Whenever I write, I recognize an urge within myself to preface everything with a disclaimer. The disclaimer would inform readers that I have limited experience, knowledge and generally have no clue what I'm doing. It's as though I see writing as an inherently vain action, and I have to apologize for doing it.
I have limited experience and knowledge, and generally have no clue what I'm doing, but I rather like math, so let me do some.
Assuming the universe has been around for about 13.8 billion years, I've been around for about 0% of it. And around 0% of it too for that matter. And with that in mind, you'll still catch me speculating on the fate of the universe and all that jazz. The nerve! Am I right?
It's really scary to publish things. I might be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure most assertions are at least partially wrong. To write is to assert things, and that means writing is intentionally being wrong. Would that make publishing anything at all the act of intentionally spreading falsehoods?
My mother attended NIU pursuing her bachelor's when I was beginning to retain my first memories. We lived in Dekalb in a yellow house we came to nickname the chippin' house because the exterior paint bubbled and chipped. I retain a few memories from living there, like peeing in a vent, my mom's car being burglarized and my babysitter making a pizza and setting off the fire alarm while I was asleep.
Later, we moved into my grandma's place in Arlington Heights and I attended Green Briar Elementary from kindergarten to the second grade. I made a few very close friends and we dreamed of pooling our money as adults and living in a mansion treehouse just like the kids in Codename Kids Next Door. I wanted to marry my tomboy-ish girlfriend because she liked frogs as much as I did. While researching frogs we found a photo album with topless women.
In the mornings, I'd get dropped off at a Kinder Care center and spend a while with the kids there. We frequently ate doughnuts. Then we'd all get on a bus and they'd drop us off at our schools. I fondly remember the view of what was then known as the Sears Tower on the drive to school.
I had no idea where we were going but when we turned off 4th, I had a hunch the punk house was the one with a pile of trash and a blue school bus in the driveway. "You don't knock here," the hitchhiker I'd picked up in Colorado told me as we swung open the door. There were about seven people sitting in the front room, democratically deciding what music to listen to next, passing the remote around like a feather at circle. Rather than introducing myself, I lifted the boxed wine above my head.
It couldn't have been more than 20 minutes later that I was sloshed. I'd rolled a cigarette for a girl and then asked for a drag.
"What tobacco is this? It tastes really good!" I said.
"You just rolled it for me." She laughed.
I blushed. I already felt the buzz of booze and the incredible punk house energy. It was a swirling, stinking mess of dirty artists and criminals careening aimlessly through the house, stopping here or there to bum a pull from the now bagged wine or a cigarette. Another piece of advice my hitchhiker companion offered me came to mind: "Space out bumming things from people. If you need a cigarette don't keep asking the same person."
There was an economy of sorts here, an ebb and flow of give and take. The hive mind micromanaged the sporadic, tobacco cravings through a gift economy hedged on the hopes that "Somebody's got a goddamn cigarette!" When rations were low, lit cigarettes got flung across the room to whoever needed a couple of puffs before throwing it the next punk called for "Deuces!"
Dear Professor,
I frequently think back on a particular day I was in your class. I'm very glad to have been in your BC III course and to have heard this particular talk. I know I had a bad track record of sleeping in class, and on one day, the power had gone out throughout the building. I kept on waking up and seeing the clock unchanged and in my grogginess, forgetting about the blackout. I thought I was losing my mind. I was stuck in a temporal loop in which time passed only in the realm of sleep but upon waking not a moment had passed. It was beautiful.
But back to the case-in-point, that lecture you gave was eloquent and traumatizing. What began as a simple look at f=ma and integrating second derivatives quickly became a commentary on politics and the militarization of science. Missile guidance was only a matter of integrating the second derivative of position, easily accomplished with a time stepper and an accelerometer. You implored us to think of the ramifications of our future work, lest we become Norbert Weiner's with classified dissertations. The discourse went from trying to appease the disgruntled students asking: "When are we ever going to use this?" into a critical question asked instead of the student: "How will you use this?"
Seeing the power in mathematics, we no sooner saw the ramifications of this power. It was not long after I left IMSA and continued my studies of engineering and mathematics at UIUC that the Snowden leaks hit the media. It was a reminder of what you said, shedding light again on the dark and ignored quality of scientific work, the fuzzy but ubiquitous aspect of politicization, pervasive and sweeping. One couldn't turn a blind eye towards the issue of violence, war, and privacy. Could one simply work a job? It was our responsibility to critically think about our work and what we were enabling our employers and even the world at large to do.
This moral quandary was echoed again in an essay assignment on total mass-to-energy conversion in Modern Physics. We suppose that we had discovered the mechanism for this important milestone in energy production, but then we're asked, "Do you continue to develop it and publish your results in light of the fact that the information will inevitably find its way into the hands of terrorists?"
It was clear that the Spiderman cliché: "With great power comes great responsibility" was indeed true and carried a haunting implication in the realm of scientific work. I've personally struggled deeply with this issue. Seeing brilliant minds enter the military-industrial complex left and right, I became terrified of the prospects of my future employment. Even on the more benign side of things, I'd be creating "plastic bullshit" to fill landfills.
In high school, I had great optimism. In time, that optimism was subjected to the slow crawl of "reality." I soon understood that: "Mechanical engineers make weapons, civil engineers make targets."
I can't say I've fully recovered, but that's probably for the best. There's meaningful work to be done, and it's probably not the work being funded by VCs in silicon valley. The world has enough weapons, and the folks at the NSA are probably damn close to building a quantum computer capable of solving the discrete logarithm. Our knowledge and labor are being funneled into very sinister pursuits.
In Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is Within You he says: "That this social order with its pauperism, famines, prisons, gallows, armies, and wars is necessary to society; that still greater disaster would ensue if this organization were destroyed; all this is said only by those who profit by this organization, while those who suffer from it – and they are ten times as numerous – think and say quite the contrary."
You helped me pierce the veil surrounding the militarization of science. I can say with certainty, it has had a vast impact on my life. I lack direction because I've been forced to consider it rather than accept it. The easy paths have at times, serious ramifications that otherwise would have gone unconsidered. I want to be in service to the world at large, not a detriment to it, yet the paths provided to me lean towards the latter. At times I think there may be no alternative to forging my own path, and that, that may even mean being the starving artist of STEM, but I cannot let the evils of the world rest easily upon my conscience.
In summation, thank you for the insights, but god damn it, it's hard.
Dear alcohol and drugs,
We interviewed a number of candidates for the executive of emotional well-being and coping position and although your credentials impressed our team, we've found a candidate more suitable for the position. We regret to inform you that you've not been selected for the position. We wish you success in your job search.
No, I'm kidding.
How's it going, old pal? It's been a while. Nearly a month right? Unthinkable considering how we used to be glued at the waist just a short while back! I think this time apart has been really good for me. It's a fact of life that sometimes people change and grow apart, but I'll never forget the times we spent together, except of course the times I don't remember.
It was my sophomore year of high school. We meet for the first time through a mutual friend. We hung out in a bathroom with the shower running hot as hell with nearly opaque steam hovering about us. I remember eating all the food in my dorm after that. You helped me appreciate food like I never had before, but fortunately, I still do in your absence. Cooking has become a fun pastime of mine.
You also helped me hang out with others I probably never would've otherwise. Some of my closest friends those years had nothing as common ground except having you as a mutual friend.
Then I started getting in trouble because of you, but I didn't want to lose our friendship. My parents barred you from coming around after I got expelled, but we'd still sneak a visit in here or there.
I had to be careful until college started, but somehow we ended up at the same university! I sort of knew somehow I'd bump into you there. We were back to being besties in no time.
I didn't enjoy the parties that much, but you were kind and stayed with me when I stood by the keg instead of dancing. You didn't make me any better at beer pong, but as a teammate, you sure did help me enjoy it more. Most of all, I fell in love with your out-going attitude and friendliness. You could help me become friends with anyone or enjoy anything it seemed. I know now that, that was too good to be true.
When I got depressed you were by my side the whole time. You were more dependable than any other friend I had. You were always there for me. When I dropped out you came with me and at times tried to motivate me and at others console me. You even caught up with me when I left for the road. You must've traveled a lot because we kept on bumping into friends of yours'.
When I hurt, you always seemed to help. I started to realize that you were hurting a lot of people close to me and puzzled why it seemed you weren't hurting me. Some of my friends swore you were helping them but it seemed otherwise. You were turning Machiavellian and manipulating us, making us anxious when you weren't around or unable to sleep if you didn't say goodnight. You nurtured dependence and then stopped consoling me once I started to need you around.
As my life became more and more chaotic, you seemed like the only stability in my life. Every week I was moving somewhere else and saying goodbye for the first and last time to countless people. As many people as I meet and will likely never see again, I kept you around -- always. I treasured our relationship so much that I'd rationalize anything to keep you around. "So what they're a murderer?! They haven't killed me yet!" I'd say to those concerned about our continued relationship.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly your tone and volume changed. "You need me. Life would be unbearable without me." You muttered, and with that, I was fine, because you had me convinced. But then you started whispering so no one but me could hear what you said. You told me that my friends hated me, that I was a waste of space, that I shouldn't even try. Then you started suggesting things like: "Let's have one last hurrah and fall asleep on the train tracks together."
I couldn't keep you around anymore. I'd seen through the clever disguise and saw your true face. You weren't exactly a serial killer, but something a lot like it. How had I been so wrong about you? You seemed so benign and friendly when we meet, but my first impression couldn't have been further from the truth.
You may remember one of your victims, Jack Kerouac? I'd like to borrow something he once wrote as my parting words: “What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
Dear Professor,
You may find this letter random, but that’s because it was. This letter is a product of the Bored Game, the ultimate solution to boredom, where you choose a random number to determine which of 81 small tasks you complete.
