Well. For some reason it just occurred to me that this old blog that I wrote in college was up, and I thought, I've got a job working with kids now, and even though my name is nowhere on this, I should take it down just in case. But then I started rereading it and I wanted to write more. So I'll leave it.
I have a student now, a 16 year old girl, with a long vertical slash on the inside of each wrist. I just noticed this recently. I'm ashamed to admit that I find this girl attractive (I did before noticing the scars). When I saw those I wanted to lick them.
So as you can see, although I'm a responsible member of society now, the inside of my head is still rather fucked...
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Thursday, October 12, 2006
with all my strength forever
A letter to my fantastically beautiful friend E, who now lives in New York and studies the Law at NYU. We met online in 8th grade and have been writing each other for...mm, what grade am I in now? 17th? Nine years.
I always thought she and I would be perfect together. Like she could make me such a better person, and I could love her with all my strength forever...but I can't tell her that. I've tried. :|
E****,
I wish for you a wondrous year of new adventures and friends and triumphs. Starting...October 12, today. Not exactly your birthday, but hey, you got a full year!
Up and doing math homework because I can't sleep. My brain knows nothing about sunlight... Number Theory, despite being a charming name, is really an amalgom of algorithms and theorems that don't belong anywhere else. Primes, gcd's, methods with names like "Chinese Remainder Theorem" and "the Pulverizer" (my favorite, an algorithm for finding the gcd of huge numbers in mere seconds. Witness: gcd(1001, 869) = gcd(132, 869) = gcd(132, 77) = gcd(55, 77) = gcd(55, 22) = gcd(11,22) = 11). This is what I doodle in the margins of my notebooks...
It's a rare moment: homework. I figure I'll scrape by with C's this semester. I don't know if all the smoking in my room is poisoning me with CO or what, but I have absolutely no motivation. It all kind of disappeared when I first got depressed nigh on three years ago... I thought decoupling my sense of self-esteem and my grades would be a good thing. Boy, was I wrong!
Sorry, this is all so self-centered. If anyone knew where my blog was, it'd be way worse. Utter wallowing drivel. I have been writing like mad lately, which is about the only good thing I can say. Probably 100 pages since the start of the semester, skipping around between a number of books in the same story arc, some of which are on alternate timelines...lets me write whatever the hell I want, even if it defies logic. Have you had a minute to yourself to scribble anything lately?
Anyway, how are you doing? Sometimes I'll be walking around campus and start thinking about violets for whatever reason. I seem to remember some school spirit on your behalf in high school; how is being a Violet suiting you? Five years of dealing with the administration here at UVA, living next to two frats, and three (!) jobs working here has soured me on this place.
Are the other law students rabidly competitive, or are you all helping each other out? Is the workload crushing you (yet)? You're going to be such a smash hit; I can't wait to hear about it. How are the living quarters? Have you discovered interesting shops and restaurants? I sound like a travel guide... Hee. Have you met any girls? ;) What classes are you taking?
Sorry it's been so long to write. To be completely, completely honest with you, I just don't care. About anything. The only reason I even try is because I know how boring it is to lie around for months on end and do absolutely nothing until one day becomes another, time flows like dirty water around you and you've nothing to grab onto. I could write a book about that; actually I am. A treatise of sorts on why one should choose to be. Hamlet was an idiot.
I've been watching this fantastic new show on Showtime (you can download on BitTorrent) called Dexter--it's about a jaunty serial killer by night, forensics guy by day. He saunters about stalking other serial killers and faking a normal life. Not saying I relate to the night part, but definitely to the day part. There were some lines to the effect of: "most people fake some human interactions; I feel like I fake most of them". I actually sat up in my chair and said, "I totally agree," to my sister, who freaked out a little. I reassured her that I cared about her, but I'm not sure I do.
Ever since that long bout of emptiness and despair, I've known how fleeting emotion is. I think of it in mercenary terms: as a compressed impression of information too myriad to be processed on a conscious level. A million little things about a person come out as a crush; changes in body language, tone of voice, logical paradoxes turn into anger. It comes; it goes; I don't care. I get the message. Then it's gone. I don't know what to think about that.
