On writing and other things, again

17/07/08

Cloudy and rainy again. On the verge of breaking the 160,000 word mark. I’ve added the sledge travelling part and went along with those characters of mine through blizzards and endless sheets of whitness where horizon and land merge into one infinity. I saw those huskey dogs run wild, dragging the sledge behind and I felt every bump on the way. Whether I actually managed to convey the experience in words is another matter, as always. My last big journey will be trekking through the dense tropical forest that leads to the Shores. It will only be a short trip but I’m looking forward to letting my mind travel in the far-flung regions of perfection. I cheated time and gravity all at once. Whilst my body is bound to this reality, being stuck- a prisoner- between grey walls, relentless noise and ugly landscapes that make up a city I can no longer stand, I have at the same time travelled so far away that it blows my own mind. It is as though I have really been to those unreachable realms of beauty and sheer wilderness. I went, saw, felt and remembered like a true explorer. What I do not know is whether I was able to translate everything I saw, felt, heard and experienced into something I could share. Yet I know now that what I have written is my most precious possession. It is my own escape, a world I created along the way that is entirely mine even though it now stands on its feet and has its own ‘spirit’. I may have thrown in the foundations but the rest that ensued was of its own accord. The world shaped itself into what it ought to be, not according to what I wished it to morphe into, in a way. Or perhaps the grey walls and relentless noise around me, the gloom and crying skies, were the very element that helped me build a world so far removed from my reality. I longued for sunny horizons and green landscapes, glimpses of purity boyond the ruthless materiality that is everywhere my eyes look.

So much so that in the end the perfect world was born- out of a mind that felt smothered alive and reaching out for air and freedom it can never truly obtain. I suspect I shall never win such freedom, for I know very little of what it ought to be. I only yearn for the ideal it instills in my mind. I’ll always be a prisoner of this reality and a pawn of materiality. It is inevitable. All I have is a yearning mind and itchy fingers eager to better themselves. These tools are my only defense, my only way out. Beyond that nothing much truly makes sense. Everything is veiled or concealed from its truth. Every object, every palpable thing is known without knowledge and taken for granted. Even the food we eat everyday isn’t known. It is so far removed from its original state and has gone through so many different processes that it is but a lie to think we know the finished product. 

If I picked a tomato and turned it myself into a puree I would know what ketshup is.

I look at that glass bottle and the only way I ‘know’ it is ketshup is thanks to a label telling me that it is. Social conditioning also instilled in me many templates of what certain things ought to look, feel or taste like but unless I haven’t discovered the thing myself, from its initial state to its finality then all that I know is really little more than an illusion. No wonder I feel trapped and confused in a world where everything that surrounds you is based on a tacit agreement that we ought to know things simply because a majority says what they ought to be.

 It seems especially true of food. How do I know what that beef steak really is, beyond the safe label stuck on it telling me that it is? It’s pretty much a game of trust and I should be trusting enough to take whoever’s word for it but in an age where only profit and money prevail, I find myself lost and frightened. Even if I decide not to trust what is deemed to be, even if I refuse to believe readily that the beef in front of me really is beef, everything has been so far removed from me for so long that I have no alternative but wonder forever. I have no option to go back to the source and learn- truly- what beef is, what that piece on my plate is. It seems that while we appear to live in a world of great material technology, we’ve never been so far removed from reality itself, living off understandings on what everything ought to be- living off one illusion to the next.

Anyway, I need to go to the bank pretty soon and that really pisses me off. The bank itself is a perfect allegory of illusion-based reality where the bank is a term that refers to an unknown agglomeration of people and powers. There is no real relation or exchange between the individual and the bank, only the illusion of one through numbers of people and machines. Hence the difficulties and headaches such encounters always seem to give us. In the spectrum of Reality such encounters are in fact at the lower end and could be deemed more likely to be an illusion than not. Fact.

The End

When I was very little I used to lie down on the bed and as I closed my eyes I could imagine myself anywhere I wished. I saw everything as though I was there. I was there. And then, eyes still shut, I would feel my bed spin in place faster and faster and I was so afraid- not because it turned so fast that I was dizzy, but for fear that it would stop if I looked. I didn’t want the spinning to stop, I wanted it to take me away, somewhere higher and I didn’t care that I could never find the way back. And I didn’t care that I would lose myself. But then, every time I would fall asleep and when I woke I was back in the bed and nothing had changed.

Too much

       I know nothing because the society I live in, more than at any other given time, is based on illusions- tv, cinema, the internet... How can I not be from a generation of eternal doubters? How can I not question what is imposed as truth when deep down I do not know how we got here? Every single thing we know is reliable as far as the source on which your knowledge is based is. 

How can you not question it? How can you just accept it? Do you believe everything your neighbour tells you? Do you take everything your friend- made of flesh and blood- says as the ultimate truth? Of course you don’t. Part of you wonders if what they tell you is the honest truth. Now put yourself in my shoes. All I know is from someone else’s mouth or words. I learn from a screen or from so many un-human mediums that I am bound to reject it until I can safely enough find out for myself. These days it is impossible. We’ve removed ourselves too much from basics. To seek truth one doesn’t need to complicate the settings. One could find as much sitting under a tree. 

We are being brainwashed the easiest way there ever was: by drowning us in constant waves of information and noise. We’re still humans at the end of the day, not computers. We can only truly process one piece of info at a time. They know that. You didn’t, but now you do. Start doubting for pit’s sake.

I have always known, somehow, by instinct, and that is why it is so hard for me to find the right words. I feel the truth but cannot explain it. It’s much akin to trying to express that moment of fleeting joy- how would you go about it? There is only so many words or adjectives one can use. All our languages are flawed- of course they are. they limit us. They reflect our self-imposed limitations.

