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