A praise chorus

The creator of the universe
The father of our hope

It is in our broken failures and death that you are shining, not glittering but shining as though perfection and sunlight were one; a strong light that shatters all clouds and darknesses and all of our petty instants

The author of all narratives
The first and the final

An eternal tube piercing time and space and scattering it unto infinite ends O! how we will never understand the depth of your infinity, of your love, of your knowledge, of your creativity. O God who holds me so precious be praised above mine eyes, so blind; lead us forward to your purposes and into your kingdom that is a kingdom that will endure after all eternity has passed, after time itself has long died

Stay with me

Be a father where I have not known a father
Be my strength where I have not strength
Be a friend where I have not known friendship

Why no regrets and a mountain of regret are the same

When you have no regrets you deny the past saying "I would never go back to that moment or to any moment because I did it perfectly the first time" and thus this enables you to plunge headlong, dancing into the future with a recklessness characterised by suicide. You can never make a regret and so your future is assured: it is success! Congratulations!

This attitude is the same as having mountains of regrets. These people wander around shackled to their past like prisoners, they drag it and weep on it and spend endless amounts of time trying to intellectually break free from it. Their binding to the past is their assurance of their future, which is why these two polar extremes are the same, both are suicidal and both will achieve what they invest in, the truly cursed are those who carry regrets and success; they are stricken with uncertainty and a fear of more regrets yet still hopeful of more success. You would expect this to amount to balance but no; they are paralysed by either hope or fear (when you examine this deeper it really boils down to false hope and fear; false hope springs from fear so it really is just fear).

This was supposed to be a daily thing

I started this blog to promote creativity, the idea was that people would read it and think I was a genius and leave all manner of comments and praise thus inspiring me to write more and more and with an overwhelming momentum behind me I would be propelled into a literary career sure to dazzle and sparkle and yet puzzle and befuddle at the same time.

The dream has died. My blog is almost untouched and virtually unread. I think and glorify everyday the position of a writer and how romantic it would be to hole myself up in a small room for weeks on end with nothing but a typewriter and walls made of literature. I always marvel at how writer's, such antisocial beings, manage to produce such sharp indictments of the modern world; surely it has to be pure genius. More likely than that though is the power of words. If it is a printed source do I take it to be truth? To what lengths do I evaluate the writer's opinion? Perhaps such a critical rethinking is a bad thing, I mean it largely just produces mountains of critics and few appreciators (something we seem to have these days).

The problem lies in our desire to snatch glory for ourselves (when I say our I mean my, and when I say ourselves I mean myself). Through being a critic rather than something proactive (a critic is reactive) we are able tear down an upheld value or piece or achievement in a hope of placing something of our own in that place, there is of course use in being a critic (such as maintaining a quality or fostering progress) but this I think has died in my generation and in it's place is a clawing, desperate golem with green eyes.

What do I ever say? Nothing, the answer is nothing. Ever.

I am a perfectionist

I have a lot of conversation with a lot of different people but it always seems to revolve around one thing: the vacuity of my generation and my consequent isolation from it. I love my generation, I love how we are opposed to everything, how we are cynical and how we prefer the easy way out, mainly because we lack vision for the future.

Despite all this love I have no idea how to be a part of my generation; I feel outside of it, like a detatched spectator who is much older and is able to grow a decent amount of facial hair. So I have all the disadvantages of being isolated and distant but no advantages of being able to have a beard. I often go to pubs and just sit there, I try and just listen to conversation but nothing really interests me these days; people mostly just talk about other people anyway, about what Sarah said and- oh my god- what Dave did to Brad for Kate. Somebody occasionally want to talk to me but I mostly exude some terrible smartass, knowitall complex.

A question I like to ask people is: what do you want to be when you grow up? This doesn't get me very far though, in fact, most of the time people's ambitions resort to getting drunk or 'scoring' that night. I confess, on my best nights I cannot be so sure of what I am to do. It is in this way that these people are better people; they are sure, they know and then they act. They make positive decisions (that is, they make decisions to do, I make decisions to not do) and end up in exactly the place they knew they would. What is more is that they all cascade into that place between fits and laughter and being barely able to walk, a druken stupor of alcholism and elation.