Wow, this ramble is getting kind of creepy, but I always have felt like you could listen to me and not judge me. I don't know who to say these things to, except the open air. My friend Kristin, she's so calm and plain on the outside, but so torrid with emotion--anger and passion and sadness--on the inside. I'm the opposite. We had some mini-fights; I spent last weekend at her townhouse three hours from here; the kind of fights two opposite people would have (awkward, silent).
I wonder what we would be like if we fought. It's an important thing to know about a person. Everything I remember, we're the type to apologize with all our hearts and make up better than ever...thinking of that is feeling something, even if it's kind of far away.
So--don't bother writing a long reply, I just wanted someone to listen and I know you're always kind in that way.
Love you,
*******
I always thought she and I would be perfect together. Like she could make me such a better person, and I could love her with all my strength forever...but I can't tell her that. I've tried. :|
E****,
I wish for you a wondrous year of new adventures and friends and triumphs. Starting...October 12, today. Not exactly your birthday, but hey, you got a full year!
Up and doing math homework because I can't sleep. My brain knows nothing about sunlight... Number Theory, despite being a charming name, is really an amalgom of algorithms and theorems that don't belong anywhere else. Primes, gcd's, methods with names like "Chinese Remainder Theorem" and "the Pulverizer" (my favorite, an algorithm for finding the gcd of huge numbers in mere seconds. Witness: gcd(1001, 869) = gcd(132, 869) = gcd(132, 77) = gcd(55, 77) = gcd(55, 22) = gcd(11,22) = 11). This is what I doodle in the margins of my notebooks...
It's a rare moment: homework. I figure I'll scrape by with C's this semester. I don't know if all the smoking in my room is poisoning me with CO or what, but I have absolutely no motivation. It all kind of disappeared when I first got depressed nigh on three years ago... I thought decoupling my sense of self-esteem and my grades would be a good thing. Boy, was I wrong!
Sorry, this is all so self-centered. If anyone knew where my blog was, it'd be way worse. Utter wallowing drivel. I have been writing like mad lately, which is about the only good thing I can say. Probably 100 pages since the start of the semester, skipping around between a number of books in the same story arc, some of which are on alternate timelines...lets me write whatever the hell I want, even if it defies logic. Have you had a minute to yourself to scribble anything lately?
Anyway, how are you doing? Sometimes I'll be walking around campus and start thinking about violets for whatever reason. I seem to remember some school spirit on your behalf in high school; how is being a Violet suiting you? Five years of dealing with the administration here at UVA, living next to two frats, and three (!) jobs working here has soured me on this place.
Are the other law students rabidly competitive, or are you all helping each other out? Is the workload crushing you (yet)? You're going to be such a smash hit; I can't wait to hear about it. How are the living quarters? Have you discovered interesting shops and restaurants? I sound like a travel guide... Hee. Have you met any girls? ;) What classes are you taking?
Sorry it's been so long to write. To be completely, completely honest with you, I just don't care. About anything. The only reason I even try is because I know how boring it is to lie around for months on end and do absolutely nothing until one day becomes another, time flows like dirty water around you and you've nothing to grab onto. I could write a book about that; actually I am. A treatise of sorts on why one should choose to be. Hamlet was an idiot.
I've been watching this fantastic new show on Showtime (you can download on BitTorrent) called Dexter--it's about a jaunty serial killer by night, forensics guy by day. He saunters about stalking other serial killers and faking a normal life. Not saying I relate to the night part, but definitely to the day part. There were some lines to the effect of: "most people fake some human interactions; I feel like I fake most of them". I actually sat up in my chair and said, "I totally agree," to my sister, who freaked out a little. I reassured her that I cared about her, but I'm not sure I do.