The Bored Game rarely fails to cure boredom. Sometimes, it takes the player on a great adventure. One Monday night in April, we got the task, “Walk to the nearest 7-11.” At UIUC, however, the closest 7-11 is in St. Louis. So, we got on the 11 pm Greyhound to St. Louis and skipped school on Tuesday to hang out with friends from Wash U.
This time, we got the task, “Write a letter to a friend.” We randomized your name.
Enough of an introduction. If you’re looking for the ‘meat’ of this letter, you may be disappointed. This is a vegetarian letter, with no purpose whatsoever. Rather than leave you thinking that you’re just a victim of our boredom and that we’re passing it off to you by writing such a boring letter, we have come up with some interesting things to say and ask.
Just kidding, no we haven’t.
Okay, fine, we should at least pose a question or a problem so that this isn’t a simple waste of ink and time.
In Rome, after the Colosseum was built, we thought that Roman citizens would perhaps have been looking forward to the next great building. However, that building was not created in Rome for at least 1000 years.
Being engineers interested in technology and computing, we’re looking forward to the continuation of Moore’s Law and the advent of 5-7 nm transistors. We hope to see single-electron transistors or feasible quantum computers within our lifetimes. Perhaps the ITER fusion reactor in France might become functional.
Is this, however, a juvenile hope? It’s fairly possible that instead of great technological progress and peace, we will instead face a great ideological and political struggle, the type that threatened so much of the world so many times in the 20th century. Students in China in the 1930s were looking forward to a bright future. Kids our age in Tenochtitlan in 1521 were probably satisfied with their state. They couldn’t have predicted the atrocities to come.
Do you think we will face such a struggle? If so, where might it come from? It’s bad to live worried, but it’s also bad to be unprepared. Certainly, we can extrapolate from the trends. Today is the safest time to have ever lived. War is becoming less and less necessary, perhaps due to democratic nations better compromising? Yet we can also learn from the past; we ought not to think of our present as a permanent state. The roaring twenties come to mind. Electricity fascinated people just as much as any new technology that might fascinate us today. The economy was booming due to the expansion of credit. No one saw the writing on the wall. Things had been getting better for a long time and it was conceivable that trend could far outlast those speculating about it.
As I grow I find myself more attracted to routine. It’s paradoxical almost. As a child I longed for the days I could control my bedtime, my meals, my time, and ultimately my life. We’re both living in our own apartments, cooking for ourselves, and working full-time research positions. In no way have we claimed complete responsibility for ourselves. Our parents still support us financially. Yet, here in this moment, we are the most in control of our own lives we have ever been, and that’s terrifying. We’re only a few years shy of completely running the show. Not our own show, but the show.
We’re all born into a relay race of sorts. There’s no real handoff of the baton, but in due time, a completely new group of people finds themselves in charge. The entire earth shifts hands in a sense. There will come a day when I’m long dead, and no one I directly interacted with is alive. That’s the realization we’re having. We’ve been taught how to receive the baton. We’ve practiced sprinting around the track for a few years as well. Now’s the moment we’ve trained for. It’s the real event now. We stood at the ready, prepared to throw our all into this leg of the race. As the last generation rounds the curve we bring ourselves to a run and then nearly a sprint, preparing for the handoff. We feel the baton land in our extended hand, and we clench it dear as we take off around the track.
Pre-race jitters can’t even begin to compare to the anxiety we’re feeling. What if we trip? What if the baton slips? What if the runner before us screws up the hand-off? What if we’re too slow and we throw the entire race and ruin it for everyone? What if when it comes time to, we sweat so much that the baton becomes slippery and the next runner can’t grasp it?
Dear Raymond Poe,
My name is Bryan Hoffman, and I am a student attending the Illinois Mathematics and Science academy. I have attended the academy for only three semesters, yet I can tell that these few short years will have a lasting effect on the rest of my life. The student body is made up of such unique, diverse, and intelligent students that it is comparable to no other school in Illinois. Within the dormitories, students bond with one another on levels deeper than possible in contemporary schooling situations. The connections made with other IMSA students will last us all a lifetime, and may even prove to be the source of the next world-changing ideas. Personally, I have become very close with four others and through our collaborative efforts, we have begun work on creating a non for profit organization that would help support public schools lacking the resources necessary for a proper education.
Education is a very important thing to us. We take our studies very seriously here so much so that it’s not uncommon for a student to be enrolled in three or more challenging math courses in a single semester. The academy provides a unique learning environment in which students are not simply lectured to but asked thought-provoking questions and investigate solutions to the problems at hand. A math class is not simply about how a problem is solved but is actually focused on the process of finding out how one can solve it. In this way, we are taught the critical reasoning and logic skills that will be of great benefit to us in our future career paths, whatever these may be.
As students, we don’t just focus on classes. Even though the coursework is plentiful, groups of students will still find time to get together and through their work produce some really amazing things. Take for example student-led cultural festivals such as Lunar new year, or Diwali, or the multitudes of plays put on by the student body. Many choirs, orchestras, book clubs, and even philosophy debating circles have been created by students’ initiative alone.
Personally, I believe that great education creates the great leaders and thinkers of the next generation. When times get tough, and the economy is not doing as well as we would like, it’s important to consider the fact that the students in school today will be the politicians and scientists of tomorrow. Shortchanging a student’s education today is the biggest detriment, not only to the student but all of society. That’s why I beg of you to consider all other alternatives to cutting funding to education, not only to IMSA but to all schools across Illinois. As a state, let’s make our education system one that we are proud of and one that the next generation will look back on as the greatest asset to their lives. We thank you, and society will thank you as well.
Sincerely,
Bryan Hoffman
My game plan right now is something along the lines of sell my soul to the highest bidder for now for as short a time as possible until I can afford to buy some land and start growing my own food and then freelance and do odd jobs to make ends meet and use the surplus to buy fun toys like diesel power motor homes and ultralight aircraft and give back in various ways... Like ship tablets off to the Dominican Republic so they can download public domain books for free rather than purchasing classroom sets
I'm also very torn on whether I ought to go to Oregon this year to see my "family" and hang out in the national forest for a week early in July. There will be drugs and alcohol, alcohol to a less extent and it's really not the end of the world if I smoke weed or do psychs but I'm only 3 months sober and I don't know if I'm road-ready yet.
I found out that I can in fact be very happy, but there's a lack of giving back, growing, building something or call it what you will, but the lifestyle that brings me great happiness wears one thin and has a paradoxical seeming nature: something so dynamic seems stagnant. There's a balance and balancing is hard.
Sorry for the inevitable grammar errors and shizz, I'm tired but unable to sleep right now and I can tell it's effecting how I'm writing but I'm too tired to try to make it correct or canonical or blah
I'm envious as fuck of your ability to up and go to Portugal. How is it though? Say hi to De Gama for me if he's still "around" :P
Bryan Hoffman
Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 3:51 AM
I don’t believe in magick per se, but I think we can wield the forces of the universe in magickal ways. Without an appeal to magick, I’d have a hard time explaining my life recently. Those chance encounters, guardian angels, whimsical circumstances, teachable moments, and awe-inspiring places flow from a fount deep in the very fabric of the universe, like a spring bursting from an artesian well. The universe is rife with metaphor and living water, and it springs forth from every crevice of itself. Magick is becoming aware of this.
I don’t recall seeing the phase of the moon, so it was probably a new moon. Snow fell in large clumps, falling like cannonballs sinking to the bottom of the ocean. A thin blanket of snow about an inch or two deep already coated the ground. I felt the pangs of hunger in my stomach as though it was rebelling against me for neglecting it all day.
The residue of the potato soup I made in the Santa Fe national forest coated the bottom of my cookware. I scooped snow, cutting swaths from the ground around me until I’d filled my pot. Compact. Repeat.
When I had filled my pot with dense snow, I drew my lighter from my pocket to start my propane stove. I became cognizant of how cold my hands were as I fumbled around with the lighter clumsily. A spark took and in an instant, the domino-effect spread of fire had the stove roaring. The metal discolored with the heat and took on an iridescent shimmer. I warmed my hands by the heat of the fire as the snow in the pot melted. The ghostly whiteness of my skin took on a likeness of flesh again as blood flow returned to my fingers. Feeling I had the dexterity again, I decided to roll a cigarette. I recalled how Ray Smith said that there was nothing quite like smoking a hand-rolled cigarette without having even the slightest sense of hurry. I’d just finished Dharma Bums in Santa Fe and it was ripe in my mind.
When the snow had all melted in the pot, the volume of it was only enough for a mere inch of water. I poured some water in from my bottle to top it off, let it come to a boil, and added Amen noodles and a packet of chicken seasoning. I hoped the potato soup residue would come off with the boiling water and also flavor my Amen. Realizing that I had to micro-manage the stove at times during the cooking process, I decided that my cigarette didn’t meet Ray’s criterion. I’d have to roll another one once I was done eating, and then I could experience what he really meant. Nonetheless, I continued to smoke my sub-optimal cigarette.
Before going to bed, I packed all of my gear into the right side of my vehicle, laid down the left-back seat chair, entered the car and laid my feet down towards the back edge of the hatchback, and then closed the door behind me. I’d usually toy around with my space phone a bit before putting it away in the mesh on the back of the driver’s seat chair. Tonight however I had a sort of insomnia. I’d completed all my bedtime rituals, but sleep wouldn’t come. Then my phone buzzed from the seat in front of me. It was a text from my mother asking if I was still up. I decided to call her.
When she picked up, I could immediately tell she was driving because the odd reverb effects the hands-free devices created in the audio. She explained to me that she was stuck in traffic due to an accident on the state highway that forced police to shut the road down temporarily. Since it was the only reasonable route to where she was going, she had to sit and wait it out. My insomnia and her traffic delay corresponded wonderfully, and we were able to have a lengthy conversation on the phone, which we seldom did since I’d left for the road.
