Short Fictiony Prose

Sometimes when I walk into a dark room I just know that there is something else there. I put the key in the door and I feel every little ridge sliding into place. I turn the key because I know I want to find it. I want to find that other thing in the room. I walk into the room and I don’t even turn a light on because I just don’t care anymore. I know what this thing looks like. I know what it feels like. It doesn’t feel soft and it doesn’t look friendly.

When I walk into the room my mind does this thing where it turns into several octopuses. It turns into a blue cloud and it lets all of its dozens of tentacles go in every direction. My mind becomes a blue fog because it wants to feel the space. It wants to know exactly where this thing is and exactly what it wants from me. But this isn’t really about what this thing wants. This is about what I want.

I wanted more than anything else to be eaten by something in the dark. I wanted this thing to walk towards me and breathe all over me. I wanted it to smell me without my knowledge. I want something to devour me. Something to take that kind of initiative and really just kill me. I would probably feel its teeth in my shoulder. I want to feel bones splintering. The sound would probably be one of the most remarkable things. The wet crunching of bone entering flesh that had never been there before. I want these teeth. These large and only felt teeth. I want all of them to come out of the dark. I want the hot breath to be mixed with these teeth. I’ll feel it all. I won’t scream though.

Like I said, I knew there was something waiting for me in the dark. I walked in because I wanted to be the one in the dark. I stood in the room and I didn’t reach for the light switch. I didn’t reach for the umbrella that I knew was next to the door. I didn’t reach for anything at all that resembled a weapon. I wanted to be eaten this time. I wanted to be the one that was pushed into my own life. I wanted to be the one that would be broken in all directions by a dark force.

Every night I came home and I knew this thing was in the dark. I turn on the light and I felt it moving. I felt it come towards me and disappear into something else. It would penetrate my imagination and make me think of it. I would be in the dark and it would be in different shapes and different forms. It never really exists until I imagine it. But at the same time i know that it has a definite form. It exists as a cave beast. It exists as something with spikes on its head. Something with spikes on its head but something that doesn’t even exist.

But on this night I wanted to let my imagination devour me. I wanted to let it rip my flesh and just let me die. Just let me die by these things in my mind. That is all I want. All I want is to be consumed by these things that will never leave my head alone. I want to be consumed by these things that exist within my bones. They will break free from the inside of me and show me the teeth they have always had. Then I’ll finally be able to feel the teeth of these parts of me that I love so much. I’ll be able to set myself free from this body that can’t consume itself. This mind that holds itself back from really thinking what it wants to think.

Monsters in the dark. If I gave them the chance to eat me they would. If I didn’t reach for the light switch every single time they would be able to rip me up. That is definitely what I want. I want to be in the dark with my carnivorous mind.

Doesn't Everyone Just Want Everyone/Someone to Love Them?

So I was just thinking about a few things. For one thing, I was looking at an online dating website where there is a section called "I Saw U." People go on this section and they write about how they saw someone in a certain part of the city and they say things like "oh I was walking on such and such street and saw you with your such and such dress and you looked great and we smiled but I didn't say hello. Lets hang out." Or they say something like "oh I was at this concert and we danced together but you left before I could get your name. Lets get coffee?"

It is basically a place where people can vent the frustrations that come from having fantasies of attractive people. What they are like. What they do. Who they are. How great it would be to know them. How great would it be to know them?

Not knowing people, yet seeing them, is so strange. All those clothes and styles. All that presentation and allure.

This also reminded me of a novel that I read a while ago. But I seriously cannot remember what it was. Maybe it was a short story. But in any case it is bothering me.

But the idea expressed in the fiction was this: that everyone wanted someone who would love them and care for them, and that there were so many hundreds of thousands of people in this world, that everyone should love everyone and someone. But people didn't want everyone to love them. That there were all these people who could satisfy each other's loneliness, but that that isn't how it goes.

How are there so many people in the world, and so many of them potentially lonely, yet so few of them able to find each other? What comes between these people? What prevents them from finding one another and feeling less lonely? At the very least they could feel alone together. Which sounds better.