Searching for your true self, the real you behind all pretence and social conditioning is like peeling away sore skin, and then layers of flesh until you hit the bone. And then it hurts, and everything goes dark in your mind- you become little more than a lost child in the midst of a storm and there is no one there to hold your hand anymore. 

Every time you laugh, every time you utter a word, is it really you? Have you even asked yourself, do you even know what I’m talking about? Go on, take a step in front of that mirror and only stare at the eyes. What do you see? What do you see, really? Can you be certain it is you? And if it is, are you sure it is the one that should be? Or are you simply staring at a broken version of who should have been?

Perfection does exist, it’s everything this world isn’t. It’s everything away from the easy way. I think I saw a glimpse inside of me but the truth is that perfection is too damn hard to sustain. 

Random thoughts

There is something missing in me and I don’t know what it is. It is something crutial to cope with reality in all its forms. If there was such a thing as a soul I would say that it feels as though half of it missed the boat- my body- and therefore whilst one half remains prisoner of the flesh the other is already gone. How can one exist, let alone function, with a broken spirit or mind?

Money- or lack of, rather- has the uncanny power to make you feel like shit. Here we go again, having to live with a few pennies until Friday. That’s 5 whole days to go. I kept telling mum not to spend on food but did she listen? Of course she didn’t. Who the heck needs pork costing almost 4 quid? When you’re poor you don’t eat meat, you bloody eat beans. Or eggs. They're expensive but they last you a week at the very least.

The knowledge that I can’t even buy anything even if I wanted to makes me cringe. Well, I’m as much money’s slave as the next-door neighbour in the end. They made it all this way. They made the world blind. One common purpose, one common destiny: money.

It will always remind me of those poor sods in the desert Moses tried to guide or save from slavery or whatever. they found those golden statuettes and worshiped them. That’s our legacy, you see.

Reality is as much a sham as the written words on this page. The words set me free from the certainties and laws of physics; the reason why I am a prisoner in real life is merely down on my ignorance of any other ways. Reality is akin to a lazy story where biology and the laws of gravity and whatnot are the main plots, thus making us, the protagonists, boring and helpless. There is only so much that can happen to our kind in the Reality story. We’re all different in small ways, yet so alike in every single thing that seems to differenciate us. Fact. There are variants, physical and mental, but we’re all created according to some loose template and there’ s very little chance to ever drift far away from it. Why else would we long to be somewhat different from the bulk?

I just don’t get it... People, a lot of people, can talk about anything and they will find others to listen to them, be interested even if the topic is light and devoid of much sense. When I talk people talk over me. They constantly cut me or change subjects. When I write people never read my things or they edit it with more mistakes than there was to begin with. How many times have I gone down the pub, been made to listen to someone’s rant or thoughtless reasoning that would flash the words “illogical or flawed” in my my mind and yet everytime I attempt to give my opinion or share some insight the same old thing happens: they all look at me blankly, nod their heads at best and instantly get into another conversation. Am I that transparent or unintelligible? Do I never have anything interesting to say- ever? Am I that boring when I open my mouth or do I sound so silly that people can’t even pretend to listen?

 If there was some form of consistency in people’s behaviour or reactions to silliness or even dumbness then I wouldn’t feel so confused. If they blanked those who utter stupidity as much as they do with me then I would find it easier to accept. The trouble is that often the person next to me will say something that isn’t right and yet people will still take the time to listen. When I try to say anything it’s as though I suddenly disappear. I open my mouth and people run away. I take a pen and eyes wander off. It only serves to make me feel even more alienated from everything around me. It does make me want to reach for the wine and numb the emptiness inside. The lack of love. The lack of closeness. The only way to describe the void is to describe how I long to open my arms as they suddenly become wide enough to embrass the whole world and feel as one with the whole of humanity.

 There is beauty within humanity brighter than the sun itself, warmer than the fire burning at the core of the Earth, and yet it remains hidden under layers of ice thicker than the universe. Who could ever understand the pain? Even if some do, at times, it never leaves my side and every little thing hurts more than it ought to. It makes every simple pleasure or fleeting moments of joy shine brighter but it makes everything else worse at the same time.

28/06/08

On writing and other things...

I realised yesterday that there was one emotion lacking in my heroine: anger. She needs to go through stages, especially during her stint in the castle or she remains a whimp. She must first be afraid, anxious, then there has to be a moment of frustration at some point and I’m thinking about having her break a few things in her room out of anger. Then it would be back to crying. Now I think that would make her more believable. Although what I went through these past few days (with uni)  was different from her own experience the emotions were similar. I felt as though a rock had fell on my head, just as she must have felt when they dragged her in that castle. She was in a state of confusion and all...Just as I was, walking around for two days in a daze, in denial even, not knowing how I felt exactly or what had really happened.

 Then frustration and sorrow take over in turns before ending in sheer sadness again when you either decide to keep fighting or give up. I’m the kind who gives up so obviously my heroine must fight back. I can chose to put my characters through worse things than I’ve had to confront but I couldn’t make them as weak as I always turn out to be. They have to be strong. they have to succeed in the end. That reminds me of that film we watched the other day “Becoming Jane” and how the main character -Jane Austen, of course- replied to her heartbroken sister asking how her story would end. She had said that although her heroines would have to go through some difficulties they would in the end get everything they had dreamt of... 

I completely understand such a view. When nothing works in your own reality why the heck would you stab yourself in the back by giving your heros as much of a rotten life?... They do become your only way to get as close to fulfillment as you ever could in reality. They let you have several lives all rolled into your own. Happy endings are my prerogative and only the wicked shall be made to suffer when in real life they are bound to strive.

What always worries me somewhat is my tendency to idealise situations and people, not just for the best but also for the worse. In my case idealising doesn’t necessarily means turning everything into some fairytale expectation. I seem to expect far too much from the world and people in general. Because of this I often end up disappointed. That in turn makes me prone to depression. I worry that any little thing hurting my feelings, even the most trivial of coincidences, is enough to bring me down so much that I lose the will to do anything.

