I love you today

"yesterday is gone and tomorrow doesn't exist," so I love you today for no reason at all.

We're slaves to our ideas, even my idea that we are slaves to our ideas. Why is freedom such a big deal?

The boat that always sails in calm waters doesn't get to learn about storms, and can't help other ships when storms come. The boat that always looks for storms doesn't always find them, but is able to help others find them. The boat that sails and welcomes both calm waters and storms helps both itself as well as all the other ships in the sea.

I feel like my youth was the first boat, calm waters, never questioning beliefs, enjoying myself, free from suffering (a farce), sheltered that didn't expose me to this "real world" that we "live in". Over the past few years I've looked for storms and I've helped other people find them. I've learned a lot about us, some reasons as to why we think, why we do the things we do, what motivates us, what makes us free, what controls us. The answer always comes full circle: us.

We have everything we want and everything we don't want, we are who we were, who we want to become, and who we hate. We live in all the beautiful and ugly places in the world, we're alone when we're with people, we're happy that we're sad, we like things to be easy by making them difficult. We don't understand understanding, but we know how to understand it. We fear fear and we also fear not being afraid. We know we know something even if that something is nothing. We blame others for our feelings, we are self-important. We have beautiful bodies, minds, hearts, beings, but we are ashamed of them. We have fun, we are happy, and we love. We don't know why and for some of us we don't need to know. But we have to know that we don't need to. We believe in belief, in truth, even if the truth is that there is no truth, it still in fact is true and therefore does not negate the presence of itself. We have light and dark, day and night, right and wrong, god and the devil, dualities that exist at the same time in the same space, all of which we create from the collections of ideas. We can't separate ourself from our idea, so we make them smaller, classify them, give them names, give them words. Write them down, remember them, use them, forget them. Sometimes we come back, sometimes we're so close; they're always there. We know everything by knowing nothing, we're sure of uncertainties, we are all artists, and we're serious when we want to be. We're everything we want and don't want, and we realize this everyday. We're all enlightened, perfect, evil, good. We're whatever we want to be and we are whether or not we want to be it.

I'm not trying to say anything, but words come to mean something (but not by themselves). The thirst to understand, the need. What did he say? What does he mean? Keeps our minds at bay. How do you control thought? Give people something to think about. And that is what I'm doing. Why continue to read? Reading, knowledge, collections. Something when written down does not depend on time, but still on space.


We don’t read blank pages. Why not? We never give them the chance. They’re empty, meaningless, but they don’t have to be. This need to need, to have, a want, a possibility, tricks our brains into thinking it’s real. And then we’re stuck, forever, because we never stop to read the blank pages, to see what they say, and to learn from them. Isn't nothing our only motivation?

I was listening to a history of science lecture and still can't spell etymology. Science comes from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge. Science today refers more to the belief of empiricism, that all knowledge comes from experience (so there's nothing we come up with from scratch, everything is linked and pushed and pulled by other things, the same thing). Philosophy comes from the greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia), meaning the love of wisdom. The term scientist wasn't coined until 1833, and we've been floating around thinking for a lot longer than that. Science invokes reputability, the natural world, how things really are. Philosophy on the other hand is bullshit, and bullshit is hilarious (just ask George Carlin). What interested me was finding out that before "scientist" men of science were called just that (going back to science meaning knowledge): natural philosophers. Natural philosophers studied and still study the natural world. The world, if you will. But we have split up the world into many parts, many professions, jobs needed to keep a capitalistic system afloat. Philosophy is one of those disciplines, science is another. I never used to put them together, what was I thinking?

I'm taken aback by a comment by egyptology teacher told us when we were studying egyptian grammar. We had come across a verb a few days earlier that meant "to think." This day we came across another word, different, that simply meant "to think." And she said. "All lasting languages have synonyms, more than one way to say something." And that struck me, which is why I can write a different email every week and say the same thing over and over again. Different words have different meanings, even if those meanings are the same. Our brains trick themselves, it's all so hilarious!

For the past few days it's been bothering me how we can blame other people for our emotions. Is it easier to push them aside for another day, never knowing, understanding ourselves. Aren’t we taught to classify, to think the way the public thinks. How can happiness be so antagonizing? How can it make others so damn mad? Jealousy? We are responsible for all of our problems. The only person that makes us feel anything is ourselves but why is it difficult to realize that? Internalize good externalize bad. We can’t separate ourself from our idea. Individuals are collections, reality is fear. Do we not provide for inconvenience?

Convenience, what a term. Easaliy-the right to not think. I like it. We're going somewhere with this one. Except, if someone betrays our idea we find a way to make them wrong. Let's talk about questioning our beliefs, better yet questioning our values, our reasons for living (assuming that there are some).

