scarcity equals... ?

wondering whether or not to replace ariel's link with saran wrap's link, i realize that i don't have time to give them both a good, long read. i like them both; the only reason that i was going to switch her link was because there isn't very much space in that little box up there.

so i don't have the time to evaluate these two favorite blogs because i need to wake up early tomorrow. and then i realized that i've booked myself into a corner with mad obligations... work, school, social... and i can't help but see the ease with which a person can do what they love way too much.

i'm all for achieving goals, but in the same way that "a goal is just a dream with a timeline", a death sentence is just life with the remaining days numbered. it would seem that goals are useful only as they stand to encourage consistent effort toward a particular outcome, but never as determinants of the universal meaningfulness of time itself. i've learned just as much from concept-wandering as i have from cramming for an individual subject; probably more, in fact, due to the contributory effects of connecting meaningful ideas from relatively disparate conceptual foundations.

i see many "accomplished" people who are successful in the eyes of the world, but they are over-stressed, under-[or over-]sexed, sleepless and habitually tense. my current boss is one of them. she seems so afraid of wasting her time that she has perptually bypassed today for want of projecting herself into the illusion of a better tomorrow. her plans supercede her actual experience. if i habitualize the use of force to subdue and schedule my life, i fear waking up from the dream only when "mid-life" or some other psychologically jarring crisis occurs. suddenly the realization dawns that so much of life is already gone, but only dimly memorable if not for the plaques on the wall acting as reminders of the milestones. beyond a certain point, it seems that the frenetic pace of achievement just adds up to more wrinkles on an ungracefully aging forehead.

i refuse to wake up some day and be fluent in three languages but little more than a smiling, vapid shadow in the mirror. perseverance requires a certain toughness, but it is a simple thing to deaden the nerve endings of perception and replace sensitivity with objectivity, happiness with success. with time as its currency, at what price must dreams meet reality?

maybe the box needs to be a bit larger to fit all the pieces. or the pieces need to be reshaped to fit the box.

hm...

[ ... ]

the antisocial constructivist
accidental autopoiesis

hoping that my voice sounded properly convincing without crossing the border to overacting, i absently placed the handset back into the cradle. an unpaid sick day, but not the frivolous kind. the attendant aches and congestions that often accompany yearly grappling sessions with the flu [and assorted other pathogenic visitors] were in full display; the world was, for the moment, entirely without scent and utterly bereft of sensory enjoyment.

strange though, over the past week my mind seems to have wandered back to itself after extending outward a little too far. being low on cash and never willing to eat junk food, my lunchtime meal had dwindled to an empanada at the corner deli or an american cheese sandwich and a bag of peanut m&ms. waiting for the first steady paycheck in about nine months is an interesting experience, particularly if your bank account is almost completely empty for a couple of weeks before the check reaches your crumb-snatching paws. as for me, i was in full snatch mode and my daily nutrition intake was suboptimal to say the least. only for about a week, though, i kept telling myself. just one more week.

of course, over the weekend i came down with this flu-thing, and by monday of this week, sleep was the only activity that didn't involve every ounce of available strength. so i slept.

monday: mind still hazy, not fully awake, i reach out while lying on my back in bed, applying a gi choke to an imaginary opponent. from there i run through the basic gracie jujutsu techniques that i've learned over the past few years, shadow-wrestling my way to wakefulness. it may have something to do with having spent the weekend researching judo and reading about the exploits of Masahiko Kimura. one of the reasons why i enjoy martial arts is the vast depth of legend and mythology surrounding it. there is always some way to stay inspired or learn something new.

tuesday: i rolled out of bed and onto the floor, eventually gathering myself up to sit in half-lotus position in front of my invincible old laptop computer. for the next few hours and without any particular underlying motivation, i sit and begin to solidify a precursory knowledge about mysql and php. writing hello world programs to manipulate baby databases and visualizing the streamlining of a flat-file based web app that has been my pet project for the past eon.

wednesday: wake up, go online and search for an apple II emulator. i spend far too much of the rest of the day playing roms for airheart, wings of fury, tron and choplifter. its been years since i last thought about the old apple IIc computer, the first computer i ever wrote code on [BASIC] in the late 1980s... but suddenly, i find myself thinking back.

it seems almost as if my mind had decided to re-orient itself to the core aspects of my life, unearthing the constant things that have continued with me into the present. alot of things have been swirling around recently: ruminations on the nature of instructive vs. constructive education, consideration of tradition vs. the individual, and a few other things that i may write about in the near future. not to mention seeing a girl that i was secretly in love with in high school for the first time in at least two years. and then seeing her again the next weekend and spending the whole night in conversation with her while the party around us dissolved completely into the background. i suppose that would go under the heading of "thoughts about the nature of love", in that i tend to reject romance as a form of affectionate expression for another person.

the cumulative result of this week's unforeseen introspections is a relatively unexplored perspective about life itself. it is very difficult for me to accept the apparent lack of intrisinc purpose to life, especially considering the fact that any attempt at self-determinative thoughts [the setting of long-term goals, for example] are inevitably subject to external, uncontrollable factors that predominate outside of one's own personal mindspace. i can set a goal today, but based on information received tomorrow, my goal may change entirely.

solutions to this problem until now have been either maddeningly insubstantial or overly inflexible. one solution is to set a goal and no matter what happens in the meantime, fulfill that goal. an admirable sentiment on the outside, but to look closer reveals that such rigidity takes life and attempts to cut it into human-sized pieces. the problem is that the infinite complexity of life itself is irreducible to such a limiting perspective, and to force my own actions into such a restrictive mold is to halt personal growth in favor of the illusory promise of mechanistic gain [in the same vein as Einstein's rejection of Euclidean geometry; note to self: explain the link between the two].

i refuse to slave away my life in hopes of retiring well in old age. if i am to live my life, it must be lived as it happens; to live life fully is to accept its inevitable uncertainties.

and yet, the second concept is to simply be as the moment unfolds, neither attempting to control events, nor being crushed under the weight of, for lack of a better term at the moment, existential gravity... to simply live now with neither the limitations of restrictive goals nor the promises of future prosperity. take care of the moment and the future will take take of itself.

more or less, the second idea has formed a rough guide to my thoughts and actions over the past few years, and yet it takes a considerable amount of strength and reserve not to lose sight of the moment, alternating between states of breathless anticipation and depressive pessimism.

From: if i play my cards right, i could be a millionaire/movie star/model/athlete/etc.
   To: there is no meaning to things; just selfish genes and neurons shivering in thought.

so then, how to live outside of artificial rules and ruthless scientific rationalism, while maintaining a coherent sense of self and purposefulness? i suppose it's a question to be asked continually over time; one idea that has slowly come to a state of coalescence [at least clear enough to draft in the most tentative of terms] is that of a "convergent story" metaphor.

long-term goals are often disrupted by the harsh unpredictability of things. it does seem, though, that in order to preserve a sense of meaning in life, that it is necessary to maintain some kind of structure in events. this structure, however, is not necessarily linear; in terms of time, yes [somewhat], but not the events themselves. a fundamental aspect of this idea is that each experience is a series of events. these events necessarily have some overlap between experiences, in that the "human" experience is a culmination of mental states existing previous to the current one. the current sense of self does not exist in a vacuum and is dependent on previous experiences to provide the mind with its substance.

although events overlap, the resulting experiences may be very different. for example: i read a book; later i think about things in a slightly different way, and all of my experiences throughout the day in some way reflect my altered understanding of things due to my interpretation of what i've just read.

so then, the timeline of a human life is not composed of one long string of events, but rather, interconnecting subunits, each comprising their own stories with a meaning that is merged seamlessly into the larger consciousness of the individual. life is not an event in itself, but rather, life takes place within every experience and is subsumed in the reconstructive synthesis of thought processes, whether those cognitions are conscious [in the case of introspection] or unconscious [as some contend happens in dreams or other non-intentional states of mind].

i am now, as i am doing; i am in the future, as i have done in the past, and contine to do; i understand myself as a singular entity as i have sewn together the commonalities of these individual experiences into the fabric of my self; the amorphous self-concept is the reference for the interpretation of future events; this interpretation may, in turn, inspire recursive re-interpretation of past events in light of newly possessed information, which may cause further adjustment of understanding of recent events, and so on.

death is no longer the end of life, in this model of experience; it is simply another experience. it just happens to be one in which your last thought will stay with you for eternity, as the mind cannot contemplate its own death [an idea borrowed from Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, to which i pretend no particularly deep understanding].

at least, it's a fun mental model [ 1 ] [ 2 ] to play with.

