to again continue along whatever way it is we are going. to think of whatever more to write about that might come to mind. as it lasts. as it itself continues providing thought along whatever way about whatever. to be in the stream that is called the stream of consciousness. to have one's mind filled with thoughts flowing through it for we are our minds if nothing else. our minds are those flowing thoughts. thoughts flowing through the world we receive and direct this way and that way. thoughts we connect together or take apart ever changing them in some way or another.
    or so it all seems.
    yet we disagree on so much. it seems we disagree on more than we agree on. maybe this is a good thing. maybe harmony isn't as great as we imagine it would be. it's a moot point since it doesn't exist except for brief moments when we might come together and nod to one another feeling that we share the same mind. those moments seem to radiate with light from within us or upon us. an ecstatic yet calm emotion fills us. time slips into a moment that seems eternal.
    but soon that eternity vanishes and fades and we pull apart again. we look back and see that it was just a moment after all. our minds came into synchronization and moved together. we were telepathic. few or no words needed to be spoken. yet as our minds came into it they came out of it again. the event occurred as it happened to occur. we may attempt to make it occur again, but these attempts usually fail and with their failure create opposing friction. we are not satisfied with anything less than that previous state enjoyed. our usual mode of being now seems irritating, annoying, abrasive. we may come to not be able to tolerate each other's presence as much as before all we needed was each other's presence. as close as we felt then now we cannot be far enough apart.
    such is our nature.
    could this be love?
    we move around among one another. we come into orbit with one another. we move away again toward another. we go wherever this stream takes us. sometimes into rapids, sometimes into an eddy. we may drift together in a clump or become free and alone. whatever direction we may go or in no direction at all, we cannot go back. we may forget, that is all. we can pretend we are not where we are and ignore everything that reminds us.
    light another cigarette.
    la-dee-da.

    just another day of being. eventful or uneventful as any other. it may be sun or storm. we are here with whatever happens. we may glide through it or get knocked around, or be destroyed. or we may create. something may be discovered. something may be lost. we may come to understand or become even more confused. what happens may happen to all of us together or to only a few or to one of us alone.
    is this anything to write about? it seems so trivial yet it is what is. we forget about it in all the excitement or our looking for excitement. we equate it with boredom. it does not stimulate and cause us sensation. it becomes merely the blank canvas we paint on with stokes and stabs of color. we are each painting our masterpiece. it is never quite finished. it's never quite right. not enough of this. too much of that. our lives are balancing acts. we seek equilibrium of life. it is usually more an equilibrium of chaos. this wild extreme balanced by another. indulgence balanced by neglect. joy balanced by despair. fulfillment by depletion. motion by paralysis. satisfaction by disappointment. all added up and subtracted we find that at any given moment it gives back the same result - zero. no loss. no gain. yet that is not the point. it's not the end result we are after but the experience of arriving at that end result. for some the more thrown into it the better. they thrive on the uncertainty of the moment. for others the less they can get away with the better. they thrive on the stability of the day to day.
    and so we note another observation. another bit of theorizing about what appears to be observed. we go along from one thing to another. perhaps connecting dots, perhaps sketching haphazard patterns of our own imagined invention. we let it stand either way. let it be real. let it be fantasy. let it offer thought. let it offer laughter. let it offer sorrow. let it be whatever it is. let it be taken in whatever way it is taken. let it be right. let it be wrong. let it make us appear wise. let it make us appear foolish.
    is any of that our concern? only if it pisses someone off and they come looking for us to give us what for. in that event, we deny everything. this is not our manifesto. this is not a proclamation of our beliefs. it is just something we happened to write down as it came to us. as it comes and leaves us. one can chase after it if one wants to. try to find the source of it. try to find its destination. track it down to its lair. we are only a conduit. it is not any particular genius of our own that produces it - though it may be our particular madness. it is not in us that it is found, certainly not in us exclusively. it is found free in the air - blowing in the wind, as it were. one opens oneself to it. one listens for it.
    so we proceed with the whateverness of it. it seems so simple, yet when one looks into it it becomes incomprehensibly complex. it fractals out into layer after layer of detail in all directions micro and macro. it maintains a structure but the structure remains invisible and a mystery. the thing itself is the structure not something following or molding itself to a structure. the structure may be the structure of our minds observing it and organizing it into something we recognize. that is one presently argued theory.
    yet that seems suspicious. that may be where the structure exists but where does that structure come from? why aren't our minds as chaotic as what we observe and organize? what gives rise to the patterns we impose? now we are bumbling idiots groping in a maze of our own making. there is still this barrier between ourselves and the world - the world of nature. nature exists in this harmony of chaos. we exist imprisoned within concepts of order and meaning that are entirely imaginary yet are as binding as if made of stone and iron which they are often made to be.
    and throughout the various philosophies and metaphysics of the world humans are generally regarded as fools in a constant state of error and misconception. what we commonly believe to be real is said to be actually a veil of illusion, false, temporary. we are to struggle against this to the real, the truth, the eternal.
    yet is this general idea found throughout most human belief in all sorts and manner of expression itself what is the illusion, the falsehood, that which binds us to the temporal world?
    we have done a fair amount of perusing among the teachings, both sacred and secular, of the various schools of human thought and everywhere we turn we are faced by someone or some group or another telling us that we are dead wrong. we are told that every thought in our heads misleads us, cloaks the real and the true. they then present some formula to follow that will correct us and lead us to the revelation of how everything actually is. whether this is toward mystical or social consciousness, it seems to follow the same line - the same pattern. it is a pattern we are to impose to override the other patterns, patterns of error, that our minds previously impose. this is the pattern of truth, the pattern of clarity, the pattern of will, the pattern of enlightenment, the pattern of salvation. the pattern of whatever. a pattern is a pattern is a pattern. everybody's got a pattern.
    so is this all a joke, or what? who are the fools here? who are being deceived and/or are deceiving themselves?
    it turns back in on itself. we may in fact be veiled by illusion, by the patterning of thought and observation and even experience from the innate structure of our minds. yet, if this is true, then it also would seem to be true for our solutions to it. and there does seem to be an underlying structure and pattern to our diverse solutions developed independently from one another in various parts of the world. it would seem that this arises from our common human consciousness. there seems to be some component of that consciousness that leads us to feel and believe that we are apart from the world and that to reconnect to the world or the true reality of the world we need to change or alter our normal or default way of thinking and perceiving. though there are a multitude of methods, they each have the same aim and purpose - to bring us elsewhere. because it is assumed that we are already elsewhere - some place or some state in which we do not belong.
    it is this feeling of not belonging that transcends our thought and becomes our main preoccupation. we feel that we cannot or should not trust our senses or thoughts or both. we imagine our way around them reaching for something we believe to be more real.
    is it our mortality that leads us to feeling this way? we have such a brief moment of consciousness. we barely open our eyes when they are closed again - as much as we know, forever. and in each of our lives we grow older and realize how much we were ignorant about before, how much time we wasted on foolish things. we imagine that eternity stretches out beyond us, before and after us. and we look out into the night sky and we are so small. there is so much we cannot reach or touch. even what we can reach and touch may seem distant to us. we have developed means of examining it down to the finest detail and have found ourselves staring into an infinite abyss that is more space than substance, a microscopic universe that is as vast and as expansive, and as empty, as the interstellar one around us.
    how can this be where we belong? if we belonged here wouldn't we be immortal? wouldn't we have the ability to comprehend it? so there must be something else.
    but would we feel different being immortal and comprehending? would those things bring us a feeling and sense of belonging? would we be able to trust our senses and thoughts more than now? couldn't that also be illusion?
    we imagine a being or a state of being that is this. something that encompasses infinity and eternity. we are certain that if such existed that it would be certain of what is and what is not. how can we be certain of that? what makes this being or this state of being less susceptible of being deceived - or even of deceiving itself - more than us? it could be a product of happenstance no less than it can be said that we are. it too may only be able to perceive what it is and what is around it through an imposed pattern and sense of structure and meaning as much as it is said about ourselves.
    what is it that has no structure and/or meaning that then produces structure and meaning - or at least the idea of it? how does this create structure and meaning that we or any other conscious being must work our way through to overcome?
    that seems to us to be more complicated than structure and meaning itself and it doesn't, in the end, get rid of structure and meaning. it just surrounds it with the veil of illusion, a magician's cloak in a disappearing act. it asks us to turn away from the innate functioning of our minds toward the invisible that supposedly exists beyond our comprehension, beyond our imagining. it brings us right back around to where we were when we started, to this place where we don't belong. it uses what it attempts to disprove as its argument. all argument has structure and meaning in order to be recognized as an argument, whether it is judged to be right or wrong, before it can be judged to be right or wrong.
    in writing this we do not necessarily argue for structure and meaning. does it need an argument? we only argue that the argument against structure and meaning doesn't make any sense. paradoxically, it doesn't make sense because it does make sense. to make sense there must be structure and meaning so how can an argument against structure and meaning make sense?
    an argument stating that a tree does not exist is refuted by the very one pointing to it and stating that it does not exist. how reasoned the argument is is irrelevant. the argument does not do away with structure and meaning nor satisfactorily explain its existence - unless one brings back decart's evil genius. the tree still stands. the only argument that can be brought against its existence is one walking through it as if it wasn't there. one who is able to do this is the only one who can present the argument against the tree's existence. at that point the argument could be simply stated with the question, what tree?
    but maybe we have taken this too far. it probably is not meant that there is absolutely no structure or meaning - what can be argued to be absolute anymore? - but that there is no one structure and meaning. that we cannot argue against.

    so once more he has chased himself around in circles about nothing. no wonder most people think he's a crazy trouble maker causing problems where there are no problems. everyone is getting along just fine. even in arguing and fighting there is co-operation. without co-operation we could do nothing. we must agree to choose up sides and wage war in order to wage war.
    it's ideas like that that make others avoid him and separate him apart. the idea that arguing and fighting, even to the level of out and out war, are variations of co-operation makes the others uncomfortable. maybe to seem even a little foolish. though he is the one pointed out as being the one who is foolish, which is fine by him. even that is a form of co-operation.

   spin it out and see what flies for awhile before it crashes back down again. use it until it breaks. pick up the pieces and make something else. dancing through this idle devil's playground. digging in the dumpsters. cast aside. over the hills and far away. dada-doo-doo.
    outside in-between the walls. the no man's land in the crossfire huddled in a shell hole hoping lightning doesn't strike twice. unarmed, yet with no place to surrender. nobody's taking prisoners.
    yet while the war rages on with those shouting and hurling whatever from their respective battlements and siege towers there is a peace one can find removed from the rest. it comes and goes. it's being in the right place at the right time. one doesn't find it but finds oneself there (here) without reason or explanation. there is nothing that points to it, no signs, no path, no formula, no maps, no instructions. it happens as subtlety as the wind shifting and one is suddenly away from the smoke and fire.
    yet one realizes that this can just as easily change. and it only needs to change once. as free as one is from it, one is also unprotected. one lets it go and it lets oneself go - maybe. or one can always fight it. yet when one fights it one is left always fighting it. it doesn't let one go. it's always win or lose.
    being without anything one can win or lose.
    being without anything one can call one's own.
    being without anything to fight for, except for oneself.
    the others are used to fighting for whatever petty thing that comes up. a constant pecking order bickering. they fight not for themselves but for rank and status, appearance and image. when rank and status is lost, when appearance and image is gone, fighting for any of that is pointless. one is stripped down to basic survival mode. there are no more protective layers. there is nothing to gain, nothing to lose. one is no longer interested in one's position or what others may judge. one's position is already at the lowest and others already judge the worst. the rules one needed to follow in order to protect and maintain all that no longer apply. one can walk away. one has so many more options.
    one realizes that to the others this will not make any sense. they do not know what they do as they struggle to maintain rank and status, appearance and image. this is their prime motivation. this is their primal drive. it is not seen as changeable or variable. they do not know that there are options otherwise. one does not realize until one has fallen or been forced out of it.
    but whatever.

    the hip hop happening groove thing. keep on dancing. strut that stuff. put it on and flaunt it. glitter and shine on. everybody's a star. big, bigger, biggest. gotta have it. the moment is here and gone. the moment is exploding with dazzling light and noise. yesterday and tomorrow are nowhere. has beens and wanna-bes. it's on-stage in the spotlight. the show for the audience in the dark obscurity stunned into silence only making its presence known by performing a standing ovation cheering and waving becoming a great seething devouring beast wanting more more more, bloated and rocking back and forth chained to its consumption undulating as it gorges on sweetened treats by the plateful, by the bucket, by the truckload. goods cannot be shipped fast enough, crowds press forward waiting for the doors to open to admit them to the immediate pleasures to be found inside the vaults and warehouses demanding at any price named as long as the supply lasts.

