Here

i present my thoughts for your reflection...take them as you may




rantings



on smoking


it is interesting, the social isolation of smokers. all other social groups who are even in danger of possible isolation are caudled into social acceptance. yet the smoker is shunned and cast away, kicked out and brushed off. what is the crime of the smoker? addiction one may say, a "clinging to a dead fad, victims of a culture." while this is true, it is no crime, it is the fault of most people.

society, with its obsession with "pc" has committed a faux pas. *fact* at one point over ninety percent of you has had a lit cigarette in your mouth. *fact* at another point, over fifty percent of you have been "smokers". is the smoker's crime then to be a reminder of a mistake, or an akward point in life? it is not as if the smoker is walking up to each of you who do not smoke and demanding that you start. more often than not, the smoker is discrete and polite with his smoking.

those of you who are attempting to save the world by brushing us under the carpet are not even considering the humanist side of the issue. do you think that it is a good feeling knowing that you are not wanted, being avoided daily or sent out into the cold, alone. it is easy to simply say, "quit." dependancy is not that simple to "quit." the majority of the world is addicted to something that puts its health at risk. these people are not shunned, far from it. these people are understood, listened to, hugged and allowed to live freely. they are safe in their addictions until ready to let go. addiction to work is a very real disorder. it may easily be seen as linked to health risks such as ulcers, high blood pressure, anxiety, low self-esteem and suicide. on this campus alone there are likely to be over a thousand females suffering from this addiction. they are given room to recover, and socially embraced in the meanwhile. smokers are ignored and clumped into isolated groups. being erased in not healthy.

society has become the nagging parent of a child not meant to be its own. over demanding parents are proven to be unlikely to get what they want, or, in so doing, cause serious psychological damage. is this society's goal? we need our space and acceptance back. let us grow up and learn our own lessons.



