Karma

A fresh cup of coffee over a fresh piece of mint gum gives, for a brief moment, the impression of that ‘holiday feeling’, born of the association slowly made over the years between winter mornings and peppermint lattes. Some day, I like to think, my house will smell like coffee, peppermint and pine all winter long.

Lately, something has been stopping me from writing. Actually, that’s not right. I have real moments of inspiration, and I seriously get rolling for a while. Ideas verily erupt in my brain, leaving me with (quite realistically) more to expunge than seems physically possible. But the more time I spend with something, the less novel and exciting it becomes, and I slowly grind to a halt, no longer seeing what made it so great in the first place.

The sticky thing is the drive to create the immaculate. We make all attempts to give birth to the flawless - the culmination of the things we got right and the things we learned the hard way, answers for questions made concrete so we’ll never have to ask them again. But there is always a portion of the result which we did not account for, or something out of our control; whatever it is, the product of our creation is not immaculate. It is flawed, though striving, and yet we find it is all the more beautiful for its uniqueness. This is the propagation of humanity: a plethora of potential iterations actualizing everywhere. We are faced with such abundant variety that we tend to look, in western culture, towards the purity of a thing. We favor something for its particular qualities, a way that it and only it excels, be this a people or an object. Seems to me that in the end that perfection lies not in the distillation of a particular element, but the homogeneity of the whole; something which exists only as the sum of all of its parts.

Through a striving for purity in Western culture, there has been a central idea of the triumph of the right - both in terms of morality and entitlement. We seek very definite reasons why someone deserves something, or why one person is more ‘correct’ than another. People are then pressured to be in the right, in order to be successful in society. That becomes a problem for a couple of reasons. For one thing, our species is everywhere. There are different cultures all over the world, all with varying ideas about what is right and good, which is all too apparent when it comes down to who is entitled to what.

That’s the obvious one, though. The less glaring, and yet easily more detrimental in the long run, is the dichotomy between those who will not waver from their opinion no matter what (even if they are ‘wrong’), and those who would rather remain associated with the opinions of the majority (better safe than sorry). Nowadays, we have a large number of people looking for the truth in places which are not necessarily the most reliable even if they are the most prominent. Western culture shrouds not its people, but itself, in its materialistic facade. It sounds like the tired argument of an aging rebel, but we have to realize how applicable it is to this very day, and even into the forseeable future, in order to do anything about it.

What we are missing is that homogeneity. We are getting closer to it, to be sure; the farther down we dig to break apart this universe into blocks separately responsible for every aspect of our reality, the closer we come to circling around and realizing that these independent pieces, without one another, are not. ‘Closer’ is, of course, relative. Who knows how long it will take us to reach that point, if we ever do. But I digress…

In a frame of mind where opinions are subject to change and reality is subject to the observing system (me), I find I can no longer afford to hold to any preconceived notion of myself - least of all to let it shape the discourse I share with the world at large. After all, I should be truly taking advantage of this advent of my era: unrestrained, instantaneous communication en masse. Why refine? Why spend ages reworking and picking away at my output, even after all the spelling mistakes have been fixed and everything is correctly punctuated, when there’s the chance that in this wide world one might stumble across it and find resonance with it just as it is? Why not, in a system expanding on into infinity with the useless and necessary in equal measure, just put things out there because I feel like it? To me, this is the ultimate personal contribution to that homogenous chaos: to loose the reins on my creative output and care not to perfect, to meet any set standard, but to truly satisfy myself and - potentially - someone else out there.

Therefore, we now return to our irregularly unscheduled programme.

Reactions? Interactions? Events? The more I think about it, the farther I get from causality, and the farther I get from time. I’m still not sure of what I’m getting closer to. It’s ironic, because I flash between picturing this on a macroscopic scale and considering it in terms of physically non-existent minutiae reacting on a level that we can sensually observe, without anything in between. It’s this whole quantum leap thing (how does anything ‘get’ anywhere?).

I’ve been largely educated ‘liberally,’ or at least by minds which consistently suggest that we look beyond the obvious for the seemingly ridiculous bits and allow them into our perception. It leaves one with a sort of acute paranoia. I find myself peeking around corners, so to speak, for anything that might possibly be taken for granted so that I can follow this tunnel of sorts even farther. And it is a tunnel, like unto Alice’s rabbit-hole. It’s a long way to travel, seeming endless, and to reach the ‘bottom’ leaves your world no less nonsensical than it was to begin with.

