EPTIn a desperate attempt to repel the incoming wave of cynicism and abjection, I’ve made a few decisions to change my life. The following is a counterattack, a last push for freedom. My dream of the summer.
One: Exercise.
Two: Don’t surrender to that quieting melody of nativism.
Well, that's all I got.
I sat a few seats over from Geddy Lee at the Jays' game the other week without knowing it!
You’re lying in bed, thinking about something very intensely. You get an idea and another one comes along, you set up their places with structure. A few more make their way and you think, maybe I should write this down - lest I lose it forever. On your way to the console you lose a few words, and suddenly all you have written down is half a barely intelligible sentence while you cringe to yourself at the thought of losing an opportunity.
I have this problem almost every time I write. I can think of such great ideas and such great ways to say them when I’m in bed, or in the bathroom, anywhere away from the chance of writing. When I hit the pen to paper or fingers to keyboard the words and thoughts fly right out of my head, evaporated. And I can converse with myself, have eloquent dialogue, racing with description and ingenious with forming words. Then some days I get soggy-minded and it seems the will to write (and by extension the will to live) is all gone. And with it comes depression and hopelessness, which reinforces my helplessness. Most of the time it's in what I don't write that I wish I could say, like there's something more I wish I could illustrate...
It’s almost like I have the old influences of school friends who were very much … well let's just say I'd expect them to go into business rather than arts or science. There is the business type in me that seemed to be buried since I first questioned the purpose of life (and how to live a good one at that). Since then I haven't been able to reconcile my inner argument.
Once my summer vacation hit I set out to explore every avenue of a future I could. First up was programming, so I went to codeacademy and learned HTML/CSS/ and javascript. The 'internet' languages were surprisingly easy to learn compared to something like C++. I remember when I was a kid I'd use some HTML to design my Neopets shop webpage. It was kind of fun relearning that stuff and realizing how simple the code is. And since it seems like the real hardcore, necessary, and nitty-gritty language to learn, I started getting into C++. Can't say I've learned it well but I get the basics. (For more background info, I've been learning C# for a year now).
I feel it may have been an attempt to passify career anxiety between me and my father and at the same time reestablish the connection that's been missing since preschool. Am I only doing this to become something acceptable, something successful and useful to society (which is of course an extension of my parents)? On the street I saw an old friend's dad. We chatted and I told him I was learning how to program. I expected him to be impressed and wished he would tell me I was finally making something useful of myself, yet his expression was neutral, almost skeptical.
As I learned all these new skills I felt a rush of importance for life, like I had a reason to get up the next morning (and to go to sleep early). But as I go on, things are slowing down. Things are starting to feel like they don't matter again. All this verbiage is so meaningless and pointless. I'm finding less motivation to complete even my own projects, much less to explore the horizons of databases or neural networks. I wonder if it was all just a wish to return to the time when I was 11 and played neopets and surfed the net with my sister and cousin in her basement late at night.
Some day the technology and commands will be obsolete won't they? Can one say the same about a writer? The thought of neural networks brings up another problem. Computers automate our lives, well, how long until this automation encroaches on less frivolous territory? The field of neuroscience is also advancing rapidly, and yet I can only feel that this is a bad thing. That our minds and bodies have become so fused with machine, that we lose our identity and we lose our weaknesses! No longer chained to the ironies of our unconscious or our biology. Is this not escapism and the core illusion run to its conclusion?
Wouldn't I be contributing to the end of things by studying the mind or by computerizing the world? Sooner or later this kind of knowledge will be used for tyranny, the kind we've only seen in science fiction books. It's not something I can put my tongue on but it just doesn't feel right. I'm too attached to the old world -- nostalgic for times never lived.
I'm frustrated because it seems the will to write may be gone and I may be at the cusp of realizing I'm not a writer. ..but what about the stories I used to write? And the passion I once felt for writing essays? Did I just lose my imagination? Have I simply not practiced enough? Rilke’s words come back to me every time I think about this and yet I can’t find an answer to his question. Only more searching and finding empty spaces in my mind results.