Idealising means, to me, that every little thing can easily be blown out of proportion, ‘dramatised’ to excess. I know I do it all the time. I waste my time trying to read between the lines and because I’ve always been a clumsy sign reader when it comes to read people of course I’m bound to get to the wrong conclusions. I’m an inner drama queen in the sense that I like nothing better than focus on one tiny detail and imagine the worst in my head. Last example in mind? Well, there’s my rant about Dave not inviting me to his birthday when really, he had. I’d imagined the worst simply because he never replied to one of my friendly posts on facebook. I had to take it personally, add two and two together and get five, of course. That kind of thinking pattern is such a natural part of my personality that it proves extremely hard to modify. At least I’m able to pin point my issues and perhaps one day I can find the keys to answers that will help me change for the better. For now all I seem to be able to do is identify what is wrong. I still have no clue as to how to make things right.

There is a sense of infinity within my mind, yet I can feel time slipping through my fingers.

substitute for perfection?

I never wondered what it is I like about art, what always seems to draw me in beyond the positive feeling I conclude it gives me. 

Why do people paint; why do we compose, play or listen to music; why do we write stories? It all comes down to the root of expression, what is conveyed through any form of art. Some paint to show a sublime moment in time (ie. Impressionism) or to capture a vague sense of perfected light, a body, a scene. Some paint to depict pain, misery, war and despair (think Picasso) as though they could do nothing but become witnesses of their times. Others write the most enchanting stories, the kind that will seem to set your mind free into the endless realm of imagination. Stories will be romance, science-fiction, even a thriller or a classic...But what is the aim? Beyond the prison of reality and a sense of helplessness -human limitation-stories offer an escape for the mind in the hope of finding a sense of peace or freedom, fulfillment. Some write to transcend the reality of having only one life and with the power of their imagination they can live so many and share them with others. All forms of art, it seems, derive primarily from a desire or need to escape what cannot physically be escaped, a desire or need to create a window that will reflect either the illusion of a voice or perfection. A voice, whose owner-the artist- is not able to use any other way for he finds himself prisoner of his individual condition; a perfection, for who has never dreamt of catching but a glimpse of what makes perfection or sublimity? In a perfect world made of perfect minds the need for art would be cancelled for once such a perfected world is achieved the perfection will be found within, therefore making all forms of art obsolete. Escapes and external substitutes would no longer be required.

Until then, though, there is art...

The I within

I have a fascination for human nature, I can’t help it. The more they hurt me the more I want to understand why. Sometimes I forget that I am a person myself. I lose myself in concepts of humanity and I eclipse my own sense of individuality as though I was watching the world through a glass wall. I get a few glimpses of understanding and need to immerse my self back into the world so as to keep a sense of perspective. It challenges my thoughts every day. But then, no matter how many answers there might be to all mysteries regarding mankind, isn’t it the point to begin with identifying every possible root that could lead to such answers?

To that end I suspect I tend to mix psychology as well as philosophical theories. I merge introspection, psychotherapy tools and a few other theories that I tend to embrace. Kant’s good will theory, for instance, Descartes’ reflection on reality, Plato’s vision on politics and society in particular, Nietsche’s vision of a transcended God. In all their differences they challenge one another in my own reasoning and that’s good. That prevents complacence. I am also aware that I know too little philosophy and that in turn is likely to be looked down as a flaw. But then I want to preserve a fresh outlook, as flawed as it might be, and would rather know a few than all at once without really taking anything in. 

Reading philosophy often overwhelms my mind. I don’t understand their point unless there is a clear, concrete example to illustrate it. In that sense I love Plato and his dialogues. I also find Descartes’s use of a candle much easier to grasp. Stories also allow me to get a point better. Everything else is just so much wording- like Marx, for instance. Even my own writings on here are challenging to me, they are a mixture of pure thoughts, mistaken pre-conceptions and insights going in so much detail that it makes it all so scattered sometimes... But the aim would be ideally to condense them into a story, so that it becomes accessible to all if they wish to.

On individuality

I was watching the X factor last night, the most pointless singing talent competition there could ever be. I couldn’t help watching, of course. It makes you cringe and laugh. But it also allows me to question myself more, so it can't just be a thoughtless indulgence on my part.

What annoyed me most was the way most of the candidates seem to think that fame and success would define them as persons. Take woman X, whose reason for coming on the show was ‘to give her kids a better life and achieve something in her life so they would look up to her with pride’. Such a statement is so devoid of any logic and so contradictory or blind in itself that I won’t even bother explaining why. If people can’t see how flawed her reasoning is then...They probably won’t be able to understand even if I took the time to explain in stages. It would thus make more sense to carry on with my point.

As I watched television it made me realise that it is all really about a need for individuality, a sense of actually existing, being better, more important than anyone else. Most people want to stand out from the masses by any means necessary and they adopt a misguided belief that fame, above all else, will achieve that aim. We all have a purpose in mind, the difference is that most people’s aim is flawed from the start. This might be explained by low IQ or lack of logical reasoning. This in fact I suspect is the reason why it is so easy to manipulate the masses. Give them a false sense of worth that you identify as being their craving and they will lose themselves at once. Nowadays this technique has been so greatly facilitated by the illusions projected through the lens of the media that it is almost despicable. You could lure almost about anyone with the promise of fame and/or money. People think they crave those two things when really all they want is to feel a sense of individuality.

 Therefore the likelihood is that as of at least today I can assume that most societies as they stand do not permit such a thing as individuality. And now I realise that it is the constant promise of granting individuality which has permitted our current form of political system - capitalism- to take over societies or control the masses. Of course, as I can see it now, this looks more like a carrot and stick game than a reality. And still a majority do not possess the logic or are unwilling to use it to challenge the biggest delusion of our times.