    ,.///
    him and his monkey.
    him and someone who makes him look like a monkey.
    which one of us is which? we are humankind. we perform our tricks. we run around in circles. we babble incessantly. we are occupied with ourselves. we are frightened. we don't care about anyone but ourselves.
    as it should be.
    he could be right. he could be wrong. he waits for the bullet. he does his laundry. he is just like anyone else. he is no one going nowhere leaving behind a bunch of unpaid bills. we are the enemy.
    do we expect anything else? we have thought it out a thousand times and more. we have worn ourselves out. it's easy to dream and expect one's dreams to come true. for some this might happen. for most we are the background for those dreams. we stand on-stage and carry the spear.
    there is an awakening out of one's dreams. there is the realization of how dirty it all is. one can no longer get out of it. it just keeps building up. there is grime on all the faces one sees. there is always something foul in the air. and this is the promised land. this is where and when we have all come to standing before one another. we are disgusted. we push one another away because we do not want to be reminded of who we are. too many mirrors in the grand hall and maze. all the many images we project of ourselves.
    the hard edge dull and cutting slowly into our flesh, wearing away at the same spot, wearing away to expose the bone, wearing down through the bone.
    it is possible to think of this. it is possible for this to be a metaphor for most of our experience. it is possible for it to be real sometime.
    we think these things. we think of these possibilities. we make many of them real. the real that finds its metaphor in our thinking of the possibilities.
    we each are painters. we each take up the brush and paint a portion of the mural of the world. some of cover it with broad sweeping strokes. others work on small areas of detail. some add to other parts. others paint them over sometimes copying them with the same thing in a different style for better or worse.
    he finds it amazing that anyone can do anything at all. how any co-operation comes out of such conflict.
    it seems that much must remain silent, unspoken, undone. we allow ourselves our constant petty complaints. as long as the work gets done, as long as it's not taken as anything serious and to be acted upon.
    to take it seriously, to act upon it, requires the same amount of co-operation, the same silence of the unspoken and undone, the same dedication to getting the work done, the same idle venting of petty complaints.
    conflict is turned into and expressed as competition. competition can turn into violent conflict which so long as it's organized into co-operative effort toward a common purpose it is excused - if one is the winner. it must never be personal. random conflicts of interest are not allowed. all must be channeled into the co-operative.
    a common purpose the loser is understood if one is the wrong seen and proven but even it is random that is seen individual own resources a co-operative organized group instead of channeling when one of these believed that one or could act associated to a group it is not of these individuals that has influenced generated these ideas of conflict for one's own psychologically weak resist and were controlled that reason conflict is a result be unreasonable the two unless one's conflict is organized as representing a minority as small as different rules a co-operative collective on different beliefs a majority group prove itself an organized group individuals are not random noise organized collective oh well this is recognized to be so species have us do about it what would dominant over all others intelligence and consciousness no other context exists in a socially organized species the collective and individual context both together this was primarily development however even then the respond to a large part that response itself was further response became stronger self-determined as it became increasingly overlaid direct relationship natural environment or something like that.

    an abstraction of the real as the real itself becomes abstract. the objects of our world serve us more and are perceived more in symbolic terms. the symbolic becomes function. the object is used as representation more than directly as object. even the direct use of the object becomes a representation and symbol. how much are even what could be called primary functions involving the use of objects such as food, clothing and shelter limited to direct and simple fulfillment of need? though these basic and universal needs are served, how we go about fulfilling them and with what and the meaning it conveys is of higher importance, except in cases where the fulfillment of these basic needs is in danger and anything will do, when the alternative is nothing. but even that conveys meaning beyond its fact. what is missing or threatened is not just the loss or scarcity of what is needed to satisfy these needs even at a minimal level but the ability to fulfill them in a meaningful way instead of having to accept whatever is immediately available.
    almost anything will satisfy our hunger, will keep us warm and dry, but that is not enough. we have social and cultural needs as well. what we eat, what we wear, where we live has to satisfy representational and symbolic needs as well as the functional. this to the extent that outside immediate desperate need we often place the functional second to the representational and symbolic. the preparation and presentation of food, and only certain foods, is of more importance than its functional nutritional value. even when the nutritional becomes a matter of importance it often serves more representational and symbolic meaning than functional need. communicating being seen as having that concern is as important, if not more so, than having that concern.
    but that is us and our behavior. as the tiger hunts and the buffalo grazes we abstract the real. we hold and use objects as representations and symbols. we have more than just managed to survive by doing so. we thrive in a self-created world many times removed from the directly functional need. only at times of that world breaking down are we forced back to the functional again and relate to our environment directly.

    and it slips into the big swirling whatever. the witch's brew. we utter our incantations reaching into it and pull out something else.
    now as another day enters the scene, he has returned to the cafe again. he sits and writes. existing in space. existing in time. existing in being.
    we have written and read each other's thoughts. we search for revelation - meaning. many have believed they have found it. they absorb themselves into it. they disappear. maybe they found it after all. that seems to be what it is - to disappear. to leave the world in some way or another. the world is a distraction - a burden. the world is in the way. we are all fools. the less one has to do with us the better off one is.
    glory to this one who has reached the mountain top and is that much closer to the radiant sun, who is above the suffocating air of our ignorance.
    woe to us who are crowded together in our deluded misery, who toil through our lives for scarps from the table where the immortals feast. we who are as dogs and cattle. we who do not know ourselves, who must look to these few who are the ones to show us our potential.
    this all is the world that is the burden, that distracts us. to be sunk in it or to gain flight from it. which is more the entrapment? which is more based on ignorance and denial? which is less caught up in the wheel?
    where do we find what is divine within us? is it found in isolation? or is it found in the crowd? do we turn from the faces or look into them to see our own reflection?
    and what is divine other than who and what we are? what is divine other than human? and not human as an anatomical study, or the existential scream, or potato eaters, or the aristocratic dandy, or the star haloed mystic, but human as a snapshot taken by a pocket camera developed in a hour. human as the human in the mirror. the human passed on the street, in a car in the next lane on the traffic jam freeway. the human unrepresented. the human in the audience, in the checkout line, in the office or factory, at home, in prison or the hospital. the human who is anywhere and everywhere. the human we are as we look for who and what is human.
    the human forgotten. the human who comes and goes without noticeable trace. the human without a face anyone can see, even often oneself. the human buried deep beneath the image. the human who creates the image to hide oneself behind to present oneself to the world as someone and something else. the human dreaming of the divine thinking the divine cannot be human.
    to be human is an embarrassment, a disgrace. to be human other than to be something else - something divine. to be human that is not the ultimate human - the divine human.
    we turn away from ourselves, even as we try to turn to ourselves. it is always the image - the image of self. to be human is to be self-deceiving. to be human is to make up what one believes to be oneself. even the mirror polished and clean deceives. to look into a mirror of any sort is to look away.
    can we do anything other than to look away? is the human capable of looking at oneself - ourselves? if we could would we still be human? if we could be anything we might imagine would we still be human? what would be human that would not be something else one might imagine?
    that we cannot see ourselves as being human but see ourselves as something else seems to be what is human.
    to turn and chase oneself around in circles seems to be what is human. to find oneself as that seems to be what is human. to want more seems to be what is human.
    to be human seems to be to be stuck in given circumstances, to be limited and defined by them whether one overcomes them or is overcome by them.

    so it spins still around in the whatever. the is and is not. the imagined and the real. the indistinguisable we take parts of into the light of our gaze to define as this and/or that. the it. the whatever it is. the whatever it is not. the whatever we might discover, define, invent, imagine whatever it might be or not be, whatever it might or might not become. the whatever we are or are not with it as being whatever.
    whatever into the nevermind. whatever into the meaninglessness beyond the furthest reaches of meaning. whatever that might be something after all, something encompassing the whatever. something being the whatever drawing upon the whatever to make up its own being and/or not being. and is it possible that we are that something? - even as being human? would we ever know? do we keep that from ourselves as that would spoil the game we are playing? would it end the suspense?
    this tragic comedy or comic tragedy we are involved and turned around in - around about ourselves. is there any reason to believe that there is anything - any being - besides ourselves? is there any reason to believe that we get or share our being from or with any other? is there any reason to believe that all we perceive as being is not only an object of our perception but of our conception and creation? or do we "refute it, thus"? maybe not individually but collectively. are we all the god?
    but that would change nothing. what can we do collectively even if there was no limit to what we could do collectively? we cannot and never have done anything collectively among even the largest or smallest group of us. that may have been our collective decision when we conceived and created all this and ourselves in it. we may have placed that restriction upon it to keep it as it is - as we conceived and created it.
    this, as unreachable as anything else, might as well be god, or nothing. it has no bearing on the day to day. it doesn't make us any money. it won't make us be loved. it won't do diddly squat.

    burning. killing time. believing whatever one may believe. opening. the realization of the loneliness. waiting. trying to explain to oneself something that is real. seeing the paths others have taken leading away. standing apart from oneself. looking at oneself and wondering who's who.

    in this idiot mind. strange. when it falls as it does. when we are unlucky. when we cannot understand. when everything seems distant. when it might be ourselves who are distant.
    we expect nothing. nothing is expected from us. when we cannot easily explain. when there is nothing to explain. when it all seems like noise - a bunch of babbling monkeys.
    and one may decide not to give up, though one may not be sure what it is one is not giving up. one isn't quite sure what it is that one has or not. one only knows one has something others do not seem to want - or could it be that one has something others do want? what is it they do want or do not want? do they know? they grab the immediate, the obvious. they seek to possess. is it just possession that they want? - and likewise not to want to be possessed?
    one searches through the words one knows for the right ones to describe what one sees and feels. are there any? what is it one sees and feels? can it be communicated and validated by words? how do words communicate and validate? what more than what is presently understood? what is presently understood?
    which way does one go? what questions does one try to answer? does one want answers or just the end to questions?
    why can't one put it down and walk away? it hasn't accomplished anything. one would think it would have by now if it was going to. it hasn't, for oneself or for anyone one knows about.
    crazy time. it all amounts to one talking to oneself. the words flow out easily and smoothly. a habit. a nervous tick. a compulsion.
    this is the steady state. one feels safe and secure within this obscurity. the words one surrounds oneself with to fill one's mind. writing them gives one something to do. one does nothing but to find some place where one can sit and write. one settles into it like settling into a favorite chair. nothing more needs to happen than that.
    one pretends one is asking and answering questions, but all one is doing is juggling words playing a game with oneself.
    once in awhile one may follow one line of thought out or another. it continues until it fades into its own absurdity. one finds traces of others who have been this way. the words that come to mind have a certain familiarity. one sees that there isn't anything one can bring back from where one has gotten to except to state that i have been there too and have seen for myself that there is nothing.
    there is a reason we are where we are. this is common ground, though there is misunderstanding. we understand what it is that is misunderstood. we understand the arguments. we understand what we disagree on.
    this is where the lines we each follow meet together and become entangled. this is where we all become lost together. this is where we stand our separate ground. this is where we stand to lose or gain. this is where it is happening.
    we may each retreat into our own spaces away from others but this is where we must come out sooner or later even though it might be only to get more supplies.
    so what is written with that being written? what does one revel? is it one's insight or ignorance?
    to reach into it. to hold onto some part of it for awhile. it is timeless sand. there is always more than what one may hold at a given time.

