Like In The Movies

"Life was shit," has been my intro to describing an experience of the last several years.  It is much easier than the alternative, longer version, which begins, "I was happy," and expresses more succinctly not only the truth but the more interesting bits of someone else's experience.  My experience.  An episode that lasted and was held together with words like, "life is shit."  It hits to the heart of the matter I think.  From the standpoint of the present tense I am proud, no, understanding of what just happened.  I have something to say now.  The older our generation gets the more entitlement we feel we deserve for quiet rooms and fear-struck audiences to hear out the 'wisdom' of the events and general knowledge we got from school or relationships or the drifting, socially acceptable, relative truth we picked up from the majority.  I am being facetious of course.  I am one of those people.  But I have an argument to back my case and I think it is worthwhile to hear out.  I'll not make this a forum for lecture, however, I would rather say these thoughts aloud where gestures and questions can carry on their work between us.  Even philosophers who define every important word they use cannot communicate an idea accurately to their peers.  Best not to pretend.

I took a frightening test online yesterday - life expectancy generated by Reuters.  The punchline is that I have fifty years to live, and I'll add 'if I'm lucky'.  A third of anything can be tragic or ecstatic.  In the case of a life lived I think it has the bittersweetness of both.  If I hold to my best guess this is all that we have, us noble human beings, and noble we most certainly.  Kings and pawns are both made out of the same carefully hewn marble against a mathematically and beautifully simple board.  Humans and the universe operate on a similar principle.  The compromise for complexity in our race is that we are bound to be a short-lived phenomena, either expelling ourselves through ignorance or being extinguished by the natural order of destruction and regeneration.  That we can understand that is one of our unique qualities.  I think we could cherish that a little more.  But my argument is not for the universal so much as the local and more current existence.  The fifty years I may have left.  I don't want to put words into anyones mouth so I will suppose in generalizations.

While living a morally, righteous and healthy lifestyle is what I often say I want, it of course isn't.  Those things are just principles that can be used when necessary to protect an otherwise debaucherous (a word?) life I really want.  If I haven't said so I am on a break from Agape Community along with the other interns.  I chose my vacation alone in Providence.  When I left I gave everyone a hug and visualized that the next time I saw them I would have a conversation about how much I miss being on the farm in simplicity and nature.  "Oh the glorious things I longed for while I was gone in the crazed, unnatural city."  I don't think this is going to happen.  Unless I am mugged and raped on the streets before going back I think I will have to admit that I love being here.  I know the reaction already for it has already come up with my subconscious.  We in the West cannot continue to live the way we do.  Not so long from now things will become just as radically different as they have in the recent past because we no longer have the resources natural and unnatural to continue.  I am not afraid of that happening.  In fact, I hope for it.  At Agape the idea is that we all need to move back into the woods and live naturally and simply.  We don't eat meat because it is unkind to animals, yes, but also because history says that we are not designed with teeth or organs to digest the food properly.  This is where one of my arguments comes in:  I don't buy it.  And it's a simple as this.  We are not now what we once were.  We are evolving just as much and often more than the life around us.  I can believe in the possibility that humans were once herbivores, but I also believe that at a given point we found it beneficial to eat something other than fruits and vegetables and beans and berries.  The claim is also that we are conscious enough to realize we can live without harming what is around us.  While this is true - that all beings are engineered to stay alive - I am also a piece of the natural order, one in which I cannot change to any significant degree.  This is just an example of so many pointless topics.  At some point in history there was a man or woman who thought up the idea to have definitions for who humans were and what they 'ought' to do... mythologically speaking.  This, I believe, is the root to every organization/religion/government that sets out to order human life.  We are not ducks lined up in a particular fashion that is perfect.  Nor are we going anywhere where those rules apply.  I am tearing through the farce like a wrecking ball to an already crumbling building, clearing the way so as to see the whole scenery behind.  This is all done inside but I have gained the confidence to admit it via weariness rather than ego.  Existence is not perfect, most would agree, but not because of any fallacy on our part.  We are because we must have been and we need to start living our lives that way.  The special, observable seat we sit in allows us to make life better for ourselves by helping others and so I do not promote total anarchy.  That said, life will happen as it happens, unaided by us.  Can we effect anything? I don't know... I try so hard, but I don't know.  I will say that admitting who I am is best thing I have ever done.  I think if I can effect someone I would do so by letting them out of the asphyxiating bag of religious belief, of social normalcy.  Say it understandingly and without fear!  I am this this gender, attracted to this gender.  I am destructive to others. I want to change - I want not to change.  I have been a greedy, untrustworthy, debaucher and I am unafraid to say so.  This is not about pride. This is about clearly seeing where you have come from and accepting the life that comes from that.  Admit that you crave sex or masturbate, steal, lie, cause others pain.  It is not about the liberty. It is not about the pride. It is about living without the weight of unnecessary (and unnatural) guilt.  People will either fail or succeed in the eyes of those who try to categorize rules so that we can fit into their standards.  There are no standards - there is only chaos.  But that is not the end of the story.  Despite truth, there is beauty, there is relationship.  And maybe, just maybe there is something more.