This part of this website reminds me of what it is like to see beautiful strangers that you think you want to know. And that makes me think of how concepts get in the way of people. We think people are beautiful, or that their clothes or hair are great, that they look charming or exciting. People look certain ways.

But when we get to know someone do they still look those ways to us? Yeah, I guess people can still look certain ways when you get to know them. But it is different from how they look when we don't know them.

What I'm getting at is that when we actually meet someone they feel a certain way. They don't just look certain ways, they feel like something. They have a palpable shape in our lives and in our minds. Something about simulation and mental modeling.... People feel a way in my mind.

But I dunno. I find it all very odd and frustrating. The masses of people all around me and the difficulties of getting to know them.

I also wish that I could remember who wrote this thing that I'm thinking of. Who wrote about this loneliness that no one is assuaging. Why don't all these lonely people come together?

Because it is too easy to say what you don't like. Too easy to say that this or that person isn't your type or whatever.

This was a spur of the moment post. Who knows what I'm talking about.

Oh and then I googled all the novels I have read recently, which isn't many, and found the passage. It is from Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, which is probably my favorite novel I have read this year. Great novel.

If you care to search on google books, you can find the passage on page 179 of Sputnik Sweetheart.

Why do people have to be so lonely? Why do people have to not connect with each other? Why is it so hard to feel close to other people? Lots of reasons. I suspect language and mental modeling have something to do with it. Depersonalization, as a super loose idea. Who knows. But I want more connections. Maybe I should be more talkative and loving. I already am I think. But maybe I should be pushing myself harder to be loving and talkative.

Here I go.

Struggling to Execute This Essay

This essay I'm working on is challenging me pretty intensely. I have a rough outline right now. I can't decide if the whole thing needs to fall into four or five sections. Sections two and three might need to collapse into one another. Oh. Yup.

As soon as I wrote that line I realized that it had to.

Errr. Or maybe it doesn't. Oh. No. It doesn't. Now I just see that part II need to be a part general statement about how art is useful for both artists and the community. Then part III will be a series of ideas about how an individual can attempt to become an artist in his everyday life.

Yes. The parts will remain separate.

This essay looks like it will be pretty big.

But that is good. It'll be nice to have a work in progress. I hope I can find the time to finish it, with all this working and all.

I also started reading a fascinating book today. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr.

Hard for me to imagine someone who is doing a better job at merging all of my interests: neuroplasticity, contemporary culture, the transformation of minds in society. Most importantly, I feel like Carr is doing what I am describing as 'the genealogy of the modern mind'. He is describing what minds are like in this exact moment in history.

Work is fine. The apartment hunt is not so fine. But my reading and writing are going well. So what else really matters? Well, the short answer is lots of things. But my reading, thinking, and writing is keeping me going.

Some Notes For Next Essay: Collingwood, Searle, Language, and the Art of Life

So my time has been mostly occupied by work. But on the bus I have been making steady progress on Collingwood's The Principles of Art, and I can't believe how fruitful it is proving to be. Collingwood is handling some of the most fascinating questions and posing some very compelling and exciting answers. I'm so tired it is hard for me to even begin to think about it all.

But generally i am pleased because he just explicitly told me that all of our gestures, actions, and words could become a form of art. Which is precisely what I wanted him to say. My last major essay 'The Science and Art of Minds' probed that question, and I'm so happy to have Collingwood on my side with this idea that life itself can be an art form. I so badly want to find ways to be creative in my own life, and sometimes feel that my writing isn't satisfying enough. I want to find ways to explain how all life and decision making can be creative, how empathy and compassion can be creative. So on and so on and so on. Just like I wrote in that post called 'On Creativity', I want it all so badly. I want that artistic spirit.

I want words like fire.

I want life to be like flaming language.

I just mean that if every gesture can be language, as Collingwood says, then I want all my movements and actions to be powerful and expressive language. This is basically what I wrote about in my essay called "Social Progress and Personal Progress: Expanding the Unconscious Repertoire and Densifying the Content of Action." I want every action to be artistic and expressive. Every single action.

