Music

1)

2)

Take one of the ends of #1 & view it from that angle:

3a)

3b) ROPDR=Rotated Opposite Direction

#2*2ROPDR=

19

Conversations with myself: The Broken Bottle

[Setting: Back alley of a bar.]

1: Hey, hey, listen, come here.

(picks up a beer bottle from the floor)

What the fuck is this?

2: Uh, that's an empty bottle of Heineken.

1: (laughs)

(Breaks the bottle on a railing)

What is it now?

2: Well...it's a broken bottle of Heineken.

1: So, what can I do with it now? Since the bottle is now broken, I certainly can't drink from it or carry any alcohol in it anymore.

2: You could always use it as a weapon.

1: Right. 

(Tosses the bottle into the wall, it shatters into a multitude of smaller fragments.)

(Picks up a jagged triangular fragment)

What is this?

2: It's a shard of the beer bottle you tossed at the wall. Listen, I don't got much time man, where the hell are you going with all of this?

1: Why don't you guess? What would you think this was if you didn't see me do all of these things to the bottle?

2: Well, I'd...I'd just think it was a piece of glass or something.

1: Or something what?

2: Shit I don't know, get to the goddamn point already!

1: The point is I made this into what it is now. Don't you see? Creation and destruction--these two ideas are ultimately tied together in an endless cycle with each other.  Now, we often love to tell ourselves that these concepts are opposites and completely different, but we were just bullshitting ourselves. The thing is, they're just two different sides on the same coin. You see, by manipulating physical matter into such a way that suits our desires, we've essentially destroyed what a thing once was. And what you've gotta realize is that you can't preserve your state of being forever. You gotta realize that, no matter what, you're going to have to crack some heads to make anything out of yourself and to leave any sort of imprint upon this world. For all we know, we're probably just fragments being pounded into dust particles by this gigantic universe too. Might as well join the party, right?

[End conversation]

Author's Note: I don't drink Heineken, that was just the first brand that came to mind.

Inner Worlds

The perfect world is only one that can exist conceptually. Much like a faith in God, this idealistic inner world can only exist in the confinement of our minds; when tested against what one calls external reality these inner worlds can and will clash against it. The reason here is that these worlds are held together by our perception of reality and the valuation of how things should be. These conceptual models of what one thinks is real are mere illusions carefully developed through our perceiving processes. Be that as it may, these inner universes are also tied to what we call the "self" or the "I" and ultimately, this is why a person's art is the greatest measurement of the human condition. However, the personal self-expression of artists is in danger of giving a skewed view of reality because the artists are susceptible to giving only one edge or corner of a picture as opposed to the full image. These images can become myths and these myths can be proclaimed as truths, which will then fully develop into gods.

The problem with some of us I would say is that we actually believe that there is an affixed image, that there is an underlying Truth. What is it that guides us to this Truth? Hope and faith, a blind embracing and celebration of the unknown. The thing here is that the full "image" is a dynamic one as opposed to a static. Idealists then are a dying breed, because their image is in constant peril with we being the dynamic people that we are. Like the tightrope walker within part six of Thus Spoke Zarathustra's prologue, the idealist must remain consistent in movement for if he makes a fatal mistake then he shall fall and die. So what is Truth then? Truth is not what is absolute, but what can reinforce or more importantly, destroy absolutes. That is the plight of anyone who I would deem a thinker. It's an endless cycle of the creation and destruction of inner worlds. An existence of constantly rebuilding how one sees the world, constantly developing a working model for reality. 

I'm sick of formal education.

 

"Just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so is study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in."--Leonardo Da Vinci

Honestly, I have no idea why I bother to even go anymore. Whenever I reflect on the time spent in school, I can't find a single thing that has ever helped me understand the world around me that came from the institution itself. Instead, all I know about the world came from the people I encountered and what skills I've built up came from pursuing my own interest. It's so goddamn depressing to find out that I've wasted over a decade of my life in the educational system when I could have been spending that time with the activities that I truly enjoyed doing and hone my personal skills. Not only that, but whatever I actually enjoyed doing was deemed as nothing more than "mindless entertainment" by my family. What constitutes as modern schooling is nothing more than a job training ground, a factory for producing factory workers. More cogs in the fucking clockwork. The other day I asked one of my friends as to why he is going to college and he replies, "Well, it's to get a good job so I can support myself financially, just look at the economy". Practical,  yet boring and lifeless.

   You know what else that gets on my tits? It's the fact that we have to get credentials in order to be taken seriously in the job world. Whatever happened to just showing what you could do and acquiring a license based on that? But no, society has to tell us how incompetent we are at doing something and that we need to be babied every step of the way. And the funny part is when we have been a part of this system for so long, we form a dependency on it. Lo and behold, we become exactly as what they tell us to become and get addicted to the rat race . We have to turn ourselves into a good little gear with a diploma from a certain university if we want to do what we should have been doing. That is to say, what we should have been doing from the beginning when our desire to learn wasn't tied down with the shackles of public schooling. Honestly, what happened to becoming an apprentice to a master from a particular trade? What happened to presenting masterpieces? What happened to the system where the value of a person to a profession is not determined by how "experienced" he is in terms of acquiring articles of prestige, but from actually giving their interviewers an experience? Educational institutions, no matter what level they are, can't do jack to help you learn anything besides providing tools for free.   

