Black is in my head, annoying my restless neurons with how it relates to my situation. The craziness of last night haunts me like a receeding dream at which I try to clutch but recall only snatches that blur even further into grew forgetfulness. Another person with whom I was very close is gone and no amount of insolent kicking of my legs or wailing like a forsaken ghoul into the night will make her come back.

Two weeks ago today I told her goodbye and two days prior to now she said she cannot return to me. My tears have been in vain. All of the thoughts and words and smiles will fade into obscurity. Like with Melanie, Marcie or Kierstinn. The pain is fantastically intense like the cracking of my aorta that steals my life.

She cried for Pavla and Jeníček last night as I nearly choaked to death in our bed. She held me tight and kissed me again and again on my forehead and neck, much like a mother to a deleriously feverish child. We slept as close as we had when we were first in love, on fire with unquenchable passion. The fading flame that killed our love. That prompted me to foolishly kill our love. And now my mind cannot see my rationale, my list of reasons for departing because my emotional energy floods cross my corpus collosum, drowning all logic in its way indiscriminately.

It is much too terrifying to think of what I am losing, of the history that will atrophy, from the smiles she shown that at the moments they appeared, seemed like they could never die or pass inconsiderately into time.

Messages…

Where are you? Talk to me or I will evaporate. I am going to make pancakes tonight and have them with Univers Zero. -Hela.

Why am I not savoring my moments with her instead of pining over things already eroding? I am so caught up and fascinated with loss and the ensuing despair that I forget the moment and later regret the times I wasted. A very good example of this is Spring of 1996, my pain and emptiness wrought from Melanie’s absence, and the ridiculous events I drug myself and my friends through because I could not let go. So must I let go of Magdalena? If I do not, I shall drive her away for good, but I wonder what is the difference when she is now pursuing a life perpendicular to everything our relationship concerned.

This fact is the knife that twists in my heart.

It is scarily similar to Melanie’s actions (though certainly not as extremist): to discard all that related to our relationship. Gladly, Magdalena will not go to thisextreme end since much of what she has now in her life was the both of ours and she gladly still receives gifts from me with a genuine smile.

More messages from Hela…

Vesele Vanoce … Love, peace and poison for all.

Let me lick your fishy LAP TOP.

The greatest tragedy concerning Magdalena is the fact she is pushing deliberately her feelings for me away – that or supressing them with active (refusing to kiss me on the lips) and passive (not spending much time in our flat) actions.

I feel last night was the final one I shall spend in her arms. It is time for grieving and ultimately catharsis. In a way, these words are my catharsis whilst hers may be discarding her feelings for me or submerging herself in other people to help her forget. Diametrically opposite, baby. I am looking up at the surface of the water knowing I have not breath or the strength to make it there.

It has always been my method of dealing.

I have not changed. So, I must leave her alone or watch her be gone for good. What a silly paradox it is. Fuck. My fire in her eye has flickered and died. Soon another wil rekindle that flame. I want not to write of the ills we suffered as a couple. Here is where I clean my memories. No longer do I with THE HIGH VOLTAGE POWER SUPPLY. Trains encourage me to pen my ideas. I am saddened that I missed the train to Magdalena’s home. Now I may never see it.

Messages to Jeníček from me, now…

Letna, crying, thinking, writing and healing. Where are you?

Thank you, my friend, but I think I should be alone because of my pain :/

I am writing about Magda, of course.

I am writing words to a song for her. It will be the second song for her.

They are mostly the truth. Soon, I’ll be sitting in a café drinking tequila sunrises - a drink that will one day be nostalgic of yet another woman. Yet another, indeed.

My backslide into the relentless sycophant-like behaviour will ultimately alienate Magdalena. I must nip it in the buttock so to preserve and chance for reconcilliation. The sad truth, however, is that I am not sure I can unless I disappear for a while. The emotional flood overwhelms any sort of logical decision maing ability I have in this atrophying brain of mine.

