#421

It bears saying every now and again, lest I seem forgetful or inured: this wartime shit hurts my heart. All this war everywhere and more to come, and the pain of it is in every single day. It is terrible watching hatred consume people and the havoc of retribution. 

Man, I hate that people have to suffer and die on this nonsensical, farcical, line-in-the-sand, get-me-mine-and-fuck-you bullshit. Hate the vile vibration that possesses them to strike out rather than seek peace.

But I guess they have to. I guess we have to. 

Human is as human does.

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Dunno. Fuckin read a lot of history, fuckin lotta war and hate and anti-semitism every other thread of ghastly twisted ever-unspooling racism and genocide and conquest and theft and punishment and torture and every kind of sexual violence imaginable plus the dark everyday shit and the serial killers and the negligence of every kind which can even lead to stuff like mass poisonings and preventable catastrophes and finally, the rape and strangulation of the natural world, which continues apace. 

What the fuck, people? I am beginning to doubt a few sculptures and some sheet music were worth the trouble!

No, I must imagine that the good and happy times that people have managed to have in spite of the great machinations of rulers and the bloody paths that history must carve, despite the appetites of the wicked and insatiable and harmed, are in a balance. That process, awful as it is, creates the space for a more refined process.

Given time. Time always seems short. Must remember that.

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Primacy must be established always! Primates! We are primates! 

Disgusting.

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Per yesterday's quest: found a table, but not a card table. It cost money, and there was only the one. So! Nobody has to do anything. Nobody ever did, really.

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Ok. Gotta do a lotta stuff, man. Gotta clean things and fix things and make more art. Making more art is very very important to me right now. 

Coping mechanisms, eh?

--JL

#416

Part of the whole picture of smoking--inhaling smoke produced from the controlled burning of plant matter--is aesthetic and neurochemical and psychological. So like, smoking being actually bad for you and a problem and everything, for you personally, is factual because using something as a crutch to get through the days of your life prevents some forms of growth, so it takes away from you, and because hurting your body causes problems which take away from you and can even lead to the breakdown of your body and be the cause of your shuffling off. 

It is also bad for society, some say. That's not compelling in two ways:

1. I don't have to give a fuck about society and what allegedly I "cost" it. Fuck that. My interaction with society is an obligation under durance vile which I suffer owing to my attachments to individuals in my monkeysphere and because of the overwhelming, unjust, despicable and unforgivable powers that society wields in self-service. Nothing in the world is as bullshit and fucked up as human society. It does everything it possibly can to make slaves and corspes out of everything on the planet and the rock itself. Only by waging constant war are human beings able to slow the process by which society eats reality alive, leaving not even a husk. I don't owe society shit, jack, larry, fuck, or ass: it takes what it wants from me by force and against my consent, forcing its wickedly attained boons upon me and soiling me with complicity thereby. If you look me in the eye and tell me it's my responsibility to protect society and its "healthcare" systems by costing those systems less money by taking care of my lungs for everybody's sake--I mean, you understand that society put the cigarettes in my hands, right? 

This brings me to:

2. Indeed, it happens to be a mark and even one of the pillars of civilization. Getting drunk off rotten fruit and burning plants in a cave only to discover that these plants are seriously chill, maaaan--that's the key to human consciousness itself. Who knows if we'd ever have bothered to build a building were it not for the feelings and desires awakened by these discoveries and the wish to refine and develop them. Visions from the beyond and the breakdown of inhibition--society may hate it, but these lie at its foundations.

Conclusion: it might be weird when you think about it, it may be a tradeoff when it comes to good health, and it definitely has its price in every way you can interpret the phrase--but it is natural. Just as it is natural for society to sustain the contradiction that enables it to exist by making it something antisocial.

It is natural for all things to be in a balance of good and evil, chaos and order, light and dark. 

Much that is natural is contradictory, paradoxical, metaphorical.

