29 November 2004

She smiles
and softly laughs,
“They listen to you?”

It stings.

I smile and sigh,
gaze into the great unfocus.
I do not respond,
for response to the subconscious
is the height of impropriety:
How dare you tell me
who I am?

“You say that I
should not be heard.
Your mirth says as much.”

I do not say this;
I respond in kind:
“Why would they not?”
(She would not)
(How dare she tell me who I am)

( C: 2 )

I cannot sleep; insomnia piled upon insomnia, question upon question, anguish upon anguish. So many questions I have; they fill the pages and margins, ‘till the pages and margins can no longer be filled. And yet the questions come, unbidden -- they must be addressed, must be written, remembered. I scribble on what I can, the desk, napkins, on my own hand. And yet the questions come, they must be written, they must be answered. My hand aches from the torture, pain upon pain. And yet I must write, the questions continue to come. I fill the papers, the surfaces, the walls of the room, the walls of my mind, and the questions spill out; finding no place to be stored, they flow like river, filling the room, washing over me, choking me. But they must be noted, they cannot be ignored, but they can find no place to be satisfied: the dam, broken, washes over both the dirt and the trees, peaceful water, violent in its immensity. And so I find myself in this river, surrounded by that thing I have wrought, and I know I am beyond myself. I cannot divert this torrent, though I have created it. The river has become a power unto itself.

( C: 3 )

28 November 2004

Calm faced gaze,
Dark scream fades,
Across the aeonian drift.
Acropolis long,
Ephemeral dawn,
Mortal, fleeting shrift.

( C: 0 )

27 November 2004

Samuel blinked open his eyes, opening the portals, and he gasped without taking breath; and through the flow of his grey hair, he could see beauty that even the greatest king could have never acquired – a splendor imperishable. Through the portals blurred with flowing water, he gazed at the submerged glacier, and his head turned in reverence.

White light fled the surface, forming rank and file, smooth glowing lines falling and fading into the black deep. But, here and there, the water formed radiant battle lines, harshly seeking to repel this bright invader; yet, the defense was ill-formed. Rank upon rank fell smoothly to their willing doom to retreat in glorious chaos, sparkling soldiers reporting, battle cry resounding.

Samuel gazed at this in mute silence; could he react in any other way? Water, blue and light, white – ice luminous. Samuel couldn’t imagine that, for all of her jewels, the Queen could know such beauty. The light nearly blinded him; the harshness brought tears to his eyes, and his head drifted toward the surface to see what he could see.

He saw the light drift lazily in, in from the burning, dangerous world; the surface seemed intangible, a pretend world, far from this ideal tranquility. Samuel knew the world above was real, but his mind was sluggish, and it seemed surreal that men would live a world as imperfect. A name came to mind. Ann, was it? He couldn’t quite recall, there was beauty in that name, he felt.

But he glanced at the sparkling beauty in front of him, and saw the way the light gave itself perfectly in beauty, and how its ideal quest for a new life was not destroyed by its idealism, how they were sent off and made a greater thing – a perfect jewel, glowing as far as his eyes could see. A perfect vision of beauty, not flawed as the one his slow mind stumbled over, again and again. Ann, was it? He remembered her and their ardor, but now he was cold, so cold, in the presence of a more piercing and demanding beauty.

Shivering, in the presence of majestic beauty, his heart slowed. Was it love? But Samuel was cold. He looked upon the submerged glacier a final time, and his white hand strained outward for a final moment’s beauty. And he smiled. A word – a name? – formed upon his lips, and his eyes closed. Caught in a current, he drifted, last rest in aeonian splendor.

( C: 3 )

Papa! Papa! Tell us a story!

Why yes, children. I’ll tell ya a story. Let me tell ya about the time when I was a pair of shoes...

(sorry, boys and girls - got nothing tonight)

( C: 1 )

25 November 2004

Happy Thanksgiving, folks. Enjoy the turkey and the time.

This year, unlike last, we actually had turkey. Ah, things are as they should be!

Anyway, have a pleasant day.

( C: 2 )

23 November 2004

I dreamt this several years back: I was never quite certain how to understand and interpret it, but I still found it compelling, an absolutely significant story wrapped in the veil of night shadow.

One

He had been elected to the second highest office in the country. By all rights, his vice presidency was the most inconsequential in history. This vice president was considered foolish by the most wise.

For the president had his own close advisor, known as ‘the Senator’. It was she who attracted all of the attention, all of the praise. It was her intelligence and wisdom that had set her above others. She was by all means brilliant; her importance surpassed the president’s. All knew and acknowledged this.

The vice president frequently walked through the halls of the White House, looking to accomplish some purpose – for he was the most insignificants of insignificants. He often came uninvited to meetings, but every important conversation would be silenced. All knew that he was both young and useless.
Read on...

( C: 0 )

More post tomorrow. Tonight was fun, fun, fun, quick rush home and write an astronomy test as fast as possible and go to bed and then wake up and rush to school thank you very much.

CNN.com - Girl with rare disease doesn’t know pain - Nov 1, 2004. Read that link, and search for pain in the blog archives -- the article makes clear my central thesis in regards to pain: that it is not only necessary, but good.

( C: 0 )

21 November 2004

I photoshopped this a while ago, and liked it... but never found a use for it. So, here it is.

( C: 3 )

A special edition of boring picture Sunday: bad picture Sunday. Your assignment is to look at these pictures, and imagine them photographed with a high quality camera.

