 years and also the fullest moon of the year. Did anyone feel it's effects? I know that it was covered in cloud last night, so I didn't get to experience this supermoon and who knows how long I'll have to wait for the next one. And I hope that I get to see it.
I'm going to watch Closer, because I'm in the mood for some Julia Roberts and really great dialogue and emotional friction.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Where's The Line?
I just finished watching Never Let Me Go. I can't begin to understand why anyone would even think of creating a story such as this one. Don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed it. How could anyone i.e. Kazuo Ishiguro write this. Fathom it. Explore it? How could we even think about crossing the line of morality and ethics. It's like if it's science, it knows no bounds. For the sake of science, for the sake of discovery, nothing is without boundaries. To be honest, there are laws, and a lot of what we have learned has come from the scientific testing done in WWII. We wouldn't know what we know now if we hadn't of crossed these boundaries. Yes, knowledge is valuable, is precious and worth seeking, but at what cost, at what level do we pursue it? So undeniably despicable. Beyond the story line where people think that yes, I have the right duplicate myself, to duplicate my DNA, to give authority for it, but in no way do I have the right to the duplication let alone does anyone have the authority to own another living individual. The whole time I wanted to tell these people, you're 18, you are legally responsible for yourself. You have not consented to this. Why would anyone consent to this? I would fight this. Legally, these healthy sane people, who have been told their purpose and accept it. How could you? Why would anyone accept this? I'm disgusted by these fictional characters who raised these children, who lied to themselves, who told lies to their self that these children don't have souls. How can anything living not have a soul of some kind? The same thing that animates people made of a natural source, is the same thing that animates people made from an artificial source. Life is life. And whether it's artificial or not, it's life.
I believed this before my loss almost a year ago. I had researched PVS patients as a paper in high school. In fact, I even think it was a history paper. Even in high school I was introspective about ethics. Thinking about it now, it probably wasn't an appropriate topic to research for history. I can't even begin to wonder what my teacher thought of me and my choice of paper topic. PVS patients, such as the high profile case Terri Schiavo. These are people who aren't in a coma, but have experienced brain damage and are not on a ventilating life support system other than a feeding tube. What keeps these PVS patients alive is their lower brain is still functioning. The lower brain (brain stem) is essential for survival. It controls blinking, breathing, sleeping, moving and hearing. The "brain" can be dead and damaged, but if the lower brain still functions, so can life per se. In these special cases the heart beats itself, the body breathes on it's own, but what makes the person the person has gone, is left. In coma patients, they have all the same fucntions as a PVS patient, but they have brain activity. Brain activity is vital. People tend to think that body and soul are two different things. and in philosophy, epistemology isn't the easiest thing to argue. It's rather challenging. And from what I've learned, you can argue anyone who has a logical stance in epistemology and still defeat or show flaws in the arguement, thus defeating them. I agree with Searle. The body and the soul are the same thing, and are not separate entities. PVS patients are the exception to the rule. They have no brain activity, yet they continue to live, so how can they be without a soul? I argue that this is a natural phenomenon, because the lower brain functions regulatory skills that are essential to living. We associate our brain with thinking. Like anything, we don't think about breathing, unless we are consciously taking control of our breathing. Like taking deep breaths. These are chemical responses and are controlled by neurons and enzymes and all complex. As it's been said many times, we're machines, and when we're working, we're exceptional and when our machines stop working, nothing works as it should.
The cover article of TIME 2045 The Year Man Becomes Immortal is Singularity. Or singularitarianism is the philosophy. I spit on this philosophy. Not because it's preposterous, or unfathomable, but because it's outrageous in its ethics about life. I refuse to accept this as a reality. This is The Matrix. And yes, its cliche, and yes The Matrix is actually about Buddhism, but it's also about singularitarianism. The annoying thing about the human mind is that if it can be thought, then it is possible. Because the thought itself proves its existence. Besides singularity being about computers superceding human intelligence, it's also the notion that we can upload our consciousness, our self into a computer or robot. Yes I like the idea of putting myself in a robot and being in a space ship that extends to the outer ends of the universe or can go into different dimensions. Maybe it's because I'm slightly "alternative" in L's words, if you think about natural resources, and how they're being depleted, electronics use energy, and not the same kind of energy that organic beings use. As long as organic living things exist, then life will continue to exist. The beginning of the article is about a guy when he was 17 has a computer that creates music. Music is essentially sound. The huge flaw about singularitarianism, is that humans create computers. We make computers faster. Humans program computers. Even if one computer is smarter than one person, it's not smarter than the 10 people who made the computer. A computer cannot be any smarter than the porgrammer itself. Just because a computer can create music, does not necessarily mean that a computer can create its own programs. It can only create what we give it to create. We give the tools and since we programmed it to think like us as best as we can in an electronic way, it is essentially flawed. We as flawed beings create flawed things. We cannot create perfection. It is impossible. It is logically possible, but in reality it's impossible. Our thinking is limitless, our capabilities are not. This future of uploading my consciousness onto a computer to be immortal is impossible. You can't make something organic into something electronic, just as you can't make something electonic organic. It's physically not possible. And until we figure out this soul business and the meaning of life, or what gives life, will we not be in any position to plug ourselves in. Sorry, but its probably going to be one of those things that human beings will never figure out. And I'm glad for that. I hope we don't discover the meaning of life. Without that need to give life meaning or purpose, we would lose all ambition to live. What makes us human is that we're thinking animals. And to upload us, would essentially no longer make us human. Cyborg or not, we wouldn't be human. People want to be immortal because they want to do humanly things for the rest of their lives. Who on earth would only want to exist as a conscious being for immortality. The thing about being immortal is that its not eternal. Immortals can die. It's simple.
