howdy...
Somedays I feel like I have been shanghaied onto Ahab's doomed whaling ship the Pequod...
My bunkmates are Ishmael and the tattooed wonder Queequeg...
My part is to fill the space between them while the rest of the story swirls around me, Queequeg harpooning the great beasts and Ishmael lurks gloomily around the deck house watching the one legged captain scan the horizon for the burning ambition that dooms us all.
"Where is that damned Malaysian 777!" he grumbles as others hide the truth and he chews on the fat of his imagination. "It's been two weeks..."
The thing about the Dick story is that Melville based it on true accounts of whalers who, like himself, spent time in the great Pacific Ocean. Some of them never to be heard of again, as an occasional whale might ram their boat or ship and send them to the bottom.
The mystery of the real.
Their travels only slightly making an impression on those few who knew them...
Like us all.
Today, we wonder at how on this planet we could have lost an entire aircraft with 270ish or so people on board.
Poof, it's gone into the deep, maybe? Pakistan?
I'm betting on the Indian Ocean, or somewhere else...
Some, throwing their bones of chance and speculation on CNN, wonder if a new black hole could have swallowed them in their entirety, leaving no evidence of their passing.
Others like to cast the bizarre plots of TV shows and movies around like this is indeed a fiction that we can manipulate with our ideas and wide-eyed craziness until the final act when everything will be resolved.
I have speculated that the plane is imbedded in my left side, because I had a cancer there for seven years and no one could find it...and, roughly, it was the size of a lode stone...but, I digress, again...
Somehow, I think the ending with have nothing to do with all the beginning.
Can you imagine going to a movie with these people. They'd be chirping the entire time about what they think will be happening next. Homicide would be happening next. That's a guaran--tee...
I stand amazed as Queequeg and Ishmael gaze upon the world with inquisitive eyes wondering how we can play the games of the shore keeper, stunted in our imaginative growth that only surmise a fiction from the truth by forgetting that it is indeed the reality of our time bending their minds into inadequate contraptions of what they want it to be, instead of what it is.
But that is the power of self-delusion...
Indeed, have we become so civilized that the only answer is the one we can think of, a product of an overheated imagination and not the truth-evidence? Somewhat narcissistic, too. Think politicians here of any color.
The truth is a distraction and it gets in the way of reality...which will all be forgotten when reality sinks in and we have to admit that aliens have not come and abducted our Boeing 777...
Although I know aliens are watching me, they drive an old Ford truck and work at the local On the Border...they're very nice but have no interest in Boeing airplanes...a new toro lawn mower or weed-wacker, maybe, but not a Boeing...
We are an impatient bunch of monkeys.
I was reading an interesting piece the other day about what separates us from other things in the universe, like the grass in our back yard or the rock that lines the Maine coast...
It is our consciousness. Otherwise, we are just machines. That was what made Queequeg so interesting, an alternative consciousness to the mundane reality of Ishmael or the machinations of madness by Ahab, the captain.
And to be conscious is to have a subjective understanding of the events that mark our lives. A short digression, some people do believe that grass and rocks have a consciousness, just one to which we can not (yet) communicate...
It doesn't mean that because we have a subjective understanding of the events that that makes them correct. It just means we have feelings that give them significance in our emotional worlds.
I mean really, look around, there are many states of consciousness altered by our beliefs of ethnic purity, pluralism, left wing, right wing, Shiite, Sunni, Hindi, Buddhist...and Christians seem to be everywhere preaching peace and understanding between people...I wonder if that will ever catch on?
What the fuck are we supposed to do with all this consciousness...I mean, gawd, it's everywhere...
It's a MF overload...of consciousness...we are simply too subjective for our own good...being a rock might be OK, look at their lifespan...
And the more we communicate our consciousness into the world, the more reality is dissolved by it...because whose consciousness is the correct one...???? I am thinking Putin's consciousness is in the lead right now.