My goal is to visit Katrin on my way to seeing Peter Hammill in Strasbourg 15 May. It is not far away, is it, silly penstroke? There is no reason to call my leg shaven if each pitiful pore exudes a thin strand of useles protein that captures small globules of dirt and sweat to stink up the interior of each of my three pairs of jeans. Extrapolating, I recall Magdalena telling me last night that she would go with me for new jeans today, but, when I spoke to her on the telephone, her resounding NO in reply to my dinner suggestion shows the hallmark of logic over emotions. Sure, the yesterday evening was tumultuous to an extreme degree for her, and the backlash is retreat into her cavern of non-bobitude, dismissing all thoughts of a tentative rendezvous even though in contradistinction, she is obviously in a state of bliss when we banter whilst strolling about Prague.

So what, my dear reader may ask, was the purpose of tagging that bit of prattle with extrapolating? Well, my resulting extrapolation from her actions is this: she will drift further and further until she is over me and it is safe to give me her time again. But then what would be the point since we are not again in passionate thrall? You see, it will depressingly just become what mine and Draža’s relationship is: two people living separate lives who see each other mayhap every two weeks for a cup of java and semi-interesting conversation. There seems to me, then, three sets of friendship or relationship types.

• Committed, which involves this capricious beast called love. In this sort, two people see each other constantly, share time and experiences.
• Folk with whom you go out for a beer every few evenings, to a cabin or camping on the weekends, etc. I always blurred quite convincingly the boundary between this and the first type.
• Friends who are considered (suprisingly) good, but who are only seen mayhap once in two weeks or less often. It is the most dismal of the trio, methinks. I want to run from it.

Fuck this.

Sunday night, Draža said something of great interest to me. I mentioned to her that I hope she and I can still be going on our cynical, scurrilous shindigs even after 30 more years! She replied that we can talk about our problems concerning whomever we happen to be with, about children, job, etc, and why we had never been to gether. Obviously, it was this last bit that hit me not quite unlike a rubber mallet to the testicles.

Poignant.

Not really even thinking about my initial attraction to her back in October, I plaintively overviewed the sad irony of such a future situation. Resigned to age and commitment, I wonder if we would have the nerve to simply run away with each other if our lives were both in a sad state of disrepair. Would it be a possibility to touch once again the spontaneous, impulsive irrationality of youth and tap its vein regardless of consequence? It is the story of my life, is it not? The second tequila sunrise is being slurped affectionately into my tum-tum here in the café that haunts none of my thoughts or dreams (yet).

It is time for Chapter “Bared Dogma” to come to a close before my chest cracks open from the pain in my heart, both physical and emotional. Oouh!

Left without a clever word to say. There is nothing but čekat now for Sweet Entropy to decide the fate of Magdalena and me. The putrescent past bubbles like bile up the esophogas of my mind and I recll my must too spotless (excepting for the smashed and well placed ZZ Top tape destroyed after Brandi left me) bedroom in Fort Stockton, Texas.

That song Endings comes to mind ruthlessly and, as always, I recall Sharon Weber’s visage along with the lyric endings are only places where all things begin. Ironic, because I really never had any beginning that was not imagined with Sharon Weber. Now it pertains in a much more telling capacity.

I left Magdalena.

Now I am hating paying the consequences of my act. Never before have I actually broken something off with a female without being extremist (cf. Marcie). I need another tequila. As Jeníček would say: It’s good for you. I am about as poetic as a moose in heat these days.

Find your muse, Bob! Find your muse! Where the fuck is that pesky muse, anyhow? Where the fuck, indeed.

Now I shall attempt to gleefully continue my work on James’s project, hopefully in a successful manner. Hawkwind spills out of the speakers and I am reminded of the particularly lengthy day during which I completed most all of the tournament management tool and left an imprint of the event in this elaborative mishmash of words. My mind is also on Magdalena, with whom I spent the majority of yesterday. I wonder if she will keep her resolve to leave Daryl. I hope. Why? Well, because I want her to be happy. Watching her play pool last night with that curious, bright smile and her shuffling feet made me laugh with pleasure despite myself.

It is time to actually perform the task I laid out for myself in the last entry, the construction of the whole page. Stay tuned, my ardent reader.

Well, quite a bit has changed since the last entry of “elaborations”. I shall probably fortunately not go into details, however. Morrissey croons above my head and struggles to raise my eyelids from their half-closed position, mostly unsuccessfully. My fingers are having quite a bit of trouble efficiently hitting the correct keys to form these tenuous words. No explanations necessary, I suppose. Mother I can feel the soil falling over my head. I must work on the software for James, the lines of broken perl code that he entrusted me to create. Responsibility is like a bane on my life right now and it is only because of my dreaded personality, the biting off of more than my rotten teeth can chew without dislodging themselves from my bleeding gums. So what must I do to finish these myriad of scripts for James? A list, I propose? First entry:

• Determine what has been done and what needs to be done.