Ever since that long bout of emptiness and despair, I've known how fleeting emotion is. I think of it in mercenary terms: as a compressed impression of information too myriad to be processed on a conscious level. A million little things about a person come out as a crush; changes in body language, tone of voice, logical paradoxes turn into anger. It comes; it goes; I don't care. I get the message. Then it's gone. I don't know what to think about that.
Wow, this ramble is getting kind of creepy, but I always have felt like you could listen to me and not judge me. I don't know who to say these things to, except the open air. My friend Kristin, she's so calm and plain on the outside, but so torrid with emotion--anger and passion and sadness--on the inside. I'm the opposite. We had some mini-fights; I spent last weekend at her townhouse three hours from here; the kind of fights two opposite people would have (awkward, silent).
I wonder what we would be like if we fought. It's an important thing to know about a person. Everything I remember, we're the type to apologize with all our hearts and make up better than ever...thinking of that is feeling something, even if it's kind of far away.
So--don't bother writing a long reply, I just wanted someone to listen and I know you're always kind in that way.
Love you,
*******
Thursday, September 14, 2006
The top of my head...
I'm picturing myself saying this to some girl, someone I could be in love with. I always imagine future conversations and exactly what I would say. I say it out loud sometimes, I feel the emotions I will feel then like I do when I'm writing. My metaphors are so weird, people don't get them. They don't think wide enough and connect things like I do. I have to find someone who can, like K or E, girls I can't have...
Saying I wish I didn't believe in God, but that I do. Saying I know it's not logical, but that I feel it and feeling is more important than logic. Feeling is what we're made of. Saying even though I hate the corniness, I really do believe that when God closes a door, he opens a window. Saying clouds really do have silver linings, but you have to look. Sometimes it's hard to see. You could be in the worst pain of your life, and see one beautiful thing, one tiny light, and the gift of even one thing, of being alive, is enough to keep going. Nothing should be thrown away. You can turn your pain into your greatest strength, and when you doubt yourself, you can look back and say, I made it through that because I'm strong, and other people might not know that you carry that gift inside you, but you know. That's the lining, the window...
When I'm alone, if it's dark and for some reason I'm paranoid and panicky, I reach out for God. I never went to chruch as a child, I don't know where I got the idea, but I always have. I can reach out, reach up, and I feel the power of God touch me. I feel as if the whole universe is inside me, and I'm covering, I'm touching every point, the way God must, and it's beyond me. Really I don't know what it is. It's a gift, it's a beautiful mystery seen through a dark glass and some things do not need to be elucidated. People don't understand that sometimes.
I reach and it's like Emily Dickinson said of good poetry, that it feels as though the top of your head has come off, and ideas are flowing in, unfiltered, unblocked, beautiful even if frightening sometimes. Sometimes dark things are beautiful. It's something so beyond the strength of one person to create...I try to tell people the things I have felt, in group worship, in a group of people crying together and praying together, as hard as we can, it is the most beautiful pure feeling in the world, not ephemeral like sex, not uncontrollable like drugs...just safe, just known and protected and most of all loved.
I was crying thinking of this future conversation, now I'm sobbing and I don't know why. Maybe because I'm drinking a little again, because I lost $1000 gambling yesterday, because I'm neglecting all my schoolwork, because I've been up for 30 hours now and I don't want to go to bed, I'm afraid of it like I always used to be, I'm afraid of being alone with my thoughts.
This writing, this letter isn't to myself...this is to you.
Saying I wish I didn't believe in God, but that I do. Saying I know it's not logical, but that I feel it and feeling is more important than logic. Feeling is what we're made of. Saying even though I hate the corniness, I really do believe that when God closes a door, he opens a window. Saying clouds really do have silver linings, but you have to look. Sometimes it's hard to see. You could be in the worst pain of your life, and see one beautiful thing, one tiny light, and the gift of even one thing, of being alive, is enough to keep going. Nothing should be thrown away. You can turn your pain into your greatest strength, and when you doubt yourself, you can look back and say, I made it through that because I'm strong, and other people might not know that you carry that gift inside you, but you know. That's the lining, the window...