everyone is out on field assignments, vacation, meetings or something of the like... so my mind wanders from the day-to-day administrative work to which i've been re-acclimating myself after the long interval between jobs. high-speed internet at the office is great for a restless brain [and broadband streaming-deprived ears.]

oh, and before i forget: a little backdoor into the live365 streaming audio service --

to stream directly from your media player and avoid those annoying "register now" prompt screens:

1. find a station to listen to [for exampe: wonderchill radio]
   
2. copy the address of the station [example: http://www.live365.com/stations/45853]
   
3. paste the address into your handy text editor [like vi or metapad]
   
4. switch the subdirectory name "/stations/" with the name "/play/"
   
5. paste the address into the "play from location" [or something similar] dialog box in your media player
   

voila! streaming radio, no popup window hell.

so then, back to a restless working brain. as my thought process is in the vein of the work that i do, i start to browse anti-corporate web sites, eventually coming to an article entitled The Betrayal of Adam Smith. for the next hour or so, i split my attention between the remaining tasks of the day, the chill grooves streaming out of the cheap, boxy speakers, and the article on the computer screen. tidying up, i take a look at the office book shelf, pick up a book, and unexpectedly smile at the title. it's a book about redesigning the world's social, financial and politicial systems away from the mechanistic psychological hedonism of the Hobbesian perspective.

amused: i work here, at a non-profit organization, spending lull times reading about urban agriculture, anti-corporatism and globalization. it strikes me that last june [june of 2001, that is] i was working as a web designer-slash-"a little of everything else" at a badly managed company whose sole aim was to milk every penny from its clients and boost the management's six-digit pay figures by repressing the employees' salaries. now, i redefine myself as a full-time student who actually has a reason to go to work.

suddenly, life takes a sharp turn. for a change, this direction feels good. if only foresight could leave me so that i wouldn't anticipate the next hairpin curve. i suppose i'll just have to enjoy the view from here, at least until here becomes there.

and what to do then?

take a deep breath and jump off the cliff again. after all, that's what got me here in the first place. but falling deeper also means falling faster; the margin for error narrows as the pace of events accelerates.

11.19.2002 // japanese, punk

considering the circumstances, i normally wouldn't have gone: i had work the next day, was on the verge of catching a cold, and so on. but i rarely get the chance to see my friend, k, who had gotten free passes for both of us, so i decided to take it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. it is very likely that november 19th, 2002 would be the only chance to see them live, and they are known for their live performances.

i arrived in the city at around 8:30pm, coordinated with my friend k and met at the bar about an hour later. i was a bit early; across the street was a biker bar replete with about fifteen gleaming hogs parallel-parked outside, interspersed with a few custom bikes and a sportbike or two. every now and then, a contingent of the classic "mean-looking biker dudes" would emerge, jump onto their bikes and roar off down the street, but there was very little commotion otherwise.

as i stood outside the bar/lounge, shifting my weight from right foot to left in an attempt at staying warm, a yellow cab rolled up and out stepped k. a few amicable hellos later, we had no problems getting in -- he was on the guestlist and i was the "plus one".

upon entering, the most noticeable aspect was the styling of the place; definitely a place where grungy 80s rock was at home; the furnishings were minimal and even the doorman was obviously going for the "aging rocker with a day job" look; the straight black hair falling to his shoulders under a baseball cap turned backwards and the apparent eyeliner were dead giveaways. suspended from the ceiling, one for each corner of the space, television screens were tuned in to a documentary on the weirdness that was the eighties rock music scene. to the left as we walked in and separated by a partition was the raised platform stage, about 30' by 20'. all in all, a relatively small setting.

as we walk in and toward the back of the place, on the right is the bar, and in the rear, on the stage-side of the partition, there are tables selling goods with a hand-written sign scrawling "suppport the scene. you've got to buy this merch." i, broke as always, decide to stake out a vantage in the crowd from which to see the stage. a few minutes later, k joins me with a "japanese punk sucks" t-shirt. we laugh and take turns wondering when the main act is going to arrive. at the moment, a japanese rock band is playing, and although i admit to having been a b'z fan a few years ago, i'm not really feeling the whole j-rock vibe tonight. i've come for something else.

after a few more songs and some broken english in between them proclaiming his love for everyone and how happy he is to be here, the lead singer and his motley crue finally shut up and step off the stage. during the j-rock set, i've ducked out to the grimy little boys' room to put in my earplugs due to screeching guitars and ecstatic microphone abuse. the sound system is definitely not at the level of making you feel it. that, and the fact that the music isn't studio-produced; the audio quality is, of course, somewhat rough and unpolished. but that's half the fun; you get to hear what the bands really sound like.

as the main act sets up, does their sound checks and so forth, k and i observe the goth-punk japanese groupies interspersed with about an equal number of non-japanese. after about fifteen minutes of waiting, the american promoter wanders onstage to babble his stock praises for the band, touting that in japan their newest CD/DVD costs the equivalent of three HUNDRED dollars... making me all the happier that i got mine for free. the crowd waits for another few minutes in the semi-darkness, and finally kyono, the lead vocalist, takes the mike and the spotlight. he seems to decide something after looking out at the crowd for a moment. everyone laughs as he pulls out a sheet of paper with words scribbled on it and starts to read "how is everybody doing tonight?" he pauses, then carefully, "O-K. please welcome and enjoy yourself."

"speak japanese," one of the groupies shouts. "we're all here!" but by then, kyono has run out of things to say and folds the page back into his pocket.

and so the show begins. the highlights, for an electronic music-head such as myself, were definitely the gabber/hardcore/dnb beats that were interwoven in the songs, and i often found myself moving to the beats just as much as to the songs that were laid on top of them. and a funny observation about a crowd of mainly rock-loving heads: they don't dance much. except for the ten or eleven psycho moshpit kiddies in the front, most everyone was content to just nod their heads and yell the obligatory "wooo!" at the appropriate times. i tend to feel the beat with my hips and my head, so a lil wigglin' was inevitable ;)

i'm not sure exactly when it happened, but i suddenly went from seeing the band as entertainers to seeing them as artists -- that these guys were getting up in front of a crowd, setting up a vibe, and going apeshit to it, all the while having to gauge the audience response. i realized how much balls that takes and i tuned in a lot more to kyono [the lead vocalist], which added a kind of vicarious headrush as he settled into the set and really started bashing out the lyrics.

it was fun, but k is a grad student and i had work [and class] the next day, so unfortunately we had to leave before they finished their set. although i definitely see an atari teenage riot influence, mad capsule markets definitely holds their own, both on stage and in the studio.

and somehow it was five a.m. before i managed to stumble into bed. worth it, though. definitely.

audio: mad capsule markets . live performance

if ($cop eq "thug"){ know_your_rights(); }

so in other words, be polite, show them your ID, and if they ask you why you're there at that time of night, you are fully within your rights not to tell them anything.

if he gets all up in your face, feel free not to be intimidated. and if his partner is nearby, make sure that you can see any sudden moves toward you and that you have a clear exit at all times. gang tactics apply equally to doughnut men as they do to anyone else. if you trust them and there are no witnesses to the encounter [for example: if you are walking down the street in the evening and they decided to stop you for a chat], it's their word against yours.

written on 11.16.2002

in a fit of spontaneous utility, i ran from the train station back to the apartment [a twenty-minute walking distance]. the cool night air stung my lungs and condensed my breath as rhythmic stride matched heightened respiration. it feels good not to have lost my wind after having spent so much time focusing only on training in the dojang. and after sprinting up the five flights of stairs in the apartment building, i noticed that the time was only 2.15am. not too late for a friday night that should have been spent partying; i felt like the gay couple from groove because couldn't find the damn party... very unsatisfying, i must admit. as if there won't be a party tomorrow, and maybe the next day, too ;)

as far as the whole homosexuality question is concerned, there may be some resolution, or at least momentary abatement in my search for definition. over the past few years, as i have been moving farther away from mainstream society to pursue the questions and overcome the taboos that i have been indoctrinated to accept, one of the most difficult conventional stigmas to deal with is sexuality.

at this point, it would seem clear that there is more than one issue at hand in solving the personal question of sexual orientation. the factors as they have revealed themselves:

gender

social identity

sexual orientation

-> the first factor, gender, is one that i find particularly interesting and amusing. i think that anyone who spends a fair amount of time in places with large gay populations [just walk down the street in a gay-friendly section of the nearest city] has seen an obviously transsexual or transgender person. i remember not too long ago, i was walking down the street with a friend and a six-foot tall, um, person, wearing very high heels, very pushed-up 'cleavage' and two-foot tall hair flounced past. and of course, if you spend more than five minutes online, you can easily find images of transgender people who would fool even the most straight-laced priest, having given up fornication and unlawlful carnal knowledge for the safe haven of the church [among other things].

to be feminine [or effeminate, for that matter] is not necessarily to be biologically female.


