Just Because I'm Losing Doesn't Mean I'm Lost

The Truth is that which is there, it is the extension of reality. About reality, Philip K. Dick wrote it is, that which does not cease to exist when you stop believing in it. After watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for the second time, I find myself sitting here in bed, thinking about a certain truth. Mortal Truth. I think about age, I think about time, circumstance, direction, ambition; I think about motivation, determination, strive and fear. At my hands, do my eyes fall, searching for younger layers of youth, curious of future layers of age. I sit here on this bed and more or less think about Death and all his Friends.

I see this place in terms of Universe. I don't live in an apartment, street, city, state, country, etc...I live in a universe. It has to be that sparse, that complex, otherwise I'm not impressed. Life is too large, too interwoven with multi-facets to be limited in the frame of planet or solar system. Life would burst the seams, compromise the foundation, if such the idea would be to attempt its maintenance within so small a border. Life needs an entire Universe in order to operate.

I hold sacred that every moment is in fact a new universe, an infinity of combinations and codes, endlessly spiraling, with no two moments ever universally repeating. Thats my definition of Life. In this manner it can be said that no one is ever really one person or ever even in the same place twice, we are all cosmonauts, ever changing like scramble suits, indefinitely traveling throughout a universe in a ship called Life that so happens to also be an ocean.

But Life ends. The Universe might have no end, Life does. The Ocean dries up, concentrates into a powerful drop that eventually also departs, evaporates, fuses with the rest of time and space. Its the best you can do to make every moment the Prime of all its possibilities, of all its potentialities. You'll never know if you're right or wrong, there will be no judge, no guideline, no examples from which your recourse will be contrasted to and decided whether you played the right card, took the right door, were at the right places at the right time and so forth. Sure, on Earth others can judge these things, on Earth we have formed opinions about what feels good and what doesn't, what a good life is and what a good life isn't. However, if you're not careful you might fall into the idea that another person's opinion, because it seems more generally observed than others, is a fact. But here I say to you my opinion: your universe and their universe will never be one. There is no right choice or wrong one, there is only the choice...and having made it, you have changed the universe and if it feels right to you then you've made your right choice.

29 Days of Perky Pat

Today is the day Philip K. Dick died, 28 years ago. Its easy to keep count of the years because I'll be 28 this year, Philip K. Dick died 29 days before I was born. I wonder how much can happen in 29 days? I'm sure the answer is plenty. In any case those 29 days were the only 29 days in 1982 where neither Philip K. Dick nor I, were presently alive on earth. Sure, I was alive but in my mother's womb. She, my mother was presently alive on earth, I was presently alive inside her.

Those 29 days are somewhat of a trade-off between the world Philip K. Dick experienced and the world I'll experience once born. Funny thing is, he'll filter his way into my world, subtly unveiling his mind to me piece by piece; and I through my own experiences was shaping my own mind to, when the time came, understand his mind as if his thoughts were in fact my thoughts.

I wish I owned the Cold Souls DVD, maybe I'll watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Burn After Reading, its weird how most of the Philip K. Dick adapted works to film are so far off the mark, while anything written by Charlie Kaufman reads like a lost volume from the PKD bibliography. By the way, Charlie Kaufman wrote a Scanner Darkly script some years ago. I should finish the night with Bladerunner but so much in so little time...I might just have to settle for rewatching Roy Batty's death scene. I wonder what the Coen Brothers would do by way of loosely adapted film to a Philip K. Dick novel or short story, or a group of short stories made into a novel?

How Far, Icarus, How Far?

FALL FOR GRACE

The story of Icarus is one that I've had as of late, very freshly in the fluency of thoughts. The story resonates an ongoing truth, analogously, about Man. We are that creature that will fly too close to the sun, regardless of how good a thing we have we will carelessly push passed safe and destroy even ourselves to savor happiness. At least that is my interpretation of the myth of Icarus applied philosophically to Man.

Found in any addiction, any vice or obsession, its the echo of Icarus' fall, cloud through cloud, ending in a death-pounding plunge into the Icarian Sea. He could not contend himself with flight, an achievement in itself so marvelous that following his father, Daedalus' instructions or precautions would have proven alone, a reward. The reward of flight. But Icarus took advantage, saw an opportunity and decided to withdraw the most he could from the experience. Of course, he paid with his life yet when he flew--Good God, how he flew! It could never be said that in comparison to Daedalus' flight, of the two it was certainly his son, Icarus who flew. Freely, with the confidence and command of a naturally winged creature, that is how Icarus flew; while Daedalus remained a human flapping wax wings and thereby remaining alive, survived his son.