Through the haze

Today was too long a day.

Too much thinking, introspection, so much so that in the end I thought I had lost sight of everything. Absolutely everything I ever thought I knew for sure. But then, as night befell a new dawn prevailed. How cliche. This post means very little and everything to me at this very moment. Perhaps I was meant to lose sight for a moment so I could regain it.  These lines are pure indulgence, they represent the apparent nonsense that leads to sudden understanding, or so I like to think.

10.43am: There is something missing in my reasoning, a contradiction so blatant that I can’t even see it at present.

I am so afraid of others judging me that I feel sick to my stomach. This a major point right here: I am so intent on being accepted or loved by others that I keep trying to be what I’m not. I want to stop doing that. I want to be me, even if it means that I’m wrong or end up being labelled as crazy or evil. If I manage to be me, true to my own self and living according to ME then at least I would have truly existed. Anything else would be a sham, a pathetic broken copy of what I think others would accept.

...

16.14:  As I sit on the grass in the middle of the park I feel like I’m going insane. What a fancy way to waste your life away.

The more I dwell on things the less I seem to know and I only get more confused. How to make it stop? Is there such a miracle pill one could take to alleviate the weight of thinking too much about absolutely EVERYTHING- and yet so little, so nothing at the same time.

I need to take my mind off things for a while...

- “Doctor, I think I have a disease.

- “Really? Why don’t you describe the symptoms to me?

- “Well, there’s the thinking- it never seems to stop. And all those questions I ask myself.

- “I see. Well, it seems to be the case of too much brain abuse coupled with an overdose of self-discovery.”

- “Really, doctor? What can I do about it?

- “Oh, it’s very simple. I’ll just write you a prescription right away.

- “Oh, so there is a cure?

- “Oh yes, of course. Always proved very efficient even with the most severe cases of thorough reasoning.”

- “What is it then, doctor? 

- “I think a highly concentrated dose of mental inertia is required. A minimum of 10 hours a day spent in the company of the most common people.That’s what you need.”

- “Really, doctor? That’s all I need?

- “Oh yes. But make sure you spend time with the most frivolous kind. That is the key to regain some well-deserved mental torpor. You’ll be back to normal in no time- and no, you are no longer permitted to ask what is meant by normal.”

16.33:  And then I was distracted by a squirrel that stared at me for so long, making its way closer to me in such a way that I could not help a smile. Of course I had to smile. Today time is my ally. For once. Relativity. Perspective.

I am again being too impatient. If I allowed time to run its course all would be possible. And if I can take pleasure in watching the simplest things, if the most basic creatures can relax me then surely I should be able to find the same comfort among my peers- the silliest the better. I’m far too intense for my own good anyway.

16.44: Maybe I should do a “Muriel” and just find some idiot to amuse me in between two sessions of brainstorming. I mean, why not? There is nothing charming about a writer- if that’s even what I am. But I decided that I was and so it is that I will get there in the end.

I wish I could just sit here forever under that tree in a field of crows and squirrels hopping around me.

18.17: Unless one is mentally abnormal there is no way to escape nature for long. I still feel confused.

18.20: Today I reached the end of my tether, I think.

18.22: Then again, maybe not. Or did I? No. 

18.28: I can imagine and wonder, but I am not meant to come up with solutions. I seem to sense that very strongly within myself. Then again that could just be pure cowardice steming from a lack of confidence. There, we see it blatantly now: I am forever undecided. I can safely say that it must be one hell of a drawback courtesy of good old social conditioning and childhood traumas. Bless. there is one thing I’m fairly sure about, though, no matter how terrible it will sound to a majority: religion is meant to be surpassed- transcended.

20.21: Knowledge is knowledge is knowledge. Without purpose there is no logical reason to pursue it.

Ah!

More often than not we let our instincts or wants dictate our behaviour when we should be ruling with our brains. If everyone just followed their head then we could boast about being the superior species. Until then all we are, really, is a bunch of fancy monkeys with delusions of grandeur.

We find creatures using basic tools most facinating and sometimes it seems even extraordinary. With the brains we have all the technology we come up with through the ages is little more than equivalent to the chimpanzee learning to use a stick as a feeding tool. Therefore being able to create or invent fancy things can’t be the determining factor in proving that we, humans, are superior to any other species or that we’re any more special in any way. Our capacities are merely proportional to our biological constitution. I read it before somewhere and I now agree that what can make us special and superior to any other creature is our ability to find true meaning behind everything around us and the very things we create or do. Not just any meaning, though, but true meaning. Reasoning. Logics. Striving to shed away the mechanics of instincts and wants to act as logically and independently as humanly possible.

Reason is salvation

Ego is malleable, it is the conscious and unconscious social part of a person, feeding on experiences and everything around it. It is therefore prone to envy and can easily lead the way to corruption.For example, let’s say that ego is constantly immersed in an environment where more is better. Take a medium like the television where ego is constantly confronted with the sight of rich kids and fat cats who seem to have it so easy. Ego takes it all in, even when you least expect it. It becomes that creeping little voice at the back of the mind chanting “Why not me? Why can’t I have this too?...”

I’m far from immune to it and all I can do is chose to forcefully ignore it. 

Perhaps it is futile to rant about these things, perhaps it makes you sound childish. But does it make it irrelevant? Does it make it any less true? As I wrote before, there are topics we know about, that we’ve heard so many times that we become immune to their truthfulness. We dismiss the rant as pointless because we already assumed nothing can be done. If no one ever stood against what the majority has ended up finding “normal” or better than the alternative, then how would we ever evolve? You need the moaners, those who will make you sick to your stomach because they keep pointing at what is wrong and one day they might just trigger a need for you to find solutions. It’s almost akin to the butterfly effect, in a way. Some place out there rises the echo of a person’s rant which bears a certain degree of truth and one day that echo might just happen to travel far enough to find another person’s ear who will then do something about it and so on.

