Chapter II: 6 Months Later

I know.

You ever not know what to write but you do it anyways? Usually I cower away slowly after trying a few times, ideas about the what but not the how. Expression is interesting, so is style. Some stories are vast and penetrating, piecing together a detailed scene filled with layers upon layers of meaning, significance, and the assumption that there is more than just text. Deeply invigorating is the story, what happens, to whom, the when, the why, and how each of these separate instances become a coherent and lively tale. A plethora of thought, character and plot development, believable circumstances, and action. A page-turner. Others, equally as tantalizing, might be just about a man walking across the street, reading a newspaper, and whistling. It’s not so much the story, nor the plot, and the character in himself doesn’t have to be interesting. It’s the actual telling, the descriptions, the emotions and devices the author uses in order to make the ordinary extraordinary.

Reading books. Reading books leads me to believe that I have something to say, but not really. More that I want to be a part of a story, an action, an ordinary occurrence seen and written by someone else. Another perspective, a way of thinking, a genre. Some archetype that I can then apply to what I do presently. A walk with a figment of my imagination born out of the words, the relationships, the significance of my interpretation of someone else’s. A rich yearning for a situation, a place that, although the words are visual, the images tend to locate themselves towards the back of my brain, like a projector. Right at the back near the top of the spine, a source of light, of wonder. I’m curious to know what’s there, biologically that is, what kinds of operations occur on a scientific level, what we can measure in that area and what that might say about ourselves and the ways in which we think.

I’m currently on the 3rd page of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2. I’ve read that it’s one of the more difficult songs to perform, and I’m not quite sure if that flatters me or not. It’s fast, this one part, where the right hand has to almost lifelessly twirl, as if it were throwing away a bad idea, and then come back again, stopping and starting at different intervals to fill the measure with enough beats to ensure that the left hand continues its cadence. Just a few weeks ago I was beginning, note after note, so that I could hear them all, and it sounded strange, because in real time I don’t feel I need to hear all the notes, but the collection of a scale or two. Anyways two weeks ago I began the process of vigorously memorizing each note and then playing it up and down and up and down. I’m still not completely comfortable, but now my hand has caught up with my ears.

I’ve also been volunteering at Balboa High School right here in the Excelsior. I sought to experience a part of the city with 22 tenth graders. The topic is stress and balance, and the various ways human beings try to cope with their ultimate and ageless problem: existence. I wanted to do something productive; I wanted to work for free.

Or maybe I was just bored.

I feel like this blog started with something moderately exciting and then turned into a rather melancholy systematical explanation of what I’ve been doing the past 6 months. Going to get my masters in Italian at SF State in the Fall just doesn’t seem interesting, not even to me.

I just finished Fahrenheit 451. I found myself reading it on BART, waiting downtown, on the bus, somewhere with people. It was astounding to watch all the ipods and blank faces, as I myself walked right past people I didn’t know. Seems obvious, contemporary, and I’m sure there’s some explanation as to why it’s part of our human behavior. Or why society permits this relationship as long as there are no immediate desires present.

But I realized something about here and how I interact with myself. I have a lot more toys; I rely a lot more on external stimulants. I can remember in Italy, from all the walking no TV no radio no car no piano no job, that ideas appeared all the time, as long as I sat in a piazza or journeyed across the street. Something was always there, waiting, and it didn’t take much for me to find a computer or a notebook and start writing things down. Four pages in twenty minutes, single-spaced. I’ve heard horror stories of that length the night before a particular paper is due. I guess when you’re writing for fun it doesn’t have to be about anything explicit, still I search for some meaning, some truth, but it might lie in the process of writing and not its manifestations, not the finished product but the thinking behind it. Maybe that’s why I’m not impressed with what’s been going on these last twenty-two minutes.

I like spelling out numbers, they seem longer, seem like they hold a definitive space. One-hundred thirty-five thousand nine-hundred and seventy-two, as opposed to 135,972.

We’ve been writing poetry at Balboa, another means of expression aimed at becoming aware of the self, the senses, and the emotions exhibited. I figured in order to take up space I’d include it here, below these very lines, and so I did, or I will:

I’m from the icy, mud-drizzled depths of a consciousness I
Never knew existed until my imagination manifested itself in Rome.
Tall music, harmonious buildings, and the juxtaposition of rain
In the day’s light.

San Francisco’s breath speaks to empty streets on a cloudy,
Miserable, and summer day such as this one, where not even the
Pigeons are motivated for an adventure.

Art travels short distances over a long period of gestation, mind-
Numbing prodigies sit and write poetry. I look for my reflection
In a mirror and see nothing but an apparition, a fabricated
Hybrid copy of an idea so rich in its implications that it fails
To understand the truth. That there is such a thing, and that
It lives and dies with every thought and desire.

I search for profound things in shallow dreams, wonder what
My dog thinks, and then ask him to explain. The
Genius of a gesture such as this, or this, or this, or even,
This, shines penetration with a glimmer of the awe-inspiring
Realization: we are here, we are now, but that’s it.

The limiting experience of abstraction is difficult to overcome,
For I still can’t remember what day it is. The moon’s still
Following me; I feel it under all this pillow of but a single
Cloud, an explosion of density.

That uniform, annoying, beautiful humming. How dare you.
Traditions fade with new inceptions, forever lingering in tomorrow’s
Reality. A day in the life.

So there you have it. I’ve been turning the TV off more and more these days but haven’t been in my yard as much. The volunteering keeps me busy, but I’m beginning to question that actuality of keeping busy, attacking the assumption that we can be bored. Put another way, I’m starting to believe that it’s not about doing things so much as it is about sharing. A more profound experience is what I’m looking for, without of course forgetting the simple pleasures. An old book, a conversation between friends, a walk.

Going back home. Leaving things ambiguous

-Anthony

Chapter I: a conversation to no avail, an exercise of illogical consequences

I don’t like change. I mean, it’s not that I have anything against its moral principles or its universality, it’s just I don’t see the need to be so wrapped up in measuring it. Calculus, therefore, is a means, not an end; such is Buddhism. It’s what I admire, not what I believe in. On the contrary I like commas, and I see to put them everywhere, any day, until, they seem, arbitrary. It’s a goal that I think is pretty attainable.

Of course I know that I should have written a much more eloquent and polished introduction to this collection, or even took a little more time in the beginning to organize my thoughts, to find the patterns and then to present them, rather than hoping that they present themselves. Contemporary superfluous speech, accompanied with random-minded jargon, intelligent multi-syllabled phrases aimed at obstructing the reasoning of the nothingness (thank Sartre). He’s French, and I like that.

I do, in fact, enjoy chaos, but not the media-frenzied variety. Mass markets need to increase funds by enabling the consumers to consume. It’s about money and property, which seems to be a successful albeit failing business, at least for the latter. And now that I think about it some more, the former as well.

A book about a guy writing a book about a guy who’s a schizophrenic, and it turns out that the author of the book in the book is a schizophrenic. One name’s on the book and a million are trapped inside.

I guess it’s ok to be a writer. Nothing like sitting alone in a quiet room talking to yourself and making up stories. I understand that the characters have some bearing in reality – phone rings – but that doesn’t mean they can’t be created again.

Stream of consciousness makes a lot of sense if you don’t ever think about it. Problem is I get so bored sometimes. And I know what I want: to not do anything. The ideal, the dream, the truth, it’s just that when I do it I get so bored sometimes. Reading a book, taking a walk – now that’s a good motivator. My mind wanders, I see an idea, hold on to it, dance with it for a while. No time in waiting for music, and then we go over a few steps, things that seemed a little rough, try to sand them down, even out the bumps on my head. And then I realize that I’m taking away all the beauty. I can only give you something to read; I can’t tell you what it means.

That’s why I like the idea of perspective; there really isn’t right and wrong, unless, of course, it’s forced upon. Governments need to do that at least in some respect to maintain an order. I just don’t find it necessary to define what that order is and how it works, and labeling it a “human affair” tends to be a little hypocritical if all the existentialists only read 20th century German, French, and Dutch authors. I feel that a little bit more variety – and it doesn’t even have to be a different time nor place- would make for a much more complete understanding of the nonsense that is the non-sensical.