on society

We knock down forests and earth to construct pavement mazes. Every road is labelled with aarows between the lines because we have forgotten how to even direct ourselves. We drive machines never even seeing the thousands of faces that pass us each day. We smash into each other. Animals are not supposed to smash into each other. We were never meant to move at such speeds. Cities are arranged around construction or soon coming construction. Houses are few, duplexes, apartments, condos, and motels are taking over. Too many people not enough land for each person to have his own piece. Now we even construct better roads so that people turning have their own curve. Roads are the sign of our "progress". Cars are taking over the earth and we dont even notice because were so trained. It is natural for a person to learn to drive as soon as possible. We are told what is an appropriate age to learn. Forbidden to drive sooner regardless of aptitude. Everything is numbers...there are no more faces. TV teaches us the perfect way to live. Each show embodies a different lifestyle lived perfectly stereotypically. And we eat it up. Never stopping to question. Music is for the mindless. TV in the audio form. It is a reflection of who we are...but what came first the music or the personality reflected by it. No one makes their own music or entertainment. We numb our senses and stupify ourselves by plugging our minds into the media so thoughtfully provided for us. I sit here and type on my computer completely conscious of my own abilities of writing. Machines are simply made to simplify the otherwise long motions of humanity. We have machines to cut wood, make heat, move, hear, even brush our teeth for us. Are we so lazy that we cant take the time to learn to do things ourselves? Why on earth have we spread ourselves so much from those close to us that we need a honking rolling machine to bring us together again? Why do we not live with our families? How are children to know where they have come from if they do not have a chance to socialize with those that are a part of them? We separate from the co-creaters of our own offspring because we are selfish. If two people have a child then for the sake of that child they should live together so that the child knows everything about both of the people that birthed him. We meet people on weekend visits or summer stays. We are not given a chance to realize by ourselves why things didnt work. We hear stories because the world has become so complicated that people dont have time to learn what makes a person. We wear makeup and dye our hair. We show that we are trained in technology. We are never happy with the people that we are. When we are fed perfection and we are human it is only our nature to be self-destructive. We have eating disorders that rip out our insides, self inflicted pain, in order to be similar to people who are "perfect". Average height, average weight, human imperfections are no longer considered human. We are no longer a species. We tear each other apart based on differences that must exist between us. We classify one another based on material used to cover nudity. Personality is no longer an issue. We look far to shortly to care about personality. We are a superficial world with superficial attention spans. We claim that technology is unstoppable once started. If we are the ones who create technology are we saying that we do not have enough self control to stop ourselves from becoming machines? We have so much of everything that people are overwhelmed and begin to abuse things. Drugs, sex, violence, food...all in abundance and all raped. There is no more land. As animals we need land. We will be the death of ourselves. Shooting ranges, wrestling matches, sports...we know that we are creatures and need to demonstrate our physical abilities yet we still make our lives so easy and push button that we have no need for our physical. People are driven to crime and violence because they are only animals and they need to have a physical world. We cage ourselves if we dont obey a rule. If we can not properly operate our own speed machines we are locked up. How ridiculous is it that if we get enough tickets and we dont exchange money for freedom we are locked up? The alternative is nonexistant. Riding a self proppelled board on wheels is illegal in most places. Walking is bitched at by the machine drivers. We are locked into eating exactly what we are fed. With no alternative to their machines we are forced into driving them. We work at their jobs doing menial tasks hour after hours using their machines as transportation to and fro and then to relax we sit in front of a lit up box showing us their tv "programs" so that we know how to live. We hear news about all around the world without ever taking the time to figure out what is going on directly around us by looking and experiencing. Our food is processed and chemically enhanced. We dont even read labels to be sure we are not pumping ourselves with poison. We assume that because something is sold to us that it must be good. We no longer trust ourselves. Free will and questioning is now called paranoia. We put chemical creams, lotions, shampoos, and pastes all over our bodies in an attempt to perfect ourselves. We are ashamed of blemishes or bumps. The life is nearly sucked out of us the machine nearly taken over. We dont see this though because from a chemical perspective we are carbon based living beings. This is us clinging to what we should be. We see it happening but at such a level that we feel helpless to fight it. Once we give up all hope is lost. We work and do not socialize with co-workers or customers because we are supposed to be working and the customers will get impatient if they are forced to wait too long for their purchase. We dont even have time to say hello instead, "may i help you?" Are we helpless? Why does everyone need to help us? We are perfectly capable of making our own food and clothes. Yet we refuse. Although we have all the time in the world saved for us by their technologies we do not have time enough to cover or feed our own bodies. This is the reason why technology came into being. It was to simplify our lives so that we could care for ourselves better. Instead we neglect ourselves and are not in touch with our bodies. We can much sooner tell when our car is running poorly then when our bodies are. We pay people to tell us when we are ill and what we are ill with. We do not even understand ourselves enough to know what is going on inside of us. We are envious of the people on the glowing box because we can not detach ourselves enough to realize that they are only human. They too have problems. But they have money the greatest human pacifier. We live to pacify ourselves. How sick is that? We talk to one another through computers...never hearing a voice or seeing a face. We are emotionless letters sent back and forth.







br>


on self



We have some sort of stimulus for pleasure or pain, but there is no stimulus for ?self?. Why would we ever need to sense self? Even if we can never locate or trace the mind there is such a large number of perceptions that the mind has to exist to organize all of these complex ideas.












on abortion



i find it a bit concerning that homo sapian is the only species that has to kill its young before they are even born. we now use murder as a form of birth control. it is permitted because the fetus is not technically a fully developed being. when then is the line drawn? if it has a heart? a brain?



on free will and identity



Antecedent conditions cause us to do what we do. We have no choice. Our actions are determined. For everything that happens, including choices and actions, there are antecedent conditions which decide for us. Thus the claim that we are free is wrong due to the laws of the universe. Even if the cause of an act is a desire, it is not a free act because desires can be controlled. Like a leaf blowing in the wind, we ourselves are blown into behavior. For every choice we make, even if we become more aware of the influences that effect us, we are not free.