I guess…the answer lies in whatever happens. If I really felt the need to write, I’d write, and I’d be writing. Was I really that deluded? I wonder if this was all just a process of self-exploration, not some grand endeavour in perfecting the writer's craft.
I'm hit with scenes in my mind; it could be anything, like a green pasture with the sun blazing the sky...the political turmoil and the irony befalling people in their lives. I wonder should I be better at making films? Or is this just another ploy for narcissism? As I watch the Woody Allen doc...
If my father had been more of a romantic when I was growing up, more of an artist...would I have turned out to be more engaged to writing? Or if I had been straight, would I be more attracted to the artist's life? (Nothing Freudian going on there). Maybe it simply was all the years spent playing video games that let my mind slip away into the annihilation I always wanted.
I see people here writing well thought out, coherent and intelligent blogs every week! How could I match that...how could I have what they have...that raison d'etre, that prerogative to declare one's ideas with such precision?
My mind is fading -- I can feel a great emptiness emerging like when the Moon threatened to engulf Clock Town, except from within! I wish I could attain that freedom I once spoke of...hard to believe it was only weeks ago I set myself affixed with that optimism. Guess it takes a long time to repair long term damage.
I wish I had something to write about...some cause to promote, some lie to expose. But in a way I just don't care. No sense of direction, no ...
Long pause in the action. The months go by deeper into the heat of a metropolitan summer. Many a night have I spent encroaching on the morning, using its time to disassemble my mind. Battling myself as I look for rest, terrified of being stolid and idle. Avoid invalidism.
I fear I may be nearing the end of this stage of my life. Was writing just a form of therapy to guide me in sexuality? Nothing else seems to inspire me so. How long can this dream go on?
No, it’s too simple a life…I was going to take on the great issues…not build apps and APIs and such mind-numbing, psychological-entropy accelerating programs. Is the only solace to be found in some kind of ascetic solitude?
The more I uncover the less I like about myself. I'm afraid I may like giving in to crass and cynical entertainment, to being petty and enthralled in my own stupidity. (Next thing you know I'll be listening to top 40s on my Ipod).
Was it all just pseudo-intellectual rabble? (rabble? or rubble? What word am I looking for here?)
Cleaning up my desktop…so many Word documents with titles that seem to hold great ideas. Most are unfinished or barely started at all.
4 AM: What the hell am I gonna do with myself. I don’t want to throw away the good chance I have now of making a good life for myself. Not just that…a life well lived, not just another cog in the machine.
The more I open myself up to real romance the less I seem to care about the things in which I took my bit of pride.
How can I set out to live with such a stolid mindset?
And yet for some reason the more I program the more easily the words come to me in my offline life, with greater vivacity and precision. Like a contrarian impulse, I waver between two different paths against my own will.
Do I really enjoy being crass and cynical?
Still having breathing, joint, muscle, skin, back, head, and sleeping problems the doctors can't seem to figure out. Just makes me feel like I'm on the verge of the infirmary at all times. I'm too young to be feeling this old...
I like the good formatting of code and I can't stand that fact. Stop complaining.
![[image loading]](http://www.catspawdynamics.com/images/james_bond_03_moonraker.jpg)
Why is it so hard to get through this damn book?? A year ago I loved reading Live and Let Die, and Casino Royale. Now it's labour making it through Drax showing Bond his missile. Maybe just -- huh? -- my mother said.
I set down to write a story, mind goes blank. Writing about myself was a crutch I've stood on for too long. Write about nothing?
Just write? (No matter how nonsensical and crappy it is, like some hacky Joyce imitator?)
Losing the will to write more and more. No inspiration. No clashing or troubles to overcome. No more feeling like I'm insane. Now I'm normal.
You have to let go
If I let go I'll lose my mind.
Bland meaningless existence ahead.
Maybe I'll just grow up and be a shill for consumerism, mainstream society, and such. (You already are one!)