I know what you’re thinking, I just haven’t figured out a way to express it. So I say “I don’t know.” Math, science, religion, government, art, metaphysics, philosophy, doubt, corruption, death, life, happiness, truth, concepts – all really fantastic and beautiful ways to say “I don’t know.” And I try to hold on to as few as possible, but some just keep on popping up from time to time and instead of worrying about what to worry about I simply make my ideas as erroneous as possible. Telling myself nothing matters matters, and it matters to me a lot, and I believe in this whole thing we call _________. I just can’t fit the words in the box so that they don’t sound crazy. What’s wrong with crazy?

And what’s with the “What.” ? I find it most exhilarating the “What?” and not the “What.”. It feels a little more pure, because some doubt is expressed. “What?” Yes, of course, but “What.” ? I don’t think so, or simply put I don’t know. Not about “What?” but about “What.”. The answer lies in the question. That can be taken with both meanings even if the context only allows for the definition of “to place” and not “to be untruthful.” I say embrace the illogical! It might make more sense.

Alas. I have little more to say. The merging is complete, but I still wonder, and I still dream. Haven’t written them down until now. I have the fleeting suspicion that even if I just made a dream up that it still would be interesting. Another word for weird, like different, but the inherent meaning, which sounds more like an oxymoronic euphemism, seems so out of place. A stranger in a strange land, but where else would it go?

Exactly. The answer lies in the question, not in the answer. It’s not very profound, and I would advise even the most keen to try to feel it both physically and abstractly.

“But how does one feel something abstractly?”

Exactly, the answer lies in the question. Functionality, build up, reason, the reason we are here. Not the fact that we are here or that there are reasons, but the reason we are here: a collection, a stream of consciousness, a means. But not an end. Not yet at least. Not now. And I can’t think of any other time but now. Can you?

Well there’s then, and then there’s later, but later is just another now, and then used to be now and now is then. Language is one of my favorite games. I don’t like change, but I won’t see to its complete dismissal.

I guess what I’ve been trying to say this whole time is written somewhere. I’m not sure where and I’m not sure when, but I have a feeling that it’s there, amongst the ideas, the words, the meanings. I haven’t been able to put my finger completely on it so I will continue to write until I do. Not for today or for any other day for that matter, but for fun, and sometimes. I’d like to think I’d do it more often, but I need a walk. At least a break from the games and the fun. A little bit of solitude, like the writer, does go a long way. But I can’t help but feel bored and inspired. The simple might seem lazy – phone rings – and the obvious rather obscure. But that’s ok, it all works out in the end, some way or another. I just don’t like to think about everyone being dead, that’s all. More like the end of a movie. Everyone gets up, sees the light, and talks about it. I figure that’s what I’m trying to do. But sometimes watching a movie seems more fun, more enlightening. It’s definitely easier even if it’s costing more and more money these days. Turn the tv off for a few seconds and stare at the wall, you might see something even if you are scared too. You’ll definitely see a wall, but if you see your life then maybe it’s closer than you imagined it. Maybe there’s more than hope, maybe there’s something that doesn’t have a definition yet. Dictionaries are rulebooks meant to guide, to suggest, but above all I’d say, at the tender age of 24, that I haven’t got a clue. And I know that I don’t want to rest in my ignorance like some really old pillow that I just can’t let go of, or an idea that I keep to myself because I’m afraid of saying it. Those darn rules, I can’t be mad at them for what they do to me, because they don’t do anything to me. And I wouldn’t prefer to be mad at myself for what I do to them, so where do I begin?

I like change.

-Anthony

"Thomas the Obscure"

Greetings,

I figured that I might as well share a few of the secret papers I've been writing for my philosophy class. They are short and generally answer a question posed by the teacher based on some sort of reading. This particular week the assignment was to read a decent amount of Maurice Blanchot's "Thomas the Obscure" and then write whatever came to mind. The title I took from Pirandello's Uno Nessuno Centomila (One No One One Hundred Thousand), published in Italy in 1925 with the first English translation in 1934. I haven't been able to find it in book stores as of yet. It reads, "And life doesn't conclude. It cannot conclude. If tomorrow it concludes, it's over."

“E la vita non conclude. Non può concludere. Se domani conclude, è finita.”

Death. The end of the end. My own incapacity to understand what I define as the end sparks my continued fascination with its idea.

Water forms to all things at a constant rate of infinity. Its sameness comes in its ability to change. Will one ever step in the same river? The answer would be yes and no, according to Blanchot. But does water die with this form? What does water look like by itself? Can it exist without touching something? Can it stop for just a moment and realize its being, it reason, its philosophy and consciousness?

No. Water doesn’t give a shit about its existence. It knows how to do one thing: exist. And it does it: without questioning, without being, without even knowing what is is. Water moves because it moves and it stays because it stays. There is no philosophical cause and effect, there is no underlying theme. It’s water!

Yes. Water knows how to be and thus perpetuates its very desire to do so. Water is conscious of its forms at all times and proceeds to empower itself as well as its environment in order to exemplify the value of being water. It does not fear the unknown nor does it shadow in the doubt of its own reflection. It does not need to justify its power nor force, and it exists always.

Ok maybe.

Blanchot, like all great philosophers and writers, desires something. He wants to rid himself of his form, of his individual nature, seeing in himself this being that is trapped inside his body. The single person is not an expedient but a curse. The best way to conquer the notion of “the other?” Destroy him!

And it reminded me so much of Pirandello’s last novel. He aims at becoming the other, at trying to perceive himself not by seeing himself through his eyes but by seeing himself through the eyes of others. In short, he wants to see himself live, he wants to experience his own life not from within himself but from outside of himself. He is determined to become everything around him and he eventually does. I see Thomas doing the same thing. He strips himself of his identity, down to nothing, an epoché if you will. He becomes nothing with thought. Which begs the question: can we think without language? Sitting in my car during a break at work I tried to outsmart myself. Better yet I tried to trick myself. Surely if I would have said, “Yes,” than I would have contradicted my own thought. If I could think without language, why would I feel the need to answer the question? Surely I could communicate with myself without using language, at least without using its form, namely words. Yet that did not satisfy me.

I immediately thought aha! No is the correct answer, thought is dependent on language! But it all sounded too good to be true, too easy of a conclusion drawn from what I feel is a very compound question (the egotism is settling itself quite nicely). There is no answer, rather the answer comes in one form: yes and no: opposites being the same because they are different. Zero is infinity, every thing is no thing, etc. And a range of emotion and thought began pouring into my head like some sort of volcanic eruption. It did not happen fast, but it was thick, and it was hot: a stream-of-consciousness.

What boring animals we are, looking for meaning and its opposite, sitting around debating, trying to fix the problems that we create. Can we not enjoy ourselves in some other way? Why must we continue to assume that there is a void and that we need to fill it with something?

Is death the ultimate freedom? Socrates surely thought so.

Reality is based on assumptions that drown us, chaos becomes order when chaos has a form, but is it not the same thing? Are not, therefore, all extremes the same truth, that it is a lie?

Hierarchies and the like, why the constant need to restart, to regroup, to build, to destroy. Why the need to be, to exist, to justify something we do not understand? And understand what, what is there to understand? And again I come full-circle, coming to a similar conclusion: create the universe again, make your own rules, justify them, get others to catch on, become a scholar (a bullshit artist).

*While writing these papers I feel the sensation of insanity, an idea of freedom that continues to expand. I am getting more and more abstract, slowing breaking down barriers and rules that govern both the educational system as well as the universe in and out of itself. In this class, at least, I do not fear continuing to think and act in this manner. But I do know that the worst is yet to come, and that my complete degeneration will not cease. What do you think?

-Anthony

Music

Well, it’s been more than months since my last outburst, just enough time to be self-conscious about it. Why am I not writing? Do I have nothing left to say? Has America completely pacified my thoughts like last summer? Have I done this to myself? And then a strange thing happened…I let it go. It wasn’t a big deal, not writing. It didn’t show a sense of uneasiness, or lack thereof. It would bother me and then I finally sat down and am now doing this.

Many a thought has pondered in my head all starting with the question: can things be learned if they aren’t taught? Instantly I don’t want to say yes or no, knowing that both have irrefutable conclusions, which sounds like a lie. If both sides cannot be argued, then they are in fact the same. Of course this goes by these little glimpses of intellect that we call definitions. I call them rules of thinking, which inhibits control, which someway or another leads us back to freedom, by being controlled, by, yes, freedom.