Taking this myth and applying to it, one of the current and more obvious areas of human ingenuity to which Icarus may play as a perfect analogy, I find myself conflicted. Conflicted because upon reflection to Man's daring and careless innovation, I at times feel like a Daedalus rather than that plunging, screaming, wingless man falling his last seconds of life away. The good example of today's "wax wings" is found in technology. The wax wings themselves were a technology and Daedalus, known for his ability as a master craftsman (earlier, he had designed the labyrinth for King Minos to trap the Minotaur). Technology alone is not the harmful flight. Tools are helpful by definition and their utilitarian function has helped to in turn, define Man. We are after all, a tool using animal. But so long has passed between the wheel, fire, and spear to maglev trains, space travel, and atom bombs; we are approaching a peak to the Information Age. We are approaching Singularity.

And there my friends, is when the sun is too close and we heed not the previous warnings or the consequence of flying farther and faster with wax wings. In the myth, I side with Icarus. I side with the idea that no limits should hinder experience; that Man must push beyond, regardless of what consequence may result. Even if you expire yourself in the process, you at least lived a moment to its fullest and most possibly, dangerous potential. This being my stand, one would furrow their brow to see me swiftly transformed into a scolding Daedalus when Singularity is brought up. My position changes, I believe, for a very valid purpose. Singularity is so perverse, so destructive to the idea of what Man has been as, that its hard to compare it lightly to a pair of wax wings when its more analogously accurate to compare Singularity to a highly evolved suicide method.

Of course, my conflict is much deeper. After all, a man with wings is just as perverse as downloading your mind into a computer. I am farther removed from the Icarus myth to be at all shocked by it but I assume part of the thrill in the story was applying Man domain over an unnatural and therefore exotic tool (wax wings). There is absolutely no difference between wax wings and Singularity. And still I am a practical Daedalus who sees only a minimal mean to an end, while Icarian engineers see a new playground, a new opening to peek through the eyes of a god, a careless creator.

Try as I will I cannot be upset with the Icaruses of my time because there is no separation. There is no division of Man, where this side is Icarus and the other Daedalus. Man is a unified experience of the Universe, what one man creates, all Man creates; what one man is bound to do all Man is bound to exercise. There is only the collective representation. So it is logical that I include myself as part of that Icarus that happens to be 21st Century Man. Elemental as I am to this 21st Century Icarus, one can see why I understand. I can pardon the reasons--reasons, which I feel need not be apologized for in the first place--but I mourn. I prepare myself for that fall. I mourn for everything that came before that descent, all the heights and cleverness that lead to the creation of wax wings. I mourn for that falling creature who flew too close to the sun; who had a good thing before becoming curious about what was further up and unsatisfied with playing it safe. Falling the last seconds of his life away.

Spiders and What they Spin

I was watching Charlotte's Web with my niece last night. Or so the evening began, because as usually is the case, halfway through the film my two year old niece wanders off and I am left fully immersed, entangled as one rightfully should in Charlotte's Web.

I remember the story from third grade, Ms. Smith read it to us, or we read it with her. After the book we watched the movie. I don't think I've set eyes on either the book or the movie since. In the way that first impressions from childhood carry over into adulthood, sometimes even covertly, I remember a few things about the story. Charlotte, Wilbur, the messages on the web, Charlotte's death, and Wilbur's prize; vaguely are these plot points available to me yet I still found myself surprised by my reintroduction to a childhood story that I'd be lying if I said I cared at all about.

Reviewing Charlotte's Web I realized on some level, especially to an adult viewer, this story is about mortality. I also realized how much I hate Wilbur who has so hard a time dealing with that mortality. Not only does he fear dying but he is also selfish and naive, but then again so are children. The fear of dying, of course is okay, since he's a pig who is raised to be killed; I kind of get that but Wilbur also has a problem with Charlotte's death and the death of even the insects that are caught on Charlotte's web, which Charlotte herself gains nourishment from.

