4

A burgeoning rift,
A solemn stab at fortune:
A pact with the dead.

3

For acquiescence,
I find no mercy or calm;
I slip, unnoticed.

2

Alcohol and fate,
opiates and destiny;
composition reigns.

1

In the late twilight
I can see the frayed, threadbare
womb of the corrupt

They call it night, and I call it mine...

I have been deciding on two things of late: The meaning of Life and the idea of Free Will; capitalized because they are that grand of a concept, and in effect, the Ground-Of-All-Being (another term for 'existence itself').

What is Free Will? If you use a reductionist theory, it means that it's an empty promise, because for there to be free will, there would have to be something mechanized that gives it to you. And once you reach that point in logic, the idea breaks down and doesn't really have veracity.

But what is Human Free Will? This is something I can define very easily. Just because we are all driven by our chemicals and our physical structure doesn't mean that we cannot change our paths. The phrase that best fits the solution is Carpe Diem; sieze the day, because it's only with an aggressive launch that you can achieve something that is your own.

But, it is not possessiveness. It's carving yourself forward, and not letting your chemicals drive you, because then, you are just rationalizing everything your ape-self does. Our higher minds are what make us Human, and Free Will comes from that change.

The meaning of Life is still something that I have no handle on. But Free Will is something that is intrinsic to my only sense of reality. When I act like a drone and only rationalize what I'm doing afterwards, I feel the emptiness of that path inside me. When I seize the world and make it mine to live in, I feel a fire in my belly and a much stronger pulse. It gives its own meaning, if not to life, then to any point in being alive. I believe that life is about representing your own artistic soul, and really nothing much else. Materialism doesn't do it for me, and neither does mindless courting. I have always seen how I am cast aside because of my ways of thinking, and how indifferent the world is most of the time, but you know what I do? I stay on the road I want to be on, and I don't change for outside forces. Even if it is socially reprehensible, it is individualistic in the purest sense, and it is the only thing I would want to live doing.

What spawns Free Will is not determination, though. Nor is it aggressiveness. The root of Free Will is education. You grow your mind (literally), the more often you stimulate it with new information. You increase the complexity of your thoughts (literally), the more you meld and play with them. These are not just cognitive effects. Our bodies and souls are run by our brains. The only way to move forward is to delve deep inside yourself, and to find a way to come out on the other side with something that is truly positive.

I've always held the suspicion that the world was out to get me. Sometimes, it feels like I'm proven right. But even now, I still look down on it, instead of wallowing beneath it.

I am larger than any of the shit that pulls at me from below. It just sucks that I have to be the only one that I have.

When no one gives a fuck about you,
You find that you are your own etude:
A wanton, lonely, broken rule;
In a symphony of solitude.

Nothing but a body; naked, beaten...

Like a membrane, strained and pulled and finally popped, a retroactive sense of responsibility lifts too far above psychosis to be anything but strict, self-restraint. Is this the banal, biological, survivalistic mechanism come to save itself from ruin? Or is it just another step forward?


How do we know ourselves? We are only the paper on which we project our own feelings, and nothing more. Real-time actions betray the philosopher in me. The taste of the sea betrays the romantic in me: The salty, morose sweetness of the grand Goliath of Nature; progression.

We have evolved for nothing but symbols and strings, tained by cognitive dissonance.

Run Into Flowers

You can be instantaneously transported to a different time in your mind, when the right stimuli hits. Everything can come crashing back just as it did before, even if it was all but forgotten.

To make the same mistakes and fall into the same cycles is the only organic thing about the way we live our lives. That must be why these things seem so much more important than the rest; because of their irreducibility.

Sometimes I feel like Socrates, and wonder what shape my Hemlock will take. And at the same time, I can't share the view that life was a diseased to be cured. But, it is a losing struggle. But you wait it out, because there's nothing else to do. And you reflect.

On a cosmic level, I feel solitary. As if there isn't anything else but me. The small amount of soulful life that I've discovered in other people has always been a facade. And even though I've come so far, I still have the same wants.


