25lines, redux

i have a spattering of readership again.

i’m not sure who - but welcome, and thank you.

i think this blog charts a very interesting time in my life. i wish i wrote here more often than i did. really, starting spring term of senior year until now - it’s been an interesting story arc in my life if nothing else.

in the beginning, i wrote for the professor.

then i wrote for myself.

then i wrote for the audience.

then i wrote for friends.

and then now, again, i write for myself.

i’m not really sure what i’m doing anymore.

i can see it, i know it, but i can’t keep up with it.

hell, these days i can’t keep up with myself.

like i’m in a perpetual state of leaving myself behind.

the entrails of the snake within casting off more than just my skin.

yeah.

these days, my skin is not my own.

apparently wrote this in june. go figure.

—
Awakening. There is light. More gray, less green today.

Walk in step, spread saccharine joy with my chocolate shirt, flowing and moving frozen in the wind.

Waiting for the light to change, green arrow, white walk man. Cars drive on by, pausing, asking:

who is that chocolate man listening to chocolate song
standing on that corner, over there
dancing uncontrollably.

As they drive on by, in their lovely broken things.

Then I get to work

“The problem with you hackers is you never stop working.”

“That’s what a hacker is.”

“It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you to be unmasked, it can do no other, it will writhe before you in ecstasy.”

Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

dichotomy: day job vs. my job.
dichotomy: work vs. life balance
dichotomy: my view on things vs. most peoples.
dichotomy: my aspirations vs. those of the people around me
dichotomy: a meaningful relationship vs. a meaningful purpose

i wrote the following junior year, while in the Kendall Marriott. sf had already gone to bed, haha.

The Dichotomy

It seems to me that there are many people in the world who think in very concrete, perhaps empirical, or discrete terms. As a computer engineering student, we are taught to strive towards a 1 or a 0, yes or no, black or white. We try to transcend the confines of the dirty, real world to attain a higher system of judgment or truth. However, I believe that this notion of concrete separation, this barrier between two truths may be misguided. The dichotomy is better-put, a duality.

The Abrahamic faiths preach in some sense a discrete notion of God, and this notion permeates into society. Whether we follow Unity or the Trinity, God has been quantified. Something that has been lost here is the sense of connection between the self and God. The duality lies between one and his God, and none other. For whatever reason, it seems that people would like to disassociate the notion of God from themselves.

Perhaps a bad example, especially if the reader does not believe in God, but I want to stress that there is a need for balance. In any case of conflict, with two endpoints, we need not wholly choose one side over another. Instead of black and white, we either superimpose one on the other, or we become grey, and tending either towards black or white as we will, adjusting our position as we live, and learn more.

In the design of any system, whether it is a lifestyle, product, or society, there are often seemingly binary choices. These choices need not be made between discrete results, but made in the gradient space between the two, or by combining the two choices. Binary decisions have carried over from on/off decisions to deciding between two items.

Society vs. Individual
Central vs. Personalized
Recommended vs. Serendipity
Philanthropy vs. Self gratification
Connections vs. Barriers of separation
Happiness vs. Pleasure
Bliss vs. Ecstasy
Real vs. Fake
Actuality vs. Image
Custom vs. Unilateral monolith
Encyclopedia Galactica vs. Individual know-how
Psychohistory vs. Speculation
Planning vs. Spontaneity
Causality vs. Chance
Thinking vs. Doing

While these examples may not apply to everyone, I have found that either myself, or my personal contacts often make decisions between the duals presented. The choices made in 2-dimensional domains can influence mindsets, approaches, and paradigms. Therefore I believe it is necessary to retain some, if not all, of all domains.

an anthem
for the nation of the future
the empire

inertia is terrible.

in work.
in family.
in relationships.
in life.

my neck writhes uncontrollably in step with each bar.

pressure and release, the most fundamental dichotomy in my life.

to speak freely, without fear of misinterpretation.

to realize the pain of misunderstanding.

to know self-inflicted pain, and profound regret.

all for what?