I drink to forget usually, forget that I am tormented by an anti- existentialism. I pretend that I am making decisions to become something, striving to a noble and great existence. I think that I am more likely to tie myself off in a knot of confusion and intellectual puzzles. Soren Kierkgaard defeats himself utterly in this regard. He comes to the conclusion that the highest sphere of life is religion, these days religion is relagated (academically speaking) to the reaches of superstition and a lack of resolve or ability to 'do' life. Kierkgaard said that the paradoxes of religion (especially Jesus, the supreme paradox) were to be accepted as a sign of faith and that was a measure of our ability to recognise our inability. Philosophy is a tangle of giving up, we can never really know anything, never know if anything exists or how to act; how then should we act? We are cursed with the knowledge of our uncertainty, yet we must move forward lest we be swallowed by the deluge of progressive society as we stand back and think in a sea of runners.

I hope to be something someday, to make a decision that is not perfect but right.

Inspiration

There are times when you simply lack motivation or ideas and you just cannot bring yourself to write, right now is one of those times. So, in an effort for inspiration I sometimes use a dictionary to find a random word, which then gives me an opportunity to write on a topic.

My word is "MODERNISM"; really. I cannot believe I got modernism. I have to write an essay on fundamentalism as a reaction to modernism and I am also reading a few books on the idea of modernism, so I guess this blog will have to serve as a precursor to work I should be investing in.

Descartes is often described as the father of modern philosophy (and modern mathematics) and in terms of epistemology (the science of knowledge, how we know things) he proposed an absolutism that typically characterises modernism. He set out to find 'first principles' that is, indisputable knowledge on which we can build Truth (yes, capital T) consequently in this search for Truth he was led to the famous maxim: "I think, therefore I am". Today, at least in the last six or seven decades this absolutism has been eroded, at least at a scholarly level. A new epistemological understanding is taking shape, one largely proposed by those crafty, crafty French.

I cannot believe modernism was the word I got, it makes for a horribly boring blog. I am going to change the word then, to "MODEM", I didn't pull it from a dictionary, instead there is one right in front of me.

Modem o, modem, that is all I have got. Nighty night.

It came full circle, ugliness

We are all hopeless, it cannot be escaped. My heart is still beating but I feel as though my soul has stopped beating with it a long time ago. My soul is not a living thing but in a state of dying, like it has achieved its peak and is gradually fading away into a death, into a severance of body and soul, where my being will be split asunder (I have always loved that word, it speaks of lighting bolts and incomprehensible power; anything that is beyond human comprehension is worth recognition). What has propelled me toward such a bleak and unsatisfying end? I do not know.

I do know that my friendships are strictly business: "what is that you do?", "what is that you can do?", "what is it that you can do for me?". There is a strange space that exists between a connection and the hope of a future connection. You meet someone new, someone different perhaps, or beautiful, or admirable, talented, intriguing or just someone like yourself. In this meeting the opposite person is thinking that you possess some of the previous qualities and so some form of connection is established and you both leave your first meeting in the hope of another. You are too shy, too afraid of rejection or too convinced of your worthlessness to think that they would be also thinking the same thing. And so you see your hope around, here and there but never to approach just in case you spoil the sacred moment of your first meeting. Every exchange of words from then is weak and makes you feel short of breath, you squirm and glance away, looking for a way out or an easy way in, forget about it, you cannot walk upright through a crack in the brickwork.

Then, of course, there is that rare and decisive moment of hope in which a step of uncertainty is made and a connection is remade, in that oxygen instance you have floods of ideas and unity, passion and an unstable desire to conquer the world. Or you could just kick them in the face and spit on them running away quickly so that as they see your back a voice whispers in their head that eventually spews out of every orifice cursing and remembering what you did in between shaking their head and shaking the heads of everybody they know. You know better than them.

You always did.

Welcome ignorance!

Why do we all wish that we were more idotic? I feel as though our generation, more than any other, are content to while away the time in recreation and abasement. It is because we can, right? We have no pressing danger or immediate urgency and so we are allowed to waste our lives in a material squalor. Sing, Sing the message of our generation to the older, the younger, the poorer and there are no richer.

"You need more stuff"

Echoes the chorus while the verses rattle off the ills of society worth fleeing from:

"learning, critical thinking, books, questions; these are the dangers we face"

We are the idiot nation, welcome ignorance!

Committing, quitting

I work at Word Bookstore, Word is a Christian bookstore chain who take advantage of the Christian consumer market and while purporting to sell 'resources' usually only advertise what sells rather than what is actually good. What does it mean to commit to your ethics? I believe that Word exploit the weaknesses within the church in order to make money. I vehemently disagree with this but should I quit on the basis of such a belief?

