So much lately has been directing me towards, of all things, biology. (relatedly, why way back when and maybe again why I wanted to be a journalist--sanctioned dilettantism). But anyway, biology. Psychobiology in particular (but not only). For example:
1. Why does sitting very straight clarify thinking, help remove delusive veils of consciousness? It's a fascinating and well observed and phenomenon in the meditating world (don't believe me if you don't want to cocksuckers).
2. Every time I watch Empire of the Sun, I suddenly, bafflingly, start bawling my eyes out (on the inside..) at the point near the end when the entire ship has pretty much sunk and young Christian Bale says, "I learned a new word today: atom bomb". These convulsions are highly impersonal and come from beyond, or way down below near the root, nothing I had anything to do with anyway--an organism's despair for its species. It's palpable, and opaque.
3. K. says--telepathy. Why not? Transmitting entire sections of consciousness, beyond the chopped up semaphores, the glimpses, provided by utterances and postures. Telepathy might even be possible right now in a crude proto-prototypic way: GSR+MRI+PET+EEG+yadda yadda, add them up and you get more complete communication, at least. For what--to help alleviate the tremendous stress of solitary confinement within one's own skin.

I don’t want to complain, but…
Everything depresses me. Like unambitious white people drinking around a campfirein New Hampshire depresses me. Like all of America that isn’t NYC depresses me. Like all the outer boroughs depress me. Like everything that isn’t the tallest, shiniest buildings in Manhattan depresses me. I neeeed to be similarly way way above the mess down there. Fixation with infinite perfection can be a sign of immaturity and also psychosis, so I hear (ever watch Taxidriver?). I share this trait with several of my least accomplished friends. If it’s not perfect or close then it’s worthless. 60% perfect is a particularly ugly percentage. This goes for other things. If it’s not infinite love then it’s nothing at all. To know you're being shown the diplomatic side of someone’s ambivalence, the stronger side of someone’s indifference—what can be worse! Between a rock and a boring place, spinning in place. I want to be rich, and I want a motorcycle.

Valueless living is: saying yes to everything, no only to what’s uninteresting. It was a blip: like the solitary cigarette burn on the clean white door panel of the Asian Studies Center.

I have many addictions
I’ve wasted enough time already
*beautiful moments* are justified only if I write about them
I am an utmost bore.

If I really had no values I’d try to be a journalist, or something else as inconsequential and self-indulgent. I feel that it’s more noble to attempt to provide a drop in the bucket in the corpus of human knowledge. Ooor--actually it's really because a Ph.D is at least some respect from others in the bank. It's not like I really want to be a professor. After those seven years are up I'd rather go to China, knowing that I have those letters after my name, and train to be a Daoist mystic. And do something else after that activity starts showing decreasing returns.

Of the five people across from me on the train bench, the only one I really notice is the one with the jew-fro and the tanned biceps. And not much else about him either. The human animal is highly imperfect for getting at *objective truth*. My future, or at least part of it: cognitive epistemology.

Kierkegaard was an urban writer. All the signs are there: the poisen pen, the self-absorption, the cleverness, the feaux-jadedness as a tractable island to retain poise over an intractable sense of wonder. He even takes time out here and there to complain about how meaningless his life is. Love it—I’d only regret coming to it so late, but regret is a waste of my motherfucking valuable time. A month into my time at Dartmouth I knew that I would come back to the city, at least a city. I enjoy my time the most at the center of the disease—why? Innumerable reasons. Relatedly, ever hear of the folks who during the holocaust would snap and throw themselves against the electrified fences? It’s the way I want to go out. Here’s an imperfect/perfect metaphor. You don’t know it unless you know it. I was a Brahmin in a past life so I know better. Statement of fact. To prefer unity in a dualistic world seemed a matter of integrity, of obligation to oneself. To prefer it also a matter of escape. From obligation first, fellow feeling second. BUT knowledge by acquaintance vs knowledge by description. To someone who feels she values knowledge above all, this little duality, this clarification, is mind-blowing, life changing. The brother calls: he was on the 1-train and heard…a thud, an emergency break, an entire platform gone wild crying and screaming—talk of a child. My first reaction to (factual, not theoretical) pure overwhelming horror is to think of the words on the wall of the uptown pastry shop “secular humanism will save my life”. Of course the universe has a mystical core—if only if it is the subtraction of the known from the unknown which comes out to an infinity—and then that mysticism is just the general fogginess of what one is ignorant of? It’s more than that. Subterranean spring yadda yadda. Again though, the Daoists got it wrong. The entire Daoist canon is one flash a brilliance gone corrupt (of course I’m not qualified to say that but I’ll say it anyway). Duality trumps unity. Climb out of pleasure seeking/pain avoidance into greater things. Into loss of ego boundaries. And then there are things even greater than that—the creation (creatively, awarely) of new ego boundaries, for the sake of oneself and the rest of the disease. Ultimate acts of autonomy. The human supra to the ante-human. Something as unglamorous as secular humanism. So I’m back in the city to stay.

More:


"Tuesday, March 28, 2006

" I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: "In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death." I only meant that the hero of my book is condemmed because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives; he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of private, solitary, sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to look upon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least one much closer to the author's intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn't play the game. The reply is a simple one; he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn't true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels."
--Camus


- I've become very laconic.
- .....because whereas most of my relationships have been kept afloat by laughing a lot, and saying very little (even if we say it desperately, movingly. And then theres the lying, so much lying...because there are no such things as values right), I have at least momentarily lost my tolerance for (for lack of a better word) bullshit--especially my own.