-> the second factor is the identity that comes with one's choice of particular affiliations. some people choose to come out "all the way" and assume the stereotyped identity of the flamboyantly gay person, but some [i would say, probably most] keep a more hushed profile as far as their preferences are concerned. after all, everbody's got to make a living, and not every gay person is an artist ;)

that being said, there are gay people in many other professions that don't require interior decorating or fashion design. and mobility within a corporate hierarchy would be somewhat hampered if chairman-of-the-board Bob's penis envy is magnified by his male subordinate actually noticing his lack of girth and length. the driving force behind his desire for that fast car, empty-headed trophy wife, and overpriced summer home would suddenly evaporate because he would realize that the new porsche can't mask the truth in my khakis! -- a liberated gay man could single-handedly cripple the american corporate greed culture... and we can't have that.

-> the third factor is the real meat and potatoes of the question at hand:

are you gay or not?

as for myself, the answer is: nope. i met a guy at my previous job who was gay... i knew from the start, but couldn't confirm my suspicions until we had both left the company. most people are absolutely horrible at masking their body language, and he was no exception; oddly enough, none of the other males in the company could tell. he was very professional and not stereotypical in the least, but he just had that "something". so we kept in touch after leaving the job [him about six months before me] and we had a little flirtation, but nothing more. it was fun for a bit, until i realized that i had absolutely no interest in him sexually; i just liked playing the game. and he was a friend, with shared interests beyond sex as well. the aspect that enticed me about him was not the sex, but the lifestyle: the parties [a different kind of party, though], his friends, and so on. it was so different and unusual to me that i naturally gravitated toward it, for a time. but when i realized that i've essentially been making a false promise to this guy, i feel the need to decide, and be assertive about my conclusion.

but, then again, you only live once.

audio: keoki . relax [ak1200 remix]

as i sit in the back of the cab, behind the driver, the old woman sitting in the seat next to him turns and asks, "would you like to hear a funny joke?"

"sure"... bemused, i listen.

and so she begins:

"
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
"

"it's macbeth. isn't that funny? i'm on my way to the doctor, and i was going to tell him... but i just couldn't wait," she says, beaming, feeling satisfied and accomplished.

she goes on to talk about how a sense of humor is essential in this life, and that if you lose your laugh, you're pretty much lost.

"lady," i say, "if you see that [passage from macbeth] as humor, you've got nothing to worry about."

we share a chuckle, and the cab driver keeps on driving.

» but the spirit within them turned chill «

» and down dropped their wings. «

power source and battery problems. and what evil force compels those problems to manifest themselves in the middle of a journal entry?

ah. whatever.

society is a strange thing. no one seems to want what they ask for. give a stranger help, and they try to take advantage; laugh with someone and they mistake friendliness for weakness.

humans aren't animals? many die at the hands of others without a hint of reason, and even reason itself is often little more than a justification of one's actions.

superstitition versus reason, morality versus logic, efficiency versus compassion. in the mirror, just beneath the skin; the pulse reveals that blood runs freely inside a tightly bound package. how is it that no one seems as confused as i am?

of course it's a facade. a random selection of faces seen in a day surveys apparent stress. many people who seem calm unintentionally exhibit signs of strain, even in their body language -- crossed arms, a furrowed brow, a clenched jaw. anger arises in response to potential fear; fear is often a response to the threat of not being in control of a situation.

if you don't feel threatened, why get angry?
if you see that control itself is an illusion, why feel threatened?

my favorite dreams are those of gods. what torture it must be to live forever.

audio: bjork . play dead

two customers stood ahead of me. the cramped quarters of the small cafe offered little breathing room and no space for extraneous words. brain cells suffering a severe glucose shortage, i had come in for a sugary snack after a grueling period of stuffy-classroom headache. the display case showed rows of tasty nothings, utterly devoid of any nutritional value, overflowing with sensual goodness.

as my turn came to order, i spotted a golden-brown chocolate chip cookie smiling up at me from behind the glass. quickly finding the cookie irresistible, my head throbbed "yes" and i decided to take it.

the naturalistic lighting of the cafe gave the place a warm ambiance, despite the rush hour noise and bustle outside. from behind the counter, her soft, almost feline eyes held mine in a silent recognition of not knowing but wanting badly to feel. my gaze took in the contours of her face, her lips, the hurried look of serving too many customers at once. i look down at the cookie, pointing at it through the glass. we both gaze in at the selection; she starts to ask me which i want to confirm my order. as i look up, i catch her eye in the perfect way, a little innocent mischief turning up the corners of my lips. she stutters.

a full three seconds passes before she regains her composure, stammering my order back to me. "yes," i say quietly, studying her face. she bags the cookie, passes it over the counter and gives me change for the twenty dollar bill that i handed her, making a great effort not to look up again.

is beauty worth the time it takes to enjoy it? and what of the inevitable pain after separating, i wonder. unfortunately, romance seems always to work better on paper than it does in practice.


audio: paul weller ft. portishead . wild wood

written on 10.19.2002

engage to entertain
phenotype corrections

i just realized that online pr0n is my tv.

the past two hours have been spent browsing blogs, reading about general culture stuff and... browsing pr0n.

after being interrupted by a conversation with my brother about his girlfriend troubles, i was spurred to think about aspects of myself that i need to change in order to be happier in the future. considering the fact that my moods and general energy level goes polar south in the dark/cold months, the importance of a positive lifestyle looms ever greater in the course of my introspections.

the vast majority of self-assessment tests that have overpopulated the Internet recently are generally annoying and not particularly useful. a few are somewhat amusing at times, and there is one in particular that is more entertaining than most... i re-take the "test" every now and then just to see how much more of a crazed maniac the web site rates me as being ;)

the test most likely served as a catalyst for reviewing my self in relation to society... not to mention recent readings on the possible origins of consciousness.

there are relatively few extraneous elements that distract attention from my interests; i watch very little television, and i'm not addicted to the telephone. downsides: recently i haven't spent much time with friends, either, due to studying [still on academic probation] and a general reshuffling of priorities. the list of purely recreational activities in which i have participated recently is quite small.

a side-effect of my attempts to keep myself on track is that the need for relaxation and social contact doesn't suddenly disappear. although my mind is consciously focussed on one aspect of life, i still feel a sense of pressure to keep up with the others. the recent lack of sexual anything in my life combined with seasonal horniness results in the unconscious mind hijacking my thought process, and me browsing pr0n [see? it's easy; just blame it on your unconscious]. i'm half-joking but the other half actually strives to make a point.

simple answer? get some ass, foo.

not-so-simple answer? remember the principle that underlies the problem:

habitual passivity wastes time and energy. always strive to actively participate, no matter what the situation.

browsing pr0n is essentially a passive process, similar to the act of watching most television programs and hollywood movies [in terms of sensation, perception and response]: see the image [stimulus], interpret the message encoded within, "feel" stimulation due to association with previously stored referents to the stimulus.

the problem with pr0n lies within the degree of interaction. it takes zero creativity to watch a pr0n movie; a bit more to see an image and fantasize; much more to read an erotic story and construct a situation from that; more still to visualize a situation from scratch; and of course, the most skill [and enjoyment] lies within experiencing the actual event itself.

in the fight against absenting myself from my own experience, the issue becomes one not of pr0n, but of how to become more involved in this life.

if only the quick-and-easy-answers weren't usually the wrong ones... ah well, even the smartest cats don't live forever. i might as well use my curiosity to do something, even if all i do is make mistakes.

audio: tim deluxe . it just won't do

written on 10.18.2002

geek in the ghost

the overweight man sat down next to his coworker, peeling off his grey overcoat with the effort of moving heavy weight. i sat a seat's width behind and to the left. an attractively stitched yarmulke sat comfortably on his head; it was the only prominent feature on him, jolly corpulence aside.

the other man seemed to be subtly uncomfortable, feigning a kind of uneasy truce between the desire to disappear and the unfortunate fact that he would still have to see his pudgy compatriot in the office on monday anyway. after the two had exchanged greetings, the smaller man seemed to resign himself to the interaction, and they commenced a session of manly jargon-tossing.

myself a former repository of useless computer terminology, i felt a certain difficulty in keeping attention on the book that i was reading to pass the time; every now and then, a peculiar lurch of the train would send the word "dsl" or "desktop" or "rights" [in context] wafting over in my direction. the strangest thing about it was that i was drawn to their conversation not by the content, but rather by the snotty, grown-up geek voice that i immediately recognized for what it was. the tang of intellectual arrogance marinating in self-admiration was unmistakable.

having spent the vast majority of this past summer not writing code or designing anything even remotely related to the Internet, i no longer derive a smug satisfaction at holding conversations encoded in the byzantine soup of computerspeak. and today, i felt no desire to pat myself on the back for being one of the few people who can actually decypher that sub-dialect of not-quite-english.

suddenly, i understood the oft-repeated sentiment that techie people are insufferably boring. my head nodded forwarded, paying an unexpected homage to gravity. heart rate slowing to a leisurely pace, my thoughts wandered, and i slept until reaching my destination. although unexpected, the nap was actually quite refreshing.

oddly enough, though, this morning was the first time in months that i had laid hands on a linux manual, and over the past couple of weeks, the words "information architecture" have suddenly come back to haunt me. but at least i can put this curse to good use; a friend wants me to work with him on a music-related web site for local punk bands and general miscreants who don't get much mainstream airplay.

knuckles crack, lamps set to burn the midnight oil... time to start writing some browser independent multi-platform W3C-compliant XHTML and CSS using some juicy Photoshop techniques and a little Macromedia Flash...