Plato's dream was to be in a continual state of contemplation. But because consciousness is linked to the body, we must fuel the body in order to make contemplation possible. If it were possible as singularity proposes, would Plato take it? If we were able to separate what we think is immaterial from the material, what would make us think that all the uploaded consciousnesses wouldn't converge into one super consciousness. I picture this as Brahman. We are all a part of Brahman as individuals, and Brahman exists as only one entity. One being. One super being separated from the physical. The physical being the illusion of our true selves. Our Karma, our souls are bound to this illusion of the physical, and all this meditating, and all this drive to achieve moksha, to achieve nirvana, would it be this superconsciousness? Would we really have separated everything, man from animal. Is our true self our consciousness or is it the combination of body and mind? Would we be free of suffering if we were without the body? Would we still have emotion? Where is the line?
Just like the movie, where is the line in creating things just to harvest them? It's bad enough we do this to animals, but to do it to ourselves? I hope I'm dead long before Kurweil's exponential growth comes true. And I agree with Lev Grossman that nothing gets old faster than the future. Look at movies that predicted the future. Some of these movies are 30 years old and I watch them and I see the date and I'm like "yeah right, this is so not what's going to happen in 5 years, not even 10."
I also wanted to discuss determinsm, which I have talked about before, but after watching The Adjustment Bureau, I wanted to delve further into the idea of life being planned out for us. That we don't have free will which I was going to tie into Never Let Me Go, where I thought why didn't these people refuse this? I would have committed suicide before ever "donating". I don't know how much money you paid for me, but suck on this. You're going to die and I'm relish in tthe fact that I wasted all your money and now I'm deciding when I die and I'm also deciding that you're going to die of your ailment. Why would they even bother to educate these children. The more you know, the more you question and you never stop questioning. When they turned 18 and left the schools and had access to the real world, what stopped them from going into a bookstore and reading a book? Why? Ishiguro set all his characters up to fail. He did not give them the full capacity of a real human being and our will to live. No one resigns to death at 18 who is healthy and has the whole world ahead of them. No matter how brainwashed you may be, any contact from the outside world would ultimately change you.
Determinism scares me. It scares me a lot. I keep thinking my rearended car from last night was an adjustment. Either for me, or for the man who drove away who is more than busted by the police. Or my car accident stopped someone from being on time and therefore their path, their determined course got back on track. I can't help but wonder. And sometimes it is nice to think that someone else is pulling all the strings, but that would be me not accepting that I am responsible for myself and that I don't believe in free will. I am responsible for myself and I do have free will. All these logical philosophies cloud my thinking and it's hard to be set on anything outside of an emotional response and conviction for how I think the world works and the world actually works. But at 24 soon to be 25, I think I have time to contemplate all this for much longer. And according to Kurzweil, I may be able to contemplate this for as long as I like.
Cheers to your Sunday afternoon.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The Last Weekend
This is my last weekend in my little bachelorette suite. Starting tomorrow after work, I'm going to start boxing my things. I get possession of my new apartment on Friday evening. This is only going to make the week super long for me. Packing and waiting. Patience is not a strong point of mine. Maybe I'll be so busy that it will go by quickly. I'm moving to the other side of the river in my favourite neighbourhood in Saskatoon i.e. City Park. It's the same distance from my work too.
Since I'm still so excited about it, I'm going to first go over the cons of moving: I can't take Lucy with me, my movie store is now not a quick jaunt from here. In fact I know that there is no video store chain downtown or in City Park. Rogers Plus, please hear my cry and move in downtown please! My favourite Starbucks is now way too far to go to for a coffee. Not to mention that Indigo, my love of my life bookstore is now nowhere near me. Goodbye Superstore... although this would be a stop I would make after work or after leaving my Mom's which means it really isn't out of the way. Although I will miss the closeness of Sobey's which is a hop, skip and a jump away.