The challenge is that one is seeking, even by these means, to come to a sort of satisfaction in the unfocused and chaotic entirety of it all. In the end, that which you seek is that which you already know. That doesn’t stop you, though; you’re still in the tunnel, skittering after the unchallenged assumptions that waver in your peripherals like shadows on the wall of the cave.

Specifically, the book The Dancing Wu Li Masters (Gary Zukav) has been clinging to my brain. Most notably (at the moment, anyway), it has turned time into a much less binding assumption. It’s just a field now, existing all at once and not at all, of the myriad manifestations of probability. How our consciousness moves within this field, how our sensory experience focuses our perceptions of these manifestations, seems awesomely fleeting and meaningless - until we consider that without our selves to do the observing, none of these things are meaningful in a way that could ever impact us. It’s cyclical, and equalized.

The problem with looking at reality as a set of probabilities-manifest is that at first it seems very constricting. When we think of probability, we think of those things that are ‘probable’ - to us, this generally insinuates that they are ‘likely to occur’. It’s easy to fall back into the mental construct of this universe operating as a grand machine, with each and every event pre-determined. Really, the picture painted by such advents as the Schrodinger equation is far more varied and exciting - it’s just harder to imagine.

It means that anything - really anything - is possible. Illogical, unfathomable, inconceivable - all descriptors for things that we cannot fit into our daily experiences with reality. They are outliers to the statistical set we have accepted as ‘making sense’. But this reality, in all its tangible reliability, is not the end-all, is it? What we know of the universe is not truly universal, and even knowing that, our perception is incomplete. Why does quantum theory feel so right?

One could spend a very long time attempting to figure that out. For the time being, I have decided to relax the attempt I would normally make to structure everything systematically. Even thinking of things in terms of chaos, the tendency to attempt to apply causality encroaches. I, myself, spent hours attempting to utilize mathematics to extrapolate on the concept of dimensional compounding using linear coordinate systems conceptually, but found myself speaking only in terms of the ‘physical’ or ‘temporal’ universe which with we are familiar. And it was frustrating - all I was trying to do is prove why everything I had learned made so much sense.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t, because we have constructed definitions for ’sense’ and ‘order’ that simply don’t work. The intersections are not graduated simply because we speak in terms of quanta. They are not points where lines meet, nor rippling tangential fields. They are distributed, to infinity, in unfathomable ‘homogeneity’. From one to the next may simply be a shift from + to -, the disappearance of one necessitating the appearance of another at any place, any time. We dance like sparks among them, as them, as I and as we: going in every direction, having no direction at all.

It’s really something to be ‘bottoming out.’

There has been a loss of control. But it’s been more like a blip in the power steering than, say, spiraling into addiction or becoming trapped in a bad relationship. I guess this means something different to everyone. Either way, it’s quite the experience.

The thing of it is not to panic. 

It reminds me of my first forays into The Evergreen State College’s twelve-foot deep diving pool, when I was just old enough to pass what at the time seemed like a rigorous swimming test (two laps in the regular pool). To plunge in headfirst from that height, slicing through eight feet of water when you are barely four feet high, is exciting and at once starkly foreign to what you know as swimming. But there are familiarities. I could find ‘up’ with a momentary pause to drift, and steer myself in the same way I swam along the bottom of the five-foot pool. The pressure in my ears, though intense, was recognizable and not frightening. Recognizing these elements as universal to being a person under water allowed me the time for curiosity, to wonder at just how far away the surface was and how close this new stretch of pool floor had gotten.

Once I felt the bottom, oriented it to myself and mapped it into my world, to resurface took  little more than a push. But, I did find it easiest to push once both feet had touched down.

I remember one of the first things that struck me about the film Donnie Darko. It was during the assembly, as the ‘inspirational’ speech was being given, and things began to speed up around him. "I’m moving through time," he said. It was profound, and yet when you think about it, incredibly obvious. Of course he was moving through time. We all are. If we weren’t, we would be separate from the stream of reality that holds us in conjunction with those around us. This "time-space continuum" is, by definition, a streamlined progression.

I think about it every time someone says that the day is going by fast or dragging on, especially when I feel the opposite effect to what they are describing. It’s strange to think that while a day is racing along to you, for someone else, it seems to take eons to make it through the last hour. That’s only for those of us who believe in time, I suppose. But even then, I don’t know anyone who has never experienced a ‘long day’.

We know we can’t promise not to be offended. We know the truth can hurt, almost more than a lie, sometimes. We may even have an idea of what the real answer is going to be when we ask for it.

