There is a lot of land on earth.
Not as much land as there is water, sure, but there is a whole lot of it.
Not only is there a lot of it, but there are all kinds of different nations, states, cities, towns, villages, communes, and the like spotting the landscape. On top of that, there are different cultures, religions, philosophies and laws. On top of that, there are all of these people. People everywhere. Even in places where no people live, people go and visit and check it all out.
So then why would we ever assume that of all possible places, contexts and cultures that the inside of a prison is the best place for anyone?
To use a common example: Alcohol laws. There are things which are legal one place and illegal in another. Consider the dry counties that dot the US (Sometimes w/ enough concentrated dots to qualify as a "swath"). Most penalties in dry counties are relatively minor.
Ramp it up a notch and consider drug laws in the US. The penalties for marijuana use can be far more punitive.
Now consider the options while disregarding whether you personally believe alcohol and marijuana should be legal or illegal. Should folks who disagree with you on what constitutes "mostly harmless fun" be put into prison?
Have you ever *been* to a prison?
Perhaps we should reconsider simple exile. If you are caught and convicted of certain crimes, you are simply not allowed back to the place in which it is illegal. For example, all those humans driving marijuana out of Colorado to neighboring states could, rather than face jail/prison time can choose to be barred from, say, Oklahoma for life.
Let's consider political prisoners around the globe. Perhaps a better way forward for everyone is to encourage/choose exile. Just because there are intractable disagreements does mandate non-coexistence in the world. Coexistence in the world does not require interaction.
We can argue all day about which crimes this would work for and if there are crimes which demand imprisonment, but the folly of removing people from the whole of the world for things which are illegal in one place and legal in another is troubling.
The notion of "state's rights" in the US has long been code for bigotry and prejudice. What if, instead, we agreed that we all have differences and that, quite frequently, this is nothing worth going to prison over? That we can have a broad federal agreement on what the basic laws of the land are without mandating that every place be homogeneous? What if we can have harsh prohibitions against things based on the values of a community without resorting to depriving humans of their humanity?
We could stand up in our communities for what we believe in while not trampling the rights of others.
The phrase "separate but equal" comes to mind here, but is not quite accurate when we consider the connotations of that phrase. In this case, we're not sorting by prejudged characteristics, we're sorting by actions and choices.
I'd love for a legal scholar somewhere to tell me why this is an idiotic idea (or at least something which I don't understand fully) and point me to the relevant literature.
20150211
A Note on Banishmnet
20150118
What if...
... the evidence that shows
"fatness" resembles a communicable disease is just representing that fat folks tend to like fat folks and skinny folks tend to like skinny folks?
Exceptions abound, obviously, but there seems to be a correlation/causation thing here.
I mean, one 130lb person around a dozen 360lb persons seems as awkward as one 360lb person around a dozen 130lb persons.
On the other hand, if you have five 300lb men around one 250lb man, you've got an NFL QB and his O-Line entourage.
The one 6' person surrounded by four 6'5" and over persons is a point guard.
The one 6' person surrounded by four 5'9" persons is a center.
If content is king,
context is everything.
20150113
Good Morning
Fellow Early Risers
I see your lights on,
some flickering.
And now newly some
late-early risers
still pre-sun though.
Oh, salute to the
Nightowls and the
all-nighters:
A nickel's advice
for free:
Move to NYC.
Us Early Risers
Help ensure birds
ease the earth
Around again and &.
All around the world
the truth of bird-
turning all around
the world.
Or at least on
the Eastern
Seaboard.
It was two hours back
In the black when I
awoke to think
I wasn't where I
thought I'd be.
I was on the edge
of the bed,
You see. Which is
not the comfy bit.
So I got up.
Which is hardly the
lightest thing
To wake me.
Somehow one gets
Used to the cars
in a city.
Or the semis
on a "rural route"
in Pennsylvania.
Or the birds
in subirdia,
Maryland.
On the other hand(
Or in the other
mind) the
inside is
the same.
The same misconceptions,
the same quirks of evolution
the same weird biological success
the same types of insight
the same mental failings
the same digestion
the same dreams
the same scars
the same hope
the same me.
Just a
new set of outside sounds
to engage with
when I'm up up
up before dawn
wherever I am.
whenever I am.
whomever I am.
whatever I am.
Now alarms go off an lights come on in not-so-distant houses.
These folks who have the gall to think they are early-risers.
Barks issue from impatient dogs, bays from hounds.
Impatient cats make the mewlings over kneaded bread.
