Fluidity

Yes, fluidity is dependent upon its relation to the present. But as with certain friends, who are like good books with many pages, we should take breaks away from them, put them down occasionally with a good bookmark in place. Pause is pressed. The present moment no longer continues in our minds while we are away from each other. There is no dwelling upon or stewing over done. No grudge burning holes nor puzzles requiring time to find solutions. The present moment has been forgotten but is not lost, because you used your bookmark. And so when it becomes time to return to the story of knowing your friend further, after the period spent apart, it is like an unpausing of the present. Reopening at the page where you left them, removing the bookmark, finding the precise line and continuing. A seamless sewing of presents despite them both occurring in different ages.  And so an act of fluidity does not need to be present all of the time, it just needs to feel like it hasn't spent time away from the present. Suspended animation.

Fluidity in the sense we're talking about here would then be the feeling of the absence of interruption. You could be being interrupted all the time. It's whether you subjectively feel that have you been interrupted or not which is important. A friend with epilepsy would stare blankly for minutes before returning to the present knowing nothing of this interruption.

This is not about the universal present. I'm talking about the subjective present. I'm talking about fluidity in the context of the shared subjective present of two people whose shared reality is suspended in time when they are apart, and continues as it had been whenever they meet again. 

As opposed to the two friends who continue living the present moment of the imagined other through their imagined selves in this present with the imagined other the very moment the two are separated. They cannot forget about each other. They must continue remaining in some sort of present, even if it must be fabricated by themselves. This is a relationship devoid of all fluidity and flow.

My Heart Attack Turned Me Into A Photographer

I've written next to nothing since the election result. Which is fine. But I have been taking pictures in the woods every day. 

I started taking pictures of the trees and nature in the woods after they helped me get better. I'd had what at the time felt like a mini cardiac arrest, induced by the constant chain smoking of cigarettes long into the earlier hours, fuelling my while writing and chess playing, sometimes for up to 3 days without sleep or any exercise to ameliorate the negative impacts.

Then one night I was overcome by peculiar bodily sensations. Nodes. Individuals points started presenting across the top of my chest which felt like blockages. Blocked arteries desperately gasping for clean air they could breath.The number of nodes grew and spread across my chest. My ability to exhale was suddenly capped to a minimum, as was my maximum intake of air.

Then my torso felt as though it too had become riddled with these nodes, these blockages, that now restricted my physical mobility; issuing darting spiky pains like pulled muscles whenever  a shift in movements transgressed the newly enforced curtailments.

I proper shat myself when the nodes finally made their way to the top of my arm. I remember how will power, perseverance and  determination had all become remote memories. Luxuries one can endure only when one has a modicum of certainty about the longevity of one's existence. 

I began stretching myself and massaging my chest like a mad man in vain. No one was in the house at the time. Mum and Kim had gone out to Wales for the day. I kept stretching all different ways to relieve the internal discomfort and continued massaging my chest hoping to improve my circulation. At some point I felt like I knew the chest and bodily pains had peaked and would not become any more intense, so like a true addict I went back outside for 3 more ciggies!! It was a very sad to witness myself incapable of exercising the necessary rationality to do the right thing despite being in a life or death scenario. 

Mum and Kim came back from Wales and I was conspicuously muted for the rest of the night. I went to bed and struggled finding a comfy position to sleep in. The next day mum enquired what was wrong with me. She had two wrong guesses before guessing correctly that I had chest pains. She gave me one of her unopened asthma inhalers and two dissolvable aspirin to thin my blood. It was my day off work, so I went back to bed and slept. 

I woke up mid-afternoon, a little less riddled with chest pains but lung capacity was still bare minimum. My body's maintenance dept needed more time to carry out essential repairs, so I went back to sleep.

I woke up late that evening, with slightly greater lung capacity now but the chest pains had returned as before. It was around 8pm and dark outside. I had an impulse to be proactive to help open my arteries I'd foolishly clogged up with tar and plaque, but walking any distance had become a exhausting chore requiring delicate navigation, especially if it was to at least look half natural. 

I told mum I was going to the local woods to breath some clean forest air. She questioned whether that was such a good idea given my restrictions but I said I was going anyway. 