    to reach across the divided heart. is there anything we might use to fasten it together? was it ever together or would we be attempting to merge what has never been whole to begin with?
    we have this sense that things have not always been as they are, that we lost something along the way, that we have fallen from some higher state of harmony that we need to return to. but this is just a sense, a sense we have always had.
    always in some other place and time. always never here, never now.

    what might open or close. what might seem right or wrong. what might come to us or go away from us.
    our own zero point.
    the clowns looking for love and that sweet thing following the steady metronome beat and the dripping provoking riming words. the easy path. the path well traveled. the satisfaction with the immediate short term reward. don't have to think of much else. the primal engine driving the machine. the very same machine that they complain that they are chained to. who has chained them to it? are there chains or do they just refuse to let go?
    to let go is to fall into the unknown outside the dancing circles of chanting people. the unknown where slogans are meaningless, where one must come up with one's own words from one's own thoughts to describe what only one sees. the unknown where nothing is given, where nothing on the store shelves are worth anything even if given out for free, where even the obscure and fringe are seen to fit into the standard status quo each in their own private secret niche. there has always been that which is in and that which is out. to be outside that inside.
    the unknown becomes increasingly unknown. that is the only way into it and through it. the strange and unusual is added to, not lessened. there is less for one to grasp and hold onto that doesn't come apart in one's hands.
    what  can or does one trust? what doesn't have many faces? what doesn't have many names?
    this is what we should expect but once we recognize a face and give that face a name we expect it to remain that way each time we meet it again. when it doesn't we feel betrayed and become confused.
    the unknown doesn't allow that. the unknown is always becoming. the unknown forgets as it is remembering. to follow it is to become lost. to become lost is to find where one has always been.
    whatever anything is or might be, one is in it as one tries calling it this or that and each name one gives it doesn't really describe it. yet one exists in a world of names. the names are understood to mean this or that whether they actually describe them or not.
    a sound in the air.
    a scribble on the page.
    to attempt to look through the names into the world as it is. to try to remember what it once looked like.
    yet is this what is being done? is this what he is doing? is there any purpose to what he is doing? haven't we asked this question before? haven't we asked that question before?
    this and that.
    he just repeats the names of things over and over.
    we have zoomed into it. we have zoomed out of it. the specific and the general. do we know what we're looking for? would we know it if we have seen it?
    to write about what is without a name is absurd. writing about names. writing about what we call things. how does one describe what is without a name with names? how does one see it? is seeing it enough? do we recognize it without a name?
    one should leave this alone. why look into something one cannot bring anything back from? what one might discover doesn't add to what we have already but takes that much away. it is found that we have no basis for much of what we do but we continue it anyway. was that the point to this?
    there is the busy activity of the others around him. those who do not question everything, who continue functioning in whatever way they function. these are those who build and maintain the world. there are those who decide what it is to be or not be. yet that activity seems to be hidden. to them they are only doing what they need to in response to the way the world is to them. they do not seem to see beyond that even just responding is also directing. it is that feedback cycle that is the creative force that shapes the world. the passive is also active. we are presented with options. we choose, and as we choose we close some options and open others even if we choose to do nothing. and in so doing we present options to others to choose. though the whole process is more complex than that, it is complexity built upon that simplicity - though that might not be true.
    it's dada. it's the hobby horse. it's the image as things appear. it's the illusion of that appearance created by how our minds perceive and recognize the image. it's our minds needing an image to perceive and recognize. we move our imaginary hands through it touching and holding that which we perceive and recognize. there is correspondence. that correspondence is reality.
    we close our eyes. we sit still not touching anything. we allow ourselves to forget. the world slowly exits from our minds. our minds return to where they are in their own space and time which is without measure. to be without measure is not to be more or less than that which is measured. it is only the absence of measurement. measurement is having one thing that is used as a unit of measurement held up to and compared to another thing to determine that the other is so many of these units more or less. if one is in the mind where things are absent, measurement is also absent. the idea of measurement is pointless. to measure one needs to return to the world where there are things to be measured and things to be used to measure. one must bring one's mind back to that. then that which is without measure ceases to exist. it cannot be brought back to be compared since, by definition, it is nothing. it cannot be said to be this many units more or less. it does not exist in units whatever quality or quantity any particular unit is defined as measuring. as such it is not perceived and recognized except as being perceived and recognized as being without measure.
    as such it is not inside or outside that which can be measured. it is not more or less. as its quality and quantity cannot be measured so also it cannot be located since location is a matter of measurement. thereforwise since the definition of existence is generally that which can be measured as having quality and quantity and location, it does not exist. but is it because it does not actually exist or because it cannot be measured?
    this question cannot have an answer. it can always be argued. what argues one side is outside the domain of what argues the other. one side argues with proof, the other side argues without proof. proof itself is what is being questioned. proof is measurement. that which is unmeasureable is also unprovable. the question is whether that which does not have any measurable proof of its existence can exist if that is to be the state of its existence.
    what in the mind might perceive and recognize without measurement? - without proof? what in the mind exists that does not measure in order to perceive and recognize? what would it be but being?
    to weasel around that. a fine axis point upon which much else pivots. however not so much that is deemed to be of much importance. not so much that many even consider it let alone would ponder it for any length of time more than a few idle moments. and any who might have have long discarded it as a dead end, an inconclusive stalemate between the rational and the irrational. it is philosophic quicksand. to struggle with it is to sink into it deeper.
    yet that conclusion, the conclusion that it is inconclusive, is from the rational perspective and faith - what we have described elsewhere as rationalogic (the logic of rationality). this only means that rationalogic cannot extract anything that is rational (measurable) from it. one approaches it rationalogically using the logic of the rational to guide one as to how to proceed with one step that follows the other. there is the point at which there are no more steps that follow rationalogically from the other or perhaps the path that it follows circles back in on itself. one reaches the irrational (the unmeasurable). rationalogic perceives and recognizes irrationality in so far as perceiving and recognizing where and when irrationality is met and touched upon. rationalogic will not allow one to proceed beyond that point. to step from the path rationality follows is irrational. to proceed further one needs the logic of irrationality, or irrationalogic. irrationalogic explains nothing. irrationalogic offers no proof. so we are left swimming up and over the incoming waves out to the open sea. this is our freedom. this is our being free from restrictions, free from the security that restrictions provide as well as the limitations. but we are secure in that. and we are no longer free.

    what the possibilities are. what is inside the limits. what we bring into it.
    how much does he offer? how much does he take away?
    to live in the absurd. to wait and wonder about what questions there might be one hasn't thought of asking.
    to think of oneself as being a poet in an age without poetry. another resource that has been used up, dead and gone.
    who were they anyway but those left howling at the moon and dying in pain? they wanted love and found the world empty, unjust. they cut up their words and threw them up into the air - a magick ritual hoping that they might be blessed with meaning once again.
    now poetry is left to the monkey people who grunt in rhythm and rime stroking their primal instinct. this is now honesty. no more those heavy clouds of thought and despairing yearning. not for the common person on the street driving by fast faster fastest.
    stretching out the time into where one forgets. one sits still feeling one cannot sit still.
    there is this vanity one is plagued by. it is not the despairing yearning of the soul. what passes for one's soul is a reflection in a mirror. one tries out different facial expressions to make one appear as if there is something more than what appears on the surface.
    and one sits in a cafe writing and hoping that if one writes enough words one will chance upon something worth writing. how many words are there to write? when does it stop being nonsense? how does one know when or not one is still writing nonsense?
    mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me if i'm making any sense at all.

    one partakes in simple idiot ranting. one attempts to go in all directions and goes nowhere. there is not one thing one feels strongly enough about to dedicate oneself to it. one settles for what comes. one puts it into as much haphazard order as one can. building a house in a hurricane.

    for those of the rest of us we avoid this one so his misfortune might not become our own. we avoid also those things in which he becomes ensnarled and entangled. we have learned long ago what questions are best left unasked. we are busy with the work we must do. who else is there to do it? not him. he does not recognize the importance. he seems to believe that the things we produce appear out of thin air. how much business it is just to keep him supplied with notebooks and pencil lead and cigarettes and coffee. none of the so-called poets or other scribblers take that into consideration. they demand freedom. but it is freedom within the security we provide. we who are deemed by them to be unfit to delve into their holy sacred depths or to elevate to their lofty heights. we are to stand and admire their dreamy pronouncements and bow ashamed to their scolding criticism.
    we move on. we leave them behind. we keep the factories running. we make the orders and deliver the shipments. all they are are passengers on our journey, not we on theirs. they may point in any direction they might in the moment of their fevered emotion but we know our way. we have the charts and the maps. we know how the machines work. they are not monsters to us as we are to them. to us they are children. we command them. we know how to steer them and when. we know why as well. we work to meet the demands of others including these scribblers of so much nonsense. and, yes, we are only concerned with the material demand. if we arrive someday when that demand is satisfied, when the orders stop coming in, we will then be obsolete. our job will have been done. if there are poets among us then let them sing. we will retire to ourselves. we will sit in the shade and play in the sun. we will smile when the poets boast that they are the ones who guided us here, they are the ones who foresaw it. we know who were the ones who toiled every day while they slept after nights of drinking from the moon. we did not see them in the engine rooms. we did not see them on the assembly line - not even those that printed their words. we did not see them at the business meetings going over the elaborate details of how to fit this together with that. they danced about dragging long capes and waving wands. they uttered ancient sounding incantations. they glittered and smoked with loud noise. they flashed bright dazzling light from mirrors such that its source appeared as if from nowhere.
    it's all from nowhere, made to appear as if from secret powers. and that is enough for the amusement of entertainment. we all enjoy being entertained. there is pleasure in reading or hearing intricate tricks of the phrase, the wittiness of words, the phonetic music of pronunciation. yet it is just that - pleasure. pleasure, as many are amiss and unaware, does not lead to happiness. it is more often the other way around that happiness leads to pleasure. whichever way it is, are we to be guided by these who cast spells over our pleasure and happiness? - not to bring us either but to always promise. is it any wonder that the poets, and their kissing cousins the artists and musicians, find such successful employment in advertising? who is it who throws gasoline on the fire of desire? who is it who drives the demand for the material? who is it who flaunts the latest thing off the assembly line, the newest trinket or gismo? who tells us what pleasure and happiness we will have if we sign up for a few more easy payments? who but the poets?
    not that all poets are intrigued in this. there are those proper and impoverished poets who imprint their own purging soul upon the page. there are those whose words do offer solace and comfort or allow us to at least identify our pain. it is our pain that is often the only link and bond among us.
    so let him sit here among us scribbling away his pretensions. we keep him fed and housed, isn't that enough? let him be happy with that - or be miserable. does that matter to us either way? let him at least keep himself out of trouble and not bother the rest of the others who are of more and better value. who serves society best and most, the poet or the garbage collector?
    and he is a poet only in the sense that anyone with something to write with and something to write on can call oneself a poet. let him call himself a poet. let others call him a poet. let everyone call themselves poets. let them have a festival of scribbling. let all the words they produce be printed and bound in volumes to be put on bookstore and library shelves. let the connoisseur consumer consume them. let this go on forever.
    we will put up the capital for it. we will contract the design and layout people, schedule time on the presses. we will have our own poets put out the word that these are must have items. we will lease office space and set up communications for those to take the incoming orders. we will have them boxed up and put on the loading docks. we will direct the shipping and distribution routes, maybe co-ordinate a book signing tour to go along with them in key city and regional stores. if all goes well, and we have someone who happens to be a hot and heavy hitter, we'll even add radio and tv spots. and we'll all be happy. we'll be able to walk away from it once it's set into motion with a feeling of a job well done off to indulge in our own pleasures - maybe going home and actually reading this thing that we created.
    and what is it we might happen to read? much to our chagrin it's some ragging spewing bitch rant calling us all a bunch of fat pigs or a mindless mass of monkeys or whatever like that. well, so much for that. what's on tv?
    we may feel somewhat insulted. some of us might get mad. but, in the end, in the final analysis, the bottom line is if this is what sells then we all made our money - so, fuck it.