Give the boy some chemicals
I want to run into...

Save the Steel River

Destruction.

From built-up cascades, to clumsy collapses, to iridescent annihilations. It's all still just destruction.

And when the hum returns, there can't be a silver lining. That would be false.

From a developed mind, a sharpened sense of acuity... and nothing in-between; it's nothing more than destruction.

...And it all comes down to a thin line between insanity and progress.

Fist

The only thing worse than being at the receiving end of a lifetime of anguish is knowing that you deserve it.

And it's in rationality that you find these things. You see the glaring mistakes, and the regret towards the past, but it's totally irrational. But it's rational.

I would say that I wish I would've done better, but I know that I couldn't have. I tried overly hard just to become the lackluster, emptied thing that I am today. But knowing that it rests on the shoulders of more selfish people, or knowing that I have risen above the things that keep people at a low, dull hum... it's kind of pointless when you also see how the divide will always be there. And after a point, the division itself becomes a willful endeavor, taking on my own charge instead of its maker's; but I guess that would also be me.

It's strange to feel yourself sliding down when you've gotten what descent really felt like. Not because I'm at the top, but because I'm at the bottom.

The Virus

The truth is all there really is, and how we define ourselves is how we try to skew that truth with the holes inside us from where it had gone wrong.


Maybe 'we' is only 'me'.

I can sympathize with the Buddhists, who only strive for a dead brain. It would be useful, sometimes. But in a causal world, why should you erase every bad seed? It's beautiful, in a way...

And it lets you put peace to yourself in a minuscule way. Even though it's so small, it's still large enough to rest on when you don't have any other support. Humans need to be more than simply their intentional stance and its manifestations.

I and Me, we go with Jesus in a bowl of dirt...

To see the truth of things in a way that is almost too abstract to explain linguistically is very disconcerting, when so much is so obviously flawed. Things that seem so nebulous as morality or education, or nearly anything else for that matter are ridiculously easy to fix, at least in concept. The arguments for institutionalized religion have been the same for hundreds of years, and yet it still is as much a part of public life as it has ever been. Not because we are all religious vessels, but because ignorance is so virulent that it gives lead to all of Humanity's self-destruction. It all comes from willful ignorance.

Being an American, I've only heard that said about a billion times each week, for my entire life. All of the great, pseudo-intellectual remarks that were skinned from our founding fathers and used as vacuous proverbs with no weight or real meaning... It was either a by-product of ignorance, or a catalyst for it. Either way, it is just as evil.

Men seem to think that they are always focused on something outside their own life. Most people around the world are taught as they are growing up that Man is intrinsically evil and corrupt, and that to achieve anything in life, you must put your Human self aside. You must become a cog, or a vessel, or a steward. You must empty yourself so that they may put what they like into you.

That willful surrender to stupidity and absolution of any real, rational self-criticism is the only shape that Satan could ever realistically take in our world. If the Devil is real, then He lives in the twisted side of Human nature; but not 'twisted' in the sense that it is still something that comes from us. I mean that it is deliberately morphed and given disease. Something in the Zeitgeist of Humanity lets us pay heed to others so much that we lend ourselves to be slaves to their (im)morality, and as citizens we do nothing about it.

But the Zeitgeist, or the grand Human psychological state, or whatever other abstract term it is named comes from us as Humans. Whether or not we take responsibility for it is another thing entirely.

Philosophy was more or less invented to question our stupidity as a race of animals. It lives to destroy stupidity by showing just what ignorance means. To me, philosophy is the antibiotic of Mankind, and most only take enough to give themselves a resistance to its construction. You have to bathe in it for years to be able to find any kind of real answer.

Because if you only think as much as you would like to about something, your brain shuts down and directs you to other, less painful things. This is how we cope with an evil and corrupted world. And that is the real ignorance: stupidity through ignoring.