The woods is only 5 minutes away. I got there and didn't go too far in, but far enough to know when to try and breath deeply. It felt good. Consecutive deep inhales and exhales of clean air really helped break up the heavy shit that had been sitting on my lungs for the past months.

The next morning I decided that visiting the woods each day to inhale its restorative air would be part of my new daily health regimen. So that's what led me to start taking pictures there and posting them every day on my facebook.

"I Am Honoured"

A friend sent me a poem and there were some interesting parts in it that I wanted to share my thoughts with them about. They said "I would be honoured". I replied, "No need to suck my dick!". There then followed a period of ambiguous and possibly uncomfortable silence (not at my end).

After a while I sent them this to try and resolve things:

Just to even out any possible imbalance lingering in the remnants of the tone left... It's not that your intention was ever to fellate me with praise prose, it was more likely the case that you were simply appreciative to receive any kind of feedback or critique about your work from a friend. And so my sensitivity and heightened response did come from a valid place, but a place which seemed to have issued a voice imbued with a drop or two of venom, a substance mildly caustic in order to seal up a certain pathway forever. An act of cauterisation. A heated implement or caustic substance applied to the skin or flesh to seal it and stop further bleeding or prevent future infection. A pathway was sealed. A route forward that is an inbuilt scripted response; that of you feeling honoured that I should ever be interested enough to want to share my thoughts with you about your thoughts. But should I not be equally honoured to be gifted an encounter which compels me to want to share part of myself with someone else? And so my honouring of you was already embedded in the gesture of wanting to offer you my time in the form of my thoughts about yours. I honoured you before you, me, and so your declaration of being honoured was simply to say thank you. No problem at all. You're very welcome! X

Snakes and Ladders

"Sometimes life feels a bit like Snakes & Ladders. We’re all moving across a 2D grid trying to get to the end of a game dictated by dice, made more entertaining whenever a snake or ladder is stepped upon. 

The ladders are love, they lift us, they raise us up towards our goal, the end point, the finishing point. Snakes are like snake oil salesmen who peddle mistruths upon our own desires for wellness, happiness, health, and everlasting contentment in life etc.

The salesman is aware of our needs, and promises us many desirable things we'll receive on terms that cunningly threaten to take away what we hold most dear at the same time - truth, honesty, connection...

Ladders represent the specific amount of progress one can expects taking an alternate route also heading in the direction of the end. Predictable long ones and short ones. The snakes are digressive. They can never be straight and simple in form. They take us back to where we were before, surrounded by the same artefacts we thought we'd moved on from. 

The same songs we've played to death, the same smells that have lost all magic, the same stories whose endings bring no surprise, the same friends we go through the motions with each time we meet... 

We become memories of who we were before but without the parts of our selves that have been lost in the promises made to us by the snakes. 

Up and down the grid we travel, until at some point we look up, and realise the game that is actually being played above our heads. 

Chance. Being forced to roll the dice. Our role within the game we didn't realise we had been playing unawares all along. Seeing yourself from a distance, as an object in the, as a character playing allows one opportunity to leave the grid completely and move on without snakes or ladders, by something akin to faith, by embodying the structures that contain us, gazing at the dotted lines we've been expected to follow, and looking towards the gaps in between, seeing the myriad of truths within them that allow us to create our own meaning.

Creating meaning then becomes a purpose in itself, a journey and not an end point we should strive to get to. Not something to finish, but something to explore indefinitely with love, passion, and the with the joy in others that also float in this realm, a realm which is between the stars and the sea, as we travel across its landscapes with our own stories, our own sounds, histories and cultures that transcend the borders of maps with a hope that is carried by fellow human beings who also look for meaning in a world, where there is none."

..............................................

For me, I think the trick is realising that the game we're playing is actually called Snakes are Ladders. But even more than that. Snakes are Springboards. Snakes are Adders - if you know how to launch yourself off them correctly. Snakes are like big springy coils that give you an elevating boost if you've propelled yourself at the right time. The spring in the step can be the gravity from the vow of our refusal to ever accept we need  to never allow ourselves to feel again. 

Ladders are just linear progressions of benefit that elevate us a specific amount higher than we were before. Ladders are a bit boring. They're like Forrest Gump's nightmare. A box of chocolates all the same flavour - "You always know what you're gonna get...", Forrest said glumly.

