In Diegesis

life is

my frist pro-tools play for audio post prod. class. the link requires two clicks to play, not sure why.

We met where the sensitive, fragile individual emerges into toxic air in philosophy club. Vague ideas nervously hopped onto words shooting out my mouth, and you breathed normally (normal to me anyhow — I had never seen you breathe before).

I talked almighty about Descartes and nothingness and the anti-God, the Great Deceiver. The one professor there debunked the whole game — I forget what he said now, but we of us who weren’t in the know nodding our heads suddenly got a little skeptical about Skepticism.

I only wanted to get to know you, to discover.

Introductions to beautiful peers make me feel like ol’ Ferdinand Magellan, steering my vessel into another inlet, trying desperately to get around the tip of South America with the fear of mutiny and impending scurvy (mine a more Romantic sort) constantly igniting me forward, waiting waiting awaiting for the Strait with my name on it, and then — oh, all the space an Earthling could ever know.

Seeing hearing breathing your apartment was like what Schiller says about energizing warmth animating the exuberance of matter. What was that strange connotation, that wonderful energy?

Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, created nor destroyed, created nor –

Your plants, I’m sure, are all the same, save that one which sprouted puffy pink spiky beauties when we spent two weeks at your hometown (by the time we returned, its life trajectory had just passed the point of no return); the stove top is, I’m sure, as fire-prone towards fried cooking as ever; you’ve probably even tossed a beetle or two out the window or rather, when confronted, did you murder like you said you would never do, because I wasn’t there to handle it for you? These things I think of now as I write about you, but when I water my plant, when I cook french fries, and when I kill various insect invaders, I don’t usually think of you; I don’t see my life relative to yours too much anymore; I’m not sure what I see my life relative to.

A vague, fuzzy Nervous energy in me feels an abyss, the Vacuum coming on, but it’s never potent enough for me to feel sincere, touched,

concerned.

Something about that space, the way the kinetic gas particles bounced around my clothes, seeping into my skin — I could have fallen in love with Kristi, our mutual friend who brought me there. All my loving potential was being wound up, I just needed a push and there I’d fall into a warm whoosh; I didn’t know where directed; just hoped, by God, it was towards you.

And then there was you, your beautiful persona stretched out over as much time as it could bear to stretch. And that was that, Mattress Man. We laughed everytime we quoted Punch Drunk Love. I might be cooking dinner and you’d spin me around and stare me straight in the face and say, dead serious, “I have a love in my life, and that makes me stronger than anything you can imagine. I would say, ‘that’s that, mattress man’” And I would say, “That’s that,” in between kisses. Rollin on E(ach other), watching movies (In the Mood For Love, another favorite),

these things remind me. But only here, sitting, writing it down, because I want subject matter, and I want to be great, and I have no idea what else to write about (that’s even more poetic than the truth — in reality, I write about many many other things, they’re just mostly shit).

God Damn it, this is frustrating. What is this energy? What is the word for it? And where am I now? Who am I? What in the world do I know? In my head I hear the last song from the last mix I made you, which also happens to be the greatest song ever written: God Only Knows what I’d be without you, God Only Knows…

Great help, Wilson; I’m an atheist. Yeah yeah yeah, I know I know, that’s not the point. It’s metaphorical,

it’s implied. Well, check this implication; outside this one girl, I’m a virgin, which is a totally inane truth, because I am not a virgin, because there is no part of my life anymore not outside this one girl. But here I am, inside this apartment, reading a lot about how to be Righteous and Good like a post-modern Platonist should, considering what properties I want in me, around me, considering considering

alone,

in an apartment in San Francisco, a short walk away from the abyss Pacific.

I look out at it sometimes, sometimes riding bicycle, sometimes sitting for hours. I think about how your name is Victoria and how The Victoria was the only one of Magellan’s five ships to circumvent the globe and make it back to Spain, how Magellan’s face might have looked over there on the other side of the great blue, in the Phillipines, after some angry imperialism-resisting natives (who might have wondered in hindsight, who the fuck is King Phillip and why are you naming my home after him?) shoved a spear through his heart. And I might go home, drink alone, and dance the raucous cathartic to Daft Punk’s “Around the World” just ’cause I’m a sucker for that sort of meaning-making. I might do all those things, I might not,

what’s it to you?