The pros: no super annoying loud 20 year old screaming couple next to me. In fact at this moment at noon they're playing music too loudly with too much bass. A-holes. I have once gotten the chance to look into their place last week. I was trying to figure out where they keep their TV. They have their stereo in the corner on a shelf with a huge sub which the volume to their TV is connected. Which is why their shit is so loud all the time. They also have an ugly fish tank. I think the girlfriend works part-time at the pet store here at the mall. I swear she doesn't work. I also am saying adios to the smell of ethnic food, cabbies, and children running in the hallways. And since my new place is on the top floor and the only suite, I no longer have noisy people beside me and I don't have to listen to squeaky floor guy. I think losing my favourite places and Lucy, is worth the move. Don't get me wrong. I won't be living in my new place forever. It's my next stop before maybe buying property. The housing market in Saskatoon is overpriced, inflated and what people are selling is not worth what they're selling. So I think I'll spend my time waiting for when it is a buyer's market. At that point, I'll have the money saved. I also like the Starbucks on 2nd avenue, so no complaints there. I'm also 8 short blocks away from the river, and 3 blocks away from downtown. More like 12 walking blocks from the movie theatre and all the pubs and bars I usually frequent. I google street viewed it. Google should have taken photos in spring, summer or fall when there were still leaves on the trees. I also like that I can see the back of my place. It's pretty exciting. I'm also 5 blocks away from Pacific which means I'll most likely drop by more often since it's in the neighbourhood. Earl's may be my new watering hole. I prefer it to Whiskey Jack's and JT's.
The pros of living near downtown are all the summer festivals. This is going to be a great summer. I'm going to make this one memorable. I'm going to maximize my new location to its fullest.
In the middle of blogging I started checking into ratings of movies. It all started with The Roommate which I made plans to see it tonight with D. It has a low rating, but all kinds of movies that I liked had low ratings too. I don't know what this says about me. I'm not sure what these ratings are based on. Writing, dialogue, originality, acting, story... I can watch a movie I don't think is very good and still enjoy it. I still want a gig as a movie reviewer. Any reason for someone to pay for me to go to movies is good enough for me. I would write for free if I got to see a movie for free. Although I wouldn't just watch anything. I'd have to have some kind of interest in wanting to see it. I just went back and forth between RottenTomatoes.com and IMDb.com and a movie I liked will have a higher rating on IMDb then on RottenTomatoes. Why is this? Are the people who are reviewing on RottenTomatoes the people who only see blockbuster movies whom have no discerning tastes? If that's the case, I will only be looking at IMDb's ratings. The moronic mass of people's opinions have less value to me than actual movie critics. I checked the raitngs of this cute adorable movie titled Flipped. IMDb rated it 7.4/10. RottenTomatoes gave it a 57 and a rotten tomato. WTF?!!? This was a great movie. It had a great story and dialogue and the acting wasn't bad. I may have to start a new movie blog that meets the standards of RottenTomatoes. Now to get 500,000 different viewers monthly. I think that's a bit ambitous. Even D has some 162 followers which I think is brilliant. I would be stoked to have 162 followers. This may be yet another project to take on after I'm settled in the new place.
I've also taken on the project of organizing Candy Grams at the office. I completed the poster and request form. Now all I need to do is buy some supplies and look up card templates to affix to the candy grams and I'll be set. I just had to spotaneously move into a new place, didn't I? It really was spontaneous. I decided it when I got home on Monday evening, made an appointment to view it for Tuesday and it was mine Wednesday morning. It was about a 36 hour process. Life is good. Just like the perfect set out couches I purchased yesterday. I thought I had found the perfect couch at Palliser's and then bam, right when I was leaving another furniture store, the set I purchased appeared and I instantly bought it. The easier something is when you're looking, the more perfect it is. Don't get me wrong, hardwork isn't easy, but if done right it looks easy. When things move smoothly, it's like it was meant to be. I can expect some snags, but really, it's all about luck and being ready for luck. The best advice I was ever given and I'm going to stick to it.
With it being the year of the rabbit, I'm hoping this year will be lucky, because I could really use the luck. If luck has plenty it wants to give me, then go ahead, and give me some extra luck. I don't think people complain too much about luck. I want to earn things, but luck is always good.
Cheers to new things, cheers to luck and cheers to the year of the rabbit.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Dream
I had a dream last night that I didn't recollect until the moment I stepped into my apartment after work. To be honest, that's never happened before. It's not the only odd thing recently either. I had the feeling of deja vu on Saturday afternoon. The thing is, its not like I felt like I had been there before, but that I had a dream very similar to it. I want to believe that it was a dream and it wasn't that logical explanation that one side of your brain is processing information before the other side. As I continue to digress, I can't remember if I had blogged about it before, but I'll recap it anyway. A friend of a friend had/has multiple tumor growths in the brain, the neck and spinal column. As far as I know, he had them removed and isn't doing too badly. I don't ask. It's one of those things whether he'll manage, but he'll always have this problem in life, or it'll kill him at some point. I think it is the former than the latter. The point was that he had told me that he had had a few moments where just before he had the future unfold before him and then after, went back to the exact moment he was in and everything played out just as he had experienced it. He was sure that he had these telepathic/psychic powers due to the tumors and what a surreal experience it was. I also experienced something similar to that effect to. This rift in time where time stopped for a moment. Entirely stopped for a moment. I think I blogged about it. But I had a similar experience on Saturday. It was slightly unnerving. But like always, my mind running multiple processes at one time, it got put on the back burner.
