Tag: Negation

Aphorisms, V.2

negativegeographyLeave a comment

  • There was a spontaneous genius in the Big Bang, which reverberates in all the little bangs that open new worlds through “blown minds” or insight. *

  • The desire for a deathless state (an unending Heaven of one sort or another) is an unintentional desire for lifelessness, for a static and inanimate repetitiveness. *

  • Even if I can’t hear the deep bass of the elephant and the whale echoing across the Savannah or the ocean, I’ll hear their silence. And then I’ll know the real meaning of alienation and loneliness, guilt and sorrow. *

  • Panic is a dog chasing its tail. Funny if I can see the whole dog, and not so funny if I’m caught up in the chase.

  • The question, “what is real?” can only be answered with a sense of humor.

  • Most schools teach only a short-term open-mindedness in order to gain, in the end, conclusive confidence in what is “real.” But a conclusion closes the mind and ends learning. Few schools help students discover a more ineffable confidence in what always exceeds our conclusions.

  • Scientists might cringe, but electrical or nuclear power could be described as hidden forces charmed into being by the magical formulas of math. These invocations isolate attributes of an undifferentiated whole, giving these forces an independent existence and practical purpose they never had. *

  • The scientist can become bewitched into a materialist vision; the salesperson can end up thinking that everyone is selling something. We’re made gullible by any story conflated with fact. *

  • Error is how reality makes itself known. It’s a ceaseless trade wind of correction. Embracing this slant on error, theories no longer strain to be perfect. (A “perfect answer” would put an end to learning). Learning requires riding that current. So, stories flex and shift like sails, catching whispers of larger worlds. Now the wind exceeding the sail is beautiful. *

  • There’s no greater comic relief than recognizing one’s inner demons as fools on the level of Curly, Moe and Larry. *

  • What hasn’t changed is this phony sense of a divided consciousness, this feeling of being the better half of a Siamese twin; the other a dummy of a nincompoop dragging along beside me; a co-creation of my own desired destiny divided by the destiny friends and enemies consider more within my grasp. Probably this Siamese self is nothing more than my own recollected behavior sloughed off on an imaginary scapegoat.

  • Too often, the inner voice (the “I”) escapes into the delusion of being the better angel, who can look back at his dim-witted past from an improved distance. As if I were superior to my own immediate past. And these internal revolutions from dimwit to angel and back again occur in quick succession, like a dog chasing its tail. *

  • For no sooner do I act in the world then I become immediately annoyed by what I’ve done, rising in opposition to this now utterly deposed former incarnation who had been in his own day (of a moment or two ago) an equally enraged monster with regard to previous incarnations.

  • “When I get mad or frustrated with myself I notice that the voice (the “I”) feels distinctly superior to the lout I call myself. It’s a kind of voice-throwing trick, placing “me” perpetually outside the scene of my own error, gazing back at my failures like the lab-coated know-it-all, not like the dummy in the wreck. *

  • Hear me complain about my gaffs with the sternness of an English school-master, condemning what I’ve done from a morally superior third person’s perch (disguised under first person pronouns): “I’ll never forgive myself for what I’ve done!” Or listen as I express the frustrations of an injured party — “there I go again, spilling milk all over myself!” — in this way sidling over to gaze at my wrong-doing as the victim instead of the perpetrator. *

  • The key to learning is being edified and bemused by our own stupidity. *
Read More »

A New World Is Only a New Mind

negativegeography6 Comments

I’m picturing a mostly unconscious human being – a mind occupied all day by video games, food, sex, drink, and sleep. Or I could picture a corporate executive who has utterly surrendered to the sociopathic profit motive, perhaps somebody at Shell who has helped to bury the science on climate change. Or even myself more often than I care to admit – my thoughts like mice constantly scurrying to the higher end of a perpetually sinking ship.

But it’s all the same state of mind in one fundamental way at least – a mind perpetually busy trying to outrun itself, trying not to notice the unfathomed compulsion that keeps it busy. In this state of mind (if there aren’t sufficient distractions available) the tendency is to feel subjected to thought, tossed and turned by thought. To avoid the sensation of drowning in this tumult, an inner director, a thinker in charge, a focus of Self, is created, which seems to be a retroactive gloss that thought itself compulsively places over its own shenanigans to retain an illusion of order and control. But in this state of mind there is only a running script (though ad libbed) in which this fantasy of a director (a Me playing the starring role) ends up organizing what is still only a compulsive escape from its own unfathomed turmoil.