How does the power of objective reason infiltrate the budding child’s subjectively egocentric mentality? In the history of mankind, there has hardly been documented an entire behavioral set, or whole personae, as principled as Socrates’, and yet even Socrates, who claims in Crito that he is “and always [has] been one of those natures who must be guided by reason,” on occasion drops hints to his more childish, egocentric nature. There is a subjectivity to Socrates’ reasoning that he shields with language. Consider this exchange from Crito:

“S: Ought a man to do what he admits to be right, or ought he to betray the right?

C: He ought to do what he thinks is right.”

Socrates’ language suggests that rightness is very clear objectively, yet Crito’s response twists the meaning of rightness in just such a subtle way as to make it a little more imperfect – that is, rightness is what we believe it to be. Socrates, in embracing Crito’s answer, endorses this level of subjectivity within rightness; however, he seems also to believe that subjective believing is aligned more towards rightness when reason is used as the means to rightness as opposed to any other means (for instance, social acceptance).

Even Socrates’ way of presenting his reason allows for a deeply personal (dare I say even – aesthetic, artistic) manifestation of thought. Yet it’s no person’s reason who he empathizes with, but the entire Athenian state’s. His entire argument which he presents to Crito is from the supposed, personified point of view of the Athenian government or as he puts it, “the law”, which answers and argues and concedes using Socrates’ own tongue. Though the laws of the state are as objective as they are written down, there is truly an element of empathy in Socrates’ understanding of them – by realizing a point of view outside his own, he superficially abandons the simple confines of the child’s self-loving-interpreted-into-self-preserving ego. Of course, the reasonable man is also a grown child with emotions and desires and needs; however, the truly reasonable man (which Socrates undoubtedly, inspiringly is) is sad only when his actions betray virtue; desires only to be engaged with reason; and needs only to live according to his principles. Those principles he accepts as being in some ways contingent, but he respects the means (a la reason) in which they are derived from their contingencies. Insofar as reason is a subjective faculty of the mind, Socrates admits that the arguments of the Laws, which he has been channeling as his own arguments, comes to him as a voice. He says, “This, dear Crito, is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other.” In this light, reason is not simply a mathematical abstraction of life, but an aesthetic obsession, an artistic arrest by the least likely, yet perhaps most effective, of artists – Reason!

We’re goin’ around the world

(around the world, around the-)

on the elliptical puke-slide

in our one-bedroom apartment.

Lights romantic echo chill christmas

happiness, raining the only light

in this universe on beloved

strangers, unifying all dialogues

that I hear, and I wouldn’t mind givin’

a snuggle to everyone I see,

but in another frame of mind

I have to pee, and I hear some sick soul

needs the replenishable water-

-bowl much more than me. Feel

my heartbeat, spin the floor around

my feet; It’s a lie, it’s a lie,

it’s not a lie (truly to the beat)

tonight. Someone tell Miss Altruist to

shut the bathroom door

behind her. We’re all sick, we’ll all be

reborn hungover in the fresh sunlight

in the morning. In the meanwhile,

Let’s dance!

Waking up naps taps

action into doing,

cuz my virtue’s been boo-hooing

when I’m screwing and nothing

but nothing at all is

on about doing, and death

always where I last kept him,

I assume anyway, ever-looming.

Waking up naps starts life’s

time resuming, pushes dreamsparks’

zooming parallel lines sticking

out of my head, so I can let more room in.

Look in the mirror and think: quit yr wombin’,

this life business is a-boomin, and we’re

gonna keep do do doo doo wop

doin’ til our lovers stick the tomb in

that dirty earth that I never knew

at all. So here’s an ode to the dirty earth,

it’s a bumbling something; I’m makin’

my abode out of wordy worth, it’s a

rumbling nothing. Now, Funkadelic, talk to

me, make me want to feel like

I can get to that. *Click Publish*

PublishPublishPublishPublished,

FUCKIN’ YAY!!!

Dean sits at my (mom’s ex-)computer and reads this paragraph he wrote (which I have edited in passages marked by [ ]):

“Tonight we built a fort out of cardboard, paper, three different grades of tape, magic marker, two bowls of weed, Okkervil River, Random Spirit Lover, [the sharp mechanical-heart-like beating and constant thrum of Mike's fingers pushing into electric typewriter keys, some potent play-drive] and the fear of imperfection.”