Snakes may be lies and mistruths we are sold by others, but they are mainly lies and mistruths we sell to ourselves.

Snakes are the promises that exchanges and transactions we make now can lead to much needed immediate gain without any pain. Very often we deny that these instant boons could turn out to be detrimental to us in the end or have any kind of inherent detrimentality, no matter how mild. We convince ourselves there won't ever be a price to pay for the wonderful benefits that were purchased for a mere pittance.

But there is always a price to pay for anything that seems too good on its surface. 

So it's vital to gauge exactly what that price will be first, or at the very least, accept that the price we finally end up paying for what we got will be more than we parted with at the time - and then weigh up whether or not it makes sense to go ahead with the purchase. 

When I play a game of Snakes and Ladders, the entire board is filled with 'GOAL' squares. I've already won. And so playing consists of me just sightseeing through the game's afterlife, exploring its mechanics and learning how it works.

I'm enveloped by its meaning everywhere I go and don't go. It's the main reason my solitude can't ever become malnourished and turn into loneliness.

Because meaning is everywhere, permeating the vacuum of existence. 

Meaning is like dark energy, a substance which makes up 70% of all energy in the entire universe. Did you know, that there is more energy in the empty space in the universe, than there is in all the planets, stars, galaxies and black holes combined? I shit you not!

But this dark energy doesn't interact with matter as we know it, so how do we know it's actually there? Because we know what it isn't, and we can measure the effects it has on the things that surround it. At present, the true nature of dark energy is unknowable. Even so, we are able to deduce the scale of its ubiquity and likely effect. 

The solid matter that we can see, taste and touch makes up only 5% of all matter in the universe. 95% of everything that is, is hidden from our view. And so the key to having the energy to be able to take on the world, remain cordial with others at all time in ways which advance both towards a point creating shared truths in the agreements made - the limitless store of energy you need in order to operate at your peak, is literally in the air you're currently breathing.


..............................................

I feel like a beagle on the scent of a fox hiding very nearby!!

Thinking about the Snakes and Ladders metaphor again, and the idea that those who play feel that their goal is to reach the top. It was act of reaching a certain level of ascension before one's counterparts had, which was the principle event which precipitated the rush of pleasure into the blood stream. I was thinking how this idea didn't feel quite right to me.

I thought about it for a short time before my brain started doing a wheelie without telling me - began accelerating at full throttle and refused to listen to sense...

Reaching the top I thought was the wrong way to look at the sense of progression one makes towards a final life goal. 'Arriving at the source of an important realisation', seemed to chime a lot more.

But what is the force that draws us closer to where the sense of this realisation is always stronger?

Gravity. 

Gravity is a product of mass. It is a manifestation which occurs naturally whenever something has substance. Things which possess substance draw us towards it.

Gravity is the force by which a body attracts objects towards it centre. Once two bodies are connected in this way, gravity becomes the force which initiates the movements of their dance as they begin orbiting one another.

But each time we orbit each other, the distance between us grows closer, through the pull of attraction, and the spectre of an eventual collision is evoked. 

Our goal or destiny or purpose or the reason or point of existence is to seek out people whose gravity is in perfect sync with our own. Two gravities that are perfectly fine tuned, keeping us at a distance which is as close as possible, without us ever touching. Perpetually orbiting one another without fear of annihilation. An eternal dynamo of dialectic. For as long as is necessary. Until the finitude of time asks this question.

Are you both now ready? 

Is now the time for the moment of contact. The moment of the sublime. Sublimation. When both bodies absorb equally into each other, not one by the other. The merging of equals.

Our destiny is to achieve the perfect death of our selves. To die simultaneously in nothing but joy with the other, in an act of fusion. Marriage. Mutual self-sacrifice so complete it gives birth to a truer beginning this time round.

The need to feel the desire for peace trumps our need to see peace itself manifest.

Epilogue To An Ended Friendship

EPILOGUE: I thought that it could have been the result of my mental exhaustion yesterday that was causing me to be exceptionally forthright and zealous, but after waking up I only feel more certain of myself and the difference in the paths that we've decided to take.

And I'm glad that its happening via text. In words. I can believe it more, because facts are not able to cloth themselves in the disguises of physical appearance. It's all there on the page in black and white. No illusions can be performed to divert the audience's attention.

