Pt. 1, Time During Those Years
You know, time feels different to me now. It used to be that when I’d try to fathom some unfathomable span my chest would go tight right away. If I looked ten years back, wispy half-dreamt memories would lurch out of their burial plots dug somewhere in the timeline. Usually the bad ones, mad ones, sad ones, incompletely mourned. If I looked ten years forward, the same thing: ten years of the past would arise so I could feel what ten more years would be like. Beckoned and offended, the blessed part of me who protects from unsavory things would rage, drawing in my diaphragm nice and tight lest I know all that suffering gone by and, therefore, to come. This doesn’t happen anymore. Around the time of my last birthday in 2021, I noticed I could perceive the entire preceding year as one piece of time-stuff, like I might normally perceive the passage of an hour. There weren’t any outside events or changes of scenery to mark time, only the life in my head, because I had been hibernating at my parents’ house in Chicago. It took a year of stasis to feel what a year of time is actually like. What is a year like? Literally the same as a minute, an hour, twenty-five years.Pt. 2, This Year In Time
War is on my mind. A quarter century is long and short. Will to ___. It turns out ‘self-love’ is literal. I'd describe it like this: there are a wide variety of positive feelings I can feel toward something, such as an animal, person, trinket, memory, etc. Any of these feelings might be described as, or related to, love. Usually there’s a subtle conditionality that comes with the positive feeling: I only feel positively towards something if it deserves positive feelings. Is the dog aesthetically cute? Then I feel positively towards it. Is the person nice? Then I feel positively towards them. Self-love is when I feel one or more of these positive feelings towards myself. Furthermore those positive feelings can be unconditional, meaning that the positive feeling includes the felt-senes that nothing can make the feeling go away, or that it’s not dependent on anything – it’s just there, regardless, directed at myself. That’s unconditional self-love. It’s good. There is a way of seeing – literally, a way of processing things in my visual field – in which everything is inherently beautiful. It's actually more than everything feeling inherently beautiful: there's also the ontological conviction that everything is inherently beautiful, which has a distinct felt-sense. It’s happened a couple dozen times maybe, and it lasts for a few minutes. Usually I cry. Often it’s triggered by indie rock. Identifying less with my thoughts, more with my tastes. Identifying less with the idea of identification. Identifying less with ideas in general. The current frontier is my self, the next frontier is everyone else. Human nature is a thing, in that behaviors are statistically consistent across people and time. Human nature is not a thing in that it’s actually possible to durably modify the distribution of behaviors. I feel better when I believe phenomenology is a first-class citizen. The feeling of confidence doesn’t have to be well-calibrated to “truth”, that’s just an assumption. Treat confidence as an unconditional feeling and confidence will treat you well in return. It's less like a train rumbling down tracks, more like a long roll of paper gliding through a printer. Artist? Do I care? My cheeks blossom dry red circles when it’s cold outside. I have a moisturizer that helps, but it smells like sunscreen. It’s turtles and tradeoffs all the way down. Mental moves are a thing, too. I can mental move into creativity, mental move into affection, mental move into sex drive, mental move into sensory freshness, mental move into unwavering confidence, mental move into expanded sense of space, mental move into equanimity, mental move into capacity for symbolic manipulation, mental move into joy, mental move into poeticism. My success rate is low and it changes over time. The more I think about a mental move the less often it succeeds. Sometimes my posture changes in a certain way and people look at me in public. It’s happened enough times that I’m certain I’m not imagining it. It feels good to be looked at, but I start craving it quickly. I really miss feeling refreshed. Honestly, I'm still mourning it. When do people start saying “my parents’ house”? Doctors and patients are soldiers in the great war between signal and noise. Doctors distrust signal because noise exists, and patients distrust noise because signal exists. Call Me By Your Name is stunning. Before Sunset, Sunrise, Midnight are sublime. Should I move to Europe? Outside, I like it bright. Inside, I like it dim. The Last Question. Scared, I'm compelled to do grand things for the world. Easeful, I want to deliver beauty, seek beauty, and peacefully do nothing. Twitter is toxic and I owe it much. I’m so sensitive to curves, lines, edges. Explains a lot. Thanks, Mina. The indent in the bathroom floor where shower water pools surreptitiously – It Did Not Have To Be This Way. Ineffability happens when we experience something authentic but new. Symbolic manipulation tires me out. Performance, and equanimity thereof. Apparently, I have cold hands.