Over the course of the conversation, we discussed manifold topics, her participation in a conference she had been selected for by a major educational company, my travels, how in effect my travels could be considered a form of education, and also my aversion to living with money. It was scattered, but somehow maintained a sort of cohesiveness. I’ve puzzled over how to live without money for a long time, but that conversation helped me realize, if nothing else, it was a radical, educational endeavor.
The cathedral style of the university wasn’t for me. A generally unscrupulous and unambitious group of people listened to some “ordained” faculty talking about their understanding of “divine” knowledge for an hour or so. As with pastors and professors, their explanations are nothing short of their interpretations. To truly understand it, you must go to the source yourself, be it the Bible or Gilbert Strang’s Computational Science and Engineering. I considered myself a sort of educational protestant.
Accepting the premise of personally coming to understand God let me discover God for myself. Although the lesson I had learned from the Bible, lead me away from Church, it brought me closer to God. When I was young and thought of the divine, I seldom thought of anything other than the book of Revelation. Miracles in my mind were alchemical feats or physics-defying demonstrations. But I came to a more pantheistic understanding of the universe and my place in it. “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”
When asked if I’m a Christian, I’m often confused and don’t know how to respond. Of course, the person asking generally wants to hear a firm yes; I generally muster a shaky “I don’t know.” Explaining that I’m not a Christian, but not, not a Christian, confuses people only slightly less than explaining my disbelief in classical, propositional two-value logic. The question that was equally frustrating for me, was whether or not I was a student. I thought about it in much the same way.
They say going to church makes you as much a Christian, as being in a garage makes you a car. I think the same is true of being a student, and being in a classroom.
So in the way, the Protestants sought a personal relationship with God and the Bible, not restricted to the confines of a church, I saw knowledge as God and was outraged that my study of and knowledge of truth was confined to the gates of the university.
I hung up my phone and tucked it into the mesh pocket behind me, and ignoring the sensation that my toes were becoming icicles, I drifted into the realm of dream on a snowy, Colorado mountaintop.
In the characteristic dream fashion, an image of a sprawling forested wilderness gradually appeared within my mind’s eye. The flickering hallucination grew in intensity and suddenly I was teleported into the scene. Ah the smell of pine, the aroma of the divine. The hues of green and the geometry of the landscape impressed upon my fictitious retina and the sounds of birds cooing made their way from a land far above into my comatose auditory cortex. Dreams are real until you wake up.
I was walking along a path. The narrow strip of ground bore the tell-tale compression of hundreds if not thousands of other traveler’s footsteps. I contemplated how rivers knew to flow down the paths that water of past “generations” had flowed along as though the souls of raindrops-past guided the souls of raindrops-present. So too was I guided by the souls of weary travelers here in these woods. I knew not where the path led, but I felt it was important, perhaps imperative that I discover where it leads.
A human voice rose from the background noise. It was unclear what it was saying, but I could tell in time that I’d be able to hear it more clearly. Sounds in the forest bounce off trees and scatter, dissipating rapidly over short distances. Many secrets have been uttered in the forest because of this natural sound-proofing.
As I progressed along the path, the voice gave way and seemed to split. I could hear two voices now. Still unable to interpret what was being said, my mind was able to securely latch onto and attach the words “no beginning” to an utterance. The discussion seemed lively and it was becoming clear that the sounds were coming from above me in the dense canopy of the forest. Three hundred feet more and I could hear clearly what was being said.
“Yes, well the chickens will tell you that it was them, but their vanity shows. Of course, they were first and the creator made them in his likeness!”
The other voice laughed and said, “Let the chickens believe what they will. So characteristic I might add, the robins claim they were first and that all others came from their egg. Who’s first and who follows is a mystery and the seed of endless bickering.”
The other chimed in saying: “Yes exactly! Who cares who came first! We live in the present, not the past! And all considered I feel both egg and chicken -- well I mean egg and bird -- must’ve been co-created because how would the young hatchling feed itself if not for an adult present, and how would an adult avian exist if not born of an egg?! Or perhaps this whole ‘came first’ issue would best be resolved by acknowledging the illusory nature of ‘first’!”
“Yes, yes, yes! The existence of ‘the first’ is all part of the chickens' plan to propagate this senseless inherent authority doctrine of theirs! Nonsense, all of it really.”
At this time the voices were coming from directly above me, but looking up I couldn’t see anybody in the trees. My eyes swept over the branches searching for human forms. The form of a nest and two magpies came into view and abruptly the epiphany came to me that these magpies were in fact doing all of this talking.
One opened its beak and broadcasted, “Nonsense or not, what authority does being first give one?”
The magpies looked down and saw me staring up at them.
“Oh goodness!” They cooed and took flight turning into 7 crows in sum.
I continued along the path laughing aloud. The affairs of the bird kingdom were of no importance to me.
I sauntered under the weight of my pack at an ever diminishing pace. When my legs felt as though they were burning and the total sum of my effort seemed to be getting me nowhere, I understood that I was carrying too much. I would need to lessen my load to progress.
I stopped and let my pack down by a tree. I unzipped the bag and examined its contents. I had 37 stones of varying sizes, shapes, and colors and not a single item more. Not wanting to discard all my provisions, I came to the conclusion that each time I deemed the load too burdensome I’d remove the largest stone. I set the largest stone which bore an impression resembling the face of a buddha by the tree, zipped my bag, and continued along with 36 stones in sum. My pace increased and I felt a renewed vigor in my step as if my stride had been lengthened by reducing the weight. A part of me feared that 36 stones might not be sufficient should I encounter a dangerous situation, but I remembered that most experts claimed that 10-12 possessions total should suffice in the majority of times. I liked having a factor of safety of roughly 3 or more.
For an hour or so more I progressed till I came to a placard that read: “The End of the Trail”. In disbelief, I stared. The evidence of the trail carved out by previous adventurers’ foot traffic abruptly disappeared. It seemed the trail had in fact ended.
My heart plummeted and soured the milky concoction of my guts. My stomach turned and ached and my bottom lip quivered. I threw my pack at a tree in a fit of rage and fell to the ground, pounding at the earth as if I could hurt it and make it feel the pain I felt. Confusion, anger, and sadness stirred and boiled, thickening with the heat. The stew was turning into something wholly different but it wasn’t clear yet what that was. The dream was on the verge of becoming a literal existential nightmare.
“Why do you cry?” A voice beckoned to me.
I flinched with fear and embarrassment wiping my eyes so whatever spoke would not see my tears. “The trail ended and I have no idea where to go! It’s winter’s eve and surely I freeze to death here in the uncaring void!”
A lion with a mane of gold that appeared to burn with a brilliant white light approached me. I felt no fear from its presence, in fact, quite the opposite.
“The trail never ends, somebody just needs to continue building it. Would you like to continue building the trail?”
Time paused and a gray cube appeared containing three-dimensional forms of the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’. I knew I had as much time as I needed to decide, but I knew quite instantly I ought to and wanted to select ‘yes’. I lingered in the purgatory state of indecision for a moment. I was scared, but I was resolute in my decision to choose ‘yes’. An overwhelming sense of deja vu hit me as I remembered the countless lives in which I’d come to face this exact dilemma. I grabbed the ‘yes’ by the tail end of the ‘y’ and although disjoint from it the ‘e’ and ‘s’ were glued by some force following the ‘y’ wherever I should move it. As I pulled it from the gray box, the surface of it deformed and stretched over the ‘yes’ till the skin of it ruptured and visibly sent waves all throughout space and time. Time began again, and the lion was pleased by my decision. The ‘yes’ had disintegrated and a pile of pure white sand remained in my hand and on the ground below it.
“Now that you’ve decided, you’ll need a certain tool that will allow you to build paths, but it isn’t free. I’ll give it to you for 37 stones.”
My voice cracked, “I only have 36.” The feeling of sadness washed over me again, but this time the anger and confusion were absent.
“Look about you. All that you need is within reach,” the lion said as it pawed at a stone nearby.
I opened my pack and dumped its contents near the other stone.
“Good. Now in exchange, you may pluck a single hair from my mane.”
I did and it really was made of gold. But as I examined it, it began to curl and wrapped into a circle and 8 rods of gold exploded forth from the center of the ring and fused with it so that in this way the single, golden hair came to look like a golden amulet depicting the wheel of a boat. The lion said to me, “Now you can control the path of your earthly vessel and lay down the next segment of the trail. Explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no man has gone before.” And in the same way that the trail had ended, the dream did as well.
When I woke up, my naive attempt to exit my car met with insurmountable opposition. Water vapor had frozen in the lock and I was trapped. I shook the feeling that I was somehow in a metaphor or that a future version of myself was transcribing the event. Weird.
I crawled across the center console to the driver side door and managed to brute force it open. Alas, I could smoke my morning cigarette.
While pondering the lack of direction, or perhaps the abundance of direction in my life, I decided that I would eat a huge breakfast, because why not? Eggs and toast sounded delicious.
I grabbed my space phone and opened Oogle Maps and searched for breakfast places. I wanted somewhere I could sit and have the waiter or waitress bring cup after cup after cup of piping hot coffee. There’s something magical about bottomless coffee. For some reason, I thought of the koan in which the bottom of a pail falls out and the aspiring Buddha attains enlightenment, but I wasn’t quite sure why. Whatever. On to breakfast!
A series of events took place from which I can glean no metaphorical value and then voila! I had drunk my first cup of coffee and a cook who I never saw, never directly communicated with, and will probably never come in contact with again was fast at work creating the tastiest breakfast burrito I’ve ever eaten. God bless verde sauce and God bless you, you beautiful anonymous soul.
A man and his son came in and sat at the table next to mine. We exchanged some casual conversation about the weather and what I was up to in Colorado. He seemed to light up upon my explanation that I was traveling. As they left he yelled “Enjoy Colorado!” to me and the waitress explained that he paid for my meal. God bless you, you beautiful, practically anonymous soul.