I'm in Italy. I'm not in the united states. These are both two ideas that don't have to be true. So I'm not in Italy and I'm not in the united states. Or I am in Italy and in the united states. Or there is no Italy, there is no united states, so I'm everywhere. I'm on earth, so I'm nowhere in space. A pale blue dot, a speck of sand: nothing. I don't want to say that I am right, but I do want to say that I don't have to be in Italy because Italy is an idea, an idea that needs to be accepted (even if it's forced to be accepted). If I want to be in Italy I can be there, it's an idea, but if I don't want to be in Italy then I'm not in Italy, which is also an idea.

It's funny how counter arguments to everything we’ve ever thought use the exact same logic that we use to make sure that they are still true. The smiles escape me.

I need to be wrong; I need to question my beliefs. Won't we please help each other?

-Anthony

hollow earth theory

“Thank you government for protecting me from the terrorists that you create.”

I think I caught my subconscious trying to kill truth the other day. Come to think of it, it seems as if he (I assume my subconscious is an old tan Italian man with a big belly in his mid 50’s who wears a tight stained white t-shirt (sweat around the armpits), dark khaki slacks, smokes a cigar constantly has black rings around his eyes with big Las Vegas sunglasses, who walks around my mind picking and choosing how to exploit thoughts that come in and out of my brain for various reasons) has kept truth drugged up in a bathtub the past few months, and for the most part truth put up a fight, never giving in to his desires nor intentions.

It seems, however, that now truth is finally close to death. The water is cold, and he’s (I also assume truth is a man not in the physical nor sexual sense, so I guess I don’t assume he’s a man and just felt like I needed to use the masculine impersonal pronoun for a thing) starting to feel the pain. My subconscious has almost broke him down completely and all he is waiting for now is to die.

Truth: the beginning and end, the alpha and the omega. Wait. Isn’t that the same definition that the catholic church gives for Jesus? Interesting.

God, Jesus, Truth better yet god, jesus, truth (I never understood those superficial hierarchies where the bigger the letter the more powerful the meaning, or maybe you did it out of respect, but respect for what? and why the respect? for fear of being scared?) all seem to have similar characteristics: they are all excuses.

earlier today at my internship i was helping a lady write an email in english talking about how italians use hyphens. apparently in the word “rispondere” (to respond) one mustn’t write ris-pondere but rather ri-spondere. i tried to explain to her that i understood what she was saying, about the rules of language and the need for organization, but i kept asking her if it really mattered, if it changed the word or its meaning, and if she would be unable to decipher it if there was a letter on the wrong side of the dash. she however was convinced that i didn’t understand since i wasn’t agreeing with the need for there to be that rule. the word didn’t change, what did the rule have to do with our capacity to understand or to figure it out? another colleague walked in and again it was declared that i couldn’t understand the simple workings of a hyphen, and i told her once again that i understood what the rule was trying to do but that i again didn’t see the need. it didn’t have to be important. a long sigh followed.

And it got me thinking about rules, control, etc., how we aren’t dumb, but we can be. We don’t have to think critically if we don’t want to, since there will always be something that can guide us. Like truth. But on the walk home I also was thinking about Horowitz, existence, and movies.

I was looking up 2001: A Space Odyssey (and I finally figured out how to spell the word without word getting embarrassed and turning all red) since it’s being played for free this week at a movie theater near Piazza Signoria in the very center of Florence. At first I was stoked to go, but then the image of a dark room in the middle of the day made my body shriek with disaster and my mind bubble with ooze. Sometimes it’s better to let analogies talk for themselves. It’s not like we just come up with them on the spot, more that they somehow find their way from our heads to our mouth. What a great excuse!

Horowitz was on one last night, performing in New York back in the 1970s. Youtube broadcasted the recorded video live, and we watched it at the Italian family’s house. Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto number 2. We were talking about how he had to be mad, the way his face was moving, body churning and exploding with every note. At one point after another flawless set he pumped his fist to the sky in joy of his accomplishment. We agreed that he had to be somewhere else, that he wasn’t all there. He was in another place, but where is that place and why can’t it be here? For some reason here can’t be there, but here is there, depending on the angle. Where would one go to escape the world? Would he still be in this world just at another part that isn’t as occupied nor busy, a part that we can only go to mentally? It seems that he was there temporarily. And sometimes I feel a little bit of this too, walking, getting “lost” but in a sense more keen and aware then ever. Playing the piano and forgetting where I am, what I’m doing, and once I “come to” I realize that I have progressed further in the song that I had imagined. Where was I? What was I doing? I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, but I do know that when I “go” to wherever I “go”, that is to say, during this “process” that I am experiencing, I know that I’m flawless. I can’t miss a note because I’m not paying attention anymore.

