Last night I thought to myself that it had been a long while since I had cried. Honestly, I couldn't remember when last I did. Tonight I did. As I did, it occurred to me that most often, I cried for suffering that I thought went unnoticed. In my view, we all suffer to some extent. Obviously, some more so than others. Howevrer, suffering is one of the (many) integral parts of the existence of human beings. To suffer is to be human. But for some, and almost the entirety of the people I will meet more than once, it is a part of their lives that is bearable.

What makes suffering bearable is knowing that others understand it, or will look on it with favor. Knowledge of outside knowledge ennobles suffering, in other words. Unsung heroes are sad because a hero, one who suffers (and all of us do), should have the story of that suffering told. Suffering without any trace is not remembered. Aristotle missed the mark on catharsis. We don't care about the suffering of tragic protagonists because we get some kind of emotional release from seeing them suffer per se. We feel better because their IMAGINED suffering is remembered. Even false suffering is immortalized. How much more so would our own be, should a great playwright know of it and tell all of our life? Is it not greater than that which never happened? There is your catharsis. Knowing that your own story, told well, would touch the sympathies of those hearing it. All of us could ask for nothing more than to have our story told to others that they might know of our desires to be great and the forces whic prevented that greatness.

Tonight I cried. I cried, but only after I had exhausted the avenues of explanation that I felt were open to me. I called the ears that I trusted, but they were not able to answer me. I thought then of my own petty obstacles, and how so many others had suffered worse but did not have the luxury of that which I write now. They left their stories untold, or unregarded. We owe an ear to every person that has ever been, if we think our own story is worth hearing. I cried then, knowing that I would not be able to explain myself. Why I felt how I felt and what I had chosen that led to where I was would be lost, even to me. Similarly are lost those of every person.

It has been noted that "all [humans] lead lives of quiet desperation" and that "either all of us are heroes or none of us are." These basic concepts fuel my founding principles. At bottom, none of us are so different from each other that we cannot see the basic human similarities between all of us. To do otherwise is to be vain, ignorant, selfish, and completely trapped in a sociopathic worldview regarding fellow prisoners as tormentors, when only the recognition and fellow feeling of those same beings has any possibility of making our existence worthwhile.

In other words, the cure to your sorrow lies NOT in yourself, but in others. The lazy answer is that of the stoics. "Cease to care of these things, and they will not be a bother any longer." It is easier to stop breathing. Once you divorce yourself from the social fabric, YOU ARE DEAD. If nothing perturbs you at all, you have more in common with stones. Embrace your humanity! You are a social being. Born to need, and living in need, you cease to be a human when no one matters to you anymore. Self-sufficiency is for the weak! Need will make you free!

An unpolished post on a silly article

http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/were-vampires-baby-sucking-blood-from-the-earth

Reading this article reminded me of someone I knew who hated ants (or maybe just the particular species of them) because some species of ants would enslave ants from other colonies/species.

It's kind of an interesting way of putting things, and it is a good idea for human beings to understand how they alter their environment and learn how to avoid destroying our food supply (in fact, I have altered my own diet as a result of my desire to preserve it). That said, it's ridiculous to say that we're like the Independence Day aliens as if WE WEREN'T THE ONLY ONES. There are so many lifeforms that wipe out indigenous life when they move in and or destroy the "delicate ecosystems" they inhabit. It's less excusable on our part because we have some inkling of what we're doing and the consequences of it, but don't flatter yourself with thinking humans aren't a part of the whole system.

""Farming drives much of the ecological damage humans do...""

You know, corn is also thriving right now. We interact with corn plants, and they have done a great job of domesticating us to the point that we do all the work for them. We gather their seeds, plant them in ideal locations, and pump them with every nutrient we can find.

I don't actually think we're in thrall to some malevolent corn spirit that has domesticated us (but maybe a benevolent one... just kidding). I just found that to be one of the more fascinating little side alleys that Michael Pollan dipped into in Omnivore's Dilemma.

Anyway, if you're concerned about human beings destroying the planet for the planet's sake and not for the sake of human beings (that is, you value your fantasy of earth's environment over the continuation of the species), then I suggest you join the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

The time when I am no longer able to withdraw any further seems to be fast approaching. It's worked so well for so long though, which is of course the problem. I wonder how much longer I can feel like it's all unraveling before I realize it isn't, or if it is, how much longer this spool will take to unwind.