The main fullview page consists of a backdrop and three floating frames. These frames are thus: the main navigation bar, which controls which major type of database “collection” becomes displayed in the content frame which lies below this navigation frame. to the right of the content frame is another navigation frame. its purpose is to switch between records in a certain database “collection”, to print a record, and perform a sundry of other record-specific duties. So my list becomes thus:

• Complete the layout and functionality of the main navigation frame.
• Complete the layout and functionality of the content frame.
• Complete the layout and functionality of the record navigation frame.

I shall now inspect the code I have written for the former, a script dubbed “menu.cgi”. And now I have inspected and, to the best of my abilities, made it work in a reasonable fashion. Now it is on to the second entry in my list, the content frame. For some bloody reason, this step seems like it shall be complex and annoying. My motivation is at the level of a squished slug baking in the noontime sun on one of the prestine sidewalks leading from building to building amid the Red West Microsoft campus. Oh, but is life not different now?

The content frame is in reletively good working order, though I have encountered a potential problem. James must change the pseudo-entries of the html created by the script to actual values taken cheerily from his database. So, I may have to modify this script to actually just write to a file, or have the navigation frame actually call a buttock which creates a file containing the html which would be directly interpolated into the content frame. Hmmmm… or something like that, surely. So, on to the record navigation thurk.

Nifty, the mechanism which writes to a file in /tmp when one clicks on one of the record navigation thurks is not working. You see, my dear and special reader, James must poll this file so as to know what the user wishes to do. When this file changes, a change to the content frame must be made. How the hell this will work I specifically know not, but I forsee nothing but complications and mayhap even failure. Damn bitchin’, honeybunch.

An aside. A new employee, Eva, is chatting with Kathy behind me. My desperate craziness is occluding my thoughts, coupled with a strangeness arising from sleep deprivation. I want to meet this new person, get to know her, show her the bizarre and beauteous world in which I live. I must restrain myself, however, because of the potential alienation factor. Actually, I should just take Chris’s potential advice and become obsessed with her. I’ve never been obsessed with someone named “Eva” before. Oh, wait.

Okay, now I must construct the whole of the page. ie, I must now add floating frames to the base page. It has just occured to me, though, that using real frames and complex tables may well be the best way to go, though redoing all of the html would be a pain the spleen and cause me to most likely whack the first person I see with a cubic light year of rubber cement. I shall attempt the floating frames option initially.

Actually, I am going to put this on pause for a bit of time whilst I thurk the Investor Insight rep file thinghie. Know, my thoughtful reader, that this is the best decision for the present.

What an amusing thing that i am doing at this moment! I am making a tape for Julie VanLoh, whom I have not seen nor heard from since October of 1996. I was the one who did not keep up the contact, however, and I am quite regretful of that. The one day we spent together meandering about Anchorage trying to find a church to attend stamped some sort of indelible impression on my mind. It keeps recurring in my dreams. Strange. What does her eidolon mean to me? “Tea for One” pours into my wax-laden ear sockets to bathe me with some semblance of a nostalgia which is mostly conjured from the neurotic tendencies in my bedraggled brain. It should have been “The Beating of the Bedraggled Brain”. Screw the heart. It’s just a workhorse with no more mind than Jeff’s ubiquitous pumpjack.

“A past that lives if only for the present,” croons Peter Hammill. Why am I so rife with nostalgia? What is that fleeting yet perpetual feeling which permeates my being when I am in contentment? Or is it this which is actually the source of contentment? Without it shall I be lost in a terrifying maze of meaninglessness? A tenet of mine has always been the search for meaning in my life, in others’ lives, in everything around me, to connect and construct from the scattered debris of sensory input a well woven tapestry, beautiful to the eye, satisfying to the mind. Mayhap nostalgia is my way of weaving the past into the present, gathering up all of the loose strings which hiss & strike at me like vipers. If that is who I am, then I believe, at this point in my life, I have chosen to live with it; moreover, I have encouraged it to flourish. Good for me. I finally accept at least a part of who I am. Is it true? I cannot escape from my personality any more than I can flee from my skin.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason states (quite matter of factly) that there must be an explanation for:

• the existence of any being.
• any positive fact.