I have been rewatching season three of Californication today in expectation of the coming fourth season beginning in a few weeks.  If you haven't seen the show the main character, Hank Moody, is a writer in Southern California who unapologetically drinks, smokes, man-whores (it's now a verb) while trying to father a child.  Anyone who likes the show has a special place for Hank - we love that he is an asshole who sleeps around.  What keeps us liking him, however, is that he sincerely wants to be a good father.  I get chills when I see him on screen in the warmth of California, smoking a cigarette with nothing to do but enjoy life and drink away the tragedy of what it took to get there.  I honestly want that - like it is in the movies.  But life is most definitely not like that.  And so in the same moment it's not what I want.  Instead I submit to an alternative.  It's not perfect or moral or healthy or anything to do with groups.  It's soaking in what can be for as many moments as possible.  It's dragging on the best experience of our lives for as long as possible.  It's a radical submission because I don't think it happens very often. I would say that it's impossible because I don't personally know anyone who has pulled off a life like that but I am setting off to be the first.  I spoke with a girl here in Providence the night before last who has inspired me quite a bit.  In a sense she admitted the ugly truth of life in the voice of someone who is unwilling to submit to 'the way things are'.  People who have wanted money have found it and those who have sought god have found it.  I will always return to hope in people, tried or not.  There will be love in good people, shock and tingling feelings of a joy that is enough to handle.  I will have my real-life Hank Moody experiences. I will have a cigarette.

Vacation

I awoke in Connecticut on Tuesday with the fashion of a traveler.  No questions asked, just get up, find the shower, find the coffee, read until somebody shows up or wakes up.  In my childhood I might have missed home maybe once or twice but since as far as I can remember there has been a comfort in adventure - knowing that if I can survive in this new environment for today I must be able to survive it another.  But this is just a small trip and one night.  Jerrod, our part-time resident at Agape, is driving me to Providence where I have been waking up the past two mornings.  Kate gets off work at 6:00 and I was in at 1:30 so I drop by a Starbucks and buy myself an overpriced sandwich and coffee.  I figured five hours of surfing the web here wouldn't be so bad but my computer is broken in such a way that I have to hold the power chord down with my coffee in just the right way so my laptop stays charged.  Of course every time I take a sip of mocha I have to rearrange the chord again.  Eventually I drank enough coffee that my cup wasn't heavy enough to do the job, and people behind the counter were giving me funning looks for being so poor and making a home for myself at their table.  So I decided to leave.  My back hasn't been that great lately - an old injury reborn - but I managed to heave my duffel and backpack on in a reasonable manner and head towards Fox Point from Brown.  I was still too early to creepily sit at Kate's doorstep so I walked down hope street till I hit water.  There's a great park with good people on the other side of Highway 195 overlooking Providence Harbor.  I put my bags down and stretched my back.  The scenery was familiar as I had been there several times just four months ago.  I took an hour or so to soak in the moment and the memories.  Four months ago was the last time I remember being unhappy but the time I spent here was actually good by comparison.  I tried to figure out why it is that I feel sad about every memory and place from the past whether it was good or bad or whether I was with a good friend or not.  I got no further than I had with any previous time considering this.  It's one of those problems that even if solved will still leave you sad in the end.  I have been getting back into Nietzsche lately.  He lived his life in a frighteningly similar way to mine up till now.  Though we have our differences he had his philosophies that made life just tolerable enough through inaction, realizing how pain can be used to our benefit.  He once said that he wished that all of his friends and loved ones (which there were few) could be struck with all the tragedies of life, pain and intolerance, suffering.  He had an angsty way of saying he had benefited from overcoming pain and wished for that reward to be with the people he loved.  I think he was close to the point without ever actually having any real joy in his own life.  Before turning from the harbor back to Kate's place I allow myself to see the hurt of memory as it is - a glitch that can't be fixed.  I spent most of yesterday cleaning house, a blessing I must say as I had little else to do, and then rested up with reading and a few shows online.  It looks like today I'll walk around the area looking for possible jobs.  Retail is the easiest to shop for but I'll keep and eye out for shadow jobs in Craigslist.  I need to update my resume.  The last year hasn't been good for resume building as I have had trouble keeping/finding decent jobs with which to write down.  Agape will be of help.  It has sadly been my longest commitment for a long time.  That's quite alright with me today.  I'm leaving the past in it's miserable state and deciding to worry less about where I will be and how I will live.  I may end up homeless and I may end up rich - that will happen as it may - I know I am of enough worth that my life will not end up as Nietzsche's.  I've already had insanity, friends are better.

