#511

Thought of the day, related to the last post:

Consciousness is a disgusting, inheritable disease. The idea that a "higher order" of consciousness infected us with this abortive, flawed operating system is as perfectly reasonable as any other irreperably underinformed notion that our finite and completely maladaptive code generators are capable of manifesting, and the intervention of alien species as reasonable as the idea of a surveilling creator-god or pantheon. This smorgasboard of illusion holds up generation after generation because one of the symptoms of our shared illness is to see that the collective mass of interacting symptoms plays out like a big horrible perfect shakespeare play if you happen to have a comfortable balcony seat, or can imagine one, as our diseased and overburdened brains are wont to do. 

Fucking goddamn things'll imagine fricking anything. Plus, because they are lazy on top of everything else that is wrong with them--cuntivorous and cocktivorous to the detriment of the psyche and the species, for instance--they will tend to repeat what they have seen before. So everything is still full-blown animal shit, even though by nature of iterating complexities and fractal growth it seems very different to the casual observer.

"Of course I am not a monkey! Look at my top hat! The top hat is a symbol--it shows that I am smart and beautiful, a god! I made a machine to think for me and solve all my problems because I am so smart and industrious! I am sure I did a good job because, see above, I am not a monkey! I am smart and beautiful, a god! I have the fanciest hat! I will repeat this, not quite the same way, until I die! And my children will repeat after me!"

Concussively stupid. Draining. Worse, I've written it before.

But I can save myself labor, if that's what interests me. There exists one convenient term to encapsulate all this: farce.

Utter farce.

*

Must be very tired--things must be bad--because readers have actually checked in, concerned, that something worse than usual is wrong with me. 

Maybe. Thoughts of the day, related to my well-being in the here and now:

The farce has me down, and I am not in an accepting mode. Resentful of my impending desctruction, even though there is not one single solitary thing that I can do to avoid it and retain my selfhood, which is the only real possession I have--without it I am nothing. This seems obvious, but think about it. Maybe it was true for you and you already gave up the ole self-ghost a long time ago, just kept on doing stuff because everybody does stuff all the time and they incessantly bray that it is normal and good to always be running around busy and providing themselves and others with proofs of authenticity and badges of correct accomplishment. But that is farce. It's just not true that anyone has to do anything. They are kidding themselves with trinkets, but you don't have to let them kid you, though if you would prefer to be kidded that is perfectly fine.

Anyway, an impasse: there is nothing I want to do as I await destruction. All action is contributing to farce, and I am tired of farce. So I do the things I always want to do, farce or no farce: I read, and play, and paint, staying as much as possible in my dark room with the curtains drawn and the space heater cranked to max. I think in circles and speak as little as possible to anyone. This is an act of hypocrisy, wasteful and selfish, but it's mine, and it's all I am fit to accomplish.

The only thing left is to lose my guilt about it and be as honest as possible.

I am going to eat what food I have availabe and enjoy being warm and entertained at the expense of others weaker and less fortunate than myself, feeding off their pain and their pointless deaths until I also die in a futile and meaningless way.

Heidegger was right about everything. Getting raped by this farce means no one ever has to say they are sorry for anything, ever. That's what Dostoevsky said, too, and Jesus and the Buddha. It is up to you if you decide farce is farce because of phenomenology or because of God or because the truth of infinity means that everything must be. It doesn't matter which you pick because it doesn't affect anything, not even you. From here you can sell special insights by the immaterial pound or give them away for free.

You will either let everything go or keep right on having what you can get, clinging to your safety and rationalizing whatever you must in order to do so. As will I. Others will keep on wanting, or decide to destroy the world. Too bad for us all. But none of us are better or worse than the other. In fact, we are all one infinite thing.

There is no one to blame for this. No one to hold responsible. If everyone is guilty, no one is.

*

Grappling with all this along with being unable to tear my eyes away has meant that I don't even bother to put on clothes anymore until I absolutely have to, and I am just flat-out not going to get a job. I feel fine, whatever. Exhausted. Just done.

This is my new "praxis": anti-resistant non-participation. If you get it and feel like getting in on it, you'll quit your job and peaceably wait for whatever is going to happen to just happen already with as much equanimity as you can summon.