Still on this walk these ideas were swimming around in my brain just about at that moment one jumped from the top of the diving board. Existence. Maybe, during that time, we’re enlightened, or better yet we cease to exist. We leave not this earth, we leave everything. Everything we ever thought of, we ever dreamed, we ever wanted. We stop believing in it all, including existence itself. Because, c’mon, it doesn’t HAVE to exist. And that made me feel a little better about walking home. To stop existing, just for a while, to see how it feels when nothing matters, freedom. From everything, including freedom. I guess that’s the only way. But again, freedom being used as an excuse to do something.

Just about all thoughts have assumptions attached to them, things we have to assume to be true, we have to make true, in order for a thought process to work. There has to be a beginning, better yet a justification of what we are doing, where we are going, and all those other famous philosophical questions that we keep trying to answer as the years pass us by. I don’t want to be a philosopher because I don’t want to fall into that trap. Going on and on about truth, freedom, defining it, arguing it, writing books about what I know (and therefore what I don’t know). I don’t know what I want, but wanting to not want has gotten old. It’s dying right beside truth.

This is an excerpt from my notes a few days ago when I discovered something grand. I have changed the expletive to “Yeti” to keep the intensity and get rid of the obscenity. Hopefully the latter will still find its place amongst the rest:

“Dude hollow earth theory, a theory that states the earth is hollow, a star in the middle that gives life, regulating gravity because it’s the center of gravity. Isn’t that great? Scientists conventional ones don’t accept it, calling it pseudo-science, which begs the question..what the Yeti are we holding on to? What the Yeti are we afraid of losing? What the Yeti are we trying to preserve? What the Yuck? We are our problems, we are who we want to be and who we don’t want to be at the same time, and we keep making one right and one wrong. Why can’t we just enjoy ourselves and be happy, live good lives, relax, what the Yeti is stopping us? What the Yeti is our problem? WHAT THE YETI”

So we hold on to truth, oneness, abstraction, freedom, as well as any other deeply developed theory or thought and then apply it to some sort of function, a way to justify it, to make it work. We create the need, a use, and then we apply it. But for some reason we can’t let it all go, like truth. It was Plocratotle’s excuse for philosophy, and from what I can conjure up in these contemporary seconds is that truth split to science and religion, both having their own reasons to progress the idea, better yet to keep it alive, to keep feeding it as it’s trapped in the bathtub, drugged to do our wills.

Walking around the city I have been pondering, trying to figure out why my subconscious has been hard at work, what he is actually doing, and why he is doing it. I’m simply just applying global theories to one more current and then making my own justifications, ensuring that it exists, not being able to let things go. In another sense I feel that writing helps me to let things go, to get the thoughts down on paper, not necessarily trying to analyze or break them down, just continue the process, making room for more. But I know they don’t have to exist. Do they?

-Anthony

"pale blue dot"

What is the meaning of life. We answer the question by asking it. Maybe it's just my need to find a start and a finish, a beginning and end, the need to secularize, to classify, to break down, understand, and perceive. For me many a philological breakdown can be made by this one statement, and this is what I thought about walking home from my internship at Via di Novoli a few weeks ago.

Firstly, we assume that we are all alive, that this life exists, and that we are all a part of it, intertwined in its web, slaves to its definition, wanting only to understand what it is that we are.

Secondly, that there is a meaning, that a meaning is out there, somewhere, like a fixed point in a cosmos, the truth, the meaning, it's here, it's there, wherever it is, it still IS. It exists, it makes sense, logically, if we are taught how to think.

Thirdly, that we have the power, the will, maybe even the need to figure out exactly what it is. So we create, and we try to understand. We dedicate our lives to answering that question, or at least we start there. I would say most never finish, which would be hypocritical. There are ways around it, saying there is none, or there is but one, that we will never know, that we will never know that we know, etc.

So I say that what is the meaning. That it lies in questions, a topic to think about: the question. A science, not a form of dogma, but the understanding that knowledge changes over time, that nothing is permanent, even if we write it in stone.

I'm reading these articles for a presentation in my Roman Imperial history class and the words identity, culture, and power keep coming about. A title if you please.

Identity: anything that makes us similar or different from anything else, including ourselves. Sex, height, weight, nationality, culture, age, race, etc. Anything that can be made up and used to describe and define ourselves. We have multiple identities and different ones are more intense depending on the culture where one lives.

Culture: shared meanings, shared ideas, shared something. The ability to think similarly, to make the same things valuable, important, worth it.

Power: control over environment. To alter, to change, to create. To be able to do these things, means one has power. Power in turn to create and then maintain. Maintaining by controlling, by creating identities and cultures and then ensuring that they live on, that they are believed in, and so they exist, just like the meaning of life.

I think Carl Sagan said it best in this excerpt from "Pale Blue Dot," written in 1994. The whole article can be found here

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994"