This dream I had this morning was weird and it wasn't a dream you have right before you wake up, it was one I had in the middle of the night. Not when you have a dream that you slowly wake up from, you kind of remember it. The jist of the dream was that I had made a booking for a hotel and I chose only one bed that was queen size. When I got to the hotel and the room, the room was tiny. And so was the bed. I was thinking this is a single and only one person can sleep on this bed. It was actually slightly smaller than a single. It was the shape of a traditional Dracula shaped coffin. It had a headboard, but the colours of the room were creamy, but not too light orange, pink and possibly tan or yellow. The walls and the bed spread were of a floral motif, but not large flowers, but not too small either. And then I proceeded to try and lay in the bed which wasn't long enough, and the footboard was in the way. It was a weird dream for me. It might have something to do with work, which I'm sure it does. I also think it's some subconscious level of my fear of spending the rest of my life alone. No this is not the first time I've expressed this fear.
A few weekends ago I had some people over and we never managed to leave my place, but we played some drinking games to get drunk. Since it was a kind of going away shindig, we all went around telling everyone things we're afraid of. One of mine being that I'm afraid I'll be single forever. And not because there is a lack of people I meet or who have an interest in me, but a "it's me" thing going on. I'm pretty sure this dream was playing up on this fear I have which I've been thinking about slightly since that night. I lie, it's always on my mind, I just don't ackwoledge its presence in my mind. I put it under thoughts like "I'm hungry. I'm sleepy." I put it with the ultra mundane thoughts and keep it there. It's a dark place this thought and if I hide it well enough, it won't lurk around and plague me, causing me anxiety and stress and all other kinds of neuorticisms.
I watched The Switch on Saturday night. And I loved it. I thought it was a great story. Jason Bateman is great and does neurotic very well. It only makes me wonder if is also neurotic, because I don't think neurotic behaviour and tendencies are something you can act. You either you are or you aren't. For people who aren't neurotic, they don't understand neurotic behaviour. How I know this, is basically how people respond to things I say. Their response is "chill, relax, don't let it get to you, it's nothing personal..." blah blah blah blah blah. Their advice is true, no doubt about it. It is easier said than done, especially if you're naturally inclined to be neurotic. I LOVED the movie. I could relate. There were similarities. I am not that annoying, although I'm sure I'm more annoying in other ways. I also watched No Strings Attached which I also loved. This movie struck a cord with me. Now I'm not comparing myself to Natalie Portman's character, but a lot of her character is similar to me. Oddly. In a coincidence way. The funny way coincidences are. Sometimes coincidences having you thinking "fate". "This is meant to be". Sometimes I think that. Not fate necessarily, but those moments where you know you're doing exactly what you should be doing and you did the right thing and continue on your way.
I thought this would take me maybe 15 minutes, but it seems that everything I'm thinking about it pouring out. On Sunday morning, I finally made myself wake up, kind of. I looked at my phone at about 10:30 around the same time my sister was messaging me, and we got to talking about a dream she had that came to her about rabbits. My sister and I have been having conversations about rabbits for awhile now. At least since December, maybe as early as late November. Next week, on february 3rd, the year of the rabbit starts. In case you were wondering, this Chinese New Year's element is metal and it is in yin. I was researching my sister's Chinese zodiac, which is... the monkey and her element is metal and her year is yang. Mine is year of the tiger, my element is fire and my year is yang. If you are a friend of mine born in the same year as me between February 1986 and February 1987, you are the same as me. I'm skeptical of wikipedia, but in this case, wikipedia is a great source for checking out your Chinese zodiac. I am a firm believer in the zodiacs. That scare of when they added a new zodiac and shifted all the birth months put me in a state of shock and panic. Only to find out from one of the Purolator guys that it applies to people born after 2009 and yeah. I'm still a Taurus. Or am I? technically if the shift had happened who knows when, I'd be an Aries and really I've developed myself into the personality of a Taurus because I believed that's who I was as opposed to just being me. I'll never know and this is as much investigation as I'm going to give it since I'm gullible and I also think I'm intuitive, so I believe it. For some reason I cannot accept that Jesus was a divine being, ebodied as a man, yet I believe in zodiacs. Weird, I know. Maybe because zodiacs have a system. A calendrical system, based on the alignment of planets and the rotation of Earth and all that jazz. And all the jazz makes sense, because we're all bound by the same weak force of gravity and momentum and all things organic and non-living bound together, under this principle of possible string theory based on vibrations.