We still ask.

When is it fair to give a dishonest answer to an honest question? 

So many intelligent people I have conversed with would tell me, above all else, that they respect candid and straightforward honesty in all things. Rarely do they seem to remember this when they get exactly what they asked for.

Personally, I don’t believe honesty is at all times required. There are moments where a small white lie can make a difference; we do our best to judge this when we tell them, and we make it known when it wasn’t the best time, and we learn as we go.

But there are those times when we are asked a direct question. Maybe not even a big question, but a solid question that deserves an answer. I am going to give you the answer, whether you really knew what you were asking for or not. I expect the same. Honestly.

We were thinking about how we forgot what we were just thinking about,
But that it doesn’t matter, because now that we’ve thought about it, it’s out there. 

– The final night in my first apartment 

I have three major personal philosophies.
Two of them I am aware of.
The first has to do with the general tendency to analyze and judge categorically, this being inversely relative to the expanding human consciousness. I’ll go into that later.

The second, and probably the most pertinent on a daily basis, deals with process.
If there is one thing I’ve noticed in moving through time, it is that nothing begins and ends at the same moment. We never remember the exact beginning or the exact ending of an event - it is what leads to these beginnings and ends (which for the purpose of my thought are one and the same) that makes a point in life memorable. Try and think of a single moment in your life that you remember clearly. Immediately, one tends to wonder why one remembers it.
It is part of our inquisitive nature as humans; I like to think of that curiosity as a subset of this philosphy, because that is what drives these automatic reactions. I remember reading Sophie’s World (an excellent book if you ever get the chance to pick it up); there was a part in which an object is rolled through the room towards a cat, who immediately locks onto the object and watches where it goes next. A different form of curiosity; humans see an object roll into the room and, as the book notes, look to the object’s origin and not its destination. This is why history is necessary to us, why science looks to debunk the whole thing, and why so many look to faith: we need an explanation of the process. Simple answers like “We are alive, and that is all” are not enough.
Life is about process.
The most important part of this, though, is far more personal. We measure our life in terms of experiences, not necessarily in knowledge gained. It is a strange phenomenon in adults, however, that when we reach a certain age, we feel the need to pass on what we have accumulated so far to the generation below us in the hopes that perhaps they will not have to go through things in the same manner we did. What we forget is the importance of process in that child’s life. The answer will not be enough for such a young and inquisitive mind, and we are hard pressed to explain the sequence that led to these conclusions, especially when it may seem different in retrospect than it did at the time. Memorable events are going to have a larger impact on a child than simply delivered answers that were perhaps not what they meant to ask for.
Children are simply an example, really, of a more over-reaching idea. In modern Western society, we are very individualistic and goal-oriented. Often we lose sight of what we go through in between until much, much later. So my philosophy of process is, I suppose, to gain as much from the process as you might from the end result; or perhaps, to be careful about taking the process for granted.

The third philosophy is a mystery to me, at least so far. I like to think that in a roundabout way, this alludes to my belief that not everything must be explained or understood; and I can accept this, which further indicates that it’s alright, and perhaps it isn’t necessary anyway.

I always feel the need to defend my philosophies against nihilism for some reason. I suppose it’s because as I write and attempt to debunk any questions that one might have about what I am writing, the first objection to leap to mind is “Well bugger all then, we can just leave things be and not bother doing anything, is that it?” This is not necessarily so. I suppose it could be in the harshest of interpretations, but one would be missing the point.
One misses out on a lot by simply disengaging and assuming the world has nothing to do with them. Above all else, without ourselves, how would we appreciate anything?

I feel like I’ve been losing track. I haven’t been writing much, and what I have written seems shallow and less connected. I keep looking to the world for inspiration in case something jumps out at me. Nothing lately has. But honestly, something has been irking me for a while. It is another church sign, though from a different church this time. It reads:
"WAL-MART ISN’T THE ONLY SAVING PLACE"
You may read this and wonder why it bothers me. I’m rather obviously not Christian, and never even in my discussion of religion have I lauded the sacred necessity of being "saved". But somehow, this sign seems to be in terribly poor taste. It has been up for a long time now, and perhaps no one has complained about it. Maybe it’s because enough Christians shop at Wal-Mart to see the connection and find it funny. It’s a connection I don’t see, and I don’t find it funny - I find it tacky. Saving a few cents on poorly made items in a work environment where its employees are unfairly compensated and the business is drowning out other local family-owned businesses doesn’t seem to fall in line, anywhere, with the Salvation in the Christ. If, in order for people to make the memory connection to their place of worship, it is necessary to call upon an infamously cheap chain retailer, inadvertently (?) advertising for them at the same time, then our nation’s poison commercialism has reached a new level of saturation. Of course, it’s not like this honestly means anything to me; I’m not looking for a church, and I don’t need to confirm my personal beliefs against those people. But it seems to me that a person’s theistic perspective should be something that is not only personal to them, but remains "sacred", if you will. In that way, a sign like this is twisted and insulting.

