I believe in you

Further discussions on this whole god thing. The terms which I have accepted as my category (athiest, infidel, whathaveyou)are inherently oppositional, and of course this is a problem. They immediately conjure adversarial emotions, contradiction, elusive semantics and semiotics. So what I DO believe, as opposed to what I DON'T:
That the universe as a 'biological' (and thus inherently a phsyic-al system)has eventually generated us (mankind, and whatever else has achieved what we might call a 'consciousness' that is able to ask existential questions) as a means to understand itself. This statement almost personifies, but I don't believe that there are any intentions at work. Out of the infinite possibilities this place happens to have the particular set of rules that allow our existence and development. I believe that there is not afterlife and instead our 'spiritual value' is not how well we've adhered to abstract (and yet, for the most part, rational) rules, but how well this thing called 'us' has impacted all of existence. By this I don't mean that our individual goals should be 'importance' in the terms of how many people know about us or how much measurable 'success' we have had; rather you might almost think of it as how well you are remembered. We all have distinct influences on our surroundings, our spiritual welfare is how well this has been received by those it has touched and how that influence plays out after you are gone. I believe that any attempt to dehumanize a person or people (by disrespecting the things that make them human, and robbing them of autonomy, and abusing cooperative advantage, and...well, engaging in the things we know to be 'bad') is a travesty (notice how this works with the afterlife=influence mechanism). I believe that the Universe is a daunting and beautiful and mysterious thing, and it brings me to tears to really understand any little aspect of it. I believe that we have a great deal more work to do before we begin to really understand. I believe that language is immeasurably powerful, and that it defines our life. I believe that art is one of the ways in which we can have a meaningful relationship with the universe, and that so are a lot of other things. I believe that genuine human experience is the most valuable thing we do in life; and that we may all define this differently but it always has more to do with accepting than rejecting. I believe that there are no cultural constants or truths or universals. In the end, I believe in people and love people and want to have people in my life. People. It's the most complex phenomenon we might hope to study, and we are literally swimming in it, humanity.

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"I am what I am, and what I am is who I am . . ."

I was engaged in one of those drunken conversations about god last night. Mostly me and this other guy; who I don't know all that well but am starting to think of as a friend. He's a cool guy, but I saw in him this familiar preconception and recoil when I laid the atheist card on the table. There was a sense of condescension when I began my defense by first discussing the flaws of organized religion's theology. Of course, he doesn't believe in that sort of god. He relied on a notion of god as being the same as what I call 'life' or 'nature' and we both agreed that things called 'miracles' do not occur but that everything plays by the rules (the doubt lying in our ignorance of the 'rules'). My point was, why should we call it 'god' necessarily? I think the answer lies in the societal pressure on the atheist in all of us. You can say you believe in god, and thus be covered from any sort of outrage or admonishment, when in fact you don't believe in anything of the sort. Semantics. A linguistic convenience. The problem is that every dictionary definition (how can we settle linguistic confusions? is the dictionary the best way?) refers to god as being a 'being'. A supreme ruler responsible for the origin of life and the universe. If you do not believe in something like a divine, creative intelligence that controls the universe by force of will then you do not believe in god.

It's an untenable position to be counting days until points on the horizon, twiddling my thumbs until the coming week is over and then the next 3 months and then the next 1.5 years and then whatever else is out there becoming increasingly hazy and indistinct. So you just try to seize whatever the hell has fallen into your lap to at least demarcate this present instant as something. Or you melt into widely-available and patronized videos so you can engage in polite conversation. Or you just try to feverishly hurdle things because in all honesty you've never been able to sleep unless you were terminally exhausted. Or you take one night a week and just drink yourself beyond recognition, until the details of the bacchanal run along associative tributaries over the next days smoking and reading and hygiene.


