I watched the rock last night and it was kind of interesting as a bruckheimer/bay movie bfore cgi. it was the same visual fuck fest with lack of story in favor of action but without cgi to so seamlessly and sadly reproduce story. i remember when i was young and it would be at the peak of its coolness, that i was bothered by the dialogue which mostly consists of every line trying to be more extreme than the one before. it's entertainment, and it has only gotten worse, so what is to take away from this? I don't know. and here's to you robert altman, i sorta miss you.

in the land of the blind, what good is being king?

again, i think i can. . .

the steppen wolf

I went for a walk today in utter dejection and despair. I wept. I didn’t cry, you cry when your feelings are hurt, you cry for yourself, but these tears stream from a spring higher up in the faculties where things are transcendental and you weep because you weep alone.
I thought of how I made a mistake, I thought of all the mistakes I’ve made, no pardon or mitigation, I am guilty in all things and fully responsible. I thought to God how much I suck and I wept, and then something happened I believe to be between me and God, his way of comforting me for real.
As I thought to God he helped me think which is another thing all together but I thought of how I kill time. I mean that in a way that is wanton murder. I waste it, and I feel this is wrong and the wolf I am though meant to be a man came forth. I thought how I am worthless, and then I thought of how before I think or feel there is a part of me that is natural, and as part of my nature I lack any thing in life I consider worthwhile. For this I kill time thoughtlessly. Am I to blame for the way I am?
Yes. Still, though I’d want to be a good person but can’t, a feral grin comes to my face slanted and inhuman which is the wolf. I thought of living in chaos, the wolf’s inclination. I thought of how embracing chaos would be so kind, to be mean and base, to only concern myself with me. I came up with an idea.
Dostoevsky said the only logical conclusion for a human being is with no God is suicide. Most people live like animals, fulfilling their wants, but some try to be good and selfless, these men, the ones who think and live by their ideas and ideals, who empathize, are human beings. These men see pain around them and cannot fix it and thereby their own pain grows in frustration and vexation. Without god there is no meaning therefore the pain has no value, though you still feel it and it feels real. Everyone dies and to live such a life would be worthless and to die today or tomorrow would be a simple decision.
Given God there is reason to live, but given God there are things beyond our ken. It is intuitive, it is natural to things, and my nature is that of a wolf, an agent of chaos, evil. Perhaps this is all speculation but I am kept in check by compassion, though I do nothing in life, at least I do not subtract from it by hurting others. I seek only to exist.
It made me think, though, of men whose natures were those of human beings, were good, but at the same time felt the brink so close as I do. I though how some may have chosen chaos and how these men would be the worst of all. Evil, but they feel compassion, chaos for all they know could be contentment. Then I thought again of evil men and respected them for perhaps they are closest to God. This would be a speculation almost entirely of fantasy, but think of perhaps the executioner, or putting down a wounded animal. Only an idea.
In any case the wolf subsided and the man returned, I stopped my crying and came here and wrote this.