Like all things, there are patterns. Patterns naturally occur, which is why we can classify things. Not going there today, that is a topic all on its own. I wish I would remember that I would like to talk about the process of classifying things. Human beings have this uncanny gift or skill of clustering things, based on observation thus building knowledge. Organic living things are these incredibly beautiful fucking things. So complex, and when they work they work well and when they don't work well they don't work. So believing in the zodiac is easy because it has a pattern, it has a system and it has a logical system. I don't know who gave the classifications the classifications they gave, but I'm sure it was someone of some unique ability to see patterns in such a detail that they could accurately describe personalities based on a time they were born at. I also think that people who are born very close between two zodiacs, slightly embody personality traits of both.
Not everything is black and white, and that's not to say we don't have our own unique personalities completely different from that of the zodiac. But the year of the rabbit has got me thinking. Thinking in a different way. Thinking differently is great. It is a great thing to think critically, explore, expand and test new things.
I am ready for the year of the rabbit and still putting that dream in the back of my mind until I figure out what to do with it.
Here's to deep thinking on a Tuesday night instead of a Sunday. I can change my habits... at least Aristotle said we can, you just have to do it in excess to develop the mean. I think this year is the year to do everything in excess to build my perfect ethic. I think this is a life process, but it surely is attainable. Even psychology has some kind of chart like this. That chart of self-realization, fullfilment, yatta yatta yatta. This year I'm going to work on... not telling you. But maybe each year I should work on a new characteristic to work on. Doing the excess of it in order to develop my own personal mean. Maybe this is my long-term new years goal. I don't remember how many are on the list, but I know it's over 10, so this should take me at least a decade to work on. And I thought I wouldn't have any real long-term goals in life. HA!
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Saying What You Mean and Meaning What You Say
The new year isn't just about new beginnings and starting fresh or slugging off dead weight. It's about growing, it's about learning and it's about moving forward.
I've learned that honesty is incredibly important. It's valuable. Even if it hurts, the sooner it's said, the less damage there is in the long run. With honesty comes respect. You may not like what you hear when someone is honest with you, but you can respect that they've said something to you.
I hadn't realized how important it is to tell people what you think or feel either about them or about something. I learned this lesson at a heavy price. I will for as long as I live have things I want to tell my father. To have them acknowledged by him. To tell him the truth and how I feel and how I'd like to move forward now that I've said them. But I will never get to tell him. It's not a regret, but it's pretty close to it. It's not my fault that I thought I had time to say it. Now I'm in the habit of telling people what I think when I don't like something. Because I don't want to regret not saying it. I don't want it to hang over me. I don't want it restricting me. I don't want it to weigh me down. It's not in the case that if I die tomorrow I haven't left anything unsaid. It's in the event that if the person I have things to say to dies, I have said it. It's been cleared. Which is slightly morbid.
In the event that the cute strawberry blonde rhythm guitar player who played at Bud's in March and April of 2006 and if your name is Travis and you ever find this post, I wish I talked to you; that I introduced myself. I do know it was nearly 5 years ago, but I've said it. This thought hangs somewhere in the digital world, but it exists. And it has the potential to be found.
The song to accompany this post is 'If Looks Could Kill' by Musicforanimals. I would include the song if I hadn't written this on my iPod and not on my laptop. If you have time search for the song on YouTube, listen to it because it's a pretty good song.
All I have to say is that if you have anything left to say to someone, say it. Just make sure it comes from the right place and not one from pain and hurt. Honesty and saying things to hurt someone are not the same thing. It matters to distinguish between the two.
I've learned that honesty is incredibly important. It's valuable. Even if it hurts, the sooner it's said, the less damage there is in the long run. With honesty comes respect. You may not like what you hear when someone is honest with you, but you can respect that they've said something to you.
I hadn't realized how important it is to tell people what you think or feel either about them or about something. I learned this lesson at a heavy price. I will for as long as I live have things I want to tell my father. To have them acknowledged by him. To tell him the truth and how I feel and how I'd like to move forward now that I've said them. But I will never get to tell him. It's not a regret, but it's pretty close to it. It's not my fault that I thought I had time to say it. Now I'm in the habit of telling people what I think when I don't like something. Because I don't want to regret not saying it. I don't want it to hang over me. I don't want it restricting me. I don't want it to weigh me down. It's not in the case that if I die tomorrow I haven't left anything unsaid. It's in the event that if the person I have things to say to dies, I have said it. It's been cleared. Which is slightly morbid.
In the event that the cute strawberry blonde rhythm guitar player who played at Bud's in March and April of 2006 and if your name is Travis and you ever find this post, I wish I talked to you; that I introduced myself. I do know it was nearly 5 years ago, but I've said it. This thought hangs somewhere in the digital world, but it exists. And it has the potential to be found.