And so, Satan would probably have to invent something like the Christian faith, and other religions. He would need those to keep people as livestock, instead of free-thinking radicals in such a finely-tuned experiment. He would look like Jesus Himself, because it would mean that any doublespeak would be so graciously asserted, and therefore vehemently followed.

Wouldn't that be hilarious, to find out one day that Lucifer was God, and our God was really dead... I'd laugh.

The evils of this planet and our species come not from otherworldly forces, but from ourselves. Everyone has, albeit very indirectly, contributed to millions of people dying or living in poverty. We contribute daily to injustice in our own country, because we believe all of the stupid, pedantic, childish lies that we are told. No one tries to investigate. And when they are enlightened with the truth, then the truth someday turns to another pedantic lie. It is not that Human nature is so corrupted and evil; it is that the majority of people are so very, very stupid, with a limited education and no real cognitive development. If you teach them all to only do what is supposed to be done, to not investigate or think critically, then you will have a country of worker drones.

But, the inquisitive nature of the mind is the only real good in the world. Everything else is either indifferent, such as Mother Nature and our own evolution, or it is evil because it was built by us to be that way.

To say that "It is just all evil" and walk away, feeling superior for pointing it out but not feeling useless for not doing anything about it, but rather feeling as though you don't owe any part of yourself to do so... that itself is evil. It makes me wonder how far our society has to fall and crumble for the people who live here to take responsibility for their own lives, instead of running from it.

We Americans are the limp-wristed, soft-spined, prissy little descendents of what were hearty men, men who shrugged off all of the injustice in the world, men who saw how inane it all was.

So then, what is the real evil in this world? Not necessarily ignorance, because it is those that prey on it that are evil. Not necessarily Human nature's deformity, because it was deformed by Humans. Not necessarily religion, because it too was built by our own hands.

Real evil is the lack of a backbone and the lack of the mental capacities required to know that you need one. There is a one, truly pure morality, and although it hasn't been discovered, I believe that most would find parts of it pretty easily by looking inside themselves.

Arms of undertow...

To develop a real sense of self, one that is worth keeping, there has to be more than just the necessitation and subsequent obfuscation of the basic functions of the mind and body. To really develop beyond a self-aware animal; the mode of thought that has existed since Aristotle.

Basic logic is something that is taken for granted, because it is defined wrongly in most cases. Something is either true or untrue, and until one realizes that it does not depend on their own mind to be true or not, logic is an empty pursuit. It doesn't matter at all what the mind thinks of these things, because perspective only tampers with their structure and veracity.

But the real progress is made when you can take what you think and believe, and meld it together with logic in a way that is not just self-gratification. To reconstruct yourself in a logical sense, in a way that is not dependent on your own ego is something that most won't even ever want to touch upon. They will always be in ignorance because ignorance is easier to deal and cope with. They will always be weak husks, filled with empty thoughts and always directed inward, even if they don't realize it.

Apartheid and other forms of cognitive and behavioral oppression are the byproducts of this thought process. Children are bred more to be reflections of their parents and the ideologies therein. This is what ruins humanity. They are not made as vessels for the truth; rather, they are made to reflect an untrue 'truth' that is a monstrosity of logic and only has the dim, narrow views of those which had birthed them.

It is reprehensible and evil in every sense. God will not move in this world in any way, if He even exists, and He will not choose. Anyone who claims to be those chosen is only projecting their own egos on the rest of mankind and snuffing out the spark of beauty that makes life worthwhile. Yet we still argue about it all, as if there is even the slightest merit in an irrational society.

If you can see that, you can begin to understand what it really means to be Human: To always be fighting against ape-like minds, forever pushing down on real progress because they are weak, cowardly and afraid of the future. They are afraid of their own doublespeak, and their insecurities shine throughout it all.

And if humanity is lost, then one day another self-aware animal will rise up and claim to be the chosen, and the cycle will keep going, until consciousness is finally evolved past the emotional, irrational mind.