When I'm alone, if it's dark and for some reason I'm paranoid and panicky, I reach out for God. I never went to chruch as a child, I don't know where I got the idea, but I always have. I can reach out, reach up, and I feel the power of God touch me. I feel as if the whole universe is inside me, and I'm covering, I'm touching every point, the way God must, and it's beyond me. Really I don't know what it is. It's a gift, it's a beautiful mystery seen through a dark glass and some things do not need to be elucidated. People don't understand that sometimes.
I reach and it's like Emily Dickinson said of good poetry, that it feels as though the top of your head has come off, and ideas are flowing in, unfiltered, unblocked, beautiful even if frightening sometimes. Sometimes dark things are beautiful. It's something so beyond the strength of one person to create...I try to tell people the things I have felt, in group worship, in a group of people crying together and praying together, as hard as we can, it is the most beautiful pure feeling in the world, not ephemeral like sex, not uncontrollable like drugs...just safe, just known and protected and most of all loved.
I was crying thinking of this future conversation, now I'm sobbing and I don't know why. Maybe because I'm drinking a little again, because I lost $1000 gambling yesterday, because I'm neglecting all my schoolwork, because I've been up for 30 hours now and I don't want to go to bed, I'm afraid of it like I always used to be, I'm afraid of being alone with my thoughts.
This writing, this letter isn't to myself...this is to you.
Monday, August 21, 2006
left behind / blown past
I can't decide whether I've been left behind by the university system, or if I've just blown past it...
See, I had to take two years off on medical leave...lots of things happened during that time, to make it short I feel like I aged about a decade in those two years. Now getting back into school is such a hassle I feel like pulling out my hair half the time and collapsing into tears the other half.
All these happy, shining new faces...joggers breezing by on winged sneakers, tanned girls in tank tops, giggling...everyone I know who's left this uni hoping to come back has been an addict...and I am, too, but...I had such promise once, some ambition. Of course I still have the promise, I still have my genius brain, but I don't have any ambition now, nor any fear...
See, I had to take two years off on medical leave...lots of things happened during that time, to make it short I feel like I aged about a decade in those two years. Now getting back into school is such a hassle I feel like pulling out my hair half the time and collapsing into tears the other half.
All these happy, shining new faces...joggers breezing by on winged sneakers, tanned girls in tank tops, giggling...everyone I know who's left this uni hoping to come back has been an addict...and I am, too, but...I had such promise once, some ambition. Of course I still have the promise, I still have my genius brain, but I don't have any ambition now, nor any fear...
Thursday, August 17, 2006
72o
Otherwise known as seven, two, off-suit. The worst pocket in Texas Hold 'em. Can't tell you how many times I've won with that pocket, but only because I call it to be funny. Well--actually I call it because if you flop something good with it, no one will ever suspect you. I seem to be taking a more psychological approach to the game, versus the mathematical approach a lot of people take. Which is funny because I wanted to be the opposite.
I'm very good at reading people's cards, though. I'm not very good at believing myself...or not chasing...or not feeling pot-committed (stupid stupid stupid), but...I know what they're holding. The other thing I'm good at is crushing people from above. I'm terrible with an average stack, but if I'm in the top 30%, I can take down people like *snaps fingers*. Cause I have no fear. I'm as aggressive as I want to be.
I always want to be...but I'm so scared, too...of everything...which sort of explains what an evil person I am when drunk.
So...I'm not hemorrhaging money anymore. I've bought chips exactly once in the last two weeks--$50 worth--and played in at least 30 tourneys in that time. I've plateaued, though, I think. I need to sit down and study the math.
Of course I'm going to have lots of studying to do 6 days from now, which is when school starts...and yet all I can think about is fucking POKER. Anybody who thinks that game looks easy is dead wrong... In poker variants without a board, you can at least be sure that if you have AAA, you're the only one who has it...the only thing harder than NLH is Omaha, which I don't even want to get started on...it's like NLH on crack, especially hi/lo, in which the best hand and the WORST hand split the pot...Jesus.
