You dream, sometimes, a real and very darkening life, not unlike the real thing you call real that is your waking day. The day of yourself, the moment of your awakening.
You are not alone, ever and never, in these dreams. All around you, men and women you have known in your tired and aging days are working and living so humbly and harshly, firesome and languid, making plans and taking everything from you. Your days, you begin to realize, are not your own.
You are overcome by these dreams and labor with them. You fall weak and wanton in the face of this inevitability: you will die.
And you must, so. Always. To die, and be remembered, as we all must so.
Swallowed up, consumed, depleted, destroyed and so very, very gone.
This is a moment in one's life that one must not forget. This is a moment that will truly define who you are.
Alive and ready, or ready to be dead.
Ask yourself if you are ready, and then, knowing the answer, begin to question whether or not what life you have lived holds any meaning whatsoever.
If it does not, then best to drive your stake deep into the ground and hold here. Morelikely, just wait.
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Be brave; be patient, however, not too patient.
Hello you.
We need to talk.
When lost in the wilderness of our unhappy present, meandering as oft I may from message board to news site, social forum to image dump, I sometimes stop to carve my own painting upon the wall.
I have not always done so with generosity, kindness or respect. It is an awful truth that I find joy in the picking apart and reassemblage of words made by others and I have all too often enjoyed a peculiar satisfaction when doing just that.
I'm not here to apologize for what I've done. I am not sorry.
I am not here to seek atonement for some injustice I have afflicted upon others in the name of a just cause. I have been charged with no such tragic mission.
Here is some light reading to set the mood:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
-Abraham Lincoln
All around, waves of hate and fear and retribution come down so hard and hot as the August sun. Democrat! and Republican! and Conservative! and Liberal! and Atheist! and Catholic! and Christian! and Mormon! and Muslim! and Sikh! and Obama! and Romney! loaded, leveled, and let loose to fly hard and hit friends, family, politicians, pundits, and strangers and to what end?
It follows that in a match of any kind that a winner must be declared. And this certainly is a contest and there certainly are sides, but its Tuesday and that's Political Party War Day so I've got to take off my Monday (Best Lemon Meringue Pie Recipe Day) Uniform and head into the ring. I've got to remember to get Jackson back for the volley he fired at me on Sunday which used to be Best Religion Day, but then we all realized that the Atheists couldn't get in on that because what they do is not, by definition, religion, so we changed it to Best Moral Code/Guide and/or Philosophy Day (which isn't really catching on).
And suddenly, I have that unmistakable twinge that I get in my sartorii at the moment in a dream where I realize I'm dreaming, but not the sort of wriggly weirdness in my latissmus-dorsii that indicates to me that I can fly.
I am grounded.
I don't want anyone to mistake me for Buddha or Muhammad or Guru Nanak or Jesus or (HH) The Flying Spaghetti Monster so let me just get the Fuck Fuck Fucks out of the way. However, I would like to make a suggestion that we might all be better off by being kinder to one-another in the form of an extended analogy about all of us humans being one body.
The terrible and terrifying thing about HIV/AIDS is that it is not alone, it is many. It is the Xhibit inspired Legion come to kill the life right out of your life by using your life to kill your life. The human body is positively teeming with critters that do all kinds of regulation, maintenance and just-swell jobs that keep that body here amongst the living. HIV/AIDS is a piece of programming that wants, just like you do, to be the living-est son-of-a-gun it can and its better at it with you than you will ever be without it and yet it cannot do this alone. It needs some of the body's stuff, specifically T-cells, macrophages and dendritic cells and these are some of those critters mentioned previously; critters of the keep-you-alive variety. The Hiv, as we are now calling a destructive ruiner of lives, replicates itself by hijacking the reproductive parts of cells whose job it is to defend the body from other diseases and The Hiv really starts to trash the place when it sends out invites to its besties: The rest of the host of daemons that those very helpful cells kept at bay.
Silly HIV/AIDS! Dumb bastard doesn't realize its going to kill the very body it needs to survive, because it isn't alive or capable of thought.