And then I say, with some humor,

“And then we tore it down because it was by no means perfect,” though it should be noted here that though it was written in sharpie on cheap incidental cardboard (we want the delivery, not the box it’s delivered in), above the entrance of the fort was earnestly scribed by Dean: “Dean, Ian, Mike & Erica’s Hyper-Sublime Fort June 20, 2010″.

And then Dean says, after a pensive pause,

“But it was complete.”

To which I reply, after considering the immortal shell (which in truth is only as immortal as my cardboard consciousness) in which transient things lovingly dwell,

“Yeah. Yeah it was.”

Prologue: If you want a paper then it’s a paper you’ll get, and it might not be great and it definitely won’t be right, but here it is in all its life-presupposing glory, because that’s all anything is when you see it – something that presupposes a phenomenon. In everything I do, in everything you do, there is life lurking underneath it all, and for us who have seen the glory of life and the boundless heights and chasms of the ego, that life which we know is hiding beneath the bourgeois surface is the only thing for which we live. And for it, eventually, we live out of respect, as Kant would say, respect for the sublime awesome which we know to be there even if we don’t feel it anymore.

Here we begin: If art is the universe rendered into ordered beauty, and the universe is actually indifferent – neither ordered nor chaotic, but a truly contradictory and impossible combination – then what do we make of life? How do we choose to live? I have been gravitating towards the diegetic life, crafting and adapting my mind to perceive the indifferent universe (that is to mean, my whole perceptual space) in artistic fashion, because I am addicted to art, to beauty, to love and movies, but as Nietzsche suggests in Beyond Good & Evil, oughtn’t we appreciate chaos as much as beauty, untruth as much as truth? Or rather, isn’t beauty the appreciation for simply what is – both chaos and beauty? Ah, if only chaos weren’t so damn unpleasant, but after all, “Beauty is Harsh” (Tartt, 510).

[book-spoilers abound herein]

(more…)

88.50 “There are some penguins above antarctica, but they’re all in the southern hemisphere, which is why polar bears can’t eat them…” “… dolphins and whales outside Jersey Shore.” The sea and land, we know are mirrors. I wonder, what really happens when waves crash(-land) on shore?

90.00 H     ea        v                  en-
90.10 ly Jazz (perhaps NPR)

90.90 “They’re actually good jumpers, Dave, that’s right; there’s contention over which one of these two ants has the worst sting”

91.50

92.50 Country: I feel a stranger in a strange land here, (where’s my sister? she likes this stuff. where are my appreciation genes?)
93.30 Guitar-Hero Ready, ‘tough’ alt-rock
94.10 WYSP, ‘Spike’, tix 4 Green Day & “get him to the greek”, it’s “the rock you grew up with”, we determine: LedZeppelin.
95.70 “Time makes lovers feel…” s  ta   tic     , and Pablo’s saxophone “…like they’ve got something real, but you and me, we got nothing but time.” ‘BEN’. Then Kid Rock pukes Warren Zevon.
97.50 “In the NBA, the way to make money…”          s t a t i c ,          “… you know, god knows why, doesn’t seem to understand the blueprint of success…” reminds me of dashed 10-year-old dreams, orange-rubbered perfect spheres shooting through hoops in beautiful synthesises of effort and expectation and cash millions raining, drenching me instead of water as I play, play, play
98.10 “You can ring my bell, beh-ell, beh-ell, beh-ell, bell today” Summer-y Disco, 70s all, eternal parental alien incredible aesthetic!
98.90 “Halo” Beyonce, not Crazy in Love Beyonce. Believe it or not, I miss “Single Ladies” and “Umbrella”. Those were some good radio minutes (radio days will die with Woody Allen; I’ve never known ‘em, but that’s a good movie, though considering his canon I often have a hard time recommending it in particu-)

99.00 (

99.10 n         &)()(

99.20  0         ~~~~~~

99.30   t      *       )

99.40    h                                      b () r n             ( i n

99.50     i                                 ***)~19#89                         *d

99.60      n           ()                                   ()                          y*

99.70       g                     ()  ~–~   ()                                    *i

99.80        -                           ( )                                           n*