...

noooooo!

audio: dj skribble & anthony acid . feel the drugs

written on 9.30.2002

there is a practical reason for this.

i opened my eyes at around eight a.m., snoozed/thought about the day ahead for an hour, trudged into the bathroom and showered... getting out of the shower, there was one hour before the train left and i would be late for class.

ate breakfast [raisin bran, two english muffins], read email, sent my resume to a couple of companies, put my dishes in the kitchen sink and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed. half an hour left.

dressed, packed my bookbag, ready to bounce. oh no! i've got to poop. lol

five minutes before the train leaves the station. i could see the train pulling in, people shuffling inside, the doors sliding shut, and the train slowly building momentum as it lumbers toward the city. washing my hands, i gave myself a blank look as i peered into the mirror above the sink.

i just missed the first quiz of the semester. why?

reason A [the rationalization]:

i caught some kind of sinus bug over the weekend, and my nose has been running like a leaky faucet for the past couple of days. energy is running low, thus the hour-long snooze and the general slugishness in getting my arse out the door. don't worry, i'll do better next time. really.

reason B [primitive psychoanalysis]:

there is a distinct, well-worn path to the present. the sequence is simple: sleep during the day, awaken at night. even having woken up around seven a.m., my head is cloudy until the sun goes down. not stupid-cloudy, but i just don't feel as if i'm thinking at one-hundred percent. sometimes not until after midnight. i design and write code best at night; i can come back from having been out until five a.m. and not crash until eight in the morning.

to a large extent, my night-living habits began as an escape from the pressures of the day. in the past, and even now, i'm so preoccupied with just keeping all my shit together that i have no time to quiet my mind and just be. my mind escapes into the darkness and quiet of the evening to focus, relax and reclaim itself. the fact that i don't take any recreational drugs makes reaching the unconscious thought processes that much more of an effort. and shit, drugs cost too much ;)

now i'm stuck with this unfortunate habit of staying awake late, and subsequently sleeping late. when i don't stay up, i feel refreshed upon waking in the morning, but that refreshed feeling manifests a renewed sense of tension. throughout the day the tension builds and finds no outlet unless i do something that requires physical dexterity or artistic expression -- something that stimulates the visiospatial, non-analytical mind to reassert itself and ease the push-pull sensation of concentration on the things that i "have to" do during the day. meditation clears my mind [to an extent], but that alone can't give meaning to an effort that runs contrary to deeply engrained self-perception. knowing is meaningless if the mode of expression is divorced from that knowledge. kind of like telling someone to fingerpaint using their eyeballs, or asking a snake to wiggle its toes.

the problem: old habits don't die. they can be beaten into submission, but they will always be there to slip back into. one underlying cause can have as many manifestations as a crown can have thorns. i've made a dedicated effort to be a "productive citizen" this semester and go to school, and most parts of me want to stick to it. but where will my creativity and intuitive mind go if i don't make time for them?

audio: bjork . vespertine . 07 . aurora

push, pop, shift

i don't write poetry anymore, but if i wrote anything longer, it would probably end up being prissy and incredibly sanctimonious. on second thought, maybe i'll just wait for a bit and then post a longer prose version of these thoughts. for now, suffice to say that it feels good not to be a guilt-ridden not-rich boy in a rich country oversaturated with images of all of that which bleeds in the world, and consequently, makes headlines.

so then:

look at a picture of a starving baby.
imagine thousands of them.

claim to be honestly touched. find the hypocrisy in self-reference.
shut the fuck up.

realize that you can't help them.
educate yourself. get a job.

acknowledge the system, sleep with the system.
make money. get corrupt. inevitably.

die and come back as you are, not as you were.
not as what you had become.

sell the rich kid something for a dollar.
guide the dollar somewhere else,
no longer in his pocket, now in yours. (are you in his pocket?)

attract people who want to do something.
start your own. your funds. do it yourself. with them?

save a couple of babies.
make love. make more love. wake up. cease to exist.

babies die in the thousands. did you fail?

your guilt motivated you to trade a sports car for a beggar's bowl.
trading cash for prestige? the prestige of imagined moral superiority.

should you have done something else?
after all, meaning is contextual.

audio: rappagariya . step up

addendum to syncope, i [entry date: 8.28.2002]
subentry: june 06, 2002 @ 8:06:22am

Tune ID: aqua - lollipop (candyman) [antiloop clubmix]

Lyrics_

oh my love let us fly
i know you are my candyman and oh
my love let us fly

oh my love let us fly
i know you are my candyman and oh
my love let us fly

to bounty-land...

four o'clock. a.m. i've been awake all day, but i just woke up.

a random conversation on the train with an ex-wall street retired man.
started out with him peering over my shoulder at the book that i was reading.

i slid the book into my bag on the way to the train station, with the intention of brushing up on the physiology of muscle fibers and stretching techniques -- for our first training session together, i wanted to teach my friend stretches and movements that were applicable to his present capabilities.

"you studying to be a doctor?" the lean, leather-skinned older man asks me, within a few minutes of my sitting down and opening the book.

"no," i smile. "teaching martial arts to a friend, and i wanted to brush up on my muscles and tendons."

"seems like everyone needs to brush up on their muscles and tendons," he jokes.

we fell into an easy conversation about career paths and the role of money in a person's life. in the twenty-five minutes during which we talked, i mostly listened, facilitating his thought process until he caught a flow and began to tell his story. at my age, he said, he was living on a rickety boat in the caribbean, hanging out with friends because it seemed right at the time. since then, he had moved through careers as a massage therapist and several others before settling on wall street to support himself, his wife and two kids. as i expressed my reluctance to enter into the apparently predatory culture of profit and consumption that seems to predominate, he observed that things aren't the same all over the united states. there are alternatives, he said; the metropolitan area is exceptionally competitive and money greedy. consumerism [1] is one choice among many.

as we reached my stop, we shook hands and exchanged friendly farewells.

there are so many things to do, possibilities, realities. success seems to revolve around matching the right time and place with the right intention. now is always the time, but here isn't necessarily the place.

flinch, fight or flight.

audio: les nubians . bebela

a fork, in a question
a day, in two parts: 9.06.2002

-> first, the interview. the non-profit sent me a postcard about a month ago regarding the possibility of an opening. so naturally, i filed the card away with all of the other "we may have an opening"'s and "sorry, the position has been filled"'s... that special receptacle that neatly holds all my post-sneeze tissues and old correspondence from spam mailers.

so after tossing the postcard in the trash, i didn't think twice about it. according to a last-minute message on my cell phone yesterday, though, they wanted me to come in for an interview today. of course, i didn't check my messages until this morning, so it was all the more sudden.

the agreed-upon time arrives, and i find myself in a spare, yet tastefully furnished ground-floor office -- somehow fitting for the united states headquarters of a multinational non-profit organization. humility by design, or something.

sitting in the office, the three women who run the place take turns grilling me on my specifications [um... qualifications], motivations, personality quirks, neuroses, and so on. the process takes almost an hour, and by the time i'm done, i feel strangely amused by the whole thing. i suppose that using the right keywords at the right moments makes a person seem pretty smart; "internet research", "globalization=evil", "team player", etc... but i knew this already. one of the advantages of going on alot of interviews is learning how to present the new-and-improved, bright-and-hardworking version of yourself without needing too much warmup beforehand. i've gotten so numbed to the risk of not getting the job that i started making jokes at one point, for example:

her [seriously]: "... and so, what do you feel is the unique aspect of yourself that you would be able to bring to the organization if you were to be hired?"

me [laughing]: "well, i'm a reaaallly nice guy..."

everyone else laughed as well, and of course i got to the point immediately afterward. having kissed the appropriate amount of non-profit booty, hopefully everyone got the point that it was kind of like asking a burglary victim how they feel about having their house broken into. "i'm just peachy, jim, how are the wife and kids?"

hopefully, i'll get this job so that i can finally buy a new pair of shoes to replace these beat-up old sketchers boots that i've been re-shining every time i have somewhere "important" to go. and be able to afford to hear good music with cool peeps without having to skip a meal here and there.