    this is the way he sees it anyway - how he sees how the others see it. and it's their world. they're the movers and the shakers. they roll up their sleeves and work it through.
    he used to do that himself once awhile ago. he wasn't always sitting here wasting time away. he used to do his part of the work, put in his share of the time. he was on that side of it. he was even supporting a wife and kids - marginally.
    and maybe he could have made it - if he paid any attention. maybe he could be driving a fast car stuck in traffic with all the other fast cars looking for the exit that leads to the open highway like they all saw the car they bought driving on on tv. the car as magick object. go, car, go. take me away, baby. some place else. take me to that winding mountain road.
    this ain't tv no more. it's out in some sort of real zone.
    but that's not the point.
    be-bop baby.

    we do this. we do that. we have become what we are and remain as we have always been.
    he wonders if that's true or not. whether he it's just something he feels is true. how is one to know? how does one decide?
    here in somewhere. being in here somewhere. there is something he is trying to get to - still. something in or not in his mind. something the questions he comes to with his writing. is it deep? is it shallow? is it unusual? is it common? is he just playing tricks with words or is this an actual pursuit?
    he has the feeling that it is like having a note pinned to his back. everyone can see it but him. anytime he turns around it's always behind him.
    but isn't this true in everyone's case? we are visible to one another in ways in which we are ignorant. we infer what this might be by how others react to us. it is true that none of us know what it is to be the other, but it is also true that none of us know how we appear to others.
    but is this the point?
    he feels that he is always writing around whatever the point might be. or there might not be a point but just the continual writing itself. never arriving at a point, a destination. no eureka of discovery or revelation though there may have been a number of insights along the way, some things he might not have come to otherwise, some things he has left back along the lines of writing. (he wonders how long those lines are - how far to the moon they would reach - or would they even reach a mountain top? he just figured the page he's writing is about 10 feet. the notebook is 3000. he has about 100 notebooks. not very far at all.)
    his writing has brought him here. or he brought himself here with his writing. either way. has he written himself into madness or written himself out of madness? whatever. nevermind that. he's been around and through writing about that business enough. or is that the point? is that the answer to the present question? what is the present question? is there just one or were there several? wasn't that the question? is there a central question? is there a thematic question? is there a central answer? is there a thematic answer? is this nonsense?
    is this even the format or method for arriving at what that might be? - that central thematic thing. this wandering in uncertain direction until one comes across something. this whatever it is. this questioning and answering, or questioning and not answering. this scribbling. this compulsive reflex of madness. this everything and nothing.

    we wake up screaming.
    we stifle ourselves.
    we cannot go out into the world that way.

    is it that desperate? - that despairing? - that frightening? maybe for some. maybe for many. he doesn't feel that it's that way so much for himself though he does find himself wandering into that territory.
    fear and anger, those inseperatable twins, are within in. they may be elemental to it, both in composition and motivation. they do arise. they do overwhelm and overpower him, but only for a time. usually when events make him stressed and feel threatened. even then part of him remains the observer taking notes while the rest of him is trembling and shaking his fists at the sky or the fortress tower calling whoever is there to come down and face him on the even field.
    fat chance.
    is this primal and innate or social and learned? is it some twist in himself or shared in common?
    there seem to be those who can contain it. they speak of not even possessing it, not feeling it to begin with. is that from their nature or their position? power need not feel fear or react with anger. they are able to sit composed while the other loses it.
    it is the subordinate who must act, yet is discouraged from doing so. this contradictory conflict becomes internalized and makes one fight against oneself. this serves the dominant. it causes the subordinate to be disorganized and therefore less of a threat. it also provides the dominant with justification for one's dominant position as the other is seen as not deserving by not being able to behave properly. this other would misuse power if one was given it, so power must be held back and even used against this one who is subordinate.
    power itself doesn't care.
    power lives through anyone who uses it.
    this is its power.
    there will always be power.
    but this may not be the point either.

    what god by any other name does not also have the name power? power is a god's true name. that is what any other name means. what is a god without power? who would worship such a god? and so what is it we are actually worshipping?
    what is anything that does not have and/or give one power? all things are aspects of power even that which is not usually thought of as so. is there not power even in powerlessness? one has to think in a certain way to understand that. a way most do not think.

    is that the question and the answer? is that what he is delving into with his writing? it would seem so since he wrote it. but is there something more to see? has he reached any depth, or is he still scratching at the surface?
    he cannot believe that anything he might come upon will be anything of any significance. if he came upon it then others must have come upon it and have not considered it significant and have discarded it where he found it in the trash.

    he has lost what he was thinking and writing about. he has lost a great many things. this is probably for the best. what does he need now of these other things he once had - or once had him? it is the latter that is what is probably true. they had him. that was what he was writing about power. things are power - are thought of as power. it is the thought that is the power. the thing is just a thing. yet a thing can trigger a thought. thought is what leads to action. action is power. action needs power to be action. it needs energy. energy is power. power needs energy to be power. energy comes from things. things being consumed. things converted to energy. inactive energy is a thing. a thing is potential energy. a thing holds energy back. a thing holds energy idle - checked, dormant.
    there are times when energy should be held back. if energy isn't held back everything explodes. the big bang. the big bang was when there was nothing - no thing - to hold energy back. the big bang all energy exploding all at once. then it becomes things. it slows. it cools. it solidifies. it becomes manifest. energy manifesting into things. then those things are consumed to gain the energy they hold.
    so to have lost things is to have consumed their energy. to have propelled oneself from them. to lose them is to not have them holding one back, to be holding back one's energy, one's thoughts. our energy is our thought. what generates thought but energy? sparks in one's brain.
    a thing, a perceived object, fires neurons. firing neurons are the energy of one's thoughts. thought leads to action. firing neurons are all human action. one sees a rock. one picks up the rock. one throws the rock. object, perception, thought, action.
    and la-dee-da.
    what does and does not follow in whatever nonsense spills out of his brain into the object notebook.
    wasted energy.
    it's nothing. it's not what he is writing about. his writing sidetracks into these eddies, these circular pools off the stream of consciousness. maybe something is picked up from them. maybe something is left off.
    he continues.

    there's this collection of notebooks of stuff he's been writing for 10 years or more after he burnt the rest. what is it? he wonders what it is. something left behind? energy held for another to consume? thoughts for another to think? something to be taken to the dump after he's dead - after he's been taken to the dump.
    and now he leaves it all on the big world wide web, that great cyberdump. the ghost in the machine.
    he's dead now. he's dead to most everyone. his actual death will not affect things much. there are a certain amount of personal things to be hauled out of his apartment so it can be rented again. that's about it. his body will be donated to medical science. a cadaver. a skeleton or something.
    it's all dreaming. dreaming of one another all in the big dream. what is active? what is held in potential? is any of this close to what he's writing about?
    as it turns on any number of axes. as it is what it is and is not.
    as it is blind to itself. as it is blind to what is not itself. the blind god in the dark void.
    he's been to the void. it's not there. nothing is there. nothing to write about. and writing is the thing for him. if it can't be written then what is it? to him it's nothing.
    he keeps writing like other people keep talking. what do they have to say? how much of it is just chattering? what does he have to write? how much of it is just scribbling?
    he could be sleeping. he might as well be sleeping. to sleep. to forget. to dream.
    the great dreaming god in the dark void.

    he wakes up again. today of all days now being here. his hand in motion already writing. his hand in motion lighting a cigarette. his hand in motion drinking a cup of coffee.
    he is narcissus fascinated in his own reflection. what is his reflection? what does he see in it - all these damn notebooks.
    he loses himself as a thing among things he has lost into the energy of thought. the thought provokes the action of writing - creating things - these words.
    an echoing voice calls him back. it is the voice of the world reminding him of itself. one day follows another. one day an echo of another.
    the earth always in motion revolving about its own axis around the sun star in a parade of stars around a galaxy in an even grander parade of galaxies through the universe moving ever apart toward the entrophic horizon.
    the earth never occupying the same space twice. not in a day. not in a lifetime. not in the universe's lifetime.
    so what are the echoes? the echoes changing with each echo. from what did they originate? who/what first uttered them? did he come from the echoes? is that why they keep calling him back? is he only an echo himself?
    the echoes of dna. the long continuous chain linked back to the chemicals within the gases that formed the earth condensed from the flash of energy of the big bang. the singularity expanding as the universe becoming infinity - or so we imagine. infinity expanding as it expands. the infinite spacetime groove thing.
    and on and on along whatever line that is. that eddy. that swirling pool. the universe echoing. the universe gazing at its own reflection.
    just a thought.

    he writes mostly about which may only be of interest to himself, and maybe only understood by himself - except as it might be of some interest to someone interested in what someone who writes only about what is of interest to oneself and only understood by oneself writes about. isn't that the way of all writers? maybe that is the correct way to understand it.
    it might be understood as representing what a human is interested in and writes about when one is interested in any whatever thing that momentarily comes along. but does he represent what is human? is it, or can it be, that general? there is so much that is human that he is not. he is cut off from a major part of human experience. but human experience is cut off from a major part of his own as well. just the fact that he is "he" and not "she" cuts him off from half of all human experience and vice versa. nevermind all the other divisions. there are any number of distinctions that limit him from being in any way representative of any but a very small minority of all who claim to be human. in the end he may represent only himself.
    how much of himself does he represent? how much of his thoughts and feelings does his writing represent? so what is representative and what is not?
    but that itself is a representation representative of himself being who and what he is by doing just as he is doing by not representing everything about himself. if he did more than that he would be representing someone else not himself - someone who does represent these things.
    but while he's digging around in his own brain he does look out for what might represent being human - if there is such a thing. but would he recognize it if he came across it? is it anywhere in what he has dumped and spilled out on these pages? is it the question or part of the question or what the question might be part of?
    what was the question again?
    is the question, what is human? or, what do humans question and think about? maybe something like that. he recalls that the question was kind of up in the air, that the question was a question about itself as much as anything else. it may have been about what is the point of all this that he is writing. and maybe there isn't a point except just to keep writing. writing about something - whatever.
    things to write about. things for the writing to consume for energy to keep itself going and keep him going with it. but it seems to be consuming itself - himself. which is which? doesn't he keep himself going and his writing is kept going with him? which is consuming which? what is consumed? what is the energy here?
    the vampiric muse that preys upon the the weak and isolated from the herd to feed upon. it cannot kill because the dead cannot do its bidding. it must leave its victim enough life and will to perform that which it commands. yet not too much that one will ever be able to get free.
    is that all this is? if so, pay it no mind. resist any inspiration it might evoke, any temptation to write down one's own thoughts. one thought leads to another and that one to another. the thoughts become unending, just more that one feels the compulsion to keep writing down. thoughts that won't leave one's mind until they are written. instantly forgotten. one looks back over the pages and wonders what was meant that was so important about it. and one may realize that it is the same thing over and over, each time seeming to be new, a discovering of insight by one's genius. such is the delusion of writers. such is their addiction - the singular obsession to it and it alone that overrides any concern for anything else. the ignoring of all else, friends, family - even oneself. the wake of destruction that follows it. no, do not become a writer. for that matter do not become anything - any one thing. all singular obsessions are the same. all are addictions. all cause the same destruction. look around. one can see addicted souls everywhere, though, true to all addicts, they try to hide it. but to one who knows what to look for it is easily recognized.
    look for the one who is alone or who congregates with the same type of people who all do the same thing, who share the same addiction. this might be occupation or recreation, religion, politics, philosophy - whatever. it can be anything. it can be that which does not appear to be destructive but ultimately is for oneself and others. what of the obsession of love or compassion? who has suffered from these and such like? how many have been imprisoned and exiled and executed by all that is holy?
    and to write this is not to point to the hypocrites. it is also, and at times more so, that those who are the most devout to these "virtues" that are the most destructive, not by doing the opposite but by means of the virtue itself. all these can do as much or more harm than their opposites. what is the difference between, i am doing this to you because i love you, or, i am doing this to you because i hate you?
    such is the subtly of addiction.
    or maybe there's a few screws loose in all that. it's a hat. maybe he's gone off again into some more nonsense that takes him away from the question which might be, why does he get taken away from the question?
    is there a question that takes all of us to answer? - all of us to ask? do we ask it? do any of us? is it any of the questions we have asked already?
    who spends their time asking questions and coming up with more questions? philosophers? idiots? the mad? four year olds?
    put it down. forget it. walk away. so many have been this way and have just gotten lost. no one comes back. if they do, they don't come back with their minds - or maybe it's their souls they don't come back with.
    is it that?
    there's so much to sift through - from the noise of chaos to the open-ended labyrinth of order.