Now imagine that at the spectacular, hate-filled, strawberry-coconut-center of every break-down of every discussion about anything on any day is our old friend, The Hiv, and we've got it bad, baby. Each post arrives fresh and clean in the world, nursed through adolescence by its OP and makes it to body college with the rest of its compadres on a board in the inter-blogo-sphere (for purposes of the analogy, we'll assert that a post is some new, non-lethal entry into the system and a given board is just a place somewheres in the flesh). All us critters make our way into that part of the body to check out the interesting area and leave replies, little bits of new data about the new cell, which begin to add up, and it isn't long before one of the Hiv-infested helper-bots arrives and starts breaking shit in a real way. Abortion? Baby killer! Religion? Suicide Bomber! Welfare? Socialist Thieves! and on and on and on.
Every new entry to the cell, every bit of new data, is infected with Hivvy. Every other cell that interacts with the new cell has to try to deal with that infection before it can get anything else done. Inevitably, those cells that interact with the infected cell will take some of that corrupted data with them to other cells, and thereby, spread the disease.
HIV/AIDS, needs a body full of cells and some of those cells need to make it out of the body so that the HIV/AIDS program can continue to write itself. It will continue to do so, its only a program, so long as it can find a body full of viable cells.
Warning, imminent analogy break-down/call to action.
We humans, which make up the body of humanity, are not cells. We are not unchangeable programs, and we should not carry too many with us.
If dishonesty, selfishness, cruelty, callousness, cowardliness, prejudice, and hatred are all viruses which can infect us, then we must, in order to keep our body functional, bear a sufficient quantity of those anti-bodies necessary to combat them. I'm not suggesting that when you disagree with someone with regard to something important that you shouldn't say so, quite the opposite. I'm asking you to consider, very seriously, whether the statement that you make in response is constructive, or whether your giving the human body HIV/AIDS. After all, when we compete against another human being, we compete against ourselves as well. If, once we have won, we do not examine that victory, we will fail to reproduce it and those that we compete with will find out our mistakes and be ready for them next time. When we strive, it is against not only nature, but also our nature. We are a body of bodies, and in order to improve ourselves, we must be functional. To be a complete and helpful part of the body of humanity, we must fill ourselves with so much; honesty, selflessness, kindness, involvement, bravery, and love that we can never be overwhelmed by the daemons of our fearful nature. Else, we are a disease, bringing the rest down.
If I am wrong, know that I'm prepared to have that discussion. However, I will not accept that we are incapable of combining those things that we call different into something which we might all agree on.
TL;DR: Choose love.
We need to talk.
When lost in the wilderness of our unhappy present, meandering as oft I may from message board to news site, social forum to image dump, I sometimes stop to carve my own painting upon the wall.
I have not always done so with generosity, kindness or respect. It is an awful truth that I find joy in the picking apart and reassemblage of words made by others and I have all too often enjoyed a peculiar satisfaction when doing just that.
I'm not here to apologize for what I've done. I am not sorry.
I am not here to seek atonement for some injustice I have afflicted upon others in the name of a just cause. I have been charged with no such tragic mission.
Here is some light reading to set the mood:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
-Abraham Lincoln
All around, waves of hate and fear and retribution come down so hard and hot as the August sun. Democrat! and Republican! and Conservative! and Liberal! and Atheist! and Catholic! and Christian! and Mormon! and Muslim! and Sikh! and Obama! and Romney! loaded, leveled, and let loose to fly hard and hit friends, family, politicians, pundits, and strangers and to what end?
It follows that in a match of any kind that a winner must be declared. And this certainly is a contest and there certainly are sides, but its Tuesday and that's Political Party War Day so I've got to take off my Monday (Best Lemon Meringue Pie Recipe Day) Uniform and head into the ring. I've got to remember to get Jackson back for the volley he fired at me on Sunday which used to be Best Religion Day, but then we all realized that the Atheists couldn't get in on that because what they do is not, by definition, religion, so we changed it to Best Moral Code/Guide and/or Philosophy Day (which isn't really catching on).