-> second, i'm starting to notice a common thread between old socks and some old friends [some, not all]. after a point, if you don't wash them gently and keep them from getting moth-bitten, they get faded, gray, unsatisfying. boringly predictable. example: a friend of mine had his twenty-something-eth birthday yesterday, and a couple of people were going out for drinks with him. we've been friends for a long time, but he's somewhat irresponsible and makes false promises ["hey man, i'll call you. we'll hang out."] we live just one town away from each other but somehow we only meet up if the rest of the circle of mutual friends gets together. he seems to be a generous guy nowadays, but he rarely keeps his word. kind of like the strong, silent type -- minus half the strength.

they were all heading out to the city to go barhopping but i was not really too down for it, having already made plans to chill at the apartment and watch a couple of movies with my brother. that coupled with the fact that my body has a weird sensitivity to things [namely tinny, ear-splitting treble and large amounts of secondary smoke], slightly irritated sinuses make loud, smokey bars somewhat less than inviting. i don't mind it in small doses; my body says otherwise. we'll probably end up hanging out sometime tonight anyways, so it's not too big of a deal, but still... should friendship be about finding the good in people or finding people with whom you find the most good [feel most comfortable]? i think that's the real issue. which of my lives do i cultivate,

the bisexual, mercurial artist who goes to parties, naively considers his life to be both immensely important and entirely meaningless and resultingly lives life as a game,
or

the largely asexual, pensive introvert who craves philosophical truth and endeavors to discern the meaning behind imagery through constant self-examination?

i think the dominant traits are obvious [manifested in the fact that i actually bother to ask such questions], and yet, i suppose also that the groundwork is laid for a perfectly confusing fork in the road. but the answer is inevitably much more fuzzy than just two options. and i'm not so sure that one side can live without the other as a counterbalance. trusting myself is the hardest part, because it forces me to accept that i'm not really in control. how to describe the world when you can only see to the horizon?

audio: fc kahuna . machine says yes

i suppose that i was where i wanted to be because the escape was so warm and inviting.
but sleep and dreams eventually end, and the questions that lay ahead remain unanswered.

how is it possible to be

[a.] moving; and [b.] enjoying the process of being here now

if movement entails a constant state of not-being-here, but rather, being almost there?

how to be satisfied without also being complacent?

i wonder if progress and happiness are inevitably at odds. it may be that both of those words are inept and hollow.

old stranger, new friend

FRIDAY | 8.30.2002 :: first day of classes just ended, and i realize something: the end of summer is suddenly here. definitely felt like one of the longest summers of my life [chilling with friends, artsy stuff, and looking for jobs with no success] but it was still sudden when i realized that i could wear the heavy, denim wideleg jeans out to party that night without breaking a sweat before i hit the dance floor.

i get to the party at around 23:30, and of course security rapes my book bag, looking inside and out. the stereotypical "surly big black guy" security man tells me to get rid of the water bottle; i take a last swig, dump it, zip everything up and slide on up the stairs to pay twenty-five bones for entrance to the main event [expensive, but to hear old skool from '94-'98 is def. worth it].

first thing i do is check the venue [in order from side to side]: chill area [couch, table, fold-out chairs[2], comfy lounge chair, teevee with funky visuals], bar, door, small raised stage-area [not very danceable], a flight of about ten stairs leadng down to the main dance floor, and on the dance floor, the deejay booth is raised on the left.

i buy myself a bottle of water at the bar [only three dollars] and head to the small-ish dance floor. the deejay is being polite with the volume so far with an average trance set; i'm just chillin for a bit, moovin my feet and relaxing my brain after trial-and-error led me all around downtown to find this club. not too many kids dancing yet...

suddenly i realize that a girl i recognize from school is next to me. she says what's up and we shout greetings. the sound is getting a little hotter, the deejay is gradually stacking the beats and more kids are starting to wiggle. i spot the men's room and duck in for a minute to put on protection [earplugs], then back out to the floor.

it's getting toasty up in here; that funny guy doing the nordic trak and the running man has to pause as sweat drips off him. a circle forms [there's only room for one in the small-assed area] and a big hawaiian-looking dude starts swinging a glow-poi from either hand. he's a little rusty, apparently, and the poi keep knocking each other. thankfully, another kid jumps in, wresting the tools from the bigger man. this kid has skills and wields the poi with finesse. hard trance is pumping from the speakers; i can't help but move, as the bass pounds and the highs get higher.

as the crowd ebbs near the end of the set, i wander off to chill and catch some air. i see my school friend and we talk about partying, activism [eh? i dunno either] and she asks me who i'm rollin with tonight. i point to my face and say "solo"; she introduces me to her friends and [naturally] deejay boyfriend. apparently, he spun earlier and i missed his set. oh well. they get up; apparently her crew is about to bounce, so i get her email addy and we hug goodbyes. back to the dance floor as the set ends and suddenly it's all about hardcore.

kids thrashing everywhere - beats hitting full force in all directions - moshing/pushing/dance-judo - i decide to stroke my chin on this one and just watch the action. i recognize a couple of songs and realize that i must be getting old cuz i'm catching a slight headache, even with the earplugs. sensitive hearing sucks sometimes, so i head back to chill. kids giving massages, a couple of pacifiers here and there, and a sharp whiff of some sinister pungence as i walk past to find me a chair.

i check a couple of fliers, hear about an afterparty, chuckle at some kids burning their retinas with head-splitting light shows, witness the one dude liquid-poppin with professional skills [and more importantly, smoothness and style], watch a funny-as-hell kung-fu battle between him and some other kid, and realize that i'm stuck in the city until 5.00am cuz the station is closed until then. there is practically no ventilation [okay so, yeah, the place kinda sucked] and i feel like grabbing some air, but on my way out the guy at the door yells "all exits are final". shit. that's okay, though. i get downstairs and out, and pry the plugs out of my ears. reorienting myself to the outside world and the fact that it's late night in the city, i keep alert -- outside, bumping into someone will not start a friendly conversation ;) one thing i can say about the party is that the vibe was tight; for the most part, peeps kept their attitudes in check except for smiles, hugs and general positivity. and all the frat-boy antics stayed at the bar, not the dance floor or the lounge area. a couple of train wrecks, but overall the deejays kept the quality flowing too.

i stroll through town for a bit, too amped to be sleepy and finally sit and read a little [always prepared with a book for the quiet moments] until about 4:20am, at which point i amuse myself, walking around playing "tourist" and staring up endlessly at the skyscrapers, lingering for long intervals while crossing the streets. five o'clock rolls around; once in the station i grab my ticket and hop on the 5.40 train.

relaxing into the seat and scrolling my eyes over the predawn skyline, i realize that the summer is over, but it's really not that bad. at this moment, i'm exactly where i want to be.

motion: neon genesis evangelion . episodes 1-4

syncope, i

i don't know what the trigger is, but every now and then my mind opens the velvet-roped gate and lets "I" into the recesses of the "me". Meaning? At times, on the verge of waking up, I won't. Instead, it feels as if the the dream state becomes aware of the intrusion of the waking mind; instead of disappearing as usually happens during the transition from sleep to wakefulness, the dream state incorporates the thought processes from the waking mind and runs with them instead of the normal dream sequences.

the term for this state is hypnagogia [via kuro5hin] and it is one of the most enjoyable states of mind that i have yet experienced. there is a sensation of being untethered from myself, almost as if i am no longer creating my thoughts, but that the thoughts simply are. and they flow continuously, with no gaps for blundering attempts at making sense of everything. at yet, everything is exactly as it should be. everything is the only way that it can be.

this twilight experience is often accompanied by music as well; kind of like an ambient trance soundtrack in the chill room of the mind, a room that, once left behind, is traded for the fractured sensations of autechre at 120 decibels, overlaid by the psytrance darkness of infected mushroom.