A very spiffy point that Melanie made in her philosophy paper that I have just received via the ubiquitous postal service is that this principle is silly in that the first part generalizes out to the second. That is, the actual existence of a ‘being’ is, in fact (no pun intended), a ‘positive fact’. Perhaps they (it’s those ‘they’ again), when idea-fying this principle, had in mind to separate ‘beings’ from ‘ideas’. The first part of the principle would encapsule organic things, or, put better, things that are tangible. The second part speaks of ideas and/or theories created by sentient beings which are agreed on as ‘facts’. I suppose the first part would include things such as ‘cats’ and ‘dirt’ and the second, things such as ‘the theory of gravitation’ and ‘the recipe for broccoli-cheese quiche’. Personally, I prefer abstracting things out the way Melanie did and including the whole shabang in one big wallop… ie, making ‘beings’ part of the whole ‘positive fact’ clique.

The purpose of Melanie’s paper was to discuss and give her opinions and reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with the ‘cosmological argument for the existence of that God guy (or gal since I decided this last weekend that Jenn was quite a worthy God).’ The title of her paper is ‘The Failure of the Cosmological Argument through the Misapplication of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.’ I believe that from the title it is pointedly obvious which side she takes in relation to supporting or disparaging the argument.

The un-fun part of technical writing is upon me and, since it is a precursor to the fun part, I am only nigh-hesitant to plunge in. Strangely (well, okay, not ‘strangely’ at all, but I’ll just choose to call that word an expletive since I really do not wish to replace it with a large, black scribble), I want to skip this part and delve into my little nuances I scheme surronding the existence of dependent beings (just because it festers, frolicks, pushes its way to the forefront of my mind like a spoiled kid in the lunch line on the first day of kindergarden). BUT - I am meandering.

The cosmological argument consists of two premises and a very pretentious conclusion.

Premise Uno: Every being that exists or ever did exist is either a dependent being or a self-existent being.

Premise Zwei: Not every being can be a dependent being.

Therefore: There exists a self-existent being.

Okay… I’m really not here to re-elaborate the failing argument or to defend any particular point of view, but, instead, as always, to skip aside onto a path of my own and record the interesting tales my mind spun during and after perusing Melanie’s paper. The cosmological argument, in short, was garroted and drowned in its own blood by Melanie’s paper. She traipsed through a well constructed destruction of the argument then forged ahead on her own by redefining the principle of sufficient reason and then re-supporting the first premise of the argument. Basically, the argument is bullshit because it doesn’t consider a very important point of view. Or, it is not if you redefine the word ‘being’. Taking it for granted that the principle of sufficient reason is true (the new, happy, altered one Melanie came up with), we have this very large tree of things: the buds, highest branches, and leaves are the most current ‘positive facts’ or ‘beings’, all spawned in some way from the branches below them. The trunk that supports these myriad of facts is this ‘God’ that the cosmological argument deduces (self-existent being… same thing). Back to the important point of view that the argument discards… (actually, I have no way of knowing if this point of view was overlooked, discarded or whatnot since I do not know when the cosmological argument was created. If it was formulated before Darwin came along, then this elision may be understandable). Instead of a God, the trunk of this very large tree of beings [positive facts] could be, simply, the unknown beginning of the universe (I use ‘beginning’ loosely here since the current theories speculate on an endless cycle of previous universes which expand and contract over and over; so, I’ll specify to the inception of the universe in which I exist at this particular moment and hope there is no argument over semantics). Furthermore, the first branches could represent the swirling gasses that formed galaxies, then, splitting more and more into solar systems, planets, inorganic compounds that finally, by some act of chemical oddity, became organic, etc, etc. Amoeba to hydra to barnacle to mollusk … … to reptile to mammal to primate to human.

Everything that ‘is’ is dependent on something that has existed. By no means does this imply a supreme being, as Melanie states in her paper and I imply above. She concluded with some nice comments about humans and their ability to concoct scenarios that are almost always time and distance sensitive (well, she didn’t actually say that, but that is what I concocted from her statements of humans’ limited understanding and frightened flights from endlessness). Her last sentence rings very true and meshed nicely with much that I have written in this already yellowing journal. When understanding is paused and the wall is too high to breach, it is easier to create an explanation from nothing, no matter how silly or fanciful, than to admit, “wow, you know guys, I don’t think we have the ability, technology, or prowess to grasp this!” Okay… now it’s the right brain’s turn to belittle the left! Nah - maybe tomorrow.