( C: 3 )

20 November 2004

Writing a good book requires knowing reality. Observation and knowing, experiencing -- isolation might create a great abstract book, a myth of a kind, which idealistically gazes upon a false world (Atlas Shrugged comes to mind. Compelling, but false), but the great novel depends on its intense connection to what is... reflecting truth and life through word and mind. I admire DeLillo for his reality; what he writes is true, in a sense (though not ultimately) since it shows this world clearly. His characters are alike and unalike us, consciences thinking the thoughts we cannot.

Of what can I now write? What do I know of life as a man of twenty-five, when I have experienced so little, known so little, and intentionally blind myself? Blind, I hope to write a story of vision -- ignoring the pain of vision. The cost -- I always desire to avoide the cost. Stay without pain! Might as well say, “Bread with no grain” or “life with no experience”.

And yet I know pain -- intimately, as a man knows his wife -- or, perhaps, more akin to how a man knows his mistress. Certainly, there is intimacy of a sort, but empty intimacy, a physical embrace which is both knowing and unknowing. In time, that embrace grates, becomes insufficient. Merely momentary, it is satisfied in the moment, and ever the moment must be increased, lengthened, repeated, until there can no longer be a moment and the moment is gone.

Stretched to infinity, the moment becomes all consuming and utterly unsatisfying: and it can never be extended any further, and can no longer fulfill. And one is left with the pin pierced void.

Such is the pain I feel, and though I know it intimately in the moment, the moment feels stretched, increasingly empty. Soon it will reach the point where it will be always present and never satisfying. And at that point, I will truly know: this pain is not derived from life, but from myself -- selfish, like the mistress’ embrace. The pain will stretch into an eternal moment, but it is not eternal, and will be therefore proven false, untrue to me though it is of me. Useless for knowing the world because I created it, because it is from me, because it is selfish and therefore does not contain the knowledge and worth that one gains through the pain of relationship. Useless because it is not truly intimate; and so the depth the pain might provide is gone.

Edit:

Reflecting on this post, I’ve realized that the ‘mistress’ will necessarily become all-consuming upon being stretched into eternity, since the moment becomes all time, she becomes the central figure, the one thing around all others revolve. So though she can never satisfy, she becomes the center of all things, all thought, all actions. The moment of experience made by choice has become the controller, and the free choice has removed free choice. Choosing self-pain over the pain of relationship does this: freely one chooses the option that leaves him the apparent freedom from the randomness, chaos, and pain of life... and he therefore is sundered from free will.

( C: 0 )

Er, I have something I’d like to post, but it’s in my notebook, which is in my car, which is outside, which is too far away. I’ll post it tomorrow.

In other news, I bought some more memory today, 512 megs worth, which is 2/3 more than I originally had on this computer (which is to say, I initially had 256 megs of ram, creating a massive bottleneck). My computer now runs fantastically and that makes me relatively happy.

And, oh, now that I think about it, it was flashback friday. You’ll probably get one of those on Saturday or Sunday. Mea culpa!

More tomorrow.

( C: 5 )

17 November 2004

It’s been a while since I’ve done Poland blogging, so here’s an excellent post on the historical nature of the Polish-French alliance, and how that alliance came to fade. Unknown to me, Poland and France have had a long standing alliance which -- apparently like most alliances with the French -- has often left Poland betrayed. In fact, the Polish calvary supported Napoleon with the expectation that, should Napoleon conquer, he would cause the Polish nation to rise again.

( C: 0 )

16 November 2004

Bow to dust, oh, son of man*,
from dust to dust,
fall then stand. *not a reference to Christ

Words do not come unbidded, they hardly come at all. I have no hidden muse -- tonight, I am alone, and alone there comes no words, no story, no elan.

I wish for a muse, for the words to pour from me, that gift from the gods. I often feel a story within me: but it lurks, ever elusive, in what depths I have. And I feel those depths daily shrinking, the deep no longer calling to the deep; and I fear the story -- its lifeblood removed -- will die, ‘till nothing but dry bones and poor memory remain.

Melpomene, hidden, Melpomene, lost.

( C: 0 )

Older chests reveal themselves Like a crack in a wall
Starting small, and grow in time
And we always seem to need the help
Of someone else
To mend that shelf
Too many books
Read me your favourite line

Papa went to other lands
And he found someone who understands
The ticking, and the western man’s need to cry
He came back the other day, yeah you know
Some things in life may change
And some things
They stay the same

Like time, there’s always time
On my mind
So pass me by, I’ll be fine
Just give me time

Older gents sit on the fence
With their cap in hand
Looking grand
They watch their city change
Children scream, or so it seems,
Louder than before
Out of doors, into stores with bigger names
Mama tried to wash their faces
But these kids they lost their graces
And daddy lost at the races too many times

She broke down the other day, yeah you know
Some things in life may change
But some things they stay the same

Like time, time, there’s always time
On my mind
So pass me by, I’ll be fine
Just give me time,
Time, there’s always time
On my mind
Pass me by, I’ll be fine
Just give me time

( C: 3 )

15 November 2004

I believe that astronomy will now be my favorite class. Go to this site, download the solar system simulator, and you’ll see why. It’s the coolest simulation I’ve ever seen, both graphically, and in terms of the information presented. I want nothing more then to spend the next several hours wandering aimlessly through the galaxy.

And it’s open source -- so I hear that some Trekkies and Star Wars fans are putting together their own little ‘tours of the known universe’.

Seriously. Download it. It’s awesome.

( C: 3 )