Anyway...in the process of moving into my new efficiency, which I love despite its sketchiness, trying to get ready for school, pondering dropping Lisa (just can't take the rotting smell of failure anymore), wondering whether Kristin and I will be able to sustain phone conversations...
What I really wish, really CRAVE, is to work on my stories again--with some goddamn inspiration. I think maybe my problem is that they got too good--my three-book arc started out as an exercise in writing as fast as possible without editing so that I could enjoy writing junk...now the prose is really good, the characters are all sharp and compelling...the plot is exciting...well, all of the aforementioned are IMO of course...since I'm the only one who'll ever read them.
And yet I can't write anything. I'm bored with it. No--not bored. I have things circling in my head, but as always with this series, any direction I actually WANT to go in would significantly change the plot...although I guess that's the point. I've been working on new scenes and rewrites for the first book--though I think of it as finished, there're actually two gaping holes: an entire summer spent in Russia, and all of one Christmas break.
You know what? Screw this. I'm gonna go make a list of all my retarded ideas and then just work on a few of them. I'd sure as hell rather do that than play poker.
(Thank GOD.)
Love...
I'm very good at reading people's cards, though. I'm not very good at believing myself...or not chasing...or not feeling pot-committed (stupid stupid stupid), but...I know what they're holding. The other thing I'm good at is crushing people from above. I'm terrible with an average stack, but if I'm in the top 30%, I can take down people like *snaps fingers*. Cause I have no fear. I'm as aggressive as I want to be.
I always want to be...but I'm so scared, too...of everything...which sort of explains what an evil person I am when drunk.
So...I'm not hemorrhaging money anymore. I've bought chips exactly once in the last two weeks--$50 worth--and played in at least 30 tourneys in that time. I've plateaued, though, I think. I need to sit down and study the math.
Of course I'm going to have lots of studying to do 6 days from now, which is when school starts...and yet all I can think about is fucking POKER. Anybody who thinks that game looks easy is dead wrong... In poker variants without a board, you can at least be sure that if you have AAA, you're the only one who has it...the only thing harder than NLH is Omaha, which I don't even want to get started on...it's like NLH on crack, especially hi/lo, in which the best hand and the WORST hand split the pot...Jesus.
Anyway...in the process of moving into my new efficiency, which I love despite its sketchiness, trying to get ready for school, pondering dropping Lisa (just can't take the rotting smell of failure anymore), wondering whether Kristin and I will be able to sustain phone conversations...
What I really wish, really CRAVE, is to work on my stories again--with some goddamn inspiration. I think maybe my problem is that they got too good--my three-book arc started out as an exercise in writing as fast as possible without editing so that I could enjoy writing junk...now the prose is really good, the characters are all sharp and compelling...the plot is exciting...well, all of the aforementioned are IMO of course...since I'm the only one who'll ever read them.
And yet I can't write anything. I'm bored with it. No--not bored. I have things circling in my head, but as always with this series, any direction I actually WANT to go in would significantly change the plot...although I guess that's the point. I've been working on new scenes and rewrites for the first book--though I think of it as finished, there're actually two gaping holes: an entire summer spent in Russia, and all of one Christmas break.
You know what? Screw this. I'm gonna go make a list of all my retarded ideas and then just work on a few of them. I'd sure as hell rather do that than play poker.
(Thank GOD.)
Love...
Saturday, July 01, 2006
yellowed polaroids
It's amazing to me that people consider horror a third-rate genre. The things people want to write about are the human things--passion, glory, honor...rage. People want stories about people doing things, changing the future, their own lives.
I don't know about anyone else but I've personally never felt particularly human. Not what people think is human, anyway. It's like everyone walks around looking forward and back and side to side and sometimes down, but never up. Cats. Cats won't look at sky. You can force their heads up but they won't move their eyes up with them. And it's impossible to ever convey in words what you really mean.