Which is why this really is the end. Our goals are irreconcilable because they're being guided by completely opposing truths, although it seemed at one point that they might be converging.

Your belief that unskilled thoughtless graft in the service of a ravenous profit obsessed organism like Amazon, whose soul preoccupation is everlasting growth on a planet which can't ever get any bigger to accommodate this delusional mindset, left me stunned.

But then you let me know that Amazon's biggest distribution warehouse had recently met its targets. Apparently. That was the word on the street that someone heard through the grapevine. I mean, what am I supposed to say to that or even think??? It means nothing to me.

Presenting me news that this monolithic organisation whose appetite has now grown so large, classes of human beings are springing into existence keen to have only one purpose while they toil for a living: to keep feeding this systemic idea that giving rich people great deals and bargains at the expense of poor people they never see, don't have to know of or think about is just fine. Nah man. Fuck that! You've always been a bit "Hey Guys! Let's not talk about that depressing topic right now yeah? This is supposed to be a dinner party" - kind of person. But obviously you can't skirt around where you truly stand forever. No wonder you're afraid of expressing what you actually think online and have fears about how your friends will judge you. It's so upsetting. I'm so not like you at all. I can't live a life in that way.

To be happy to invest sizable chunks of your waking hours to a project like Jeff's is best undertaken by people who don't think, can't think, are incapable of reflection, and see their labouring task as destiny itself. You think you are using Amazon to get what you need in order to achieve the success you say you're destined for, but you don't realise what the true price is that you've paid for reducing yourself in such a crude and myopic way, which mocks the vision of what you can be if you strived continuously, instead of the momentary elations of epiphany you savour at your leisure within the grounds of comfort and security. The more I want to be totally honest with you, the more I think I'm likely to cause you pain, which obviously isn't my intention here. It couldn't be intention here because the manner in which I'm trying to hurt you is far too floral and whimsical to ever go straight for the jugular. Writing 'THE END' in finishing off my message yesterday, I admit was a bit dramatic and OTT. But whether it had been well-tempered or even quite muted, the message that it was conveying had a gravity that can't be ignored. Something has ended and I'm not sure what. And things that have ended are sometimes resurrected and given the opportunity for a sequel, which is more often than not very cheesy. But for now, I hope that you're right. I really hope you get to where you want to be and the manner in which you do this is something you feel sure of, because I have nothing more to offer or say.

Opening The Past

in so many moments 

i see myself 

with a want to explore 

through writing 

at some point I will...

now that i finally know 

myself

i'd write 

of the nice times we shared 

poignant and sweet

in the brief while spent

at Claremont

as and when...  

desires to convert 

my heart into words 

wax and wane 

like the FTSE 

but just as important

is seeking

the looking within 

without conditions 

for acceptance 

of aspects and times 

of pain caused and felt

seen and unseen  

my want to go honing

memories, recollections 

evoke quivers of longing 

rippling shame

reliving the visceral 

moments destabilized 

emotions red fevered

with jealousy 

pangs 

the need to possess 

to feel peace inside

inadequate, inferior

synthetic intimacy

impulsive projections

confidence feigned 

before shallow conviction 

suppresses the shaming 

resonant feelings 

of nakedness

 

up from the deep 

uncertainties rise 

when fears hide my absence 

of qualities i wished 

were inside 

to replace this mask 

of myself disguising 

a maturity straining  

but then feelings

effervescence and love

buoyant and light and easy

skins gently brush 

in communion 

in each readjustment 

dispersing its charge 

traversing the void

anticipations leap 

sooner than we 

to embrace.

The Brain Is Radio Receiver Receiving Thoughts Transmitted By The Universe

Perhaps achieving the zenith of our genius can only be attained via a state of total non-thought. Through choosing not to choose. Opening up the self to the point of inversion. Where the inside has become the outside, and the outside, in.

The celestial FM receiver of spirit, embedded within the heart is now able to receive with a total clarity, diction from a place located beyond the locality of the cogitating brain.

What if consciousness as we experience it lies embedded within the fabric of the universe itself, all around us like an ever-permeating ocean of resonating cosmic soup, containing everything that has been and ever can be?

The brain is not the inbuilt thought generation device we assume it must be, but a divine radio receiver of conscious thought, and the living universe is the transmitter whose frequency we perpetually seek to find and tune in to.