I do rant a lot. It is a mixture of frustration and a sense of being powerless. I’m aware that all I can do is point at the wrongs and very rarely come up with a solution that would work in a world like ours. Even using “world” irritates my senses for it is such a general term that it is easy to fall into the trap of generalisations and sickening vagueness. What I do know is that athough what I do is rant, my points aren’t necesssarily far removed from a reality that simply lacks solutions at present.

What I now come to realise is that there is a very fine line between idealism and childish naivety. Perhaps I’m but a mere child at heart and my opinions never really grew out of a fantasy world. Adults would look down on this, yet who can say, hand on heart, that adult views, far removed from all childhood remnants, are for the better? Why is it they couldn’t be in fact a factor in how bad things sometimes turn out in our daily lives?

We go through childhood for a reason and I can’t understand why we shouldn’t have to remember crutial moments that adults could nurture, such as an appreciation of the simplest things, or that sense of profund empathy children often display. While they also display the cruellest streaks in their development because it is something children must go through to understand their own limits, adults have a chance to keep what was good and reject the negative. I think that I’m just too pacifist a person and I forget that others simply don’t have my degree of sensitivity.

Void is chaos. Chaos is a blurred line between control and delusions. Delusions are a first step leading right back into that giant gap within the mind. Welcome to nothingness.

Stream of consciousness

The trouble with too much imagination is that it is bound to take you further than reality and therefore there is always a painful crashing down period.

I went to see the new batman yesterday. It’s hard to believe that heath ledger who played an amazing Jocker, is dead. That such talent killed itself, just like that, and all the world has left is one last breathtaking performance immortalised on screen.

There is something about feeling too much or being so sensitive, somehow, that every simple beauty or glimpse of what is hardly ever noticed becomes an epiphany of some sort, yet pain is as much emplified for no logical reason. As feelings keep burning lungs and spirit the mind grows weary and a mental torpor slowly eases its way through the body itself until the light is so faint that you stagger down the well you knew was there all along, but you can no longer avoid it. 

There is so much beauty through the pain of living that it is bound to kill a spirit in its bud when one dares to gaze at such spendor for too long. Written words are a painter’s brush forming infinite combinations of colors to mirror the hues of rain and sunlight. Alone they are little more than shadows of what they ought to become. Together suddenly the world is set alight and there are no limits. These days words seem to flow out of my hands and I watch the threads of thought slide along those lines without even knowing whether it is really me writing or something beyond my own self already. When one achieves greatness of any kind, does it mean the soul must have gone to other shores where only splendor and perfection prevail?

 Like a vessel the body translates or convey what little can be from those unphasomable shores and withers slowly under the strain, much like the one who one day built wings so he could reach the sun.

But what do I know? What am I? If there is but one thing I am aware of it is how tiny my body is amidst the ocean of life. But my mind? How far does it stretch? How far can one venture and be certain that it is not in fact an illusion of infinity? What if what I saw for infinity was only a trick of the light too bright and I kept flying in circles? Who would warn me? Who would even notice?

Sorrow tires me yet my mind feeds off it. The contradiction is again sublime. If I was made of words I would want to be a poem.

Why do I keep writing even though the writing itself is far from perfect? Because the process is the closest one can get to their own sense of perfect, which is always subjective in its very nature. Yes, of course the notion of perfection is subjective... The process of creating new lives, no matter how fictional, awakens a new lease of hope and opens the mind’s window to let your inner eye wander as free as can ever be. And so it is that with every page of any story I feel more of a sense of being alive than reality could ever grant me. But then there are the eyes to see what is real before you and life as it is is rarely more than one long cliche after the next. 

That’s why I used to love watching movies or read fantasy stories. They would open my inner window, you see. Throughout my early years this was enough for me to revel in my own little worlds but then as I grew older I was forced to stare reality in the face and that tiny window was no longer enough. Hanging onto it as I grow old now would blur the fine line between reason and folly, I suppose. As long as I find the strength to question myself I cannot be so bad. The day I take my own word for anything I will know that reason is morphing into something much darker, a shade closer to nothingness, perhaps.

A flawed power system?

Some people are allowed to get richer but the poor sod working his ass off to be able to afford life remains stuck on the same level of poverty- with a few pennies thrown at him here and there to keep him quiet. That’s a good way to ensure the rich stay rich or get even richer while the rest either slave away their skills or stay as poor as society intended them to be. Fact.

 Do I blame people who live off benefits? Nope. I actually understand how people could be so sick of slaving away for barely more money than the state would grant them anyway. Every payslip is taxed and the state gets billions out of them, yet it is always in deficit. Wars, which the states themselves decided to trigger in the first place, didn’t help either. 

 Where does all the money go? Official budgets tell you the bulk, or where it’s supposed to be going. Let’s say I believe that for lack of contrary evidence. What my mind cannot grasp is why politicians need to be paid so much when, according to human nature so easily darkened by temptation and greed- corruption- they should be the ones avoiding excess at all costs.

 By wanting to become a politician or a leader of the people you should be able to embrace such a requirment: living with just enough to be comfortable based on a medium of your own society. As such, someone like Brown should be living in some flat with just enough rooms to catter for his family. No cars, only public transports. I’d understand the need for tighter security around him, maybe. A leader is useless in all his preaching unless he walks the walk. I’d be tempted to say he should be getting about the same as people on benefits but then we might well end up with a depressed leader so let’s say he’d have enough money for proper food and a few treats a week - as in a meal out or a few pub rounds- and if he needed to go on holiday or anything more of a luxury then he would have to save up, my dear. 