As someone who has tried to understand my place in the flow of the Pequod's cresting through the waves, my shipmates many times confuse me while Starbuck handles his morning coffee with the cynical eye of someone who deals with authority gone mad...
Reality is illusive and truth is subjective...don't we know how unimportant we are?
When did we forget that? It's hard to keep track when we are looking for the next piece of information that will do nothing but excite a part of a brain that we are not currently using...
We love to be distracted because it is stimulating, and nothing results from it...sort of like watching a SYFY movie...the Japanese used to distract themselves in the 50s by watching Godzilla movies, of course after being crushed in the war, they needed a distraction that had nothing to do with reality, that was a dose too strong for them...so bring on the giant lizard...
The currents of history and time are our own creation, we try to lunge after them and hold them prisoner, like some vast beast that we can conquer and control.
"Put the giant lizard back in the cage!"...
We are forgetting our own mortality. The distractions of what we want it to be always gets in the way...every once in a while we get a wakeup call, but that's hard when you're punching the hell out of a little plastic phone that constantly requires attention...it's worse than having a misbehaving child...
The more we conquer, within the confines of our limited understanding, colored with the subjective feelings of the small beasts that we are, the less we are able to understand the limits of our world.
We think we're beyond the patterns of behavoir that appall us, only to find, that no, we still are capable of being a beast pounding our chest in the forest...
Ride a bus, a plane, or stand on a street corner, everyone is looking into their palms for the latest information over which they can deign to have an opinion, (the modern version of simian chest pounding) like that will give them some power over events that have nothing to do with them...
I cast my eyes to the horizon and look for the whale, I only see the long drawn line of blue against blue, whilst the sounds of the creaking ship moan below and the dragging of Ahab's leg scraps against the wooden deck...
The only pattern of consciousness that I can see uniting us is that we either really only want a window seat or an aisle, preferable an aisle...Ishmael gets the window and Queequeg gets the aisle...he will need the extra legroom....Ahab will not be making the flight...he is otherwise busy.
random thinking gone astray....excuse me, I have to go see if they found they plane yet, or if the Russians are in Kiev...
best, tim
Somedays I feel like I have been shanghaied onto Ahab's doomed whaling ship the Pequod...
My bunkmates are Ishmael and the tattooed wonder Queequeg...
My part is to fill the space between them while the rest of the story swirls around me, Queequeg harpooning the great beasts and Ishmael lurks gloomily around the deck house watching the one legged captain scan the horizon for the burning ambition that dooms us all.
"Where is that damned Malaysian 777!" he grumbles as others hide the truth and he chews on the fat of his imagination. "It's been two weeks..."
The thing about the Dick story is that Melville based it on true accounts of whalers who, like himself, spent time in the great Pacific Ocean. Some of them never to be heard of again, as an occasional whale might ram their boat or ship and send them to the bottom.
The mystery of the real.
Their travels only slightly making an impression on those few who knew them...
Like us all.
Today, we wonder at how on this planet we could have lost an entire aircraft with 270ish or so people on board.
Poof, it's gone into the deep, maybe? Pakistan?
I'm betting on the Indian Ocean, or somewhere else...
Some, throwing their bones of chance and speculation on CNN, wonder if a new black hole could have swallowed them in their entirety, leaving no evidence of their passing.
Others like to cast the bizarre plots of TV shows and movies around like this is indeed a fiction that we can manipulate with our ideas and wide-eyed craziness until the final act when everything will be resolved.
I have speculated that the plane is imbedded in my left side, because I had a cancer there for seven years and no one could find it...and, roughly, it was the size of a lode stone...but, I digress, again...
Somehow, I think the ending with have nothing to do with all the beginning.
Can you imagine going to a movie with these people. They'd be chirping the entire time about what they think will be happening next. Homicide would be happening next. That's a guaran--tee...