I had a conversation once with a friend who said that I was thinking too small if I didn't take a job based on ethical values. He said that it can be our duty to enter a workplace and reform it; to change it from the inside out. I would have preferred to extricate myself from the world and create my own bubble of community that lacks the reality of tragedy.

This begs the question, what is fundamentally wrong with Word? It surely is not the people I work with who are some of the most creative, loving and passionate people who I know. The conclusion I have rested with is the capitalist framework in which Word operates. The enemy of capitalism has always seemed to be communism, or some form of socialism. At the core of socialism is the other, whilst the core of capitalism is the self. Saying that, the answer is not workplace socialism; that is equally as wrong and would place a business outside the field of real competitiveness. The answer is dedication to the other, as opposed to the self.

Capitalism crumbles at humility and servanthood as it is built on a foundation of competition and comparison. The furthest we can move toward humility is embodied in the greatest victims of our western salvation, the homeless. If, as a functioning business, we were to support the most poor and destitute of our society how would that change a business? Obviously I am in no position to make executive decisions about who we support corporately; but I am endeavouring to influence a quiet revolution. In my few encounters with manifest brokenness (the homeless) I have come to terms with the lack of character inside myself. I believe Jesus called us unto people like this for our benefit and not theirs; I realise this now because I have nothing, beyond dollars (which are hollow to starving people), to give.

It is my goal to use the vehicle of industry and commerce as a ironic catalyst for social change; much in the vein of the Horse of Troy. Such a business I think would have to be retail in essential nature as this provides the greatest opportunity for human connection. If anyone reads this (which is unlikely) and feels gravitated toward something new and anti- anti then please either comment this or message me through myspace, the link is on your right.

My ideas are just ideas, but I hope to cultivate some commitment in myself.

Neglect

Plato talks about education being the answer to all wrongdoing. He says that we only do wrong things out of our ignorance and that if we really knew the effect of what we did we would not do it. I thought this was really good but after consistently desiring good and failing to achieve it I see that it is not through not knowing the good that I fail but an undisciplined and lacking life. The worst of me always comes out when I am complacent and neglect the responsibilities I committed myself to.

I am reading Silas Marner by George Eliot and have four pages left; four and yet I cannot bring myself to pick up the book and finish. Also on my reading list at the moment is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

Textures

 

That ether sky

I often walk alone at night
my shoes nearly falling off and
my mouth bustling with words and phrases

The ground falls away and gives unto
the lonely sky that swallows up
in order to give wonder a new birth

I always preferred a country sky,
the stars cascade and bow in
cosmic decadence, the entire universe was for me

I often walk carefully at night
and you should take my busy hands and
brush them softly, whispering that

that I don't have to...anymore.

Control

This is such an ambiguous concept, but then I guess any abstract noun presents difficulties. I mean, I say something (like control) and who knows what it rattles in your brain; it moves through the conduit of your previous experience and forms a terminally subjective meaning that is far removed from what I am talking about. Hence, virtually all of post- modern philosophy ends up tearing up the classical philosophers because the words they used really have no meaning, words are dead. Can we connect? I do not really know.

Anyway! I am supposed to be writing on control.

The word would mean that we have some mastery of our environment, a feeling (real or imagined) of authority. The greatest degree of this control could lean toward power but the least degree of control would fall into the jaws of helplessness. We are told that control is a good thing, that control is directly linked with purpose, that if we purposefully strive ahead and control, take-a-hold-of our situations that will turn out the way we want them. For the most part, this is true and not a bad thing; illusion, however, is.

Control is necessary but even more important is looking like we are in control, because if we can't be in control then why not at least seem like it? Right? I realise that all these issues (that I blog about) stem from a core problem but I will not address this problem just yet. I grip the illusion of control like grim death, as if you imagining I had control would count to real control. The short story is my life has moved beyond my control and become a monster of it's own. I used to think that this was a fantastic thing but it has moved into areas to which I never wanted, let me illustrate.

A hydra is a mythical beast, when you cut off one of it's heads it simply grows two more to replace it, making it virtually unbeatable, Hercules did apparently but God only knows how. My life is much like a hydra, I had a single head or purpose; then it got cut off. To compensate I grew two heads, diversifying my purpose and not limiting my options, sounds like sensible business to me. By 21 I have had my head cut off so many times that I have about 57 heads and I do not even know which one I really am, this angry monster now just rampages following whichever head is out front. I have a complete lack of control despite every head being a part of my body that just feels the weight of the world crushing it.