Not a lot of people would be tempted to get to power anymore and that way those who still want to are actually the ones we need- the right people for the job instead of greedy opportunists who don’t give a damn about people, only their fattening wallets.

Anyway, this is what I think should be but probably never will be.

Harsh facts

Once upon a time white people thought that the whole world belong to them and was waiting for them to conquer it. Everything else, every other culture was beneath them and so it was that people with different skin colours were turned into slaves or regarded more as obscene creatures than human beings. It was the awakening age, minutes away from our time today, before technology gave us a false sense of security and power over nature. 

You would be forgiven for thinking that our time, the age of apotheosis as I like to think it, has come to learn from mistakes of the past and that the white man regards his fellow black, indian or chinese companion as equal. That he is trying, at least. Through the lens of the media and society as a whole, it would seem that things have changed for the better or working toward a new world based on acceptance. It would be forgetting the white man in power. The puppet master. He wants us to believe a lot of things and everything he lets you see is always what he wishes you to see- not what you ought to see. When something is too good to be true it usually is and the same goes with the notion of truth. If something is too obvious or taken for granted then one must stop and think carefully, try and see beyond the veil of words and pretence.

Unless this is done as we live through our time we will remain blind. I don’t understand why or how we got to this, all I know is that far from reaching acceptance, we are pushing everybody against one another. A subtle, pernicious poison runs through the many veins of societies and I have doubts whether it can be stopped now. This is why our time is the apotheosis age, where all the loose ends finally come together.

Anyway, I went for a walk through the park on the way back and soaked up some of the sun. A vain attempt at cheering myself up. I felt the weight of solitude on me as though the tabby skies had suddenly collapsed and I waited for them to swallow me whole. But they wouldn’t.

 

Interlude

It’s 6.53am on a misty sunday morning. The cat sits on the window ledge and watches the world go by. 

I went to the library yesterday and got an old book on ‘wonders of this world’. All I can ever do is look at pretty pictures, lose my gaze into immortilised glimpses of natural beauty. I see high mountains lost in a hazy mist, drifts of blue ice and snow whiter than any snow I’ve ever seen; streaks of the greenest grass and oceans of golden sand... The most striking of waterfalls that seem to break free from canyons in majestic curtains of bubbling water crashing down the most mesmerising of valleys... 

And all this I see through the pages of an old book and I will probably never get a chance to witness such beauty myself. Yet as I take a stroll in the park nearby I find small patches of what I choose to see as wilderness and as I forget the spoils around to focus on one tiny glimpse of beauty I am again overwhelmed. Peering through the dense foliage of a weeping willow by the mossy lake I find myself in the midst of a distant land and further down that lake turned river lie the neverending green valleys and their untamed waterfalls. I glance over my shoulder and I am back to reality at once. 

Reality and its tall, grey buildings, the screeching of cars, the unseen smokes and broken skies. The patches of grass lose their sheen and return to their puny-looking selves, dry and stumped on far too many times. The pebbly paths no longer lead to wilderness unspoilt but back to greyer walls and colder grounds made of concrete and asphalt. My eyes have grown weary and my mind is tired. I can no longer pretend to see what is not really there yet I have so little strength to follow what the eye within only can see.

On religion and a theorem of thoughts

I cannot rely on the idea of a God for it would always be stained by conditioned beliefs. Even if there really was a God then we would know nothing about it or what it truly entails. The concept is so far removed from our reach that it is pointless to try and comprehend something so hypothetically infinite and grand when we can’t even comprehend our own selves.

Proportions, probabilities and the laws of physics, the three Ps that made the world. If one could get to the roots of all three and from the source work their way up to the results then many answers would be unveiled. But to get to the source, ah! Many scientists got close enough, yet not quite. They were also blinded, just like the rest of the world, by seductive answers or discoveries, mistaking science, which is a tool to knowledge, for knowledge itself. They also care very little about the fact that what can be done shouldn’t necessarily be done. But what do I know? Demanding ethics is probably too much to ask and always has been. However, using the word has always seemed so pretty and fluffy for a majority. Let’s face it, notions and values are devoid of deep understanding and what they are to most of us are mere blanket words, empty shells of a word that sounds like something right yet we just don’t know why they sound so pretty to the ear or the eye. That in itself is enough to make them what they are to us today: empty words filled with ideals.

Note that I could never deny the existence of something higher; I mean, why not? It’s just nothing to do with the way we’ve pictured it so far. More importantly, I’m not about to try and find out as it would go completely against my theory that unless I can truly comprehend my self in outward circles (starting from my own self, perception, reality, substance...working my way from that base and moving up to the next level which would probably be my immediate surroundings; “thy neighbour” and so on) until I eventually get to the top through logical reasoning and true understanding, enlightenment. 

Of course, the likelihood of ever getting to that all-understanding awareness is tiny if not impossible in a lifetime but then to me it only means that we just aren’t meant to dwell on bigger questions until we can find ways to work our way up. Perhaps a chain of philosophies through times is the key so that the answer can eventually be found along the spectrum of time. Why bother with my theory? Because to me it seems the only way to minimise error and avoid ending up with even more supositions. Just like algebra or quantitative methods problems, if you start off from a flawed base then the proportion of error only keeps growing as you carry on trying to resolve the problem- perhaps I should say the margin for error? It is a fundamental mathematical reality.

When anger meets the mind

I want to belong to no country, I wish to have no nationality or homeland. The world is my oyster and with it comes a sense that there are no borders, no frontier or boundary that could ever be imposed on me and my mind.