I stand amazed as Queequeg and Ishmael gaze upon the world with inquisitive eyes wondering how we can play the games of the shore keeper, stunted in our imaginative growth that only surmise a fiction from the truth by forgetting that it is indeed the reality of our time bending their minds into inadequate contraptions of what they want it to be, instead of what it is.
But that is the power of self-delusion...
Indeed, have we become so civilized that the only answer is the one we can think of, a product of an overheated imagination and not the truth-evidence? Somewhat narcissistic, too. Think politicians here of any color.
The truth is a distraction and it gets in the way of reality...which will all be forgotten when reality sinks in and we have to admit that aliens have not come and abducted our Boeing 777...
Although I know aliens are watching me, they drive an old Ford truck and work at the local On the Border...they're very nice but have no interest in Boeing airplanes...a new toro lawn mower or weed-wacker, maybe, but not a Boeing...
We are an impatient bunch of monkeys.
I was reading an interesting piece the other day about what separates us from other things in the universe, like the grass in our back yard or the rock that lines the Maine coast...
It is our consciousness. Otherwise, we are just machines. That was what made Queequeg so interesting, an alternative consciousness to the mundane reality of Ishmael or the machinations of madness by Ahab, the captain.
And to be conscious is to have a subjective understanding of the events that mark our lives. A short digression, some people do believe that grass and rocks have a consciousness, just one to which we can not (yet) communicate...
It doesn't mean that because we have a subjective understanding of the events that that makes them correct. It just means we have feelings that give them significance in our emotional worlds.
I mean really, look around, there are many states of consciousness altered by our beliefs of ethnic purity, pluralism, left wing, right wing, Shiite, Sunni, Hindi, Buddhist...and Christians seem to be everywhere preaching peace and understanding between people...I wonder if that will ever catch on?
What the fuck are we supposed to do with all this consciousness...I mean, gawd, it's everywhere...
It's a MF overload...of consciousness...we are simply too subjective for our own good...being a rock might be OK, look at their lifespan...
And the more we communicate our consciousness into the world, the more reality is dissolved by it...because whose consciousness is the correct one...???? I am thinking Putin's consciousness is in the lead right now.
As someone who has tried to understand my place in the flow of the Pequod's cresting through the waves, my shipmates many times confuse me while Starbuck handles his morning coffee with the cynical eye of someone who deals with authority gone mad...
Reality is illusive and truth is subjective...don't we know how unimportant we are?
When did we forget that? It's hard to keep track when we are looking for the next piece of information that will do nothing but excite a part of a brain that we are not currently using...
We love to be distracted because it is stimulating, and nothing results from it...sort of like watching a SYFY movie...the Japanese used to distract themselves in the 50s by watching Godzilla movies, of course after being crushed in the war, they needed a distraction that had nothing to do with reality, that was a dose too strong for them...so bring on the giant lizard...
The currents of history and time are our own creation, we try to lunge after them and hold them prisoner, like some vast beast that we can conquer and control.
"Put the giant lizard back in the cage!"...
We are forgetting our own mortality. The distractions of what we want it to be always gets in the way...every once in a while we get a wakeup call, but that's hard when you're punching the hell out of a little plastic phone that constantly requires attention...it's worse than having a misbehaving child...
The more we conquer, within the confines of our limited understanding, colored with the subjective feelings of the small beasts that we are, the less we are able to understand the limits of our world.
We think we're beyond the patterns of behavoir that appall us, only to find, that no, we still are capable of being a beast pounding our chest in the forest...
Ride a bus, a plane, or stand on a street corner, everyone is looking into their palms for the latest information over which they can deign to have an opinion, (the modern version of simian chest pounding) like that will give them some power over events that have nothing to do with them...
I cast my eyes to the horizon and look for the whale, I only see the long drawn line of blue against blue, whilst the sounds of the creaking ship moan below and the dragging of Ahab's leg scraps against the wooden deck...
random thinking gone astray....excuse me, I have to go see if they found they plane yet, or if the Russians are in Kiev...
best, tim
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