The song to accompany this post is 'If Looks Could Kill' by Musicforanimals. I would include the song if I hadn't written this on my iPod and not on my laptop. If you have time search for the song on YouTube, listen to it because it's a pretty good song.
All I have to say is that if you have anything left to say to someone, say it. Just make sure it comes from the right place and not one from pain and hurt. Honesty and saying things to hurt someone are not the same thing. It matters to distinguish between the two.
Monday, January 10, 2011
The Brain and The Soul.
For some reason I thought this would be more challenging. It's not. I've crushed these questions. Pondered them. Tackled them. Struggled with them. Destroyed myself over them. Instead of challenging, it was too easy. At this point I think it's pocket philosophy for people who don't study philosophy and a way to engage them in wanting to philosophize. I'm being a snob and for good reason. I'm not 18 and completely impressionable. I'm almost 25 and I've had enough experience and grueling introspection to no longer be so impressionable. I think critically of everything. Some ideas take more thought than others. These questions just weren't challenging enough. So it lacked in epistemology, but maybe not in other fields. I'm thinking this is definitely pseudo-psychology disguised in pretty garb. I will finish this project, but it feels like it won't take long.
I have been unable to do the first challenges. One being that it's the prairies and it's winter. No one shovels the snow here. Secondly, I waited too late in the evening to even be able to people watch while listening to a playlist to connect me with others....
My personal challenge: don't do the dishes. Let chaos reign. An excuse to ignore the sink littered in dishes. If only dishes no longer existed in their need to be washed to be reused. If only it were like The Jetson's and technology did all the heavy lifting.
Goodnight and wish that this book becomes more intellectually or personally challenging for me.
I have been unable to do the first challenges. One being that it's the prairies and it's winter. No one shovels the snow here. Secondly, I waited too late in the evening to even be able to people watch while listening to a playlist to connect me with others....
My personal challenge: don't do the dishes. Let chaos reign. An excuse to ignore the sink littered in dishes. If only dishes no longer existed in their need to be washed to be reused. If only it were like The Jetson's and technology did all the heavy lifting.
Goodnight and wish that this book becomes more intellectually or personally challenging for me.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Embarkment of Soulpancake or Selfsandwich
I'm always thinking about some project, something I can create and something to commit to since commitment isn't my strong point. Loyalty and commitment are not the same thing. Loyalty is more of an obligation, but one done out of free will. I digress... I've been watching Conan. I am super behind in my episodes. On Friday I watched the episode where Rainn Wilson is a guest. Mr. Wilson was on the show to promote his book Soulpancake. I liked the discussion and thought I would check it out. I ended up buying the book yesterday. I've barely made it through the intro as I wanted to blog about the experience; as a project. One that is creative, spiritual and philosophical. Which are all "things" I highly value above all else. Though I lack any real commitment. Which I think is based solely on inspiration. I just happen to have inspiration that is short on fuel. This Soulpancake may be the motivation I need.
A quote from the book: I believe art and it's expression are the same as faith and it's expression. Science, too, for that matter. And quite frankly, everything that urges us to create, to love, to think deeply, to breathe in the moment, to be of service, to be human. They are all different expressions of some divine, creative energy that longs to radiate out and away from the trappings of close-hearted, selfish, animal materialism.
This is so well written, in an objective way. Something I sometimes lack in myself. But that's okay. All subjective experiences lose it's personal meaning in it's translation amongst others. It's hard to radiate something that which translation distorts. As an expression it becomes something other than what it originally was. Maybe that's what's my problem. I don't like the translation. The medium in which to express it is so deeply insufficient in capturing exactly how it feels and how I feel. How the thoughts become something beyond the thought itself. Beyond the body, yet coming from the only source from which it came. As much as I agree with the quote, so do I disagree. We are material beings. Animal beings. What we create and where it is created from comes from the physical. Creativity is organic. It is not from some separate source outside the physical, it is physical. It is a physical thing. Something tangible. Something graspable and at hand. Because it seems so rightly "divine" it must be from something outside of our animal bodies. This one quote has sparked hundreds of thoughts in just seconds. Neurons firing, multiple processes running at the exact same time. It blows my mind.
On Christmas Day, J played me a video of a classical composer whom she admires. The music was beautiful. In listening to the music I was engrossed by the entire process of this creation. One process of the music itself. The fundamental process of how we experience sound and how we hear it, and how what we hear is so fundamentally different to every other non-human. That beautiful sound we hear, richness of tone, inflection of notes, melodies, pauses and breaks and so on, are uniquely human. Without the physical, we would be unable to hear it. Without the mechanics of the ear, that catches vibrations in such a way that doesn't distort it, is simply incredible. These musical beings hear noise in their head that is completely internalized, and they externalize it. I wonder if what they "hear" in their head is what comes out if them, through their fingers, represented by a symbolic language of musical notes, that other people can read, and play that same sound. Even the brilliance of the engineering of a piano. The piano itself as an object. As physical thing. I can't even articulate all my thoughts into text. Text is 2D. These thoughts are of a different dimension. As I said about translation, it just can't quite capture my experience of it. Maybe someday in my life, it could be a possibility. Because what I think and experience isn't translatable in an objectionable way that is sufficient in capturing everything, what is the point of creating something that is no where near as complex as what I feel and see? I don't know how people work around this obstacle. Maybe they're not thinking about it, that's why they aren't hindered by all the noise because they only "hear" one thing at a time.