So far as we are leaning towards yes, then YES, I do want to go back to Italy, and YES, for no reason at all. I don’t know when, but there’s something about making friendships that ensures they will last, especially if you’ve worked through the language barrier and instilled some value in some one else’s life. I am talking about myself and all of my friends, but we’ll let the poets do the preaching.

I went back to school and before that I had a good friend of mine visit from Florence. His first time in the states, a family first as well. I remember driving to the airport transforming my eyes into new ones. Looking at street signs, cars on the road, trying to imagine that it was the first time I had ever seen a scene like this, and it made me excited. Boring everyday tiresome chores more banal than watching the news and feeling enlightened, were new again. Over the next three weeks I would see more of San Francisco that had seen in 24 years of existence. How easy it is to drive around and enjoy the beauty the city has to offer. I almost scolded myself for being so pretentious and ignorant, sitting down in my San Franciscan home yearning for a place that provoked creativity and beauty, history and entertainment, a quiet place to speak Italian. Little did I know I was sitting where I wanted to be, I was just to blind to realize it. So the next time you want to get out, get away, free yourself, go the place that you’ve always been and look at it differently, with new eyes. Someone said something about that before, I am saying it again, and there is no doubt in my mind that someone somewhere else will say it again. The paradox of time, existence, and the universe: one thing. No change, no reason. Zero, in this case, still equals infinity (better known as I don’t know).

A few days after he left I missed the feeling of getting up in the morning, getting in a car, and driving around the city. I have been back to a few places that are close to my house but I haven’t nearly trekked as much as we did in twenty or so days. I guess it takes a little bit of nonsense and ignorance to empower the soul, whatever that means.

I’ve been blacklisted: a super senior with more than 120 units. I graduate in spring or face being kicked out of school. Desperate times call for desperate measures, except when it comes to the “war” budget and corporate salaries. But why would we do anything about it? We might lose our jobs, our freedom, our house, you know, the things that matter the most in our make-believe lives.

I really didn’t intend to be so frank, which is kind of funny if you repeat it to yourself in the shower, “I really didn’t intend to be so frank…”

Anyways, I’m taking 18 units and going to school two days a week, which means my days are long, but not tiresome. There’s something about going from math to art history to math to art history, and maybe I should explain just what classes I am taking so that I can waste a little more of your time.

Vector Calculus is pretty straight forward, the class taken after 3 full semesters of calculus. Vectors in space, vector functions, it isn’t really abstract and very analytical, half the battle being able to read the notation. Just think of geometry and then a bunch of calculations. You’ll also learn a lot of new words that end in –oid.

The Silk Road is still a road but for some reason we are studying its past instead of its present. The various meetings of different cultures, the way the lands changed, what travelers left (goods, language, and a lot of dogma), what stook (the slang of stuck), and why in the hell we care. I don’t think the last question is ever answered directly, assuming we appreciate our existence and the things we do. I like to call it “justifying our existence” and the best way we do it is by NOT talking about it. I can envision a very tasteless (or tasteful) position involved when someone drops a pencil on the floor. That’s what the new “American” poster should be, someone bending over. I think it’s subtle and yet adds a little taste of truth. No one said it was sweet, and here we go again with the nonsensical logic.

Number Theory is flat out flabbergasting. Remember when 1 + 1 = 2? Well now 2 = 1+1. I think of it as reverse arithmetic but these mathematicians that have been studying the subject since its birth (more than 3000 years ago) call it the predecessor of abstract algebra. As words are collections of other words so are numbers collections of other numbers. Primes are the cancer, definition the cause, and there exists a whole bunch of radical ideas about thought. Namely: “things are obvious until you think about them, math isn’t perfect absolute truth but rather perfect relative truth, having to assume something first in order to conclude something else by going as far as the average person would go, and then keep going.” Ah, these assumptions again, half-truths (lies), the fundamental building block upon which all knowledge sits. A house of cards with a brick compound surrounding it. If only we could just get in there and turn on some fans. A cat would do just fine as well.

Moving on from number theory we have Egyptian and Mesopotamian Art History. Look at how professional and reputable it looks, nothing like egyptian and mesopotamian art history. It’s the same thing, so why are they different? The answer is they’re not, but that isn’t as interesting. I do, however, have one thing to say: we would be (if we aren’t already) an empty void in the nothingness that is the world if it weren’t for these people. Everything you ever knew about christianity lies in the pagan rituals. We’re all the same religion and we will continue to kill ourselves over denying this fact. Where are our values? Why are we governed by names and definition? C’mon Dan Brown, I know you have it in you.

Once a week I have an art history seminar based on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, written about 2001 years ago telling some of the stories of old. Mythology, parables, history, which literally are the same thing. Shakespeare, Dante, the Bible, all influenced by this book. All the famous people and places are there. All the same things happen, just with different names.

And last but certainly not least is existentialism and phenomenology, a philosophy class about existence and phenomena, which is short for nothing. Living in the moment, in doubt, and under fire, this artificially created discipline in the classification of what scholars define as philosophy discusses the opposite of all these problems. God’s a big deal and religion is the devil; existence is but a cloud; knowing yourself is knowing you’re dead; hell is other people; essence before existence, and all that other jargon. I do a lot of thinking in the class, sometimes about the subject we are talking about, and at this time I’d like to confess: I’ve been lying.

I write papers once a week for this class, short two page theses on some of the topics discussed in the very propagandistic prose we are reading.

“Why read books on existentialism in an existentialism class?”
“The status quo my good son.”
“The same reason why we start any math/philosophy/science class with the greeks and then conclude that it all started with the greeks?”
“Indeed, we assume a falsity and then use it to justify our claim.”
“God exists and therefore god exists, we exist because we do.”
“Precisely, what was your question and your point?”
“I guess I didn’t have one officer.”
“Precisely.”

And that about sums up my classes at San Jose State. I also work at Target, the 6th richest business in the country where business is freedom. They make a measly $60,000,000 a week but I’m sure a small percentage of that actually goes to their corporate minions. They do have to pay their employees, too. I guess not all is lost, there’s always Walmart. Wait, what’s the difference? Names, again, I’m sorry. Different NAME, so different everything (sarcasm lingering).

On a lighter note I get to tutor a russian in italian. It pays triple what Target pays an hour, but it’s much more enriching. I’m paid to think, which just feels so useless. What can I say, I’m a product of my environment, and my environment is a product of me.

So these thoughts, I always try to take them outside of their context, see if they really hold true in front of a mirror. I’ve rediscovered this sense of duality but in a different light and I really shouldn’t even be calling it that. Let me try to give an abstract and misleading example that is neither legible nor coherent (as I seem to be good at doing those, a modern politician, if you will). As a side note republicans are mad at obama because he’s not fixing the mistakes bush made in office. Seems like somebody is finally taking some personal responsibility for their actions, but obscurely. Is there something you’d like to say?

Back to these thoughts, I was asked by a great friend why I liked music. And I start to meditate (think) about it, and honestly don’t know if I like it. I don’t feel it necessary but at the same time I understand music to be formless. An immeasurable phenomenon that can be produced and enjoyed without rules. I don’t mean those of meter and theory, I mean those of artistic freedom. The allegories and concepts we create around the source, giving it its life. What everyone makes of it is up to them, and to the victor unfortunately go the spoils. I’ll take it for what its worth, not for what it’s selling at. Fear.

That’s why I like it, because I don’t think I do. Doesn’t seem nearly an acceptable response to such a simple and elegant question, if one takes it as such. I don’t know. It’s an alternate way of perceiving, of being, of interacting with whatever it is I think I’m interacting with. Some call it the world, others reality, and even more (the self-righteous ones) refer to it as a glimpse of my spiritual potential. I wonder why they have to go door to door and baptize the dead. Will we ever grow out of joining clubs?

Music, namely the piano, has always been with me, but it was a choice that I made and continue to make every time I play it. A few days without it is ok, and when I am being brainwashed by education and sports I usually don’t pay attention, but when I am really bored or in need of an intellectual or zombie break from what I see as the norm I sit down and make music, using the sound in stead of my vocal cords to justify my existence. Zero to infinity, 88 keys and no end in possibility. I don’t know what that really means but I feel I’m getting closer to the center of that cloud.