I press my face against the glass of my unbelief, the foggy pane clears and I see lucid emotions, wheeling wearily through my mind. Have I lost all sense of who I have been? Have these things that have tortured and rent my spirit been subdued, leaving me bored with my contentment?

Have I slacked off in my writing? Yes!

(Marcie’s Birthday – XVI).

Psalms 23. (NIV)

The lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

The Lord God has built a fence, a fence of barbs and electrons, tearing and electrocuting all evil that tries to trespass. I need not do anything at all, for the lord is my tender. Sheep are, a bit, like humans, a bit unpredictable and bizarre, unruly upon occasion for no particular reason, illogical. This confused mass cannot manage on its (their) own, so a shepherd (the Lord) tends them. It is a beautiful and meaningful relationship. Very binding… in a quirky sort of way. The shepherd is not needy, but still cares for his flock, which is needy and lost on its (their) own.

he makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters

The Lord allows his sheep to lie, restful from a chaotic livelihood (oh! the entropic life of a sheep!), and leads his flock to waters for refreshment. Sustenance and rest are two of the most coherent branches that lead to “self-preservation.” It seems God provides for these freely and plentifully.

he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

The soul - also called the mind in so many ancient texts. These two words are so interchangable, even having the same translation in Aramaic and Hebrew. Frustration, anger, pain, any other degradative emotion of the mind is cleansed. The Lord restores the soul/mind, bringing peace. FOR HIS NAME’S SAKE, God guides his flock on to the path of righteousness, the path of good - His path. If he did not do so, his reputation would be in ruin. Who would believe in a God who does not hold the promises He makes? The paths of righteousness are within reach following the shepherd who, because it would be hypocrisy not to, tends his flocks with care.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and staff - they comfort me

These are metaphorical, or, symbolic, lines of the psalm. As stated earlier, the lord has a fenced pasture for his sheep, who are protected from the evils, the physical dangers, of the world.

The pensive sheep wanders, though, in his mind, upon occasion, through the “valley” of despair, sickness, psychological evil. The closer one strays to these darkensses, the deeper in the shadow they can be… a feeble sheep in mental anguish, mayhap from lost love, dead friends, or faulty footing has the road and staff hovering to drive those fears far from his mind. Turn to the Shepherd, and comfort shall be found. It is, because of this, possible to deny the murky black of evil and stare it in its pocked face until it melts to nothing with the Lord God’s Rod and Staff overhead, protecting.

Do not stray from the pasture! The psychological darkness is evil enough!

You prepare a table before me in the presense of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

The Shepherd stands before his sheep, a sheep full of pain and frustration, IN THE PRESENCE OF THESE ENEMIES, these psychological apparitions of hatred and fear, and load the table with sustenance divine. Your enemies shall be vanquished by God’s compassion.

Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord -forever-.

Thus church ended…

                  --  B  O  O  M  --

Frustration – pounding my brain with its painful pickaxe, driving all rationality form my head. I can’t think! I cannot think! Try as I might, I am feeble. The shadows creep quickly over my eyes, blurring my sight and smothering my mind. Fuzzy images of clearer thoughts dance just within reach. I grapple with them to try to untangle the weave that squeezes tighter and tighter onto my brow. Limping, I grunt unintelligible, ugly remarks at passers-by, blinking at my arrogance, lost in their opulence. Memorizing names of cities and spaces on maps, places to dance and scream your revelation into empty air, only to hear the echoes years later without the meek applause.

Problems… things are created to solve problems. Frustration is prominent when you cannot formulate these problems into terms comprehensible to the end of a snazzy solution.

                          FILL THE PAGE!
                          FILL THE PAGE!

           With what
                    prattle blather meaningless jingling bells from
                                holidays
                                      forgotten

Thoughts on “self-preservation”:

Many human “goals” can be stretched, expounded on, then compressed back to the concept called ‘self-preservation’. Is this extremely simple yet powerful instinctive sense an integral part of most everything we do?