I never realized this was a problem for me until university. I read an Edgar Allen Poe short story about a cat being put into a wall. When I wrote the essay, I thought "this is amazing." I got the essay back and it was everything less than amazing. I got a "pass" on it but just barely. I cried. I bawled my eyes out. How I experienced the ideas and how they came out of me through my arm, and hand, pencil and paper was incoherent. But when I wrote it it made perfect sense to me. When I typed it out it made perfect sense to me. When I reread and edited it, it made perfect sense to me. When I got the paper back and saw the grade and spoke with my professor about the paper, the body of work made no sense to me. It was utterly incoherent. My lack of objectivity of my subjectivity was apparent. And was for a lot of my university experience. As I wrote more papers, my writing became more clear, but only out of my desire to get better grades. To write what I knew my professors would grade with a mark I could accept or be proud of. But because I wrote my thoughts with that objective in mind, that streaming subjective consciousness of mine was compromised. Discussion and the act of discussing requires being fluent in the art of dialect - in dialogue. All things I lack in expressing. Like a block. A block which I can't move. Technically because everything I create, produce, think, dream, "see" and "hear" are physical things, this block too is a physical thing. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to push past that block.
I've had enough of sharing. The philosophy will have to wait for another day. It is my intention to start Soulpancake tonight. To embark on a journey of Rainn Wilson's Soulpancake. In the first creative exercise, I created Selfsandwich. Which makes more sense to me than Soulpancake which is linguistically and syntax-wise an attractive thing to read and hear, but doesn't quite express the consumption of self and whatnot into a completely nonsensical word that somehow makes sense. Just like the "word" absentmindedness, which means only one thing, yet the two words by themselves mean a different thing. So I am going to tackle the sandwich of self.
Cheers.
A quote from the book: I believe art and it's expression are the same as faith and it's expression. Science, too, for that matter. And quite frankly, everything that urges us to create, to love, to think deeply, to breathe in the moment, to be of service, to be human. They are all different expressions of some divine, creative energy that longs to radiate out and away from the trappings of close-hearted, selfish, animal materialism.
This is so well written, in an objective way. Something I sometimes lack in myself. But that's okay. All subjective experiences lose it's personal meaning in it's translation amongst others. It's hard to radiate something that which translation distorts. As an expression it becomes something other than what it originally was. Maybe that's what's my problem. I don't like the translation. The medium in which to express it is so deeply insufficient in capturing exactly how it feels and how I feel. How the thoughts become something beyond the thought itself. Beyond the body, yet coming from the only source from which it came. As much as I agree with the quote, so do I disagree. We are material beings. Animal beings. What we create and where it is created from comes from the physical. Creativity is organic. It is not from some separate source outside the physical, it is physical. It is a physical thing. Something tangible. Something graspable and at hand. Because it seems so rightly "divine" it must be from something outside of our animal bodies. This one quote has sparked hundreds of thoughts in just seconds. Neurons firing, multiple processes running at the exact same time. It blows my mind.
On Christmas Day, J played me a video of a classical composer whom she admires. The music was beautiful. In listening to the music I was engrossed by the entire process of this creation. One process of the music itself. The fundamental process of how we experience sound and how we hear it, and how what we hear is so fundamentally different to every other non-human. That beautiful sound we hear, richness of tone, inflection of notes, melodies, pauses and breaks and so on, are uniquely human. Without the physical, we would be unable to hear it. Without the mechanics of the ear, that catches vibrations in such a way that doesn't distort it, is simply incredible. These musical beings hear noise in their head that is completely internalized, and they externalize it. I wonder if what they "hear" in their head is what comes out if them, through their fingers, represented by a symbolic language of musical notes, that other people can read, and play that same sound. Even the brilliance of the engineering of a piano. The piano itself as an object. As physical thing. I can't even articulate all my thoughts into text. Text is 2D. These thoughts are of a different dimension. As I said about translation, it just can't quite capture my experience of it. Maybe someday in my life, it could be a possibility. Because what I think and experience isn't translatable in an objectionable way that is sufficient in capturing everything, what is the point of creating something that is no where near as complex as what I feel and see? I don't know how people work around this obstacle. Maybe they're not thinking about it, that's why they aren't hindered by all the noise because they only "hear" one thing at a time.