So we have this thought, this idea, this thing (synonyms can be so misleading sometimes: do they have the same meaning? But they are different words so they are almost the same, right?) inside this universe, inside its own concept. I draw a circle around the letter A. A is sitting there, comfortable in its own existence and ideas, never having to worry about getting lost, because as A moves so does its circle, its knowledge, its essence. I draw a line from the center of A and quite easily yank it, curve it around the backside of its truth, and position it so that it faces itself. A mirror, if you will. Now we have A, outside of its concept, and it has nothing to say. All of the assumptions are gone, and A ceases to exist, not because A doesn’t exist, but because A doesn’t know how. I conclude by restating my assumption and let the words do the work. A quick example is that we are always judging things. Is that not a judgment in itself? I’m stuck in the circle by liberating myself from it. Where must I go to be lost?

And with that I encourage your thoughts. Hopefully the next one will be in less than two months, but I wouldn’t worry about it.

-Anthony

Forgetting about the internet

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my room reflecting on the beauty and tranquility of nothingness when I realized something that had slipped my head for more than 15 minutes: I could check my email. It’s a tough thing to do, forgetting about the internet, even for just a short while. Staring off into space, space in this case being a turned-off TV, I remembered that amazing tool to the universe, where school is free, where ads rule all, and where one word could turn into more than 2.6 million web pages in less than .0000256 seconds. Thank you, google, for all that you do.

We had gotten back from clearlake, another marvelous get-away situated north of the bay in a tiny little town called Kelseyville. There isn’t much to do and I imagine the locals like it that way. Sitting on the deck, staring at the water, trying to get lost in the depth of the mountains, letting the atmospheric perspective blind out the furthest object that we try to make out. The vanishing point, from nothing to infinity, our spectrum (and who says it’s limited? A few hundred nanometers is more than we need!), our world in a little town next to a big lake. Time never showed and that was good, because he wasn’t invited.

Usually I sit around the house or walk around the city, waiting for many an idea to jump from the pool in my brain and hit its head on the top of my skull. It passes out from the excitement and if I am not careful it might fall back into the pool, a coma of sorts. I hold on to it for a few days, hours, and contemplate why on Earth I think these thoughts. I imagine we all do, but that normally our brains work with a filter. Those devious or too abstract thoughts get pushed aside because they aren’t practical enough, those radical and evil thoughts get called radical and evil, and the ones that are too mushy can’t stand on their own. I’ve tried (somehow) to get rid of the filter, and I think that there are times where it’s either malfunctioning or not functioning at all, and wouldn’t that be the same thing?

Chasing ideas, that’s what I do. About a week ago, taking a shower (being alone the mind starts to wander and instead of questioning or looking for a distraction I like to let it peruse the strings, ultimately leading to me talking to myself in one of the most fluid and expressive ways possible, or a whisper) a thought came to me: does one have to have values (or fears) in order to be happy? Or phrased differently and maybe even a little more easier to answer, since we can’t help but answer the questions we pose. Is it weird to imagine that the problems we face are ones that we ourselves create?

Again, phrased differently: can someone with no value nor faith in life be happy? I immediately want to say yes, and I don’t want to have a reason. But I still put all this pressure on happiness, isn’t it as well another invention, another belief, another dogma that doesn’t have to exist? It surely isn’t wrong nor right, indifferent. I see happiness as being indifferent, and that idea just made its way forward now. Is nature happiness, is nature indifferent? I know that when you don’t water a plant it dies (the kind of plants we keep as pets), but it knows it is going to die and so it does. It does what it has to do, even if that means to cease to exist. Is survival the only mechanism keeping us doing what we are doing? I surely think not, as we can get rid of many things (especially those in the current market trends) and still be able to survive, which continues to be both temporary and timeless. Is it strange to think that one day ipods will be obsolete just like horse drawn carriages, walkmans, and now analog television? Change, death, so often, so underappreciated I feel. The death of a star is beautiful, is it not? The explosion, the gases, and colors, the vastness of it all, as if ignorance and pure splendor were all we needed to be happy. Not logic, not knowledge, not even survival. Again, the dogma continues. I’ve simply covered up truth with happiness. Earlier it had been logic and philosophy with truth. The lie. The lie.

Is lying telling the truth? A good excuse, yes, if understanding that the lie is what someone wants to be true, a very tricky way of telling someone what one wants by telling the other what he or she wants to hear. But most often what one wants to hear isn’t what the other one wants to be, unless the lie could be read as: I want you to think that this is true. Truth is still there, it has to be, just like life at every funeral, darkness at every candle, happiness at every tear.

Psychology: these ideas, we tend to bubble them up, put them in piles just like papers, getting to those that will progress our lives first and those that are mere dreams-we humor them, keep them hidden, never speak of them for fear of losing them-are left secretly behind. Progress, but to go where? If there is no relationship is there no universe? Can we measure something if we do not have something else? I think this has to do with relativity, as we can observe whatever we want and then compare it with whatever else we want, but some things are deemed non-comparable or otherwise illogical, mistakes: apples to oranges, miles to seconds, time to desire. Those too are relationships, ones that are rarely discussed. Are they just hideous or is there something we are missing? I would consider the latter as it would take a little more effort to cover this one up.

These ideas, we tend to surround ourselves with ones similar to ours, generalize as to try not to include ourselves in the matter. Take, for instance, feelings, perception, the stress model. Our perception begins our reaction, the only person making me whatever I feel is myself. This is agreed, in a general context, but the minute I start getting mad it all goes away, the theories, the “bs” philosophy, something isn’t right in the world because something isn’t right with me. My fault, my responsibility, but again the almost accepted response is to project, to blame others, to channel the anger into something or someone else, as if it was a liquid that needed to be drained and not drunk.

Ideas that counteract our ideas, that make them seem like mere-dare I say-ideas; where pride comes in, our securities, our self-esteem, our building blocks upon which we have constructed our own lives, and those that interfere with this standstill are treated not as such but worse. To say god is dead, to say he is alive, as pros and cons are with everything, is both right and wrong at the same time, depending on which team you are on. Wouldn’t it be more rewarding to see the truth and lie in both from both sides, or from all the sides, or to even get rid of sides, there is no right and wrong?

The need to label and destroy those ideas that make us feel insecure, that question them, “make” them scared. Like this email, a politician, a diety. To see right and wrong doesn’t seem to be profound anymore, but to see how close they are, to see its unifying characteristics, to see the nothing that interlaces our being, our sense of self, the doubts that cloud and try to support our dearest dreams, the house of cards our world, a gust of wind the question, and our bodies the shield. To sit and watch our ideas die, to watch them live, to let them change, I think is one of the most beautiful experiences we have created so far. And it will change because,“All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.”

As a parting gift I would like to say that yes, it is commendable and worthwhile to fight for what you believe, to never give up in your quest for truth, but I find it even more exciting to realize that what I think is true isn’t, to stop walking in a circle, to stare at the sky, and to get lost. Forever is all we got, the unknown, the un-educated, the blissful, the damned, in one word: the internet. Is it indifferent?

-Anthony

I just got back

Cogito ergo non sum: I think therefore I’m not, I wonder if René meant that as well. To be means to think, so to think means to be? I feel like Shakespeare, the son of god, the oldest trick we got in the book. I guess we’ll go over schematic lifeless information, the stuff we know and love, seeing that I have yet to break my own promise to myself: separating thing from idea.

Pooping has never been the same ever since we left Sardegna more than two months ago. You ever poop on the beach? Digging the hole, squatting, watching your insides come out of you. It’s quite beautiful, the human body, and I still don’t get this “natural ugliness” that we tend to inherit after the first few years of our lives. When exactly does the body get ugly? When is it weird to touch kids? I think it has something to do with function. You pick a kid up to say hello, but when is the kid not a kid? Aren’t we always going to be children, isn’t that a genetic definition? Seems like morality once again has turned it into a psychological state of mind, and it’s ok to be a child when you are a child, which in my case would be forever, but when you are acting like a child (happy without any reason to be happy, feeling no guilt or self-esteem issues (until you learn those from your parents)) it’s somehow negative. Logic, reasoning, excommunication. We should be like children without being like children, or at least not my idea of children, which is a good one, because I still see myself as one, more biologically than religiously, what was the difference again?