lol... i'm such a cretin ;)

a [somewhat] recent experience related to this one involved the final stages of a web site that i was developing. written and archived, but not blogged until now:

june 06. 2002 @ 8:06:22 AM twilight period, slowly rising from sleep to wakefulness. running through code in my mind, debugging a perl subroutine that i had written for this project that i'm working on. ooh my boy we can fly you know you are the only one and ooh my boy we can fly

i wish i could ID that tune... but that fragment of the lyrics is all i remember.

that was a seriously ill visual experience... my mind was running ridiculously fast, but without that intense concentration that usually accompanies a session of writing code.

in my dreams, i am maxwell's demon [1].

dynamic:unstable

during a chat session about bahai, i realized that an intrinsic factor of religion that underlies the particular belief systems is the contrast between collectivism [tentative example: catholicism] and individualism [tentative example: zen]. from that conversation i derive that there is possibly a third option, which could be derided as "eclectic" but may function as a bridge to both aspects for someone wishing to escape blunt categories: the collective individual. someone who recognizes the importance of community as a crucial aspect of survival and happiness, but at the same time exercises a disinterest toward dogma. instead, favoring reason and introspective contemplation, the individual arrives at his or her own interpretation from available information, both from the community and from available literature, hypermedia, etc. eschewing the seductions of mysticism, such a person finds satisfaction in...

hm.

that's where the idea breaks down. if not to live for the promise of an afterlife, what to live for? purposes are just arbitary goalposts, set by the same individuals who set the rules of the game. if i do not pretend that someone higher than myself in the order of things has set the rules, how do i keep myself from the idea that life is just a game that i think up in my head? i suppose that is the one true attraction left to religion, for me. the promise that everything is being taken care of. the abdication of personal responsibility in favor of a wishful "master plan". of course, chaos theory goes a long way in assuaging fears of being too much in control of things. and the gaia hypothesis is a fun thought process to play with from time to time. but they still don't answer the big, chafing "why" of things. i suppose nothing does unless you give it a heaping spoonful of faith.

unfortunately, belief and non-belief are motivational opposites, and as such, circular when considered in relation to one another.

believers [whether it be science or religion, or whatever] start out by looking for an answer. therefore, when they find something that answers their questions, they jump into it and invest their faith in the "truth". other ideas may be plausible, but only what they've found is "real". dogma becomes experience, and what was once dry ink on the page runs as the frothing rapids of a waterfall.

skeptics start out by striving to ask the right questions. since almost any point can be argued with the proper flexibility of perspective, the skeptic finds no solace in any form of dogma, because all dogma can be argued both for and against ad infinitum.

if the world is full of unknwowns, how does one find descriptions of truth without also finding incompleteness and doubt?

i suppose that truth really is an experience; trusting that what you believe is also what you see. this seems inevitably to lead to at least partial blindness, especially when combined with the encouragement of a group of people who want to share in the same vision. he who sees what he wants to see, sees just that. but even the most conscious mind cannot be aware of that which is beyond its grasp to understand. to limit oneself to a set of platitudes and truisms is just the horse asking for its favorite pair of blinders so that it can most comfortably amble down the street to an unknown destination.

vision | illusion | vision | illusion

thinking is such a torture sometimes ;)
and yet, i don't want to stop.

audio: alex reece . feel the sunshine

suddenly, walking down the street at about 22:00, i thought of a poem [1] that i hadn't read in at least four years. there is a beautiful face attached to this poem in my mind, but i doubt that i'll ever see her again.

wondering what a salt girl was, i found that miss mighty memes archived the same poem a while ago. i like her writing style.

and wesley snipes is my new sparring partner -- when i feel like a couple of rounds of shadow-boxing, that is.

motion: walter hill . undisputed

..... exformation: information which has been abstracted away, and now is implicitly included in the message. reaction time: the interval of time between application of a stimulus and detection of a response. .....

4.00am :: as i sat in the eggshell chair next to the window, looking out and thinking, i started to consider the phases of life. i'm twenty-one years old now -- still growing up. and yet, by the age of twenty-five, i will need to have a concrete sense of who i am and where i'm going with my life -- even more importantly, i will need to be on my way to getting "there".

it concerns me that, as i said to a friend who asked me just what i was up to these days, that i'm mainly floating right now. it seems that i change college majors on a weekly basis, and there is a strange fatalistic tendency that i have developed as well.

i don't see myself being alive in five years, much less living out a "full and productive life". i don't know why, but i have never thought of myself as aging through time. and yet, the only way that i will achieve anything meaningful to me in this life is if i plan carefully and choose a path to walk on. so this is what i'll do, and let events take their course.

one of my early thoughts toward a career was computer programming. starting with BASIC on a new Apple IIC somewhere near the sixth grade, i started copying examples out of a book, line-number by line-number. it was so frustrating that i just had to continue with it ;) recently, i've even come across my own childish scrawlings from way back then listing the things i wanted to be when i grew up -- and my number one want was to be a computer programmer.

over the past few years, though, i've realized that the reality is not much like the playtime fantasy of the past. the problem is that programming essentially means labyrithine problem-solving and communication with a binary system in extremely arcane ways comprised of terse coding languages and endlessly updated technical specifications. unless i were free to choose the projects that i could work on, a life of telling a computer how to do what i want it to do is not particularly exciting.

another aspect of my life that has always stayed with me is a love of artistic expression. every now and then, i look at the childhood portfolio of drawings that i have kept over the years, starting with comic book characters when i was a small child up until middle school, when i started to gravitate toward graffiti art. the love for drawing has never faded, and now, my artistic interests have two main points of departure.

the first is still graffiti: every time i go into the city, i can't help but feel an admiration for some of the graff lining the walls of the train route, zooming past at almost a subliminal rate. there is a technical proficiency in some of the lettering and style that approaches a sense of typography, while at the same time maintaining a cartoonish playfulness.

the second artistic urge, one that i have been exploring over this summer, has been pen and pencil sketching. i have always been fascinated by the relationships between objects in space as well as the ideas of distance and proportion. it never ceases to amaze me that the world appears in perfect proportion, and yet it is so difficult to accurately communicate that proportionality on paper [or whatever the medium may be]. more on that in a moment.

i remember remarking recently that the only class i've attended consistently over the past five years is training in martial arts. i was away from formal classes during the year after graduating from high school while dorming at a school in the city, and it was then that i found a reason for pushing myself when no one was watching: acceleration of my sense of time.

reaction time, roughly put, is the time it takes to perceive and react to a stimulus. drop a kitten off of a table, and the reaction [to reach for the falling kitten] is not instantaneous. perception and reaction takes time. in that fact, i had realized something that i am just now confirming through readings on information theory: the fact that the human mind lags behind the moment in terms of conscious perception and the creation of a coherent sense of reality. back then, i had phrased this lag in terms of reaction to a punch or kick. my desire was to reduce the time necessary to react to a stimulus, and as a philosophical expression of the concept, to reduce the interval between the moment and my realization of that moment. i didn't know it at the time, but was i was engaging in was a crude form of cognitive psychological experimentation [and a healthy dose of philosophical speculation as well].

one of the interesting aspects of the interpretation of a piece of art is that it is not only an evocation of emotional response, but it is also a cognitive act. an act of recognition, excitation of sympathic memories and experiences to form a shared understanding of the piece of art that lies before you. the truth behind the piece is felt because it is recognizable in some way to the viewer. as i search to understand the spacial relationships between and within objects, i realize that a prime motivation in my artistic curiosity is mainly one of psychology [yet again]. it's the same reason that frank lloyd wright's Fallingwater is such a captivating achievement to me. the same reason that i can look down the otherwise ordinary hallway of whatever building i'm in and suddenly be amazed at the perfection of the intersection between ceiling, walls, and floor. it's all a game of how the brain processes the information [exformation, technically] and puts it together within a recognizable framework. i recall having first seen the magic realism of rene magritte -- now i realize that my fascination wasn't simply the "wow" of color draped on canvas, but the intentional re-contextualization of the relationships of size and spatial depth. it turned my mind inside out and forced me to look closer.

my interest in art has been a kind of empirical cognitive psychology, and the same can be said of my interest in martial arts. apparently this is a recurrent theme throughout every curious fibre in my body -- also explaining the interest in graphic and web design. while researching HCI curriculums at various schools, i was pleased to see that much of the foundation for that emerging discipline is rooted in - yup - cognitive psychology.

i think it would be a great thing to see art that intentionally tickles the perceptive capacities of the mind. it seems to be something that i tend toward naturally.

definitely something to explore further.

ah! and damn exciting too.

it's a cute little place, downtown with the [maybe] life-sized neon dragon in the window. next to a comic shop, i think...

i had called up beforehand to ask if i could schedule an appointment, but unfortunately, the line was busy. there was a party in the city later on, so i said to myself, "why not go in a little early and take the design concept for my new tattoo with me?" that way, i could think about the whole thing on the way down to the shop. if the artist who i've been working with was either busy or not there, i might even leave the design with him and come back another day...

stepping out of the train station, i walked west a few blocks, people-watching as usual. instead of taking the subway down to the shop, i walked, testing my ankle on the uneven sidewalks and curbs that i met on the way. every day it feels stronger, and i can visualize the anterior talofibular ligament returning to its former strength.

immediately i recognize the area as i approach. without a second thought i open the door to the small shop and walk in, the door closing gently behind me. coming in from the warm, muggy day, i don't sense any particular relief from the heat, but the temperature inside is not too warm or cold, either. just right. the flash lining the walls and the artists' books lying on the table to my right serve to complete the atmosphere. looking around the place, the odd sense of familiarity returns, as if some part of me has just been waiting to come back. at the front desk, i ask the receptionist if the artist i want to speak to is here. she says yes and disappears into the rear portion of the shop to tell him that i'm here. a few minutes later he comes forward from his shared cubicle space in the back of the shop. i smile slightly, remembering that i like him.

