Wednesday, February 27, 2013
What Is Life About?
God help me, because I don't know anymore.
Is it mating? Is that it? Raising issue/kids? Is it about status, finding a way in this cold world and holding your head high against the tides that be?
A Beethoven string quartet? Beauty? Some aesthetic ideal? Aren't aesthetic ideals just sort of reflections of what's so beautiful about life, though, in some more essential way?
Getting into good relations with others? Well, what does that mean? What relationship is crucial and honest, not a pot-luck or amalgam of hesitations and false-starts? Which relationships work?
Having respectful kids? Parents? Elders?
Is it not going mad by the time you've reached middle age? Recognized mortality? Fended off youthful idealism? Found enlightenment? Where? How? What does it look like? Is there any right answer? I'm stunned for something correct. Please provide it.
Have faith? Is that the answer? Have faith that there is purpose?
In the end, is religion effective because it is effectively all we can do??
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Always So Serious?
Odd thing is that I don't think I'm serious, in my head. This is almost an autistically removed answer because it might seem rabidly literal. On the other hand, it is utterly true. I do tend to stray toward the intense, or whatever. Whatever in that I don't take the label so seriously, knowing the level of intensity that others I've been exposed to subscribe and act accordingly.
How to respond, then, while not making the questioner uncomfortable?
See, side note necessary here. [insert] I'm trying to figure this out as I write. I don't have it pre-figured and ready for writing. There's a bit of a difference between the two. During the first, I actually am exposing myself in a kind of thorough way that's frightening. And exhausting.
Here's a separate side note, to myself, from myself: folks don't really care. It isn't worth actually being vulnerable. Every possible stimuli out there, exterior-side, screams toward the pedestrian, the strategy, that is, to be utterly fake and impulsive-driven and vaingloriously self-obsessed, mannequin-like when listening to other viewpoints, lioness-like when pouncing down the throats of non-interlocutors--non-interlocutors, I'll remind thee, self, that are fundamentally hard to identify. Damnit. It isn't a puzzle. It is a fucking diaphanous piece of opacity, of dual layered glass, that I/you can see through and see a reflection in, and I am reduced to measuring geometrical approaches to understand the angle of others, whether they are, as it were, in the reflection, or on the other side. And either option is not heartening.
Another side-note. If you don't know who is on your side, it doesn't make sense to jump down random throats. It also doesn't necessarily make sense to have sides, except that they increase cooperation exponentially, because they offer psychological buy-in, which is a precious commodity, one that, shucks, can't just be produced by sheer will, but is the by-product of a series of emotional compromises and mutual reckoning. Also, there's the issue that if you tell yourself that folks don't care, and act accordingly, they certainly won't care, but if you are sincere, and act accordingly, perhaps you'll find a commonality out there, one that can ring true and whatnot. The question is of weighing the possible nuclear size harm of being hyper-sincere all the time, and of the problem, of course, that when you're sincere and interested in things, people are always asking you things like, "why are you so serious?" and that's fucking annoying, and makes you not want to be so sincere all time, and basically revert to a kind of nihilistic solipsism that's carnally gratifying and totally empty. Which is the problem, isn't it?
So, there's a blindness. That's what it is. A blindness to taking action. And there's a blindness in speaking (or writing on a blog); one that manifests itself in the incapacity to produce cocked and ready-to-consume pithy titty-pinchers of humorous content. Mostly because we don't know who we're interacting with, not that easily, anyway, and certainly in a large anonymous place like the internet. And, worse, perhaps, there's no guarantee, even in that space, of other like-minded souls to find their way together, even if I'm as sincere-as-is-possible. There are no monitors of companionship, after all. There's no assurances, no guarantees
There's only you/me, our looking glass butane-filled science experiment of piecing it together, pretending that, once we get there, to the end of the journey, we'll have been successful getting some message across to one another about our experiences, so that we can breath a sigh of relief, and die knowing that: we weren't alone after all. That would be a feeling of relief worth dying over, don't you think?
How to respond, then, while not making the questioner uncomfortable?
See, side note necessary here. [insert] I'm trying to figure this out as I write. I don't have it pre-figured and ready for writing. There's a bit of a difference between the two. During the first, I actually am exposing myself in a kind of thorough way that's frightening. And exhausting.
Here's a separate side note, to myself, from myself: folks don't really care. It isn't worth actually being vulnerable. Every possible stimuli out there, exterior-side, screams toward the pedestrian, the strategy, that is, to be utterly fake and impulsive-driven and vaingloriously self-obsessed, mannequin-like when listening to other viewpoints, lioness-like when pouncing down the throats of non-interlocutors--non-interlocutors, I'll remind thee, self, that are fundamentally hard to identify. Damnit. It isn't a puzzle. It is a fucking diaphanous piece of opacity, of dual layered glass, that I/you can see through and see a reflection in, and I am reduced to measuring geometrical approaches to understand the angle of others, whether they are, as it were, in the reflection, or on the other side. And either option is not heartening.
Another side-note. If you don't know who is on your side, it doesn't make sense to jump down random throats. It also doesn't necessarily make sense to have sides, except that they increase cooperation exponentially, because they offer psychological buy-in, which is a precious commodity, one that, shucks, can't just be produced by sheer will, but is the by-product of a series of emotional compromises and mutual reckoning. Also, there's the issue that if you tell yourself that folks don't care, and act accordingly, they certainly won't care, but if you are sincere, and act accordingly, perhaps you'll find a commonality out there, one that can ring true and whatnot. The question is of weighing the possible nuclear size harm of being hyper-sincere all the time, and of the problem, of course, that when you're sincere and interested in things, people are always asking you things like, "why are you so serious?" and that's fucking annoying, and makes you not want to be so sincere all time, and basically revert to a kind of nihilistic solipsism that's carnally gratifying and totally empty. Which is the problem, isn't it?
So, there's a blindness. That's what it is. A blindness to taking action. And there's a blindness in speaking (or writing on a blog); one that manifests itself in the incapacity to produce cocked and ready-to-consume pithy titty-pinchers of humorous content. Mostly because we don't know who we're interacting with, not that easily, anyway, and certainly in a large anonymous place like the internet. And, worse, perhaps, there's no guarantee, even in that space, of other like-minded souls to find their way together, even if I'm as sincere-as-is-possible. There are no monitors of companionship, after all. There's no assurances, no guarantees
There's only you/me, our looking glass butane-filled science experiment of piecing it together, pretending that, once we get there, to the end of the journey, we'll have been successful getting some message across to one another about our experiences, so that we can breath a sigh of relief, and die knowing that: we weren't alone after all. That would be a feeling of relief worth dying over, don't you think?
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