Resin stains on everything. Walking city-wide to find a few square feet to sing praise in or bleed out the last week of disease in. And now every blinking decision arbitration between the 14 people I am to complete this thing called living. Kicking bones and corroding sophistry across the overgrown factory floor, or spilling drinks on patio tables to punctuation . . .conversations about conversations about something I cannot elucidate. Only that the very air I breath seethes increasingly automated, and my fingertips numb to the touch of everything except your skin limned in fluorescence as you sleep.

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There is so much more satisfaction in sacrifice these days. Like, plow through the entire 8 hour yuppie gig (and actually sweating a bit now, mountains of things to do), with an hour of soul-cleansing exertion, and then a few hours of class or reading or writing or all three and then at some point drifting off to sleep in the hum of my computer. It makes the time in which I'm outside of my home/office feel vigorous and rare and seizable. It makes communication with loved ones more vital and enthusiastic. It makes that one night out on the town immensely valuable and tremendous.

Some things I have (re)learned this semester:
School can be painfully socially awkward. I have a colleague who I think has a man-crush on me, or at least wants to be my dear friend. But I can't have a conversation with him. Like a Seinfeld episode but with more raw nerve-endings and body-odor.

No one can really teach you to do this thing. People can suggest what absolutely does not work and give you a sounding board to throw some verbage at; maybe point out a few pitfalls. But then of course those are the things that now become interesting. For example, in a set of "Writing Don'ts" the suggestion is given that we should not write anything with fist/gunfights, car chases, courtrooms (or any other heavily repeated television/movie premise). Now all I want to do is write an episode of Law and Order that is heavily ironic and absurd.

Students' views of their instructor is wholly related to how said professor reacts to the student (in the like/dislike spectrum). We all to this to varying degrees. A talkative (almost chatty) and tolerant professor repeatedly shoots down a student's (see 2 paragraphs up) out-of-context remarks and his response is that she is not open to new ideas. Lest our brains fall out.

I have forgotten thousands and thousands of dollars worth of education. And somehow it is still worth every cent.

The entire world is cliche unless you really look at it, and then its all painfully unique and flawed.


Time is not a ribbon or an arrow or a quantum ball of possibility, but we can perhaps start defining it by what it is not: Time is not love.

But love has a huge time component.

If you commit yourself, honestly, things fall into place. Far from perfectly, but things will absolutely happen.

If you strip a thing of all its supposed universal relevance it somehow then becomes universally relevant.

Time is not really running out, but expanding in all directions. I can sort of feel that for a few seconds as I'm falling asleep.

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Tasers, Taming, Torture

For whatever reason, the recent tasing incident at the University of Florida has raised hackles across the board. Authoritarians and not-so-authoritarians are claiming that the kid's belligerence and rudeness brought the tasing on. That, in effect, the kid deserved to be tasered and possibly more. Analysis of the video shows that the kid, while being an asshole, was neither violent, inciting a riot, or out of control. He did in fact resist arrest, but primarily because THERE WAS NO REASON TO ARREST HIM. Even now we're finding out that he HASN'T BEEN CHARGED with anything except resisting arrest. So, he ran a little bit and threw up his arms, he did this because the fucking pigs had no right to grab him. John Kerry has even noted that he had the situation under control.

Thisis not an isolated incident.

We have gradually, incrementally like a toad in water, slipped under the thumb of authoritarianism. The pigs have somehow convinced us that if we've done nothing wrong then we have nothing to worry about. Simultaneously, it has become almost impossible to protest anything without being arrested, They're passing laws that ban saggy pants, They're monitoring your e-mail,They've taken away Habeas Corpus, They're murdering innocent people in paramilitary drug raids, They're intimidating us. Can't we see this is the opposite of freedom? Can't we see that there is something wrong with police being armed with automatic weapons?

If you've ever had an encounter with a police officer, it is much like getting into an argument with a jarhead except that police officers can legally beat you, drag you over asphalt and make up reasons to arrest you. In my experience with law enforcement (and it has been rather extensive), the individuals that gravitate to this type of work are assholes. Kids that picked on people smaller than them in school, guys that get erections when they push people around, guys with intelligence on par with the lowest rung of Mafia goons. Tell them to beat something up and they will.