99.90         !——————-!–!–(it goes ahhh’ah-on~*g><>>>~

100.30 THE HEAT), auto-tuned soul hand-claps
101.10 “…had the time of my life,” innocence rendered perverse, sexy means to the ends of the 80s never cum, and I’m never born,
101.20 “and I owe it all to y-  —!—?::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;c:h: a  o   s:      :
102.10 big beat rocking dances your body -COME ON COME ON – Rock it!-
102.90 —-SaX sCreeeeeeCh: ELODEVO80S? REEGGGUUUlar REEEGGGGUUUUUUUUULLatin’ Reagan, baby(, I wish I knew how to quit you, capitalism)
104.50 babybabybabybaby allnightlong, He called you: (repeat), Everyone needs to be my baby (be my, be my pretty bab-)
105.30 Em-Jay, ackson, “Why did you do me that way?” smooth jams, R.I.P. He just needed to be everyone’s baby, and we called him crazy. Now he’s -
106.10 “This sounds like the 90s, man!” crooned Erica’s claps.
106.90 “by the power of God and the armor of righteousness…” By 2(thousand)one, I was an impressionable atheist, as set in stone as budding space odysseys can be.
107.30 Swingtime makes me feel like i’m in the twenties. Instead I’m just twenty in

twenty(poi:.nt)10(…   ). (

…Welcome

to the ode

space where we

race in between teen dreams to where

we know nowhere is where we are

so far facing each other

from distant stars;

Come back soon to the ode

space ruins where my abode

tastes glue onto geniuses’

and saints’ stone

faces who’ll

be forever old,

and doin’ everything i have

ever known and owning noth-

-ing but home;

Take me far

from this state in a(nything)

car; let me make-believe the sky

is different this time, let my soles

touch the floor of a bar

in Canada, and i’ll do

the best I can, always always

doing the best I can; i’m not

doing the best I can; in this city

i’m not (-even twenty-one-) doing

the best I can. I’m

not, i’m no

t, i’m noth………………….

…ing, plzzztakemy

t0mb to-the odspac roo-

oooooo0ooooooooo0oooooo0o0o0o0o0ooo00oo00o00o000

0000000000…

o

oom.

(i’m gonna cry

like a teenager if I keep

this up): i still feel

sorry, Kevin Roche, for being so cruel,

Matt Hajec, Doug McClellan, i let people hurt

you, i hurt you; i am sorry to the little black girl

whose arm I twisted, because i didn’t know how

to teach her chess; i’m sorry to all the people

i can’t show my love, it’s tearing me a part,

hate is tearing me apart, love is

everywhere, and i am

sorry:

Janelle – Freya Ray Eva Leah Heather etcetera lovers -

Keith – i still can’t believe i pissed on Colleen’s air mattress -

Jeanne – i hardly remember any of the natives’ names in Chevak, just the faces -

Judy – my mother, and your siblings Peg, Claire, and i was five years old at Lefty’s funeral -

Jim – uncle Jim, uncle Joe, uncle Jack, aunt Denise and especially you aunt Sue -

Scott – Karen Cathy Doug (i remember the police, your screams, i remember your sobs, I feel-) Jolene Randy (whose father just died; Randy, i love you, and i’m sorry) -

Rose – Bob, aunt Carrie (Where was i when DJ died? where was my love? does it mean anything that i was angry for days, that for a few hours in artificially-lit darkness i shed some tears in between these monolithic philadelphia buildings? for weeks on my way to and from classes i sang “Gone” by Kanye West and changed the words to “we’re walking home / i’m walking home / it’s too late / it’s too late / he’s gone”) -

Forest – aunt Laurie, aunt Carrie, my father, my father, my father, my father, my father Scott -

my brother, Matthew, I’m sorry for getting angry at you for us never meeting each other, some things are bigger than we ever know, may you rest peacefully in our hearts,

Erica,

Sam – Amanda, Lizzy, Kim, Katy, Leah, Gretchen, ex-girlfriends and potential ex-girlfriends are just beautiful girl friends and now i speak to them as much as i speak to most of these people -

Nathan – Chris, Sam Dz, Steve, those ancient Collegiate Academy friends -

Jess & Jess & Sam & Adam & Katy & Ashley & Molly & Marie & Tylor & Kyle & Jenna and endless amounts of people standing certainly but never knowing where each is relative to one another (or is that just me?) -