God is money, didn’t you know? If there really was one out there he was buried a long time ago. You can find god in every purse, every transaction you make, in every note or coin you play with in your hands. That’s such a conveniant tailored-made deity, really. No need to think too much about it, everything is written on the label, or should I say value? Thanks to the money god we can even put a price on abstract notions and human beings can also be purchased in more ways than one. Of course, I am bound to take the view of a pauper, I must necessarily be biased on the subject. I can see the in-betweeners, those who get on with it all, the middle class family always adapting to the current. There’s no blame to be placed on them but I could not feel sorry for them for even when they stop to think they rarely let thoughts or conscience dictate their actions. Denial or charity is their outlet. 

Of course I am generalising. I’m only human and I can’t find the strength to go deeper than appearances on that matter, not yet anyway. There is a forgotten voice in limbo, lingering on throughout the ages which the world is forced to ignore if it is to carry on the way it does now. That voice is the sacrifice believed to be necessary. That voice comprises everything you can’t adknowledge within yourself when your mind realises how wrong things are.

We’re all so isolated in our own little life that it often takes a disaster to wake us up from that dull, self-centered torpor. Even disasters nowadays aren’t strong enough to get through most people who have been utterly desensitized. You only realise how much society has been mechanised and rendered faceless in a way, when even small issues force you to take action that requires interaction with society. Everything is now a business of some sort, from the so-called religious establishments to the schools and the state. Everything must bring profit and be viable or it will be thrown away. Even charities are a business: to be worthy of their time and pity you must meet a certain degree of helplessness or get lost.

We don’t live to enjoy life. We live under the rule of money whereby ‘hapiness’ and enjoyment are dependent on how much you have in the bank, regardless of what you are as a person. Whether you’re a monster or a saint it is the amount of money you have that defines you. Thus even individuals have been rendered faceless. 

Before the memories comes the rain

If there wasn’t even the slightest hint of pleasure in any of our actions then we wouldn’t bother in the first place. There can be pleasure in expectations of outcomes through actions, too. Thus we often force ourselves to do things we wouldn’t normally want to do simply because there is something appealing at the end of it. What it really comes down to is selfishness and its spectrum. What is called survival instinct in the animal kingdom has morphed into a destructive machine in man’s world. If I can assume so easily about others’motives and wonder endlessly about the whys of a world then I can easily imagine how anynone else could have ideas of grandeur in their head instead, justifying every action as legitimate or necessary.

It’s all a foul pile of garbage. Excuses, excuses. Men are the masters of dellusions. If there’s anything they have finally tamed it is the wondrous realm of lies and make-believe.

Pretence. Faux-semblants. Projection. 

Here are our talents. We don’t see the world- or reality, for that matter- as it is; we see it as we please. We don’t choose knowingly - or freely- we do so out of lust or envy or sloth.

Words are my only solace. The rest is out of reach. Reality is a sham, akin to a set on which all the pretty things one day were gathered. Everything around us- the buildings, the streets, the nice, glowing lamp posts- is made of cardboard the wind can blow to the ground in one swift stroke. It is cartboard we decided to see as gold. And that is why reality is a sham, it is nothing more, nothing less, than what we make it to be.

Anyway... We’re so poor and always on the verge of perdition that I’ve come to kind of like that way of life- almost. There’s a certain unfathomable charm to it and it does make me smile when I think of our life so far. In all my mortal flaws my spirit remains unspoilt. Take Paris, for example, or what I remember of it now. We lived in that flat in some council estate and it sucked. Not the appartment in itself but ever since our first cat had caught flees we’d had to remove all the carpet and I ended up with a bedroom whose floor was the concrete itself. Mum’s always been a cleaning freak and we weren’t to blame for the infestation of flees. We had a family for neighbours who were SO filthy that the corridor of the whole building floor stunk. Not only did they not wash but the children wore rags and nits as hairclips. Oh, and the parents were rude and brash while the kids were simply too young to have turned half as bad. They had two dogs the man of the house used to beat senseless. You’d hear the poor skeletal beasts roar in pain, high-pitched moans from big German Shepherds full of flees and years of neglect. Sometimes I’d go out to play in the square and I’d see him walk his dog- the other one had just magically disapeared one day, never to be seen again- and I’d see the meaning of despair in the glaze of its eyes. 

No, it was rather a glimpse of what unhappiness truly looked like, not just in a dog but in general. That day it felt to me like the epitome of pain and unhappiness in its most basic, intrinsic form. I then came to realise for myself that if a person was capable to inflict such pain to an animal there is no telling what that person could do to another human being. That, if anything, showed me the true extend of being human. Now, of course, it will take at least a life time to truly understand and define that extend for it is one thing to realise something or get a glimpse of a reality or notion, quite something else to truly understand its significance, the ramification beyond superficial knowledge where one only comments or utter empty statements- no matter how true they really are in the end- instead of being able to get to the latter through a proper reasoning.

Make-believe and reality as we see fit

I’ve written it before, I shall write it once more: money is the poison to men’s heart, which in turn will wither to a dead pulp. It will be the cause of destruction all around and for what? For a fistful of dollars. The so-called God, the one a lot of people believe in, is given false sweet names and a nicely tailored fairytale when it is but a mere reflection of their greed. God as we ‘know’ it is an ever adaptable, ever-changing excuse to worship what sounds shameful to the ear: bling-bling, money, shiny pretty things. We don’t have a God as the men of religion proclaim, it’s all a sham. What you believe in is a very intricate propaganda machine meant to control people. If there was a God somewhere, we wouldn’t have the first idea what or who it is. We simply could not comprehend even a glimpse of such a higher subject. The rest is part of a man-made fabrication. Delusions....

I was thinking about the French Revolution the other day. It was such a strong statement, a step towards the ideal of equality. “Liberte, Fraternite, egality.”

Chopping the aristocracy’s head off was a sublime symbol of revolt among the people but the rest that ensued soon became a farce. Perhaps it was planned as a farce from the start. If you think about it...Are we really free today? It sure feels like we have more freedom than we had a century ago...Or have we? I’m tempted to think that only the settings and ways of exploiting people have changed. Why? 

