.diminished discords (xii)

time and stuff

Bruce wrote this great post, which prompted the following thoughts:

having myself been once in awe of the timeless oneness that everybody who has ever had curry and liked it loves so much, i can venture an explanation for its appeal.

i think it’s because this feeling, and it is a feeling, is a result of powerful experiences of ecstasy and inspiration, where moments seem to stretch to infinity, and clarity is immediate and undisputed. this feeling of peak experiences points to something true. even fundamentally true. about our being, and our relations with other beings. that we mistake this, momentarily, for something abstract like being as such, is only natural. we’ve all been drunk.

but the thing is the dull moments, the sober, uninteresting moments, the doubts, the impasses, the valleys, are also integral to our being, and our relations with other beings. and perhaps, should such a thing exist or be relevant, even being as such. how we deal with the slumps, the alienation, the disconnection, defines us just as much as how we deal with the peak experiences and the oneness.

answers are irrelevant without questions. faith is meaningless without doubt. meaning in fact is only a means to an end. because purpose is necessarily a future state. once achieved, it’s just posing.

in other words, the timeless oneness is a fake explanation, and a terrible goal, because contrast is the fundamental law of existence. which is why, when the idea is pursued to its logical end (though it rarely is, and thank god), like any erasure or dismissal of contrast, is ultimately an affirmation of non existence.

.

there are two popular answers to who Jesus was and is, and what he tried to do: one is that he was God, in some way; the other is he was a human teacher. why can’t these two be true together. i don’t mean at the same time. i mean combined. Jesus was a god teacher. he was doing things for his own purposes, like gods tend to do. but the purpose was showing us how to be gods. godhood 101.

.

writing fiction in the first person is really hard for me. only way i can do it, and that with difficulty, is pretending that it's actually dialogue or an essay or both.

.

whatever floats your boat. but it's probably water.

.

i picked some Schuon from the shelf a few days ago, read a couple of pages and then felt embarassed for having spent so much time on nonsense like that. ended up reading about anaerobic composting instead. not to single out the man. it applies to all the esoteric mumbo jumbo. thank you Joseph Smith for curing me of this sickness.

.

a native romance speaker can pick up other romance languages easily (except perhaps romanian). i wonder if native english speakers have an easy time with dutch. i know the reverse is true, but since english is the lingua franca (the irony of this term), maybe not. it's obviously also a matter of utility. it's useful to pick up spanish or french or even italian and portuguese. but what use does an english speaker have for dutch.

.

i've discussed this with the wife more than a few times, and maybe it's generational or otherwise cultural, but Steve Martin just is the opposite of funny to us.

.

i'm not the heaviest smoker in the world, because i'm rather lean.

.

smartphones are a magical device. a permanent deus ex machina allowing no conflict and thus no growth. since i no longer care for fantasy, i basically ignore them in my fiction. they don't belong in real life. one of the worst things about it is how it destroys conversation. not being sure of a fact is a great starter. with smartphones, it's a nonstarter. you can just check the right answer. i hate it when people do that. and most everyone does.

.

i no longer care for escapism. i accept the tragedy and the comedy of real life. that's what i want to write about.

no one has fallen more out of love with life than the 'reenchantment' types. it's extremely ironic. they are incapable of talking about anything beautiful that actually exists. it's all faeries. and it's all cope.

this is why their project will keep failing and devolving into boring academicism. there is no escape from the mundane even if you reject all modern comforts. we're not like the ancients, their symbols don't work for us in the same way. we can study them, but they are empty now.

Jesus understood this in his time. but his followers fail to understand it now. they've found the scenic route to nihilism.

.

if you want to investigate the soul of a word, pick common idioms with it and substitute the word for a synonym.

let’s use art as an example, changing it to skill: patron of the skills. life imitates skill. state of the skill. skillist.

or maybe changing it to craft. the role of the crafts in society. craft for craft’s sake. crafts and… uh… skills.

.

i may be the only human who loved highschool (except for classes), and hated my time in university (including, but not especially, classes).

i wish i’d been expelled from college. it would look so much better on my cv.

.

i see now the name Alice has been following me for a long long time. ironically, not really the Lewis Carroll classic.

.

there should be more stories set in the present west that feel like life used to feel, not as life is now. in other words, without being complete fantasy, give some hope that human beings can be intelligent, especially perhaps, morally intelligent. this is what i’m trying to do now.

i think it's important for people to see what could be. how there is a path forward, because the path behind us disappeared under our feet. the lie may in time inspire the search for truth, not just fact. or so one hopes.

the fact is people already see the decline and it does not move them. because a negative purpose (like fixing something) inspires no one. a positive vision does. and fixing things is easy after the motivation is there.

.

they tried really hard with Jobs and the bitcoin guy but tech nerds will never be cool (except to other nerds). it's just the way it is. the mechanical inventor could be cool. the code people just can't. it's too nerd. existential ick. and money changes nothing. if anything, it makes the nerdness more apparent and cringy.

.

a man of hard drives does not listen to spotify

.

the little things are not that little

.

art may be dead but i'm alive

.

a fun experience writing Powerless is that there were a handful of side characters that just forced their way into the story. i had no idea until they actually appeared that they would exist. and i had no idea after they first appeared that they would be central. but it happened.

usually it's dialogue. a new character just starts talking. and then keeps talking.

i think i’ll do a promotional t shirt (that only i will buy for myself) with a line from one of these characters (probably my favorite character intrusion in the whole book). the line is absurd out of context, but that just makes it all the more funny to me (mostly i like the way it sounds):

there’s no goddess named Sandra.

.

it's hard to have faith in people. but better than having faith in not people.

.

the truth is AI is here to stay. i'm only interested in moving things.

AI is basically a civil servant. half academic half accountant.

.

rap and video games made it so i was always far enough away from the kuhltshure

.

the blessing of good taste is underrated

.

some people are not optimistic that it can be done, but you can't take not optimistic it can be done for an answer

.

the opposite of magical realism is mundane fantasy

.

my favorite version of the sound of silence is the one by the creek

.

my favorite writer, which i started out emulating, never used chapter titles, so i didn't used them either in my first book. but since then i learned they can be quite fun, an art form.

on the new book each chapter title, much like that of the book itself, is supposed to have several meanings at once, which you can only discover after reading. i find it kinda neat. though likely it’s the kind of thing that amuses the author alone.

.

decided the tag should reveal a bit of the premise

.

musical portion for today is Chet Baker. probably the most well known version of the tune he is most known for. it has of late been very meaningful to me.