misunderstood words, not easily corrected.

three near fatal car crashes in a row, all neatly avoided - can’t lose in my fire stingray.
perfectly brewed coffee, black, chirashi fish, delish. home to silence and sleep and somber thoughts.

fresh hazelnuts snapped to a paste, delicious.

red haired man wearing hot pink suit strutting his stuff down the street.
short midget on a short scooter zipping down the hill.
the city has characters, the characters give the city a play to sing.

emergent, conversant - impressions impress themselves on each other. when you need to release, you need to let go. permit a full flow - the words just come out, formants.

leading to know, now, your big blue eyes looking all baby cute looking up at me, at the head of the most perfectly composed lines along your mouth, smooth down, drawn down the jaw, along your neck to places in open enticement, revealed. concealed.

i am thinking of you still.

“Except here in this time warp of a courtyard – where the ancient typewriter continues to be nothing less than a computer with a built in printer and an unlimited power supply.”

flow. how much we allow to pass over us, under us, through us.
experiences and memories abstract away into 10 second sound-bites that we think to ourselves.

how much of the past is retained in the present?
how much of it is meaningless?

ooooh shiny!
or deliberate decisions?

a fundamental question that makes me think about who i am, who i really am.

i just can’t shake the feeling…

apparently, “[i] will reach high levels of intelligence.”

one can only hope.

additionally, “[i] will have good luck in the autumn”

bow chaka wow wow.

intersections

intrusions

connections

spark flow

Through the glass, there’s gray and green. Lush. The air is sharp. Cold. It attacks the skin behind the hand, softly biting. In one ear, and then the other. White orbs of programmed audio to blast away the demons between the ears.

Darc.

Amsterdam.

Color.

Over the head, thick blue cloth, shrouded from the repelling water, falling deeply. Under the hood, body and shadow become one, and I walk. In step with the beat, heel-toe, heel-toe, humming to the tune of the riffs.

Water, salty water, it blends. Walking in the flow of a cold shower, with tears streaming down my face. Knowing happiness and sadness all at once, all the same. The aberration from water, pure on my face, on my skin sinking in slowly. The sky drops and soaks through the cloth. Damp. Moist. Engulfing me in shivers.

The greens fill me up, overflowing. Water crashing through the leaves ruffle noises just the way I want, shuffling in motion. Pressing greens push to fill me, searching for the entryway. Too much green, more than my irises could handle, doubly.

Heel-toe, heel-to, step, splash puddle after another puddle, and salty water comes freely now. Sorrow. Regret. Pain. The delight of memory brings with it hard burdens, blame, doubt. The ultimate fear of abandonment.

Apathy.

To fight it is to force an intrusion. A penetration of the defensive surface raised - keeping the complex thoughts and feelings at bay cannot keep me away. I challenge your simplex.

At home, the fingers move quickly, beyond thought, acting on their own will. Stroke, stroke, stroke - and it is done. The future has been written.

where you’re going, you’re not coming back from.

through the vibrations that we live in, we trace a line through which we go. never straight, the line curves like the arc of a brush, wielded by a skillful master.

to know the line is to know our past.

the follow through takes us forward.

the body can asset dominance.
mind over body, yes.

but if the body rebels, then what?

then the mind must be still.

mind 1, body 1.

go to bed with one state.

wake up with another.

ignore, avoid, forget consciously - go through the night in peace.

wake up under duress.

pain.

stronger than usual.

my body’s way of punishing me.

to share.

i could converse with the self, yes. i could. but why? the fallout from reflection would be lost, kept secret. to write is - for me - to share. there are conversations that i have with myself, of course. but those are quite different. quite. the thoughts i express to myself, reflexive, you could not relate to. most of you anyway.

to write in an enigmatic form is to share vignettes of my day, my night, my head with any who care to ask. the details lie with those who care to ask. rarely are most important, most are trivial.

every now and then, the tinniest little thing is the most delightful.

how true of everything in life.

to be surprised, to be delighted.

to live fully.

may we all.