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folie à deux

Of what Nature will our Love be? Will it grow like a weed, that wildest of the kingdom, fast and vigorous, encompassing everything in its tight grasp. Or will it metamorphose, as divine things do, into a grand oak, proud and sturdy with roots dug deep down into earth. Or again will it become an exotic fruit tree, hitherto unknown to these lands, with bloom so delicately fragile that it cannot be plucked without spoil, but must drop of its own into an gaping mouth when ripe. But oh! Pray let it not be as some potted plant or other imprisoned – though thought “cultivated” – garden flower, retarded by laws more chaotic than natures own.

Enlightenment 2.0

[work in progress]

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] “Have courage to use your own understanding!”–that is the motto of enlightenment. - Immanuel Kant, What is Enlightenment? (1784)

Are we now living in another period of enlightenment? Throughout history, every time a new technology has empowered more people to communicate with each other in more meaningful ways and become widely disseminated through a society, it has resulted in fundamental changes and shifts within the structure of that society. The introduction of sea commerce between early cultures, the phonetic alphabet, the printing press, the radio, the telephone, and the television, to name a few. The latest of these technologies is the internet, and it has connected people from all over the globe more immediately and richly than any previous technology. We have always suspected that the internet is novel and powerful, but only now are we beginning to get a perspective of the full repercussions of this technology on society.

Over the course of the last month I have witnessed people all over the globe take their tents and friends down to local parks and form ‘occupations’; groups of strangers working together to share ideas for building cohesive but open communities. Most of the friends I have made over the past weeks at the occupation found out about what was happening over Facebook and other ‘social media’. The online communities we have grown up in are beginning to materialise in the physical centres of our cities. I have met a large number of practical idealists at the occupation; men and women, young and old, they all know how to dream of a better world and have the skills to work together towards it. We have learnt the powerful lesson that by combining our ideas and skills we are quickly able to achieve things far beyond anything we could as isolated individuals.

Many people are asking the question ‘what is occupy?’, but seeing no further than the 15 minute attention span that the media has conditioned us to, we miss the deeper question ‘what age is this?’ If we step back and consider what is happening by the scales of history, then we see that deep motions are stirring in our society. Our technology has opened up possibilities that have never existed for humanity before. It is only a matter of time before our whole society catches up with the new playing ground.

It is vital that we remain conscious that this is now our own narrative. +We+ can make this into and about whatever +we+ really want.

We are peaceful, but let us not delude ourselves that we are not entering a time of struggle. Our weapons are love and knowledge, let us wield them bravely.
 

Socrates and Plato

Plato faces us with two challenges. The first is to become like his hero, Socrates, and live the examined life of a philosopher. The second is in responce to a central question within the dialouges; is it possible to pass on wisdom? If we meet the challenge of becoming like Socrates, then this question is immediately answered in the affirmative; it is possible to pass on wisdom, because Plato has passed some to us. This raises the second challenge, to become like the author, Plato, and teach others to live the examined life of a philosopher.

On memories of pain and pleasure.

[cf. life]

Negation

when you’re looking for something that isn’t there, you won’t find it

Reforms

I do declare that a clean room is more soothing for the soul than a clean conscience.
You only say that my friend because you don’t know what a clean conscience feels like.

Pregnancy

Q—: Can you imagine a man, having read and heard everything written and spoken, with nothing more to say?

A—: Of course.

Q: And is his silence anything other than the most profound statement left to make?

A: Perhaps.

Q: But it nonetheless would be a statement?

A: Sure.

Q: Then such a man cannot be imagined after all?

A: It appears not.

The First Supper

We sit around an ancient oak table, its round top is covered in arcane graffiti. The darkness surrounding us plays tricks on our eyes if we stare too long or hard. We are not sure if our eyes are playing, or if there really is a tiny speck of a man far in the distance walking towards us. It grows into a speck before fully resolving itself into a small-because-faraway man. After an eternity, or perhaps a single moment, he has arrived, a full-scale human waiter. He introduces himself as Karma. After seeing to our comfort, he asks us what we would like to order.

Historian

When thinking as a historian, I often wonder whether the men and women I am studying were possibly consciously aware of the mystery they were setting down for future genereations to solve.

Philosophy of Language

a philosopher sculpts [appearances of] ideas out of words

“but Plato, if I am not mistaken, was ill.” – Plato, Pheado

The professor had a plan. And the professor was a sick man. A sick man with a plan. Once upon a time, in the professors distant past, he had happened upon the idea of writing an article on some arcane subject, but which contained the secret knowledge of a deep and secret philosophy, and placing it gently, without a stir, into the cauldron of knowledge. And now, many years since the publication of one such paper, the professor sets assignments, for his acolytes, in which perhaps only once or twice a century, some bright student would come across it in their research, and thereby become the next secret member of the group, taking up the life of a professor in order to keep passing on this secret knowledge, and with it, their secret illness.