Of course, I find that some individuals have found a way to integrate themselves into the system and I'm happy for them. However, the thing with me is that I don't know what I want to do besides learning about things on my own. Hell, if this article is true, then every single one of us does not know what we fucking want out of life. Sometimes I yearn for the days of when the most a man needed to do to sustain himself was hunting and growing food. I just can't see myself tied down to a single career for the rest of my life. If anything, I'd rather take a map, a compass, a bike, and go off on my own. Where the hell will I go? I don't know but most likely, I'll probably find some things to care about when I'm on this ridiculous journey. 

I keep telling myself that I would watch this anime one day. 

Life is indeed unplannable as it is unpredictable, but it's far from unmappable, and perhaps I'll make a map highlighting the areas of interest and go out into the wild.  I don't need wealth, I don't need fame, I don't need power, all I have is a desire to understand things and learn how to do the things I might be interested in doing. 

Staring Inside

In a state of sleep deprivation, I wrote this a few weeks ago:

The pedant wants his art to be labeled as such because he is far too lazy to draw connections stemming from what he knows and what is happening before him. He desires a challenge, but not when the opponent is himself.

The most powerful sense of catharsis is one that is the result of viewing a certain thing in a fresh perspective. Challenge is a relative concept and with each hurdle that is surpassed, stronger grows the affirmation of life.

All too often we unfairly criticize the social stigma associated with a certain style of art, that we fail to acknowledge what worth it is to other individuals. What have we against a piece of work? More importantly, what have we against those who admire said piece of work? So I ask myself, why should I give a damn what others find worthy? However, when you pick that notion apart, the answer is I shouldn't. I should want to. That is, there should be a reason for me to engage in caring and a purpose for not. Whatever reason can be infinitely interpretable, but once we have intiated in the act we can explain very little but describe ten times as much.

I shall posit that intent is the core towards everything that humanity creates and everything that is created by us produces a reaction, whether it is disgust, awe, or utter indifference. Once an idea has penetrated other minds, it does not leave, only suppressed and whatever truth that can be deemed absolute is the intent of artist. Art is what we will it to be and it's true--all art appeals to us in a subjective fashion. Art is found when there are eyes to see, ears to hear, and minds to conceptualize. I can spend my entire life discussing the technical merits of a certain piece of work but at the end of the day, I can't take away what someone finds value in no matter how "sensible" my words are or appear to be.

The hard-boiled elite already thinks himself as superior because he has apparently surpassed the masses and reached enlightenment. As he ages so does his perception of time begin to change, hours become minutes, minutes become seconds, seconds become nanoseconds, and everything that was once beautiful begins to decay at an accelerated rate. He has so refined his personality that his vision of reality becomes mundane. What follows then is a resignation of apathy towards reality and most of all, towards himself. And so "refined" is he that he pigeonholes himself to a single vision, where anything that deviates from his personal system

of thought is reviled and denounced.

Ironically and dare I say, most fitting that it is the rejection of these deviations that hurt him so and is the cause of his severe boredom. He conjures ideals and labels them as techniques, but fooling himself, he places techniques as part of the definition of a thing and heralds it as Truth. It is with these self-contrived truths, he bars himself in his own singularity, because by desiring the unique and the profound a shade is cast over his eyes rendering everything as a dark mass. All that is colorful and bright, turned black and white, but yet he fancies himself gray! And let it be said that gray is proposed as the ideal. We fancy ourselves as ideal and we worship the act of staying as opposed to becoming or overcoming. So wrapped up are we in the creation and solidification of the self that we do not even embrace the pain that dares threaten our ego. Perhaps I'm just pretentious and a fool, but for the time being I'd rather not dominate but embrace, for there exists a billion selves and a trillion different shades of gray. Equally so, let us not be dominated but adaptable, let us leave our friends and make new enemies so that one day those enemies shall become our friends. I'd rather not carve absolutes into my line of thought but create slots for me to augment myself, for as long as I've known, humanity as a whole will always be a puzzle that can never be solved.

"Fuck off with your sofa units and and strine green stripe patterns, I say never be complete, I say stop being perfect, I say let...let's evolve, let the chips fall where they may."-Tyler Durden

P.S. - Thomas Kinkade is still not an artist. He sucks big black dick.

The Enslavement of Thought Through Language

This happens too often with me . Whenever I try to get something that has been on my mind for awhile down onto paper it's really difficult for me to express what I wish to express. Perhaps it's an inherent problem with language itself. What makes a thought? Each one comes and goes so quickly that it makes it almost impossible for me to translate it instantly into a coherent language. Visually,my thoughts probably look like cloudy shapes of patterns and colors until I can synthesize it into an image. Even then, attempting to mold it into such a way that makes coherent sense is difficult, especially if I am concerned about how it appears to others. Sometimes I get impatient and try to get my thoughts onto paper far too soon and then I would end up with half a sentence. As of now, I have published six posts within this blog but in actuality I have six more drafts that I have saved into the database because I reached a language barrier. In fact, I'm having trouble right now because I'm questioning the purpose of this entry. Even so, I think I'm placing another unnecessary description on my thoughts by ascribing traits such as color or shape to them which just leads me back in a circular logic fashion. Bleh.