[767] Lines In The Sand

Convergence! Too many things all tying to a theme equals, gotta write. You may or may not be familiar with Chris Gethard. I'm not, but for my constant immersion in media. I clicked a random episode of his show I've never watched. Then I clicked somewhere in the middle of the episode. Then I watched as a caller from Bloomington, Indiana did his betting game on air. That's what brought me here. Of all the gin joints in all the world, people literally call into that show from all over the world, I found the one serving Bloomington gin, on a whim, while I'm arguably in the middle of 3 entirely different things to watch.

Next thing. I had a dream that was straight out of Interstellar. I was doing something innocuous, like brushing my teeth, and at the same time, doors were opening on a subway, a bird was flapping it's wings, and some other picture I can't remember was moving in sync with my movements. This, I take it, is because I started reading a book called “Now” about how science is trying to understand what that means. We have particles that can flow backwards in time, we all agree on the lengths of different things no matter our individuated frames of reference, and we all pretend to have a grasp on our butterfly-effect waves we send into the world. It was almost like a mini-acid trip dream that felt oddly reassuring that I was part of the machinery.

The third thing is a meme picture a friend I haven't really seen or talked to in a while posted about getting better at dealing with stress. It postulated either she was getting better, or just not giving a shit anymore. She's posted another one about one day having the money to actually live like the person she really is. Massive red flags go off in my head any time I relate too closely to what I consider “throwaway” sentiments and cliches about life. I promise, if you dig through blogs I wrote towards the end of high school and start of college, I say constantly how often I want nothing to do with the regular struggling Joe narrative and pull-cord sentiments of the old and lazy.

The fourth thing is just me recently musing on a kind of ethical style. As of late, I'm realizing my ethics, so to speak, have morphed a bit. Anymore, I wait to consider something as ethical or not in the moment. I have some loose standing presuppositions, like don't murder perhaps, but otherwise, I'm kind of waiting to see what I see or feel what I feel before I allow something I'm doing to register one way or another. It's not amoral, but it's not specifically speaking to a moral either. Sometimes I feel justified in driving like a dick. Sometimes I want to throw the gum wrapper on the floor. Sometimes I want to be as polite as can be while you unload your pointless and boring life story. I didn't know what I was going to pick until it was happening.

The more I find myself under the “rules” of normal society, the more I find myself wanting to play with boundaries in other ways. I know, barring everything, what kind of person I am and what I need to be doing in order to not lose my shit. It is an impulse I not only refuse to try to kill, but one I revel in as a kind of personality drug. It's the levels of obscenity or pretentious air. It's the complete blunt disinterest in things you purport to care about or find funny. It's a harsh boundary, but it's my boundary. But this raises old questions in a new paradigms.

What's got me here? Why is there little to no emotional investment in the grand standing narrative example I might be setting for the world? It's old news me calling myself an anti-particle, villain, or self-indulgent loon. Have I truly been shaken hard enough that I can't conceive of the “proper” thing anymore? Is my restraint more a hamstrung choke than wise and measured practice? Can I refrain from floating too far away from anything making sense?

I've had several opportunities over the last few days to lay into people who've objectively mislead me or had me on the receiving end for the consequences of their unforeseen circumstances or disorganization. I've been letting it ride. When I thought my job was going to get a leg up on me in monopolizing my thoughts, I picked a “morally equivalent stress relieving” course of action that seems fair enough and has me continue to get the job done. I think that just gave me the insight. When you start to scoop up points of corruption into your perspective, you're forced to make little negotiations. Why not eat more sugar when everyone's got so much candy and cookies and donuts they bring to the office, and why, you didn't have breakfast! That last call was super annoying and technically cut into your break. Better sit in the parking lot for 20 minutes and talk or smoke it out.

Perhaps what I conceived of as my morally backed insistence to work outside the confines of normalcy is decaying after being subjected to the regular world. Recall, I have a job paying me more than I've ever made, just got a new car, have spent kind-of wildly on some things for the future and in eating out so much, though not so much lately, and this is the place I've always conceived of as “losing.” That car is debt and a substitute for the rent I was trying to escape. Those indulgences I'm always and forever going to be doing alone, and my job, for as noble as it exists in the minds of those around me and for the odd amount of power it grants, has nothing to do with where I saw myself at this point in my life. I don't have it “bad,” but I don't have it “me.”

So if you're not you, what's the moral? I'm the walking embodiment of unrelenting revolt and provocation who plays dress up and juggles crazy stupid people's lies. Play along? Remain patient? Stay in the moment until the next check comes? Go overboard in giving handouts to the dumb and needy that you know in advance they're psychologically incapable of figuring out or sticking with? That's the rub too. I've been reading more about people. The dirty facts about how we treat ourselves do much work in tempering my will to chase “helpful” impulses I might have to pretend inform people. It doesn't mean you can't try, but it does mean if I don't feel a genuine impulse to try, I'm not going to. I never believe the show I put on for myself.

[457] How Now Brown Cow

The moment is now.

With full acceptance and pride, let’s introduce another sophomoric rant. As I honestly can’t tell you the difference between reading what hippies say and what academics postulate, as far as “profound consequences as they pertain to your life,” I want to carry on with the moment in tow. The idea seems so very loud; that you are arrested by the show or artifice of the moment. You’re a collection of moments. Struck by a movie or song. Maybe you’re reliving or reviling an awkward interaction from youth. One way or another, you’re caught.

