aspatial & atemporal

i wonder how much of a person's notions or ideas of right and wrong, their ethics, their morality is influenced by pre-existing laws and rules and religious doctrines, how much of it is mere indoctrination instead of actual, independent thought.
i dont believe that i could ever truly believe in any universal sense of justice, of right and wrong, so i live my days trying not to assume that what is right or wrong in my eyes is the same in the eyes, minds, worlds of others. it's tough, certainly, because of course i spent a great portion of my life indoctrinated as well. this mental freedom that i currently possess was a lifetime in the making, and still i am not completely free. i have been trying to build my own personal base of morality for at least two years now, and it is difficult to create, even more difficult to actually live in it in the midst of living in a common reality and choosing a career that purports to adhere to a particular code of morality. perhaps that is why those blank phases, where i feel that sense of mental anarchy, the ultimate, most intense "i dont give a f***" feeling. maybe i have them as a reminder that i am not bonded to the world's limitations, its laws. i would like to apply in all aspects of my life, not just to social laws or norms or moralities. i would like to apply that type of thinking to any and everything possible.

i wonder about the existence that comes after this one ends. worst case scenario, i think, would be if we, our "souls" or whatever is attached to this body, just recycle back into another body, i guess like reincarnation, but its immediate, and we get no choice in the matter. i think that would suck, if there was no choice. i dont too much like the idea of reincarnation with choice either, because that makes me wonder, if my current soul is somehow a reincarnation of a previous soul from some former body, why would i have chosen to come back to earth? i cant imagine. i dont believe that i am here to relearn that which i would have already known before coming to this earth, if i am indeed a part of the Infinite Field of Being or whatever it is. So, Im not hip to reincarnation, or my perception of what reincarnation could be. So, the other view I would be comfortable with is the one that we, our minds or our souls or whatever (I dont like that term, I dont think its really a "soul" as we commonly think of it), create our heaven or hell or afterlife. Its basically just another level of reality, like a permanent dream, and we get to run it. Perhaps our current life experiences on Earth inform these dreams, so like, if we believe our souls are damned to hell, that is what we will create. If we believe we are destined for a heaven of some sort, we will create our view of heaven and exist there, living, but only on a different plane. There is never really a death, except the death of the physical body. The movie What Dreams May Come is probably the best example I can think of that expresses what I'm trying to get at, with slight variations. I think I have the most faith in this view, which is why I do not fear death itself, only the methods by which death may be achieved. The third view that wouldnt be so bad if I couldnt have the self-created after-life is a nothingness, the absence of everything. i imagine that to be a black, soundless nothingness that we join. i am not sure if we would be conscious or aware of the nothingness, but it wouldnt be bad, either way. it would just be nothing. pure nothing. i guess an even worse worst case scenario than the first would be if there really is a heaven and a hell, and there really is a "god" as people commonly think of it. that would really suck for me. luckily i dont believe that, and cant make myself believe it.

it seems that when i love, when i truly love, i love and love hard. but when im not loving, when im not truly loving, or when the love is conditional, pretentious, surface-y, i dont really believe in its existence. i've never been able to convince myself that we exist for love, and some people do believe that. i dont find it to be the end all be all. perhaps because it has been quite transient in my life, or maybe thats just how i feel and how ive always felt, not merely because of past experiences. i just dont put much stock into it. if it happens, it is lovely, truly, madly mind-blowing, a needle to vein type of high. but after the high honeymoon period, it becomes much like anything else (for me personally) - an experience that has the ability to invoke certain emotions and things in you, an experience that passes and occassionally returns. love is special, perhaps even necessary, but definitely not the most important thing that i can think of when i think of what i want to take from my experience on this existence. knowledge is what i really want, omniscience, not really love, but perhaps love is a sort of conduit of information or bridge to obtaining a certain level of omniscience.

