The dark form of the world is hollowed out by each of our beliefs and it is dissonance between such worlds which brings conflict. Multiple worlds. Perhaps only those who lack imagination can perceive without distortion.

I believe I typed this into Eira approximately a year ago. It was inspired by a paragraph from a novel by Cormac McCarthy. His point was that how we perceive the world - our personal beliefs - carve out the substance of existence just as wind or rain.

Reading my quote again, it seems obvious. After all, I was scolded today for stating the obvious. I say fuck criticizing myself, however, because it bludgeons down my will to write. That takes my mind quickly back to so many conversations with Christian about negativity and Energy Vampires and how our lives were better with out either. But that is another story (most likely already told elsewhere).

The idea of the quote does seem obvious. Of course dissonance between humans results from differing sets of beliefs. The views we hold do carve out our perception of reality. This perception directly leads to our expectations of how events should unfold. The dissonance results from these expectations not being met. All this leads to the obvious conclusion that humans with similar belief sets will basically get along better than those with differently shaped carvings.

I disagree with what I said about imagination, however. I believe it takes a large dollop of imagination and creativity, but most of all, sheer intellect, to carve a belief system out of the substance of reality which allows one to accept other belief systems on the surface and in their individual volumes. I’m thinking of a meta-carving. A space which accommodates different carvings and perhaps modifies itself in the process. A learning space. If the stuff of reality is three dimensional, then my meta-space is four dimensional.

Those who lack imagination will, like Roland, be single minded, have a static space carved from reality, frozen long before. Advantages to this mentality abound, and the immediately obvious disadvantage (at least to other humans) is that such a carving is obstinate to an extreme. Plodding onwards, this hollow will swallow none but perfect matches. Others are rudely thrust aside.

I could easily be drawn into thoughts of the brief exchange I had today with Miss Sunshine about proselytizing and continue. It is a natural continuation…

My parents have a tendency to place light switches either exposed and just out of reach, or hidden strangely behind furniture or appliances. My first thought is that it is a result of my father’s insistence that work, no matter how unfulfilling and strenuous, should be the priority of everyone’s life. So, that old fashioned switch, which must be rotated instead of flipped, is placed just out of reach of the edge of the bed. I must, therefore, work to get at it. His unconscious provides these little frustrations for all humans around him. My mother has absorbed the habit over the years of their marriage.

Complete convenience is the contrasting viewpoint. I wasn’t brought up a fucking Catholic, so I don’t have even a residual bias for such bi-chromaticism.

Hall

There is a discussion at the moment on Progressive Ears concerning the lack of an identity for years after 2000.

(Progressive Ears)

I see where the topic eructer is coming from, as, looking back on fashion and music, there is always a few prominent trends which span the decade. I posit that there were always multitudes mulling in the background, creating a tapestry on which the big-wigs could lie. Every trend has roots in so many flowerbeds that its petals are hybridized to the point of being no species at all.

Yet, in retrospect, they are named something specific.

Now it seems as if there’s this big, huge, metastasizing mass of STUFF, and one stakes out one’s territory therein, depending on taste or preference.

Yes, but I have always staked out my territory in any particular time frame in my life. Humans such as Tony, Christopher and I were out in our teenage years specifically for this reason. Our own paths were never chosen out of love or hate for the current (ok, perhaps a bit, at times, because of the latter), but by what appealed to the static electricity flashing between our semi-disassociated hemispheres.

It has always been as the quote above describes. Retrospect just shows otherwise, lying to our present senses at it fleshes out skeletal memories.

Invigoration.

I need a splash in the face with the frigid water of existence. Probably existentialism, as well. I am surprised that I grew up to be anything interesting psychologically at all. The drab, washed out setting all around me attests to only stagnation and death. From where did I pull my inspiration? Possibly from pain. Obsession?

Newly found old friends have inspired the gut instinct of creation to an extent once again, but it is not going to be nearly enough to get me off of my lugubrious buttocks. Of course, Sweet Entropy sucks out my soul once again in a mere ten days.

But how to keep up until then without it being a toil?

No, Maggie, making lists don’t help.

