April 14, 2010

It's hard to know where to start a log.

Last night the Introverted Thinker was telling us what she is worrying about. She is worrying about atoms and protons and electrons. "I don't understand them. How do they hold together and why? Why doesn't my hand go in to the table? There are spaces between them and how does the hand part stay hand and the table stay table. And when I rub my arm a layer comes off and then why doesn't it leak? Why doesn't the inside start falling out?"

I worry about grundoon a lot.

The Introverted Thinker says, "I don't want to be a scientist. It's scary. We don't really know how it works. Why are people here? Why do the atoms come together and make things? What's it for? What if it isn't for anything?"

The clinic opening date is April 30th. I'll never be ready. Auuughhhh. Might as well set a date. Word gets around town fast.

IT says, "What about an architect, mom? Is that an ok thing to be? There isn't too much science, is there? But I might want to make things too square and boring."

I finished three months at the Army Hospital, commute two hours there, work ten, commute two home. It was really fun and exhausting. I worried about falling asleep on the road and was careful. The Beau loaned me his car which is at least 12 years newer than my decrepit fleet and has side air bags and front air bags and more modern safety stuff. I let him, a departure for me.

IT says, "I might become religious so I don't have to think about science. We don't KNOW and they CHANGE it."

I say, "I think the protons and electrons like to be organized. They are attracted and repelled. They are organized for a while and then disorganized. They come together and apart."

IT says, "Infinity. That's ok. When I was really little I watched the Simpsons and they watch themselves on tv and I thought that we were watching them and someone was watching us and so on. It was scary then. And what about fractals? A picture of a fractal isn't a fractal because if you go small enough the ink can't get any smaller so it isn't real."

I say, "Hmmmm. I don't know if a picture of a fractal is a fractal. You are right, it's limited by the ink. Finite."

The Beau had his back surgery. Two months out, doing really well, sciatica gone. A piece of stitch came out of one of the incisions. He thinks doctors are awful and know less than he realized. "Don't stitches absorb?" he says.

"Mostly." I say, "Except when they don't."

IT says, "Life on other planets. Maybe it wouldn't use water or air or anything we would recognize. Maybe it wouldn't think. How could we tell?"

The Extroverted Thinker came home from Thailand. The situation had gotten really awful. He is back in high school, picking up precalculus in the middle of the year and doing the Running Start college courses to finish 11th grade. He is very happy to be home.

IT says, "And what if those protons and electrons are alive? Then everything is alive! How can something be part of the air and then part of a plant and then part of me?"

I say, "And what about when we gain or lose weight? The part that was me and isn't any more."

IT needs a hug.

I say, "Let's have chocolate. I think chocolate electrons like to be eaten."

So we do.

I've been writing a lot on free will lately. One argument has been this set of definitions:

Random: caused by nothing

Determined: caused by a prior event

Free: caused by a substance

I am convinced, for the moment, that this set of definitions can save free will from incoherence. The definitions didn't originate with me, so they will be old news to people more erudite than I am, but they are new to me and I am impressed by them. The definition of free that I am using succeeds in making free will neither random nor determined without falling into mysticism, which I had previously thought was impossible. Further, it removes some of the mysteriousness associated with agent causation by specifying which part of the agent is responsible for the free act.

It’s that time of year again. Instead of going to school, I think I’ll just sit at home and drink beer. If I drink enough I could get my own little beer baby and impress all the ladies with it.

You’d like that wouldn’t you ladies? Wouldn’t you?

Let’s review last year! Eh. Let’s just do this week. Two tests, one in sociology, one in American Politics. Both intro classes (I’m sweeping up some core credits). Didn’t study for either, passed both. My “advanced” creative writing workshop workshopped a piece I had written. I find it funny that I’m almost always able to predict what people will find wrong with a piece well before they tell me.

A general rule of thumb is if you’re unsure about what a piece of writing does then others will be unsure too. I’m very much a propionate of the rewrite and firmly believe that stories, particularly short stories are really born out of rewriting them many, many times. Actually, I think that of every piece of writing and I think that anybody who doesn’t at least edit their work is fooling only themselves.