I never realized this was a problem for me until university. I read an Edgar Allen Poe short story about a cat being put into a wall. When I wrote the essay, I thought "this is amazing." I got the essay back and it was everything less than amazing. I got a "pass" on it but just barely. I cried. I bawled my eyes out. How I experienced the ideas and how they came out of me through my arm, and hand, pencil and paper was incoherent. But when I wrote it it made perfect sense to me. When I typed it out it made perfect sense to me. When I reread and edited it, it made perfect sense to me. When I got the paper back and saw the grade and spoke with my professor about the paper, the body of work made no sense to me. It was utterly incoherent. My lack of objectivity of my subjectivity was apparent. And was for a lot of my university experience. As I wrote more papers, my writing became more clear, but only out of my desire to get better grades. To write what I knew my professors would grade with a mark I could accept or be proud of. But because I wrote my thoughts with that objective in mind, that streaming subjective consciousness of mine was compromised. Discussion and the act of discussing requires being fluent in the art of dialect - in dialogue. All things I lack in expressing. Like a block. A block which I can't move. Technically because everything I create, produce, think, dream, "see" and "hear" are physical things, this block too is a physical thing. Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to push past that block.
I've had enough of sharing. The philosophy will have to wait for another day. It is my intention to start Soulpancake tonight. To embark on a journey of Rainn Wilson's Soulpancake. In the first creative exercise, I created Selfsandwich. Which makes more sense to me than Soulpancake which is linguistically and syntax-wise an attractive thing to read and hear, but doesn't quite express the consumption of self and whatnot into a completely nonsensical word that somehow makes sense. Just like the "word" absentmindedness, which means only one thing, yet the two words by themselves mean a different thing. So I am going to tackle the sandwich of self.
Cheers.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Burnt Thumbs and All
I've run out of matches, and for some reason lighters just don't work for lighting candles that aren't new. This has resulted in me burning my fingers for the last few days.In fact I've had a lot of burning in the last couple days. Even when I've been cooking I've burnt my fingers on the handles. Just a whole lot of burning going on in my life.
I ruined my New Years yesterday. I tried to put myself together for a party, but I lost myself again. I don't think I drunk a whole bottle of champagne... but it's possible. The last time I polished off a bottle, the same thing resulted. Although I made it to New Years. And I was sick at 3 am and not at 11:30. I spent the countdown with my face in the toilet, while I heard everyone cheering and having fun like I should have been having. Sadly, my hang over isn't what's kicking me today. I really don't like placing the blame on anyone other than myself. I'm responisble for myself and my actions. Although it's easier to blame others, I'm an existentialist through and through, and to blame someone else is inauthentic.
I attended a very nice dinner party in a very nice condo tonight. It was all very nice. I felt like a grown-up. I don't have too many moments like those. For the most part I still feel like I'm a kid. Maybe if I owned something I wouldn't feel this way. Or maybe if I was married. Probably not. Maybe it will only be those moments every once in awhile.
I glimpsed the Northern Lights tonight. It's been awhile since I've seen them. It was a treat. And they weren't green like the usually are when I see them in the city. They were white and short and perfect for the quiet cloudy night that today has been.
Often I wonder if these are all signs for something. I know, its probably coincidence. Sometimes it's got me wondering. Like if I hadn't have gone for a cruise before the dinner party along the river, would I have seen them? Usually that's where I see them. Right place at the right time?
I did my cards in August. I don't know why I do my cards, but the cards are always right. Not coincidence. I worked for a woman whom read tarot cards, and her predictions were spot on when she was in high school. Suddenly her cards were off and it was because her younger sister was using them. Because they are my cards and only I touch them, I think they're true. Eerie I know. Over Christmas my mother bought these mensa personality quiz cards. To my sister's surprise she thought she was more intuitive scoring a 53. I on the other hand scored an 88 out of 110. So maybe I'm not so much more intuitive, but gullable because I believe in the cards I deal myself. I basically do a short reading from both decks. To do a 13 card reading would be exhausting since I haven't really studied my cards. Maybe sometime.
The card that stuck out the most was the Knight of Swords. I knew it was a person and I knew who it was. I was hoping that I was wrong; that the card was about me and not a person. My gut was right and it was a person and it was just I had expected. It's funny how I knew in August that they would come and go. I really didn't want it to be true. There's nothing that can be done about it. It also predicted a new career in the near future. The thing about the cards, is that each card can either be about personal growth, another individual representing that card or a situation. For me, it's easy to accept the cards as truth because it's not necessarily fate or predetermined circumstances. The future is entirely subjective. Thoughts are constantly changing. A short reading is just as it is. A reading of a short amount of time. I only do them once and awhile. Had I not have done a reading in August I wouldn't have been aware of the Knight of Swords and I would today still believe that not all was lost. Since I did the reading, I know better. You can doubt the cards, but I don't.
I'll do another reading today before midnight.
I've included a station that I happen to like. I thought it fit my mood to a T.
Cheers to you and hopefully a better year than the last.
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