So our task and privilege as self-creating entities, is to reconfigure our brains through the right thoughts and deeds to harmonise all our neural connections to enhance the quality of the signal we may receive. If our brains consist of a chaotic mess of wirings, then we receive poor quality signals, broken fragmentary thoughts and ideas. Life is experienced as a constant stream of distracting garbled noise bouncing around our skulls. 

But a brain which has been fashioned with its neural connections to work together in harmony, enables the possibility for a high quality signal to be received - where visions and mental projections possess a striking lucidity. 

In choosing to make ourselves so open to receive them, choosing to have no guards up or barriers erected to protect us from what could possibly happen next - choosing total vulnerability - leads to the capacity of signals of a higher order being permitted to enter the inner domains of our minds, freely and unfettered by any man-made filter. Undisturbed by the ego's pathological need to analyse and question everything it can observe.

Acceptance of everything as being a valid expression of some aspect of life, is a form of love. A state where nothing is denied its right to exist or declared as being evil. And through life-long self-configuration of our brains, the conditions and necessary environment brought about by nurturing our capacity to love, to be loved and critically, our ability to extract strength when in the presence of love - is how we personally manufacture the optimum conditions for our minds to be paid regular visits by superior ideas and thoughts which are dictated to us perfectly from beyond.

In my opinion.😂

How Much Do You Love Me

A scientist finds out much energy is in the connection that joins two atoms by breaking the bonds that hold them together.

The energy released no longer belongs to them. It is transferred into the surrounding space and felt by their neighbours.

Therefore the amount of love I have for you is equal to the amount of love lost when the bonds that connect us are severed forever.

So I won't be able to say how much that is unless it happens, because I just don't know. But my guess is, a lot.

Parents Who Tell Their Kids To Stop Showing Off

I'm not a fan of parents who tell their kids to stop showing off. Without good reason at least. Like an oncoming car or approaching cliff edge which their child is unaware of while performing a pole dancing routine they copied off a drag queen on YouTube. 

Parents who forbid their children from expressing themselves fully because they fear other parents will think they've been teaching their kids about the virtues of boastfulness I feel kill part of the magic in being a child. Each time they choose to blunt their child's desire to express, they pull them one step closer to the drab, grey predictable world they exist in and hate, precisely because it's drab, grey and predictable. 

If it's possible for you to do so, then encourage the freedom in expressing creative impulses throughout your child's life. If your child happens to sing like a strangled cat, then provide guidance and assistance, or point them to someone who can. That way you also get them out of the house for a couple of hours each week at singing lessons, which lowers the chances of you strangling them yourself!

A parent who chastsises their child for not already being good at something they have a passion for I doubt has any appreciation of the amount of time and effort needed to excel at anything. If they did then they wouldn't do something so ignorantly cruel.

To any kids happening to stumble upon this while browsing through your mum or dad's phone - ignore them. Carry on expressing yourself even if they order you to stop. Or ask them why they think you ought to. If they drop some Grade A  codswallop like, "Because I said so!", then I'm sorry, but your parents are assholes.

Showing off your talents, showing the world what you're capable of, isn't a crime because it may cause others to feel inadequate about what they can't do. It's they who needs to grow up. Or should that be, grow down? Obviously, don't be a knobhead yourself and refuse to share the secrets of what you're doing if someone intrigued happens to ask. You have a duty to share the good things you find out in life.

I daydreamed once about creating my own juvenile prison for youths who were super talented, but their refusal to acknowledge or nurture and develop their strengths I deemed as being criminal. Youths were sentenced to a spell inside my jail, where tutors and expert practitioners would find ways to allow them to exploit their squandered talents to the utmost. An organically programmed pathway which grew the potentials of these obviously brilliant youths, would constitute their punishment.

But it's the adults who need to rediscover the joys of knowing and assuming nothing again. The joy of being unafraid to approach life naively. Something they may now regret having discarded because they listened to society's insistence that "they've grown beyond that childish phase now. It no longer serves your purpose". Erect a firm middle finger to any person or society which tells you this, then go retrace your steps to reclaim what has been lost before it's too late.

A person should be the sum of all they've ever experienced, rolled into one. Nothing should ever be thrown away.