    there are these many questions. there are these many answers. what among all that is he trying to get to? - or maybe trying to avoid?
    there's this being human thing. he is human and so is everybody else. however being human seems to be being different than every other human no matter how we may clump ourselves together. and that could be stated as being the common human experience.
    that may be what he is trying to write, or to write from. he sets himself out from himself in third person to attempt this view, to write from that view. he is other to himself as he is other to the others. yet writing about himself as other he is still himself as the one writing. he is not other to himself as others are other to him. he cannot cross that line. he might view himself as among the others but the view is still from himself not from being another. but that is true from the others who view themselves from themselves.
    it would seem that there should be something typical in this. something typical being human. yet there is much that colors over that. we are colored by culture. another is experience. culture lays down the basic patterns, experience fills in the details. there may be certain things that can be stated about the group that cannot be stated about the individual - perhaps none of the individuals. we each go our own way. within each cultural pattern are individual variations. within each house and family. within each circle of friends. the group may not represent the individuals and the individuals may not represent the group.
    is this the right direction - or has he missed where he was going?
    in some ways he wants who and what he is, what he is trying to get to by his writing beyond the particular aspects of himself, to be typical. or to find that typicalness within himself beneath the particular. to write what anyone would write if anyone were to write about what he is writing about.
    yet he resists this. he does not want to be typical. no one does. he doesn't want to find anything typical about himself. he wants his writing to stand unique on its own, to be about and by himself. for his writing and its content to be solely independent of anything anyone else might write.
    these seem to be in conflict. but is it not the conflict of being human? wanting to be part of and apart from the others. we envy those who we would not want to be. groucho's not wanting to be part of any group that would have ourselves as a member. yet he writes in these discriminate general terms. he writes about us and them, himself and others. is this how he feels or is this cultural coloring? he is surrounded by and is within us and them. there are those who see him as one of us - though not many - and there are those who see him as one of them - most everybody else. to function with others he must take into account these designations. to him, everyone is them. to him, its me and them, not us and them.
    these others set themselves apart from others who they call them and call themselves us. he is more often one of them than one of us. there are always lines drawn and he is usually found on the other side.
    he draws one line - a circle around himself - me, myself and i. that is the only us that he feels he belongs to.
    we are them.
    so he is not free of bias and discrimination. that's part of being in the world - being in a culture - dealing with individuals. - being human. it works for him and against him depending on how us-identified another is and which side of the line he falls on. they are always on the other side of the line. even if he is considered by others to be one of us it's always marginal. he's usually on the periphery, a lower subordinate order. sometimes not even that. he is one of them.
    he has to deal with their various hierarchies. he has no hierarchy. there is no up or down, there's only in or out. he's in, everyone else is out. maybe that is a hierarchy. but hierarchies are based on power, who has it and who doesn't. he has no power. there is no great loss for any of them being outside his us-group of one - except they can never be him. who wants to be him? does he even want to be him? yes/no. maybe.
    what a wonderful person human to be.

    he wanders around in this. it is whatever it is. it's whatever it appears to be from whatever perspective one looks at it from. but it's not like an object thing which can be mapped by putting the perspectives together. one is also looking at perspective itself. the cultural collective perspective, the individual solitary perspective. everything is conditionally true. everything is subjectively true. a tree is a tree but the cultural meaning of what is a tree is fluid. a tree is a spiritual being and/or it is boardfeet of lumber. it is a symbol metaphor or something to hang a swing from. hanging a swing from a tree can be a symbol metaphor.
    so still we are in whateverland. this vast territory of our minds that is both familiar and strange. the world transmitted on uncountable complex interlocking and interweaving levels. and that's just within the individual mind. how much more complex within the cultural collective mind?
    no wonder we feel so overwhelmed and lost - individually and collectively. we select what seems secure and want it to remain as it is so we have a reference point and something to hold onto and stand on.
    humans seem overwhelmed and lost within worlds of their own making. but what makes these worlds? who makes them?  we each together and alone make decisions and act from what is given and what seems to be true. and some have more power to do this than others, yet the ages can turn on the axis of some unknown individual or group who have no recognized position of power. they may even be unknown to themselves and not have any intention of having an impact.
    there is the story of the buddha who saw a beggar and began his journey to enlightenment. a common beggar in the street who was no one and unknown without a name that is remembered yet who triggered a wave of events that crossed millennia.
    so who is what and what is who?
    what is buddha? if there were no beggars there would be no buddha. there would be no need for buddha. there are beggars, so there is buddha. or perhaps there is buddha so there are beggars - if it is that the buddha is eternal. the eternal creates conditions for itself. being buddha creates beggars. the same can be said about other saviors - eternal saviors. it should be, because i am here the poor you shall always have with you. the poor, the sick, the infirmed, all justify the savior as do the unrepentant. what is heaven without hell? what are either without some fucked up earth?
    but this is a different track. it leads to the damnation of god or gods or whoever. it leads nowhere. it leads back to a cafe where a man sits scribbling in a notebook and killing himself slowly with cigarettes and coffee. it leads back to our stupidity, our powerlessness, our meaninglessness.
    who triumphs over this? who stands up and says, not me. i am not part of this. i am above this. what is true for others is not true for me. i will fly while others crawl. i will surpass even myself surpassing. i will not be held down.
    let us laugh at this fool and this boasting. this one who cannot look into a mirror without placing an image in front of oneself. one who cannot face one's common appearance, who is frightened by it.
    there are these among us who radiate themselves and their own heightened glory. i am this. i am that. even humility is glorified and deserves a prize, a trophy, a plaque, a statue, a holiday in its honor.
    these hold themselves as examples for others to follow. look at me. look at what i do. or they hold themselves as unique, singular, someone others can only gaze upon and admire. look at me. look at who i am.
    meanwhile he sits and scribbles nonsense about their nonsense. look at me. look at what i do. look at who i am. they won't look. they won't notice what he does. they will never know who he is. they cannot do what he does. they are not who he is.
    it is nothing.
    he is nothing.
    they are nothing.

    what is here? is it desolation? is it a wilderness to be discovered? is a new world? - or the ruin of an old one?
    he waits. he thinks. he doesn't know if he should expect anything more or whether he's wasting his time.
    what should he expect? what has anyone ever pulled out of this? if there was anything it is now long gone. it stands gaping open, a dead empty mine no one lays claim to anymore though many, like him, might come to it. just a hole in the earth.
    he is among the fools who want to believe that the world can be different than how it is. yet he realizes how the world is and how it is very unlikely ever to change. he has found a place on the edge of it where he can still watch it more or less undisturbed. that is all he asks. let the others struggle with it and make themselves great from it. let the others ignore or scorn him. he cannot be touched, not because he is invulnerable - he is very vulnerable -but because he offers nothing for someone else to gain by interfering with him, though he is interfered with as much as anyone else is. there are those who go about making big waves in their wake. they must interfere with everything and everyone. these waves radiate out from them indiscriminately disturbing anyone around them. it doesn't matter who or what they are for or against or what they might be trying to accomplish. they make a disturbance no matter what. waves that move in all directions and counter-directions. waves that eventually return everything back to just as it was before.
    for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
    yet they behave as if that primary law doesn't exist. they think they are immune and what they do is unaffected. they believe that they are gods among us. but even the gods are powerless against this law. what can even a god do that is absent of action and reaction? this is not a law of behavior, it is behavior. it is the behavior of power itself.
    but there are people who believe that they can do this without this also doing that, its opposite. what creates any sort of semblance of balance in the world is that there are these people doing the opposite of one another, each action generating its own equal opposite reaction.
    this belief can only be maintained by those who view the world from a very strict self-referenced, self-centered point of view - though the self may be the self of the group. this too is very primary, primary to human identity and behavior. it is the primal loyalty to the tribe.
    this is too often disguised and diffused by the stated nature of one's belief, by the group's belief. many profess beliefs in things that transcend group loyalty - internationalism, interracialism, interethnicism, inter-etc-ism. yet upon closer examination it is discovered that these are beliefs professed by those who belong and identify with this particular tribe of internationalists, interracialists, interethnicists, inter-etc-ists. they usually feel themselves to be the elected elite, the few, the chosen, as much as any other group they claim to transcend. they are "the people", a term used by tribal groups of humans everywhere since as far as memory recedes.
    oh well.
    to be human is to be human. what is to be done for it? therapy? re-education? medications? we seem to moving toward that. but who is to conduct it? who is to play doctor who isn't suffering from the same disease as well? is it a disease? why is who and what we are always wrong? who tells us this?

    zero.
    bring it back to zero. to begin it again. to set it back to what is absolutely necessary, absolutely real. we've been dealing with abstract nonsense far too long.
    maybe.
    it's not what things are but what they mean. not what is in the world but how we translate it.
    and so?
    and so this is what we do - what we've been doing. it is what we will continue to do. we are driven by primal desires and fears, work with primal conceptual structures and frameworks. we are still monkeys up in trees.
    he sits in his tree in the cafe. the tree at the center of the island in the middle of the forest next to a house and garden all out in the eye of a storm raging on an otherwise calm sea on the shores of which are camped the armies of the nations of the world and peoples of the earth who fight among themselves over this and that and the other thing.
    the island where no one can find it. no one looks for it except to destroy it. it's too obvious. others believe it exists in some far off location in space and time that takes a difficult and hazardous journey of discovery to get to. no one knows that it is here and now surrounding us at every given moment. it is what is real to him. the world they invent for themselves is the delusion. but it is the delusion that is reality. they believe in it and function within it as if it is real.
    so the individual is conditioned to follow the group. yet the group is nothing itself but a collection of individuals conditioned to follow the group. the group and the delusionary reality it creates is made out of thin air.
    there are those individuals within the group with whom this conditioning doesn't take. they perceive the actual world. this perception undermines and exposes the delusion the group believes in and operates from. naturally the group will defend itself and its beliefs. it has the power and the authority of the many to use against the isolated individual. the group makes the definitions, invents the language in which these definitions are made. to speak of anything outside and other than these definitions one must speak outside and other than the group's language. this then makes what the individual tries to describe seem like nonsense. the individual is forced to speak in metaphors, not to describe the unreal but the real.
    it's backwards because the original language of the group itself is metaphor, describing the unreal. there is no way to describe the real. no words exist. the only words that exist describe the unreal, the delusion, in place of the real that the group believes in and invents and uses the words of its language to describe. to speak otherwise is crazy.
    to describe the real real world must try to counter the metaphor of the group language. one must use this language, which is metaphorical to begin with, in a further metaphorical way and hope for the best.
    if something is twisted, one must countertwist it to set it straight. but if the way it is twisted is believed by others to be straight then any counter twisting to set it actually straight will be perceived as twisting it out of being straight.
    what it comes down to, the bottom line of it, is that the individual who perceives the real is perceived by the group as being in a state of delusion in terms of the delusionary reality the group perceives and operates within as being real and the language that is invented to describe and maintain the reality of that delusion.
    so what does one do as an individual to keep alive? how does one eat and have a place to live? one must succumb to the group - any group -. the group controls all the resources which it usually gives to the inner circle above the rest. one must learn to function somehow within the confines of the group. these are all groups, even the groups of outcasts from other more dominant groups. even on the street one must fit into a group or rely somehow on a group for survival. sometimes one can become a symbol for the group of free spirit and creativity. one's weird eccentricities are allowed and may even be encouraged - as long as there is some profit in it for the group. one can sometimes rely on the group's charity. the group does not want to view itself or be viewed by others as being evil. it is able sometimes to show some amount of compassion.
    the group knows in its heart and beneath the surface of its mind that what it believes to be real is not real. but there is nothing anyone can do about it. the group as a whole must decide to change. but because the group itself as a whole doesn't invent and create its own delusion, it cannot uninvent or uncreate it. the delusion is a composite of the individuals within the group. no one individual is responsible for it though there are those who are charged with its maintenance.
    all the individuals of the group are responsible for the invention and creation of the delusion. they all must realize this and agree as one to change it. this is possible but highly improbable. instead a few individuals are allowed to act as the group would like to be allowed to act. it may expose the delusion of their collective reality but in a safe and unthreatening way. it is thought of and perceived as being the product of creative imagination, a make believe fantasy one may partake in at one's leisure. it is not to be taken seriously. it is not to be believed to represent anything real. when at such times it is believed in to be real, forces within the group are brought in to stop it. this may lead to violent confrontation. yet often elements of this new vision are absorbed and incorporated into the overall delusion. this gives the individuals of the group a sense that things have changed, that they have become more real. but what has actually happened is that by adapting and changing its form, the delusion has actually been reinforced. it has changed itself, not toward being more real, but toward again gaining widespread majority belief. that it is believed to be more real than how it appeared previously is a result of the human belief that something new is something more real. that's how they sell cars and other household products. the basic premise has not changed at all. the group is still in control of reality.