I turn, once again, to bygone days.

I can’t forget that by ideal standards, we’re all of us silly-looking, witless geese.

My idealism is a thing my parents certainly cannot relate to. Peering at it from outside, from the, as it were, listless sands of West Texas, it seems an unlikely oasis. I must be a stream of pure water amid the muddy regularity of their life. I do not mean to seem pretentious in that statement. I just want the imagery of contrast to be readily apparent.

By platonic standards, our clunky reality certainly has shortcomings. I do posit, however, that the clunkiness, when not sanded down to soundless and frictionless clockwork, is charming. It is also the nectar of fecundity. A platonic solid cuts out its place in space by sharp edges. As less than ideal worm-fodder, we less-than-perfect must struggle against routine which will smooth those edges completely away. It is a curve which peaks somewhere between beautific perfection and mechanized perfection. First, beating at beauty with an angry, iron rod to shout against its implausibility is fuel for the upwards climb. The calculation and craziness combined. Etched upon the peak of the curve, shrouded in clouds, looking outwards from the two-dimensional page is where we want to be. But submitting in entirety to routine will swallow us whole. Tempering routine with jagged bursts of chaos is the meta-routine, and the only solution which does not let us drop downwards into the doldrums of mediocrity.

Lina and I have reconnected after nearly six years of silence and oblivion. The past two days have been filled with conversation. Perhaps it is now as it was when we first met on the internet. ICQ volleys our messages back in forth. I tend to put more effort than she does into it, I must admit.

She is working on her thesis. The subject is the changes in local culture in her home town of Fulnek from 1989 until now. Not a bad topic. It focuses the glass on a small community developing in a new regime. I’ll read it when she finishes if she is not too shy to share.

After the unfortunate misunderstanding and demise of our relationship during the last days of summer, 2006, I thought of her recurringly. Of course, as time passed, the frequency grew lower, but in a very slowly decreasing modulation. There were dreams, even. I recall once stopping in front of her living quarters on the way back from work. I walked from the bus stop that day, not wanting to wait for the next bus to Stará Osada. I even remember that I was listening to Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê. The time before was when I returned her magazines she had mailed me. I thought our relationship over. And I’d only met her in person once! (And now she doesn’t even recall that meeting!)

Perhaps I’ll chronicle our newly kindled friendship. It is eking along so far.

I awoke from a vivid dream. I was living still, for all this time, in the flat on Petra Rezka. I was the only one living there. A space I had never been to before showed itself to me. It was behind a door that I had always taken for a closet in Jeníček’s room. My room was abandoned and I lived in one of the strange alcoves beyond that door.

How I knew it was the flat on Petra Rezka, I know not, for it looked nothing like my old home (possibly my happiest home, for my interaction with people was at a maximum on my lifetime). It is obvious, however, that my mind associates that time with high dopamine levels.

Is there a method by which I could test my dopamine levels at the moment? I should use Google to find something adequate. The times like those at Petra Rezka are long gone and I have spent much of my life since then either in isolation or in a cloistered relationship which is akin to isolation. I miss laughing. I miss my friends.

Christopher is in a similar situation, hobbled with girlfriend and child and interminable job. He has more than once expressed his distaste. He has more than once expressed the fact that he has no one to talk to who he can call a friend. I suppose this also means he has no one to laugh with. Fucking New Zealand. I wish I had the means to visit him.

In one week, I shall be with Tony. We’ll have a few laughs and a few intense moments, I am sure. Old times may be hinted at, but most likely not reached in dopamine levels.

I need to laugh.

I realize that I have problem recalling faces because I study lips as they speak. Were I to focus my attention on a central part of the face, or even directly between the eyes, I’d burn portraits of humans in my mind. As an experiment, I’ll begin to do so.

Meanwhile, I am listening to Dokken, provided by Nathan Waldrip on Facebook. The song is power pop metal stuff. It is not really my thing.

I append these to the list:

• November novel - kolmkümmend minutit
• Daily arithmetic

And on the subject of the second point … rewrite the daily arithmetic program in… clojure? Using MongoDB! Jaa!