Danielle – Mike, John, Bryan, Gabriel, Samuel, Joshua, Sean, Steve, Frank, Katie, DJ and what’s the youngest’s name?, “me and my cousins and you and your cousins, it’s a line that’s always runnin’” -

Corry people – Max, Kevin, Kevin, Brad, Mikey, Colin (i forgave you ages ago), Doug (that stutter joke i made on the bus in middle school was beyond callous), Doug, Adam, Dustin, Rachel and Dana (i was infatuated with you both, why don’t we just Say It All?) and

Shane, i don’t hate you, i just don’t know how to love you anymore – how do I love

all of you?; i love

all of you

none of the time,

and i can’t wait

to see you, but I am

always waiting here

in ode

space.

(I’m gonna keep

this up; here comes “Bros”

by Panda Bear: I’m not trying

to forget you, whoa-oh-

oh! I’m just trying to be

my own. Come and give me

the space I need, and you

may and you may and you may and you

may find that we’re alright.) I’m not (-even

crying over you, whoa oh-) going to talk to you

as much as i could before you

die, I’m not going to think

of you (dying)

as much as i could, I’m going to

forget you most times, but I’ll

dream of you

sometimes, and we all know that

in the fullness of time, every moment is

everlasting, every dream as much a dream

as the last one. I’m not doing the best

I can, and I want to know that

it’s not good enough for you; This Is

My Art, and it has

no start (because immortal

lovers can’t be torn

apart), and it never

ends, (be-

-cause

A once fetal

species writes a

social contract treatise

which reasons this

thesis:

See you, Jesus;

good-bye, genius;

I am forever

living in diegesis.

Smile

and the universe

smiles with your child.

Hail

the birthing style

of your ancient lover.

Stare

into baby’s blood

until retinas burst alive.

Rock

the cathartic wild

until imperfect all dissolves.

Believe

beauty’s soul song

sings to you separately.

Live for

a long time

sister, brother, fellow art

mother,

and don’t ever

read this poem again.

Sing

to just sing

in air hearts touch;

transcend

nothing, but let them see eternity

reflecting between your tears and their young eyes.

There’s a dissatisfaction settling into my feelings regarding this journaling that I need to address more fully than I did in Journal 2. I want to tell my story, I’ve wanted to for some time. It began last year as I slowly emerged from the haze of ignorant adolescence to the lucidity of inspired education. I began seeing my life as a story, as a spiritual continuum with constant relation to beauty. I wanted to share it, I still do. I had fantasies of Keith visiting me and Janelle during my summer at her place; we’d start some drinks early and then I’d ask if it’d be cool for me to share my life story as beautifully as I see it. Hours later, I’d be explaining my freshman year at college developments and how they relate to my life and from what spring in my Soul they originate. That never happened; I was too timid. These journals are the first step towards the grandaddy, the beautiful. It’s starts by me simply sharing and rendering the story not so novel. From there I will try to make it timeless, endlessly appreciable.

That’s the ideology. The practical matter is, no way could I just sit down and summon the beauty of my life. My memory is awful. I’ve got to get back into these things, these moments, deal with them in gradations of remembrance and poetic understanding.

Already these journals have conjured so many questions in my mind, loose ends of meaning, poetic points that are mentioned lightly but I know are absolutely integral to the story of my soul. I mean, stories are pockets of contextualized life, always relative to something: to this circumstance or that happiness or this sorrow or that ending. When I say my life has been mostly perceived in a relative manner to my mom, that’s a true story, but what exactly does that mean? Well, the philosopher Ian in a detached-yet-earnest fashion would probably say that my life has been constantly relative to Agapic, un-conditional love, that indeed it was that relativity that made me fall so cathartically in love with Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love. However, there is something different between understanding the concept and feeling the meaning of the concept’s contextualization, there’s something imperfect about living which makes life all the more tragically beautiful. Did my mom love me truly unconditionally? To the extent that she was able to, Yes I am sure she did, but in her own imperfect way. And it’s that imperfection which I perceive and interpret emotionally to be the Agapic-love standard to which I understand my life relative to. It’s that imperfection which is going to sink me into such a deep depression as I become more and more estranged from it.

In many ways, depression is the Lover’s reaction to a dwindling sense of value. I cried, because I missed love, because I was valuable enough to cry over. SIGH. Ignorant yes, but innocent too; they go hand-in-hand.