How Roman.
The rest of the world seems more awake.
Is this, for me, to be a good or a bad?
What is it for others? What is liberty?
What is freedom? Are these words which
Comfort us or challenge us? What of the
Word "Security"?
Now later than quarter past six.
How the hours have past.
Now the lights alight.
How the sky becomes all.
Now the hour lights the way.
How the dawn now shapes the day.
Soon the dreaded/lauded lights can go out and instead I can use a distant ball of incredibly hot gas to keep the planet warm and light my way. Now *that* is a pretty cool deal. All of the rest of the mucking about we humans do is lightweight compared to this Sun and Earth thing. Sure, we're designed for the environment in which we exist (how else could it be? Whether we were shaped by where we existed or designed to exist where we're been placed... this remains the way it must be.) but that a stable enough environment exists to engender long-term communication over time and space through text, video, radio, wired internet, wireless everything... that is... something remarkable.
And we can't tell you what our purpose is other than that we are what we are.
Nor can an ant tell anyone its purpose.
Nor can an anteater.
And yet there are mounds of ants.
And yet there are cities of people.
And yet there are wars between peoples.
And yet there are wars between ants.
And yet we play sports and have games and feasts.
Roman is in many ways just human.
But not in all.
All feasts are not the same.
Nor all breakfasts, for that matter.
Back to reading before breakfast.
I wonder what I'm making?
I wonder what we're making?
20141129
the view
and this is the view
this is all i've got.
these words and these thoughts.
but in my world, it is all you have too. your thoughts, your words. can you turn a phrase, tell a tale spin a yarn? pick a word split a verb change your tense? punctuate abbreviate bloviate? (the sounds and inhuman grunts you make in response are informative.)
and here i am on my low horse trying to make sense of how or why i push everyone away through opinions crisply stated and arguments passionately made. inaccurately because i don't know my ass from your mouth. i mean... i don't know shit about shoot i forgot the point of this potty talk.
this is the way we roll we roll and this is the way we dig our own graves. breath by breath step by step. what else must i convey aside form the simple fact that it is hard to make sense of the rest? the beauty you see may be like maggots to some. the drinks you drink are death not fun to some. the some arenot some but all to some. the all are not all but none to some.
how wide is your vision? how deep are your dreams? how small are our lives and is there anything left to hope for.
i write and type i read and i skim. i work and i work to understand this ridiculous spinning madness i sleep on, walk on, jump off of and land on again despite my best efforts to break free and fly past the oxygen farther and further from the myth of the sun melting my wings and closer and closer to the reality that that is all too calm a description of what a sun would do. wwjd ain't got shit on wwsd.
but then i go again, making object like people and reverse that to make it more common. flip it to make it more remarkable. like a remark one would make. or,,, here i am remarking on remarking on remarkability.
sic sic sic. i read it. i read it again. i left it in. i got no editor, i'm just some non-punk non-kid sitting at his parents' table during a holiday wondering what the hell this all means and why the times i feel most alive are when i'm spitting someone's words back at them all twisted. or when i'm parroting back a song written by not-me. or when or when... what is this but a rush of nothing? where is the satisfaction? what is there out in the world that surpasses this measly nothing i am?
we are all nothing-- i'm nothing special in my nothingness.
if this breath is the same as the last then you're already dead.
ozymandias tells me i can build nothing which lasts and all is illusion of permanence.
the illusion of permanence is an illusion of permanence.
i must find a way out of this corner. i lash out and snap out and behave in startling ways sometimes even to myself. i'm finding disappointment inside and little else of note (though there is definitely some vital bits int he parts left out! like... the kit!).
i'm seven sides of wasted talent with your babyback ribs.
i wish i could roll myself up and smoke me just to see.
i'm done here. the air will never clear.
this is how it comes out. brambled tangled wanting. riffing raffing signing. standing sitting walking. jumping jumping jumping and hitting my head. wondering how i'll ever be dead. but what else instead? the words are all that sing, and i imagine you reading which makes my mind hum and my feet beat the beat. the notion that there is another any other out there who can help me with what's in here... is tooo much to bear since i've not met that many. but then again, what do i help with? what am i good for?
i breath. i supply the plants. i'll supply the worms when i die. i'll push the daisies while i lie.
barf.
another
and now so i publish another piece of shit
Or is this even published if i put it up on a blog that no one reads in the uncharted backwaters of the galaxy?
If i waste all of the work I've put in and the readings and the writings to put these words on the internet for no profit, will you buy me some food tomorrow? Share some wine?
