Whimsical Laughter

Emotional Banter

2006-09-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

How much of emotion/sentiment should be reactionary, and how much should be deliberate?

Is the answer to this question entrenched in a descrimination towards the heart - as it is irrational - or in a preemptive attack against the needs of the body when in conflict with the convictions, ideals, beliefs of the soul?

The Confucian Conundrum

2006-04-10T00:14:00.000-07:00

Confucius' two ultimate questions: (that are indeed perhaps the two questions) 1) What is the way of human kind, and 2) How is everyone going to eat. Now sink deeply with me into the blood of these questions.

Again, to stress the importance of the body (Confucius posing such remarkable questions).

Also again, hunger exemplifies a perpetual state of our nature. It’s inevitably a matter of yielding to a different hunger that necessarily produces its corresponding kind of growth.

(Also again, this notion of again)

So the crucial question before us now is: growth in what direction, or perhaps more accurately, what kind of growth? (as different kinds represent different functions in the body that house different manifestations of beauty).

Today we twirl on the stage of the Enlightenment. We, the hopeless romantics, avert our eyes from the negative stigma that surrounds our costume. We may be perceived as committing heinous crimes such as being regressive, damaging, diluting, or God forbid, “selling out”! But after a few drinks are shared, this color combination reveals that we truly are not forsaking the beauty in wisdom, but rather we are answering the battle cry of William Wallace so to reclaim the pearls of an economically efficient human progression. We are the noble archaeologists who strive to resurface the sacred scrolls with the formula for bliss.

The brainchildren of this socially wrenching phenomenon, Adam Smith but even moreAyn Rand, have indeed found the most magical medicine of all. Just the aroma is entrancing. The maximization of wealth is achieved through the constant conjunction of the various items in the toolshed of the human nature. (This idea is analogous to the apparent infinitely increasing height of absurdity that is used as a device in pop culture such as ads or TV shows).

The idealist, bewildered again, quietly wonders as he stares into the mystical flames of philosophy. Surely all things do not fit into the shoes of, “holier than thou,” “sharper” and “better”. Perhaps this problem is yet another formidable arrow of the enemy, dipped in the poisonous excess of the Enlightenment. Or perhaps we are the ones being duped. It is our offspring who have reached the showers.

Undaunted, the enlightenment thinker smiles as a father to his curious child. We are not embracing regress or placing a tariff on freedom. For we are the true poets! We have risen to breathe from a different lung. To cultivate a different kind of fruit! We are not forsaking beauty. Is not the form of the body to energize its many different kinds of functions?

The third sort of ultimate question now arises: How great is the body we are to nourish?

But as the wind blows and the sun sets, beware! The moon of super human progression has been awoken. For on this level of eternal night, humans can become gods.

Another Sundry Sunday

2006-04-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

You can't buy this kind of sunscreen, even on the street. How did you find this? It's rarity causes quite a skin damage epidemic. Another good find you have is Paranoia - it is a flashlight that helps you to see things in hiding. Beware of Intellectualism because excess is unhealthy. Even worrying can be a drug. Be advised to oppose systems of a hierarchy as they stand against the body. Cultivate within yourself the highest respect for the body of the human experience. Be armed against modes of thinking that inhibit the flow of the divine sparkling river sailed upon during one's commute to creativity. Let us remember the words of Maynard James Keenan:

I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.

See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me.

Why should good art be hidden, Emily? How deeply do the roots of the stage grow?

Should we prefer foolishness to falsely held elitism that travels in a bloodstream outside the body?

"...many of us, however, lose our ability to recall our dreams as we grow older due to the relentless stress and concerns of our every day lives. " 1

I walked into a vaccum, as a child
Then I crawled from the womb, defiled

David Hume's Skepticism

2006-04-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

In my philosophy class, we've briefly touched on the great skeptic David Hume. My question to Hume is, why does he limit our ability to understand reality just to immediate sensation? It seems to me that the totality of Hume's brilliant skepticism for causality is evidence enough that immediate sensation can't possible be big enough to accommodate the needs of a metaphysical system.