I need to emphasize this distinction between people and the habits of thought that hold them captive, otherwise I fall into the common misconception that people who think and do ugly, evil things are inherently (in their blood and bones) ugly and evil, and not merely ill with thought. If I blame the person — even my own starring Self — too much (and I often do) I become susceptible to the illness itself, willing to injure that person just to stop the ridiculous ideas driving them (or me). Then the distinction between these dimensions of life (between the actual human being and the thoughts driving them, between territory and map) is lost, and then I’m driven by the unfathomed compulsions of thought, and capable of ugly, evil things.

Read More »

Why Am I Writing?

negativegeography5 Comments

I don’t write because I know something. I write because I don’t. This is the narrative of someone who isn’t fully developed and never will be, and who sees things partially.

Writing occurs when a growing tangle of questions (or contradictions between my everyday life and a wider, less self-defensive perspective) becomes uncomfortable, much like a hairball in a cat. So I’m forced to disgorge this tangle in the form of yet another story or essay.

However, it’s not as if there’s a Right answer to anything and all undeveloped perspectives are simply sophomoric. Every definitive conclusion to my questions and contradictions would remain sophomoric (I remind myself), because there is no positive answer, only negative observations (of what is not true).

But this absence of certainties doesn’t imply the absence of honesty. At any stage of development, at any consistent depth of perception, I’m honest to the degree allowed by that particular depth. At a certain depth, the honesty may be only verbal. At another it may be more behavioral (trying to live up to moral codes and such). Or at still another it might be self-lucidity, the ability to recognize the persistent failure to live up to codes, and the kindness inherent in not trying to be perfect anymore, which is an honesty that exceeds morality. They’re all forms of honesty, but some reach deeper.

Read More »

A Fly Fable (Which Includes the Amoral of the Story)

negativegeography7 Comments

Act 1

Eugene yawned. He dreaded another day of banging his head against the glass.

His friend Leslie, however, was eager to get started.

“Yesterday that precocious young fly Skip said he felt the glass in the upper pane softening a little. Let’s get cracking! Today’s the day, I can feel it.”

Eugene stretched his wings and nibbled on sun-dried bacteria. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Most of the flies stuck between the storm window and the regular window were already banging away.

Eugene stretched his wing again.

His world measured approximately 64 inches by 26 inches by 5 inches. The majority of flies were banging on the glass facing the interior of the house, and not on the storm window to the outside. That’s because the curtains in the little shack were usually closed, which made the interior window into a weak mirror reflecting the trees and fields across the road. And that’s where they wanted to go.

And all memory of night, when they had banged away on the storm window facing the dark fields and trees, had by then faded into legend.

“Eugene thinks he can sit there all day and reap the benefits of our hard work!” a fly named Bixby complained, when he saw Eugene slowly crawling his way towards them.

“Yeh, but guys, how many generations of flies have been trying to get out of this window?” Eugene said, looking down again at the piles of corpses on the sill.

“Oh, listen to Mr doom and gloom!” Bixby said. “Legend has it that a fly named Boris flew out this very window and into those yonder trees!” Bixby shifted a wing to point at a shimmering mirage of a tree. “So how’d he do it? Not by moaning, but by banging that’s how.”Read More »

Death’s Good Intentions

negativegeography3 Comments

Friendships are Parallel Universes

Almost a year ago, one of my truest friends died. Pat Styer. I never met her in person. It didn’t matter. We spoke the same fundamental language. It wasn’t about agreeing or disagreeing. It was about playing catch with a perspective that few in my circle at that time seemed to find worth picking up. What she said broadened my own vocabulary. And whatever I said, she received without distortion. It was as if we were learning something that could only be discovered between us.

I think every relationship (whether with a human or a dog or a cat) gives rise to someone new between us, creates a context of understanding that will never be duplicated with another. We move between parallel worlds. Each infinite, but limited to our mutual contexts.Read More »

Manifesto

negativegeography7 Comments

 

In memory of Pat Styer

The Writer(s)

I’m having more trouble than usual picturing the reader. This project will lead me far from my usual comic shticks. As I leave my comfort zone, sneers and arched eyebrows appear on the imagined face of this unfamiliar reader. And it’s not helpful to focus on the few familiar faces out there. They differ so much from one another that it makes me nervous.

It reminds me of being at a party. With respect to each person I act and feel completely differently. Talking to all of them at once builds a mini-Babel. There are awkward silences interspersed with comments bordering on Tourette’s. Editing does wonders.

I’m uneasy because I don’t feel any overriding persona I can lean on like an old friend.

I’m a shifting perspective exhibiting the personality implicit in whatever angle of view happens to be momentarily dominant. (And that wasn’t a good way to introduce myself to girls at college).Read More »