I shall now make a list of daily tasks. I shan’t break them, even if my forebrain is floating in a stagnant pool of alcohol.

• Estonian - üks tund
• Foundation Lutreola page - üks - kaks tunnid
• Overtone - finish the pine marten rhythms, then one pattern a day for the visit to Tone Tone
• Exercises - (arms || shoulders) && stomach
• 4clojure - üks pusle iga päev

Get with it, you dummy.

The part of me which years to leave this hellish place is hidden now. However, the more my time is protracted, that is, the more I convalesce, the more this part of me grows and threatens to overspill onto my environment. I held it in with sheer effort yesterday on the ride from Seminole to Hobbs.

The map of any explanation from either of my parents is always they same. The template is like this:

• Introduction

An overly long explanation is given as to why the topic has been breached instead of launching straight into it. It is as if they have to rationalize every free thought they have.

• Storyboard

Every point in the story is elucidated with redundancy. Every situation is explained in several ways. This most likely comes from their teaching background. My mother and father must get the point across to everyone in the classroom - to make sure it is understood. In these cases, however, it is a classroom of one: me.

Part XVII

My walks in the evening end with my body oozing perspiration from every pore. The temperature shift between the shunned outdoors and the airconditioned interior is abrupt and possibly shocking to my system.

A sudden gush from every ore leaves a sticky film on my body.

The Mennonite families still occupy the park in clumps. Each Mennonite individual is like a tentacle extending from an unseen protoplasm - a nucleus. It seems they are discreet, as the families do not seem to interact.

Some days ago - perhaps weeks - one family sat on the rise slightly overlooking the sidewalk on which I stroll in the evenings. The young girls in the group made it a point to wave at each passerby. The naivety was stunning. Typically, I smirked back at them, but did not raise my paw.

The oldest daughter in the family always stared openly at me when she was on the track and we passed. This is because I am a võõras and she knows it.

They sit on the hill and the high ground gives them courage to wave at the võõras striding by like a diety who is lost in a godless land.

I suppose I am a subtly elitist bastard still. My countenance exudes confidence which is unlike the meekness in the Mennonites. I believe the people here (not just the Mennonites) are bothered by someone they sense who doesn’t give a damn about others’ thoughts. Close knit communities need constant feedback between individuals and the need for acceptance is great.

It occurs to me that the same is true in employment groups. And in social circles. The constant need to be thought of positively is repellent to me. It is a crutch. One, in this regard, must constantly be on the alert for any possibility of negative associations and quash them immediately. It must be exhausting.

The deity who rises above these petty matters is one who is truly satisfied.

Welcome to Sunday morning in Seminole Texas. I am sitting upright in bed in a hunchbacked manner. I have now corrected this manner, to my spine’s delight.

I have neglected my writings for a few days now and feel a bit out of touch with my own psyche. This also reminds me that I have neglected my book for about eight months. I shall get back to it soon. The scene which broils constantly in my mind is of Shambal and our hero at a table in the café at the corner of Broadway and some street in the lower 100s in New York City. Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps is playing throughout the café. The sound system is not seen. The music emanates from everywhere.

Ah! Ambient noise! (Beautiful in this case, however)

As if our two protagansts were on stage and watched by a silent but attentive audience, their table is lighted. The remainder of the café is dark and no serving staff is seen. Regardless, a steaming cup of coffee each sits before them. Shambal, of course, pines for a beer. This is not Praha, our hero reminds him.

Though not the only portion of the scene which is in my mind (though others have actually escaped my mind at the moment, but will likely resurface), the first three parts of the Messiaen piece will cycle again and again as our hero explains to Shambal the futility the wandering piano line inspires (especially in Part Two). Shambal will consider this in his dullard manner, but come up with an analogy for their plight in the seemingly deserted New York City.

What I haven’t exactly plotted out in my head is Shambal’s demise. Earlier in the book, he was absorbed by a rock. I haven’t decided if this portion is a hallucination by our hero or an actual happening. Well, most of the book could be seen either way, actually.

So, as the Sunday morning in Seminole gropes for me, I relent and walk from creativity to fruitless activity once again.

Tere hommikust!