And suddenly, I have that unmistakable twinge that I get in my sartorii at the moment in a dream where I realize I'm dreaming, but not the sort of wriggly weirdness in my latissmus-dorsii that indicates to me that I can fly.
I am grounded.
I don't want anyone to mistake me for Buddha or Muhammad or Guru Nanak or Jesus or (HH) The Flying Spaghetti Monster so let me just get the Fuck Fuck Fucks out of the way. However, I would like to make a suggestion that we might all be better off by being kinder to one-another in the form of an extended analogy about all of us humans being one body.
The terrible and terrifying thing about HIV/AIDS is that it is not alone, it is many. It is the Xhibit inspired Legion come to kill the life right out of your life by using your life to kill your life. The human body is positively teeming with critters that do all kinds of regulation, maintenance and just-swell jobs that keep that body here amongst the living. HIV/AIDS is a piece of programming that wants, just like you do, to be the living-est son-of-a-gun it can and its better at it with you than you will ever be without it and yet it cannot do this alone. It needs some of the body's stuff, specifically T-cells, macrophages and dendritic cells and these are some of those critters mentioned previously; critters of the keep-you-alive variety. The Hiv, as we are now calling a destructive ruiner of lives, replicates itself by hijacking the reproductive parts of cells whose job it is to defend the body from other diseases and The Hiv really starts to trash the place when it sends out invites to its besties: The rest of the host of daemons that those very helpful cells kept at bay.
Silly HIV/AIDS! Dumb bastard doesn't realize its going to kill the very body it needs to survive, because it isn't alive or capable of thought.
Now imagine that at the spectacular, hate-filled, strawberry-coconut-center of every break-down of every discussion about anything on any day is our old friend, The Hiv, and we've got it bad, baby. Each post arrives fresh and clean in the world, nursed through adolescence by its OP and makes it to body college with the rest of its compadres on a board in the inter-blogo-sphere (for purposes of the analogy, we'll assert that a post is some new, non-lethal entry into the system and a given board is just a place somewheres in the flesh). All us critters make our way into that part of the body to check out the interesting area and leave replies, little bits of new data about the new cell, which begin to add up, and it isn't long before one of the Hiv-infested helper-bots arrives and starts breaking shit in a real way. Abortion? Baby killer! Religion? Suicide Bomber! Welfare? Socialist Thieves! and on and on and on.
Every new entry to the cell, every bit of new data, is infected with Hivvy. Every other cell that interacts with the new cell has to try to deal with that infection before it can get anything else done. Inevitably, those cells that interact with the infected cell will take some of that corrupted data with them to other cells, and thereby, spread the disease.
HIV/AIDS, needs a body full of cells and some of those cells need to make it out of the body so that the HIV/AIDS program can continue to write itself. It will continue to do so, its only a program, so long as it can find a body full of viable cells.
Warning, imminent analogy break-down/call to action.
We humans, which make up the body of humanity, are not cells. We are not unchangeable programs, and we should not carry too many with us.
If dishonesty, selfishness, cruelty, callousness, cowardliness, prejudice, and hatred are all viruses which can infect us, then we must, in order to keep our body functional, bear a sufficient quantity of those anti-bodies necessary to combat them. I'm not suggesting that when you disagree with someone with regard to something important that you shouldn't say so, quite the opposite. I'm asking you to consider, very seriously, whether the statement that you make in response is constructive, or whether your giving the human body HIV/AIDS. After all, when we compete against another human being, we compete against ourselves as well. If, once we have won, we do not examine that victory, we will fail to reproduce it and those that we compete with will find out our mistakes and be ready for them next time. When we strive, it is against not only nature, but also our nature. We are a body of bodies, and in order to improve ourselves, we must be functional. To be a complete and helpful part of the body of humanity, we must fill ourselves with so much; honesty, selflessness, kindness, involvement, bravery, and love that we can never be overwhelmed by the daemons of our fearful nature. Else, we are a disease, bringing the rest down.
If I am wrong, know that I'm prepared to have that discussion. However, I will not accept that we are incapable of combining those things that we call different into something which we might all agree on.
TL;DR: Choose love.
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