I am the hydra, and you are next.

Night times

I was hoping to have my next blog entry broken up by photos and I have heaps of them ready but a friend has the cable and so I can't take them from my camera just yet. So, in a desperate attempt to not lose momentum this blog entry will be another all - text one.

People do not know what they want, I think maybe it could be that we are all afraid of what we want or that what we want is 'wrong' and so we don't stop wanting it but instead just deny that we want it. Which brings us to an interesting situation... when we pretend not to desire something we have to pretend to desire something else. This blurs the line between reality and fiction; and how do we know what we want if we really don't want it? I think we have to take our cues from somewhere or someone else.

For example, somebody seems to be doing really well wanting a full- time job that is not nessecarily fulfilling but it pays the bills as well as a weekend of excesses. He is able to work this job with minimal stress and has even been promoted. Now, you, on the other hand, don't want a full- time job. You think you want to do something creative and different to change people's minds and hearts while retaining your soul. You really want to be brilliant. Mr Jobs (as we will call him) seems to be achieving some form of brilliance, at least on the weekends, if nowhere else. He has enough money to treat his social inadequacy with drugs and alchohol and seems to be unaffected by it, I mean, his work is not a place that demands integrity. What is it that you want? Brilliance. Who says what brilliance is? The answer is simply other people, they weigh your worth. Mr Jobs is your new standard of brilliance and so you begin to take cues from him without actually realising that he does not share your desires to maintain the goodness of his heart and purity of character. You sold yourself short for a cheaper dream imagined in the mind of bang gangers and junkies.

I don't think I came to a point but I rarely do, writing can only reflect life and right now my life serves little purpose other than capitalist waste and consumption. With all our false wants and confused ideas we career through an oblivious existence to an obvious end.

Prattle, prattle

What is the point of a diary / blog / thinking?
I pretty much have no idea but exploring other blogs makes me think I should be doing one of the following:

a) Writing about the daily happenings of my life, which would interest virtually nobody and only serve to justify anything stupid I do.

b) Grinding some axe or agenda, unfortunately this generally requires some kind of opinion based on either a big life experience (like beating cancer) or having a giant asshole complex.

c) Exposing the secret dirty underbelly of something. Again I am not deeply involved in anything that has a dirty underbelly, and I am certainly in no place to expose it if I am.

d) Whining.

e) Exhibiting my flowing and gorgeous prose and beating off book offers with a golf club.

It is abundantly clear that in order to achieve the fame, respect and unrelenting adulation of the world I will have to do all five. So that means: daily happenings, an agenda (probably brotherhood of humanity or something), dirt (Sydney has enough to fill plenty - a - blog), whining (something I seem to do ad nauseam) and brilliance (again ad nauseam).

You forget, this is nothing new.

This is nothing new, so if that is what you are after, forget about it. I am the cut copy of millions of others and in all my efforts to distinguish myself I have only succeeded in separating myself from success (in material terms).

In a class the other week another student said that life is just a parade unto death, that in life we simply move toward our eternal destiny, which he believed was a really long sleep, a sleep for eternity in fact, he also said that eternity frightened him. I guess this is understandable as it comlpetely inconceivable to our human minds. His fear also lay in the fact that nothing good stays good, so whatever lay behind eternity (however good) could not be eternally good. If this life is a waterfall into oblivion / eternity; what contributes to making a difference to eternity? If eternity is a reality then is my immediate physical experience is simply a distraction? It would make sense since we know that from science that the physical body dies, thereby rendering all physical attainment pointless and foolish. I heard on the radio that philosophy is not about prescribing right answers but about asking right questions, having said that, what is the purpose of a question? In the English language it would be to obtain information, and certainly when we ask questions of philosophy and of life we obtain information but it is not calculable or measurable. We would be rendering character unto ourselves with this information, rather than achieving a peaceful answer. So we are left with a negative proof, in the Socratic tradition, crossing off all possibilities and proposing no new solutions.

So much of my life is socially constructed and I have no desire to escape it's tentacles because without it so much of my pleasure will disappear. As a result of this conclusion tonight will be a party and probably a messy, regret filled night. Socrates, shake your head.