"what's up," he says. definitive. not quite as friendly as the last time.

okay, i say to myself. no pleasantries.

"i came to the shop a few months ago with a custom design. i have a few ideas to improve it, and i'd like to go over them with you."

"what do you have in mind?"

i show him the rough version of a lotus flower image that i scratched out with a ballpoint pen onto notebook paper about a week prior, explaining the significance of the eight petals and the meaning of the flower as a symbol. i'm not buddhist, but many of its principles seem sensible, mainly the ideas expressed in the eightfold path. it was interesting to see his attitude change from "me artist. you customer" to something more receptive as i explained my intentions for the design and style of the tattoo. having done a fair amount of research into the process and talking to friends [and gawking endlessly at people on the street who had work done], i have found that due to the fact that ink shows up underneath the natural pigment of the skin, tattoos on people with darker skin fade much more perceptibly than on others. in order to keep visual impact over time, the idea is to create a design that is more representational than literal -- something that doesn't depend on small details to keep its coherence -- but at the same time, maintain a conceptual luster that will be striking regardless of the color depth.

as i explained the importance of shadow for the piece, he nodded and seemed to be thinking. he then suggested that maybe he would use light grey ink for portions of the design.

i must have looked at him a little cockeyed, because a moment later he said, "hm... no, that wouldn't show up very well."

hold up a second. who in their right mind would consider using ink that is a lighter color than the person's skin on a tattoo? okey-dokey. i filed that little gem away for further reference.

the conversation continued, and i started to notice a trend: any time i voiced a concern or uncertainty, he waved it away and said "nono, it'll be fine," kind of like he was on auto-pilot.

then he suddenly got to the point: "when do you want to do it?"

joking, i grinned, "well, i figure i'll come in to have it done, then i'll change my mind and come back again in a couple of years..."

"whaaat!"

i laughed and told him i'd like to come in as soon as possible. he proposed to ask the receptionist at the front desk to schedule a couple of hours in the coming week so that we can work out the details and get the piece done. fine by me, i said. another interesting little nonverbal tidbit -- for all of his "professionalism", i was the one to initiate the closing handshake. only then did he look up and thank me for coming. i know that tattoo artistry isn't exactly the kind of work where business protocols are insisted upon, but i found it interesting nonetheless. come to think of it, i was watching more than listening to everything he said.

i know it's a bit late for exposition, but a little backstory is in order: i had come to the shop somewhere near january with a similar idea for a lotus flower, but less well defined. he had done a beautiful job of creating a design from a relatively vague sketch of mine, but once the design had been stenciled onto my skin, a realized that it wasn't exactly what i wanted -- it was too large and ornate. i think i blue-balled him that day by getting so close and then backing out, so when i popped up again this past saturday, he had a bitter taste in his mouth.

i still don't see what made this interaction different from others -- rarely do i distinctly remember the way that people stand, their gestures, etc. when judging their feelings in everyday conversation. but i remember his posture, facial expressions and overall physical bearing throughout the entire exchange between us that day. and from start to finish, something in my subconscious was giving me negative feedback. his words didn't match his actions.

so what will i do? trust my self, as always: cancel the job, and go back to plan [a] -- kanji tattoo, designed by someone about whose skill i feel confident. and this time i'll take it to an artist whose hand i trust to coordinate with his eye.

audio: kittie . wolves

written: 6.1.2002 @ 9:24:32am

a strange thing, sleeping is...

i think that there is an entire other life on the other side of consciousness, sometimes.

when i dream, at times i find myself in places that i've been before. sometimes the people recognize me. but these places don't exist in my waking life. it's 9:24:32am on saturday morning 6.01.2002 and i just woke up. i was wandering through a dream town, looking for an offbeat-looking jacket for myself. as far as i know, i've never gone shopping in my dreams before, but buying the jacket had a purpose that i don't remember.

as i walked down the streets of this town, i remember noticing that this place was a tourist trap -- store after store, with a "wild west" theme. i've been to a place like that, while visiting a friend in arizona. tombstone is the name of the place, but this one was different, and i had a vague comprehension of the limitations of this place, or at least my mind hadn't created the whole world surrounding it. almost like _the thirteenth floor_, a movie where the world ended at a certain point for the AI people, and only some of them were able to realize it. but anyway.

i remember that it was late afternoon in this town and all the shops were getting ready to flip their signs from "yes, we're open" to "sorry, we're closed." it was about 17:45 [i remember looking up at a clock] as i entered this faux cowboy outfitter store. there were assorted racks of clothing on the showroom floor and a particular black leather bag caught my eye. the bag had a large buckle on the front and was very detailed in its design. the price tag read $50.24 and i thought to myself that if it didn't cost so much, i might have bought it for my girlfriend [in meatspace, i don't have a gf]. also in the layout was a cash register on a counter to my left as i walked in.

after noting the time, i saw that the back portion of the store was already closed off. apparently, i had been there before because i knew that all of the interesting merchandise was back there, and i wanted to try on a duster but they were in the back section too. a middle-aged white woman approached me and told me that they were getting close to closing down for the day, and could she help me with something? i told her that i was looking for something in the style of a jacket and she showed me some beautiful mexican ponchos... none of them were what i was looking for, though.

so i left.

and i woke up after having the most rejuvenating night of sleep in a long time. but the most interesting thing about the whole experience was how my conscious mind began to interfere with the recollection of the dream; the particulars kept appearing and disappearing, like trying to grasp at a feather as it wisps to the ground in its odd pendular wobble. sometimes i catch the dream fragment, and sometimes it floats just out of reach. as i began to write [still bleary-eyed from waking up], i actually began to remember the dream more vividly, but as i continued [waking up little-by-little], the details began to feather their way back to that unconscious universe that i visit behind my eyes.

rem: note to self- don't forget to post the dream of the kenjutsu match against the cute brunette sword master.

"so mom, when you were younger --"

"i don't remember."

"ha ha..."

"it was a long time ago."

--

i was going to ask, "what did you dream of being when you grew up?"

i'll never forget my dreams. i intend to live them. but intentions never go very far; actions are the only substantive realities, it seems.

sometimes, i write down my dreams for the future. i see images of the future that i am working toward creating for myself. strange, though, how i never lock my goals down and tell myself, "it's this or nothing". too easy to lose sight of life itself if all you do is specialize in one thing only.

over-specialize and you breed in weakness. it's slow death.

interesting how that quote has implications beyond its immediate context. and yet, lack of focus has the same effect. the problem can be phrased this way: how to see the focal point while maintaining awareness of the periphery as well? i could mumble something about the forest and the trees, or the trees and the leaves, but instead of zen, i'll use a computer programming metaphor - within the question of purpose lies an essential scoping problem. if you want to accomplish something or become something, it's difficult to defeat the influence of feature creep - dabbling in everything that interests you and not thinking about the time taken away from your core purpose until it's too late.

the paradox is that to fully achieve requires complete absorption in a given endeavor, and yet to fully live is to take in even the chaos in search of individual truth. the individual is not important; there are billions of humans [living] on the earth. the importance truly lies in the experiences that the individual experiences as a singular quantity in time and space.

consciousness is a matter of here-and-now, not who-am-i.

i came upon this little piece recounting a dream that i had written some time ago; i suppose inserting it here would be timely. i've uploaded it underneath this post.