Impossible.

But I want this passion to be my goal. I want me to push myself to be constantly creative. Every word. Like I said, impossible.

Collingwood is making me so hyper aware about emotions and their expression. How exactly they interact with the intellect. What it is that the imagination is.

It is absolutely fascinating what Collingwood is doing in The Principles of Art. I can't even believe it.

But I generally am very interested with his idea about the imagination as a intermediary between emotions and the intellect. Imagination is the space where our emotions have been consciously recognized, but have not yet been fully intellectualized. We are able to imagine and hold sensation in place, but are not yet fully intellectualizing them, abstracting them. Art is the imaginative expression of our emotions. Not the intellectual expression, but the imaginative expression. And no, I don't fully grasp this distinction yet. I have so much work left to do with Collingwood.

Collingwood also says that all art is language. But that language is a much more general phenomena than just words and speech. Bodily movement is language. Every gesture is language. I find it interesting because Marco Iacoboni, the UCLA neuroscientist, also claims that language is fundamentally connected to hand movements. So I think Collingwood has a surprisingly contemporary view on what language really is all about.

I am also curious about how Collingwood talks about what the artist expresses is what everyone else already knows or feels. Sorta. He said, I think, that the artists job is to articulate the experience that he/she is going through, but that he is thus trying to remind other people in society what they are experiencing. The artists can become a voice for society, or something.

But let me just say what one of my main questions is right now with this work: if the artist is essentially using language to imaginatively express his emotions, and he is expressing a common sort of social experience, then how does John Searle's work in Making The Social World relate?

John Searle believes that all of human social and institutional reality can be explained by language's ability to bring certain realities into existence. Searle discusses 'status functions', meaning things that function in our own society only because people regard them as functioning in that way. Their status is the only thing that allows them to function in society. A great example is money. It has no real value. But everyone regards it as having value so we can trade with it. But one of the main things is that people don't have to be consciously aware of status functions in order for them to work.

Searle believes that most social/institutional reality is brought into being by 'status function declarations'. That when we declare something to be the case it thus becomes the case. When we say 'this is money' or 'this fence signifies the boundary of my property', we are literally bringing those things into existence. We are not discovering the fact that money has value, or that our property extends so far, we are literally making those things socially real by declaring them to be so. Thus, Searle claims that the status function declaration is responsible for the creation of all human institutional and social reality. What a huge claim, right? I find it somewhat compelling though.

So, my question is this: given Collingwood's concern with language, and his idea about how the artist expresses a common experience of the people in society, is it possible that what the artist is expressing is his feelings about the status function declarations that are framing his experience in society? Is the artist perhaps the person who discovers how his emotions are structured by his surrounding social environment, which is constituted by status function declarations?

My inkling at this point is that these questions are inadequate. I haven't yet finished The Principles of Art. I have about 50 pages left. I know that there is a relationship between what Collingwood is saying and what Searle said that needs to be articulated. But I can't do it yet. But given what Collingwood says about language, and the artist's relationship to society, it seems undoubted that Searle's work on the structure of human civilization has to have some implications for Collingwood's theory of art, which extends far into life.

Another thing: I think that Searle's work definitely has huge implications for what I have written about as 'The Genealogy of the Modern Mind'. Basically, if I am talking about how a theory of mind needs to be constructed in light of social/historical knowledge, then wouldn't this notion of status function declarations be useful in articulating precisely what sort of social information needs to be taken into account in order to construct a genealogical theory of mind? If I am saying that we need to think about how history structures minds, then doesn't this idea of status function declarations let us understand exactly what the structure of minds is? I think so. Very curious. Searle will likely be of great use to me.

Jesus. I sure do have a lot of weird ideas right now that I can't track down very clearly. My thinking is evolving in weird directions right now. Very exciting directions.

Calm it down now. That was a freestyle. Just wait til I sit my ass down and really write it. LOL just a little R. Kelly there. I was listening to that part of a song and it seemed appropriate.