Jayson provides a few excellent examples, though I shall not elaborate exquisitely upon them. Simply: the avoidance of large, hairy beasts with sharp claws and pointed teeth. I suppose this may be a purer, unadulterated… or better yet, non-camouflaged instance of self-preservation than most which we experience.

My linear algebra professor, dubbed “Dr. Wilson”, makes an amusing and thought provoking comment occasionally which is on these lines: “Once I was like you: my purpose was to graduate [college] and eat.” Is the lengthy struggle to get an education so one can attain a good enough job to provide for oneself simple an extension of self-preservation? In a historical perspective, the norm was once not to go to such lengths for an education because it was not as difficult to provide for oneself without an elaborate series of pre-planned educational curricula as it may be in this, the “information”, age. I used the word “norm”. I meant this: The normal person chose the easiest path throughout history to the end of self preservation. Mayhap at one point, in archaic times, all that was needed was a good spear, careful (practiced) aim and a mediocre to good throwing arm plus some meager cooking abilities. The only “education” relevant was learning the ability to kill meat that could be eaten (and possibly sort out non-poisonous from poisonous fruits, berries, etc) and preparing that meant for a tasty eating process. As history progressed (as history surely does), or “lengthened” with time, man created a more complex society, one that allowed groups of different people to have different means that reached the end of “self-preservation”. These groups split into more and more until there were many different archetypes that all traced an exceedingly convoluted course to the same goal – to “eat”. So, the “easiest” course that the normal person could take became more complex with time, resulting in an educational hierarchy (or a “manual labor hierarchy”) that allowed the normal person to find one of the many means (his or her choice) to reach the goal… the only goal… “to eat”… to survive. Self preservation. What of the “un-normal” ones? Human intellect prospered in many, allowing them to find ways around the normal ways to “eat” (take a thief, for example) AND to explore other pursuits outside the realm of the instinctual “self-preserving” rule.

So this sketchy idea I have presented is surely full of holes that may or may not be easily patched, but no matter, it is surely food for more thought on the matter.

The point of the first draft of such an idea?

The NORMAL person leads a life in whatever “intellectual” pursuit they have close– which is, in reality, just an elaborate camouflage of the self-preservation instinct. Conclusion? Most people really do not grow intellectually beyond their inborn instincts.

A better way to state this might be…

They do not explore intellectually beyond that which leads them to the predetermined goal: “to survive”. One could speculate, however, as to what other instincts (if dissimilar instincts do, indeed, exist_ drive any other sort of intellectual diversity that my extend beyond that which can be traced back to the self-preservation base. If every mental endevour can be traced back to a foundation of instinctual behavior, it might be easy to come to the conclusion that intelligence or creativity, even is just a aftereffect of heredity. This may be a silly conclusion, though.

What of the need to find “meaning”, then? What of this need that drives some to seek walls to enclose them, urges others to break them down, and pushes still others to self-destruction? What primal force could, if any, this be distilled to? Or is this one of the elements that truly separates us from instinctual creatures? And might this, too, if that, be whittled down to a hereditary factor – the non-instinctive instinct. “The primal urge to question the validity of primal urges.”

Does a man who submits himself utterly to an ideology do so for sense of security? Surely he does. But security from what? Perhaps from harm… therefore a spawn of the “self-preservation” base, but I think not. the closest idea I have at present is that this man is seeking (and has found) security from unsanity. Unsanity! “Chaos”, big and evil, lurking behind self-imposed prison walls… he wishes to become “institutionalized”, for that is the way of the happy? Escapism comes in many forms, religion (whether true or not) can be one of them. Reading fiction perpetually could be another. The possibilities are endless, some safer than others – some with more security from the unsane, others just passing solace from the dangerous outside. This security is purely anti-intellectual. It prohibits all consideration of the world outside and sometimes even the knowledge of it. It becomes simpler, easier to live with a feeling of non-danger, non “sudden shifting of environment”, and occasionally even total refrain from change. So, the question remains still from the bygone Shawshank ponderings: Is it “right” to awaken these people – crash through their walls into where they are seemingly safe from knowledge – safe from thought? Or should they be left to live and die where they can manage best?