It's not at all uncommon for us to idolize the past. The past is a lot easier to digest than the present, and memory has a way of keeping what we like or altering it to suit when what actually happened didn't fit the narrative as well.

I still remember a sunny evening on a patio years ago. Flush with victory, well-fed, in good company and in love, I closed my eyes and imprinted. I was happy. I was happy, and I knew it wasn't always going to feel that good. There may have been other times when I've been on that kind of crest, but that time I felt myself feeling and tried to store it up within myself knowing how fleeting such things are. Now, looking back on it, the pleasure I take is in knowing that I did experience that glorious few hours and that it was no product of selective memory (and don't go getting recursive or derivative on me here, I hear you thinking: "But you are just applying creative memory to the memory of your thought process! You're fooling yourself at one step removed." I have no rebuttal to offer that could answer that charge except suspect assertions of veracity that serve no purpose). I knew that I had something good, and I held on to it.

Long it's been since I found my foot in the door and pushed my leg through rather than pulling the door closed as I withdrew.

The Beast At The Door

So many things that I've put aside of late. I experience so many things that I long to put to page, but where to find the time to stop experiencing and start writing? I came to the conclusion weeks ago that it was criminal to have this life and these thoughts and this ability to meld them that we call writing. Moreso still then, to use it! My great, and sometimes only, regret is that I have not time enough for all the evils I could perpetrate (Aaron's shroud should hang over my coffin).

What is the point of holding on to these little corpuscles of hate? Do they make me more interesting, the way that I like to think they do, deep down in the dark where dwells this dank? Nihilism says that I must hold my hate as nothing to me, just as I would demand my greatest joy must be called no different from dust and ashes, or a Big Mac, or any other (nothing new) under the sun. The "true" nihilist (and try to think that phrase aloud without laughing) then says, but if all is equally nothing, what then must we conclude of nihilism? There too, we see that it holds no more weight than anything which it desiccates to so much meaningless dust. It seems our whim is truly all that can be given credence. But let us not fall into the existential joys of choosing not to make a choice just yet!

What greater crime is their than betrayal? Like any reasonable person, I find no joy in Inferno. Beatrice was a cold mockery of our lust for purity that sickens me to this day. And yet! And yet, somehow he and I come to agreement on this. The sociopath, wise in her solitude at the top of the lonely mountain, says with satisfaction: "the only people you should be afraid of are the people who are nice to you, because gratitude is a burden that you might never be able to repay. better for people to be assholes -- that way, you can brush them off as easily as lint." But to this I say: I would rather owe someone a million times the value I place on my life than to place any trust in them and see it tossed aside as the worthless thing I fear it is.

There is your nihilism then! Tossed into the rubbish heap for the sake of my own sense of pride; my vanity bleeds out in scarlet colors in my eyes that never seem to make the leap even from the quickening tension in my neck to the words I tap out onto this keyboard. Oh how I hate you! Not a general hate for all, no, not at all. I hate each and every one of you, and for a very good reason (someday, someone will catch me out with all my stolen phrases from better speakers and writers than I, or is that just a vain sort of vanity to hope such a thing?). Each of you has fallen short in your own human way that I just can't stand at all, and I, for hating you for it, have fallen most short of all.

Did you know? I was in Alaska recently. Juneau. I climbed a mountain. The doctors and the biologists, they invited me to their party. I ate the most delicious fish, caught by some of the attendees that very day. I drank their beer. I drank their wine. All in moderation, of course, I was a representative of someone else (my employer) and there was decorum to maintain. As the night waxed and attendees left, they produced instruments. Instruments for music. Guitars, ukuleles, bass, and voice. They melded together, amateurishly, and more truly for it. They spoke aloud the chords they would play and asked each other the names of songs so they could play together. Some remarks were exchanged between them, those warriors of measures and keys. "Oh, I can't really play in G." "This thing is best in E." For all that hate that I hold for you, and you, and you, and all for very good reasons, I must tell you all. I hated them the very most of all, more than all of you put together, at that moment, and maybe even now. I nearly broke down in tears in front of them, and from that drew even more vitriol to fuel the bile building behind my teeth.