This is a story.

This is a story. It is a story about a girl named telly, and a girl named leni. It is an existential story concerning the end of love. Looking through another you from the past, but from the perspective of a latter and now current version of yourself. – It contains an account of an almost perfectly beautiful date ice skating with an amazingly beautiful young woman, and the simultaneous mental digestion of the fact that a love of three years had met annihilation. - This account is also at least approximately ninety percent true. – [It also contains three additions and three ghost edits.] Write me.

Art:

belongs in caves

Normal

I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal, I’m normal. This is not normal.

Freedom:

our only desire for freedom is to relinquish it

Morality:

rationality applied to life

Wisdom:

the ability to live well, despite lacking knowledge of the good life

Philosophy

There are two opinions held regarding the philosophers; one by its practitioners, and the other by its detractors. The detractors believe that the philosophers come up with unusual ideas and then think up reasons for them. The practitioners on the other hand believe that they begin to think of reasons and are then lead to unusual ideas.

Apples

My childhood is singularly remarkable for the fact that I was never forced to steal an apple.

Pain:

it is not when something ends that we ruminate on past failures, but when something begins

Nature:

mother step-dad nature

Dreams:

every dream is born of a dull reality

please don’t throw stones

my heart is just a puddle,
you are just a raindrop.

Stoicism:

pure reason leads to pure resignation

Enlightenment:

Q. But isn’t it hard to live in a state of perpetual doubt?
A. Ignorance, like almost anything else, is something you learn to live without after a while.

Questions:

* What do you mean?
* Why do you think that?
* How does that follow?

Drugs:

The opiate of one generation becomes the birth defect of the next.

Failure

Failure, this is honesty. Who am I trying to fool anyway. Loneliness, I am lonely, alone. We all whither and fade in isolation, we all die alone. I write, without elegance, lacking style. It feels like a sorry attempt at prose. A fool only fools himself. What a charade, does it look like I’m holding things together from out there? I lie, I don’t want to be a hassle, a fuss, you couldn’t help anyway. I’m starving, dying slowly in what I suspect is more than just a poetic expression. A big empty room to match my big empty life. Save the world? Save the poor, the starving? I can’t even help myself. I’m vane, I hate vanity, but I am. I feel all wrong, my body doesn’t fit, I don’t act right, I don’t look right. Am I really this unattractive? You will hate me if I admit I feel fat, or at least chubby. No one understands what I write in any case. I suspect I shall just leave it be. I could lie and say it is preventing my thesis, but I just don’t know what to write for it anyway. My dreams are so hard, so impossible, so demanding. I give up.

My Adam

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I am a tourist, an observer, a loner. Perched on my windowsill in my unlit room gazing into my dull shadowy alleyway below I see a murky eyed man dressed in drag gray stumble into view. He has the look of a man coming from nowhere simply to return again, with only the differing shades of indistinguishable gray to meter out the moments. I mentally christen him Adam, even strangers deserve names. His life is written into his ravaged features as clearly as any history written in a musty old tome. His crushed posture tells of a man that has been trying to put his life together his whole life, though without much success.

In the beginning there was Adam. He had been born; the existent, with a slosh and flop, had come into existence. But that is now in his distant past, at least an epoch ago. His birth must be an occurrence that he infers from the fact that he now exists, rather than a fact he derives from any particular memory. His hands, ruddy and callous, suggest a youth spent working in the garden growing vegetables, which he most likely sold at the local market. As his whithered arm makes a gentle brushing movement through the empty air a forgotten smile swims across his face, betraying that he had once enjoyed animal companions. The etched look of sorrow that chases the smile from his face speaks of the fate those childhood companions meet. Farm yard pets, sheep and pigs, with names he can no longer recall, which grew into mere livestock and were slaughtered at his hand accordingly. His jaunting nose, broken in adolescence during blood thirsty schoolyard fights, tames the earlier slaughter in comparison. He had gone on to pursue a higher education, evidenced by the shabby satchel slung from his slouched shoulder, a worm-eaten book slipping out. Tima, in metallic gray lettering, is discernible along the half concealed spine. A dull silver cross hanging from his neck hints that the brief golden age of learning, proving unsatisfactory, had been replaced with the consolations of faith. Matching the silver pedant is a silver ring, worn on his ring finger, eternal proof of his vows to some dead or divorced girl. Predominantly his appearance testifies to a life of gloom and doom. Most of his hair has fallen out, what little remains is unkempt, soiled, and stained into various oily shades of gray. Long years of resigned apathy have convinced his disgusting grubby feet to toe the same line. Poverty inhabits the very wrinkles and furrows covering his skin. His cloudy cataractic eyes cease to see clearly, resigned to witnessing so many unspeakable sorrows. Eyes that no longer provide a window to the soul, instead vaguely reflect a bottomless depression.