    and whatever along how that is or how he is writing about how it seems to him.
    he remains on the island. whether the island is more real or less real than the reality the group believes in to be real, which it may or may not be, is a delusion itself. what is relevant is that he is one, the group is many. that is the sole fact that determines what is real or not. whether what that is is actually real or not is secondary. what the group believes to be real is real. what the individual believes to be real is not real. that's it. any discussion beyond that is absurd nonsense. it twists and turns and ends up going nowhere.
    the best the individual can do is to find a place for oneself where one is able to survive. if it's going along with the group then that is what it is. if it is going against the group then that is what that is. whether either or both or neither are real or not is what that is.
    within most groups there is a certain allotment of spaces for individuals who don't go along with the group. if one can find one of these spaces that is vacant then that is where one is. some are drawn to these spaces, others are not. it works out somehow. there are sacrifices either way. one sacrifices one's own individuality or one sacrifices one's group membership. it win and lose either way.
    so meanwhile, for whatever it is or isn't, for him there is the island. and as previously stated it's all here and now. it only needs to be perceived as such. it is usually perceived as being located elsewhere in space and/or time. it is some place else in the world or it is some time else in the past or the future. it is the mythical garden or the promised land. some even believe it can only be reached in death. how's that for an answer? in some or whatever form it is always elsewhere. it is truly utopia - no place.
    so that makes the here and now a place and time not to be. a place and time one is forced to be in and is confined within. it is always less than the ideal. it must be struggled against. it must be that from which one needs to escape.
    that is why, for him, it is the ideal. for one, he doesn't have to relocate or pine his time away dreaming of it being out of his reach. for another, no one else wants to be here and now. he has it all to himself while the others chase elsewhere for it because they hate the here and now and avoid it as much as they can. he has the here and now pretty much to himself. there are a few others who have also figured out the same thing who he comes across once in awhile. but since they, like him, are content with the here and now he doesn't so much mind sharing it with them. they get along quite easily. none see any reason for disturbing it for the others. the ones who disturb it are the ones who hate it and are always whining and complaining about how miserable it is for them. they go about messing with everything, either trying to get out or trying to get it as it should be, as they see it should be. of course none of them see it as it should be the same way so there is constant conflict and clashes among them about it.
    this is the environment he and the others in the here and now must deal with - all the trouble these others, these idealists, create. that is why he envisions and imagines it as an island. the island is a metaphor, or a counter-metaphor, to cushion the effects of the disturbance these others create. it functions as a fantasy. but, as he thinks of it, it is a fantasy of the real - an island of the real within the delusion of the others surrounding him.
    and maybe it might actually be a fantasy, and what the others believe in and operate within being actually real. he needs not argue with that - though there is no one to argue it with. if it is so, he is satisfied with it possibly being that way as well. whatever it actually is, it works. whatever it is the others believe in actually being real or not, it doesn't seem to work to well  for them. it certainly seems to create problems for them. what creates problems for him are the others creating problems for themselves and everyone else around them. this is especially when they notice him. he is considered to be part of the problem. then they try to fix it. this has on a number of occasions turned his life upside down and inside out. to him now it is just weather. once in awhile a storms blows through. then it goes away. one picks up what's left and continues. this is not so much a metaphor as the others do not operate collectively on a conscious level. they are as unconscious and automatic as whether, so it might be actually like weather. it's just a force of nature.
    one cannot see the others as people like or similar to oneself. at most, one gives them existence equivilent to cattle. that's the level they collectively operate on anyway, if that. often it is far more reptilian. individually it's different. individually any one of them is equivilent to oneself - similarly equivalent. this is the paradoxical dilemma. each person is a person. yet more than one person together, even just two, then one is dealing with a collective group. a collective group, from two on up to the whole human species, is a stupid animal, a primiarily motivated and functioning beast. it cannot be communicated with on the same level of conscious intelligence as one can with an individual - some individuals. there are many who cannot let go of their group collective consciousness even when they are alone by themselves. they are too frightened.
    there are those who deal with him as an individual and themselves being individual. in such situations everything is cool. however, when group identity comes into it, even between individuals, everything gets screwed up. all that comes out of their mouths is collective slogans. he, being individual, is treated like some sort of freak, usually to be converted. there is always confrontation. this is why he avoids dealing with the others as much as he can get away with.
    this is even true when the other believes that he is one of their group and tries to talk him up about it. at some point he needs to tell them that he is not part of their group. this turns into an argument as well.
    there is no way to win when it comes to groups. the group is always right. the individual is always wrong.
    so he keeps his distance. those who might be interested in him as an individual he lets come to him. he seeks no one out. this eliminates most of the collective orientated folk. they usually seek out their own kind. though they sometimes come to him too - either to try to convert him or try to buddy up to him. he has to be rude to get them to go away. they eventually take the hint. that leaves the individuals. they come to him and they relate as individuals and they stick around.

    and all that comes and goes. it's something he writes down along the way of things as they are and as he, rightly or wrongly, perceives them to be. it's whatever nonsense or not it might happen to be at this or any other given moment. it is him here and now writing it. him at another here and now denying any and all of it.
    so all that goes.

    the ritual liminal moment, transition, transgression. the mind opened and closed. rough notes on the nonsense of revelation, while the world goes on about its business with itself for and against itself, while the saints walk on the water, while the poor are starving, while the rich are overfed, while the regular everyday person is confused.
    the mix of whatnot. the holy and unholy. all the good and all the evil. the sea of waves. forever and forever.
    this is it. this is what it is. the great big it with all the little its within it.
    it becomes common. it becomes unseen. it becomes just another thing - a broken toy. we become bored with it - annoyed with it. we forget what it is.
    it is the spiritual. not the spiritual beyond but the spiritual that is. the physical is the spiritual. where does the physical begin or end? how big is it? how small is it? how thick or how thin? what color is it? what is its name?
    yet it is familiar to us. it is touchable. we see it everywhere. so we dismiss it and look for something else. we imagine something else though we cannot envision it or name it.
    what else needs to be envisioned? - to be named?
    who would have thought of something as common as dirt. who can tell us what dirt is? yet we walk on it every day in the everyday. we sweep it away, wash it out. we rarely think about how mysterious it is. instead we look up to the sky, past the clouds, past the stars. these things are mysterious too, but what is not? it is all it. it is it that is unnamed, that is named as all else that it is. now it's a rock, now it's a tree, now it's scum on a pond, now it's shit being flushed down the toilet, now it's gold in a crown.
    we see it as one thing and not as another. one thing we cherish, the other we abhor. but that is our nature. that is the spectrum of our experience. that is its nature and how it is experienced. what can we take away? what can we add? can we divide pleasure from pain. joy from sorrow, love from hate? there are those who say we can. they live their lives divided.
    if we divide our experience how do we experience the whole? if we do not experience the whole, what are we experiencing? and the things we give power to - the objects of our displeasure. we become controlled by them through our own will we surrender to some inanimate object. this is our own energy - our own synergy.
    these enslave themselves to a god of power. these crawl before the protector. we call out to these gods. we call out to the big daddy of them all. here we are. come to us. strike us down. trample us beneath your holy feet. we will not worship you and with our refusal to worship you we will defeat you though you may turn us into dust. eternity will remember the moment we stood and defied you though we may no longer exist. that will be our name that you will have to forbid anyone from ever speaking again. those who even whisper our name will have to be put to death and oblivion like we were and their names forbidden to be spoken as well. you do not have the power to do otherwise. even you do not control that for all else you may control. you yourselves are confined by the very power you possess. and that is why we stand here laughing at you and all your inflated bungling glory.
    let others fall on their faces before you. they are fools. we stand and we gaze into the eyes of gods who are worshipped by fools. are these gods we should worship? we worship another. we worship this other by our act of defiance, by our mocking laughter before your face, in your presence, in the very hall of your power.
    we acknowledge that you possess the power to silence us, to torture us and make us cry out for mercy. you may force us to the ground. you may even force us to praise your name. but that we will do only by your overpowering our will making us helpless puppets to your own. and who will you be then? gods worshipped by fools and the tortured. are we wrong to now laugh at such gods as that? gods so weak they must depend on power. gods so hated that they must command to be loved.
    we are the fools who don't know any better.
    we understand that when one is plagued by troubles and adversity that one is attracted to the hero. one seeks a fortress of a powerful lord who has command of great armies. this is common human nature.
    who remains in the open fields when the forces of the enemy approach? who goes about one's business of daily chores when the trumpets of war are blown? who is such a fool?
    yet who bothers such a fool? of what importance is such a fool? what is there to gain to defeat such a fool?
    no, the prize is the fortress where all the others run and hide. who lays their treasure where others can easily take it? and the fool is no treasure, no worth. the fool is not one another would die to defend. and vice versa, the fool is not one who needs defending by another. a fool is defended by one's own foolishness.
    it is the fool who can laugh in the lord's face. who pays any attention? what else does one expect from a fool too foolish to stand trembling like everyone else who have much to defend, who have honor to be taken and lost?
    the fool walks through the crossfire of battling armies picking up pretty rocks by chance stooping down as a lethal projectile whooshes by. or maybe not. by chance fools are slaughtered along with the rest. but fools die with nothing in their minds but looking for a pretty rock.
    fools are sideways to all that is straight. villains, victims and heroes are all that is straight. one directly leads to the other. what would one be without the other? who is not one or the other? a fool is just a fool. is a fool a villain? a fool may do villainous things in one's foolishness. is the fool a victim? a fool may be victimized in one's foolishness. is the fool a hero? a fool may stumble on a heroic act in one's foolishness.
    if a fool is one or the other of these things to be, does the fool even know it? it is the nature of the fool not to know things others know about, yes?
    a fool laughs while others weep, weeps while others laugh. a fool is afraid while others are brave, brave while others are afraid. we may ask, why does the fool not know what we do? but we may also ask, what do we not know that the fool knows?
    we laugh at or pity the fool. we mock the fool with our pride. yet the fools laughs at or pities us. the fool's pride mocks us.
    we lay claim to everything. we fight with one another as to who is to have what and how much. the fool lays claim to what remains, what slips out of our hands, or what we throw away. who fights with the fool over what the fool might happen to have? we allow the fool to have as many foolish things as one might wish to have. the fool can have the world of pretty rocks, we have our gold, silver, gems and jewels all safely locked away in vaults in our fortresses surrounded and protected by our great armies. the fool's treasure lays scattered on the ground in the open fields trampled beneath the marauding armies and rioting mobs.
    the fool is born into a world where people march about beating drums and beating heads. to the fool this is foolishness. the fool lacks the common sense to see its importance. the fool is taken away with the fascination with the unimportant. that is what we call foolishness.
    but if we were to enter into the fool's paradise would we behave any different? if we became fascinated with unimportant things would we stop beating our drums and beating each others' heads? it is not the object of our fascination but the action of our fascination that divides us from the fool. we are the crowd. we behave as the crowd behaves. we have our ways and means of organizing in such a way to compete for what we are fascinated by. a fool is a fool because one is not part of the crowd, not part of the organization. the fool is out of the competition. it is that which defines and marks the fool and that which defines and marks us. who are we to laugh at and who are we to pity?
    the fool is always the individual. we are always the collective though some of us may stand out. that is still a characteristic of the collective, that some of us stand out from the others. but to do so they need the context of the collective - especially to be admired or to be despised. to these individuals the collective is all important, as much important as it is for those who hide within it unnoticed.
    it is part of what is defined as being a fool that one is not part of the collective - though all the collective are fools - fools for the collective. the fool is a fool for no one but oneself. of all it is the fool who actually stands apart. the fool cannot hide and remain unnoticed. the fool is betrayed by one's own foolishness. everything about the fool communicates, i do not belong, i am not one of you. the fool is not even one of them. the fool is the fool. the fool stands alone even and especially in a crowd. we easily recognize the fool though the fool may be entirely oblivious to oneself being the fool. fools often do not know they are fools. the fool may think foolishly that one is like everyone else and/or that everyone else is like oneself. that is the mark of the true fool, the fool who is ignorant of being a fool.
    it is we, the collective, who point to and identify the fool. it is in comparison with ourselves as varied and diverse as we may be that the fool is defined and identified.
    but whatever.
    enough of this.
    it is foolishness.

