Doing Time on Planet Earth (or, I know no Godot, only the waiting)

When you kick back and listen to all the sounds around you, you get the sense it's all just a cacophony of static. The sirens blaring by. The neighborhood dogs responding. The background of crickets and rustling leaves. Your stomach gurgling. Your heartbeat drumming softly on the inside of your eardrums. Tires on asphalt. The tiny whir of insect wings. Skin respiring. Toenails growing. The crackle of cigarette paper. A slight creaking in your right elbow. And all those thoughts, one after the other and in bunches, your mind a kaleidoscope of random, mostly unconnected clips that you nevertheless try to spin into a workable haversack in which to tote your sense of self around. But, wait a minute! Who is it doing the spinning, the hearing, the dreaming? Nobody, really. Watch the coffee grounds circling the drain. Did you glimpse a face there, just for a moment? Or a flash of scenery that took you back to an earlier time?

As far as I can tell, there are no selves. No you. No me. No he, nor she. Just stuff, whirling around and interacting according to very basic impulses, drawing rather wiggly pictures on what amounts to a quite sizable Etch-A-Sketch screen. All random within the confines of its limited nature, but reflecting upon itself in such a way as to confuse partially memorized patterns with a belief in order. In place. In time. However, while there is no self per se, there IS a sense of self, a complex of feedback loops feigning isolation in the midst of flux. This is what's generally referred to as 'consciousness', a hall of synaptic mirrors with the peculiar ability to adapt to its own generated illusions. And so, in this way, chimera becomes trapped within walls of pseudo-solidity, a nexus of reflection caught in the Narcissistic delusion of false light, praying for simultaneous change and endurance under a sky where the stars are going out one by one, shitting its pants over the encroaching darkness and coping the only way it knows how. By imagination, and replication. Think Hilbert's Hotel, only replace 'Hotel' with 'Prison Block' and you'll get the picture. On the other hand, my gratuitous/necessary use of pronouns, including all the implied ones, probably negates a lot of what I have to say here. Ah, language.

Feeling Lucky?

Thought for the Day

On the one hand you have the optimists, those worshippers of animate matter who believe pain equals gain, love conquers all, and life is what you make of it, sluicing chance's current for flakes of confirmation with nary a glance downstream, who sometimes hedge their bets with candy coated kingdoms come to assuage that nasty little tic fluttering behind their implanted Leibnitz’s Doctrine. They walk the land garbling contradictory phrases like ‘intrinsic worth’, ‘subjective reality’ and ‘God has a plan for your life’, sprinkling confectioner’s sugar behind them in the footsteps they leave in the mud, as the peasants rejoice for the sweetened muck, trampling over one another for a taste of it; for, after all, some kinds taste better than others. The world turns under their feet, and entropy be damned!

On the other hand you have the pessimists, shrouds without coffins, prophets who cry doom from the center of the tilt-a-whirl at all the gritting teeth behind tightened smiles, warning of the meteorites falling from the sky where others see only space and possibility, preaching portents scried from everyday watch crystal with analog sensitivity, unheard in the digital silence of mocking regularity and good will. Morose, ashamed, feared for their ability to transfer fever by touch, pariahs of unwelcomed lucidity who grapple like heathenistic Davids against stone monoliths the size of history with the shape of upturned thumbs. Spoilsports, sad sacks, melancholic crepehangers hanging porkchops from the Prom Queen’s entourage for effect, inured to champagne bubbles and babies’ coos, who look out Schopenhauer’s window and see dead people sitting at desks, plying their trades and otherwise prostituting themselves to earn quick cash for their own gravestones.


Who sees the state of things more accurately? The answer lies in how one determines risk and necessity. If I throw a sleeping child into the air I might catch it, and I might not. But who will catch both of us when the ground opens up and we are swept away into the void of our origins? When the land closes above our heads, what will have been the point? The grass will grow back, the rain will fall, the sun will parch, and all will be as it was before until the earth shakes again.

Thought for the Day

Antinatalists are considered monsters simply for applying sensible principals of family planning- those types of principals specifically conceived for the sake of the children- across the board.

Thought for the Day

Since it'll be tomorrow soon enough, and motivated by certain comments made today, here's another:

Never judge a person for disagreeing with you, but by the quality of his disagreement. Rhetoric is cheap, sophistry is easy, and bon mots are a dime a dozen, but authentic thoughtfulness shines through.

Thought for the Day

Mourning the infinite number of potential souls who never existed nor will ever exist, and mourning the potential extinction of the human race by means of voluntary, universal non-procreation are, at their core, one and the same idea. And yet, most people will find the one ludicrous while sacrificing their very lives, as well as the lives of their children, to prevent the other.

Thought for the Day

I've been told that I'd see things differently if only I held to a higher perspective. Meaning, they say, makes all the difference. This is patently absurd. I suspect that if I did discover some deeper purpose behind the ubiquitous tragedies of this world, I'd probably be against it, anyway. After all, even proponents of genocide find meaning in what they do.

Thought for the Day

Sometimes maintaining a mental equilibrium in the face of this terrible existence is a very hard thing to do. All it takes is a little contemplation, a seeing into the horrible, built-in exigencies of life on this planet, this tooth and claw world where everything ultimately comes to nothing, and all that's left to do is scream or throw up. Or to weep.

Thought for the Day

Every affirmation of the continuance of life on this planet is a philosophical acquiescence to literally billions of incidences of debilitating illness and disease, of maiming, of torture, of rape, of murder, of pestilence and starvation, of mistreatment and indignity, of crippling incapacitation through accident or willful offense, and of every other crime or mischance that falls upon the heads of living biological entities who were never given the chance to say "No! I choose not to exist." Make no mistake- whenever we say "yes" to life, we ineluctably affirm suffering and death, as well.