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.