What if I had no talent? What if all I could do was grunt?
Would you be more likely to share or less?
Which is the best or the worst or the way we were or the way we should be?
The way we would be? Is that better? Would based on what? Could based on how?
The best? The worst? We don't even know these words any more. They are simply chatty talk to be a way of 1 or 0, black or white, fight fight fight. We gotta know where you stand, otherwise how will we tell where you'll fall when we split open your head and take out it all?
That is, the stands that you take... are they worth your life?
The life that you breathe as your own... is it worth your stands?
But what if instead of taking stands you sit? What if instead of picking sides you know that the divine or ineffable or merely the sense of order or even the sense of entropy that pervades the universe... what if you know that the sense that is there taken is one of non-judgement? What if rather than the hottest places in hell being reserved for the fencesitters that the hottest place in hell is reserved for every single time you took a stand on anything?
Who the hell said there was a hell?
Who the hell said there wasn't?
What the hell is a hell anyhell?
Just a metaphor? Just a myth?
Then why does it still chill me, despite being brought up without religion? Why does it still gnaw at me like an unfed pup? The same reason it disappears from me when I look it head-on as I cannot contain the concept. Or the way that it runs from my side when there are so many other things to mull over.
This is me. I'm just a guy typing at you. Or... typing at myself in the future. Or... typing at us in the future. Or just typing at the future because I can't reach the past no matter my wingspan or howmany stools I stand upon to reach the cookie jar.
I shout I shout but there's too much to let it all out. I reach the bottom and still there is more. Unlike Pandora's box which mercifully had a floor. These words tumble and tumble until the ventilator blues suck them in, clean them up, and spit them out. But still mine again mine again hit the ore again or again walk away. Dig into the earth and see what there is. Fly into the sky and see what there isn't. Deep into your mind and relax the nothing.
Across the nothing for no one, a wasted effort a shrug.
Naw, this ain't a breakup post... unless I'm breaking up with trying. Or not-trying. I can('t) hardly tell the difference anymore. Or is it just that I'm half-trying at everything these days? Is the future a real thing that I need to concern myself with or is this just some infinite present? Is the life something I have and is mine or will it just be degifted and was just on loan? What the heck is a life anyway but a way of describing breathing?
How is your breath today?
Have you been caring for your breath? Deepening, broadening? Understanding the filling? Grasping the emptiness? Is this just a mental exercise or a physical? Why do I keep giving false choices? Why is there a need to speak in questions? Is there a way to express doubt without a mark that asks?
My breaths might well be pointless, but is that any different from yours? Or the rest of ours? Or the best of ours? When we add up the long sum of humans, will breath be anything other than the most important thing we did?
Are we just alchemists turning stars to poop?
Are we just magician's assistants flooding all that surrounds us with ephemera?
this is what.
This is what, the moment where the clock ticks and i write something profound?
This is what, the breath in which the heart beats until I grasp what surrounds?
This is what, the thought that saves mankind, the action that acts a salve?
This is what, the nothing that begets nothing that begets nothing at all?
This is that, the thing that I excrete on the page and leave for another.
This is that, the shit that I smear on the walls.
when i breathe i breathe all breaths (and so to do you)
when i sleep i sleep all sleeps (and i hope you do too)
when the sun warms the earth, it is all suns.
when the moon lights the night, it is all moons.
there is no place but this. can you make it a happy place?
there is no happy but what you feel. can you make it worth feeling?
how we walk through this time, is how we've walked through all others.
how we wonder and grasp, is how they've all wondered and grasped.
the whole world a single flower, can you show me the way?
the single flower a whole ideal, can you show my the why?
this language is twisting, running and listing to port.
this tongue is now kissing, so profligate a a gift.
the lines are now splitting, scampering this way and that.
the meaning is shimmering, giving us just enough light.
the light is now fading, off to the right.
the dawn is now breaking, on to the left.
with this weight we wander, not knowing our selfs.
with another thought we ponder, no result to lift.
another another another line another.
bother don't bother don't bother my brother.
this word this world this wandering world.
his word her word like there is an other.
all of us y'all of us pall of us here,
tall of us short of us all of us near
the end we all work at not knowing the goal
just as the the doe knows not the foal
yet tends to bend the world to make
the soul that follows us in our wake.
yet again yet again
die again try again
rye again gin again
sin again sin again.
20141027
The Meaninglessness Is Accelerating
The pictures of pets dressed as humans.
The musings and rantings online and off.