    what is written and not written.
    he now sits here alone among the others. no one knows what he is writing though some have been curious. some have tried to guess. some have thought they knew.
    he now gets to write whatever he wants to, whatever he is able to write. he writes for no one and for everyone. he wants to leave what no particular people or group can claim represents them or what they believe. he, ideally, would want to leave something anyone and everyone would have to admit to being representative of who and what they are at heart - at the heart of being human. something that is present beneath the subjectivity of his words that describes something else.
    yet how much do we share even among close everyday friends? except don't we share everything? maybe that is not what he wants to leave. maybe he wants to leave something no one understands. something discarded as so much trash.
    the same as him.

    humans come to tolerate one another. the need for social contact overrides our hatred and disgust for one another - sometimes. this is why we betray one another when a better deal comes along. all love for another is a reflection of self-love. love from the other is hard won because it needs to be won from the other's love of oneself. but we all need to compromise. few can tolerate social isolation. many prefer death.

    still he hasn't written what he is trying to write.
    it should be simple. few are willing to read through some complex explanation of whatever it is. but isn't it complex itself? would anything simple be able to represent it? but then he's left with needing to write forever, and that still would not be enough. we cannot even think of it in any way that accurately represents it. we reduce it down to symbols - like words.
    but  is he trying to write about everything? he knows he cannot. everything does not need to be written about. everything is here and now for any and all of us to perceive directly. writing gets at something else, something that is not immediate in the world. it is one's impression of the world. it is added to what is in the world.
    he adds nothing to the world.
    he wants to destroy the world - whatever piece of it he can. that is the purpose of his writing. he hopes his words act as a virus to infiltrate whatever minds it might reach and shatter them to pieces. there is no purpose to this. it's just his whim. it's just his imagination. he wants to destroy the world as the world has destroyed him.
    our impressions of the world are simple. they may not accurately represent the world. they only accurately represent themselves - and even that is doubtful. impressions are experience. all description of the world is description of our experience, the impression we have of the world.
    yet this also becomes complex. there are many simple direct impressions between an object and thought and feelings. but there are many more layers of associated thoughts and feelings. our thoughts and feelings are not just triggered by objects, they trigger one another. then there is the external context of circumstance and situation. there is the internal context of attention and mood.
    there are no rules. there are only exceptions. we describe what something is by describing what it is not.
    and that might not even be it. he's just writing what comes to mind at the moment. it seems to be right in the moment, in the impression of the moment. and it is as far as that goes. these are just scribbled notes. it is the description of the impression.
    the impression is not static. it is fluid. the impression is ongoing and continual. that is what "stream of consciousness" is all about. it doesn't stop to analyze, to put things in any sort of order. it just records as it happens. it is the raw data. though it is not pure raw data. it is filtered through the perceptive mind.
    should he explain? should he need to explain? these are the components of his own impressions. how is another to translate this impression? the impression he is writing about is writing about what his impression is and what it is composed of. the camera pointed into the mirror at itself. yet that only creates a feedback loop. the camera needs to be pointed at itself and at something else. one is to see what the camera sees and to see from what view the camera is seeing. him in the world.
    and here we are again. we always seem to end up writing nonsense. though what led up to that nonsense? is there a reason? is our reason led astray? - or was it astray to begin with?
    is this reason or nonsense? can nonsense be reasoned? can reason hold its way through nonsense or in confronting nonsense is it forced to give up?
    he would like to be able to write about anything. he wants to write without being bound by loyalty to anything, not even either reason or nonsense, nevermind the various dogmas and schools and parties and disciplines. he wants to write his way free through to itself through all.
    is that possible? is that possible for anyone whether it's possible for him or not? who is clear enough? who could possibly be clear enough? is clarity even necessary? is the realization and acknowledgment that one is not clear enough to compensate for its lack? can it just be stated and taken into account? or will one always follow the same course guided by one's own particular thoughts and feelings about this and that? even if one tries to compensate, how clear is one's compensation? what is in one's mind that one uses as a reference point and compass that tells one that one needs to correct or compensate this way or that way?
    and does one just become lost in that? how lost has he become? he is lost following his own course, his own sense of direction that represents his own mind and no one else's, and the impressions of that mind. he is lost trying to compensate, to neutralize his own particular point of view. what guides him in that? what idea is it, what perspective that states one's own particular point of view needs to be neutralized or compensated for? how particular is the idea of universality? who thinks in universal terms? what does that represent beyond being an ideal among certain particular groups of people? - a cultural idea at that.
    is that even what he is after or trying to accomplish? does he want to represent the universal to the particulars of others, or his own particular universality? or is it possible to do both? he changes nothing either way. each universality is particular. each point of view is universal. does he seek universal uniformity like so many others? can there be universal diversity? or do the twain never meet? he reaches toward a universal perspective where the particulars fit puzzle piecewise together into a whole. the diverse interwoven patterns of the whole tapestry of human experience sort of thing.
    yet, with that, what do we do with those particular views that oppose one another, who see each other as competitors or enemies? when even this idea of universal diversity is counted as one among many of the particulars and itself in competition with them and being perceived as the enemy. what do we do with that?
    it can become just as defensive and dogmatic. it can take up arms just as easily. it can be just as evangelistic, seeking converts as any other. it gains and uses power as ruthlessly, dishonestly, abusively as any other.
    what do we do with that?
    does one mark it as such and then attempt to step away from it toward an even broader unversality that takes it into account, that views it as just another particular culturally determined and driven point of view among the others? how far does one step back and away, if it is possible to do so, before one has stepped off the map of recognition and neutralized one's point of view and even oneself into non-existence, into some entranced nirvana of non-action and non-thought perceiving the nothingness of everything?
    oh boy.
    ho-hum.
    that's like going to a movie blindfolded with earplugs. what's the point? what's the point of one's life, of one being here, if one is struggling always to remove oneself from it, to neutralize it, to view it as one big universal blur without definitions or boundaries?
    yet to dive into and immerse oneself totally into one's own particular given point of view and to accept and believe it to be real and all that is real leads one into a life often filled with confrontation, conflict, pain and misery.
    to blind and deafen oneself to the movie is one extreme, to forget it is a movie and to experience it totally as reality is the other extreme. what is the enjoyment in either?
    to be totally immersed and undone by the experience of one's life is not pleasant and is usually quite painful. but to float through it not feeling anything is ultimately boring.
    so what is one left with? one seems to be left between finding some balance between pain and boredom.
    oh boy.
    ho-hum.
    but there is joy. there is bliss. joy is quite a different thing than happiness. bliss is quite a different thing than pleasure. happiness and pleasure are connected to the world of duality, of opposites. where there is happiness, there is sorrow. where there is pleasure there is pain. joy is both happiness and sorrow, and is neither. bliss is both pleasure and pain, and is neither. joy and bliss are independent of the world yet exist in the world. joy and bliss encompass everything. they are all experience. they are the balance of opposites, action and reaction. they are the gray of black and white. a gray of colors. they are a world positioned between and beyond up and down, left and right, front and back - good and evil, us and them. a world experienced both on and off and neither.
    oh boy.
    ho-hum.
    let them sit and smile to themselves. let them stroll through the busy market looking neither left nor right. let them be suspended on the first step of an eternal journey and yet arrive at the destination. let them disappear into the mist of consciousness. let them leave us and take whoever among us who wish to follow them back to the garden to sit beneath the tree of life forever in each moment here and now.
    he knows where that place and time is. he has come from it restless into the world. he has taken off the blindfold and taken out the earplugs. he has woken from his slumber of eternal boredom when one cannot tell if one is sleeping or awake. he has come from that gray twilight into the day and night, into the world of light and shadow. he has come from his mere existence into the world of life and death. he has come from his stillness into the world of motion. he has come from nowhere to the here and now.
    he breathes. his heart beats. space and time become finite. the clock begins ticking. he discovers his hand positioned in co-ordinate space and time. he grabs hold of it and wills it to move where and when he wants. amazing. the unlimitedness is bound and confined within limits. he can be here and not there. he can be now and not then. he can do this and not do that. he begins to experience and is impressed by his experience. he feels pain and pleasure. he feels happiness and sorrow. he loves and hates. he sees good and evil.
    he is the immortal who has bitten into the fruit of mortality. its taste is bitter and sweet. but it is taste where before there was none. when before there was no before, no after.
    he looks around himself. there are others. do they remember this? do they remember bringing themselves into creation? or do they speak truly about themselves being brought into creation by some another, some mysterious force other than themselves? no wonder they are so angry. no wonder they curse the heavens. he would too. he has done just that when he believed that that was done to him. before he remembered otherwise.
    and this is that. he is the one writing about that. this is what he leaves behind himself about that, when he himself no longer exists in this world, when the time he has set for it, for it to set for itself, runs out.
    the immortal is invisible. it is invisible to itself. only the mortal is visible. to be visible there must be limitation in order for visible definition to be made. there must be degrees, shades, between the ultimate extremes. the ultimate extremes are invisible otherwise. they must become limited by one another, by their opposites, by their own degree of not-being. that is how the whole world gains appearance. to appear is to exist, to become manifest. otherwise everything merely exists in a state of potential manifestation. in that state it might as well not exist. it can be stated not to exist. it is what we call the void. nothing - no-thing. it cannot be conceived or comprehended. to conceive and comprehend is to be in existence. to be in existence is to be in the world, to be in the state of manifest finite things, even things that are just things of the mind, ideas, thoughts. to think, to have an idea, to conceive, to comprehend, is to be removed from that state where and when (though there is no where or when - where and when are manifest things) everything exists in potential, unmanifested. one cannot reach into that with anything, even an intangible thought. to reach into it, to remember it as one's point of origin, one cannot rely on or bring anything that is manifest. it is remembered through one's being that one can feel oneself back to it.
    but of course it is not "back", it is not "feeling", it is not "being", it is not "remembering". these are all words that describe the manifest. it is something else that "leads" one "to" the potential "within" and "behind" the manifest. what this is is either obvious to one and one's experience of one's existence both in the manifest and the potential or it is not.
    to him it is obvious. to others it may be also, or not. he can state this for no one but himself. they may very well have been created by another - perhaps by himself is some potential way. only they can say whether they were or not. it is only how they sense their own being, their own having come into the manifest from the potential. either they willed themselves or they were willed by another.