Also, Hume believes reason to be ruled by the passions. If this is true, it's because we are really, at the most basic level of our being, as a child who hangs from the cape of our favorite superhero. Are we not incessantly projecting our being into alternate realities: prayer, poetry, plays, paintings, music, movies, drugs, etc. Aldous Huxley believes this tendency to be a fundamental appetite of the soul. It also may be seen as a reaction to the unfulfilling human experience. But it is important to get all of this out on the table since it would be foolish to whimsically engage in art.

In respect to my youth, I’m not able to provide an adequate answer to this question. But I will say that Aristotle was right in stressing the immense power of ethos. Again, more on this later.

Sit back, breathe, and touch the sky.

2006-03-18T09:16:00.000-08:00

Don't get bogged down in the swamp of the mind such that you can't make it in time for your daughter's piano recital. If you think you are living an unbalanced life, check your skin. Does it look like a raisin? If you are bewildered, perhaps you should get some food.

The fact of always reaching higher -- EXCELSIOR -- is illustrated by the avid horror film watcher who aims to "outdance" the script wrter by anticipating the next jolting twist. However, it's the skeptic who gets lost in his game and forgets that the film does indeed have a script with an ending.

Is art a sedative? Is it that through art, it is possible to see the ever elusive Extremity who cowers behind the mask of social momentum?

Abstraction should be injected with some greed-leafed Moderation. If the universal way of nature is moderation, extremity is not necessarily negated seeing how one should be moderate in being moderate.

Perhaps the 'dragon's eye' - as our eastern friends might call it - is to transcend infinite regression, contradiction, and other such phone cords that entangle our step and find a different path. I can put infinite regression in my pocket. I own it now.

To be happy is to be vulnerable

2006-02-03T10:21:00.000-08:00

I'm like an old man rich in money, but I like I lack the grip to open the door for the girl scout selling cookies.

I'm like a hysterical scientist that runs out of room at the end of the page as he reaches to the most crucial part of the proof.

The problem with language is that sometimes it's like a child who cooks. A child generally lacks a level of proficency that would help him to come to the harmonious mix of ingredients that he might achieve beauty in taste.

If you partake improperly, you may get stems in your mouth. You may only get the backside of the cupcake. That is, you won't get the full affect of the culinary explosion in your mouth.

Some Random Thoughts

2005-12-04T10:40:00.000-08:00

Analogies are crucial because not only do they represent connections between ideas, but also give form for conceivable ideas. It is in these two ways analogies help us bridge the empirical/experiential world to the "ontos" or ontological realm which is the primary goal of philosophy.

I realize why, for me, ideas first written down are sometimes confusing or poorly phrased or punctuated or aesthetically deficient. It is because there is a disparity between two different functions of my mental faculty: the part that discovers and develops new ideas vs. translating those ideas into some vehicle of communication (which necessarily implies language, doesn't it?). Or perhaps more specifically, the disparity lies within the differing paces of these two different mental functions.

Perhaps when I dont make sense or mess up, it's because I'm trying to be ironic or bait you. Well that would be stupid. Right there, was I being ironic again? I like red sprinkled corn with dr. pepper and cheese from France....OH fooled you again. Wait, huh? Don't you look at me that way! Alas lost in the sea of infinite regression. I'm weightless, floating slowly in icy waters - I'm free. I like it here. I think I'll stay. Do I stay because I really like it?

Infinite regression is cruel because as soon as you open the door to his room, he has control over you such that you can't leave the room. Only if distraction happens to notice in you danger when she bounces by in her flamboyant attire - only then are you free temporarily from the evil tyrant of infinite regression.

Anyway, can this notion of "infinite regression" be something like a precondition to all thought processes in general. Even if you can pull the distraction card sometimes, eventually your cards run out and they go back to the dealer. Keeping with this idea, it raises the question, can anyone ever have a "pure thought" when they are a slave to the will of infinite regression.

A rose on the hill of ecstasis smells like....but I can't remember. Again use the form...how deep was I repelling? Was I really meaning to be ironic there? Perhaps if this "infinite regression" stuff is right on the bull’s-eye, I'm repelling deeper than the cave allows.

I meant to made you believe that. Aha! Notice the grammar inaccuracy as a clue for using it as a form! Good work gumshoe! Haha made you look! or did I?

If anything else, this way of thinking is annoying! See look how.... see?

