Category: Rants

Posted on

Blue revisited

I can’t explain the color blue without being self-referential, though I know it’s located between violet and green on the optical spectrum. Or the power of the blues, except with uninspired definitions of rhymed, simple narratives played flat or gradually bent in relation to the pitch of the major scale. Both descriptions are sterilized to the point of meaninglessness. These two are as real as any “proven” entity, yet remain beyond the grasp of non-experiential understanding.

We bask in the glory of the senses, but as a path to true knowing they are clearly quite limited and limiting.

Posted on

Evolution

If someone asks, “Do you believe in evolution,” they are framing the question incorrectly. That’s like asking, “Do you believe in blue?”

Evolution is nothing more than a fairly simple way of understanding what is unquestionably happening. You don’t believe in it—you either understand it or you don’t. But pretending evolution is a matter of faith can be a clever way to hijack a conversation and pit it in a false duality against religion. And that’s how we end up with people decrying evolution, even as they eat their (genetically modified) strawberries and pet their dogs (human inventions all from the wolf) because they’ve been led to believe faith can only be held in one or the other.

Posted on

Systematic

These days we walk through are just systems of man. And when the systems don’t work, we get rid of them. I think Thomas Jefferson might have written something similar. It just takes longer now.

Posted on

Commas are dumb

The difficulty in learning a language. A new way of saying things involve a new way of thinking. A new way of seeing. For me, perhaps, remembering. There are duolingos to guide you. Cuanto cuesta? How much do you want for that? They donʻt mean the same thing word for word. This is why it is so important to remember. There is a phrase in English that comes to mind as I feel sometimes, when I listen to manaleo. “I donʻt have a word for this.” Is it my lack of capacity for the moment or are there no words? I often feel that way translating my thoughts into Hawaiian. There must exist those words. I can not be the first Hawaiian feeling this way. And, so, I look for more words.

Posted on

Perfect?

What do you want? Perfect? Perfect shames and mocks you constantly. Perfect can’t happen more than infinity. Should I bother spending half my life learning how to spell words that no one ever uses? Would that be perfect? Would a perfect score on the SATs make me perfect? Dial down a little when you judge me. Full disclosure? I’m almost the opposite of perfect. My brain articulates well. Don’t confuse that with I know what the fuck anything means or what I’m talking about. I’m the same sapient primate that you are.

Posted on

Let there be light is a metaphor

All these mistakes I’ve made don’t exist, except in my memory. It’s past and just as fake as whatever I can imagine comes next. Only now exists. The rest is a mind-game-mind-fuck. I have tortured myself beyond any pedestrian waterboard (which, by the way, really doesn’t sound that bad, especially if you’ve bodysurfed the Wedge or Sandy’s). I’m tired of living in the shade. “Let there be light,” is a metaphor. It didn’t happen as the book says. It happens every second. Wait, this might be hard to wrap your head around, but seconds are too long. Every moment of comprehensible difference from the last. Nano-nanosecond. Every single one of these, whatever you want to call them, is a chance to let there be light. God exists, if she does, in minutiae. The smaller everything gets, the greater the change in our rules of understanding.

Posted on

Eat butter

There’s a tribe. And I don’t have to taste your mouth to know if you’re in it. It’s not a cult.

I explained to my ex-wife once and I probably hurt her feelings but I wasn’t trying to. There is butter and there is margarine. They look the same. And that’s where it stops. This metaphor can be applied to most of pop culture. Hank Williams? Butter. Shania Twain? Margarine. Nirvana? Butter. Fall Out Boy? Margarine. Social Distortion, The Hold Steady, Drive-By Truckers, Seven Seconds, Bob Marley, Biggie, Loretta Lynn, Jack White, Gabby; the list is a long one. That’s all butter.

It’s okay to like margarine, especially if you grew up eating it. This is not a judgment even though it sounds like one. It’s an encouragement to eat butter.

Posted on

Simple

This is easier. It’s always been easier. Imagine how much easier it was in 2007 when I didn’t even know you. That was a smooth, well-cobbled road. So I stepped off. And now it’s hard… er. Life is a thing. So simple. But simple eats your soul. And you seek more complex until you fuck yourself out of that moment of simple that you found. And then you do it again. And again. And again. And … you know where the story goes.

Posted on

Close your eyes

Lives change lives. Lives beget lives. Lives are lost. You can promise on your life with a straight look on your face and lie. Love makes the potential for that lie infinitely larger and smaller. But when you promise on love and mean it, you transcend the promise.

Everyone gets sad. Sadness is part of the human condition. Happiness as a goal is actually a very recent concept for people. Survival trumped happiness for most of our existence. Losing something hurts. And that’s always been around. Of course, there is a very large spectrum of pain defined by the person and the loss. But losing that transcendence is not just sad. It’s a loss of self.

Watching a life erode: if it’s your life, whether you choose to recognize it or not is self-chosen, and sooner or later, you figure out what’s coming and fix it, or self-destruct. When love erodes, it’s not just up to you, and it reveals beauty and terror. It’s mostly sad.

Eyes opening are a blessing, and eyes closing are fear. And the final closing most likely means oblivion. This is a metaphor.

 

Posted on

Hedonism

Perhaps I was drawn in by you drawling about your irrepressible, hedonistic nature. Supposedly nothing? You clearly melted my mind at times.

I don’t belong where I was. This is the way of the world. That’s where I met you, though. So now we have to pound through this. I’m not even going to stick my toe in the pond of yesterday to consider anything about retroactive motion. I want you to come, but most likely you’ll stay. And that is where you belong. This no longer troubles me.