I tried to say this to my sister once, and it takes hours and days and pages of writing for her to see what I meant, that what's inside you is not something that you can put inside another person, not by force or will.
So I can't force anyone to see something they don't see. If I try to tell you where to look, you can't search for it in the place I point because you don't know how to look there, you don't even know that it's there.
Stop me, this is my usual theme. I wanted to say something about being human. It occured to me at some point during my childhood that it was really strange how seperate humans divine themselves to be from all other things. I've been trying to figure it out ever since. Usually I start to say this to people and they argue with me as though I'm saying that we're not seperate. I'm not saying that at all.
I'm saying we should at least know what it is to be seperate, to have our own human-carved world, so that we can then choose it over and over again instead of never knowing what we have.
It's like people crying and wondering why evil exists. I usually say that it's there so that we know what is good, so we know what good means, so that we can experience true good--it is in fact the only way to experience it because it is the only way to define it. The idea and thus the word good can only exist if evil does. Then people start, I think, to wonder whether it's worth it--to bear evil in order to have good.
But really I think evil doesn't exist. It something created in our minds, we call something evil because it hurts us, because it degrades us mentally, emotionally, physically, because it damages our societies and prevents happiness and well-being. And I think it is a perfectly good and sensible thing to call it--you have to know your enemy so that you may find it and destroy it. Furthermore I think it mete to try to stop evil, to kill it, not because it's possible but because it isn't. And as long as it isn't, we must ride the storm and bear ourselves through it at the expense of all other things--the universe will keep its own balance, and knowing this we must choose to wrench our own fate from it, or die.
It is selfish, it is very selfish, but to live is to be selfish. Survival is the most primal instinct, but it doesn't have to be just that--it can also be a choice, for good or ill. I think it's good not just to worry that you're sticking it to someone or something else to stay alive, but to choose it and be proud and revel in that choice. To time and space every atom is the same, so how should we know what to save and what not to? There is no ultimate truth of what is good and right and what is evil, these are things at their core which are human--we have given them human names, we have defined them! They mean nothing without us, and knowing this gives us the freedom, the ultimate freedom to decide whether life is a script written by someone else, or something that we seize for ourselves, simply because we wish it, because it gives us pleasure.
The universe will live on without us. But we will not live on without us, and who cares if good trumphs if no one is there to see it? Because without us, good is meaningless. The sky doesn't care if the earth crashes into the sun. Only we do--and for specific reasons which are only related to our well-being.
What I was saying about evil--one of the truest things I learned from my D, my onetime preacher, was that there isn't a line where good is on one side and evil is on the other side. There only two directions--keep walking in that direction to go toward good, and in the other to go toward evil. And the question you shouldn't be asking is how close can I get to the line--you should only always be running in the other direction.
And what that tells me is that evil doesn't exist, in the same way that east and west don't exist. I can say something is east or west of something else, but I can tell you what is east. All of what we know, all we can say is what is more evil or good than something else. I can say giving one dollar to a beggar is more evil than giving two.
But none of this means we shouldn't be running in the direction of good--it only tells us what it means to run.
How to bring this back to what it means to be human? I wanted to say something about this secluded human world we live in. Maybe just the fact that it exists. We look at things and see--fence, car, road, sky. We see this as what exists, what we've seen every day since we were born. But this car isn't only a car--it's metal that was hurled out of a star, dredged out the earth where it lay for millions of years holding up mountains. The car is something we have made, forced, out of a universe which we see but does not see us.
I want to look, to look at the little cracks and crannies between the universe and the human world, between life and death, to know what life lives there. That's what horror does, when it does it. It picks and nags not at what it means to be human, but what it means to be not-human and which thus defines humanity. Instead of running and facing always in the direction of humanity, it turns back and looks in the other direction, and what does that look like?
What might you see as you turned your head?
I don't know about anyone else but I've personally never felt particularly human. Not what people think is human, anyway. It's like everyone walks around looking forward and back and side to side and sometimes down, but never up. Cats. Cats won't look at sky. You can force their heads up but they won't move their eyes up with them. And it's impossible to ever convey in words what you really mean.