With a full stomach and a satiated appetite, I finally had to face the fact that I had no idea where to go next. I’d look at the atlas, but it was just blotches of colors on paper. I knew I should probably head south, cause you know, winter sucks. So I just kinda drove south. I drove and drove and drove till the mountains turned into hills and then the hills turned into sprawling plains. By the time all of this was accomplished I arrived at a gas station and utilized their facilities to drain the excess fluid sloshing around my bladder. I think I peed for 3 minutes straight. I drank a lot of coffee. And then, of course, I’d smoke a cigarette.
While I was standing there, looking at an atlas, smoking, and still not knowing what to do with my life, a man walked up to me and said “Wanna take a guy and his dog to the fountain of youth?”
“So… the fountain of youth?”
“Yeah! Ever heard of it before?” he said. The hitchhiker had long, blonde hair and a chiseled face like an angel. His eyes’ deep blue cast a sense of calm contentedness, but his movements and mannerisms in speaking projected sheer mania.
“Uh, well yeah -- I just didn’t think it was real,” I said, just happy to have company. Even if this guy was nuts, he seemed rather benign all-in-all, and I’d run out of direction myself. I was happy to help a guy get at least out of the frigid, winter weather of Colorado. “So, clearly I’m going to need directions!”
“Well of course -- of course it’s real! As real as entropy and perpetual motion! But don’t use that awful Oogle maps app to find, you’ll just come up with clubs and bars owned by hoodwinked douchebags trying to get rich off a gimmick!”
He paused and stared out the window for several moments with a goofy ear-to-ear grin I couldn’t yet comprehend. Later when I myself did some hitchhiking, I’d know all too well this feeling that was nothing short of sublime. One might be stranded for days on end, star-crossed fate placing them in a “black hole” with seemingly no chance of escape. The ground beneath one’s feet fissures and cracks as vines ensnare and tightly coil about one’s leg, promising to never give way, keeping them there forever, be it Indianapolis or Rochester, Minnesota. Then in a whirlwind of serendipity, the fetters break and the feelings of hopelessness disappear. Like a fish that must continually move for its gills to function and for it to live, the vagabond’s soul demands to move. The stuffy air of stagnation and the burden of boredom dissipate. All the frustration of being stuck vanishes in the rearview as the textures of leaves and grass blur into a homogenous green from the passenger seat.
When the magic of motion had set in fully he turned to the back of the vehicle to check on his dog. “Aww, she’s already passed out back there.” I looked in the rear-view and saw she’d snuggled into my blue blanket and was fast asleep. “As soon as we get picked up and we’re moving she doses off. Riding in cars is doggy Mmm Bien for her.”
When he’d observed that she was comfortable and sleeping, I noticed his mania attenuated a great deal. He was probably a hyper-active and lively guy normally, but the anxiety of getting in a car with a stranger accentuated it. Like many folks on the road, he trusted his dog to make the first assessment of a stranger, and her first impression would be his. She trusted me enough to doze, and that very much set his mind at ease.
“I’ve always been jealous of people and animals who can just do that,” I confessed. “I wish I could say ‘I’m tired’ and then -- boom -- I’m fast asleep. Rarely works that way for me, though.”
“Sometimes I have the most incredible sleep and I wake up feeling like a million bucks, but sometimes -- like last night -- I hardly sleep at all. It was 16 degrees last night!”
“Holy shit man! Thank god I can get ya’ out of here!”
“Yeah, I couldn’t do another night of that,” He said.
It struck me that he could be starving, and I was getting pangs of hunger myself. “I’m getting pretty hungry. You wanna stop somewhere and get a bite to eat?”
I don’t know if the story is true, but I’ve recently heard an anecdote about Pablo Picasso. A man met Picasso and complained to him that he didn’t understand his artistic style. “Real life looks nothing like your paintings,” he griped. Picasso asked the man if he had a girlfriend. The man said he did. Picasso asked the man if he had a photograph of her in his billfold and the man did. Upon presenting the photograph, Picasso asked, “Is she that tiny in real life?”
The Ionian enchantment concerns the nature of reality and the question of whether or not it is possible to decompose the complexity and chaos of the universe into simple, human-understandable principles. Although many philosophers supposed this to be the case, Newton’s laws of kinematics proved that the Ionian enchantment was indeed true, at least partially. The world over is composed of matter. Newtonian mechanics apply to all matter, and consequently, Newton’s laws were the first physical laws with universal scope. The falling of an apple and the “rising” and “setting” of the sun are governed by the same laws.
Plato defines knowledge as justified, true belief. We believe Newton’s laws because they seem to provide a sufficient model for the majority of events we experience. We are justified in our belief because there is a wealth of empirical evidence supporting Newtonian mechanics. Yet, the truth of Newton’s laws is not even debated. We know with certainty they are incorrect. There exist many phenomena that Newton’s laws either mess up (precession of Mercury) and others that Newton’s laws can’t even begin to explain (Quantum tunneling).
Knowledge in the absolute is hard to come by. If we relax our conditions for truth, we can convince ourselves we “know” something about the world we live in. Otherwise, it’s clear that despite all our progress in science, we still know nothing.
Newton’s laws preceded general relativity which precedes the still developing reconciliation of quantum field theory and relativity. Theory after theory, errors have been found and theories are discarded for better ones that have more predictive power. We can’t perfectly capture the essence of the universe, but all the time we’re making progress towards realizing better representations in the form of physical models.
In many ways, Newton is the figurehead of western, natural philosophy. Many people are unaware of Newton’s vast studies in the occult, however. Newton studied alchemy and engaged in the interpretation of scripture. He issued multiple prophetic statements he derived from his reading of the bible. He also owned a great deal of literature on alchemy and the philosopher’s stone. Although his interest in science and mathematics were great, it seems that his interest in the occult was greater. Most people are dismissive of this, writing it off as though his interest in alchemy was just an artifact of the time. Newton greatly progressed empirical and theoretical science, but he must have realized that science is a limited tool. Certain things are ineffably viewed from the lens of science alone.
Sorry to bring up a cliche, but if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? One can theorize as much as one would like, but can one verify their theories? Empirical science only concerns the world in which measurement is possible. None of our theories are verified to work in an unobserved world. In fact, quantum mechanics shows us that observation can change the state of reality. The interference pattern in the double-slit experiment is destroyed when oppositely polarizing filters are placed over the slits. The interference pattern is erased because the information of which slit a photon went through exists and is easily determined by observing a photon’s polarization. Observation by humans could similarly alter the state of the system measured. We must then conclude, that the nature of an unobserved reality is ineffable by the empirical sciences.
Some scientists seem to believe that eventually, we’ll have the mathematical and physical models to describe everything. I think this mindset is awfully short-sighted. One wouldn’t use a hammer to paint a wall. I guess one could, but you’d get some peculiar looking results. Similarly, there are things that science is an unfit tool for. The Ionian enchantment gave birth to science, one of humanity’s greatest tools, but it will only partially realize its goal of explaining reality.
Slaves came predominantly from Africa for multiple reasons. The diverse cultures and languages of the socially fragmented continent proved beneficial to the slave traders. Larger states could easily overpower vulnerable, neighboring ones. Slave traders seldom kidnapped their ‘commerce,’ as other Africans did so for them. The more powerful African states greatly benefited through slave trading at the expense of their victims. The slave trade was a regulated commercial venture and several treaties formed as a result. Traders could not delve into the interior parts of the continent due to the hostile terrain and diseases. Cooperation with the larger states was imperative as the European traders had neither the know-how nor the firepower to find and capture slaves.
There was opposition to slavery coming predominantly from the peace-loving Quakers. Their argument pointed out the morbidity of the slave trade and dually the risk of an uprising by the slaves. At the yearly meeting held in Burlington in 1668, judgment was passed on the issue. Therefore it was forbidden for the community to purchase slaves. The Quakers treated the issue as an ethical imperative but elsewhere in the British colonies the consensus was quite different. Slavery offered great economic returns.
In the autobiography, The Life of Gustavus Vassa, the first of its kind, a common slave details his life. Gustavus Vassa was the Christian name taken by Olaudah Equiano. He tells of the atrocities of the middle voyage including the lashing he received for refusing to eat. Furthermore, he explains the torture endured by himself and others in such harsh detail one can hardly read without cringing, all the while noting that the white men felt justified in doing these things for they were teaching the slaves of the Christian god. Regardless of the claims made, the slave trade oft proved nothing more than an economic endeavor. Equiano notes the provisions made by the master so slaves could not become strong but also not so weak as to die or perform their tasks poorly.
An alternative to the slave trade was the use of indentured servants. Many would willingly submit themselves to the harsh conditions and work for a chance at a better life in America. Mortality rates were high and the investment for farmers already in the new world was great. If one were to die on the voyage over their fares were still to be paid and the loss would be that of the plantation owner. Additionally, the period servants worked was seldom longer than 7 years and upon parting, they were to be given a horse and a cow. The losses and risk made this option a poor one for plantation owners, and consequently, the more economic option of slavery oft won out.
I’d just nearly died. I had been climbing around a bluff composed mostly of scree because I didn’t know any better. I easily could’ve slipped and plummeted to my death. When that realization sunk in, I actually had an epiphany. I didn’t want to die.
Now I was standing under a ginormous boulder covered in ancient pictograms. I couldn’t identify most, but when I saw an arrowhead, I cried. 10,000 years ago a hunter recorded it there utilizing that boulder as a prehistoric chalkboard. I imagined this ancient hunter-teacher distributing pieces of obsidian to little kids instructing them to chip it and shape it into a point suitable for a spear. “Holy fuck,” I thought while still crying, “teaching was the first profession!” I was probably still a little perturbed from my near-death experience.
A few tourists saw me with tears in my eyes and exchanged looks with each other. They shuffled away with confused expressions, like: “Is that guy crying… over that?” Fuck yeah, I was!