Lee once said: “Religion is just an excuse to not think for yourself.” This statement, though I find much untruth in it, holds much relevance to my former discourse. RELIGION, I NOW know, after years of rejecting it, has many features, uses and intellectuality behind it and is just recently becoming a prevalent interest in my life. So, I shall change the quote of Lee’s by only one word: “Escapism is just an excuse to not think for yourself.”

Now I consider it correct in whole. Religion CAN be an escapist tactic, when twisted, as can many, many things, as I mentioned on the previous page. This is possibly the aspect of religion that Lee was observing (or not more “the aspect of religion,” but “the way some use religion”) when he made this statement.

To correlate, I suspect that escapism, coupled with the drive of “self-preservation” creates a more fluid world to survive in, and that is a frequent tactic of the normal person – to use escapism to help focus their life on the goal “to eat” and not be disturbed by the evil outside.

One more note on escapism:

Is it an instinctual drive to eliminate departure from instinct? Is it the drive to adhere only to primal desires? This seems very contradictory but at the same time insightful to me. I shall ponder.

I eagerly grasp at my intention to slip from productive pursuits to lethargy with hands that mean to strangle… I’m grappling with my will to get back to writing from the more alluring computer work that has filled my day. I sit pretentiously in Linear Algebra class filling this page with rhetorical dribble. I’ll pass an integral form of my psyche onto my surroundings just right after my left armpit develops the ability to, at will, create a different recipe for tapioka pudding thrice an hour. At least I have found my bitchin’ pen.

Further elaborating, actually – what is the point to writing if you have nothing to write about? To hone your skills? To entertain yourself at a later date with easy, virtually idea-less writing? Yup Yup…

The anchor must come free. Um, after class.

A few thoughts on “meaning”. Inspired by GEB.

There seem to be three levels in the search for meaning in any particular object:

• the realization that there is, in fact, meaning there to be found.
• the ideas, conceptions, thoughts and notions that allow the actual decoding of the message inherent to the object.
• the actual message.

These three “levels” are found in all types of “decipherings” throughout life, whether one realizes it or not. Suppose a steel box violently crashes through the roof of your house and smashes your new porcelain rutabaga. You could ignore it. You could pick it up, toss it in the nearest dumpster and carry on with your life. You COULD examine it a bit. Suppose you pick this last option. Picking it up, you hear something “clunk” inside. This allows you the first level in meaning mentioned above. You now recognize there is something to be sought. Then you may start contemplating a way to open the steel box. Suppose you decide to go down to the local hardware store, pick up a cutting torch, come home, read its instruction manual (because you should ALWAYS read the instructions) and decide this is a correct method of opening the steel box. You have now proceeded to the second level of meaning, the level that allows you to find the “message,” or in this case, open the box. Your new blowtorch is your decoding weapon. Once you cut the box open and find a package of Ritz crackers, you have the message that was inherent to the box.

Because this entire process was attainable by only two things - the box and your intellect - this box’s “meaning” is intrinsic within the box, but only in the context of human interaction…

Now the package of Ritz Crackers is an altogether new “object”. What if you had never seen a package of Ritz crackers before? Suppose you have never even known the concept of “eat” before, etc… you apply the same rules. GEB used the example of a note in a bottle. The first level of meaning is surpassed when you realize there is something other than a bottle containing a white piece of paper with scribbles. The second level is realized seeing the note is in a particular language, telling you the method of decoding. And, obviously, the message is the text itself. It is unique in that no matter who the decoder might be, and no matter the actual decoding method, the only actually translatable message will always be the same.

And now something that frequently bothers me:

Let us call “music”, “movies”, “television”, “books”, etc.. MEDIA. I think there is an amazing paucity in my observation of the “coming to the conclusion” that the first level of meaning is evident in much of today’s media. Sure, there are possibly many meaningless (in every respect) instances, such as lyrics to the modern pop song (not all - some). Is it an environmental thing? Is the cause for this lack of sight the “context” of many people’s lives? I believe so. (since it is probably not transmitted hereditarily!)