How is identity effected by how people see you? We adopt a number of roles and it is the intersection of all of these roles that make identity. It was once said that stories create identities. What then happens when my self story conflicts with the story someone else has for me? What if my story about myself is never told?






quoates






Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky
rainer rilke


Whenever the project of creating an inner life passes into oblivion, we too die. A life without a regard for life is a kind of living death - within which the question of death does not meaningfully arise.
jakob needleman


"'Tis a ragged road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain as that of the soul, to penetrate the dark profundities of its internal windings, to choose and lay hold of so many nimble notions, 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and one that withdraws us from the common and most recommended employments of the world."
Montaigne


Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Kahlil Gibran


You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen. Simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked; it has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
Franz Kafka


The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere.
Emerson


i'm so lonely I don't even want to be with myself.
Dido


The soul knows no persons. It invites everyman to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love.
Emerson






golden men with wings of
sugar, made of salt, made of
tears you imagine, you wonder
if they will ever be blessed
translucent web globes of
rain paindrops spin like their
eyes the men with gold stars
above their heads made of con-
struction paper and sand i
open my eyes i break the spell
a past winter cannot be hid-
den, especially not when ice
crystals still burn red hot in
the air.


God is a word
words create thoughts
thoughts create the usage of words
did words create God?
-ss


shall i sacrifice myself in order to pacify my world?


when we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.
-victor frankl


to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering
-v.f


he who has a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how'
-v.f.


the last of human freedoms, the ability is to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances
-nietzsche


Do you need unhappiness to have happiness?


poetry








Conscious denial of underlying chaos
fear of giving over to what is true

a world of disharmony im afraid i can not help it
im afraid

lashout...tear apart my insides in search of a truth taught to me oh so many times
where does it lay...why is it that i can not find what everyone leads me to?
I try and fail, try and fail...
all that lasts is the constant disappointment at what i can never accomplish
it is no fault of mine. what body commands mind can do nothing to deny.







bitterness at self is the worst of all existance...i do not comprehend the force that
urges me to do what is so evidently wrong...the force that tears me from loved ones
and throws me deep into my darkness

within my mind there are the secrets that will set me free...where is this key?

my survival depends upon the finding of it...

wonder of life, leader of souls, show me the way...protect me...
i hear the others calling. the ones that rip insides apart.

my sole savior
have i been forsaken?

even self abandons me...
unconscious physical urges rip the seams of mentality
dreams fill--overflow a brain of dispair.

once again waging a war against the undefeatable...
an obvious slaughter



Oh so quick..and soft simple beauty
nights not of wonder, but of wonderous length and silent shy smiles

alone yes, but not lonely
knowledge of past and future bliss lies promising
change is hard but the constant obligation of versitility demands adjustment
with it i grow...



a mother's guilt for her husband's genes
a lifetime of care, maintenance, gone
such hard work at body and morality
lost before first light, first breath

a father's sorrow at a mother's trials
the embarassing disappointment of his performance
such a simple role, so little to be responsible for
forever attempting to shadow the fault, mask, deny, embrace
the bearer of the flaw

a child torn, scared, alone, responsible
no one warned her, she walked alone
so guilty for subverting the norm
eternally attempting to embrace the hegenomy

everyone looks away, pretends, denies
each suffering from the same ailment in different forms
discomfort, resentment,fear, all over tiny unsaid words
three lives drift apart
a family torn


a mind gone, broken from the flock
dreaming awake, vivid dreams asleep
beginning to question which real is real
open or closed insignificant
awoke with eyes open
back to sleep again open
just the window, not the soul
open/close world apart, but just a window not even a barrier
awake/asleep
attempting a dialouge with the guide, the coordinator
attempting to remove the noise, pure, clean, but mechanical requirements demand the static
I speak
O wamt tp fall asleep with my pen moving, i want to wake to find where my mind has travelled. the movement of this pen, so simple in comparison wo the elaborate journey's that fill and flood. i want to have fractal thoughts. i am nature, my mind is subject to its laws. let me write in fractal prose, in form and shape and style.
let me create purely out so some raw aesthetic emotion. something that only others can appreciate. what a wasted life, to never appreciate your own expression. beethoven.

the strings in the library parallel, perpendicular, some with no relation from there to the art building, all through the paper cut tied at the end.
where, why, just so sudden, and everything, out

my crutch, my sanity, evaporating quickly, more quickly than ever before. so so so very afraid to empty such a sweet taste, so beautiful, pure happiness, no thoughts no concerns, pure emotion, joy, anger, passion. swept of confusion, anxiety, the impure social constructs. interesting how the more social the less social construction.