My Adam stops, bent over double, to hack out a cough. The alleyway seems to bend double in turn and the echo his hacking cough, each reverberation more distorted and distant than it’s predecessor. My overcast gray sky begins to weep a gentle drizzle down upon my miserable alley containing my miserable man. As if determined to echo his surroundings to the same impeccable standard they have set, the man begins to weep. My weeping murky eyed stranger fumbles in his satchel and recovers a crumpled cigarette. Shaking hands press it to his lips, fond memories warming his cold expression. A spark defiantly springs into and out of existence within the alleyway, the occasion of a lighter. As he draws on the cigarette his hitherto vacant mind, like the tobacco, brightly flares into life. Inhaling smoke enlightens his mind, producing a look of anxious pleasure mixed with conditioned tedium. His murky eyes, no longer murky, now reflect thoughts of reason and equality, nay, humanity itself! Adam straightens up, clears eyes taking in the oppressing alleyway. For a flash second I swear he discovers my presence, the voyeur behind the window, but his gaze sweeps past without any sign of recognition.

Adam’s eyes cloud over once more, he clutches his chest. The cigarette, half smoked, topples from his lips and is quickly extinguished in a muddy puddle. A tumbling heap for a moment, Adam lands splayed on his back, fingers still clenching at his heart. A mushroom of smoke slowly rises from Adam’s dead lips.

By Weston Floyd

Relationships:

the purpose of any relationship, whether it is between friends, family, or lovers, is to help each other grow, emotionally, intellectually, and morally, as people

The Tunnel

The sun was at her zenith as I walked along the abandoned railway track. Springtime was taking its toll; bright flowers of every colour covered the rolling hills that formed the valley through which my track lay. It was clam, peaceful, almost meditative walking along the tracks in relative silence. Lonely foot fall after lonely foot fall, falling in time with sleeper after sleeper. The only audible noise was that of Nature herself, the undertone from the wind swimming all around, the overtone from the stream which gushed gaily over the bright red lichen covered rocks. Something was inviting me along the tracks, drawing me towards its ineffable source. The hills begun to grow steeper on each side of the valley as my meditations progressed. And then behold! I saw ahead of me that the valley would, as I had necessarily understood, come to an end. The impediment to my meditations took the form of a looming mountain that arched the entire width of the valley. Looking beyond I caught sight of two snow tipped peaks whose beauty cannot be matched by words. The tracks drove into a dark thicket of dark pines covering a large patch of the impending mountain. I begun to wish that each moment now spent were instead an eternity, not to wonder what each meant, nor where it would lead, but to just be. And yet I felt myself projected towards one moment, one shared experience; inconceivable, inevitable, and sublime.

The abandoned railway tracks drew me into the thicket. The song of Nature that I had enjoyed hitherto was now drowned out by the loud thump, thump, of my heart. The pines were at first but light-hearted and subtle saplings; their soft, gentle aspect putting me at ease, inviting me to carry on. My steps then drew me into the shadows of great dark pines towering above me, filling my heart with terror. I altered my stride in an act of defiance, abandoning the melodic step from sleeper to sleeper, adopting in its place the balancing act of a tightrope walk along a single iron beam. Though not demanding much concentration, it was enough to draw my mind from the dark omens towering around me. Thus absorbed I continued for some while, until I chanced to raise my gaze and was confronted by a dark opening in the mountain ahead of me. Surrounded by a rough jagged rock face was a perfectly formed arc, into which the railway track relentlessly plunged. An ornate green stained copper plate set at the highest point proudly christened the pitch black hole as Leo V. Looking above I beheld a perfectly formed round boulder, singularly balanced on a precarious precipice directly above the entrance. Not knowing what lay within, whither I would be lead, filled at once with a sense of terror and a sense of overwhelming desire, I excitedly stepped through the threshold.

Love

Love is a mean feature of our hearts;

It knows no master,

Respects no bounds,

Flows without hindrance,

But commands everything in it’s path.

i miss you

I hate you,

I love you.

Fuck you,

Thank you.

Culture:

i destroy myself because I find my culture unfit for humans, but that is a fault in my culture, not in my humanity

Children:

children are not free; they are merely little monkeys whom we are willing to forgive for failing to imitate the big monkeys appropriately

I am not a Dead Pessimist, yet.

So, I’m not actually dead. I am working on it however; recently I took up smoking, which is really just a slow and glorified form of suicide.

Nor am I truely a pessimist. I am working on it however; in truth I am a fallen optimist, which is really a lot worse than just being a pessimist naturally.

Pending:

it seems fitting to acquire a new book in which to write new ideas; old books are for old ideas