Easier to Face It

There has been a solitude and quietness in the house today and yesterday that has been missing in the community for the last several weeks.  With quiet comes thought.  Thoughts of the people in the past and present and wonderment of who will be there in the coming years.  I wanted to say some things about the people I have known and the moments we have shared over the years, how they have molded almost expressly who I am, but it's difficult to write about people you know.  Easier to know nothing of what a person thinks of us than to know that we might be hated, or even loved.  So I will pass on the shared moments for now.  Let those be reserved for the times I become an old man and reminisce of good and tragic times.  In loneliness, however, there is no emotional attachment but unto ourselves.

Being alone is not altogether a lonely thing.  In fact we crave solitude when we have had a busy day at work or been around a large group of people, feel exhausted or unclean.  It's a time to collect ourselves internally and externally.  People like me prefer to be alone during particular activities (cleaning, reading and running) while feeling the need to have others around during other actions (sleeping, eating and constructing).  Others might feel the exact opposite.  It's clear that on these occasions we act alone or in groups according to natural instincts of regularity.  But the pain of loneliness is a more touchy subject and one I would like to discuss here.  One word cannot describe the angst one goes through when others aren't around.  We tend to feel at a distance from personal touch, conversation, compassionate love, reason, protection, agreement, disagreement, etc.  It's not that hard to figure out that to solve our emotional distress we must have someone around.  Maybe we need to eat with someone, talk to them, have sex with them, play a game with them.  Fill in the missing links.  It is the WHY that perhaps needs a little understanding.  Humans have had a long history of selfishly presuming they are the center of the universe and that there is an external reason for why we are anything - in this case, social.  But quite a few animals and even plants have been known to survive purely by social networking or symbiotic relationships.  So why do we think we are any different?  Is it the consciousness of knowing we are anything?  What is this consciousness?  Are we any different for having experienced loneliness than would any other solitary being?  This is the reasoning that makes the most sense:

Lee Siegel was a professor of religion and talented magician, an expert on the street magic of India.  In his book, Net of Magic, there is a passage where he says, ""I am writing a book on magic," I explain, "and I'm asked, Real magic?" By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No" I answer, "Conjuring tricks, not real magic."  Real magic. In other words refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic."" Magic is not a bag of tricks and when we are told the truth of how a trick is done we are instantly disappointed.  We love to be mystified. Same with consciousness.  We like to think there is mystery to our minds, that it cannot be understood without adding an ethereal component beyond the trillions of cells that make up our selves.  Our consciousness is not as wonderful as we think.  Our minds, our memories, can fool and inflate what we know.  Our consciousness can change blue cars into red and add events and time to anything, even if it only happened moments before.  Darwinian evolution speaks volumes to why we feel the particular way we do that makes us think we're special.  Experiences of beauty, sadness, peace and frustration, like loneliness, can be reasoned with significant clarity.  To be alone insinuates in our minds having broken from a community that is necessary to our survival.  As simple as that?  Science has reworked the notions of existence based on simple decisions made over and over again millions of times to create something that is seemingly complex but at it's root is quite incomplex.  What would that knowledge do for the individual soul figuring a way out of their angst?  Perhaps nothing and something at the same time.  Our emotional response is both a necessity for our present evolutionary state and a nuisance held over from millions of years of selection.  If we were not pulled toward one another in the past we would not have survived as 'sapient' hominids.  Today we have a much greater chance of survival but at what cost to our minds?  Every break we take from our natural direction in history creates glitches in our psyche.  We are not use to pushing so forcefully against what we have been for hundreds of thousands of years or more.  During these months in the woods, working with my hands and living often in direct account of my days work, I have understood much better the reasons for simplicity in our lives.  It only makes sense with the rest of natural history.  If you are hungry, eat, and if you are bored, make or work play.  If you are lonely then endure the residual effects of millions of year knowing that your pain is only there for the sake of your survival and the survival the brief history that will be man and woman.