Whatever comes
It matters not
Quieting lyrics of trees and wind on my mind
Come sink back!
Come and my mind will drift for these precious few weeks
Write to myself.
Keep it to myself.
Imagination is a terrible thing to waste
This is the end, (my only friend!),
Tho I never wished to say goodbye:
You made me warm and my tears dry
I wonder what it's like to live in Japan. My mother is obsessed with their finesse and attention to detail. Everything is so precise and delicate according to her. I admit I have an affection for their obsession with robots and technology spun into Space Operas. (Being a fan of the Gundam Wing series as a kid I took all of last summer to watch the original, Mobile Suit: Gundam, and its sequel Mobile Suit Zeta from the 70s).
YMO is a group I've run into lately that seemed to be a Japanese Kraftwerk with some David Bowie vocal sounds (more on the Service album). As I went through what I could find on the internet, the Solid State Survivor album held my gaze. The cover depicts Maoist China greedily eyeing Japan, our narrator giving us a sarcastic glance. The other players (perhaps Vietnam, Hong Kong, or others) at the table are trying to play their hand while the American seductress backs China's imperialist ambitions. I feel I've seen the cover from somewhere else and read the same analysis I've come up with just now. At any rate the music, for whatever reason, depicts this story in my mind.
Listening to YMO is like a stream of music progressing from one style to another. Over a decade Haruomi Hosono explored Tin Pan Alley (I reccomend Hurricane Dorothy) to Rhumba, pop music, and all the while of course Electronica. Tighten Up (0:00-1:56, 5:39-7:40), Japanese Gentlemen Stand Up Please! and The Snakeman Show sound silly but highlighted some of the silly stereotypes of foreigners in an almost Monty Python style.
It's strange to think that techno music has something transcendent or numinous, but I grew up with it and formed my constructions of the ideal from its threads. I remember downloading Napster (way back in the 90s...more than 14 years ago -- good god) and looking up techno remixes of Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon clips. The Trunks theme remix was particularly inspiring. I don't know what it inspired me to do or think, but while listening I dream't up emotions of great pith and moment. Often scenarios of a struggle would form and the music would guide me along as its director, to find the climax and resolve.
My life is like a dance between pessimistic absurdity and bright-eyed optimism. The war continues to rage on with neither side gaining any significant advantage. Destruction reigns randomly over our lives yet we still find times where we fly in the clouds on zeppelins being caressed by the sun and wind. All the while devious minds are at work below our consciousness.
At times I just sit here and stare at the screen. There's nothing for me to do, no thoughts running through my head -- does this feeling mean I need someone to tell me what to do? Didn't I always say I'd never become that person? Wasn't I some independent free-thinker? It seems the illusion I used to hide from society's realization that I'm gay may be kindling away. Yet, at the same time I wish I could tell you more about what I dreamt in my head concerning the album cover and how I felt about The Snakeman Show.
The weeks go by and now I've finished Moonraker. Dark and silent, the cold evenings filled with air conditioning -- nauseates the senses. My mind splits. Ideas at random, living in a dream world once again. Emblazoned words with no connection. Plagued with incontinence. Back to exercise. Back to a blank slate. I'd rather not be conscious right now.
***
I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will — 'the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts' — need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present — until next year — that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
While looking out the car window passing by Carabana I thought of whether I had hit the point of no return. Is life going to simply be like this forever? It feels like the accelerated growth from puberty I had adjusted to are diminishing and flattening out my progress. Am I still the person I was throughout high school? In contemplating society’s demands on my persona I realized I can be any person I want. Yet in destroying these manacles, I realized the real me underneath it all simply could not be changed. After reading William James I see every day as the chance to effect the course of my habits. Every instance of behaviour or cognition is another instance of probability guiding my future comforts and direction.
To revitalize my life both morally and functionally, from here on out I will take on three maxims (the first two of which James referenced to Alexander Bain):
In the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; in short, envelop your pledge with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all.
Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
Seize the very first opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain.
Thanks for reading
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