So poop magically avoided that paragraph. It just feels so much better to put pressure on your intestines to squeeze out the brown excrement, making room for more lard. Apparently it’s also more natural (not that word again). Sitting on a toilet isn’t comfortable for me anymore and ever since I was younger I would always lean as far forward as I can, putting pressure on my intestines (I didn’t know this at the time). So I guess you could call me a born-again shitter. Why is it illegal again?

Well, number 1, it stinks, and that’s inconvenient (woe is me).

Number 2, it’s bad for my health, so I need a place to do it out of the way.

3, I’m ashamed of pooping in front of friends. Public decency anybody? Respect?

Which leads us back to fear, and this idea of the body being this dirty disgusting collection of matter. This right and wrong schematic, this backwards cause and effect we’re taught, and we like it, and it makes sense. Woe is me.

So I’m back in the states and it’s supposed to feel different. I should be as depressed as the economy, and should feel bad for not having a job, not supporting nor respecting government nor religion, which brings me to the same point I have been writing over and over again: we, being insecure, feel threatened when people stop being afraid of us. Aren’t republicans against big government? Aren’t democrats for it? The conversion to socialism is almost complete, thank you messiah. Change is what we needed, and change is what we got, right? I mean, look at everything that’s changed.

A funny quote came across me the other day, “Preventing people from failing will only make them fail.” I like it, it’s dark, it doesn’t invoke this fear of being wrong, of being unhappy. We can do it, it’s ok. Let the kids fail, it’s better they know now instead of being lied to their whole lives.

Empiric knowledge is another laughter box that I like to eat out of daily. The Church is great, when it comes to marriage, nothing like a bunch of virgins telling you how to raise a family and when to have sex. We don’t trust the homeless for financial advice, nor do we let leapers give facials (thanks Robin), so why, how can we put our trust into those uneducated folks with the multi-colored robes? How can I listen to myself, seeing that I don’t have a degree? The hypocrisy is peaking.

The idea of the subconscious was bugging me on the train as I said goodbye to one of the Italian families. I wanted to cry, I tried to, and I told them, but it didn’t work. Talk about the end of a good film, the whole family accompanied me to the train station and then waved a handkerchief in the air. Little hands and wind are what I remember most vividly.

So we don’t directly control things that happen in our body, like when my heart beats, it beats, but I don’t control it, that is, with my conscious body. Aren’t we missing the fundamental assumption? We need to have control over our own bodies, even if we don’t, so we make up this subconscious so that we can blame ourselves and be responsible for things that we don’t either know about nor think about. “It’s probably my subconscious,” well if we don’t have control over it then how do we know we don’t have control over it? It’s a great idea, I just don’t see the logic. Why do we have to have control over our bodies?

I never told you about the crotch-less experiment. I had a pair of shorts with a broken zipper and instead of getting self-conscious and afraid I decided to walk around Florence with a broken zipper. I did not, for the record, go commando.

So at first it was weird, different, and then I did something so irrational that it’s rational: I got used to it. Most people wouldn’t say anything about it in passing, but when we were around a group of people, sitting down for example, they would start out by casually saying, “You’re fly is down.” When I responded with, “Thanks,” they stopped, but when I responded with, “Thanks for looking at my crotch and having the decency to tell me,” they started getting defensive. What’s with the penis and vagina that makes them superhuman? I guess it has to do with the sexual/reproductive side of things, but I don’t get the hierarchy.

Looking for a job and will probably graduate in a year, welcome back to the system Anthony. It’s funny, the one question I have been hearing from just about everyone is, “So what are you going to do now?” And my answer, for at least the next 6 months, is going to be: “I just got back.”

-Anthony

Oh, the Insanity.

My mind has been rather at ease the past few weeks which usually isn't normal. I speak more Italian these days than English and am getting closer to my goal: being deficient in both languages. Speaking of languages while speaking in languages, is there other ways to speak? Let's not get started too soon with the damn questions that really don't have answers. Which brings me back to truth. But I guess instead of bouncing off these walls I should try to give some concrete information about where I live, what I do, blah blah blah. It helps us understand, I know, and it's fun sometimes. Minute details, basic lifeless facts, stuff to talk about, stuff that doesn't worry us. Time to get back into the pool for a little bit:

June 1 was day one of homelessness. Me and a good friend had decided that instead of looking for places to stay after his contract was up that we would sleep in a medieval castle a few kilometers to the south of Florence. We had been there before and it has a great panoramic view. It's under restoration but a simple fence hop was all it took to reap the benefits of the past. I was at a party last night (beware that Italian parties are a little less drunk than American parties) listening to many a heated conversation. Apparently Italians either talk about politics or soccer, and tonight it was the former's turn. Florence, albeit a beautiful city to locals and tourists alike, has its share of problems (as every city has had since the conception of a city). One of the more intellectual ones is its connection to the past. The former capital of the Rinascimento (Renaissance for you Frenchies) hasn't really changed the past 500 years, which doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Where are we going? What is progress? Aren't we just trying to solve problems that we have had forever? Seems like we are going in circles, solving and creating problems as we solve them, leaving me to believe that there is no point, no "end", no "finish line" which begs me to continue to ask the question: why? Faith is a cop-out, but that's old news.

Needful to say we didn't stay at the castle last night, instead we stayed at my buddy's apartment. The next day we had to leave, technically that night we had to leave, but the walk was long and we were in the center until late. So we went to school, to begin our squatting experience. Did that for about a week or so, waking up at 10 to 6 so that the cleaning lady didn't see us. It's funny, I didn't feel a drop in class nor a guilt for doing something deemed "illegal." I guess we really can talk ourselves out of things that we talk ourselves in to. It was fun, hanging out at school, yelling "honey I'm home" as we walked through the door, asking our guests to call next time before they stopped by. We had a big mosquito net and some couch cushions and slept as good as we had ever slept, maybe even better. So shelter is important, but not houses.

After that time we were going to get kicked out of school. It was going to close for old students and the door (to the upstairs lounge) was going to be locked. So I emailed the second Italian family in via Romana and asked if their grandmother would host me, since we had talked about it in the past in passing. The grandmother was busy but the family itself said of course. I now sleep in their living room on a cot, wake up early, get three meals, and walk around my favorite city. There's nothing to it: they are sweet, real people, enjoying themselves just like I am. Nothing different, no language or culture barrier, just more of the same. It's great, I've learned more Italian the past week than I have the last few months, which is more my fault than Italia's.

Finished my internship and took my egyptology test. Oral exam in front of the teacher, she asked me questions (all in Italian) about the history and then I read some hieroglyphics. Then we chatted about Italian and American institutions and grading systems, she was very helpful and kind. I got a 25/30 which is a B. Not bad for a 12 unit class. For my internship I had to write a report. Me being me, I went the "philosophical" road, but I have a hard time understanding that excuse. Does it mean that it's wordy? That it makes people think? That it isn't straightforward? I'm still dealing with this idea of definition, of classification, the breaking down and reorganization of knowledge in order to understand it. It's really fun, not philosophical, just fun. What's in a name? That thought pondered me in class a few weeks ago, and this is what I came up with (first in Italian, than my translation):

Perché nominare l'amore?
Poi per saperlo manipolare?
Poi che diventa dopo che è stato capito?
Se ne va? Quindi meglio non sapere?
Più puro, cioè la verità? È tutto e non si sa?
Si sa che non si sa? Eccola? Capire di non capire?

Why give love a name?
To be able to manipulate it?
And what comes of it after its understood?
Does it go away? Therefore it's better to not know?
Most pure, that is to say like truth? it's everything and no one knows?
Do we know we don't know? Is that it? Understand that we don't understand?

For my internship I had to write a report, a summary of what I did. I took the "philosophical" approach, whatever that means, here's a taste:

Language really is a funny thing, using muscles to manipulate air, making noises with our bodies to convey some sort of thing that we call an idea, giving it meaning, and then hoping that another collection of ideas understands that meaning. Not understanding seems to be a problem, and so we study language, for as much as it interests us, to be able to be, which to me seems rather strange. I guess it’s not that funny after all.

I am taken aback by something Gloria Venturini (before she was my internship tutor) said to us last year in Italian class. “Only 5% of a language is grammar. The other 95% percent depends on inflection, pronunciation, tone of voice, body language, eye contact, etc. Only 5%, and you study it so much.” And it made me think about language in a broader context than mere words. It brought out the idea of meaning, perception, and thought which hit me like a gothic circus. About a year later I sit and write about language and what I learned at the Regione (Region), and that thought cannot escape me yet. Or maybe it is me that keeps it hostage against its will.