I straightened myself out and walked to some wild west looking ruins. These stones used to be a hotel. There was a nearby hot spring that someone sectioned off with bricks to create a sort of natural hot tub. I was alone there, so I stripped to my underwear to take a dip and sit a bit. Not even a minute later, a dozen or more folks, most of them carrying cameras and gear, a few even spouting fanny packs, all showed up at once. Apparently, a student of Ansel Adams was teaching a class for amateur photographers there. I got out of the hot tub and dressed, but stayed a while chatting with a couple of the student-photographers. I told one that my favorite visual aspect of Big Bend was when the sunset and those mountains would glow red on the western side and turn almost black on the opposite side.
I spent the rest of my time in Big Bend searching the limestone hills for peyote until I was dehydrated. I had no luck. A german couple I kept bumping into bid me luck but warned me not to cuddle any mountain lions if I found the cactus I sought. It was for the best. I didn’t know how to take a button properly, so I’d probably have killed the cactus, and I would’ve used that as justification to take the whole thing.
When I was looking for it, peyote was severely endangered. It took 60 years for it to flower and propagate. Hippies had hunted them by the garbage bag full, and Texan landowners plowed land with no intentions of preserving existing peyote populations. Consequently, peyote was pretty much absent in the natural environment. I’m glad I didn’t find any.
I didn’t particularly like menthols, but I’d gotten five for free in Houston from a kind man. I’d smoked them all since and I was hungry.
Then I saw a flashlight. “I’m fucked… they know I’m here!”
My heart was racing. Then I heard a dirt bike. I threw all my shit together and ran. I sprinted through bushes with spines and thorns to a tree I could climb. I threw my bag, and then myself, over a fence.
I was in a neighborhood. I walked eastward. Some folks were out in the night and saw me. The night’s silence was pierced by a sudden loud noise. A train’s horn gave warning before it started its eastward journey. The beast of a machine lurched and began accelerating faster and faster. Before long, it was gone.
I came to an intersection with a convenience store and went into it to ask: “Where am I?”
I’ve given in to the “writing yourself a letter” idea, so here it goes. I’m not sure what I want in life, so I can’t even begin to guess your career, but I hope you’re successful and good at whatever you do. That’s an understatement. I hope you’re in the news and/or reshaping the world. I would like to be an influence on many people in my life, through business, or invention, or pioneering a science, or any of the overwhelming possibilities. I know there are millions of ways to change the world. But moving on…
I’m writing this at 11:41 pm and I’m listening to a violin concerto. I’ll be going away to IMSA for school in two days. How was IMSA? Was it as great as I imagine it will be? By the way, I want to know, do you have a wife or a girlfriend now? I can only wonder who!
Oh but anyway, do you live in California? I think I may want to live there someday. It just seems like a great place to live. I hope there have not been horrible earthquakes in 2020!
I have been found responsible for two disciplinary infractions. The first incident occurred early first semester of my sophomore year. The infraction was “Breach of curfew (outside the residential hall after check without permission) and Knowingly leaving campus without permission.” I had snuck off campus that night with two other boys and we were found later that same night. Security explained to us the dangers we had put ourselves in. In my naivete, I had not thought about neither the dangers we were subjecting ourselves to nor the worry I was subjecting our caretakers to. The second incident occurred in the second semester that same year. The infraction was “Use/possession of alcohol, other illegal/inappropriate chemical substances or paraphernalia for drug use.” My roommate and I had our room searched and paraphernalia and tobacco were found. From this incident, I learned that I had a great support group of friends and teachers around me that really didn’t want me getting into any more trouble. My Resident Counselor was particularly supportive of me in the months that followed.
They won’t tell you how they feel, what motivates their actions, or what makes them tick. These black-box people seek to obscure their identity. On the other hand, you’ve got people so transparent, they go about their lives with an openness that makes them seem robotic. They act on a collection of impulses. The serial entrepreneur seeks money with the same algorithmic regularity as a pendulum sweeping out its trajectory. I envy them. I want to be reduced to a robot. I crave a sense of direction as strong as theirs. Between the alexithymia and the convoluted internal bearings of my identity, I haven’t got a fucking clue what I want, but I greet the world with an openness that makes me quite translucent to the prying eye. If you wish to see the world as I see it, listen. Look through my persona and let the words I write color your perceptual realm with the hatred and love they carry.
Wake me up from this existential nightmare! I’m prepared to pay a large sum of money to the man, woman, or child that can find and return my invincible summer. It responds to affectionate love, beautiful sunrises, and the smell of sweet masala chai. The last time I saw it was when you told me you found me attractive, and I imagined our future, romantic embraces. Cuddling while intoxicated and talking the whole night through. Pushing one another towards our aspirations and goals. I wanted to make you happy because I thought it would make me happy too.
Those halcyonic days are through.
I know I can’t have you.
I know the risk is too great. Now I slip deeper into the madness of nihilism. My world is colored an anhedonic grey. Roses wither and die when I touch them. The world turns into a frozen tundra as my cynicism exports the warmth to somewhere more deserving. I wanted to tell you that you’re beautiful. I wanted to say that I understood you. I knew that every time you said you hated the human body, it was really directed at yourself. I wanted to drain the poison from the mirrors that clouded the image of your self-worth. The stark difference between dream and reality makes me feel like I’ve never been further off course. I dream that I kiss you and you kiss me back. All feels right, and I feel the white-hot glow of passion in my heart. I lay next to you in bed and stroke my hand along your back while caressing you. Our embrace is torn apart by the sound of my alarm. The warmth of your body fades and the light of my room illuminates the false happiness of my dreams and reveals them as mere apparitions. The sense of dread and depression sits on my sternum, happy to greet me as I awake. Dreams are real until you wake up. The pain of living in those fake realities makes living in this one the hardest thing to do. Yet I still go to bed each night hoping I dream about you.
I’m a mistake. The product of a night of drunken fornication. I’m a persistent bug in the code of reality. An accidental by-product of a system gone awry. I am a hit and run deposit of semen into an abandoned woman. I’ve met my father once and he gifted me a harmonica, and then promptly signed the adoption papers that legally absolved him of giving even a “financial shit” about me. The fucked up thing is that I was happy to meet him, even in the context of the situation. I treasured that harmonica for years until my childish innocence melted away and I realized what a piece of trash person he was. With that slow realization came another equally depressing one. That I was him. At least in part. As his son, I must too carry the genetic material of an asshole. I am what I hate. When you hate a person, you leave them. When you hate a place, you book a flight to “elsewhere.” But what do you do when you hate yourself? Every twenty-mile run I’ve taken, I was disappointed I kept up with myself. I cannot take a vacation from myself. I’ve inconvenienced the world, and I feel like I ought to apologize for existing. I am the forgotten teddy bear enclosed in a box in the attic. I am the waste product of the world itself as if it spread its cheeks and took a 10 lb shit in a hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois. And if you say you like me, or god forbid, that you love me, I feel that you must be lying or worse, that I’ve taken you hostage and you’ve developed a case of Stockholm syndrome. Throughout school, I was the maladjusted, borderline Asperger's kid who couldn’t make it through a day without being told how smart I was. Fuck that. I’m a piece of shit. I have no value to society. The best I can do is evoke pity. “Oh wow!” they’d say looking at my test scores. The boy excels at this small insignificant metric we’ve decided to ascribe numbers to! And I felt so shitty about everything in my life, that I let them inflate my delicate ego. Nothing will fuck you up more than believing you’re smart. You never learn to do any honest to god work, and you greet all pursuits in life with a dismissive, “I’m just not good at it” attitude. But every good score was positive feedback, a small reward for outperforming others. The teachers told me that my self-worth was contingent on being better than others. Every time they introduced new material, I felt a wave of anxiety, that this new material might be the thing that finally loses me. If I struggled with anything I was suddenly worth less. Having to work to understand a concept was a sign of weakness. Asking for help, a death blow to my ego.
We sat smoking a hookah, and somehow or other the concept of death came up. We all knew we’d eventually die. We all knew people who’d died, but we found it strange that we’d never actually seen someone die. The next day I woke up and brushed my teeth. I collected my things in my backpack, and then I heard a screech of tires and a blood-curdling scream. I rushed outside to see what had happened. A lifeless body and sirens. The first responders couldn’t do anything for you. Your body sat on the ground with a small trickle of blood surrounding you. Your death haunted me. I learned your name when your friends set up a small monument outside my dormitory. The tree closest to the accident still bears your name. I’ll never speak to you, but you’ve had a profound effect on my life. You remind me that life is much too short. Two bikers could never have foreseen the incident that would forever alter their lives. The worst part of your death is that no one is to blame. I waited for an explanation. I wanted desperately to have an enemy. The man who killed you would burn for eternity! He must’ve been at fault! But later that day they released the report. The man in control of the car that hit you and your friend was unconscious at the time. He couldn’t have done anything to prevent your death. He was not at fault. But who then? God himself? On that day Mimi, God took your life.
I describe myself as pragmatic, intelligent, creative, and eccentric. These characteristics are a great deal dependent on my genetics as my family displays them as well. I was born with a natural curiosity, a desire to throw back the curtain and see the underlying mechanisms of things. Consequently, I grew to enjoy the sciences. Due to many great teachers with my interests in mind, I was provided with advanced materials for science and mathematics. Not only was I provided for educationally, but I was also provided for in multiple aspects of my life from an early age and feel it is my duty to give back someday. I plan on using the talents I was born with to contribute to the human race and give to others as they have to me.
I’m not graced with the co-ordination that some athletes have. I do however have great endurance. Consequently, my sport of choice has been cross country. The strain put on one’s body while running is tremendous. It’s a wonder we can even run. A great deal of thanks is due to our bodies. Our legs contain four levers to absorb the shock of each step. Even the greatest engineers stand in awe of the mechanics in running, yet still the mental aspect of running trumps the physical. Negative thoughts are crippling. They build up faster than the pain of running itself. The thoughts crescendo and the desire to quit builds. These feelings form the ominous wall so many runners have fought before. With willpower and determination, one can tear down the wall. My experience with cross country has helped me identify and tear down ‘walls’ in other aspects of my life not limited to running. I’m still making progress on breaking my self imposed walls and realizing just how strong I actually am.