There is no magic like what grabs your attention. Let’s take from my current moment. A sleepy girlfriend and guest who said they were about to leave, only to be wrapped up in the music and theatricality of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Something that can do that isn’t presented to be “rated.” It’s a particular awareness. It’s a song and dance that precludes an actual song or dance. Can you appreciate a work of art like this under a constant anxiety about the future? Or can it only surprise you in its capacity for arresting your attention?

::A long pause happened before I started again:: The measure of progress appears in the consequences of the moment. Bill Clinton kept a piece of the moon on his desk so when people were arguing he could say “Fellas, that piece of rock has been here for billions of years before us and will be here for plenty after we’re gone, we should be able to work out our differences.” Not a direct quote. Introducing perspective as a measurement of the moment as much as anything else. “I feel this” a step removed from an equally contrived number assigned to make sense of it all.

Measurement. “I estimate that.” “As far as I can tell.” “Something something complicated quantum mechanics when we’re looking at it.”

We’re measurements. We’re a certain weight and height. We’re approximations of amalgamated thought and intention. That is, I am what my parents taught me and what I thought I needed to become in order to get what I wanted. My friend left and my girl fell asleep. The moment is enduringly compelling and at once fleeting.

I think sometimes my whole fight in life is to bring people into the moment. Like, I don’t want to “bring people to local politics.” I want you to feel, right now, that you can do something that makes your vote or intention resonate as worthwhile. Bureaucracy doesn’t speak to that. Flat nonsense “official web pages” don't empower by design. Power has no interest in helping you form how it’s exercised.

The whole exercise of argument and interaction is a statement of the moment. Watch debates, especially the ones hosted by Oxford. So “persuasive” the rhetoric. So “convincing” the style. The moment isn’t even concerned with “truth” at that point. Dangerous, or fun? Is it a game of semantics and style, or pursuant to how genuine reality operates?

It seems we’re habitually removed from statements and exercises that would remind us of our place in the cosmos and amongst ourselves. Then we get to revel in the ideas of what’s “taboo.” We get to project ourselves onto other people and dreamlike scenarios that suggest “better aspirations.” We’re not reinforcing the language of enslavement or subjugation. We’re “well-intentioned individuals” who decide left or right. We’re not a continuum or up for debate. We reinforce a protective “self.”

There’s this sentence that bugs the shit out of me. “Live your truth.” It at once is the best advice you could ever espouse, and yet completely excuses and dismisses the reasons and history leading up to that truth. I can only write, for example. I can’t know if you have or force you to read my previous writing to give you context. I can’t even claim confidently it would be worth it. I write in the moment. I look for the feeling and arguments as they’re to be had when the information hit you as the information is always fleeting. You don’t need 400 previous blogs to get in the moment. I don’t need the selling of your presumed understanding to grasp whether you’re respecting the moment.

It seems to be the reductio ad absurdum of all “thoughtful,” “well-intentioned,” “philosophical,” “genius,” “interesting,” “machine-like” people to swallow you up into the consequences of their reasoning. You’re drowned in the consequences as they see them. You’re opinion on the value of living on Mars is mute. You’re not the asshole with the apparatus to put us there. You have a thousand and one “that’s life” sentiments about the nature of humanity? Here’s my engine for morphing your lazy childlike conceptions. At the end of the day, you’re living or carrying out the fall-out from someone who’s taken the time to learn more about the many variables underlying your life.

I think people try to push back with claims like, “it’s not perfect!” As if it needs to be. What did the eleven(?) people who met the night before Lehman Brothers collapsed have to account for when it came to the millions of opinions about “gangster banksters?” Absolutely nothing. They’re moment reduced you to a pithy hapless statistic. And they bet on you reducing yourselves to the same stature. They won and habitually win.

The idea that “the world is generally good” is something that needs to be fought. Practically. I don’t care if we’re an extension of the universe and good can’t exist without evil or whatever the fuck some hippie wants to claim about balance or waves. I think there’s a giant presumption “things will work themselves out.” It’s bullshit. Things will default to what’s easiest and what will probably fuck you. My evidence? Entropy. Let it play out in a naive and insecure human mind and follow the dominoes.

How can I resurrect “responsibility?” I can only thrust it into the moment. It’s only real “now.” As I type, as I think, and as I decide. The mechanistic view wants to pigeonhole my being as the “natural consequence” of all that came before. I decry “fuck you!” and type or don’t. Share or not. Weigh the potential of bolstering words of others’ encouragement against disappearing behind damning self-assessments of the somehow opaque yet redundant diatribes.

I don’t know how to cope with the idea that everyone is me. What if had 87 blogs to read every day from my friends working through the bullshit on their minds? What if I got a hundred comments under a reddit post of other people who said “I think like this every night!” and we’ve fueled a new engine of thought? What happens when I’m a million miles away from the best compliments I’ve ever received because we all reduce/elevate ourselves into saying what we think needs to be said as ignorantly and un-eloquently as possible?

It’s easy enough to die for nothing. I didn’t choose to be born, so why should it follow that my life should mean anything? It’s on me to recognize and respect the opportunity. It’s up to me to help provide the language for those as stuck as I am. Waiting it out. Pretending solipsistic laziness is isolated genius. Talk, write, and share! Pretend your life ends tomorrow. Not with the relief of your own death. Pretend your friends are gone. Pretend your parents are gone. Pretend parts of your body are amputated and the next step is the complete reimagining of your life as a person who eats with their toes. Life is rushing by. I can read this blog on my last day and it can find you on yours. Who’s here with me?