"X: he's unspeakably alone; as am I
Y: as is everyone
X: everything is done in flourishes to disguise the fact""


________________________


First rule of life is to never be too obvious, for the obvious reasons (do you know them?). And, all that veracity inevitably has the property of calcification, of heaviness—all that’s wonderful and mysterious, and pregnantly silent falls off, which is the worst thing it does.

Relatedly, I was wrong. There’s nothing in the world that cleanses so well, that is so conducive to moving on, of living well than all that flourishing. Say less, say more, but never say the truth, most of all not to yourself. Never commit yourself like that, never accept a reality that is just so boring when it's not painful. Romanticize, glamorize, poeticize—and do it well. Tug at your own heartstrings with counterfeit emotions; they’ll never have the power over you that monstrous reality does when taken seriously.

And, have you ever noticed how in a roomful of people, if one person coughs someone else starts coughing? Here are intimations of where language came from, as is the nature of all things biological to react. Not to react is an ultimate act of autonomy, of differentiation. Like the learned stoicism of abused children. The guy on train platform is hot but looks like a douche and an otherwise repulsive human being. He coughs and then I do the same, which I catch and stop, because I don’t like him at all. There are better, less (physiologically) depressing ways to control all that reactivity. What I mean is to learn how to react well, which maybe means falsely.

The person who is an island sees only mirrors all around him (and nothing in all that saltwater is the least bit nourishing). I blame my congenital myopia among other things, that the existence of the entire outer universe has always been just a little doubtful. Which has something to do why I often, and preposterously, think that it was the best decision of my life, majoring in government (of. all. things); and in secret I think it was what I was thinking all along. Because I have great difficulty multitasking. And the past few years have been an—I almost say necessary because it was so instinctive—mad rush to corruption. Because the best things lie beyond good and bad and knowledge by acquaintance is far superior to knowledge by description, maybe.

________________________________
Break, Redux:

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

1. it scares me, it really does. That I may not be the same person who would say all so assuredly, so brightly back in day, sophomore year of stuy, that "economics make da world go 'round". I cared so much about what make the world go round back then. It scares me that maybe I--dont--anymore. maybe it was ­­­~ or something. ====> but im still on that route. because it reminds me of a day when I unequivacally would choose the positive. I was a rational creature back then, much more than I am now. HOMO ECONOMICUS, if you will. 2. I'm not the meritocracy's pure product. John Lee is. traded in his soul for a ticket to MIT. This kid was my competitor in junior high, when I was still effortlessly the best. Green is the color of envy. And Bronx Science. And Dartmouth. Second best. Why dont I care. Because your worth comes from the 1% of you that isnt like the next person and what you do with it. Not how adroitly you can weasel and all-nighter your way up a system that in many ways is ultimately--false. I'm reminded of Matt Wasserman--750 verbal in the 7th grade, ditched stuy to go to some alternative school in the mountains of Massechusetts. once he said "you need 10 hours of sleep a night to function correctly". he had the right idea. sucker motherfuckers.

_____________

To continue: Or—how low can you go. And early-twenties are experimental throw-away years. And, always keep them away from what you love, right. Naah, sometimes silence germinates and sometimes it rots-out. This thought is indicative my maturity. My increased sophistication. My increasingly nuanced thinking. My liberal arts education. Applied to relevant issues. Like how hatred, too, is a healthy emotion. Which I’ve known to be true for many years, or at least that it’s a potent palliative. Of course, be careful, always. That can get out of hand too. Acupuncture with a fork. A deft touch is an utmost virtue. I know of only a few.


_____________

also:

The Boy With the Incredible Brain

(the part about his skin response to pi especially. see--everything is connected. emotion, abstraction, aesthetics, biology, among other things.)

Blah blah blah. Stumbled upon the San Genero Festival this year. The tail end--cool night, descending depression that comes and goes, paralyzes here and there. Three or four old and alone people listening to loud rock music meant for many more. Been looking at ~’s pictures on facebook. Whooa—living. It’s so easy for me to live very very small, very inward. It’s very easy for me to be very content with what I have and ruminate about the rest. Always waiting to be done to; going out and doing something that has always been a rarity and getting rarer. Laziness?—Maybe. Solipsism, too. And the (irrational,) desire for a clean, unencumbered life. Yesterday I got drunk for the first time in many months. Conversation drifts to sex like always. Attention drifts to the lean shaggy haired types in the corner, of course. Feeling the loss of my resolve, dissolving in fun that is nothing more. Resolve to live better, richer. Stop seeking the same dead end exhilarations over and over again.

Other hobbies include scanning the dollar book carts at the Strand every single day for Either/Or, which I hear is about radical decision-making. Decision-making for life—aware and irrevocable and not without pain, which makes it a transcendent act. More theory from theoretical humans. Those who find it impossible to live without justifying every_single_thing that enters such awareness. Charles Lindbergh was one. He looked at one thing only when choosing his wife, which was breeding. “I learned it living on the farm” he said. Also accounts for his Nazi sympathizing etc etc. And then someone went and stole his baby. Tyranny of the unanticipated. Reality checks come in all forms. Even through something as unglamorous as facebook.