because ya godda say something

the time has come at last for me to do some heavy-ass writing about my philosophy.  it's no longer satisfying to me to resist saying anything because "anything said implies stuff that isn't there".  we should all have realized this by now.

i took a trip to Van recently and saw many wondrous things.  as a result of my experience i have realized that many of the things which terrify me, and which i'd always assumed simply weren't in my nature to do, or that i didn't have in me, are the sorts of things i should attempt because i've come as far as i can as a stock model (like i'm normal!!!! hah).  and if there's one thing i hate in life it's stalemate, and that's where i'll end up if i don't keep changing.

i came up with the term cas-flex-mono a long time ago as a start on describing my belief system.  cas stands for casual.  i refuse to be orthodox.  i feel i am destined to be a cycle-breaker, an iconoclast.  so fuck running on tracks.  flex is for flexible: i reserve the right to change what i believe in at any given moment, without regret; or to believe simply in nothing.  and mono stands for monolatrist, meaning i believe in one thing at a time, not to the exclusion of any other system anyone else may believe in.

now i think of it, that sums me up pretty good.  so i'm finally gonna say it.

i also have a great attachment to the aesthetic.  i only do things because it pleases me.  and this can be as trivial as looking at a flower or as catastrophic as jumping off a bridge.  i do one thing because the act and all it involves pleases me, and not the other because it does not.  it's that simple.

now that's not to say i'm hedonistic.  well, it's true i've got a bit of that.  but the important distinction lies in being aware of a bigger picture.  for example, i am now hell-bent on going vegan.  not because i think it's wrong to eat animals (ask me later, it's simply irrelevant here); but because the nutrition makes me feel great and it causes me to have a more enjoyable meal not to be consuming animals.  i'm not sure i even care why i enjoy it more.

it's not a weight off.  it's a lift.  i prefer that idea because even if you remove all the weights from the proverbial back, you're still just unencumbered = back at "okay, what do i do now?"  so say every pleasing thing i do lifts me into a weirder, more beautiful state of being alive.

sometimes i experience a bewildering feeling when i am especially conscious, or maybe just not quite conscious enough.  it comes from feeling and knowing and thinking more than you can really wrap your head around.  but in the end, it always comes back to a great feeling of sharpness and well-being.  i recently went through a quick process of reclaiming my self-data, basically realizing that i know all that i know.  amazing stuff happened to me after that.  i was on the ferry home, eating, and a family had all crammed up against the glass to see the eagles and stuff.  after they left i noticed a fluffie from the little girl's feather boa or something, resting on the sloped sill of the window.  as i watched, it slowly wafted down the sill and down to the carpet.

here is how i parsed this happening:

i experienced it first as a breathtaking sensory experience, without any quality at all.

then i saw the forms, shapes, colours, the movement, how it was graceful and soft, how the pile of the carpet must have bowed ever so slightly under the fluffy little weight.

after that my head started doing one of two things, i don't remember in which order.

one thing was analyzing in general terms the brief conflict between friction and gravity on the slope, and how the irregular character of the fluffie affected its dragging, its fall, rotation and how it settled.  how air or the movement of the ship may have contributed.  then the light from the window, from inside the cafeteria, how it reflected off the fluffie and everything else.  then how all this occurred only within the realm of one of my senses.  how without my perception of reflected light, all the world is black and void.  how i am actually inside my head, with a few pinpricks for information.

now do you understand how i can be bewildered, erin?

that's not even all of it.  the next thing my head did was into reality, into the reality of the little girl with all her innocence, her unfilteredness.  her vulnerability.  how in twenty years she could be a student, or a whore, or a mother, or a lawyer, or an organic gardener, or a corpse, or work at a slaughterhouse.  how all this is hers alone to understand.  her family.  how they loved her, how they suffered.  and not just the big vague words.  hugs, kisses, tears, screaming, christmas, funerals.  gestures, actual gestures in my imagination.  arms, skin, hair, the feeling of clothes.  feet in sandals walking.  the future.

all this took place in about three seconds.

so like i say, i really don't have time and space for anything which doesn't please me.  the real pleases me.

sometimes i use the paradigm of magic.  erin, i think you are fully into white magic.  you do as much good as you can without ruining your life at it, and make an effort to variously avoid or not cause the bad things.  and i mean this happens with no pretension, no naivety.  it is possible folks.  i've witnessed it - it's gentle and beneficial and joyful and fertile.  don't ask me how to do it though.

because i'm into black and white magic.  jillian, i think you may be trying this too.  grey magic is about looking hard and not looking away.  i think terrible things sometimes, things which haunt me.  but i don't whine and scream about it, or seek therapy, or try to escape.  i simply understand intuitively that awful, horrible ideas are real and must exist and i make room for that.

am i fucked up?  if you think everyone is, then yes.  if you think only some people are, i highly doubt it.  to all appearances i am a thoughtful, kind, considerate, generous and happy young man-about-town and that is how it pleases me to appear.  because the reactions of the people i am around please me when i'm kind.  and in a squishy, indefinable way, i just plain like people to experience niceness.  the reason why this is squishy is because you should never do anything just because it makes someone feel good.  if you can't think of a single good thing coming for you out of something, forget it.

this isn't callous.  it's just analytical.  you can't live for other people.  that is how people rot in the middle.  but if you're fighting and fighting as i am to express that infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering part of yourself that is the Good we can never rightly define, then it will please you to make people happy.

but that Good thrives on autonomy, on being a whole person.  trust me.  so i will seem selfish at times, i will stare and step into the blackness and i will do dark art if i want because it's a dark world i see people casting light into.

i am going to do some amazing things.  but if you provoke me i will hold up a glass to you, and begin telling you things on the basis of what you need to hear, not what you want.  i am the fully expressed swiss army knife.  if you hug me i will stick you but i'll also hug back.

who of you can show me a glass?  i challenge you.  make me form a single phrase for 'mercy' and 'i love you'.

© 2009