*

Looking at obscure unplublished philosophers on the self.Gutenberg portal to try and decide if I want to give up the idea of commercial publishing altogether and join those ranks wholeheartedly. Most things were in cyrillic or hindi alphabets, honestly.

The first one in English was...I dunno if I want to give this oxygen by specific naming. They were Laws according to the Murphy format, except these seemed written by observing dudes like Elon Musk and Benito Mussolini and other playground-style superasshole ignoramuses whose force of personality, animal instincts, and flair for verbally manipulating bullshit into platforms saw them rise to power and influence. The laws appear to be a body of referential extramoral tenets to justify any and all selfish and hyper-self-preservative psychological norms and behaviors. The screen laid over these is that they seek to emphasize both negative and positive atttudes for interpretation and action--a neutrosophist logic.

A product of low self-esteem? A joke? An honest and, frankly, defensible philosophical arrangement, especially as it admits its own sophistry? Even though I personally bristle and rebel against every word I read, I kind of like it. This is a weird place. The other stuff I'm finding is weird too.

Might be going for this, folks. Looks like they take poetry and fiction and everything else.

Well, look. I'm not a teenager anymore, and at this time in my life their shit grinds my nerves. But the Red Hot Chili Peppers did say to give it away. While it is generally best to take any advice coming from Anthony Kiedis with, oh, a boulder of salt, broadly attending to the spirit of this exhortation is defensible and probably even correct. Factually Pointless is free and clear of ads and so it shall remain as long as the platform allows; why should the rest of my work be any different? 

Might I create confusion by publishing through amazon and also GutProj and also some other plans I'm refining to seed my writing, like a paper-and-ink version of Johnny Appleseed or a geocache Banksy? Do I make my old Ghost Hands Crew fancy a reality? 

Who cares. Let history sort it out or forget it entirely. It doesn't matter about me or anything except the work. However many ways I can try ensure the survival, propagation, and memory of the work, the more it may have a chance to illuminate and entertain more people, such as it can. That's the only point. Nothing has anything to do with whatever gain it may or may not bring me personally.

Updates forthcoming, I guess. 

*

Maybe I'll ride my bike today. See how my elbow feels about it.

Ok peace

--JL

#177

HOLY SHIT FINE PEOPLE WHATUP WHATUP ON THIS GOOD DAY

THE DAY OF THE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVENTH POST

177

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177

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Wanted to make a big fanfare for this number because it is one of my all-time favorites, high in the rankings, along with 111 and 117. And 777. But unlike for 111, I don't have a real meaningful post I don't think, and unlike for 117, I don't have a silly one-off. My plan is a real serviceable, workaday post. For the seven hundred and seventy-seventh post I will probably have to publish a book about numbers.

*

First, bet everybody's dying to know about my new threads! Well, you came to the one and only place where that information is available by description, motherfuckers. Strap in.

In pride of place, I should think, is a tie-dye shirt in green, gold, and red with the word "TRIPPIN" in black across the chest. The font is Times New Roman. This t-shirt first me perfectly, as though it were tailor-stitched for my shoulders and the rest of my torso also. At first glance looks like a Cafepress dealio someone dyed themselves but in reality I guess some hipster company made it and it is really high-quality and should last.

Another t-shirt that I have now is a light-blue one with Snoopy on the front, lying back with his eyes closed between a couple of white rocks, like his head pillowed on one and his feet up on the second, with his paws laid on his belly. Over him is the fragment "NOPE." in Cooper Black in that and below, in a much smaller Comic Sans, "NOT TODAY.". This seemed to me like a great shirt to wear on a day off set aside for mostly smoking weed and being on or near a porch.

Nice light soft plaid button-down, short in the sleeve and all soothing gray-blues and pinks and browns and olives and reds and light blues and teals. The balance of warm and cool and light and dark is very very good in this shirt, evoking somehow swamp, volcano, and seaside all at once. 

Pair of, I don't know, athletic capris? They appear to be a French brand. Dark navy with a little white mesh embroidery down each side seam, drawstrings. I could probably swim in these if I had to.

