AnthropEccEntEric

the classification of fecal matter as a drug by the FDA is an amazing point of departure for so many discussions - the innoculation of one person's digestive tract with the matter from another's is as if transplanting good soil from one garden to another from one angle - turned inside out, the human intestinal lumen as a fitting substrate or "soil" for this or that (micro) organism - while the word "soil" comes from the words for the “ground” and for “seat” (solum/solium) it’s not all that far from meaning foundation or base if the connotation were to be tweaked in a more positive direction than simply dirt or excrement - have intestinal fortitude, go with your gut, dirt don’t hurt - the seeds of plants are often indigestible and some even require a trip through the digestive passage of an animal to germinate, emerging like the egg from a hen with all the potential for initiating and animating its construction - our health is a reflection of the integrity of the soil which is not simply the base of our food chain but also a stop along the way... as such we would do well to acknowledge and accept our responsibility to eat with it in mind that we are perhaps no more to our universe than the germinators for so many other more noble species, no more important to the planet than is the quality of the job we do in the processing of the food we are condemned so regularly and constantly to consume

one's sense of humour

I gave a speech in high school about the nature of joking, about what is and is not, should and should not be funny... led to the topic, and coming to somewhat of a conclusion based on my limited experience of having a dear friend ridiculed through boarding school, I spoke of the harm in using stereotypes and searched for a pure form of humor that did not contain a dark underbelly, a mean-spirited side, one in which belittlement is absent, one without abuse of another person, object or concept, etc. I think I ended up showing clips of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, maybe some Chris Farley thrown in there, making some points or other on a style of physical comedy that is funny because it takes itself non-seriously, but on some level, the abuse of my friend in his younger years, together with a school preaching tolerance and equality, there was a definite feeling that making observations about other people and commenting on this or that aspect of their difference (it was in fact the most ethnically diverse place I had ever called MY community), perhaps also in trying to fit in as a new member of the school from somewhere else entirely, it became a part of my strategy for success, to cleanse and purge myself of those types of thoughts entirely. As I became entrenched between groups of soccer/lacrosse playing jock friends and AP science booksmart kids, it was harder still to take a stand against (OR WITH!) a group. Moreover I felt it was part of a noble course of conduct to maintain this dignity, and I have ever since (I think)! Flash forward many years to a self-proclaimed and relatively friendless self with a sense of irony and a level of cynicism that overshadows and crowds out almost entirely the SENSE of HUMOR that I've today come to believe should have developed out of those times when precisely I chose not to be like everybody else, to opt out, to encourage people to be themselves and not to be what pleases me - in this manner have, I think, I missed a great big point. Preliminary searching was disappointing as regards my new sense of the alignment between the ridicule that passes between folks and having a sense of humor, but my belief in the overlap of the word humor and humility led me to push onward... until I came to this little gem on Wikipedia: "Western humour theory begins with Plato, who attributed to Socrates (as a semi-historical dialogue character) in the Philebus (p. 49b) the view that the essence of the ridiculous is an ignorance in the weak, who are thus unable to retaliate when ridiculed. Later, in Greek philosophy, Aristotle, in the Poetics (1449a, pp. 34–35), suggested that an ugliness that does not disgust is fundamental to humour" - I am INTRIGUED. And so, feeling vindicated, embarrassed, and ignorant, I begin my humble quest to rejoin humanity and to rekindle and develop my stunted sixth sense, to laugh and to love those who can reveal my weaknesses to me!!

insular

it's funny how we see islands as such. and we think that we are not also living also on an island albeit a larger one, surrounded by the same water, with access to more but certainly not everything around... ultimately, one gigantic island in space revolving around the sun, a star that is so much closer than any other ...why do we not wish on It? I am surely an island, and as rock surrounded by water, while also containing it under pressure, I try hard to surrender to current and stream to find that it takes, if anything, some tectonic violence... and even then, only so very little am I moved - are there realizations ahead that can reorient beyond the imagined? for this today, I wish upon our star!

sleepless in NYC

here I am, way past 11 PM and I am still awake! Should I go to the gym more or perhaps exhaust myself spending more time having extreme amounts of fun every day to avoid this horrifying scenario? All I know is I wish I was more tired.

precious...

you cry when things don't meet your expectations
but I realized it's because you, not unlike a child,
have not lain to rest your expectation for only the best in life,
bless your heart, may you remain in such a place,
unwilling to lower your standards, refusing acceptance of suffering,
nor have you yet come to consider the things you will not ever be or do:
oh how have we both I hope something still to learn!

sympatico

excerpt from Deep Economy by Bill McKibben,
Chapter Title: All for One, or One for All
the passage quoted below proceeds from and has just concluded noting "the new religious idea of the Protestant movement"

"...As Marx and Engels put it in their classic summary: 'All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.'
All of these liberations have brought benefit, often great benefit: they have helped produce the ideas we hold dearest, such as democracy; they helped spur the civil rights and women's revolutions; and they have made us much, much richer. But most of them also carried costs, sometimes harder for us to see. We surrendered a fixed identity - a community, an extended family, deep and comforting roots - for, quite literally, the chance to 'make something of ourselves.' Now we create our own identities. We build from scratch the things our ancestors once took for granted. This liberation is exhilarating, and it is daunting; it is exciting, and it is lonely."

here I omit a paragraph referencing Adam Smith and the concept of pursuit of self-interest i.e. "making something of oneself" amounting to general welfare of all...