they say a picture is worth a thousand words, or is it a million? whenever i have to write a thousand words i think to myself, shit, because i tend to be verbose so a thousand words is fucking tedious, restrictive. of course there's the opposite end in which i write what i want to but it is 1300 of 1500 or something. in any case, which i have realized is something i write a lot, an escape clause, new subject related yet different, i am pretty good with imagery but i think too much so i write about ideas. i have a knack for saying just the right way of describing at times or finishing someone's idea, a simple unnecessary addendum to my vocabulary and thinking is all such a thing takes. but when i write about life i write like they used to, like your life was part of your writing and part of your life was writing. everything i write is like creating a multiple me with one to stay forever in the writing and the other to wander. i lose nothing as i remain with in what i write yet never need return. sorry, it's all confusing but i like the subject because of Multiple Man from, was it X-Force? in any case, i like write a cloudy day, i look outside today and see it's cloudy and can relate. it has to do with the way it makes you feel to wake up on a cold grey day. and fuck you if you think that you like cloudy days because it's not because they're bad or anything but because i can see something in such a way that both describes and is descriptive of what i mean. the clouds are made of water particles ready to become ice when they meet up with more water and reach critical mass, but the point is that they have a solid quality in the air. this property diffuses the sun and i mean diffuse in one of its original ways, such as distill or discharge, that is, light scatters some as it passes through the cloud like lightning striking a weather vane except lights a particle or a wave or both or neither, it is radiation. radiation is wicked shit to pass through anything except the most inert element to which all elements heavier than iron eventually settle upon sans a nova or people creating elements. so it is diffused though not entirely, the higher frequency light more than likely makes it mostly, i am not sure, but it is there is less lux and variation/vibrancy of colors. you can see everything just fine, but everything looks less alive, more sterile, and so would be my writing. i think, and as i think i write and i write like they used to that calls upon experience and is intentional, i mean it is me i'm putting out there. but this thinking leads to a great many ideas never to be penned and i tend to like ideas but most people have all sorts of criticisms whereas any ideas, old or new will do for me. that is, it's probably for the best i've thought of more lines of poetry then i ever could possibly write. so what i do write is always ideally purposed to propose ideas, and in pursuing these ideas i often dispense of details like imagery to allow a more direct path my mind to communication. my stuff suffers for it and i think i'll do exercises if not at least keep it in the fore of my mind when writing for now. imagery in literature is anything written that is an idea conveyed by describing other things, similes, metaphors, whole characters or scenes sometimes. as such, this all has been an exercise in imagery, representative intentionally of my writing. i think as i write as i talk, in that order. consider first the thought, then finally the point, and now an actual address to making sense. my writing is like a cloudy day because it lacks imagery, like a grey day lacks light, and the reason why imagery is so important is because i can spend 1000 words or a million trying to describe something when a simple relation, analogy, representation, picture, does the same but better and done well will hardly even be noticed. you can tell when a picture is bad, but when it's right, it's gestalt, and there is nothing to say. thus and thus, so on and so forth, i've brought this around the spar made a half turn, a half hitch, then ran the working end through the eye of the half hitch than back again to make a slip hitch so that with only a little effort will make it all come undone.

Current Music: getting in tune- the who (i never heard this till now)

ignorant savages, it has a nice ring to it. not so much in vogue anymore, tribal, primitive, but never savage. if negative implications are taken away from savage i see nothing wrong with it because we are all people, whatever others choose to call us.
there are certain practices done by less developed cultures, cultures deprived of necessities, cultures unable to support themselves. that is, in Africa there are savages that have no need to progress scientifically as they are limited in number, then there are savages say in india that cannot advance because they are too busy trying to not die, and then there are savages that murder rape and steal because it is the circumstances in which they were brought up in.
i would begin with animals, because many times people attribute to animals human characteristics, and yet as animals sense things differently usually for a purpose, we cannot understand how they perceive therefore how could we possibly begin to posit how they think, feel, what not. the point is that as we feel, we imagine others feeling, even in the case of animals.
now i have nothing against those men who are drugged as children to murder and pillage. they may be horrible but they all people are, they just have different circumstances. the real savages are the ones who would lead them, the ones who would manipulate them, tell them to murder and rape.
consider something more simple, barbaric practices that are acceptable within a certain context, such as rape, molestation, stealing, or murder. There are tribes that treat women terribly and chiefs who take children for wives. to steal what one needs and to steal because one wants are two different things much akin to what i would think would be murder in its simplest case which would be because the murderer gains what was the murdered.
i have thought of these things and though it may be pc to accept all cultures and creeds i realized something which should be definitive. the argument against would be that they have no point of reference, or rather that such is all they know. the argument would be something like, imagine if it were you. i did, and i disagree.
in the same way that we imagine how animals feel how is it that anyone of near sound mind could be excused for selfish acts of gratification. when a chief molests a child, to think of the pain the child must feel, for the chief not to see this, imagine it, is impossible. to murder and feel sorrow for the widow or family left behind. to eat your fill while those around you starve. i cannot imagine these things. were i to be born without a context and without a culture i do believe that i would still feel pain. then i also would recognize that others feel pain. i would know that pain is not all there is to feel therefore to cause it would be inexcusable. fool me once, perhaps, but then i would learn and do believe that a morality that has developed, all complex and convoluted, would develop of its own accord.
i don't think there is anything that can be done, or know if there is anything that should be done, but i do know that if it were me i would not abide by it. to say that such is the world is one thing but to say such is the world therefore it's ok is another. ignorance is not the excuse, it is simple savagery, thoughtlessness, and selfishness.
all of this i thought most remarkable because one would consider what things would be like were they to be brought up in different circumstances. it was interesting to me simply because if my inherent nature were the same, that is willful and worrisome, then my morals would still be the same as they develop from empathy and thinking. that is, there could be such a thing as morality which could be applied to all of humanity based simply on empathy and reaction. no rules or dogmas but it could be. i don't know, i am only me, so i can't know, but it is a nice idea, that we're all alright in the end.