Margarine vs. Butter

It's the end of the day now and I'm laying in bed looking back and forth from my laptop screen and a luminescent scattering of stars peering in from the window above me. The window is slightly cracked, shut enough to keep in the warmth but open enough to hear the sounds of nature just out of reach.  A distant hum of a passing airliner rips apart the sight and sound of a peaceful night.  My immediate reaction is to be annoyed at the interruption of this peacefulness so far out from anywhere.  How could somebody be so separate from reality as to build a machine that cuts through the tranquility I was experiencing?  All this technology must go - we must go back to the beginning!  But I am just as quickly reminded of my own ignorance.  Without such imagination and technology I would have little hope of being here and of going anywhere.

These are the pieces of confusion I have been trying to fit together since as long as I can remember.  What is the utopia everybody imagines in daydreams and love-lusts? So long I worried about the actions taken in life.  Is my life in line with god's enough to make it to paradise, to heaven?  Will my parents discipline me today even when I try so hard to be perfect for them?  Will my friends today be my friends tomorrow and should I change my life so that all I want comes true?  What is right?  What is truth?  But as it turns out a lot of people have the same existential crises and my own uttering of questions about life become just as annoying as the next persons.  When a visitor to our community pulled out several sheets paper towel for his lunch I gasped inwardly in horror at the outrage of using bleached tree pulp for a minute sum of dribbled soup.  At least, to my comfort, I immediately laughed at myself for being so sensitive to a folly so small.  Where is the line drawn then?  Is it between using paper towels and not buying shoes made from cheap, foreign, child labour?  In a thousand years will it really matter?  Does the current of human nature change for the better when the mass percentage of humanity craves what ultimately destroys itself?  That is a frightening thought.  Some of us are outraged that America is still taking innocent lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.  We are infuriated that the last Republican in office entered these wars and disquieted that the Democrats before and after him made exactly the same decisions.  But if going to war was not left up to congress but to the decision of each individual American would it have been the same?  The masses are not as reasonable as we would like to think.  Stable women and men may have the ability to see goodness in any kind of human but in the end the world is getting larger, more populous and fast-paced, and the opportunity to create hell for others is growing.    My community thinks in non-violent ways about every facet of life and they do a pretty good job of it too.  No murder of any kind, not in war, not in judgement, not even for the non-human.  Live small, simply and local.  Don't raise a fist not even your voice.  This is wonderful and a pleasure to live amongst.  Despite this I do not think that the endeavor to spread this message will ever be taken seriously.  I do not even think that it will be heard at all by most.  Jesus Christ, the man, taught a message of pacifism and peace, sparking a radical following.  Though, within just a few hundred years this small group of people (just as groups are springing up now) became large and the message was lost entirely.  Even today the majority of Christianity, Catholic, Protestant, Schismatic and otherwise is dismally opposed to the voice of their originator.  This is just an example of many revolutions throughout time.  In the United States the view is just as foggy as it is anywhere. The airplane breaking my nightly silence is barely a breath of the problems surrounding us.  We think about how technology will solve our problems.  How can we get a car to run off of the sun?  How can we reestablish the housing market?  How will we pay off our student loans?  But the questions are just as foolish as the makeshift answer that leak from them.  Truthfully, there is no solid answer.  The problems were overlooked before even asking the questions.  Why must we have cars in the first place?  Why do we buy homes too large and too expensive, bought with money nobody has?  Why do we have to work in jobs we hate till we die to pay off an education we never use?  Many see that there is something wrong.  Some of them even understand why.  Fewer still can feel the futility of that truth.  Do we bail or hold on to childish hope?  We don't know.  Of course we don't know if by crossing a street we will be hit and killed by a car either.  I'm not taking the chance.  Hope is for children, but I still wish upon falling stars.  There is no longer adults, only adolescents making the best of a time soon to be over.  I will not bother arguing over pointless questions of religion or politics or economy or happiness.  Not unless I see you as a friend anyway.  After all I am a human nature, one that gets lonely.  One that also rambles.  There is a time for coffee and a time for philosophy.  On occasion they are at a time the same.