It was so pure and wholesome. Those doctors of life and the music they played together, cooperative and joyful and all for the sake of the joy of expression and community that they shared. They were there in that moment, and I looked on, an outsider at a party that I had been invited to. I had no instrument to play! No voice to add, raised in song and rejoicing. I didn't know any of the songs they sang. I felt so poisonously cast out that I knew then how it feels to be as loathsome and alone as the Christians (jealously) say the jealous atheists really are. I produce nothing but my hateful words chiseled onto sand in a hole I dug deep just so no one else can see.

Far better then, that I am here in New York City. There are enough people around that I can finally feel alone.

I can't seem to write a post anymore without being a little embarrassed by it later on. Who was that past self who wrote this drivel? Didn't he know that was trite, hackneyed, a waste of time for both writer and reader? Perhaps this contributes to my stop and start writing. I can't help but look back over past utterances and feel as though I could have better spent the time of myself and others reading more or sleeping.

[Pro tip: writing about how often you write is really interesting. Do this often!]

Google Reader seems to sap away my creative juices such that I often find little left in the tank when I have time to devote to larger efforts. Why write several paragraphs on the Department of Defense deploying area denial weapons or Colorado Springs converting itself into a libertarian -wasteland- utopia when I can make snide one line comments on a shared item in my public items feed? Or argue incessantly over hypotheticals and whether saying or doing this or that is racist or just misguided or "reflects the reality of the situation" so it's not racist at all because really, it has to be the fault of those damn lazy minorities that they... where was I?

I have a lot of project writing that's been building up, and it weighs on my mind at times. Something I liked about a game I played, In A Wicked Age, was that the game incorporated a "We Owe" list into play. Characters who met certain requirements were put on the list. They deserved more as a result of what they had achieved. Similarly, I feel as though certain events place themselves on my own internal "I Owe" list. I owe an anniversary to a mistake. I owe gratitude to those deserving who too often get short shrift only as a result of my failings. I owe my mother, Mother's Day having just occurred. I owe at least one piece to my father as a down payment, a silly/solemn (it varies) vow I made just after his death. I owe my talents my life's work. I owe love my life's devotion.

As time has passed, I find it harder to give voice to the words that roil inside. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and lack of use atrophies all strength. At this stage it seems to be all I can do to stave off being left only with the ability to recall dimly that there is yet more to write. I wrote more when I was younger. I had more to say and less reservations about saying it. It would be more accurate to say I had less to say and fewer inhibitions against shouting it. A world that for all appearances has no interest in what you have to contribute is one in which you learn to hold back. Resounding silence teaches a stern lesson.

In those halcyon days I knew a group of folks and we all used livejournal. I wrote. I commented on the entries of others. I received comments on my own entries. It was a good system. Being at an ivory tower helped to keep things limited to a general pool of knowledge, and we could share thoughts and opinions on a more varied pool of subjects with a more varied pool of interlocutors than we had opportunity for in our classes. Those times passed. As my friends list shrank, my interest waned. An echo chamber loses a lot of its appeal when you just see what you wrote repeated back at you. In time, it was only of use as a semi-regular catalog of anything that caught my attention hard enough to force further thought from me in the form of words organized into occasionally sequential blocks of quivering word-speech-text.

It's odd, or perhaps just self-centered of me, but the internet seems to mature on a pace with myself. In earlier days, I/we had not a thought for how my/our actions would reverberate down the line. Once, we had profiles open for all our peers to see. Once, I wrote whatever came to mind that I had the impulse to write on. Now, we keep our facebooks profiles private. Now, I stop to consider that perhaps writing this or that will say something about me, affect future employment opportunities, or show me to be less erudite than I wish to be viewed as, and stop writing. I have let the experimental entries go instead of committing to them as I once did. The words are stillborn on my fingers and find no release except in "that's lame" or "that's awesome" comments on pictures of kittens and child kidnappers in Haiti (that was chiasmus careful readers, I don't think kittens are lame).

I've been reading a blog of a friend of a friend of whom I am fond and would consider a friend if I had had more time to interact with him. As it is, I view him as favorably as I probably can another person and read what he writes about himself. He writes often, and has even been published. I wonder sometimes if devoting myself to a longer project might be what I need to give voice to those things that linger, to cross things off the list. Knowing me, that won't happen. I'm not the most diligent of workers. I am best suited for that which calls for focus and delivering short bursts of intense effort, leaving the longer repetitive grunt work to be done by other hands. Not to say I can't grind when it's called for, but I have noticed that as my options have grown, I find grinding harder to focus on. Blinders, if I could find such as would suffice for me, would substantially increase my productivity.