don't know how to get to where i'm going because i have no idea where i am. i write. so i hope.

Melville's own thoughts in a letter to Hawthorne
"We incline to think that GOd Cannot explain His own secrets, and that He would like a little information upon certain points Himself. We mortals astonish Him as much as He Us. But it is this BEING of the matter; there lies the knot with which we choke ourselves. As soon as you say ME, a GOD, a Nature, so soon you jump off from your stool and hang from the beam. Yes, that word is the hangman. Take God out of the dictionary and you would ahve him in the street.'

Something else, I've read Hawthorn, really good, but what is strangest is how he was friends and respected by so many authors of his time yet never as famous himself. The man that the cool people thought was cool. For some reason I relate most to Nathaniel Hawthorn of the writers of that time. Always the groom;s man never the groom.

lastly, an idea, or rather the foundation for one which comes from this time period which fits well with my 19th century russian sci-fi novel well which is the way imagination can make all things real. a fight between a demon and a man would seem a fair fight except the demon would die for good. In Paradise Lost Lucifer uses artillery in heaven, why not then could the materials we live by also have a spiritual nature. something more for me to remember i suppose, but i like it.

and if it is one's nature to be a steppenwolf?

'Now, whoever thinks that he knows the Steppenwolf, and that he can imagine to himself his lamentably divided life is nevertheless in error. He does not know all by a long way. He does not know that, as there is no rule without an exception and as one sinner that may under certain circumstances be dearer to God than ninety and nine righteous persons, with Harrry too there were now and then exceptions and strokes of good luck, and that he could breathe and think and feel sometimes as the wolf, sometimes as the man, clearly and without confusion of the two; and even on very rare occasions, they made peace and lived for one another in such a fashion that not merely did one keep watch whilst the other slept but each strengthened and confirmed the other. In the life of this man, too, as well as in all things else in the world, daily use and accepted and common knowledge seemed to sometimes have no other aim than to be arrested now and again for an instant, and broken through, in order to yield the place of honor to the exceptional and miraculous. Now whether these short and occasional hours of happiness balanced and alleviated the lot of the Steppenwolf in such a fashion that in the upshot happiness and suffering held the scales even, or whether perhaps the short but intense happiness of those few hours outweighed all suffering and left a balance over is again a question which idle persons may meditate to their hearts' content. Even the wolf brooded often over this, and those were his idle and unprofitable days.
In this connection one thing more must be said. There are a good many people of the same kind as Harry. Many artists are of his kind. These persons all have two souls, two beings within them. There is God and the evil in them; the mother's blood and the father's; the capacity for happiness and the capacity for suffering; and in just such a state of enmity and entanglement towards and within each other as were the wolf and man in Harry. And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own. All these men, whatever their deeds and works may be, have really no life; that is to say, their lives are not their own and have no form. They are not heroes, artists, or thinkers in the same way that other men are judges, doctors, shoemakers, or schoolmasters. their life consists of a perpetual tide, unhappy and torn with pain, terrible and meaningless, unless one is ready to see its meaning in just those rare experiences, acts, thoughts, and works that shine out above the chaos of such a life. To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastrophe of nature. To them, too, however, the other thought has come that man is perhaps not merely a half rational animal but a child of the gods and destined to immortality.'

it doesn't matter if i'm believed or not but there's about a million such cases where i read something like this that is almost exactly in accord with what i already think. as i said, it doesn't matter except in the case that were I to simply be reaffirmed, what horrible destiny. there's more, however I lost the page. read Steppenwolf if you want,.

