the thrill of seeing my mother --
balanced by the critical burden
of waking

self-referential graffiti, you have
become: a painter of skin, a photo-
journalist of mirrors, no distance
between you & your subject

I forget you, I shove you
from my shelf, I slap away your
calls,

PLAYBOY: Is there a hidden agenda behind our romance with war?

HELLER: American rulers are discovering that the way to get instant popularity is to go to war. I think if the Vietnam war had been over in a month or two, Johnson might still be President--and might still be alive.

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VONNEGUT: It's also very bad if the enemy shoots back.

HELLER: Well, you have to pick enemies that won't.

VONNEGUT: What was that island we attacked before, with that long runway?

HELLER: Grenada.

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PLAYBOY: Let's switch to censorship. Are you at all concerned about the government's intrusion into our privacy?

HELLER: Do I think, for example, this guy Pee-wee Herman should be arrested for playing with himself in an adult theater?

VONNEGUT: Did he play to climax? I really haven't kept up with the news as I should.

HELLER: But is that a crime? I would say no.

VONNEGUT: I agree with Joe.

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VONNEGUT: This is a huge country. There are primitive tribes here and there who have customs and moral standards of their own. It's the way I feel about religious fundamentalists. They really ought to have a reservation. They have a right to their culture and I can see where the First Amendment would be very painful for them. The First Amendment is a tragic amendment because everyone is going to have his or her feelings hurt and your government is not here to protect you from having your feelings hurt.

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PLAYBOY: Do either of you read any contemporary writers?

VONNEGUT: Well, it's not like the medical profession where you have to find out the latest treatments. I've been reading Nietzsche.

HELLER: And I've been reading Thomas Mann. I hesitate because maybe I'm reading more difficult books to grasp than nonfiction. Scientific books. Philosophy, I would not be able to read rapidly. I have a definite impression that I'm reading more slowly than I used to.

This page is an ongoing project :-)

Love is the only shocking act left on the face of the earth. Eroticism, murder, betrayal, starvation, torture, war, all pale in the face of love. We stare for hours at CNN, watch the world unfold hour by hour, numbed, deafened, defeated. We wander into the wrong neighborhood and are showered by hatred. We study the universe through distant cameras, drive ourselves mad searching for the origins of life. We detach ourselves and engage in futile superficial conversations about sexual politics, impressing one another with intellectual repartee, dress ourselves in various guises to avoid the alienation of aging skin, exchange hostile glances in loud, desperate nightclubs. This is the dance, the prelude to need and desire.

We confess out sins in cold, damp churches, kneel to the Lord to open our souls, punish one another for the frailties we cannot bear in ourselves. Winding ourselves up into frenzies of fear and self-loathing we are tamed by a cocktail or hallucinogen, pretty colors, strange desert journeys, emptiness and abandonment.

We flee from this most terrifying moment: in a warm room in the quietest night with whispers of tenderness and trust penetrating the senses, control, power, anger are thrown aside and we bear witness to the only valid instant in the universe, love.

— Sandra Bernhard, "Love, Love, and Love"

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Don't believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities. The things that seem most absurd, put under 'Low Probability', and the things that seem most plausible, you put under 'High Probability'. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you stop thinking about it. The more things you believe, the less mental activity. If you believe something, and have an opinion on every subject, then your brain activity stops entirely, which is clinically considered a sign of death, nowadays in medical practice. So put things on a scale or probability, and never believe or disbelieve anything entirely.

— Robert A. Wilson

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How grandiose of humans to think the entire universe is just a giant mechanism to facilitate our spiritual development.

— LiveJournal user evalux

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George Bernard Shaw:

"Do not try to live forever. You will not succeed."

"It is most unwise for people in love to marry."

"The liar's punishment ... is that he cannot believe anyone else."

"Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy."

"All professions are conspiracies against the laity."

"Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life."

"In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice."

"Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Sometimes we get no choice in the matter. A friend or relative dies. A romantic interest tells us he is breaking it off. A person we care about stops responding to e-mails or phone calls.

Other times, we have to make the decisions ourselves. Those are the difficult moments -- when somebody we care about does something that violates our deeply held values, or when we realize that a relationship no longer brings us the pleasures it once did. Many of us hold on for a long time, hoping to wait out the problems or resolve the issues. Others of us become enraged and break things off precipitously. Either way, the end of a relationship hurts, leaves scars, and often distracts us for months.