he fell asleep in class. i wonder if he was still learning, absorbing, how much do they know, that i do not offer to them. to what degree are they able to demolish the barrier of rrr with which i attempt to protect the important things

i woudlnt approve of my behavior if i were not myself. i would be so very let down. i need my wife





the shirt helps them disconnect
a sign of servitude--inhumanity.
cold heartless servant sign
covering a weak grasping soul
the hat marks a mindless slave
button one, button two, refill click click, change
heartbeat & breathe
background noise
a tool in the exchange
from one to another.
all feeding one big pool
large pockets get larger.
diligent mindless slave trudges on.
for the 1% of the 1% of the small change pouch
button one, button two, click click, change
smile
keep happy the small pockets
in order to keep happier the the large
larger pocket



I pause, midday
and question if I am still awake
shadows creep by
time slowly passes
I blink and question my
consciousness
Years passed seem more alive
days now melt
Each hour is marked by bills
each week marked by a check
Dreams prove more alive
than wakedness
Nude uncensored life
floods nightly visions
Headache and addiction cramp
the day
Obvious addictions pose little
concern, unconscious nagging
addictions torment and
erode.
Crisp fresh air calls back
reality
Bright clouds behind damp
trees reset thoughts
Called back into wakedness
volume turned up
Only to slowly be muted
again by background






i burn
i burn to experience..to live
The world is so full.
I am jealous of everyone for
I shall never be able to experience them.
I burn for knowledge..that bottomless sea in which few ever wash their souls.
I burn for love.
Hold and hear me.
Feel me cry.
I burn for normalcy and uniqueness.
Let me in your group yet keep me myself.
I burn for life.
Take away these daggers with which I kill myself.
Take away the eyes of the world.
I burn...mostly
I burn



I know they are there
I see them waiting
still I am silent
They call and question
They write and visit
yet I hide
Protection of person?
Identity in non-existence?
Atypical personhood
littered with bitterness and frustration
all to be had already had
all to come already came
laying in the darkness searching for light
drops of lif leaking away









Doomed because he is too smart.
His thinking weighs him down.
Consciousness is a source of inertia.
Waits...always reacting to his thoughts.
?thinking about thinking?
Test to be a man, without image, without identity.
Born of a retort.
Men can not be played like piano keys.
Do you really need a crystal palace?
or is a chicken coop just fine?
More to life than material satisfaction.
Perhaps he is envious...
...but he then is just contradictory.



Yesterday, alone I thought.

Neverending questions
suffocation, starvation, insomnia
A girl cries every second I wait

for the answers.
blood, tears, bruises, night, tears...
She knows that I'm looking, but its

so easy for her to forget.
speak what your heart is screaming

tomorrow I will call her.

Her voice catalyzing the formation
im trying to hard to set you free but the act is not mine to complete
of truth. Her laughter venom
you must unlock you own door. let me in.
boiling away the dirt.

I love her ulike I have loved
another, or perhaps the same as I
have always loved.

She leaves us in the dark.


indecision, erasing re-writing, re-erasing,
loosing track of the thoughts so difficult to contain

this hand so straight, fingers so defined,
dainty. She sees their
future, not in her lines, but in the
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; There is yet faith; But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
T S Eliot









All at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being. And this was not a confused state, but the clearest, the surest of the sure, utterly beyond words, where death was almost a laughable impossibility. The loss of personality, if so it were, seeming no extinction, but the only true life.
Tennyson



and so this is life?
a disconnected maze of disconnected experiences
aging to age
passing days to get to other days
protecting people from who we are leaving only one to witness
unraveling mysteries in shadows and mirrors
drifting from place to place, mental prisoners in physical cells
living not to live but to live to learn to love to live
who are we but who we are? a realization seldom realized.
dying because of over living
pausing to breathe not quite often enough
diving into various concentrations all in vein
clutching to that which does not clutch back
grasping at ghosts
too many buttons not enough windows
kindred spirits lacking spirits
lost souls lacking souls
hollowness deepening daily
life?
passing time?