correct spelling is for the dandicapped

'Mr. Melville, I have to say I loved your book.'
'Which one?'
'You know. . . Moby Dick.'
'O, right, right. Thank you.'
'I mean you probably hear it all the time but since we have the time I'd have some questions.'
'Take it as you'd like, I really can't say what I meant, at times I did but at others it was just expression, like a smile or a frown.'
'I totally know what you mean but that's not what I was going to ask you questions about, ahem.'
'Really? My personal life is my own affairs, read about it in the paper if you want.'
'I'm sorry Mr. Melville, but that's not what I mean either, and if you would allow it I'd like to say your being rude in trying to brush me off like so.'
'Well that's not what I mean to do, I just am so tired of answering all the questions, because I care about them, about answering them. I wrote a book, I want to take responsibility, but responsibility can be wearing.'
'Tell me about it.'
'Right, well what were you going to ask?'
'It's sorta like this, Mr. Melville.'
'Call me Herman, please, less syllables, it will save us time.'
'Thanks, in any case, I never read Mahciavelli's the prince which you may have and I don't know if people were as priggish about research in your times but I feel like people place research before invention, study before application, form before content. Anyways, I don't want to talk about The Prince, but Machiavelli. I'm guessing you read aristotle's nichomean ethics, right.'
'Right, but why all this talk of your time and my time, how different can they be?'
'I can only speak for art and only in my opinion but it has degraded to where integrity and intelligence are to be avoided because we have other forms of entertainment where if the cudgel doesn't have bits of grey matter and hair on it by the time it's over, it's discarded like tissue paper.'
'I'm sorry. You seem to feel strongly about it.'
'I do, and that's why I'd talk to you. I mean, your shit's great, you have no reason to be sorry. I'm just sorry more people don't read your stuff. I read like one other short story by you. No offense meant, I just don't normally read every book by an author except for Dostoevsky, and even for his I don't feel that compulsion it seems some people have that sort of resembles lust for conquering.'
'I know what you mean, and I'm not offended, only humbled that you took the time to read my book.'
'C'mon Herman, you're book is the shit, you got to know that.'
'I hoped it would be fly and I had this feeling like what I was doing was worth doing but I would have done it anyways.'
'I totally agree, I like to write too.'
'So what brings us here?'
'It's people.'
'Ahh.'
'No, I mean, it's just that I read your book and think to myself, my god, this guy is the coolest fucker ever.'
'Come now, compliments won't get you anywhere with an artist worth their stuff.'
'No, you're right, but see I had this idea of what it would be like to actually talk to you guys, you authors from the past who get it.'
'I see, hence Aristotle and Machiavelli.'
'Right, sort of, I mean, I often times would just like to have a drink with the people from the past I think were so important, not praise them or fawn over them.'
'I'm not sure where you're heading with this.'
'Well, Machiavelli once wrote something about how his only friends were great classical figures, but really it's just because he was a douchebag.'
'Ha, I won't argue that.'
'And Aristotle wrote this defining stuff except really it was copied down during this seminar on how to rule people and be classy not sassy.'
'So you mean to say that you fear your putting me on a pillar, neglecting the friends you have.'
'That's one of my many fears, yeah, but the thing is, I'd just want to have a drink, maybe see how you were doing, maybe I wouldn't like you, but I think that makes all the difference.'
'Then you mean to say you don't put me on a pillar.'
'No, I mean to say that I hang out with my friends as though they were like, epic hero type characters, like they were my heroes, and though I love your shit, it's so much better when you live it, you know what I mean.'
'I agree entirely. In fact, in writing about deep ideas and such I always feared myself that people would miss the point by taking it too much to heart. I mean, you get the point, right, white whale, whaling book about everything but whaling, I don't want to be presumptous.'
'Very funny Herman, but no, I think I get the point, and I understand the fear but it's related to how I'd hang out with you rather than build an altar, know what I mean.'
'I think I do. So I am as a friend to you as your friends are to me which is in a positive way though if they're like me I'd question that.'
'Hah, no, that's good, why are we so damn modest, but I'm glad you can see what I mean. I can be a little oblique when I talk.'
'Have you read my book'
'Touche'
'. . .'
'. . .'
'sigh'
'so, herman, how've you been?'

it's not so much coming up with ideas, it's writing them down.