motion: masamune shirow . ghost in the shell

in a conversation with a friend of mine, we were bemoaning the evils of corporate capitalism and the fact that concentrations of wealth are inevitably centered among the few rather than the many. recently, i've come to understand that wage-slavery effectively destroys any possibility of a truly democratic society; the fact that corporate structures dehumanize all but the management staff in making choices for the corporation practically ensures that the vast majority of people [workers] have no say in the workings of the economy. once individuals have no power as individuals, they are not only absolved of the responsibility for their own actions, but also for the consequences of those actions. people then feel that it is either "jump on the bandwagon or die"; after all, what choice is it between putting food on the table, or protesting the sweatshops and abuses that are the de facto norm among multinational corporations? it is much easier to eat than it is to fight, and all the more difficult to fight while starving.

democratization of the workplace is one solution, but it doesn't address all of the necessary issues.

i suddenly had an attack of what another friend labelled "burgeousie guilt", that is, the feeling of shame over one's privileges in a world were others can barely obtain the basic necessities. i had failed to see it as such, but in some ways, that's what it was. he rejected the idea of helping other people out of the desire to feel that at least you're doing your part, and although my logic differs a bit from his, my mind has changed significanlty on the subject after that conversation.

my understanding of his standpoint was that he held the basic cynical outlook [or an advanced version of it]: due to the fact that all people are out for themselves, it is the individual's responsibility to fend for him or her self. if they happen to be in a wretched situation with no hope of escape, too bad. the world is not structured as a gift economy. it is no one else's responsibility to degrade their lifestyles [giving time or money] just to help a poor person; after all, they probably hate people who are better off than they are. why should i help someone who probably hates me anyway?

as i see it, my friend has a point. giving hand-outs is a waste of time, and more often engenders jealousy and resentment from the recipients for having endured the condescension of being given a short-lived gift. where we differ is that i see information as a possible means of alleviating at least some of the hardship incurred by poverty. the first conversation about corporate capitalism ended with agreement that big business' stranglehold on all major media sources must be dismantled if a truly free society is to be attained. by the same logic, i make the assertion that the only long-term empowerment for the poor is access to education. giving starving people food and water is useless if their only option is to become slaves in factories for companies with headquarters half a world away. the only way that poor people can attain any semblance of self-determination is if they:

have access to information that will give them the ability to compete in the global marketplace,

using that information, attain buying power for themselves, and

through that buying power, enforce their choices regarding how to best live their lives.

in any event, my mind has been changed regarding helping the poor. it still feels coldhearted to say that i refuse to spend my life going from slum to slum, teaching people how to feed themselves properly. instead of this i would pursue a career as an artist or designer [or anything not directly philanthropic], which in the past struck me as a vain, selfish, and paradoxically fascinating way to live. but it seems that the only way to have a widespread, positive impact is by using my own influence as leverage to help others -- and that influence largely depends on whether i have money in the bank and a network of like-minded associates to build my dreams into realities.

until then, volunteering when possible and directing what little money that passes through my hands in a socially/environmentally responsible way will have to do.

but then, i've only gotten the opinions of a socialist and a capitalist on the matter; the anarchist may change my mind yet again ;)

hm.

the shiny plaque factor

i often wonder about the possibility of self-education... as an alternative to formal education, that is. what exactly is the reason that i put myself through all the hassle to go to school in an educational system that i have no particular reverence for?

to a large extent, my interest in formal schooling persists because of three reasons:

a. social life
b. recognition of my skills [a.k.a. the "point to the shiny plaque on the wall" factor]
c. discipline

the first aspect, "social life", is relatively self-explanatory. the emphasis here is on meeting people in a similar stage of their lives who are interested in learning things. more importantly, people who have similar interests to myself. looking around a noisy bar a couple of nights ago, there were very few people that i actually wanted to approach just on the basis of their looks. and of course, the ones i did want to approach were mostly cute female-types... sexual attraction not being a particularly reliable indicator of what goes on inside the dome area. besides, purely social gatherings aren't exactly conducive to stimulating conversations -- even less so when alcohol is involved. everyone is too busy trying to look like they're having a "good time" to think about anything even marginally outside of their intellectual comfort zone. i dig that, but i'd rather spend most of my time feeling as if i'm doing something interesting. that may be why bars bore me. if you can't even dance and the music has no flavor, small talk gets old real fast. i'd much rather go to an art class and chat with a person who isn't afraid to ask for an explanation when i mumble something about the vanishing point on a drawing and they don't quite get it. i've found that friendships tend to last longer when the two people start out with a shared curiosity.

and then there's the shiny plaque factor.

as much as i try to find ways around it, most people in a profession don't care a whole lot about the smart, "self-educated" ones. just like getting props on the street for your car or your freestyling skills or whatever, people in most professions will want to see credentials when evaluating someone. it is the easiest pseudo-objective way of determining just how rigorous a person's education was, and also of what their potential influence among their peers may be. it may be as tasteless as staring at a woman's breasts while having a conversation to determine her worth as a person, but credentials are an unfortunate part of the professional ass-sniffing process. even computer programmers, who ideally exist in a meritocracy were skills equals success, are often judged to a large extent by their school background. particularly in a competitive economic environment where getting a job isn't so easy as walking in and running off a list of the programming languages that you "know".

a possibly relevant memory:

as i walked in to the school gymnasium for an evening work out after class one day, i saw a meeting of the new "judo club" that had sprung up at the beginning of the semester. i was a surprised at the rowdy atmosphere and lack of order among the twenty-some people in attendance, as they were practicing a hip throw in a relatively haphazard manner. the people who weren't practicing were standing around talking to each other casually, as if the class was a social event. i asked the teacher about it, and about his background as a martial artist. he told me that he wasn't affiliated with any school at present, and that he had been kicked out of tournaments for using excessive force. i suppose that was his way of asserting his toughness. from my own tournament experiences, there are rules set in place so that people don't hurt each other too badly -- it helps to focus the competitors on the technique and form that is unique to their style of martial art. so for example, if a judo man pokes another judo man in the eye when they're supposed to be attempting throws and takedowns, the whole purpose of the exercise is lost.

during the course of our conversation, i mentioned the word "discipline". he immediately reacted as if i'd shoved pepper up his nose and snorted that discipline is what someone forces on you. i disagreed and said that discipline is an essential aspect of martial arts training in order to keep aggression at a minimum. the debate became a bit heated, but nothing really came of it. now, though, i see that discipline can be oppressive, but on some level is indispensible for individual growth. having said that, i realize now that my academic interests are so wide and varied that if i tried to study on my own, my pace would be relatively slow compared to an intensive semester's work on a single subject [or three or four subjects]. one reason for this is not that i lack the motivation to study, but something that could benefit from a physical metaphor: the longer the interval between sets of an exercise, the less benefit is derived due to lack of cumulative muscle strain. doing one set of fifteen push-ups in the morning and another at night won't strain the muscles nearly as much as doing two sets in less than a minute. similarly, if i were to try to study seven subjects a day, it would take me much longer to achieve the same competence in any one of them than it would if i only studied two or three a day. the problem with that fact, of course, is that it reveals a certain amount of limitation in what one can learn. maybe effective study strategies would help to overcome those limitations.

that actually may be worth looking into; i would like to continue my own extra-curricular studies when i get back to school in the fall and still have a little time to party.

and then there's work and all that responsibility-type stuff too...

college expulsion

after a little verbal jousting with the fire-breathing amazon woman behind the desk at the student services department, i managed to get an appointment with a counselor to plead my case. in his office, the bespactacled little man looks at me, looks at the computer screen that shows my academic record, and wonders how i could have been expelled over 0.010 of a grade point. we go back into the student services office and find that the letter confirming my readmission to the school was sitting on a desk next to a stack of papers -- somehow, no one had bothered to mail it out to me for the past two weeks.

i smile lightly. it doesn't matter; i'm back in school. now it's just a matter of finding a job so that i can afford classes in the fall. if things go right, i'll at least have an interview by the end of next week. fingers are crossed...

one thing at a time.

there is an inevitable trade-off, of course: in case i actually was expelled, i was kinda hyped on the idea of getting this few-hundred-dollar custom-designed tattoo that i've been fiending for. i was considering taking an acting class too; after all, traditional college isn't the only kind of school, and there are tons of acting schools in the city. but now maybe i can take a [much cheaper] class while in college. and once find a source of sustainable cash flow, everything will be much closer to my grasp. we shall see.

every now and then, i can't help but think of the fact that it is possible to live very small, but if you've got the means, it is very easy to get sucked into the endless troubles of living large and endless wants.

motion: usher . you don't have to call