The revolution has already begun!

*

Fun post next time. Why not.

--JL

#505

Yes, I took to bed on April first, completely in the grip of that illness called despair. Everything became very personal, you see. Everything so personal it was impossible to turn my hand or mind to anything constructive or pleasurable. Only to lie exhaustedly and think myself three hundred miles per hour into a delirious passion of hurt and rage and personal blame. 

What I forgot is that we are all guilty before one another, there is no one and nothing to blame, and the universe unfolds as it unfolds. That it is not personal. That I have no enemies, and we know not what we do. That this world is a violence and a charnel house precisely because we seek to control and blame and act as though we know what is best and what would have been better when we know nothing, nothing.

I forgot, as is so easy to do, that I know nothing. That perceiving hurt at the hands of others is a mistake--it is all just me hurting myself, them hurting themselves, for we are not, in fact, separate entities, but aspects of the godhead, a oneness and a completeness whose distinction is an illusion. 

But despair is only an illness. The worst, but just a passing thing. Here I am. Do with me as thou wilt.

Thank you, Kierkegaard, thank you Nietzsche, thank you Socrates, thank you all the rest. Truly the only consolation lies in philosophy and the contemplation/(re)discovery[immanence/transcendence] of the infinite universe/incomprehensible (smokeless flame, lossless radiance) mind of God.

That's what's important, mang.

*

Back to the vital business of being factually pointless. It is so off-brand of me to act like I should have a point. Must try to remember to remedy this tendency with maximum prejudice as I approach the next four hundred and ninety-four posts.

*

I better take a walk. Peace. As in, really.

Peace.

Also remembered this, yesterday; speaking of sublime consolation:

memento et mori

caro temporalis est

facta aterna



--JL

#367

A kind of madness I am well-used by has taken its familiar possessions. My mind is a ransacked fortress, the only feelings of safety found in raising Pocket Monsters with the only focus available to me that is quiet and warm, and that not unfailingly. 

Well, what are you gonna do? We are the piece of leather that we are, and have we have been shaped and marked indelibly by all that touches our surface and affects our texture, the irrestistible forces and the hard corners and edges of things. 

So it goes. The worst part is I'm not built to properly care about the problems, I am built to flow around them like water whenever possible and concentrate only on what I care about. My childhood shaped me for quiet acceptance of what befalls me, for the world is a beast not to be controlled, events are driven by the devil, and the only true release is in the infinite immanence of God, in radiance beyond the universe, in that which is that it is. My sense of victory comes with letting all pass through me and over me like a gravitational wave, leaving only the remnant on the very curve of spacetime, and a prayer that this remnant will be more free than the preceding form, less tied to the crude materials of this world. 

Yes, that part of me that longs to be destroyed. To be crucified, then ascend.

*

As anyone can see, deeply Catholic grandparents and a healthy chunk of early education administered by Jesuits really did a fucking number on this poor sinner. But how can I blame them, or anyone, for anything? The thing cannot be done in good conscience or honest thought. The thing cannot be done at all.

*

In the end, it's just us, alive, right this second, doing what we're doing. The past is dead. The next second could be anything. We have what we have in front of us, right now, and nothing else. Gettng the body to the next thing. 

There is no time or space for heavy shit in this life, for blame, or fear, or resentment, or anything except what is light to carry, what is uplifting, for hope and curiosity.

Love is heavy, but it's heavy as it needs to be to make you strong enough to fly.

--JL

#135

One awesome and super fun thing about human beings is how everything is definitely somebody's fault, and people have absolutely no ulterior motives or glaring biases when they assign blame. This incredible ability has truly allowed us to make sense of each other, and the world.

*

Without that lightest dusting of sarcasm, now. Honestly. Cannot understand why people take tragedies as immediate opportunities to try to be right.

Fuck all of you people. You rubbernecking goblins that drink pain and spit poison. Fuck you.

*

Hey, maybe if you accomplish a truly solid execution of being right, bad things will stop happening forever! Just keep being right all the time, hero. You are a fucking genius and you will save this ailing planet with style, and saved is how it will stay.

*

No, but fuck you.


--JL