Found a black Nike golf cap identical to the one I use for work, except the work one is blue. My work cap is rad, very high-performance, and now I have two.

Also bought a gray button-down that was just super cool and made out of lightweight fabric supported with ultralight mesh and had a secret extra zippered pocket next to the breast pocket and also another pair of more typically cut athletic shorts and an exercise tee, but I must have left them in a second bag or something, because they are definitely not with me now. That's a pity.

*

Such a nice date though. Having forgotten part of my purchases is even consistent with the overall feeling of the date (perfect and beautiful with stuff just going slightly wrong all the time, so that over time it was a pattern that we noticed and enjoyed), so the loss of these garments is most fitting. I can see how their loss keeps things even, and the universe in balance, and I am at peace. Even more joyful. 

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^ This! This right here is why I don't have a lot of money!

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One of the reasons. One of the reasons. Picked up a book by Peter Straub and a book by Nelson Algren (Ghost Story and Neon Wilderness).

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Okay cool, now I'm gonna go do laundry and finish watching The Fifth Element. I'm hoping to get a lot of rest today.

Actually, fuck it. Going for a walk first. No more than a couple of miles. It's too nice a day and these bones can rest when life has run its course.

Please have a safe and fun Friday. Avoid the cold brutality of man, as far as you are able, and let not your wrath sit in judgment. Say your goodbyes to May.


--JL

#132

Living with your hand open is a tough and pointless gig. I'm suspicious of the notion of true karmic balance; when I think of balance in universal terms I do not think of perfection but a raging chaos whose ever-churning median is roughly stable and subject to collapse. So I do not believe that everything that goes around comes back around the same, I do not believe that you get what you give, I do not think that "good" deeds "outweigh" "bad" deeds (context and valuation, muddied waters). Those equations are part of the mathematics and sometimes things happen that way. 

However, guarantees are fake. There are no guarantees in reality. No givens. 

Furthermore acting generously or being kind because you believe that you are certain of returns is insufficient. That betrays a readiness to oversimplify things. I have never believed that action which is materially beneficial undertaken for reasons based at root in self-interest or greed or pure posturing in order to be perceived a certain way as ethically valid. It's fine, of course. Not going to cry foul on philanthropy or charity merely because it is selfish. Hollow and venal action can have positive results. 

I care more about motive because I care more about meaningful action. It seems gauche these days to be mindful of authenticity or even think that it is real, but there you have it. It also seems naive and stupid to suggest living an open-hearted life of positive sacrifice in the age of internet, and I get that. It is fucking rough out there and the current religion is the aggressive acquisition of securities and immortality.

But man, there is no use pretending that going through the motions is enough. If you are going to be generous, it can't be about skimming off the rounding errors. You have to be idiotic about it and let go of the security which allows you to be in a position to give without feeling. Everything you give needs to have weight to it because it ought to cost you something to let it go and you ought to be glad in the paying of the price, glad because you're strong enough to take it and it glad because the giving is enough and you don't have to give a thought to getting anything back.

Let everything drop from your hands. No hiding things in your fist. Open. Everything you own including your life is only borrowed; what the hell could it matter to hang on to it like that, clinging and grasping? Not to say that your things are somebody else's or that anyone can have whatever they want, but that what you own does not own you, that the pay not be more value than the work. 

We are all going to die and maybe it would be cool if on the way we treated each other like human beings instead of capital, if we had the courage to let ourselves be seen for who we are and the courage to see others as themselves, that all we owe each other is everything and nothing. Yeah, it's impossible to be a human being on internet, it's impossible to escape performance, everything is tainted, yeah, yeah. 

Generosity of spirit and a commitment to an open heart are more essential than ever now that they have been relegated to crude simplemindedness. Just gotta do it anyway, best you can, every opportunity you can catch, and fuck 'em off when they shame you. 

Life is for giving as many gifts as possible, for becoming a great and skilled gift-giver. That there may be an oversimplification; but if so, one I can get behind.


--JL