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People will come and go, whether we want them to or not. More confusing to deal with are the people who want to stick around, yet violate our internal standards of conduct. For example, the supposedly monogamous husband who "cheats" ... the live-in partner who keeps falling behind on his agreed portion of the rent & utility payments ... the boyfriend who becomes verbally or physically abusive ... the hot guy who doesn't seem interested in sex anymore ... the chronically stressed-out companion who is too worn out to make good company ... the man who wants to socialize too much with his friends, or too little with ours ...

The "issues" range from the profound -- lying about sexual safety -- to the mundane -- failing to do his share of the chores. And they happen to everybody who tries to have a long-term relationship. At some point our vision of what we want from our mate will collide with reality, and we'll have to decide whether to muddle through, or flush the toilet.

There is no perfect mate. There are imperfect mates, and there are single people.

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It seems to me, from my 18 years of romantic experience, and from my 35 years of watching the rest of y'all ... that there are two basic routes to a truly successful long-term relationship. One of those is the religious route, in which the two people share the same religious programming and commit to stay with each other no matter what. The other is what I'll call the "I'm tired of all this crap" route, in which two relatively mature individuals have been through enough relationship crap with other people, so that when they "finally" find each other they know how to build a successful relationship together.

I doubt I'm intellectually capable of the religious programming route ... I think too much ;-)

However, I might finally be ready for the "tired of all this crap" route. The trick is to find somebody else who is "tired of all this crap" ... and is attractive to me, and who finds me attractive, and who is single.

Whoever this fella is, he probably has to be older than 21. He's probably tried more than one long-term relationship, as well as one or more periods of sluthood and chastity. He's probably made some big mistakes and been kicked out for them, and he's probably kicked out some other guys for making big mistakes. He'll have baggage, but he'll know how to unpack that baggage in the light of day, so that others may inspect it with him and know what to avoid.

Saturday, November 23, 2002

I felt like Warp 9 for a week, traveling down to Newport News to help my family mourn and bury my father.

Then I returned to DC, and the engines cut off, leaving me trillions of miles away from my starting point, within an envelope of familiar surroundings.

The issues that were dominating my mental life before my father's death have been wiped away. I barely remember what some of them were, and can no longer empathize with them.

The Ten Wisdoms of Apathyology

#1. Do not care about wanting to cause harm to anyone.

#2. Do not care about your personal past. It will stunt your future.

#3. Do not care about revenge. It is a self-inflicted wound.

#4. Everyone on Earth believes, thinks, feels and looks differently than you. Do not care about anyone's differences.

#5. Do not care if there is a purpose to your life on Earth. If there is, it will be fulfilled whether you care or not.

#6. You can care about anyone and anything you want - just not too much.

#7. You begin to care too much when you start caring about any of the first five Wisdoms.

#8. In any human relationship, he who cares the least has the most power.

#9. Contentment comes from strength - the strength that comes from not caring too much about anything.

#10. Letting go is difficult and satisfying.

Be happy, be excited, show kindness, celebrate, and work hard for everyone and everything you care about. Recognize the existence of the things you should not care about. Give them little thought and no action.

I feel like I'm popping out of the end of a long tubular ride, during which I've been chewed, swallowed, digested, and ... expelled ;-) Mentally speaking. Physically I'm doing pretty well for a 36-year-old human.

I've been considering the myriad of available explanations for Why The Universe Is Thus, including my own seemingly tiny role as Why I Am Thus. I've even been dreaming up my own original fantastic suspicions. At times, I've felt like my own immortality might depend on my solving these mysteries for all time. At other times, I've feared solving these mysteries would create terrible new problems I'd regret for all time.

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This has all been part of the dramatic grieving process I've endured since my father's death, about a year ago, as it has interacted with my quasi-Buddhist path.

And, after wading through a bunch of interesting ideas, some heartening, some terrifying, about the meaning (or lack of it) behind my perceptions, I've decided that the best thing for me now would be to let it all go.

Accepting that I don't know. Accepting that nobody really knows. Accepting that it might not turn out the way I want it to. There might be more, there might be less, there might be nothing, and ... I'm just gonna hafta wait and see what I find out next.

In fact, it seems like some of the worst excesses in human history have been driven by people who thought they knew for sure how the universe is supposed to work. That drive to make everything "right" ...