I was raised by a single mother. One of my friends commented saying he thought I would be more feminine than most males due to my upbringing. I don’t believe that’s true but it did catalyze my analysis of my childhood experiences. I had not realized that my upbringing was an unusual one until fairly recently, but through the years, I’ve seen my mother working twice as hard as other parents. Realizing just how much she’s sacrificed in the process of raising me, makes me feel spoiled, and I haven’t got a clue how to repay her. Consequently, I feel indebted for my own existence. Some people hear this and think this is a negative thing, but I feel it’s a positive aspect of my life. My feeling of indebtedness is a unique pressure and motivates me to strive to be the best I can be. Anything short of my best is a loss to all who have supported and continue to support me. Consequently, I feel I owe my very best to society.
As much as I would hope that there was an afterlife, the evidence is bleak at best. Sure, there are some claims of seeing tunnels of light, angels, and other such fantastical visions as one sits on an operating table and nearly slips into death, but these are explained away by hypoxia and other natural phenomena. Supporting the theory of reincarnation, there are stories scattered around the internet detailing a young child “remembering” a past-life. Such stories are rarely cited and consequently raise my suspicion. A blogger might make such stories up simply to boost traffic to their web page. But in spite of all this, I think there is real evidence of an afterlife.
There is a religion called Kopimism that holds that copying of information is sacred. Our entire existence is rooted in the copying of genetic material from our ancestors. Art and poetry are just copies of thoughts and nature, and all knowledge is spread by means of copying. So, when I die I will not exist in my same form, I will leave behind a significant amount of information. I will live on in the genetics of my descendants and my actions, good and bad, will be expressed in the epigenetics and the expression of their genes. Drinking, smoking, and a sedentary lifestyle weakens the expression of genes for longevity but activity and healthy eating strengthen their expression. Therefore, I am rewarded for my actions now in the prosperity of my kin. I will also leave behind a lump of matter which will take on new forms. I will become part of the world as the molecules that made me disperse throughout this world and eventually the entire universe. Perhaps I will contribute to the existing knowledge of my fellow human beings. I will live on in whatever works I produce, whether they be artistic or scientific.
Most people believe in a soul as a spiritual entity separate from their physical essence and the existence of such entity is often deeply rooted in their religion. My views are really no different. To me, the soul is not physical, or at least not holistically. The soul exists separate from my physical form and will endure until the very end of the universe. So what happens to the soul when a person dies? It remains here in this universe in the form of art, memories, and information. The Kopimist view is not as bleak as one might initially think. The possibilities are limitless and the beauty of it all incomprehensible. So I’m not disappointed if there’s no heaven or hell. In fact, what is here right now can become either depending on what I make of it.
My appearance, marked by wrinkled clothing, the ever-lengthening hair and beard, and an aura of ennui and generally catatonia, continued to show more and more my case of the “fuck-its”. I’d become a recluse, rarely venturing beyond the confines of my apartment, and seldom even my room. I started to keep my weed near my bed so I didn’t actually have to get up to smoke. I liked smoking in bed.
October 18th, 2015, I packed up my Subaru Outback and left Illinois with the intention of moving south for the Winter. I somehow ended up at a higher latitude than I’d set out from. By November 12th, I’d arrived in Olympia, Washington. I’ve been in and out of Olympia but lingering here in the Pacific Northwest since then.
I left with a hookah, way too many books, and a road atlas. I’d been dreaming of this road trip for some time. I spent my first night at Rend Lake State Park. I began journaling that night.
The next day, I drove to Shawnee and used my U.S. Army Survival Field Guide to scavenge edible plants. I found some prickly pear cacti and tried to remove the prickly hairs by roasting them over my fire. They tasted like green beans.
I didn’t know where I was going. I looked at the atlas. I could go anywhere.
If you naively decided that you wanted to make everyone your friend, you might give everyone a chocolate chip, raisin cookie. You do so, because “you” really like them. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t like raisins. Everyone doesn’t like raisins. What does everyone like? If we try to name any “thing”, any material manifestation, anything at all having “real” substance, we could probably find someone who doesn’t like it. So are we done? I say no.
If you’ll allow me to be circular, people like what they like. Don’t know why. Don’t think it matters. But by extension, wouldn’t people like things that enabled them to do what they like? Now again, let’s be careful not to interpret “things” as actual things.
Let’s recognize that the often-referenced, proverbial man really just wants a fish to feed himself and maybe his family. We live in an age where information is available in supply never seen before. What could this wealth of information do for us? Suppose every man, woman, and child were to receive an education, in which they gain literacy, and critical reasoning, as well as the metacognitive ability to learn how to learn. This ability is not well understood, that is, what makes an individual autotelic. But, I have the suspicion that we can teach it. What then would come of a society like this? When a man wants a fish, does he need to wait around for another man to come to teach him? If this man is literate and able to access the latest manifestation of human, collective, social interaction i.e. the internet, he can damn well learn to fish. Probably in a couple of hours.
Textured with a diamond embossed pattern, the steel wheel presses lightly on the flint sitting below it. My thumb felt the pattern pressing against it, and assurance and recognition of what was to come. In slow motion now, the wheel and flint press harder and harder. My thumb rolls off the wheel and sparks shoot off the flint. My thumb falls, finding its way to the small lever, opening the flow of butane which catches on fire as it passes through the sparks. A bright light balances teetering above the metal encasing. It dances about shaking with my hands. I take a moment to feel my body, and prepare for the events I know will soon occur. I take the opportunity to breathe a deep breath and exhale the air in my lungs. Pursed lips find their way to the tip of a small metal pipe, and the bobbing flame finds its place resting above the chamber. I expand my chest allowing the thick and sickly tasting plastic vapor into me. My body rejects the vapor as foreign and harsh and ejects it by means of coughing. My mind however knows the true purpose of this foreign substance. I fight the instinct to cough, but after a mere few seconds, my body wins. I only had the opportunity to be disappointed for a few seconds. Each molecule passed through my lungs into the blood swimming through my veins only to cross into the brain. Like rioters breaking into parliament and seizing the reins of government, this substance took the reigns of my mind. The smoke before me began swirling and burst forth with repetitive and self-similar patterns and symmetry. It had begun. I had to lay down. I would lay down regardless, but I felt some control in it being a conscious decision. The weight of the air about me increased and small drafts of wind felt like hurricane gusts. The fluid I was submerged in began to thicken to the consistency of water and currents rushed about me. I began dissolving in the water and the currents crashed over me and eventually through me. I was physically overwhelmed. My subconscious became vocal and at first, politely asked me what I was thinking in ingesting this substance, but I was in no state to respond. When my conscious mind could not respond to the question of the subconscious it began to get angry yelling at me “drugs are bad!” over and over. My ego continued dissolving in the fluid surrounding me. I seriously wondered if it would all turn out alright. Colors burst about me and I stared upward the height of a thousand Burj Khalifas at the vaulted ceiling of the universe. Stellated patterns of whirling color overwhelmed my senses. The detail was amazing. The patterns defy mathematical description. It was as if I had been lifted out of flatland and shown not only a single dimension more, but a plethora more. My mind scrambled to make any sense of it. The ceiling soon became blurred by the presence of a smoky cloud. Finite in external size, the cloud grew to a tremendous and completely space-filling size as I drifted into it. The colors went opaque and then dulled to pastel through the cloud of white smoke. Then my eyes opened as if I had been passed out in another body in some other universe. It felt like I was home, but the stay was uncomfortable since I hadn’t visited often. As the blurry smoke cleared I realized I sat in the corner of a large room. Three beings sat around me. Their olive tinged skin had a beauty to it, unlike anything I’d seen before. I felt overwhelmed to be in their presence. I was a mere Lilliputian to these gods. I noticed their inquisitive stares and interest in my existence. They each held a clear cup containing a shimmering and color-changing fluid. These gods were drinking whatever the equivalent of alcohol was in this universe. Each looked jolly and intoxicated. They kept getting closer to me reaching out their hands as if they wanted to touch my face, but they seemed to do so cautiously as though they were aware I might become fearful if they suddenly touched me.
The familiar feeling of a hopelessly damned night of sleep. The ceiling stares back. Thoughts are racing with the magnitude only an excess of stimulants could produce. A feeling of regret comes over him. He shouldn’t have taken that pill earlier. He knew how long it would last, at least 18 hours. He figured he had weed as a fail-safe if he couldn’t get to sleep that is. No luck.
The sun was peeking through tightly shut shades. Light darted through the room in precise, flat sheets. Photons traveled an absurd distance only to make their presence known by smearing themselves across the smoke drifting through the room.
A cigarette dangles in his lips. He draws his lighter from his right pocket and lights it. It burns unevenly; only a small arc of the cigarette tip is glowing orange.
The tackle box on his desk haunts him.
In Champaign-Urbana, the freshman class of electrical engineers is corralled into labs throughout the ECE building. They begin learning the fundamentals of their branch of engineering, and in one particular class, they demonstrate their knowledge in a lab portion dedicated to creating an autonomous, line-tracing robot.
At a certain point in ECE 110, the students self-select groups to work in. Each group receives a tackle box full of various components. For the rest of the semester, they apply their gained knowledge of rudimentary signal processing and digital logic to ensure their robot can and will navigate a sort of maze, all by itself.
The keystone technological development, essentially the holy grail of the entire department, is the transistor.
Transistors are basically signal amplifiers. They can encode single bits of information and can act as switches in devices. If the applied potential reaches a certain threshold, that is some voltage, the transistor will enter a new region of operation. It should be noted that this behavior is almost completely analogous to the firing of neurons in the brain.