impaired time/space perception/anarchist delight

as much as i would love to be sentient while dreaming, truly lucid, i cannot induce it. my dreams have been spectacularly vivid lately, even longer and fuller and filled with substance than usual, but harder to remember in detail. there are moments though, between sleep and awake, moments where the two blend. its weird. i think ive been having these moments because i recently cut off my cable. im one of those people who sleep with the television on. i do this because i have certain beliefs about things that happen in the dark, so i need noise and a slither of light in my room at all times. having cable allowed for the television to be on all night continuously, so constant noise, constant light. i cut cable off about two weeks ago, so that means i have to fall asleep with dvds playing. as you know, dvds go off, and the menu pops up, where some droning sound bite will play over and over again until you press play. so that means im constantly waking up, probably every 2 or 3 hours, because i somehow, beyond my sleep, become acute to the lack of sound in the room and get scared. what makes it worse is that i am often in the middle of a dream. the abrupt transition from that state of consciousness to this one is jolting, because for a few moments, you do not know what is or isnt "real." the same happens when im in a deep sleep and i happen to hear my phone ring, usually if there are two calls in a row, its like the sound reaches to me beyond and pulls me back into this world, but for 3-5 seconds, im stuck in between worlds. i think it happens with my alarm clock sometimes, too. its weird, and cool, and scary. i find that if i really focus, i can manipulate certain things, like time perception. i dont want to go into too much detail without sounding too crazy, but forreal. or maybe its totally normal and other people experience it as well. i dont know. i used to have similar moments when i was around 11 and my mom got me my own phone line in my room. i would stay on the phone aaaallll night and fall asleep on the phone. there were times where i would dream that i was talking on it, but i was really talking, but i wasnt talking to anyone in real life, but in my dream i was talking, in the same position, so i was like, stuck in between the two planes or having some type of out of body experience, watching myself sleeping, talking in my sleep. i dont know, i cant really explain it right, but i remember it clearly. its flyy stuff, and thats why im so fascinated by the art of dreams. its like a movie, a personal movie, every night. i love dreaming, even if its scary, its just the thrill of it, the experience of it. even if i dont remember it consciously, i remember it, it still stays with me, the feelings, or perhaps an image will flash in my head randomly that I will implicitly know came from a dream. It boggles the mind, though, to think that a memory has the same quality as a dreamed dream, making one wonder what reality really is.

in direct contrast to the empathy i am often overwhelmed with, there are times when i feel nothing. there are moments in my brain where i feel something akin to amoral. like Mersault, the stranger. its not like feelings or emotion or whatever else isn't there, ceases to exist. its just that my brain shuts down for awhile and i cant access any particular emotion or opinion or feeling about anything. it happens when i least expect it, and more often than I'd like. its not directed at any particular thing or person, but at everything and yet nothing at all. deconstruction until nothing remains. maybe that is an achievement, perhaps it is a temporary state of mental anarchy, where everything is destroyed and recreated again. My emotions are restored a few minutes or hours later, back intact as though they had never left. But in those moments of nothingness, I feel a true freedom, unbridled, unmolded, without burdensome assumptions or preconceived notions or nagging thoughts. I've always been moderately nonchalant, but these moments are true, pure detachment from the world. Its frightening because it is beyond my control and i wonder what has come over me and when it will end, and i dont want to get stuck in that state. i want to feel emotion. yet its secretly thrilling, makes me curious, makes me wonder who is me.

i wonder what true anarchy tastes like. what it would feel like to just forget it all, screw it all, not simply say it, but do it. stop believing in what society and organized religion and government and history and whoever else has decided is reality. what would it be like to use deconstruction as a tool to chip away at everything i know as the real until nothing exists, and reconstruct my own reality from that nothingness? go backwards in the face of forward expectations? could i live? would i survive? would things just dissapear if i stopped believing in it, would this all slip away?

i need time to think and experiment

unscripted

I can never underestimate the enduring truth of the phrase “possibilities are infinite.” I try to live it everyday, on every level, from the biggest of things to the smallest of things, but to actually live this truth is much more difficult than believing in it. I suppose that that is true of all things, belief without action is like wasted energy, and energy is not a thing to be wasted. I try to use infinite possibilities as a tool of analysis in every given situation and experience. I do that until I max out on possibilities and variables, because of course I cant consider all of infinity for one situation, and I try to take the best path possible based off of the analysis conducted beforehand. The thing that I sometimes fail to consider, however, are the infinite consequences or effects generated by those infinite possibilities, often causing me to misstep, lamenting or regretting the outcome. I guess that gives life a certain unpredictability, one that will always exist, lurking in the shadows, waiting to throw your life off-course, uncalculated and unexpected. It is in my nature, encoded in my personality somehow, to control that which is uncontrollable and to know that which is virtually unknowable. I want to stretch my mental capacities beyond their bonds and touch the sky. last night, i stretched out beneath the clouds and watched them play and make shapes and shift, slowly, in such a way that the clouds appeared to be absolutely still, moving in a second divided by a second divided by a second, so that if I glanced away for a moment then glanced back, there was some subtle, new feature. It was one of those feelings, the one where a more peaceful, perfect moment couldn’t possibly exist, those moments where you overdose, max out on happiness, marked by involuntary sighs, like when I stare up at a perfect moon and am utterly glued, locked, transfixed, breath stolen. If I could have injections of such pleasure each moment of the day, or maybe even a few times a day, life would be…would be…? I’m not sure.