So I shall use the song I fiddled with at another point in this journal, “A fool fancying cliches” … the lyrics this time. Perhaps this song is gaily bouncing out of a nearby amplification system and a passerby stops to consider it. She hears the words. Now, as in several examples above, she may simply walk away untouched, BUT, in an unguarded moment of speculation, she suspects something relevant to the words coursing forth from the speaker. She has identified that there is meaning, that is, the first level has been traversed. Suppose a page containing the words to “fool” is lying near the stereo spewing the song and, of course, that it catches her eye. Picking it up, she may now traipse on to the second level of meaning and attempt to grasp a decoding method. Now, the message is held not in the actual words, but in metaphor and allegory constructed by the words. Our eager subject must use her imagination coupled with any imagery the words inspire. She can then make connections (find similarities) between the images conjured and situations experienced / observed in her lifetime. She has decoded the message.

Is there enough meaning and message, image and allegory, enough representation of an artist’s psyche in his / her word(s) of art to, through sufficient (and this might be incredibly complex) decoding mechanisms, perceive the “meaning” of the artist him / herself? Of course, this would depend on the instance of art, since the artist may not have put “as much of him / herself” in all of his / her works. So, to rephrase: Is there, or could there be, enough meaning and message, image and allegory, enough representation of an artist’s psyche in his / her work (in a SINGLE instance of his / her work – an instance that was clearly NOT created for this or any related autobiographical purpose) to perceive the “meaning” of the artist? Say, in a Van Gogh Painting? A symphony by Beethoven … Etc.? Yes?

“My thoughts mearly drift among the oddities and quirks of how things are (as I seem them). I, humble observer of phenomena, plod along and puff my silly words into the air rather unspectacularly.” –The Tortoise.

I am quite amorous of that quote. At times, I feel like these writings are very insipid, banal and quite ignorant and uneducated, as I do now. What to do but keep plundering on, eh? Traipse through stimuli, I do, as most do, absorbing a little here, a little there, making my silly impressions, hoping someone will catch air of their message. I suppose this journal needs quite a number of levels of context - one being the language barrier, another being experience. One might find all of this myriad of meandering musings vapid as a newborn’s first excretion of bodily waste; another might have already thought through every concept I have approached, but still enjoys idle reading; yet another could be fascinated. I suppose I cannot please ’em all, nor, in fact, should the purpose of this be to do so, since it is a highly introspective work. 21 pages in 4 1/2 days is rather impressive (to me) for me, however.

Carrying on in the previous vein:

I just tangled in conversation with this idea, so I shall write it, no matter its relative wackiness. Say knowledge, in a way, is passed genetically, but not the knowledge itself, but only, as i mentioned on the last page, the ability to learn types of knowledge. Use types in the way a common university uses the word to divide knowledge: Chemistry, Physics, English, Photography, etc. A single mutation that slightly alters a few atoms gives or takes the ability (or increases/decreases) to absorb a certain type. This mutation happens infrequently, though often enough that when the whole world is populated from a few individuals, it creates an exceedingly wide variety of ability to or to not learn.

BUT! I’ve always, in the past, believed in the human ability to excel in almost anything by sheer will (I am speaking of intellectual feats, of course, not instances of telekinesis or muscle tone). This has been from my own point of view, however, and it might just be the case that I can intellectually prosper in most all of the subjects I have endeavoured in…. It is impossible to make a testable hypothesis, though, since I can very improbably tackle each and every subject matter in the universe during my lifetime. Unless I tackle the problem of mortality first, of course.

If a human being’s MEANING is not intrinsic, NOT found ONLY in itself, then, naturally, its meaning is derived from ITSELF and its lifelong context (no matter how convoluted). It would seem (to me, anyhow, and I know that is a fucking opinion, but I cannot see how else to express at this late hour), perhaps, that for a “thing” that cannot find meaning within itself to find meaning, and I am assuming that an encoded part of every (living) thing is a desire to find its “meaning”, it would have a goal that is (simply) to look for that meaning. I have many examples. I shall only illustrate one. I could perform this feat in one word: “religion”, which can be generalized out to the word “philosophy” and further out to “ideology.” Every man has an ideology. I believe I can safely make that generalization. To be absolutely positive, though, I shall define the word:

IDEOLOGY:

The manner of thinking OR The content (written or unwritten rules of self-behavior and self-modification) of thinking that any given individual characterizes.

A man or woman develops, seeks out, hybridizes, transforms, rejects, negates, or accepts an ideology to find meaning for his existence. If you want proof of this hypothesis, go visit your local Baptist Student Union.

Slainte Mhath!

Word for the day:

RECHERCHE:

exquisite or choice… also… overblown or pretentious.