Transistors are extremely non-linear. Linearity means that output varies directly with input. The number of ears of corn produced varies linearly for the most part with farm size. Linear behavior is comfortable, predictable, and rarely surprises. Non-linear behavior has and will continue to give mathematicians headaches, and engineers transistors.
Our insomniac character lies in bed with his outstretched arm holding the still-burning cigarette. The smoke wafts into the air, but he stares past it, intently focused on the tackle box. His sleep-deprived brain wanders aimlessly while his face remains static, blankly staring. Inside his mind, imagery dances. He takes note of this peculiarity but does not linger on it. He closes his eyes and allows the thoughtscape to project on the back of his eyelids. His thoughts are somehow controlling the images under his closed eyelids. His outstretched arm suddenly folds in, bringing the butt of the cigarette to his lips. He takes a hit. He’s half-asleep.
Over-worked, under-slept, and exhausted, he slips into slumber, his mind fixed upon that tacklebox.
He has a nightmare.
Beep. Beep. Beep...
Cycle after cycle, the clock’s register incremented. Count a vibration in the piezoelectric quartz crystal, increment value in register holding value for the current time, check if the current time value belongs to a particular residual group of integers. If it does emit a beep, if not continue counting.
Programs in execution remain in execution until acted on by an outside function.
A lattice of holes drilled through a plastic enclosure reveals portions of a speaker. The speaker is a small electromagnet connected to a diaphragm. Electric pulses drive the diaphragm and create mechanical disruption in the pressure differential in the space surrounding them. These disruptions propagate as governed by the wave equation.
The acoustic vibrations produced by the alarm clock arrive at the eardrum after traveling fifteen sound-feet. The eardrums invert the acoustic vibration and transform it into a mechanical tapping that gets transferred to the cochlea. This small organ is shaped like an odd spiral shell and its interior is filled with fluid. Its membrane contains many hairs with portions extending into the fluid containing interior, and also out to the exterior of the cochlea.
These hairs are all of varying lengths, and consequently, respond to different frequencies best. It’s like how different-length harp strings produce differing tones but in reverse. The hairs of the cochlea dance when certain frequencies are present and the magnitude of their oscillation is relayed via electrical signaling in neurons to the brain.
The signal then gets perceived by the brain. This is a complex response of asynchronous relaying of information and rapid changes in huge swaths of brain matter. Motor functions are unsuppressed, and the human (who responds to it) becomes suddenly animate. He moves across the room, shortening the distance between him and the machine still madly beeping away.
He takes note of the time.
Shit.
A cascading effect takes place. The hippocampus directs the brain to produce norepinephrine. This chemical, also known as adrenaline, signals to the liver, that massive energy is going to be needed, and the liver will ramp up digestion of huge chains of sugar-based, stored energy. In the brain, norepinephrine mediates the fight-or-flight response to threatening situations.
10:47
“FLIGHT! FLIGHT! FLIGHT!” screams Brodmann Area number 28 of the student’s brain.
From a slow 40 bpm in restful REM to a suddenly racing 170 bpm, the student’s heart rate responds within milliseconds of the norepinephrine release.
No time. Run!
With grey tackle box in hand, he sprints out the door of his apartment, down a flight of stairs, and he bursts from the doorway of the apartment complex. An attendant working the desk watches as he sprints across the lobby, barefoot, in pajamas, and holding the awkwardly sized tackle box. He darts through a sliver in the barely open automatic doors and bumps his right shoulder fairly hard on the right panel of the door. The impulse initiates pain response. Milliseconds later, his momentum carries him forward, but the force on his shoulder disrupts him, and he awkwardly missteps. He suddenly loses grip on the floor below him. His center of gravity moves forward, he’s aware of the imminent crash. His body continues forward on its predestined path.
He hits the ground like a clumsily thrown ragdoll. The abrasive texture of the concrete tears a quarter-sized patch of skin back, but leaves it attached to his hand. Blood begins exiting the wound. The process of healing has already begun.
All of this calamity merely elevates his energy. Lunging up nearly as fast as he had fallen down, he brought his pace back to a sprint.
Three blocks on Green street. Then head due north and run across the north quad. I can be there in 6 minutes.
His sprint attracts a lot of attention. The tackle box in hand labels him.
Only nerds ever have these tackle boxes.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he doesn’t feel it. His sprint makes his phone bounce around in his pocket with such tremendous intensity, the slight buzzing of a message notification goes unnoticed. The ECE building was now in view. Somehow seeing the building made him aware that he had yet more energy to give. He sprinted harder. Fortunately, his arrival lined up with another’s departure. Juking past the closing doors, he was able to continue his sprint directly to the staircase, rather than fumbling with the doors. A few seconds saved. As he ran up the stairs, he fumbled mid-climb to get a grip on his phone.
Rajiv Bonothou “Where the hell are you?” -sent 3 hrs ago
Fuck.
The clock on his phone indicated that the time was now 2:15 pm. He was 15 minutes late to lab. He sprints down the corridor, which seems to stretch in length as he runs. After seemingly an eternity, he’s there.
He throws open the lab’s door with such force that the entire class's eyes darted to focus on him. He suddenly became aware of his heavy panting. Then also his pajamas and bare footedness. He turned crimson red.
Ashamed.
“You nearly missed your time slot!” The apathetic TA holding a clipboard said. He then returned his attention to the automaton currently perusing the white tape path. Three Indian kids stood at the far end of the long table. One was nervously biting his nails. The one seated in the middle made a particularly dumb-looking face and sat motionlessly. Deer in headlights. The last, the tallest and most handsome of the bunch, sat intently looking at his laptop. Lines of text scrolled past on his terminal. He couldn’t be bothered to watch the robot. He had full faith in his code.
“James! Set your robot up. It’s your group’s turn,” chimed the TA.
Rajiv approached James from the far side of the room.
“What the fuck happened man? Are we fucked?” Rajiv whispered to James.
Rajiv had noticeable sweat stains on his shirt.
James’ face flashed a somber expression as he replied, “We might get a B… if we’re lucky.”
Setting the tackle box on the table’s end, James noticed a large crack jutting across its top left. His shaking hands fumbled with the latch. He hesitated a moment before opening the lid. He hadn’t checked if his fall had damaged anything. “Oh fuck!” he thought as he nervously peeked in. His fears were validated. His shaking hands retrieved the broken remnants of nearly a thousand man-hours of effort.
“You careless fuck-up!!” screamed Rajiv.
Tears streamed down James’ face. The TA started laughing maniacally and scribbled on his clipboard manically.
I can fix this! I can fix this!
James scrambled, haphazardly connecting pieces of the destroyed machine. He flips the switch on the machine and it whirs to life. At full speed, the wheels carry the robot across the table at top speed. A trail of smoke wafts from the charging robot, as a multiplexer burns with an unpleasant, putrid smell. The stench is similar to burnt keratin, the protein in hair, fingernails, horns, etc. The robot begins spinning in tight circles as the MUX starts sparking, and spraying fiery blasts of sparks all over the table.
Suddenly, from the corner of the room, James’ 8th-grade Algebra II teacher approached the TA and said, “See, I told you he was hopeless. James just isn’t smart enough!”
The entire class erupts in laughter and in unison begins chanting, “You’re too stupid! You’re too stupid! You’re too stupid! …” as they point at James.
The MUX pops, spraying a massive column of fire into the air. The fiery plume continues to spray, and horror seizes the students in the lab. The robot stops running in circles and decides to travel forward as fast as possible. The kamikaze robot rockets across the table cutting a fiery gash into the ceiling. Time slows as the robot falls from the edge of the table. It rockets through the air and begins to spin wildly. The fire incinerates a dozen of James’ classmates instantly. All of the wooden cabinets and desks throughout the room burn and only a handful of the students are even alive. The robot comes to a stop in its slide across the floor, and its wheels continue to run at full speed. The cart is lying on its side, and the spinning wheels slowly turn it. The jet rotates, sweeping out a disk of fire in the room.
James falls to the ground. He looks up to see his TA standing above him. James sees the TA’s face color change to a bright red as massive horns erupt from his skull. The TA’s hand shift in color as well, and nearly double in size. The devil-TA slams James' head into the ground with his massive, red, clawed hands.
“You’re too stupid!” screams the creature.
The fiery jet rotates spraying fire. James’ fellow students scramble at the lab door, but a huge tentacle appendage sprouting from the TA’s back holds the door shut. James watches as the fiery, rotating plume consumes his classmates one-by-one, picking them off as it rotates.
This is all my fault.
The fire drew closer by the second. James sweats profusely from his face as the machine rotated the blaze closer and closer to him. The high pitched cackle of the devil-TA morphed wildly as the fire inched closer to incinerating James.
James' hair sparked and burned wildly.
There’s that smell again!
Burning flecks singed his face as they sputtered across the room. The TA still wildly cackled, at one point resembling a ringing telephone, white noise, and finally...
Beep. Beep. Beep...
James sat up and looked across the room.
10:02
James sighed a breath of relief.
Plenty of time to eat and shower before last-minute adjustments to the robot. We should be able to fix it up completely before class at 2. Thank god that dream wasn’t real.
While getting up to turn off the alarm, James noticed a lump of ash on his blanket and a half-finished cigarette laying on the floor. The smell of the burnt MUX was still strangely present in the air. James thought it was odd, but he was not really awake enough to process it. He instinctively walked to his bathroom to urinate. He finishes and walks to the sink to wash his hands. Staring in the mirror, he notices the source of the smell. A tuft of hair in his bangs looks bubbled, frizzy, and charred.
Fuck. I need to stop smoking at night.
