#298

Well, my test was not a success. Didn't get too far before a silly mistake that I could have corrected failed me right out! This time I had the parking brake on during the air brake leak test, which is no good, and any mistakes in your brake test fail you outright. Miserable! Foolish! Ah, the pain of an actual fail is so much more searing than a practice fail. Well, I can try again on Tuesday, and I have promised the tester a perfect test at that time. And by gum, I shall deliver!

Dang, man, though. Fuck. Would have preferred to pass. That would have been preferable, to me. But, as my tester said basically immediately--everything happens for a reason. I believed this as a child, then I doubted it, then unequivocally held that nothing happens for any reason, and eventually I came to believe once more that every particle in the universe is exactly where it needs to be for all time. I did not proceed with my test and pass it today, and the consequences of that will affect my life and the life of those around me such that years from now, I will look back and say "None of this would have happened if I'd passed my test right away. Thank God. I say Yes to this life with an obstinate joy. Do you hear me, demon? A stubborn, relentless joy, a firm and clear and uncompromising Yes!"

*

Ha! Feel better already. Also, we got plenty more moving done. Still a lot to do, but life changes so fast all the time, and people are always doing everything they can to make it faster and faster--annoyances it may contain, but this slow-burn move has its beauties and advantages, as well. 

*

Ezra just came up to me and showed me that someone is selling my books at a higher price than the one I set. Through eBay! Couldn't really care less about the money angle or whatever. Any angle. Guess I hope they do a better job than me? I mean, it is barely possible to do worse. Also the seller is very obviously a bot.

*

Looking back at this post--and my life--I get the sense about myself as a terrible letdown to my family, especially in times/cultures with exacting expectations regarding the product of family units. I have fun imagining myself falling pretty neatly into the a Japanese stereotype of dudes like me. A disgrace, but not like, the worst conceivable disgrace. A faintly amusing, mostly harmless, embarrassing failure--"Gakkari shita chōnan. So fortunate for the parents that there followed other sons, better sons, sons who did not squander their promise."

Drifter mindset, drifting life. Head in the clouds, buried in books, lost in space. I may have mentioned before that at an overnight camp, I was given the nickname "The Wandering Fetus". And, well, yes. To offset this, I've done my best to work hard and at the very least not be a freeloader or a burden, and tried hard to do right and be a support to those around me, when I wasn't drunk off my nutsack or letting the devil take it all.

So it goes! Peace out and give head, good people. Or don't! Your choices are your own.

--JL

#297

If, when typing it up in this here blank space, I bring up truth and its unknowability a lot, it is because this concept, this question of the truth--and it is a Question--Quest--is the thing I have been thinking about the most, every day, for as long as I can remember. I don't believe I have gone through a single day of this life without asking myself at least once what the truth is, the real Truth, the Supraliminal Immanent capital-T Truth before which all miniscule-t temporal workaday truths are lies. The question of the true nature of God, in other words. My hubris has always been the wish to look upon the face of God. 

Death may show me, or be the starting-point of new stage of the Quest. I'm cool either way. What can I surmise in my lifetime? What does the Question do for me in my lifespan, how does it shape my existence and my being in the world? I'm finding out. Seeing, and at the end, I will see what I have seen. Seen what I will see. Man, is it hot in here? I'm woozy. This form of contemplation has this effect on me. Not vertigo or anxiety--a feeling of my corporeal liquidity changing state. Brain simmering up to a boil. Vascular system filling up with clouds.

*

Tomorrow is my bus-driving test! I've learnt to drive a school bus, and should pass barring I mess up on any of the pass/fail elements which fail your whole deal immediately. On my pretest yesterday I did just that--the bus is not secure at a stop such as a railway crossing even if the parking brake is engaged and the service brake is pressed unless it is neutral gear, and I forgot that gear change, and only that, once--but that's a total fail. I am confident, however, that tomorrow will be a successful endeavor! Mistakes are the greatest of all teachers, their stinging, acrid lessons always the most enduring.

Whole process got me thinking about other stuff I could learn and get certified for, like CPR (one should have this on lock anyway, but haven't been certified since I was a teenager) and, dunno, whatever. Could get more endorsements on my commercial license, for example. Maybe I could learn to drive an ambulance, or a fire truck? So much seems possible now that I can maneuver forty feet and almost five tons. What else is licensed and useful? At what point does one have an embarrassing amount of licenses?

*

Ok, that's that for today. Please peace the fuck out.

--JL

#296

No matter how much I write about internet--its pernicious toxins, its miraculous fruits--its mysteries, lies, and obfuscations--its great telescopic beam aimed everywhere and nowhere--it feels like I hardly say anything. This is probably because I don't know much, if anything about internet, in the end, no matter how much of it I read and experience. It may be like a dream, in that it is an unreality that is integral to the makeup of reality. One cautious observation: its portion of that makeup has grown strangely and of its own properties, like an organism. Or a virus, or a cancer. 