There’s a dead roadrunner I see on my way to the bus stop everyday. I’m not exactly sure what killed it. Usually when you see a dead animal by the side of the road it means it was hit by a car, but there isn’t a mark on this fellow. Maybe it died of a plague. There is certainly something a bit disturbing as seeing a dead state bird. Roadrunners function as a symbol of my home state. If I were a superstitious man I’d say it was a bad omen. But I’m not and it only makes me sad. Poor bastard. Or gal. It’s hard to tell.

Every once in a while the bus’s scrolling marquee will get fucked up and instead of saying that it is April, 14th 2010 or some other boring date it will say it’s April 14th 2095. But I suppose 2010 is still a futuristic date. I know because the bus talks, announcing the streets as it approaches them. So now you know. We have talking buses in the future.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I have some real nodes to writeup.

Birthday past \ / Birthday future

The other night I ordered sweet and sour pork, fried rice and a two liter of Sprite.

The man who runs the Chinese delivery store is quite familiar with this Village. He was kind enough to include a bag of ice with my order, knowing that the water potability here at the Abbey is in perpetual flux.  In the past two months, both my friend and I have become ill. I've taken to brushing my teeth and washing my hair with Ozarka.

Prior to eating, I cue-up Mulholland Dr.. Earlier that day I went to the pawn shop to look for a cheap 8-track recorder, but spent too much time looking at used DVD's and never had the chance.  I've recently acquired a Roland Juno G-series synthesizer, and I cannot bear the process of recording music on my laptop.  I've seen Mulholland Dr. once before, but watching a Lynch movie only once seems pointless.  I can only ever begin to understand his work upon the second viewing, and after a substantial lapse of time.  

My friend that attended USC said that the film was mostly just a cadre of L.A. inside-jokes with enough banal kookiness to be appreciated by a " normal viewer."  I begin to imagine mold-spore inundated film canister vaults and the coagulation of hill-fire smoke which form layers of universally disparate pretensions that accompany the pacific surf while those words echo in my head...

As the credits rolled, I was in a haze of sober lucidity. Now, I get it. I felt sick and fell asleep on my couch.

Sometimes at night, when my head won't settle, the blur between reality and fiction slowly eviscerates.  Voices of what was, what is and what should never be squelch to a din not unlike the channels in between the frequencies of a police scanner.  I turn the valium up until the wheel breaks motion and I fall into deep sleep. 

The morning sun allows a temporary respite from, well, the rest of my life. Jig-sawed coincidences fall in-line with literature and theory while the sounds of the voices on my stereo walk across the road in order, and rearrange me 'till I'm sane.  Everything in this world is all wrong, but I cannot argue that it does not make perfect sense.  Unfortunately, I'm hanging in this mental ether where the divine truth is as readable as a Highlight's Magazine; yet something akin to discovering a perfect blue diamond is less allusive than fresh perspective.

This morning I sat on the couch, turned on the television and waited for the tea to kick-in. There were two fortune cookies with my delivery the other night. I ate one the night I fell asleep on my couch; it read "the basic rule of free enterprise: you must give in order to get," while the reverse was the word "children: (hai) (zi)."  Admittedly, this was more like being kicked in the balls by the Maharishi than a fortune.

This morning I sat on the couch, turned on the television and waited for the tea. I cracked-open the last cookie to read "romance will come your way soon."  And on the back was this.  So, like, hey! What a perfectly appropriate day log, right?  A perfect snapshot of this saccharine-memetic life of mine. Could this be a glimmer of hope, maybe, please... ?  

Oh, but meanwhile, deep within the omniscient catechism of the "perspective" lies the hook. Because here and there in this (n)ether-world of muck and binary, violence and malaise are the only things that dance - and how - in such a gloriously tragic harmony. While I, myself, considerably worse from the wear, am sitting here watching the wheels go round and round... and I just have to let it go.

... nothing is real.