The ideals of the French Revolution were grand, the direction taken flawed from the start. The idealist goal was to give power to the people but it was done so carelessly and without enough thorough reasoning that in the end people chopped the royalty’s head off only to give power back to the Bourgeoisie on a silver plate. The people never got that power, they only think they did, but that again was an illusion. The only difference between aristocracy and the Bourgeoisie is that the former’s glory and power were given from birth while the latter’s stem from the new plague: money. So the surroundings, the settings have, indeed, changed, but not the problems themselves. They only morphed from one issue to another variant of it. We merely replaced crownies with more corrupted people, only the new ones had less money perhaps to start with. We were taken for a ride by the ‘bourgeoisie’. 

We never change the core of human problems, we keep interchanging players and unless the corrupt ones can be weeded out there will never be a better society, something that actually stands a chance to be fairer than ever before. 

I have to meet Tom for some political meeting- a socialist one. I’m open to ideas but I’m lazy. And I’m far too wary of politics feel even remotely excited. Tom, on the other hand, is overtly dedicated and holds strong views. He’s a doer. I’m more of a thinker who thinks too much and over-analyses the most trivial things. Where I could spend eternity pondering, he would be doing something. Neither quality is self-sufficient or intrinsically good in itself. It would be the merging of both into one person that would allow the latter to achieve better results. A good balance of structured thinking combined with the energy and strive of morphing thoughts into concrete actions. The ultimate well-rounded individual with the key to greatness for a society. Of course there are such people in the world, I have no doubt about that. What often lacks is something that could almost be compared to the idea of soul to a person: a dash of good will or profound integrity. Now if one was to present all three qualities -logics, strive and good will- we would have on our hands the true politician. Life is such that the very first quality to wither in its bud is integrity and we’re left with a strive turning into ambition and logics, well, comes and goes like the wind. Knowing this, how could I not be disappointed from the start?

I love early mornings, especially at dawn, when the fine line between darkness and renewed light emerges beyond the ocean of bricks and iron. There’s simply such a wealth of colours and subtle gradations that it seems to swell and enflame my heart at once. But it never lasts long and before you know it, at the mere blink of an eye, daylight suddenly takes over.

Now aged 25, I must say that the odds are rather stacked against me. I’ve grown into my own person- whatever that means, really- with such fierce independence and rejection of social expectations that I don’t see how I could ever change. The outlook I have on life might not be that different from other people, even though it is tempting to assume it is, but it has a stronger effect on me, on the way I feel or react to the things I see or think that I can see. 

Whereas the mind fights relentlessly toward the glimmer of light and knowledge the person slowly dies away, torn between the realms of raison and folly. Just as a body will decay, so will what I can only define as the soul for lack of better words to refer to that feeling part of the person. Perhaps, as you grow older, so does that part as though it were slowly pulled away from the body, dispersed in an unfathomable Netherworld. How funny to think that what really makes a person is in fact far removed from reality. If one was to truly define a living thing in particular, according to the form it remains as for the longest period of time, then we would have to talk in terms of nothingness and memories where the latter represents the highest state of existence. Taking the notion of time as a major factor in the attempt to define what existence is or represents, what the true substance of a person is in time, then it is nothing or a mere memory. Thus in the great temporal spectrum people are more often than not non-existent for they spend more time as nothing or mere memories than they do alive and concrete.

Time is a factor in our notion of reality. Reality is an abstract notion prone to the whims of ever-passing time. We, as people, don’t give or shape reality, time does. Only such an infinite spectrum can give the notion of reality consistancy by being the active element, the steady running line from point A (as far back as possible) to point B (as far as that line can run). On the other hand people are merely passive vectors scattered along that line and therefore they can only have glimpses of such reality which they do not create by existing for it would keep changing as there’re people.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, honestly. It seems to make sense in my head and yet the proper words fail me. You can understand a lot of things by instinct but only the process of learning can morphe intrinsec understanding or knowledge into concrete reasoning using the proper words. 

Thoughts on a cold Thursday morning and the world

Every so often you wonder how certain people get to certain positions or jobs . You wonder how they manage to get where only the few selected best are meant to be when they obviously have nothing much to offer. Every now and then you realise that a member of their family knew someone who knew someone... Even better: they have parents who are already recognised for whatever it is they do. Others get to the top so quickly it can be quite dizzying. Then you realise that many have sold their integrity as one would their worthless possessions in a market. And then you wonder how come so many people with so little skills or suitability to the job ever got to where they are. 

Actors are a good example on how pointless inbred “talent” is imposed as though it was a God given right. Hence you can see how many of already famous artists’offsprings suddenly pop out in the limelight no matter how talentless those children prove to be. That’s life, I suppose. However, faced with the facts one can only come to realise how much harder the struggle for a better life already shapes itself from the start: the starting line is already tipped in favour of a category of people and the rest must fight so much harder no matter how naturally more deserving they might actually be.

It can be a good thing, in a way, for it pushes you to better yourself all the time and you are less likely to take anything for granted. But that’s only if you’re able to learn from past experiences otherwise bitterness and envy can take over your better side. Or you can let yourself be corrupted and pretty much lose your own self just like the rest.

I can’t help but think in matters of fairness. There is a flag in my head flashing painfully every time something unfair occurs. It is far too idealistic and indeed probably naive to think that our world could ever be based on something more than relative fairness whose degree relies on luck and social position. Universality and equality might share differing meanings but they both share the same burden: inadequacy in terms of numbers. The fact that people can think for themselves AND feel means that notions such as universality, equality and peace can only remain distant ideals. There will always be at least one person too selfish to keep their wants in check and that will always be enough to spread to others like a gangrene. Thus people are as much prisoners to the laws of probabilities than any other object or number.