"In recent decades, however, this process of liberation seems to me to have come close to running its course. What ties are left to cut? We change religions, spouses, towns, professions with ease. Our affluence isolates us ever more. We are not just individualists; we are hyper-individualists such as the world has never known."

receipts

thinking about all these restaurant receipts piling up on my table. trying to figure out why I keep them. think I have/have always had this fear of forgetting so many things I have done, though this does not result in taking pictures of everything I do as would be expected. no, the receipts are from mostly restaurants and are reminders of where all the money went perhaps; it feels somewhat desperate, unimportant, but I keep thinking there is going to be this time when I want to get every receipt out and recreate the life I lived, or at the very least use it as a structure around which to recreate for myself the other memories that are strung between those instances. Being unable to look back with enough gratitude, looking forward to no thing in particular, longing for unknowns and unforeseens, loathing the stifling predictability for which I have only myself (and to some degree a crippling amount of debt or underpaying job dependingly) to blame... this is some of my chronically current lot... Maybe the receipts are simply a testament to the value I place in eating?

should I...

look for an apartment? what kind of apartment do I want? how much can I afford to spend? should I let my brother put money into it? if so what percentage is appropriate? should I look for the cheapest lowliest housing available and save money until I can truly afford to get my own place? will I live to see that day? maybe I should focus on getting a band started? should I be playing guitar right now? I never quite seem to get around to it and that certainly wont do... is being in a band going to alleviate this feeling I have about the worthlessness of my own life? do I have something redeeming to share that can jumpstart my heart back into former compassion for this life and those living it? how come everyone seems so sure of things? what do they know? seriously not sarcastically. I thought I knew a lot once. I used to give speeches. I used to ramble and muse. people had to listen and quite possible hated me like I loathe others now: for their certainty, for their level of engagement in the things they are surrounded by. how they get up in the morning to go out and do whatever it is. why am I so jealous all the time? is it because they are not me? do I hate myself? have I no sense of humor? has this cynicism been forced upon me or have I welcomed it, egging it on, incubating, feeding it? where have all my friends gone? do they still think I am the person they used to love? am I somehow still that person? were they simply amused but not anything more? did I scare them away with the hard questions I asked and to which I found answers, complicating ones that begat the deflection of gazes or physical removal from my audience. Have I uncovered nothing of value in my years, reducing myself to this deflated and jealous, hypersensitive and cynical nucleus of malcontent? what role have my skin problems in all this? have my natural inclinations been deformed so, turning my probing and analytical mind on myself? how many times can I take being let down before turning away? am I a spurned lover of life? have I been burned slowly over these last 10 years and shown a truth about misunderstanding fundamental life approach skills? have I been fighting nature or rejoining it with all this organic madness? wave after wave of media washes over me, seas of citizens with x's on their eyes embody the handed down and force fed, unseen agendas govern. have I been a demonstration of the futility of opposition, a "clinic" to borrow from the lexicon of my failed career, may have been put on by yours truly. even as I try to concede I have to wonder if I really did miss the point or if I made headway? Where is my support? Where are the ones who share my values? Do we who try too hard to understand fail essentially to understand? I am exhausted.

aujourd'Huy

so I caulked my bathtub today... no big deal. learned not to get that foam gap filler on my hands. learned silicone does not light on fire when using matches with it drying on your hands to light a cigarette. also, silicone is easier to get off from dry hands while the gap filler required repeated soapy washings. not that all of it anywhere close to being off my fingers yet. just enough for me to type a post about it. hardware store guy prepared the tube for me, slicing on an angle the plastic tip and then piercing the foil inside. The first tube I bought I thought they told me to stab a whole in top of tube so I knifed it and proceeded to watch it ooze out the top in a large blob. next project a countertop extension and recycling storage? am I moving out of this place or not?

time spent

when I look back on all the time I spent trying to learn how to live life healthfully I see that much of it was spent to eliminate my own pain; I do not nor have I ever been afraid of any imagined future discomfort mind you, which would be much different, but only hopeful that in some near future by my own doing I could eliminate the discomfort I already endure. On my conscience is whether I shall ever be able to exist in such a future; having spent so much time on this pursuit it has been to my detriment to have lost that time in trying to make a living for myself and to learn how to make enough money to live health conditions or not... do I accept this lot and move on and live with it? Would doing so lead me to a place mentally where I could overcome that which I hadn't enough positive attitude before to accomplish?