    later -
    as it all brews for war - this great holy war we've been waiting for, some of us salivating for it. as we either want it or do nothing to prevent it. we hold onto our most primal simplistic beliefs that are fundamentally the same, yet we argue over the details.
    but this is the way we want it. this is the way it is the way we want it because we are as we are as being human and behaving as humans behave. but how many times does that need to be stated? it's our nature that it is how it is and that we do nothing to change it.
    what is there to change it to? we may idealize this or that but if these ideals were really what we wanted they would exist? ideals are dreams against our nature, against our desires, against our fears. we have ideals of trust and openness, of equality and fairness.
    yet we are not satisfied with trust and openness. we suspect others. we want to know their inner secrets and make them up if we cannot find any. we are hungry for rumors and gossip.
    yet we are not satisfied with equality and fairness. we value what we might possess that others do not. we will spend wasteful amounts of time, energy, ingenuity and money on that which sets us apart from the crowd or will get us into that group that is set apart from the crowd. we want that which favors ourselves and our group. we are willing to tolerate and even encourage that which works to the disadvantage of others, our competitors, our enemy.
    so what is it that we want that we don't already have? we want to be in exclusive groups set apart from others and have certain advantages. but that is what everyone wants too. that is the context in which we make our wishes. that is the context in which we fight our holy war.
    when we divide ourselves into us and them, both us and them want essentially the same thing - to be above the other, to be different, to be set apart, to be distinct, the be elite, to be the elect. and that is what makes us all the same despite how weird and strange we try to make ourselves from one another.

    so lucky ducks and a peach pie falling clockwise around in circles. this is that. that is this. bringing it up. bringing it down.
    we climb the walls of the madhouse we have built around ourselves. we know nothing else. we know no other way. we find ourselves to be mysterious.
    when even god doesn't have much more of a clue. how is it to avoid the existential questions? who does it ask? does it accept the answers it makes up for itself? does it just tell itself that it knows what it knows and that is that?
    but that is so far away. even on the human level it is too far away. we usually do not want to spend our lives questioning everything. we get nothing for it. we often lose what little we have.
    so let the party begin. let us jump up and dance. there is no tomorrow expect for all the tomorrows that are replications of today which is a replication of all the yesterdays forever.
    give it up. let it go. keep the wheel spinning. anything else is a journey into the reasoned insanity we always hope will see us through.
    see us through to where? would we know we were in the promised land if we ever stumbled into it? why are we so convinced we aren't there already?
    we want to escape but we want to pick up and drag everything we have along with us. we believe that it will all be different some place else. how far have we come and found that it is not that easy? how far have we wandered? how far we will we wander still?
    but this is us. we can be no different. as different as we become we remain the same.

    so what does one admit to? what does one confess? and what is served by it? one presents one's common ordinariness that not too many others will admit or confess to. we have our pride. we have our visions and goals of being uncommon and extraordinary. who wants it to be know that one doesn't have a clue? who wants it to be known that one is far behind and may even be lost? it does nothing for getting that high paying job, for getting laid. we continue to believe. we continue to beat our heads against the wall we ourselves construct.
    he sits in the middle of it. he sits alone. he watches the others go about their busy lives filled with important things to do, all that they feel that they have to accomplish. he looks into their faces and sees haggard exhaustion and despair. they are so concerned with where they are trying to get to that few seem to know where they are, except where they are is short of the goal and not far enough away from where they are trying to escape from. getting to the future to escape from the past. we push ourselves along with this dog at our heels. we cannot stop. we cannot slow down. only if we go faster will we be able to outdistance this past that haunts us from the darkness.
    but where does the past exist but in the darkness of our minds? we carry it with us wherever we go. where we go, it goes. as fast as we go it goes just as fast. no wonder we are so exhausted and in such despair.
    no wonder we put so much of ourselves into being this or that. it is our armor and our weapons to protect ourselves from and do battle with our past. we will admit and confess to nothing that reminds us of ourselves. we must believe ourselves to be someone else. the past cannot touch us if we are someone else.
    nor him neither.
    he disassociates from himself. he looks into the mirror and pretends it is a window that looks out on someone else, someone else's life. he admits and confesses to nothing. so what can he expect from the others. they are all doing the same thing, taking the same route. they create themselves as other to the other they have become, who we have become.
    this is the only first person he will use - the plural. he will admit and confess to only that which is common to us all., disperse any blame and guilt that might come from it. but he knows this is also a fiction he creates. there is no "we" - no we that he is part of. he is only part of them. the them that are part of the past of others as they escape away.
    so we come back to this dragged out theme again. it seems always to come back to that. isn't there anything else? is this all that is circling about in his limited mind? how important is it? is it on the 6 o'clock news? it can't be that important otherwise it wouldn't be left to him to write about it. someone who is someone would have written about it by now.
    and perhaps they have. he has read some things on the topic but they never seemed to him to be quite it. or it is about the others and how they organize themselves into this and that groups of us and them. the individual is the freak, the one isolated, asocial. it is written as an aberration, a malady, some sort of disorder. something to be treated and cured. something that needs to be watched, monitored, supervised. something to be on guard against.
    and he can understand. the group fears the individual as the individual fears the group. but it seems to him that the group's fear of the individual is exaggerated. not that the individual cannot be antagonistic and threatening, but how much actual damage can the individual cause the group as opposed to the damage the groups can do to the individual? if individuals of the group might be damaged there are always more to be recruited. the group survives. it protects itself. it sets up exclusive rules of membership. there are initiation rites and probationary periods. the group never considers itself too safe. the individual is easily and often sacrificed.
    what does the individual have? once the individual is gone, that's it. there is no replacement, no recruits. each one stands and falls alone.
    the one holy group to be worshipped above all. morality is the morality of the group. ethics is the ethics of the group. the gods are the gods of the group. only in association with the group does the individual gain any value or meaning. only those acts that are acknowledged by the group have any value or meaning. all else is silence and darkness. these are things the group fears. the group keeps them away with loud noise and bright light.
    we are nowhere. he is nowhere among us being nowhere. how does one write about that? what is what is written worth? he reads it as he writes it. it brings whatever he might be thinking into focus before him though what he is thinking is never that clear. as he may go here or there with it it disperses into vague clouds of being whatever. it can be turned whichever way and still be essentially the same. or are these vague clouds he keeps around himself to keep himself apart from the world or the world apart from himself? that could be the case. others often remark on his distance - and his anger. fire and ice.
    why would this be so? why would anyone deliberately isolate oneself from the world? it's such a happy place. is he only pretending to be perusing a course of observation and study? what does that lead him to but a view painted in abstract where people, even himself, are only equations?
    it's a world of puzzle pieces and gears. he allows his fellow humans only their biology. they are monkeys that walk upright, wear clothes, mostly uniforms, use tools to build trinkets and gizmos, use weapons to fight over them. he dismisses their ideals as imaginary products of their brains having too much idle time, that none break free from primal animal instincts raised to the level of those who have mastered language. humans are social collective animals so their ideals are going to be expressed in social collective terms, have social collective norms and values. this is to be expected.
    we are divided, but across the divisions we are the same. we are ones divided from one another, individually and in groups. being one particular individual, being in one particular group is essentially the same as all others. but it is not usually experienced or thought of that way. we, as individuals and in groups, have various degrees of loyalty to ourselves and our group. the divisions become more than just expressions of diversity and variation shaped by environment and circumstance but radical divisions of kind to the extent of even viewing others as not being human or of being some sub-catagory of human, less developed, less evolved, having less worth, deserving less. deserving the severest of treatment, isolation, restriction, confinement - extermination.
    and on and on.
    that is how he feels about the others.
    he divides himself apart.
    and on and on.
    are we moving nearer to or further away from the original subject was? was it anything other than himself?
    and on and on.
    whatever.
    who bothers with this? who takes the time? who has the time? what can be said about those who do?
    he is not alone, though this is a lonely business. it is intended to be lonely. that may be its true purpose. there are those who takes similar courses through the seas though with different approaches and methods. who are they? what is their purpose? some may gain a certain amount of recognition, even employment. still, who are they?
    he and these others are a few who set themselves apart, who are set apart. they write out their theories and observations. there are others who might read them. who are all they?
    intellectualizing intellectuals passing notes to one another believing that they have come to have insight into the human animal. meanwhile the human animal goes about its business, ignoring them. it grunts and fucks its way through history.
    and on and on.

    so have we lost ourselves again? spinning and spinning until everything looks like everything else. until inside is out and up is down and all vice versa. all whatever. all la-dee-da. all blah blah blah.
    what comes next? does anything need to come next?
    what path is he following that we are following with him?
    the path of separation and distance. more or less so than others. the path of words. the path of wandering about what's what. the path of not ever quite knowing. the path of being. the path of existing. the path of creating.
    the path that is off the path. the path entangled with the others as the others are entangled with each other. the path he abstracts into a geometry of shapes and planes moving and intersecting in new dimensions.

    a zoo of cages. what light burns here? what illuminates our lives in our self-created darkness? what is the food for our souls in this mass of things we accumulate? what truth exists in our lies and exaggerations?
    does he come anywhere near it? does he find his way to it? he feels that he is ready for it to be anything. he tries to clear his mind from thinking of it being this or that, of expecting this or that, of only recognizing this or that.
    can anyone do that? can any of us find a clear space that is not filled with what is preconceived? is that the point?
    it is believed that realization comes after self-anihilation. one must erase the self that one is, that one has come to be, in order to know the self behind within that self.
    and whatever.
    more abstraction. looking for another self, the soul to oneself. denying oneself as one is. many will argue that that is the fool's journey. instead be who and what one is.
    but if one is one who abstracts - does one deny that?
    but if one is one who is a fool - does one deny that?
    what image do we peruse? what image do we put on? do we really only understand ourselves through the images we imagine and envision?

    and so he comes back to wondering if his questioning is his own or human questioning. is there a difference? is there any way to tell?
    what goes on in the minds of others? he feels that what he comes upon must occur to them as well. yet the difference is that they don't delve into it. one is warned not to. that way lies madness. has he gone mad? is he one of the mad who scribble what spills out of their fractured minds - their minds stuck in the incomprehensible? is it the madness of being human?
    what pieces of it are laid out? what pieces of it that may or may not go together, that may or may not merge into some overall shape and form.
    these sketches. these rough outlines.
    a story. everyone likes a story. a story about the known and the unknown. a story about someone who is just someone as much the same as anyone else as anyone else, as much different from anyone else as anyone else.
    someone who sits and writes this story about really the only thing one knows - oneself. but this someone wants to write about more than just that, more than just oneself. who is oneself? one is just someone who passes through what we all pass through. there is not much remarkable about this someone. this one hasn't accomplished much beyond keeping oneself alive and surviving.
    so what story do we tell about this? what do we recount? what do we make up? what truth or lies do we tell? what is to be reveled? what is to be imagined?
    there are few events. not anything he feels worth relating specifically. he writes about what he thinks and feels, what might lie behind or beyond events, causing them, motivating them. and what but ourselves getting all caught up in that? what happens to any of us specifically is the end result. we are reacting more than acting. he is reluctant to give us free will. we decide and act based on what is presented to us, based also upon what is given to us to decide and act with.
    however he feels that he cannot write for anyone or about anything but himself. he cannot assume that he is like anyone else or they are like him. there is a certain amount of evidence that he and they are not like each other. though there is enough as well that would seem to indicate that there isn't much difference between them and him either. how does one decide this? is it one way or the other?
    he has been treated as being different by others. as a result he has been isolated from them. at the time that he is writing this he is being paid by the state to stay apart from them, not to interfere with what they are doing. though he is not entirely physically isolated. he can go anywhere most people can go. he is really only limited economically. they don't pay him much. it's figured out to the penny to the minimum amount that will keep him alive. he can afford food, clothing and shelter, not much more. though he's been able to scam a little more by going to school and getting financial aid. but that will soon run out. he's been able to buy a few luxuries, a tv, a stereo, a computer. toys to play with.
    so that has become his life. one of the ones who aren't quite with the program - the ones who are different. those who isolate themselves and are isolated from the others.
    me, myself and i.
    the group of one.