I tried to say this to my sister once, and it takes hours and days and pages of writing for her to see what I meant, that what's inside you is not something that you can put inside another person, not by force or will.
So I can't force anyone to see something they don't see. If I try to tell you where to look, you can't search for it in the place I point because you don't know how to look there, you don't even know that it's there.
Stop me, this is my usual theme. I wanted to say something about being human. It occured to me at some point during my childhood that it was really strange how seperate humans divine themselves to be from all other things. I've been trying to figure it out ever since. Usually I start to say this to people and they argue with me as though I'm saying that we're not seperate. I'm not saying that at all.
I'm saying we should at least know what it is to be seperate, to have our own human-carved world, so that we can then choose it over and over again instead of never knowing what we have.
It's like people crying and wondering why evil exists. I usually say that it's there so that we know what is good, so we know what good means, so that we can experience true good--it is in fact the only way to experience it because it is the only way to define it. The idea and thus the word good can only exist if evil does. Then people start, I think, to wonder whether it's worth it--to bear evil in order to have good.
But really I think evil doesn't exist. It something created in our minds, we call something evil because it hurts us, because it degrades us mentally, emotionally, physically, because it damages our societies and prevents happiness and well-being. And I think it is a perfectly good and sensible thing to call it--you have to know your enemy so that you may find it and destroy it. Furthermore I think it mete to try to stop evil, to kill it, not because it's possible but because it isn't. And as long as it isn't, we must ride the storm and bear ourselves through it at the expense of all other things--the universe will keep its own balance, and knowing this we must choose to wrench our own fate from it, or die.
It is selfish, it is very selfish, but to live is to be selfish. Survival is the most primal instinct, but it doesn't have to be just that--it can also be a choice, for good or ill. I think it's good not just to worry that you're sticking it to someone or something else to stay alive, but to choose it and be proud and revel in that choice. To time and space every atom is the same, so how should we know what to save and what not to? There is no ultimate truth of what is good and right and what is evil, these are things at their core which are human--we have given them human names, we have defined them! They mean nothing without us, and knowing this gives us the freedom, the ultimate freedom to decide whether life is a script written by someone else, or something that we seize for ourselves, simply because we wish it, because it gives us pleasure.
The universe will live on without us. But we will not live on without us, and who cares if good trumphs if no one is there to see it? Because without us, good is meaningless. The sky doesn't care if the earth crashes into the sun. Only we do--and for specific reasons which are only related to our well-being.
What I was saying about evil--one of the truest things I learned from my D, my onetime preacher, was that there isn't a line where good is on one side and evil is on the other side. There only two directions--keep walking in that direction to go toward good, and in the other to go toward evil. And the question you shouldn't be asking is how close can I get to the line--you should only always be running in the other direction.
And what that tells me is that evil doesn't exist, in the same way that east and west don't exist. I can say something is east or west of something else, but I can tell you what is east. All of what we know, all we can say is what is more evil or good than something else. I can say giving one dollar to a beggar is more evil than giving two.
But none of this means we shouldn't be running in the direction of good--it only tells us what it means to run.
How to bring this back to what it means to be human? I wanted to say something about this secluded human world we live in. Maybe just the fact that it exists. We look at things and see--fence, car, road, sky. We see this as what exists, what we've seen every day since we were born. But this car isn't only a car--it's metal that was hurled out of a star, dredged out the earth where it lay for millions of years holding up mountains. The car is something we have made, forced, out of a universe which we see but does not see us.
I want to look, to look at the little cracks and crannies between the universe and the human world, between life and death, to know what life lives there. That's what horror does, when it does it. It picks and nags not at what it means to be human, but what it means to be not-human and which thus defines humanity. Instead of running and facing always in the direction of humanity, it turns back and looks in the other direction, and what does that look like?
What might you see as you turned your head?
Thursday, June 15, 2006
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