Perhaps “reality”, the dreary, boring thing, is necessary. Perhaps I need the world and its pain to give me a reason for those rare retreats into alternate reality; perhaps this body is incapable of handling sustained pleasurable stimuli. That’s fine, except I find that the less I have of it, the more I want it, the more I want to retreat and dream, because only through dreaming may I truly wake, that is where my action and my beliefs meet and co-create all of my infinite possibilities.
For every bit of order in my life lies beside it an equally-sized mass of chaos, and with every peak follows a plunge, steady patterns are rarely seen. Such is life, some may believe, and others may see it as karma, the cyclical nature and energy of existence, and on some underlying level, I hold on to that belief, because it is observable in physical nature, but on a level that is higher on my hierarchy of beliefs, it is limited to that physical nature. I don’t believe that the true nature of things is that easily calculable, bringing it back to infinite possibilities that do not adhere to a cycle of any sort. So, although I do not believe in karma on a spiritual level, my physical and conscious experiences seem to be affected by it. Thats not to say that I dont appreciate those cycles, I can, at times, but I believe that it carries me away from the truth, that these circles can be broken and transcended and opened up to infinite possibility.

the visitor

what is it that happens when two worlds collide, or when two minds meet and occupy one space at one moment in time? literally. if you share the view that we each create our own reality and we do so at every moment of the day, what is it that happens when two people come together and create a simultaneous, shared reality? what is it that they see in common, or believe they see in common? which version of reality is dominating? i wonder about this sometimes in everyday situations. one example is when i'm driving down the street, and a random person decides to walk into the street, paying no mind to the streetlights or the car that is fast approaching. sure, i can get angry, and i do, but that is a moment where that person, in their created reality, decided that the rules of traffic do not apply to them or that my car didnt exist, or whatever, and what can i say to that or do about it? more specifically, i wonder about it in situations where two people agree to share each other's company, or each other's worlds. what is the creation process between them? what are the unspoken assumptions and concessions that are made that create the experience that the two share or simutaneously perceive that they are sharing? i genuinely wonder. i suppose it is easier to observe it in a situation where the two worlds dont blend, where perspectives dont converge, when there are conflicts, it is actually obvious. an argument between two people, for example, is clearly a moment in time when two people are not sharing a common reality or perception or whatever term is suitable. but what about when there are no conflicts? what is the silent agreement, the invisible pact that allows two creators, two Gods to occupy one space, in comfort? i guess my loner-ness drives this question, because I am most comfortable in my own world, i prefer my own company because it is absent the pretenses, the awkwardness, the incongruency that may stem from two worlds or two realities that dont fit neatly together. i often dont want to take the risk. but there are those times that make it worthwhile for me, when i let down my guard and my controls and become a co-creator, a co-artist with another being, where we paint a beautiful, peaceful landscape that we can temporarily occupy, a momentary heaven or dimension or dimension where i am wrapped in the warmth of the other's presence. i like that feeling, and it is indeed difficult to achieve, involves great risk to myself and my personal comfort and safety, but ultimately worthwhile. it is strange and i wonder about it.

Support Your Local Library

...because where else can you go to buy 10 books for $2.00? I'm so ecstatic. Life is good like that sometimes. I found two Harry Potter books, a Guiness Book of World Records, a book on Mythology, and a few Babysitter's Club, Bruce Coville, and Beverly Cleary Books for my daughter. I always try to find her books that I read as a kid, the ones that I read at night, curled up beneath blankets with flashlights. The books that I modeled my very first short stories after as a budding young writer in second grade. (One of my very first short stories was modeled after a Bruce Coville book, something like a sequel or fan fiction, I suppose. It was about how my teacher was really an alien.oh, and then there was the one where I woke up one morning to find that I had been transformed into a Barbie. My 8-year old existentialist crisis, my version of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, I suppose.) I want to somehow transfer those memories to her, or help her to create her own.

My greatest purchase, however, was my Octavia Butler book. These moments of synchronicity that I have where it cannot quite be chalked up to coincedence, but to my personal grand design, my fulfilled intentions. I went to the library in the first place to find and check out Adulthood Rites, because I just finished Dawn last week, and its the next in the series. (I also went there to get the Harry Potter books that have been recommended to me by someone special, so that I may share in her obsession :o). I've been checking out the Octavia Butler books lately because I've been broke and cannot afford to buy new ones, and I'm planning to catch up and buy all of them later on this summer for my collection. I found Adulthood Rites on the shelf and another one I've been wanting to read, and was all set to check it out, before I decided to give one last glance at the Books for Sale shelf. Right on the last shelf, right in the middle, for 25 cents, in its gleaming burgundy cover and gold pring, stood Adulthood Rites, staring at me, begging for me to give her a home. The same thing happened with the Harry Potter Books - I went there to check them out, and sitting, chillin' out on the for sale shelf, were the first and fifth in the series, as if they had been patiently waiting for me to arrive.

The little things in life are grand. These little things, though seemingly trivial, prove to me that, when you put well-meaning thoughts, pure intentions out into the air, when you want things, they can come. I am starting to see how it works. I didnt beg, I didnt pray, I didnt plan, I didnt even ask. I just thought, I wanted, and it came. You have to leave it up to the Universe, I think. Tell It what you want, and let It take care of it, in Its own way, on Its own "time," if you will. And I dont meant the Universe in the physical sense, although I believe the physical universe to be a gateway of some sort, it serves some special function, but I mean the unified field, the interconneced universe that we all are a part of. I know that its infinitely more complex than that, but that is my simple way of understanding it, in the moment.

I'm going to go read now.