However, while being blind would allow me the time to pare down the list, it would leave me with only a small portion of a lifetime's experience to draw upon both as inspiration and as a means to improve my craftsmanship. Generalizing from that dualistic view (the value of being closed or open) is an item of interest for me, but I'll leave that to my list. I can console myself, I suppose, by remembering that some of the best works now circulating were produced by men of advanced age with no real repertoire to boast of up until that point. So long as I keep hold of those things that I owe a new life to, live yet more of those things, and read, I can act as if they are simply delayed for the benefit of all.

Future self, how was this one?

Sigh.

"Thank you for your application to GAO Entry-Level Analyst, GAO-10-TEAMS-0347-02. You were notified on December 15, 2009 that your application was forwarded to a screening panel for further consideration and that we expected to notify you of the panel's decision within the next 30 to 60 days. Due to the volume of applications received, the screening panel is still reviewing applications. We hope to complete this review in the next 30 days and will alert you to your status at that point."

At least I'm still in the running...

Old Songs From Nowhere

Many stories are left untold.

In this world, there are more than six billion people. All of them have stories. They all have events and circumstances that have shaped their experiences, how they learned, how they coped, and how they came to understand the areas of their expertise. No, we aren't all individual snowflakes, but we do all have unique combinations of experience, propensity, and action that leave us in our respective frames of reference when it comes time for us to make decisions. Sometimes, we have no choice. Other times, we do. Understanding the difference between the latter and the former, and understanding that there is a difference between the two, are the basic fabric from which I draw the most inspiration.

I have spent most of my life assuming that of paramount importance was recording what happened. The archival aspect held paramount. But perhaps I need to digress.

I have an exceptional memory. It is my defining characteristic. I have doubts as to my intelligence, my recollection, my judgment (most of all), etc. So far, I have yet to come across sufficient experience to say that my capacity to remember has not played to my advantage in estimations of my capacities in any other field. As such, I have little reason to believe that estimations of my intelligence, discernment, etc. have anything to do with anything other than my capacity for recall.

Art is about expressing what we all feel but can't really feel as we can adequately express. It is what I celebrate. It is what I seem unable to replicate. I want new things. I want there to be those things that we never saw coming. I want a world where we don't know what to expect. We will be better for it, should it ever happen.


I can't say whether this played into it or not, but I can say that above all things, I have found paramount that all things be remembered. Whatever else we can say is important, I have been on the side of recording and analysis. I can remember. I can dissect. I know that what happens is what has been, and what has been is what matters. We must understand what has been in order to understand what can be.

That part of me that demands that all things be recorded is very pleased by my current employment. It is my job to record exactly what people say in regards to legal, and thus by definition important, events. What doesn't jive with me is the demand that our exact records also correspond to the expectations that the record of what is, what has been said, what was meant, be understood, and understandable by, the readers that want to read it later. If they want to really understand, they have to be THERE. They must listen, and feel, and then understand. They can't read it in static, in mere words, and really understand. So much goes into spoken word that can't be rendered easily, simply, in written text. Not without commentary. Not without the listener informing the reader in ways that can't be justified in our legal system.

We must have objectivity. We must have that sense of neutrality, despite what the listener feels or interprets. We can't have a legal system without it. But how can we divorce Herodotus from his History? How can we really think that those who make the record won't feel the pain of those who suffer? How can we expect that the watchers will watch, without really being watched?

I just want the world to respond to what is true. I want the truth to rule all things. I want sanity in the world. I want the facts to determine how we act. The best way to act in light of those ideas is to say, "What has happened? In what way did it happen? How can we act to influence the way things happen to make the good things that we have determined happen?"

Perhaps this is absurd. Maybe I have decided on a course of action that reflects a hopelessly Cartesian approach to reality. But... I want a reality that can be tested. I want a reality that will withstand rigor. I want to know that I don't just accept things just because. I want there to be an objective reality that we can accept in light of current knowledge and for no other reason than because we have no alternative that is more acceptable as an alternative.