Before you ask, this isn’t some hippie attack on the material culture.
I couldn’t bother myself to go that far with it, or to get that negative about it. Just couldn’t be bothered.
It’s just that lately, as I’ve been about to move out for the first time ever, I’ve been going through a bunch of stuff that I’ve had for years. Some of it was in such a state that it had to be thrown a way. A large amount of it could probably go to goodwill, but some of it I just had to keep, because it still meant something to me. I know eventually I’ll be able to just toss it all out the window and keep the memories, but not yet. Now, hold that thought.
On a completely unrelated mindtrack, I was thinking about Christmas as I walked from the parking garage to work today. I’m not sure why. But I was thinking to myself how a lot of really intelligent people condemn Christmas because it has become a purely secular holiday, revolving around people buying each other crap they don’t need in order to try and alleviate some weird media-imposed guilt. Which is true - for a large part. But that doesn’t mean it means nothing to people. And I think that’s where those people drop their argument. Beyond their condemnation of mass marketing, any counter-argument comes across as nothing but cheesy emotional excuses for its existence as such. I feel personally insulted when people assume that I participate in christmas because I am obligated by the media to do so.
I know that for a lot of people, that’s how it is. And you can kind of tell by the things that they go out and buy for people how well they know the person and just how important it really is. Would I be disappointed if I didn’t get presents? Hell yeah, I put a lot of thought into what I ask for. I get stuff I use. But if there were no more presents ever, would I think that Christmas was gone? No. And it doesn’t have anything to do with the “spirit of christmas” or even any religious elements. The attachments I have to the christmas, easter, valentines day, all that crap - they have nothing to do with all the corporate lauding. I would still decorate a tree, because that’s one of the most fun things to do all year. Same with eggs, because I’m an artist and my mother and I go all out… and it’s always fun trying to find them in the morning because she forgets where she hid them. Valentine’s day? I like chocolate. Yep, that’s all. No cheesy romantic stuff, my boyfriend isn’t obligated to buy me anything, I have never required myself to have one by that particular day, and my mom buys me all the sugar.
I could boycott the holidays, teach the media a lesson like some people do. But I already refrain from buying the pointless crap. And you know what? It doesn’t go away. It never will until everyone stops buying it, and with the large number of underinformed, brainwashed citizens in the country that believe they are making good purchasing decisions, that is not going to happen in my lifetime. And sure, I could work at organizing people and telling them not to buy it either, but not if they really thought it was what they wanted. Not everyone can give up their material ties so easily. Hell, I couldn’t get rid of half of that sentimental stuff that I found. Now my friend is Taoist. The last thing that this friend of mine wants is more junk, and after the last move, a lot of that same kind of memorabilia was done away with. My point is, we are all on different levels. It so happens that most of the country is at the level where they feel the need to purchase and hold on to things like that for no good reason until they come to the realization years later that they never needed it to begin with. Furthermore, there is the problem of what can even be categorized as “useless shit,” and until everyone agrees on that point, we cannot compeltely stop buying it. That’s how our commercial nation works. And it isn’t just going to break down overnight. It may be slowly decaying, but the keyword is slowly.
So people can go ahead and keep ranting about it in their “blogs”, just like this. They can either dribble on in some broken, misspelled variant of internet english about all the stuff they didn’t get, or curse antagonistically the fact that they never had a happy holiday because of domestic issues and use that to argue that no one needs it, period. It will be done intelligently. Many will agree with them. But listening to anything like that religiously is just as ridiculous as buying meaningless plastic on sight from an infomercial.
That can’t be stopped either. I can’t even tell anyone to give up the argument.
By no means am I being nihilistic here. One shouldn’t do or not do a thing simply because “it doesn’t matter anyway.” I celebrate christmas not because it doesn’t matter in the long run, but because it has personal value for me. Maybe that’s cheesy. But like I said before, it’s all internalized, and there’s no real way to turn everyone at once from complete externalization of self-worth.
Just a thought. Do with it whatever you like.