Sometimes, I can't stand always being dragged under by such thinking. Sometimes, I feel ashamed for always being aloof for the sake of ease and because I know that my own opinion and perspective will not change others' hearts. People need to wake up on their own, and that makes it all the more improbable.

What I see will never end...

How does a concept begin?

In the mind, it starts with a basic, biological urge, represented by images and sounds. At least, that is how it is with me. And the longer they are held on to, the more they incorporate, until you find yourself with lines of thought that are as long as your memory. It's one string of consciousness, intertwined with everything around you. It is a poison that labors so slowly that it almost seems like reality itself.

But the mind is not reality in any sense. We are our own strain of reality, and we modify and twist the world until we find our gold; that is the Human condition.

I have recurring themes in my life: abandonment, disdain, disappointment and isolation. While they all sound like the same thing, they are very different concepts. The abandoned feeling that comes with loneliness, to me, is more of an affirmation of myself than it is a yearning sorrow. I do not feel any sadness in that vein, and my sense of self is strengthened by it. Disdain is the only word I can find to accurately portray the way I see the Human race: The habitual lies, the ego-filling, the sense of empowerment in hedonism; the Great Lie of being alive in a self-centric world. Everything is about dominance and oppression, even the smallest behavioral ticks. I am disappointed in life for that reason, but not in the sense that I am disappointed with my own life; much the opposite, for I build and reinforce upon my own view and the conclusions that I come to. That disappointment has let me know what being moral truly means, and why we all should be made to carry our misdeeds and sins into our deathbed; not because I am a sadist, but for the precious feeling of overcoming the only real evil in this world: ourselves.

Isolation is the only motif that has stayed with me throughout my life. I have been optimistic, opportunistic, horribly depressed, valiantly triumphant... but all of this has been on my own, in solitary confinement. But through this disease I have picked apart my own psyche, and I have grown from 'just another person' to 'me'. Understanding ourselves is the only real way to find peace with life, unless you are content in chasing delusion and ruining the very gift of being alive in a breathing, biological universe.

Religion is the ultimate refusal of life, and untruth is a knife stabbed into the heart of existence. America thrives on both of these, though, and I am sickened by that. Countless people have died for things that were non-issues, things that were trumped up and things that were only invented for the sake of our own egos. And this is all because of the falsities of organized religion and hedonism.

We are animals, but only because that is how we came to be. Rational thought is the only way to ascend our flesh and to become the only real definition of "divine" that could exist here. Every progression, every innovation and every single good thing that has ever been has come into existence by purely rational thought. There is no other way.

This is what I believe. And in that light, I do not necessarily believe that the Human race deserves to exist any longer. We don't deserve anything, and if we are to save ourselves, it will only be through the grace of rationality.

The only irrational world that should exist is the one of artistic expression. In that, we bind both rational and irrational, emotional and intellectual, biological and divine. And as much as this empty, bankrupt country continues to desecrate rationality and art, as much as we indulge ourselves in pointlessness and short-term gains, as much as we cut apart the body of our existence, we will never be free of blasphemy against what is real.

American politics is the most vile thing I could imagine, not because of its virulence or its many fallacies, but for how low it sets the bar. We used to be a country that redefined what it meant to be Human; now, we simply let corrupt, stupid people make our decisions for us, because we believe that Man is, by nature, corrupt. We believe every single lie we are fed. Soon, it will be our grave.

I am a real American. I am not some bible-thumping, self-gratifying demagogue. I believe there are bigger problems beyond school violence and abortion. I am concerned for the Human race, and existence itself. Quite possibly, the very first real intelligence that has ever existed in our universe is doing such stupid, self-destructive things. We are all committing suicide every second we bow down to such stupidity.

But, in the end, the only thing that can save us is our emotional bond to reality, to rationality. Philosophers, composers, writers and poets have saved humanity countless times, and I believe will continue to do so, even if America becomes too stupid to support itself, and slowly sinks into an ocean of its own affronts against Nature and the Cosmos.