Often one reads what internet scholars have to say about internet and one can agree, while wondering why it doesn't feel like the whole story. I think this is because any one person is only ever writing about a small part of the internet, like someone describing the part of an iceberg visible above the water. The internet is thousands of miles of deep, deep ocean full of icebergs--truly, the net is vast--but typically we zero in on a few peaks when we talk about the whole shebang. I mean, there's trenches down there. Billions of cubic meters of water. Why so much babble about this or that algorithm, or a couple of companies? Because you have a word count on your article. Because books and dissertations can only be so long.

Again, like a dream, writing about them is no substitute for dreaming them, and if there is an art and science to dreaming, there is only so much that others can tell you. The dreamer must dream in order to dream. So it is with perceiving the internet--diving into strange waters to see what you haven't seen before. Fishing for strange fishes.

Most people just hang out on top of one or two of the most enormous icebergs, trusting official reports about the reality of the underwater vastness, and call that the whole internet. Just like most people read an article or three, an introduction, an excerpt, and a short-form analysis, then feel qualified to tell you all about Aristotle's influence on Western thought, or what Nietzsche really meant, signified, and believed, or what effect a needle traveling at lightspeed can really have. These people don't know shit about fuck and can't be talked or listened to by any individual with even moderate presence of mind, but they are legion, and amongst themselves, they reinforce each other and create a certain social reality of perception and sufficiency of knowledge. They cannot be taught further, except by the next fragment forthcoming from their usual sources, which they absorb only to maintain the intellectual capital which is socially functional to them. And in the end, society has lots of functions to fill, and there is nothing wrong with that. We can't all endlessly wonder what the deeper meaning is to every phenomena that we encounter in life, or live as completionists and subtext addicts. People have a busy day to get to, so they'll eat disinformation over breakfast and regurgitate it over lunch.

Of course, this can be stressful nonetheless, but it doesn't really matter any more or less than, say, a giant humanoid insect in your dream telling you that in the crystal caves you just traversed, you left behind something important--yet, you cannot turn back. That is also kind of stressful, but functionally, concretely, you can keep dreaming, shift the dream, do whatever, even wake up. Neither will it interfere with you unduly in waking life, though the memory of it all is something to chew on. Similarly, on internet, it's easy to keep your mouth shut, and click away, or log off. There is more to think about elsewhere, different nutrients you could be absorbing, new and interesting vistas not available above the surface of the water that you could contemplate. 

Internet is supposed to tell us something about the real world; it is even supposed to inform us about reality, but that is not what it is really for, and not what it really does. But what even is the real world in the first place? The iceberg metaphor is equally applicable. 

No one knows anything. It's fun to exchange ideas about it, nice to think about, but far as I can determine, the only truth that has never been known by anyone lies in accepting and admitting the unknowability of the truth.

--JL 

#295

Each time I reread all the Calvin and Hobbes, I reflect upon how precious little philosophic and literary work has ever really done more for me than reinforce and enrich what is contained within its aggregate panels. In his comic strip, Mr. Watterson covers the full human range. It's all in there, and if you don't believe me, read it again. 

Not reading Calvin and Hobbes at this precise moment. Just thinking about it, as one does on a Sunday morning. 

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Thank you, beloved domesticated feline, for your contributions to this humble blog.

*

Monday morning, now. I'd hoped to generate more thoughts about whatever in order to feel this entry complete, to experience that round, alloyed sensation of the post being done. This did not happen. Sunday got real lazy. Well, I took some more stuff off the apartment walls and did the dishes, which is not nothing. It's not a lot, either. There was plenty more stuff to do which I did not, and that trend continues even as I type.

The apartment space empties slowly, and the new house fills slowly. We painted our room (two tones of green, for peace and headache soothing) and Ezra's office (his preferred bright yellow, for energy and focus [I can't be long in there, as such yellow saturation tends to give me headaches]). Well, Ezra and his mom painted his office, and did most of the work on the room. I helped some in there. Mostly, I've moved objects, largely books. All that remains in the apartment is the several books I'm reading currently and the nonfiction stacks. My office/bookroom was once some form of giant closet, with a degree of built-in shelving. My plan is to paint many symbols in black and gold and silver on the shelves and flat ceiling. This, combined with all my books, the art to be hung on the sloping part of the ceiling (the second floor is seemingly a converted attic, so our room and the bookroom have that triangular shape upper-story rooms sometimes have) and the objects that can be housed there should make for a room of great power and strong magic. Hope it's the place where I finish all my current projects and many more.

There's so much fucking work to do, though. Transforming the yard areas, fixing gutters, cat-proofing the necessaries, lots more painting, and much else.

Well, It's what life is for and all about,

*

Thinking a lot about old friends lately. Morbidly, you know. How many more will die without my getting to see them again even once? And I'm so underground and off the map that in the large bulk of cases, I don't even know how to contact people, and people have very few options in ascertaining that I'm still alive myself. 

All there is is what will be, and there is nothing in this world to fear, but I can't help but feel a certain sadness around it all. My own fault, of course. Solitude, privacy, and hermitage come at a high price. 

*

Been warming up for a real theological post, real godhead/spirit shit, but that is not this post. Soon, though. 

My practical bus driver test is on Sunday! I better work pretty hard this week. 

--JL