I think it works like this. First, there is the initial realm of infinite regression for our metacognition (thoughts about thoughts). Then the stage up from that is where a person realizes this realm of infinite regression in his mind as a doorway to another realm of infinite regression about the infinite regression for metacognition. If there is another level up on this building, it must be divorced from conceivability because my ears are starting to hurt and I'm afriad they won't pop.

You now see why I'm going crazy!

Audioslave Concert

2005-10-26T21:20:00.000-07:00

the audioslave concert affected me so deeply that i did not speak for some 30 hours. i was truly in an ecstatic state. as soon as the red star came down, i entered into a spiritual sanctuary. i was able to personally experience the depth and power of passion.

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each. --Henry David Thoreau

and my tea tasted like nectar of gods. and my tea tasted rancid. is it in the leaves? or my mouth? i wish i could find the pure pack, not this pink stuff. perhaps my quest lies beyond this restaurant.

life goes on.

Keeping Afloat

2005-10-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

they kept filling my glass with words
but i can't hold my liquor
my mind flies on the edge with birds
dear god i've never been sicker

I've made it passed Scylla and the Charybdis (the whirlpool). I've lost a few men but managed to keep this vessel afloat. I knocked out those midterms like Tyson. Ontop of that, the past few days have been garnished with a beautiful cool wind. It was almost as if I could reach out and touch tranquility and taste her splendor. In fact, I think that in this moment, if nature could speak, it would say nothing. The cool air gives you this glorious peace as it reaches out to hug you. There is something about cooler weather that makes you feel more alive and awake with a keener sense.

I realize any real conclusion that I've come to so far about Baylor would be premature seeing that I'm really only in the first trimester or so in the womb of my college experience. However, at this point I feel that the most intellectually challenging material I've been exposed to hasn't been from any of my classes, but from independent study in my spare time of things that interest me (saul williams, eduardo galeano, tool, etc.)

I can’t sleep. There is a woman stuck between my eyelids. I would tell her to get out if I could. But there is a woman stuck in my throat. -Eduardo Galeano

Hurricane Rita on the Horizon

2005-09-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

The weather is really fine here. About half of the students in our hall left town on account of the approaching hurricane; however, at this point, it doesn't look like it will be coming through here at all. We may get some rain and if we're lucky a thunderstorm. But no one really knows for certain exactly where the hurricane is headed. Only time will tell. Either way, I'm really not too worried about it. I talked to a student last night whose house is located on the coast of TX right where the hurricane hit. His dad is actually on a hurricane team so he was on his way to Houston last night. Please keep those directly affected in your prayers.

there is a gathering in the forest. the leaves have refused to change. they say that they are tired of things never remaining the same, of dying to be reborn, of winter's dry withered hand. they are praying for an eternal spring. even i expected that the beautiful autumn must have been ecstasy for the leaves. but they admit that there is nothing more painful than changing from green to yellow to red to brown. they insist that their beauty is a prolonged suffering. they say they will never change again. they have sent me to convey their green-leafed message. winter has left them brittle and they do not wish to continue their cyclical sacrament. they wish to remain a forest, unchanging. i have told them that everything has its season. they refuse to listen and insist that i am biased because i am named after the sun's distance from the equator. they say that i am the problem. they have placed the blame on me.--Saul Williams

College is Afoot

2005-09-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

It has been an exciting cultural experience in my first semester here at Baylor University in Texas. Many of my good friends are from countries such as India, Pakistan, Hungary, Thailand, Zimbabwe, and Singapore. This social atmosphere is very conducive to my overarching goal to 'cultivate wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty' (as my teacher Mr. Kern would've put it). My mentality at college so far is like, "I'm a roast -- baste me!" but then again I also feel like a child drinking Liebfraumilch.

The guys on my hall are really fun to be with for the most part. I really don't have a problem with adapting to new circumstances and learning new things. Developing a rich pallette of experiences is crucial to whether you're life is going to look more like a Van Gogh or an Etch A Sketch. I really hope to study abroad this year as much as I can. Since I transferred in 36 credit hours from high school, it opens a lot of doors to me like the possibility of a triple major. Right now, though, I'm just playing everything by ear.