When I really get around to studying and writing this stuff it will be great. But right now these are all vague connections that I am starting to see bubble up. I'll articulate them in the next few weeks hopefully.

I cannot wait to see how Collingwood wraps up The Principles of Art. Hot.

One Hundred Phrases for One Hundred Posts

1.This is my 100th post on this blog.

2. Good job!

3. I am pleased to have been able to write as much as I have.

4. Since March this blog has been a major thing for me.

5. It has felt fun and exciting.

6. It has been a unique way of expressing myself in a variety of ways.

7. It has let me have write journal entries with greater speed.

8. It challenged me to write philosophically.

9. It challenged me to write about the things I was reading.

10. It gave me a way to challenge myself.

11. It has been less of a part of my life in the last three weeks.

12. And I think that is fine.

13. But in August it was such a huge thing it was unbelievable.

14. But now I'm a barista and I don't have as much time for writing.

15. I will soon.

16. But right now my barista job has prompted me to look for an apartment.

17. I need to find a place to live.

18. Once I get some routine going then I can start thinking about my own thoughts again.

19. Because right now I have been thinking a lot about other people's thoughts.

20. Like 'What kind of coffee does this person want?'

21. Or 'How does this person say the best way to make coffee is?'

22. But all of that involves my own thoughts as welk.

23. Like, 'How do I best make coffee?'

24. Or, 'How do I learn to best make coffee?'

25. And then I did it.

26. I'm starting to gain a lot of confidence in my ability to make coffee and to do it well.

27. Steaming milk, pulling shots of espresso.

28. It is actually sort of fun.

29. It is very dynamic and fast paced.

30. I can move like the wind.

31. Or like some sort of gelatinous body.

32. I look forward to the fluidity of my physical movements.

33. I like seeing myself doing something automatically.

34. It pleases me to know that my body is capable of moving without my mind.

35. I read about these parts of the brain once.

36. Soon only motor areas need to be activated.

37. Initially my brain has to utilize more areas to pack a shot.

38. But soon it will all be in the motor cortex.

39. I don't know anything about brains.

40. Me and a friend talked about brains.

41. Is it dangerous to think in terms of brains?

42. Isn't it powerful to think in terms of brains?

43. Do I care about the power of these brain words?

44. BRAINNNNNSSSSSS.

45. WORDDSSSSSS.

46. BRAIN WORDSSS.

47. So says the zombie professor within me.

48. I am just ready to get back to writing.

49. I suppose today I felt for the first time like I could do this job for a little while.

50. At first I was like oh jesus I need to get out of here.

51. But now I feel like oh okay I could do this for a little while.

52. I suppose my main priority is simply to find a place to live now.

53. I'm looking into sharing houses with people.

54. Having my own apartment would be expensive.

55. But I don't know.

56. An indefinite series of days/weeks that will hopefully become more definite.

57. I'll find something.

58. Then hopefully I'll be able to pursue my creative projects with renewed vigor.

59. Collingwood's The Principles of Art sure is feeding my brain.

60. New lines of inquiry.

61. Diverse lines of inquiry too.

62. Challenging lines of thought.

63. Theory of Imagination.

64. Where do you get off, Mr. Collingwood?

65. Are you really so learned?

66. Are you really so potent?

67. I suppose my task is to be a judge of that.

68. How do you speak so effortlessly about the successes and failures of all the greatest philosophers?

69. How am I to speak of you so effortlessly.

70. The task is to get beyond Collingwood.

71. The task is to transform until I don't need to struggle with him anymore.

72. But I have a lot of struggling left to do.

73. I'm still in the thick of his thought.

74. Some day I'll hopefully be past him.

75. Some day I'll be able to have my own thoughts that contain his thoughts.

76. Or perhaps not.

77. August sure was a month of my own thoughts.

78. I wrote a lot.

79. A lot came out of me.

80. I just let it happen.

81. Mainly because I had the time and freedom to let it happen.

82. But right now I don't feel like I have the time.

83. Every time I write I feel my hunger for apartment searching.

84. I need to find a place to live.

85. Whether with people or with myself.

86. It is funny, I actually stopped writing after number 83.

87. I stopped to look for apartments online!

88. LOL!

89. But I'll find something.

90. I know I will.

91. I need to find something so that my mind can keep flourishing.

92. I need to make it so that my working and living is easy enough that I can do my own work.

93. I want to do my own work.

94. I've been able to read on the bus.

95. That has been really nice.

96. But what I need is to be able to write.

97. What I need is to make it to 200 posts.

98. I suppose that is the big deal with this 100th post.

99. And a good question to ask myself.

100. Will I be able to make it to 200 posts?

101. The 101st phrase, which is simply for good luck, says yes.

Immediate Life, Temporary Life, Future Life

I haven't been writing very much since I started working at this barista job. And that is fine. All well and good I suppose. Just very odd and confusing. Most things feel pretty odd right now.

That is fine I guess. It seems like I am just reverting to the same platitudes. 'Things are hard', 'I'm confused'. I don't even know what I've been saying anymore. I can't really express myself very well about what is happening to me right now. And that is the point of this whole journey. Was to get confused. To lose myself in my own life. To lose touch with knowing how to think. To be uncomfortable.

But the most interesting thing is the contrast between the theory and practice of that idea. It is really easy to read about how uncertainty is important. How putting yourself outside your comfort zone is a good thing and how it will help you think differently or whatever. All this theory of uncertainty. I've been exposed to a lot of it. But jesus this practice of uncertainty is way different and way harder. It hurts to be so unsure of what is going on. To really be this frustrated. It is a serious challenge.

And I don't know how to express what is going on in my mind or in my life. That is the immediate life I am referring to in the title. It is escaping my understanding. Life is happening too quickly for me to get a grip on it. Good, I suppose.

The other thing that I have been reminded of is the temporary nature of this life I am leading. It is totally temporary. It obviously won't be this way forever. But it is just impossible to tell what will come next.

Thus the temporary and future life I'm referring to. It is hard to feel the temporary nature of this time in my life because it feels so immediate and so demanding.

But there will be a future, undoubtedly. No stopping it. And that is good. I guess I feel pretty good writing about this frustration. It has been tough to write, just because I've been occupied by other things. And I should be doing other things even now as I write this. But whatever, I'm doin my thang.

I'll be fine. Just gotta keep moving forward.

I want to reflect soon on This is Water and I also want to reflect on metaphors of war. I have a lot of thoughts silently brewing in my mind, even if I don't have the time or energy to express them right now.

My False Awakening Waking Paralysis Dream

So I had this dream that was really strange. I had a false awakening, and in that false awakening I had waking paralysis.

False awakenings are when you think that you have woken up, the bedroom appears to be your normal bedroom, but then it turns out that you are actually still dreaming. False awakening.

Waking paralysis is when you wake up and your body can't move. I think this is a somewhat well documented phenomena. Your mind is fully awake and alert, you are awake, but your body can't move for a period of time. People often panic or something. But yeah, waking paralysis.

Also, I have really been thinking a lot about astral projection because of this dream. My past with reiki and yoga introduced me to a lot of things about astral projection, and I still find it very curious. If you haven't heard of it, astral projection is a self-induced out of body experience. People believe that in addition to our physical bodies we possess something called an astral body. And that there is a place called the 'astral plane'. A spiritual sort of realm where your astral body can travel. Some people think we have like 7 bodies or something. Astral body, physical body, emotional body, etherial body, so on. I forget.

But anyways that is the necessary background to what happened in this dream.

This dream had three parts. I know one of them came first, and then I can't remember which of the other two happened next. In the first scene I was in a huge room that was whitish gray. The walls were composed of giant slabs of something. Giant squares, like sidewalks are built of squares. The walls were soft though, I think. They may have been concrete. I can't be sure. But the room was enormous. Hundred foot ceiling. Huge panels on the walls.