I don’t really have much to say – which is a lie – about what I did, what I experienced, and how I know it is going to help me as I continue to float on this speck of dust that we call Earth in this big vast open beautiful obscure nothingness that we call the Universe. Capitalising words is interesting, using a pretty basic power scheme: bigger means stronger, which means better. We pretend as if there is only one “earth” and only one “universe.” I guess we could break them down like that if we wanted to, just like we break down a language. Words are nouns, verbs, prepositions, direct and indirect objects, adverbs, adjectives. You have active voice, passive voice, and probably something in between (even if it hasn’t been discovered yet). Language, as linguists say, is a finite set of tools with an infinite number of permutations. We can say whatever we want as long as it makes some sense, and if it doesn’t make sense we call it poetry. And in some weird way it starts to make sense, just not in the way we are use to, of course, until we are used to it.

There seems to be some sort of basic infrastructure, grammar, that tries to keep the language together. “Want eight by love for,” doesn’t make any sense, at least not on its own, which brings us to another topic: context. I’ve learned that both in Italian and English one word can have more than 50 meanings, all depending on the subject being spoken about. What is intriguing is most of these “relative” definitions are not united, that is to say, that for the word “identity” there are thousands upon thousands of definitions, but none of them really do a great job summing everything up. So we can’t find a dozen words that describe it. We can find volumes of books, although I’m convinced at times that more words bring less meaning to them.

Language is a great game; a play on words. Dancing, singing, shouting, whispering, chatting, being serious, cracking jokes, talk’n slang wid da peeps, speaking eloquently in the presence of the queen, reading every letter and giving it a moment of life. Just thinking about reading these words, what meanings will be imposed, how they will be pronounced in the heads of a few, how we will understand it, and how that will put us at ease.

I think that that is good for an introduction.

As for now I go to the beach on the 21st or 22nd and then make my way back to San Francisco via Dublin on the 25th, should be back on the 26th. Numbers are great too, and for the past few days I have been looking at myself. But really, looking at my limbs, moving my fingers, trying to understand how that works, trying to understand it completely, trying to figure out where my vision starts, and I don't feel it in my eyes, I feel it towards the middle of my brain. It's a great exercise, very intriguing, something we can all do whenever we want. We look past the obvious. Men are men and women are women. We have more things in common than we do different but our differences are shoved down our throats. George Carlin got it right once again. We have arms, legs, heads, brains, bones, etc., but the obvious isn't given as much respect, why is that? It doesn't make any sense to me. I think I started another group email. Truth, can't forget about truth. If there are an infinite number of definitions how can their be just one? I feel like I'm missing something, imposing my values on all of you, the reciprocal. The insanity. Oh, the insanity.

-Anthony

Imhotep and Djoser - the first egyptian pyramid

If you ever want to understand this "truth" that you talk about then you're going to have to let it go. Becoming defensive and insecure, even irritated all relate to the idea that your idea is insecure, irritated, defensive, knowing that every waking second it could go away, and you can't let it go. Why must we hold on to things? What are we afraid to lose? Why do we always need justification for everything? Seems as if we just keep making it up as we go along.

Airport scenario:
"Hi, my name is Anthony and I'm real, can I get on that plane?"
"Not until I see a government sanctioned piece of material that assures me that you are who you are, better yet that you aren't going to try to scare anybody on that plane."

Birth certificates, death certificates, names, identification, you think we're not all insecure about everything we do? We have to write it down, the ones that think we are important, to keep a record for ourselves. Then we study the record to make sure that we all know what it is that we did and why we did it: doesn't that sound like a whole bunch of fear? History. We write history because we are afraid. Afraid that we won't be remembered, the things that we think were important. We write them down, like this email, hoping that through this new technological age it will last forever in cyberspace. I'm insecure so I write. I tell myself I'm happy, I tell myself I'm having fun. These are the lies I tell myself everyday in order to continue to exist the way I want to exist. Sounds like desire again has gotten the best of me.

Cause and effect, every cause is its same effect, everything is an effect, everything is a cause, which tells me that nothing is a cause, nothing is an effect. Take the bible; take any doctorate's thesis. All you have to do is make something up and you'll be able to find "reputable" documentation that proves or disproves your hypothesis. It's damn near full proof, this education thing, which brings me to my next unorganized non-point: stability.

Studying political science (or for us commoners who history will forget "the art of making simple things complex") taught me a thing or two about political science, which shouldn't be a redundant statement but it sounds like one. We pick a class we want to study, and we study it to learn it, it being given to us, and whether we do or whether we don't doesn't matter: it's all about the grade. Back to education in a fortnight.

Back in the day there were three main ways to vote. One was the vote of belonging, meaning that you did what your parents did because you wanted to belong to a group, a club, and you felt good being supported. Two was the vote of exchange, when you were bribed with change, power, money, etc. Four is vote of conditioning, the act in which the media tells you what to think about and how to think about it. All of these promote for a stable continuation of politics because change is very controlled, things run slow, people know what's going to happen. I left out number three on our list: thinking. Thinking involves taking a topic, any topic, and thinking about it. Not reading books, not seeing what popular culture or your political party says about it, but thinking. Letting ideas manifest themselves, figuring out what you value (what you are afraid of losing), and making a conscious decision. This, unfortunately, promotes for a very unstable voting platform, because we think differently at different times. One day we might be against abortion, the other we might be for it, and it depends on the day and what's going on. But if we never think about it then we never think. This makes sense to me, not that it is right or wrong, but if we had a lot of people thinking about everything all the time, wouldn't there be a lot more shit to deal with? In other words, what if we taught people to think, grades didn't matter, the subject didn't matter. Better yet, what if we let people think? Sounds grand, sounds like freedom, sounds like violence. Sounds like everything, which is what I think thinking is.

That our own thoughts are who we are seems another one of the famous farces. Pooping the other day I wondered to myself why I wasn't a more angry person. I don't feel angry, I feel alive. I think all good philosophers are hypocrites, because what's the point of taking an idea and running with it, preaching just another dogmatic way of thinking to try to control more people?

It's all one big joke, and even the idea of it all being one big joke is funny. So I laugh at truth, I laugh at life, and I have a good time, and I laugh at that. It's the best lie I got, but to me it's not a lie, or at least it doesn't have to be, it can be true when I want it to be true: back to desire, back to truth. Can we stop putting off our happiness for another day? That day will never come.

Watched religulous yesterday and laughed a lot. Maher's point is strong: religion will kill us all, it is the cancer of cancer, and we really need to say that we don't know anything about anything. He markets doubt, and I like it, not as much as I thought I would though. I think his point is stronger than the obvious: we don't like talking about religion. It scares us, we're afraid because there is a great chance that we're wrong. Faith, have faith, believe in something just because you're told to. Hey man, don't worry about this world, there's another one, and if you follow these rules you get to go! I smell bullshit, and it stinks. How come one's a myth and one is fact? Why did the catholic church rape and kidnap jesus?

He's their property, but he wasn't always. He doesn't have to be, but for some reason we listen to the church(s) to hear about him/her/them and what he/she/it did, what it meant, and why it is important. I think Maher has a great point: we're all a bunch of sissies when it comes to religion. We can't say we don't know, it's not right if we don't know. What's wrong with not knowing?

Emotions, perception, education. I wanted to mention more about education. The stranglehold schools have on it, capitalism. We need to work, we can't watch our kids, we send them to school to get an "education." They are molded, taught how to think, learn, and what to think about and learn about. Our system does not promote for thinking, wrong. Only sometimes, we have martyrs, philosophers, every once in a while we get somebody that is radical. Radical is a funny word, it means to the root, to the center, to the bottom of things in a more contemporary context. How in the hell does it have a bad connotation? To the root, to the fact, to the truth if we're still hanging on to it. It's funny the way propaganda really can influence the way we think. Conservative too comes up. Saving, holding on to things. We're staying somewhere throughout the chaos, maybe it isn't so bad after all.

A fundamental theory in psychology is that we externalize things that we think are bad and internalize things that we think are good. That's why I never make myself mad, other people do, and that's why only I can truly make myself happy. It's our perceptions, the way we view the world (or are taught to view it), that allow us to choose how to feel. We have control over it, the way we assess a situation, an idea, and our reaction to it. It's no one's fault but our own. Happy? your fault. Sad? your fault. Mad? your fault. Calm? your fault. The good ones we say ok, we can be at fault if we are happy, but the bad ones, for some reason in our brains, or somehow we are instructed by our parents and friends, aren't a part of us. Again, when I'm happy I'm happy, but when I'm anything else that I see as negative it's always someone else's fault. We don't like to be responsible for our own emotions, seems like we are afraid of those too. But why? Always looking for neutral statements, "hi, how are you, where are you from, what do you do, that's cool, I like that, it was nice talking to you, see you later." We call it "being nice, being formal, respect" we throw a lot of words at the behavior because we are afraid to let it go. "I think god is an imaginary friend for adults." "I don't understand why we have to wear clothes all the time." "Do you believe in truth?" I feel like sometimes we never ask these questions, questions that I personally feel are more important than "how are you," but then again I go assuming that there is a better way of doing things, trying to instruct, to control, by talking about being controlled. The irony of it all, we can't escape our own minds, we don't have to, we shouldn't want to. More rules. I just keep adding more and more rules by taking them away.

How things are "actual." This ideological view that there is truth out there and there is a way to find it. What is the meaning of life? We don't know, but we know that we have the capacity to know. So one says to not question everything, another says to question everything. One falls back on discipline, on education, on the farce that there is a better world out there and that we have to do what WE say to do in order to see it. Plato, interesting, everything stems from one idea, the ideal, and we have to break ourselves out of the cave in order to be able to see the truth. Nietzsche, as interesting, the only world is the perceived, there is no such thing as the ideal, truth is relative. I like them both, I don't feel the need to choose, to say they are different, to classify. I'm just doing what we all are doing, living.

What is life? Life is floating around a miniscule speck of dust in a vast open nothingness that we have no idea how to understand. So we make things, we hold on to them, we write things down, we think, we try to know something, and we have fun. Or we don't, does it matter?

Paradox: everything is meaningless. The statement has to have meaning in order for it to be true, which negates its very existence.

Paradox: the truth is that nothing is true; there is no truth. Again, the statement has got to be true for things to not be true, a never-ending circle (always back to those damn circles).

So what do we have to make of it: question, be unsure, enjoy ourselves. Know that we can be happy wherever we are, because we're really nowhere, floating around on a speck of dust. The universe, what an adventure. To think it’s the biggest thing out there, to think the atom is the smallest, only limit our ability to think we can understand. Time to get rid of freedom and truth, to become truly free.

-Anthony

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"

half-stream of consciousness

Why can’t being alive by my motivation for living?

I was walking down the street, had just passed a piazza, on my way to school, remnants of the beautiful day still playing in the sky, a man was approaching the same space that I was. Bikes were crowded on either side and instead of stopping we both squeezed our shoulders in, allowing each other to pass, including his little dog. And at that moment (as with all moments) an idea surfaced from my subconscious and muddled around in my conscious for a little while, testing the waters. The more I make them wait the more frustrated and bored they get, and if I can’t pull them from my brain through my mouth they usually go back home, waiting another day to poke their heads out and say hello.

I’ve been referred to as a sea otter, and I like it a lot. I remember one time at the beach, at the aquarium, and a faint memory comes back to me. I don’t know who I was with, but the walls were dark green, black, but green if there was light. Or maybe from the water, the reflections that are just as much a part of the walls then the material itself. Just a second, a young boy, wearing black, turning a corner into another room straight ahead, and it’s blurry. The substance is there but the classifications aren’t, maybe that’s why I can’t let it go: I can’t understand it.

Am I uncomfortable not knowing something? Is that why I walk around thinking, pondering, trying to learn? Walking on that same strip, at the same time when the same man was walking with his same dog. The same bikes, the same space, the same time, the same idea, just a different permutation. A different form, but the same purpose, the same aim, the same function. Whatever that is, if there has to be one, I don’t know.

The first idea was that we move, we change shape in order for others to move and change shape. We work together even if we don’t want to talk about it, even if we don’t know each other nor ourselves. We do it, what, to survive? Surviving infers many things; animalistic, another classification albeit closer than human. War, fear, aggression, and then the individual was born. I think survival is about as independent to human thought as gravity is to the universe. Two ideas, made, created, their creations implying a continuous need for them to exist.

The second idea: I don’t know anything, and that makes me happy. No expectations, no assumptions, no bullshit. Not even ignorance, because knowing how to not know goes away as well. Empty? Free? Both? Letting things go, letting everything go, even the idea of letting go, but again, another “philosophy” that is born by the death of another idea. Why do I keep trying to murder ideas? What’s my problem? Am I in love?

My motivation to learn, to know, I want that to be my knowing of nothing. But nothing, the same, the different, who are they? Nothing, everything, to define it as such has to invoke a relationship. A relationship, things are starting to make more sense, this isn’t “good” this isn’t “right.” Dualities at the same time, the need for one another, squeezing their shoulders inside themselves to let others pass by more easily.

Good, function, the end result. Why is it that we have to destroy the universe with knowledge? We build it back up again, the way we want it, but still being a part of it, hypocrisy. Circles, constant circles, finding the relationship and then escaping it, letting it escape, go away, float somewhere else, not having to hold on to it: letting it go, letting it grow.

Identity, something that makes something the same or different. Classifications, hierarchies, putting things in their place, locking them up, throwing away the key. Intellectual humility? The art of being a scholar means to learn how to be a student, learn how to be a slave to the mind, accepting without question, questioning within limits, learning, getting smarter, and then finally, finally being able to rebel. Why not rebel during the process? Why not rebel in the beginning? Why not never start something that we have to rebel against? A society needs an enemy? We create societies, we create enemies, we create the needs, we control. Power.

I was reading La Politica (Politics) the other night. Aristotle was talking about education, saying how Plocrotes thought it meant to help others find truth, giving people the tools, teaching people how to think. Aristotle saw it more as the continued betterment and improvement of institutions, that is the goal of education. Both, for me, punch this sense of followship, a path lined out, all we have to do it start walking. Don’t mind the things around the path, the hard questions have already been figured out, the hard work is done, just follow me, and I will show you things you already know…

I don’t know what education is, but I know what I would like it to be. I lied. I don’t even know that. Ideas, education, learning, knowledge. We’ve destroyed learning and knowledge with themselves, time to find other words to fill their gaps-NO! Building a house requires it to be built on something else, a replacement, a change of the same, making it still the same because it is different. Opposites, language games. English has about 500,000 words, more than double Spanish and 5 times more than French. Easier to bullshit with more words? Easier to say the same thing again and again? Yes. The same thing again and again, isn’t that what we all keep doing? Vocabulary is important because it is then harder to hear the bullshit, it covers it up, it makes it taste good, and we eat it. We eat it all up, because we’re hungry. We want to think, we want to be happy, so we believe. I don’t want to believe anymore.

Nihilism, the belief that nothing matters. Bohemian Rhapsody, a connection, a relationship. Identity, being something, but why the need to break things down? We are going in circles, moksha. The idea of finally being able to be liberated from the recurring reincarnation cycle and go to the worldly paradise. Right now I’m trying to find the relationships, make the circles as big as I can, and then let them go. You see how linear time is almost un-escapable?

Is it the only way we can understand? I want to expand myself, I want to cover the earth with my hands by using my mind and body. I need to keep traveling, but if all places are the same place? I’m always traveling.

Intellectual humility, I was talking with a teacher about the genius path towards enlightenment. It bothered-bothers me, the path set up for all of us. We just have to walk, the way is labeled. We can walk slow, easily, walk on by, go through the motions. We can run, work hard, become geniuses. We can do both, we can do neither. Why is it that if we stop walking, if we leave the path, that we are either lazy or crazy? Can they be the same thing?

A question about history, I was obscure because I tried to tell the truth. “This could be for anything.” EXACTLY, as I am trying to find the molds and not the copies. I assume them to be there, fallacious? The templates, fundamental ideas, not ones that we keep replacing. The reasons, a different kind of knowledge, and I see it in school. To exploit those that exploit us, keep the relationship even, keep it equal, keep it the same. Keep it identifiable, classifiable, keep the need.

I’m all over the place and I’ve never been so lost. Words pouring out of my hands like drugs, do my ideas not like where they live, are they trying to escape? Or could it be my body trying to get rid of the ideas that it does not like. Can we live together? Are they really leaving? I’m trying to grow, not to get taller nor bigger, nor smarter nor more intelligent. I don’t know what it means, and I think sometimes it’s better that way.

Intellectual humility: holding your breath, accepting truth to be true, going through the motions. After the first phase is over then can we open up, the path becomes wider, the same one, however. Why does genius have to be academic? Why can’t I know nothing? Why can’t I be happy to be alive? What’s keeping me from all these dreams?

Myself. My identity.

Time to get un-known.

-Anthony

happiness, an answer to the riddle

You ask my definition of reality? Well, in that case...

...Reality is everything that we are afraid to question.

I've gotten some great responses and questions to continue our conversation, but first would like to try to talk about my adventures in the Cinque Terre and Viareggio, with a little deja vu and a Senegalese friend I never knew I had (but should've).

So before going off and camping in the Cinque Terre I went to the grandmother's house of one of the Italian families. Easter lunch was on the menu: tortellini in broth as well as a salted bread, both Tuscan traditions, artichokes, lamb, salad, and chocolate. Before this however we were introducing ourselves while entering the beautiful apartment on the east side of the city. Hand shakes, hugs, "nice to meet you"s, the like. All real but none more than when I met Semi.

Just an ordinary man from Senegal, 23 like me, but there was an instant friendship between the two of us, something that was there, or maybe it was that we understood each other instantly. He spoke very few Italian words, and my French isn't up to par, so he mostly said "americano" and I mostly said "si". One of the most humblest people I've ever met, and I only met him for a few hours. What was even better was the hand shake as I left, as if we had known each other for years, had practiced for days, it all flowed, it all made sense. The look in his eyes, pure friendship before we knew each others names.

I don't really know how else to explain it, the whole lunch was spectacular, hanging out with a family and feeling a part of it, the language barrier almost non-existent.

In the afternoon I took a train to meet some friends in Portovenere near La Spezia in Liguria (yahoo maps will help). The first night I had to hike to them, as they had found a spot off of a dirt road to camp. Walking in the dark is scary, and walking uphill with a backpack full of rice is equally as challenging. But the stars helped, and the darkness was relatively soft and subtle, except every so often rock shadows appear to be panthers.

The next two days we camped wherever we ended up when the sun was close to setting. 26 kilometers by the time we left, with Monterosso and the beach our welcoming party. We took the train back to Florence, gather all of our stuff, and went home for the night.

The following day would have been lost if it wasn't for another friend in Viareggio. Last minute decisions meant back on the train to go back to a place we had been before. More lounging on the beach, taking in the sun, living the dream. But the train was strange. After only a half hour I got the feeling that we were still camping, that we hadn't gone back and slept in a real bed, the days turning into one, time coming together. Someone else, this time in the form of anxiety. Kept looking at the sign, at the door, trying to find our way, where we are, where we were, what was happening in that train car. "We've been here before!" And I echoed the thought with my own voice, as I turned around to see the same graffiti on the same advertisement. There had to be hundreds, but the graffiti was exact. "And there's Tony's water bottle!"

Sitting on top where bags are held, I had thought that I had brought it with me back home and had left it there, but it rested with still water in it, and that was when we all stared losing our minds.

We had to run to the train, a different track, a different day, a different time, a different space. We entered and then walked through 2-3 cars in order to find 3 seats, and when we did we sat down, paying attention to nothing. It just so happened that we were on the exact same car in the exact same seats as we were the day before, coming back from Cinque Terre, as we were now going to Viareggio. A coincidence? A very rare one indeed, we were caught between realities. We travelled through time and our brains and bodies knew it before we did!

I think it would now be a good time to continue with a rather dense and maybe even mystifying train of thought. But before that I wanted to reiterate what I thought about thought a few moments ago. It can be a form of mental manipulation of everything that we experience, collectively, as a group. This could also be a good definition of existence if we need that to be cut and dry. Our brains have the ability to group and cross reference loads of information at the same time, and I understand this as having the capacity to link all that we experience into something, maybe a circle, maybe this idea of one from many, the relationship that they have for each other (as they both are the master and the slave). More doors are opened then closed, but it's a nice place to pass by on any journey.

Freedom, from my understanding before I wrote my last email, was a sense of mental freedom from ourselves and what we think. A task of trying to break down the barriers that force us to control thought, classifications that take away from our ability to make things interact. And I saw what I was doing with this blog and these emails: trying to liberate myself from myself, trying to understand what it means to understand. Trying as hard as I could to stop thinking and stop acting the way I learn to through the use of language, ideas, and people. I don't want to sever myself, but I want to be able to realize the conditions and try to understand why I think and why I do, or why I think I do. To me ideas are powerful before they are powerless, but at the same time this power has to be taken from somewhere, has to be created, not from nothing, but from the mental manipulation of what we experience, that is to say, by thought.

So we have this thought that manipulates itself. That makes me want to bounce up and down, jumping for joy. What in the hell does that mean? Does it have to have a meaning? Do we have to put it in a box and label it and keep it from other boxes that don't look like it? I surely don't think so and get the strange feeling that I am repeating myself with different words at a different time in a different place, but if that is true then all these places and all these times are connected, from the way that I think, and that wouldn't make them different. This tells me that these subdivisions don't exist, at least not in my reality because I question them all the time. Maybe I don't want them to exist, but I find that I am much more susceptible to progressing my capacity to think when I argue with myself, strengthening those points that have strong foundations and changing those that don't. Most of them, if not all of them, don't stand the test of questioning. Which is why I think we can be afraid to do it. We don't want our realities to go away, we don't want what we think is true to not be true, so we hold on to our ideas as tightly as possible not realizing that we are keeping other ones from going through us, from passing into our brains and being changed by us. Not to say that this is a constant but rather continuous. My brain tells me it's the same thing. But only at the same moment, which would be all moments. And now I'm more confused as ever, and that makes me happy.

We create to understand, that's what I said. We take what we live, what we think we have, and we make something out of it. We call it nature, we say it does this and this, we continue to observe it and therefore trust both our observations as well as our capacity to observe, another duality if you will (even though it doesn't have to be that way). So we don't understand the universe. So we create subjects, a beautiful tool called language, from which stems many things. We change this language and make other subjects, subjects from subjects, ideas, from ideas, spinning our web to try to encompass this universe that we defined before we knew what it was. I am arguing that we have to define it in order to begin to understand it, discussing the object and not the subject, much like Plato's cave, much like I felt a long time ago writing an email just like this one.

We manipulate our creations in order to understand, and we do this by thinking. Simply by thinking. That's the change, that's the constant. Does it have to always be there? Are we always thinking? What is thinking? The circle continues...

We study the end result, forgetting the process (I see life as a process and not as an end result). We understand the end, not the beginning, and everything in between? Where does it go?

We can't separate ourselves from our ideas, this one we have nailed to the ground. We are our ideas, it's all we have: thought. Our thoughts aren't independent because they need an inspiration, something that happens with the cross grouping our brains to when they are thinking. Could thinking be a way for our brains to relax from trying to survive? Do we have to think to survive? Can we survive without thinking? What's survival? Surviving what? Because we don't live forever, for as much as we can define life and death. So what's the point? Becoming children again? Forgetting all we learned because we don't like it? Do I not like what I know? Is that why I'm changing it? Maybe I'm looking for happiness and I see it in chaos.

Since nothing could be independent that would mean that nothing was free, in the mental sense. We have to define freedom in order to understand it, and we understand it by throwing words at it, a strategy. But the words change, and so does the definition, and I have a hard time understanding this change, even though it's a constant, that it is static. An idea that is always in flux is never in flux with respect to the concept, as the concept of continuous change never changes. Thanks, I needed that.

I don't want to control my thoughts with abstract ones, I want to free myself from myself, I want to be happy. I want to release all the programs that I downloaded, I don't want to be a machine anymore, I want to be an animal. I want to walk I want to dream, I want to survive by thinking, by writing, by confusing myself, by making my circle as big as I can. Pi stays the same, the concept grows, and for me this means that it doesn't get bigger, but rather that it gets stronger. Stronger to be able to let things go, to be able to float, float in space. Isn't that it? Isn't that the answer to our question of the universe? Floating in space, mass, a thing. An idea in one word: universe.

-Anthony