The actions we celebrate and mourn and pretend to not know happen an infinite number of times over the course of humanity and that we're not important enough to feel shitty about it. None of us are.
Nor are any of us not. It isn't that we aren't important enough to feel one way or the other, it is that we're using spoons to describe laughter in terms of biochemistry.
The thing is that our feelings are nothing. My statement that our feelings are nothing is itself nothing. And yet this is all we have, this nothing. And we have an awful lot of it. It is more of us than we are of ourselves. Just like those microbes. Just like that soul and spirit and mind and all that we can't get pin down.
Some say emergent phenomenon. This is another phrase for elaborate nothingness.
The diamond is not more than the leaf. They are both more space than they are solid.
It is the structure that is the existence. It is the pattern that makes the repetitions of the pattern itself possible.
And yet this is all there is. This is more than there needed to be. This is all we asked for and more because we never asked for it an never could. Before it was, we weren't. Before we were, it wasn't. Unless there is some other awareness out in existence. Ohbut wait there are many other awarenesses even on this planet. There are animals and plants and... who is to know that a rock lacks awareness? It seems to us to lack agency... but so too does water and water seems to act.
Seems seems seems. This all seems like so much and yet it is so little. It is elementary. Children think this way because this is the way of the world. The curiouser and curiouser you get, the more and more there is to explore. The more and more you don't know. The more you try to grasp the whole, the more you are burdened by the minutiae. You are sure you don't understand toothpaste, let alone the components. And if there is toothpaste, how many things that I don't even know exist do I lack the capability to explain?
What sort of things are the sort of things that I can't know? There must be truths which surpass my current imagination that in mere years will seem like commonplace knowledge. My failure is the success of humanity. The failure of humanity is non-existent as humanity is not a monolith.
Except that it is. It is a monolith which does not self-recognize. We lack the awareness of what we are because if we ask all humans what all humans are, they will all give different answers. Even the ones who pledge to have an identical reading of the world through religion or science will not give identical answers. To expect that there is some full-scale meaning or purpose or the like is too much. But there is no meaning or purpose to lava. That makes it no less monolithic. Nor the seas. Nor the next hantavirusebolachickenofheseafluenza.
That there is no purpose to us does not mean that we will not have some obvious to an outside observer path of least resistance which we will inevitably follow if given a long enough time to hang ourselves. I mean uplift ourselves. I mean our whole. I mean... I do not "mean" well.
I mean, I mean well, but I do not do direct meaning well. I write to understand, to explore, to challenge. Not to tell, convince, believe. I exist to write. I write to exist.
This is a lot like food.
The above, I am told, could for many people be better understood if I use a different form:
Examining the relationship between writing and existence for me is as instructive as examining the relationship between eating and existence for humans.
Think of all the food you've eaten over your life and all of the food you'll eat in the future. How do you feel now?
Think of all the steps you've ever taken in your life and all of the steps you'll ever take in the future. How do you feel now?
Think of the breaths. How do you feel?
Think of the thoughts. How do you feel? Think of all the thoughts of all of the people you've ever known. Think of all of the thoughts that all of the people you know know. Of the people they've known. Of all of your ancestors. Of all of theirs. Of all humans. Of the thoughts all humans have thought others were having. Of all the thoughts that overlapped.
This number is not infinite.
How do you feel?
Remember, the world is spinning, tilting, circling around something which is tilting, spinning, circling, swirling, circling around something spinning, careening, tilting, wobbling, circling around near something else that is rotating, expanding, cooling, ...
If I think of a baseball and then think of a moon orbiting a planet, how many thoughts have a thunk?
If I put it into words is that another discrete thought? If I think it in one language and then another are those separate thoughts? If I think it is more than one language at once? If I think it in a symbol and a picture? What of a framed picture of a baseball orbiting a moon orbiting a planet with rocky rings of debris?
How much is that doggy in the black hole?
Is it even a dog? Has anything actually entered the black hole?
Is there an inside and an out?
What is it we're trying to figure out, as a humanity? If we can identify meaninglessness... what does that mean? Is either meaning or meaningless unavoidable?
I "meaning" itself again lacking in meaning?
If meaning can neither have meaning nor lack meaning, what is meaning?
We attribute meaning to so many things. What has intrinsic meaning? Is there intrinsic meaning?
I'm sure there's more attempt to express meaning, but then there is likely more failure and thus more meaningless as well. If there is more meaningless is there less meaning?
If there are more meanings rather than one, doesn't that diminish all meanings?