Waking Life - Excerpt #2

"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like, you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that. Or "Saber-toothed tiger right behind you." We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting, I think, is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing. What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say "love," the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear, travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain, you know, through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable. And yet, you know, when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we've connected, and we think that we're understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it's what we live for."

Waking Life - Excerpt #1

"The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create. I've read the postmodernists with some interest, even admiration. But when I read them, I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more that you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented or marginalized, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It's something very concrete. It's you and me talking. Making decisions. Doing things and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are."

Requiem of a Colloquial Soliloquy

I stood there, alone, swallowed by the darkness, rain pouring down,
staring, staring at what was left of me, lying there on the ground,
blind shock coursing through my invisible veins, trying to remember,
remember, what path I took that would see me dismembered,
and was there pain, or simply nothing, those memories no longer flow,
and that I will no longer grow, this makes me furious and so I grow
a hundred times the size of normal
whispered howls of one immortal
destined then to roam the planet
breaking things like plates and granite
they say to go to the light - well can it
'cos thats not how it goes, oh no,
theres so much more that you don't know,
from my perspective, I see things
the meta-world,
no peace indeed,
i talk to no one, my cries unheard
when all i want's my solo words
to fly high and chirp so sweet,
a bird is nestled at my feet
the feet that do not touch the ground
I hover and make rustling sounds
but no one notices, nobody cares.
so i try remembering things that I've done in my life,
was there really truly that much strife?
was life as hard as i made it seem?
its seems much simpler from this side of the screen
but its ok though, you get out what you put in, and whatever. nothing can be done now, there's no such thing as a time machine right? and even if there was, where does that leave me? I'm now outside of the realm of space and time (for the most part) so even if time and space could revert back to a restore point, would I be able to go back and jump back into the old home like the old days? i doubt it, leaving just a shell, just like that magic shell chocolate syrup that you put on ice cream and it hardens, its like a shell with cold sweet nothing inside of it. maybe, maybe thats how it works. I guess i have eternity to ponder it. while im here though, might as well check out the exotic places that i didn't check out back then. Ill start with Egypt - those pyramids are quite intriguing and I'd like to find out more about them.

Colin Kaepernick....

Just became the highest paid QB in NFL history. As a 49er fan, a Kap advocate, and an experienced Fantasy Football player (hah), I think that this move, while overpriced based on experience, was something that needed to be done one way or another. His ceiling is super high, having only started for a 1.5 seasons and making it to 2 NFC Championships, and one SB. He's got one of the strongest arms in the NFL,  is one of the fastest QB's in the NFL, and is physically capable of bringing a team to the next level. He needs to work on his progressions and his decision making, and he'll be right there where the $$$ is. Plus, in 3 years this contract might just be the norm - better to lock in a player of his caliber now then let him shop for other deals later.

YOU THE MAN KAP!!!!!!!!!!!

Chalk Art in Denver CO, so many awesome pieces!!! This one most represents my current mindset ;)

Today, June 3rd 2014

Today is my birthday, the 27th year that I have been on this planet.

What's more, today is also Alan Ginsberg's birthday, an intriguing fellow who wrote a critical poem/letter that shaped my young adult life more than a decade ago (though it was written a lot longer ago than that). An abstract way to deliver a serious and radical message -- that was my biggest takeaway when I first read the piece. While there are tons of incredible writers and minds on this planet, to be able to express your thoughts in almost cryptic ways, so much so that it becomes something more than art, but it is art in itself, abstract poetry of insightful expressions, where the art truly protrudes from it, while at the same time capturing an idea or ideas that are real and here -- that is true magic.

The title to this masterpiece is Howl, a piece that I memorized when I was 15 and recited to a class that I had in high school. Time certainly flies.

Here is a snippet of Howl, in tribute to the birth of Mr. Ginsberg. Cheers!!

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo....