What is an author?

I don't know what it means to be an author. I write, but that just makes me a writer. What is an author? An author writes a narrative – which need not be interpreted literally. A narrative tells a story, whether with words, pictures, musical notes, or a combination thereof. Am I an author? Other than my life, which I'm not even sure about, what can I say that I have narrated? Experience. The words, structures and relationships between characters... I have dictated them. I speak the words into them, to communicate what I mean to convey, flushing out the nuanced intricacies of my relationships. Yes, the plot, setting, and rising action are all under control. But when control is feigned, or it is trumped, I cannot be surprised. For these characters have realized the truth in being part of a narrative: that they too are actors and can change the story of they will it.

Every thought, a sentence. Every new thought, a paragraph. I indent, the way I enunciate with facial expressions. My grammar is my foundation. Sometimes I don't know it, and get corrected. Other times, I built off the suggestions that my grammar offers implicitly. Anticipating the rules keeps me one step ahead of the game, or whatever that's supposed to signify.

I write to be heard, a right in the herd
Righteous with words that ripen with verve.
A rite that's observed, rife with a worth
That might be absurd with rhyming averred.

But hey, expression is paramount so long as the message is conveyed. But who is qualified to interpret: is the author like an artist? Trying to capture a moment, an event, a scene, an emotion... with the observer left to ponder and guess at the precision of the artist's brush strokes? Everyday I'm Mona Lisa. Now try and figure me out. Sometimes I write to be clear, other times I write to be interpreted. A heuristic hermeneutic though perhaps too histrionic. I often write with hidden meaning – with such a slight allusion that I can appreciate the reference, but I wonder if anyone else can? Sometimes I even forget my own intended meaning.

"A masterpiece", I said.
"That's your piece?", she read.
"No, an artistic casualty", to pretend.
"Oh, I see", was her amend.

One can never insult an artist. An artist is always intentional, even when he is not. His cavalier demeanor hides nothing and everything at once. His secret is on his sleeve, but he is a magician, so you would never think to look there. Careful should you insult an author, or he may write you into his story as an unfortunate character. But be consoled in that every author needs inspiration, even for the uninspired banal characters.

Some stories never begin. Others never end. Some are told so well that, finding ourselves in them, we forget that they are being told all together. What if your life was but a story told: you can't remember the beginning, nor do you know how it will end. What then? Well, I'll tell you what then: nobody cares unless you do something with it. And I don't mean go out and get a job, get married with a mortgage and raise 2.5 kids, but something that is both different and worthwhile: author your own story, for christ sake.

An Unfortunate Occurance

I wonder... how often does one person ask another if the other would like to partake in an activity in which the former has little interest but only asks out of generosity to the latter? Or, how often do we offer another some of our food, hoping that the person will say no? Am I the only one? Such a happening, especially the first, is unfortunate. One person asks another disingenuously to partake in an activity. Let's say the second person, thinking the first earnestly wants to engage in activity with one yet is uninterested oneself, consents out of magnanimity because that person thinks it will make the other happy. But it doesn't make either party happy, as each is only doing it for the sake of the other, with true intentions concealed in their hearts. I wonder how often this occurs. I wonder how disingenuous or sincere people are? Of course, one can't generalize for all the time, but I wonder what percentage of people, across and within cultures, are disingenuous in their dealings with others. What does this portend for our impressions of others, if they are built on falsehoods, albeit with good intentions? I'm not so miserably cynical and misanthropically pessimistic as to follow this vein of thought to its end, but the question itself is worth asking...

Wanderer Above the Mists

There was a time, perhaps high school, when I used to search for words online that I thought described me. I would see where those words would lead me, usually toward various images, and in a manner of speaking I would derive meaning from those images - perhaps that I was not the only one or that there was a visual representation of how I felt inside - who I was.

I have long since ceased this practice. I no longer search for meaning in words, but words in meaning. I define myself; I am not defined. The agency matters. My direction has inverted. I have become the expeditious captain of my own life, rather than the wayfaring skipper. Enough with the metaphors. I can weave the most brilliant of tapestries, but it takes someone attuned - or perhaps simple-minded - to divine the meaning latent in their images.

That's what is all comes back to - the variable of understanding in the equation of perception. It all comes back to the desire to be understood, to leave clues that others might decipher, to understand another being for even a moment. I sought definition, manifested in image, as a mirror by which to feel understood, even if it was only by me. That alone, I submit, is a grand accomplishment that few can boast. I'm not even sure I can to be honest, but I'm getting close... Close to the perception of aperception - that is, sensation - just being and awareness of it. If a picture is worth 1000 words, then what of 1000 pictures? It's all an exponential curve approaching the asymptote of comprehension that can only be reached through empathetic inference grounded in experience. Words and images merely seek to convey what we fail to adequately communicate - pure sentiment. Each thought is a wave in the ocean of brain activity. Often we just ride the wave toward the equilibrium of the surf... bardo nothingness. But to share that wave with others... to be joined on that wave - what would that be like! Incomprehension. Failure to compute. We only know what can call to conscience, grounded in immediate experience. Memories are but a representation of that experience - potent yet alien. We've all been to the ocean, seen it in pictures and movies, read about it in print... but to actually be in it! No memory can adequately recreate the sensation coupled with disposition that leads to perception. We each experience it every time for the first time, and nothing comes close to conveying that exact experience. Such is the nature of thought. We've all been there, but who can live in a thought perpetually? [If only sharing was so intuitive, we would hardly have cause to do it and value it so.]

Even the darkest poems are too pretty

The nature of the universe is laboriously elusive. Save it for the physicists to posit and the theologians to conjecture. We often try to reduce life, the boundlessly vast abstract, into a one line pithy aphorism. Life is this, life is that. Maybe it would be best to start with what life isn't, if such an empirical proclivity were reducible. Wrong question, I say. Let's start with the answers and formulate the questions from there, Jeopardy style. Relationships: What do we cultivate with meaningful objects for utility and/or amusement? Enjoyment: what do we hedonistically seek in itself or as tangential diversion from our primary vocation? Answers: What do we hope to receive by asking questions? Sometimes, asking questions isn't helpful and we must simply assert or become content with the humanity of not knowing. Existentially, questions corrode our curiosity. Progressively, some surrender to innovation. Ontologically, they contribute to neurosis. Yet, we have them to thank for civilization's technological advancement, for hardly has an answer been provided to a question that no one asked. Several centuries ago, Thomas Paine remarked that these are the times that will try men's souls. A decade ago, Brad Pitt's character Tyler Durden asserted that we have no Great War or Great Depression... our Great War is a spiritual war. Out Great Depression is our lives. We don't need to understand Einstein's theory of relativity to decipher this. We live in a New Age of pick and choose religion, even if we or the spiritual merchants don't understand what we're picking and choosing. We live in an age of psychology, in which every perceived pathology that strays from normalcy can be explained away or cured through synthetic (or more recently, herbal) supplements. God is not dead, as Nietzsche asserted or some post-Holocaust thinkers tried to rationalize. No, God never existed until we created God. God exists in our personal projections of the miraculous and abnormal. God exists in the tiny pill consumed to achieve a desired a/effect. Man was not created in God's divine image, but God has been created in man's diabolical, hedonistic, panacean image. Life becomes transcendent when the here and now no longer feel as such. Existence, then, is the passive passivity of participating in what we secretly and consider mundane yet outwardly strive to convince ourselves and others of how special everything is. Alas, we return to life, traversing the tightrope between existence and transcendence. Life is or is not anything. It can be what we make of it, and not what others tell us it is or is not. We tend to synthesize what we hear and read, internalizing those ideas we find helpful and interesting and discarding those that are not. As such, despite our vast similarities, we are all unique in the technical sense of the word. That is, unique meaning dissimilar from any other and unable to recognize kinship. Our experiences, even those shared in some respects, can never be identical, for being reflective beings, what we experience is actually our raw experience of the world. Thus, perceiving through an interpretive lens, no two perspectives are the same. If this discussion seems convoluted and unhelpful, keep reading – not because I promise it will not be either of those things, but because it cannot be anything else, so you may as well see it to its conclusion. And what is that? In an ordered world such as our own, surely there exists some conclusion to this proof of scattered premises. The conclusion, rather, is definitively inconclusive. It has been said that every original idea has been thought by someone else. If this were true, however, innovations would cease to recur. However, philosophically speaking, we have passed through a number of ages, each with its hallmark philosophical ethos to demarcate it on the latter of existential progress. While there is no telling if that latter will ever end, there is solace to be found in the trendy idea of simplicity. As mentioned previously, though it is of little consolation to the insufferably curious, sometimes asking questions is unhelpful and will forthright lead to madness or perpetual discontent when answers cannot be presently discerned. Simplicity the mind to simplify life. Simplify life and happiness becomes that much more obtainable. Is happiness what is at stake? Wrong question. Sometimes, we must learn to just 'be' – to accept our present condition as the best possible experience we could be having and take it as it comes. Planning is only so good as the moment the plan is made. Therefore, accept life as a set of experiences beset solely for you to experience, sometimes with others, other times times by yourself. You are the protagonist of your own life story, as is everyone else. Accept your supporting role in the lives of others and embrace your lead role in your own life. That seems like a good enough road to trod, for sometimes good enough is all we can hope for.

Thoughts as they come

I think people turn to alcohol as a means of separation. People seek to separate themselves

The Internet is awesome. It's capacity for anything allows for unimagined possibilities and countless hours wasted or spent on obscurity.

Sitting around, just waiting for something to happen. Too disinterested to start something; too resigned to do what's suggested.

The efficacy of innovation seems to be dissatisfaction with the present and the willingness to break the mold.

Learning becomes enjoyable when the subject takes on the undertone of a deep interest.

Our Holographic Selves

This evening, I wanted to order pizza from Domino's. The only economic deal they really have involves order 3 pizzas. Now I wouldn't just order that much without people to eat it with, so I was thinking about who I could call over to just chill, eat pizza, and maybe watch a movie. I was taken aback by the realization that locally there are so few people I could call who would be unpretentious company. By unpretentious, I mean people who you can just be around and not feel like you have to be somebody – or rather, uphold some image. When did culture become so superficial, shallow, and dare I even say political? I am not removed from this judgment at all, but am merely observing this phenomenon. Why do we project such holographic personalities as interactive facades when our real, 3D selves are readily available? I don't even think it's a matter of choice for the most part, as it's become second nature and ingrained into our consciousness. Why is it so rare, at least it seems to me, to acquire company who doesn't judge, but just let's you be without discrimination? That's why I love occasionally indulging in weed and the one time I did shrooms. It allowed me to consciously become that person who doesn't judge – to accept those I was with for who they presented themselves to be – and be completely tranquil with my surroundings. But why should it take a substance to initiate this frame of mind? Humans are vastly capable beings with boundless aptitude for all things. Because of this great potential, we have yoked ourselves toward projecting illusory selves and other inauthentic activity. You may notice that it is often the "slow" kids – who are often made fun of – who are the most genuine beings, barring no pretension in their words or deeds. I refuse to believe such a disposition to be a lesser form of humanity. Just as the innocence and imaginations of children should be heeded for their inherent worth, so too do I think we should take note or the proclivity of those we regard as mentally challenged. We cannot afford to be so arrogant as to baselessly condescend anyone at all. Each of us has inherent worth and consequently something – if not a multitude of things – to offer society and one's fellow man, no matter how minuscule the impact.

Returning to the initial inquiry, I think that we conduct ourselves with such pretension (notice the word 'pretend' seems innate inside pretension) because we fear that our true selves will be judged, and worse, shunned and rejected for falling short of another's expectations. The reach of our insecurities, whether realized or subconscious, is far and wide – successfully internalized and pervasive enough to parasitically dictate our every action and reaction when considering its intended effect on others. What is it to know someone? To penetrate the protective guise that we purport, I think, and come to understand the motives of one's actions – that might be called knowledge of another. Knowledge of self is a whole separate matter. Few people, it seems, are reflective enough to observe their own maya, and fewer still adept enough to change it or cast off the veil of illusion. Not everyone is ready to be unplugged; this is true. Most are so hopelessly dominated by their own sense of purpose – the mere sugar coating over the self-infatuated bullshit in which they live – that to 'unplug' them would only unsettle them into a begrudging, fruitless existence.

There is no conclusion that I have reached here, only extrapolating the observation that we are unnecessarily convoluted beings who grapple with our sense of self by seeking authenticity and acceptance therein and without.

Everything for a Reason

I often wonder at the phrase 'it wasn't meant to be' or 'everything happens for a reason'. While I in my smug cynicism have tended to dismiss such remarks as existential cop outs, they are of undeniable merit. Sure, it makes life easier when we attribute the events in our lives that we don't understand or can't come to terms with to a higher order order or Reason (Logos) – with or without religious undertones – but are they founded at all? Are we arbitrarily less culpable that despite the implications of our actions, we might be exonerated and detached from our fruits since their seeds may have been mysteriously planted by something greater than ourselves? I think it's bogus, yet it helps us make coherent and sensible the world in which we live. Stating that everything happens for a reason is merely biding one's time until one can rationalize that reason, or until one forgets to do so. Failure to do so leads to bitterness and resentment that, without the mechanism of higher planning at work, would most likely dominate our psyches. Nobody questions the mundane things though. Nobody ponders over a glass of spilled soda, wondering what the greater reason behind it could be. We only justify the pivotal happenings in life – the ones that unless explained or made sense of, we arrive at an impasse of how to proceed in the manner that we had previously done. Such an existential impasse is only superseded by direct answers, or the catch-all Reason that directed a given event. Does everything happen for a latent reason? Sure, I'll acquiesce until I come across a better system of reconciling creative happenings in life with their lack ofimmediate justification.