Charlotte is amazing, Debbie Reynolds supplies her voice. The lonely spider who spins a web and is at the same time, friend and philosopher to Wilbur. On the best song in the movie, titled Mother Earth and Father Time, she states,

How very special are we

For just a moment to be

Part of life's eternal rhyme

How very special are we

To have on our family tree

Mother Earth and Father Time

That about sums it up for me. How infinitely random that we fit into such an everlasting indefinition, definitely. To be a part of the universe on such microcosmic terms and yet contribute so absolutely to its macrocosmic orchestration is as clear as any reason why life is worth living. Camus talks of absurdism and the futility of life and why its still an experience worth experiencing even if its end result is nothing. Camus also talks of happiness as a side effect of dueling it out with futility,

What matters to me is a certain quality of happiness. I can only find it in a certain struggle with its opposite--a stubborn and violent struggle...

And about the consciousness of happiness while admitting the absurd:

Just as there is a moment when the artist must stop, when the sculpture must be left as it is, the painting untouched--just as a determination not to know serves the maker more than all the resources of clairvoyance--so there must be a minimum of ignorance in order to perfect a life in happiness. Those who lack such a thing must set about acquiring it; unintelligence must be earned.

Spiders know better than we do. The best creation is life and even though it ends it still happens. While it happens is all that matters.

The Death Dance

Welcome my dear to the last 31 days of the year. The first ten years of the 21st century are now coming to a close. Celebrate my dear, because we'll never see the close of the first decade of another century, or rarer still, another millennium again.

A Happy Death

I'm Going In

by Lhasa De Sela

from the album Lhasa,

released Apr. 2009

When my lifetime had just ended

and my death had just begun

I told you I'd never leave you

but I knew this day would come

Give me blood for my blood wedding

I am ready to be born

I feel new as if this body

were the first I'd ever worn

I need straw for the straw fire

I need hard earth for the plow

Don't ask me to reconsider

I am ready to go now

I'm going in, I'm going in

This is how it starts

I can see in so far

but afterwards we always forget

who we are

I'm going in, I'm going in

I can stand the pain

and the blinding heat

'cause I won't remember you

the next time we meet

You'll be making the arrangements

you'll be trying to set me free

Not a moment for the meeting

I'll be busy as a bee

You'll be talking to me

but I just won't understand

I'll be falling by the wayside

you'll be holding out your hand

Don't you tempt me with perfection

I have other things to do

I didn't burrow this far in

just to come right back to you

I'm going in, I'm going in

I have never been so ugly

I have never been so slow

These prison walls get closer now

the further in I go

I'm going in, I'm going in

I like to see you from a distance

and just barely believe

and think that

even lost and blind

I still invented love

I'm going in, I'm going in

I'm going in

Thank You, Lhasa and Albert

whatever is going on through your head right now,
whatever reason shoves you forward;
here is something you should consider,
nothing is going to happen in the end.
no one will cheer, smile, pat you on the back.
there will be no applause.
no standing ovation.
definitely no trophy.
you will have came and went.
you will not be judged.
you will not be congratulated
or condemned.
there was ultimately nothing
added to you after you left.
at the end, all you were
was finished.

you will not re-awaken with
a lesson learned.
nothing is going to happen in the end.
you will not sit through
a review of your merits or,
an analysis of your flaws.
nothing is going to happen in the end.
and if this makes you give up
and decide its not worth the walk.
then, that is where you stop walking.
but I don't care if
nothing is going to happen in the end.
I still enjoy my walk

Death on the Installment Plan

II.
The summation of random events is life and life is the self-presented perspective of universe. The summation of random events leads to more random events. Every life will lead one way or another to the random event of death. Most have a default setting of thought foundation applied to death; they believe death will come at an old age when life is fully lived. Death is a random event that can arrive as plainly as the next breath. One will never discover the pattern in a pattern-less system. Most fear that which is without judgement and cannot be controlled or influenced. Every moment has been added by everything that came before it. Every moment is sequence followed by random consequences. And every consequence is in itself a newly added sequence. I believe everything you learn and experience will give you nothing after death. I believe the random events of life are solely for the living to make the most of and lead to no goal or lesson. The only thing it leads to is just a random death that becomes the consequence of their living sequence and that very same consequence of death is in itself a random sequence added to the random events of those who are still living.