Have you ever been sitting in a quiet room when suddenly the A/C turns off and you become acutely aware of the absence of a noise you weren’t even aware of at first? Unfortunately, this “fluke” in human psychology affects more than just the perception of sound. It often seems as though the good things in our life slip past our radar and become part of the “background noise” of life. We often don’t recognize their signature “goodness” until we see the lack of it in its absence. Perhaps you think you’re sitting in a quiet room right now? But if you really listen, you might be able to hear a breeze outside, or automobiles on a nearby interstate, or pedestrian foot traffic beyond your window? Maybe you hear your own breath or the bass of your neighbor’s music? The world is very rarely as quiet as we perceive it to be. Likewise, the world is much better than you perceive it to be.
The world is very, very bad also, but you already knew that. The bad things in life are amplified when they pass through our perceptual filters, and like a jackhammer tearing up asphalt outside, the bad things make it harder to hear anything except for themselves. I want you to be aware of all this good in the world because I’m going to be talking about all the goddamned jackhammers now.
You may have heard about the bystander effect before. If not, you could be a wiki-article-reading away from losing all faith in humanity. The bystander effect seeks to explain why there are many instances of crowds not intervening and helping others. If you read the notable examples section, you’ll see instances of fairly benign behavior, like crowds running away from an individual who suddenly fell unconscious, to downright terrifying examples of crowds’ nonintervention in rapes, murders, and a particularly terrible case of a deranged man stomping his infant son to death.
Remember to hear the background noise.
These atrocities were allowed to occur via the non-intervention of crowds. Why did no one step in? I think the primary cause is the diffusion of responsibility. The bystander effect comes into play mostly in situations that are high risk, and unsurprisingly, witnessed by multiple “bystanders.” If you are the only person available to help someone in need, the responsibility falls squarely on your shoulders. When ten or so others are present, a person is less likely to intervene, feeling that their share of the blame is in single-digit percentages. Any number of others are viable candidates to intervene, and intervention may put the individual in harm’s way. Everyone is trying to assure their own safety primarily, and this results in crowd paralysis. No one steps in, because anybody else could have in their place.
I think most of the world’s social ills are permitted to take place through this bystander effect. I confidently believe that most people would claim they would intervene if they were a bystander, but should the situation ever actually occur, many would fall subject to the crowd paralysis and do nothing. I think this is the root of the problem, how vastly different we’ve allowed our “walk” and our “talk” to diverge. Somehow we can support our “theoretical” ideals in speech, but in our practice, reflect entirely different ideas. As humans, we’re damn good at compartmentalizing, which is why we see so many environmentalists driving cars and flying without stopping to evaluate the effects. We see pacifists paying taxes into the largest “defense” spending program in the world, and retaining the label “pacifist” as their tax dollars fund wars they don’t support. Most people are against child labor, unsound labor practices, sweatshops, and paying full-time workers less than a living wage. Why do so many of these same people shop at Walmart?
There is a lesser-known word that I feel describes, or at least names this behavior. The word is praxis. Praxis is defined as a sort of interface of theory and practice, particularly how our theories and ideals weigh in on our behavior and shift theoretical elements into practical behaviors. Praxis is how theory is realized in behavior. Praxis is what happens when environmentalists buy bikes and bus passes. Praxis is understanding that the world will not get better unless we play an active, participatory role in shaping it. Praxis isn’t appreciating and then forgetting Gandhi’s nearly cliched quote: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” Praxis is being the change you wish to see in the world.
I think most of us can agree that the world needs to change in a number of ways, but most of us aren’t doing anything to actually change it. You are empowered and you can change the world. I think we ought to. But changing the world means we’ve got to make changes to ourselves. That means we’ve got to really analyze ourselves and come to realize what behaviors are destructive and what we can do to stop them. Putting yourself under the microscope is downright uncomfortable, but so is living in a world where our collective apathy permits great evils and grave travesties to occur without opposition. These hiccups, when we realize that we aren’t walking our talk, are opportunities to change ourselves, and in doing so, reinvent our world.
Remember to hear the background noise. There is much good in the world. There can be more.
To what extent have you questioned the way things work in this world? To what extent have you simply accepted that the world works in the way it does? The powers-at-play really love this mass apathy and lack of praxis in the general populace. The profiteers of war, sweatshop labor, and environmental destruction aren’t scared of people who want to stop participating in the system as defined. Only action has real potential.
Boycott an unethical company. Write a congress member. Elect an entirely different congress. Get rid of your car. Go vegan. Feed the homeless. Stop buying useless plastic shit. I don’t care how you do it, but start looking for the friction between your ideals and what you actually do. When you discover these mismatches, let it make you feel really uncomfortable, because compartmentalizing our ideals and accepting reality “as is” is fatalistic nonsense that won’t ever accomplish anything.
Gandhi didn’t just talk the talk, in some cases, he literally walked the walk. Change is a result of those that make it. Start living your praxis, and be the change you wish to see in the world.
Hindu texts reflect a simultaneously fearful and admirative light on the god of death and destruction. Look into the etymologies of various names Shiva is given, one literally translating as “the fierce god,” but another alternative name literally meaning “conferring happiness.”
Engineering is really just failure analysis. The theory and practice of engineering serve to evaluate and prevent the risks associated with various failures. Failure is the forerunning thought behind every single calculation or thought an engineer has. Ironically, failure in engineering is to not consider the possibility of failure at all. Historic failures lead to improvements in building code and design. I remember when I was in grade school, I woke up during the night with a small tremor. An earthquake of magnitude 4.9 on the Richter scale had just shaken many Illinoisans awake. Unlike many people, I realized that it was just an earthquake and quickly went back to bed. Apparently, many of my peers and even a grade school teacher didn’t realize it was possible for Illinois to have earthquakes. The following day at school a student told about a particularly rash response to the tremor. His parents apparently thought a terrorist attack was going on, which wasn’t entirely nonsensical as the capital building stood only a few miles away. They stayed up for an hour in their basement until the radio clarified that it was in fact a tremor, not a terrorist attack. Although the reactions were comical, I saw an interesting trend underlying the event. Earthquakes are a rare phenomenon in Illinois. When a measly 4.9 hit, foundations of old buildings cracked, and a few chimneys collapsed onto rooftops. In the more seismically active parts of California, a 4.9 earthquake is a near-monthly occurrence. Buildings are designed to withstand much larger earthquakes. My adolescent mind made a connection. The infrastructure in highly disaster-prone areas is better than that of less disaster-prone areas. Progress occurs because of failure!
I feel like a sad sack of shit. I lack confidence. I've never had a girlfriend. I feel pathetic, unwanted, and hopeless. I honestly thought I was going to kill myself years ago. I'm not in that place anymore, for the record.
I've done so much to "improve" myself. I'm trying really hard. I'm exercising, cutting out my vices, getting out of my comfort zone, all that shit.
Sometimes I feel like it doesn't matter. I'm developmentally behind. When I do get that first girlfriend, I'll scare her off when I act like a 14-year-old because that's where I'm at. And that absentee father of mine doesn't help much. Just another mark that I'm unwanted, unloveable, and the rest of the lot.
But I'm self-aware enough to see the privilege I've been afforded and that hurts in a different way. I've fucked up university twice. A lot of people don't have the opportunity to fuck it up once.
All that smart, gifted shit I went through just set the bar so high and I felt crippling pressure. Getting a B+ on a test felt like I'd failed. And when I was honest with my mom about how this made me feel, she talked like we should pull me out of these tougher courses. I always interpreted that as her saying she thought I wasn't that smart.
I was a straight-A student through high school and then drugs made me care a lot less about academics. It was really kind of a breath of fresh air. I wasn't neurotic about getting perfect marks anymore. I was high on something every day and still pulling A's and B's and I had a C in the gym at one point. I co-opted that smart kid who doesn't try identity and ran with it cause it felt cool. I might not be at the top of the class anymore, but I'm the highest.
College came and I started to care again for a brief while. I pulled straight A's again until the second year when reality hit me like a bag of bricks. I didn't care about what I was learning. I'd chosen the wrong major maybe? Or maybe I was still just jumping through these hoops to prove I was smart?
I dropped out and did a lot more drugs. The first girl I kissed in high school visited me and we "slept together" which sucked. I couldn't make anything work, couldn't get out of my head, was just a mess. And then I learned she was cheating on her boyfriend up in Minnesota with me. Left me with a weird combo of feeling flattered and fucking pissed. I cried. I cry a lot. I read on the internet guys don't do that much?
I tried some other shit which is mostly irrelevant. I couldn't figure anything out and was pretty tired of the whole ordeal, so I decided I'd travel. I didn't really expect to live much longer at that point. The idea was to put some distance and time between me and family, friends, and anyone who cared about me so when they found me in the Rio Grande or something it'd be less of a big deal and could be chalked up to an accident.
It was in Texas that I almost got that accident I wanted, but by then I didn't want it anymore, and that was a really weird feeling.
I took my time getting back and figured when the traveling lost its allure I'd go back to school. Turns out school is pretty hard when you have a drinking problem, and under those circumstances, it got exacerbated quite a bit. I was drinking a handle of rum every two days.
At one point, I was slurring-my-speech drunk when I realized I hadn't done my math homework. I did as much as my drunk-ass could at the time and I literally broke into the math building through a window to slip my problem set under the teacher's door. This was the point in the semester when I "still had things under control".
But right now, to be honest, I'm just so lonely. I have few friends, but that actually doesn't suck too bad. What eats me up is that at this rate I'll be dying alone. I don't know what's wrong with me.
Like Koheleth, I enjoy sincere contemplation of things. If the practice has any reward, it is the harvesting of some amount of wisdom.
If there is any purpose at all in teaching, it must be to create teachers for the future.
In an orchard, a tree that does not bear fruit will certainly be chopped down to give way to another.
Plants are masters of politics. A strong tree breaks the wind and protects the smaller plants about it. The smaller plants thrive and create a physical moat of protection about the strong tree.
Where one hundred seeds fall, only a few may grow and live to reproduce, but these will in turn cause a hundredfold more seeds to fall when the cycle begins again. That means more good fruit, and more opportunities to share it with one another. Koheleth concluded that this is the highest form of pleasure in human life.