This is a disorganized mess, but I am so thoroughly disgusted. A charge of resisting arrest should be worn like a badge of honor. These people only have the authority that our contrived society GRANTS THEM. The entire thing is illusory. The root of the problem is that we have convinced ourselves that these people (dickhead cops, the brainless torturers in Abu Gharaib, et al) are enforcing some sort of actual, concrete law. The truth is they're carrying out the worst element of human nature, and justifying it via the same bullshit we've justified all of the ugliness in the world: that it is our right by god, by law, or by might.

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Driving time-elapsed thru the raining city. My life a proxy strife in the war on everything worthwhile, like the pity of our time together can be stretched out for miles. Tire screeches sing the threnody of our somnambulist synchonicity. Inside each building tremendous appartuses that pull together fragments, a stitched together happiness.

Man, I miss the city sometimes.

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"You Can Tell 'em"

I just finished a short-story. I'm really happy with it.

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"Talk about Labor"

Everything ramping up. 3,500 creative words a week, the winds demand no less. Disillusioned dads in the gymnasium telling me that I'm an animal with audacity in their eyes. Inept kids I run into with the same dream that's bled from my ears since my spine aligned . . .

It's all monastic and joyful suffering from here until someone finally embraces me to a stop . . . an infidel in cathedrals, the clearest of inkblots. I'm from the City that converts cops to crooks and trails blood into the future like a fugitive . . I've got game that no one but Guerillas has got.


Looks like it will be incommunicado; fine with me except the Ecstasy's made me believe in nothing but this second. So sometimes the past feels yawning and empty, my passion spontaneous and breathless. There was a night when I must have made this seem effortless and convinced that my extremities were endless or my life was raveled tight and I'd spun it unreckless.

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"I'm not a hard-ass and I'm not a push-over; I just care about what I do and I expect you to as well"

Classes started yesterday. I know what I'm getting into with my British Fiction class, but my Advanced Fiction Writing Course was a bit more mysterious. The gentleman teaching it is actually a successful writer (though by his own admission he has sold more copies of his book
in Norway than here in the states (we're busy reading Harry Potter and US Magazine). He said a half-dozen-or-so things that really got me motivated (all of these loosely transcripted):

-"As a writer, the way you've been conditioned to read is completely wrong. I will refer to that style of reading as 'The Wrong Way' or 'The Problem'."

-Had sharp criticisms for the tradition of workshop including workshops administered at our University (in response to a detail regarding the Intermediate Class provided by a classmate: "that's total bullshit")

-"There is a market for books. Anyone who says literature is dead isn't paying attention."

-"You get a B if you turn everything in. You get an A if you deserve it. most of you will get B's or fail."

-"Most people say they want to write. I assume you're here because you aren't them."

-"In your response to the readings, don't say you like it or don't like it. A story is not a piece of cake."

etc, etc



Additionally:
I'm going to climb Kilimanjaro in January. The tallest mountain in Africa. One of the most 'prominent' mountains in the world (defined by how much rock is actually exposed. Kilimanjaro rises out of the flat serengeti like a metaphor for the ascent of man.) The excitement and relevance and biography of this event is pretty hard to measure. It teeters on a reunion that means more to me with every approaching second. The inclusion of new party-members each has its importance as well: a journey across the globe with my brother (the first Kellys to travel the world other than for the purposes of killing Viet Cong), an adventure with my boss/friend that will push us past the point of no return in some ways. The hope that this begins an annual tradition of unlikely adventures; casting the rest of the solar cycle in a sort of transient and anticipatory light. The Motherland. I predict a Guerilla touching every continent by the end of the decade.



Also. Aesop Rock released a new album. I won't claim its the best thing ever. But its better than anything he's done since Labor Days.

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