I was flying in this room. And more interestingly, I was flying with another person who I knew was my 'master'. Whatever that means. He was someone who was a guide of sorts. And we were flying together, but not fast or forward or anywhere in particular. We were floating in a circle around each other. We were orbiting each other sort of. We were talking, but I have no idea about what. Frankly this scene of being in this huge room with my master was only a flash. I only recall one moment of orbiting with my master. I don't know what he looked like, but I know that he was there, and that he was my master.

I find that all very interesting because reiki and all that, martial arts, yoga, there are relationships that are like master/student type. Reiki masters, yogis. Perhaps not. But often the term master has these connotations of martial arts, spirituality, etc..

But then I was pulled from that space. I went to another layer of the dream. And this is where things get blurred between the other two aspects of the dream. This room with my master was the highest layer of the dream, and I know that happened first. Also, I remember one thing my master said. As I was being pulled from this top layer of the dream he said 'We'll talk about this next time we are here'. And then when I got pulled out of that layer and I was in the next layer I said 'But we aren't always here'.

Then the blurred two layers. But I think that the next layer was me in a white bedroom. And after this white bedroom was the false awakening paralysis.

So after I was flying with my master and I suddenly left that scene. He said we would talk next time we were there. Then I think I was in an all white bedroom with a king or queen sized bed. A big white bed with a white comforter and white walls and what bed posts. The bed posts had white balls on the edge of them. And when I said 'But we aren't always here', I was looking at one of these balls on white bed post and I was touching it with my index finger. I was talking to my master in this white room even though he was no longer there. It was like I had been pulled into that white room so suddenly that I was still finishing a conversation that had begun in the large white room.

Outside of this all white bedroom there was another room. And I knew that my mom was in that room. I don't know what she was doing there. I am pretty sure that we talked together, but I don't remember about what. But I knew I was going to talk to my mom. I'm sure I did.

Then I was suddenly no longer in that bedroom. I was in my bedroom at my aunt's house. I was lying down on my left side. My eyes opened very suddenly, and I couldn't move. I think this was still a dream, but I'm not sure. Maybe I really woke up and had waking paralysis. But for some reason I think it was a dream still. This was my false awakening where I had waking paralysis. I dreamt I woke up and had waking paralysis, but I think I was still just dreaming.

But in any case, when I had this false awakening I had a bizarre sensation of something extending out from my body. With astral projection people believe that your astral body and your physical body stay connected by something called the 'silver chord'. Sounds weird. But in this waking paralysis I had the sensation that there was a chord rapidly extending out from my body. Imagine what a spool of thread sounds like when it rapidly unravels. Imagine what a spool of thread feels like in your hand when it rapidly extends. Then imagine a giant invisible thread unraveling from the front of your body. Lying on my side the whole front of my body felt as if it was being pulled forward by the unraveling of this chord. I don't know what was going on. But in this false awakening I immediately thought that the unraveling I was feeling/hearing was my silver chord unraveling as my astral body moved through the astral plane. Really weird stuff. That was the final layer of the dream. I forget what happened when I woke up. I don't remember waking up. Or when it was or what it was like. But in this last part I definitely couldn't move, and definitely felt/heard an invisible chord unraveling from the front of my body.

Some people think that waking paralysis is caused when you astrally project during your sleep and then suddenly wake up. The idea is that your physical body can't move until your astral body returns to you. So if you suddenly wake up while your astral body is out of your physical body, then you will feel waking paralysis.

This was all really weird. I hardly ever dream. And this dream was quite bizarre and layered. It has really got me thinking about astral projection and potentially attempting it. Or trying to attempt it.

Psychoanalytic interpretations of dreams annoy me, which I think is funny. Because clearly they are legit and can be interpreted in those ways sometimes. But I dunno, it is tough to do. Sometimes it is easy to do. I just wish spirituality could be real in any way at all. I wish astral projection was real, or reiki was real. And that might be. I don't write them off. But it is just hard to know.

Weird dream.