Claustrophobic and horrifying, always,
Always –

Always –
Exaltation – crashing of
And everything, always, into
And everything, all same, always –
Into

Here are beautiful women, but none of them —
But: giddy, and they’re greedy with green glowing eyes –
You don’t know what they are.

Made of bones and skin, and you’re dying;
Waiting for bell, and it’s ringing.
Being misinterpreted as you read this.
Waiting room – full of fools and they with grins.
There’s sound something scraping against wall in adjacent room.
Two hands, out in front of you, limp, end of tired forearms,
And you’ve bled out.

You know about all tunnels under hill,
And your mother – waiting,
But all closed entrances,
It’s time to go – your mother – waiting,
She’s always calling, but you don’t want to go.

Disappointed constantly, but, deeply.
You don’t taste coffee or hear music in cafe,
Register faces of people who pass you in street –
You don’t wonder what they’re thinking or, going
You don’t look forward to getting where you’re, going
And not particularly happy to be where you are.

Sometimes, suppose that someone were always stopping you –
From doing what you’re doing –
Either forcing something out of your head,
Or in,
Stopping your starts, missing your hits.

Very little time,
Very much time,
And me is sitting in between.

To Put Above

We must stop putting ourselves above others. I am as guilty of this as anyone.

I’m not talking about value-hierarchies, here. I’m not saying that you should sacrifice your life for the life of another. I’m not saying that you should sacrifice your means of production or happiness for the benefit of another. This is clearly crazy. We all know that the best way to make others happy is to be awesome and humble. We all know that the best way to enhance the lives of others is to eschew their short-term benefit for well-thought-out long-term infrastructure creation.

Pay a dollar to feed a bum today, or invest the money in green energy so that all future humans can survive in a clean and energy-abundant world?

No, I’m talking about thinking of yourself as being above, better, different, somehow essentially greater than those around you.

This type of belief perniciously pervades the rhetoric of every decaying and corrupt cultural form which we despise:

Religiously:

• Hindus, Muslims, and Christians believe that they know god better than others
• Buddhists believe that they know the mind and reality better than others

Politically:

• Republicans believe that they are the “Real Americans”
• Liberals believe that they are the sole proprietors of “Real Compassion”
• Libertarians believe that they alone understand “Freedom”

Socially:

• Queers think they understand sex
• The rich think they understand production
• The poor think they understand what it is to be “real”

Well fuck you! If you know God, so do I! And I am a real american, and I am compassionate, and I love freedom. I understand sex, and production, and I am real, goddammit! Just as real as you, you bastards! Where do you get off believing your so fucking special?

So stop it!

When you speak with someone, listen to them. Their arguments might sound like everyone else’s, but if you listen very carefully you’ll see that what they’re saying is not driven by logic, but by pain. And if you can hear their pain, and help them heal, or maybe just help them feel connected and less fucking alone for a while, then, maybe then, can progress be made.

And if we can all do this, then we’ll be able to figure out how to cooperate again, and we won’t be so easily ruled and oppressed by tyrants who have our souls locked away in their soul gems!

[EDIT] I forgot to mention. The worst – the absolute worst – are the intellectuals. Their capacity for manipulation of linguistic symbols – the symbols which constitute the media of interpersonal connection – allows them to figure out truly insidious means of putting themselves above others. Maybe you’re really good at messing with someone’s emotions (psychologist) – maybe you’re really good at manipulating complex logics (mathematician) – maybe you’re good at reducing everything to an organic metaphor (biologist) – etc. etc. The fact that you’ve inherited one of history’s intellectual traditions does not mean that you are essentially superior – that your pain hurts worse, that your needs are more important, that your words ring more true. Indeed they may ring more true, but this is not due to your essence. The burden of the intellectual is the constant call of deception – she can use her talents and credentials to persuade others into sacrificing their value. Well fuck them! Fuck me!

Form as Tower

I momentarily [1] see all societal forms (let’s restrict ourselves to society, for the moment) as towers. You walk along, experiencing everything, until you either find a “tower” that others have built (a religion, a society, a “norm,” a branch of science, a cult, a branch of mathematics, a country, a state, a city, a tradition, etc.). Then, you start to climb the tower. Along the way, you meet other people in the same tower, and you interact with them. You interact with them in the context of that tower.

Sometimes, towers fall. Sometimes, people grow to hate their tower, and leave, and create a new, similar tower, with ONE difference (or two, or three…).

You can live in more than one tower. You can dwell in the Mainstream Catholic tower and the American tower. You can dwell in the Skeptic tower and the Mathematician tower. You can dwell in the Ruby on Rails tower. Etc.

Towers are nice because they protect you. Sometimes they give you food (e.g. citizen of a Welfare State tower). Sometimes they give you sex (e.g. citizen of the New Jersey tower). But you have to play by the rules. If you don’t, you might just get kicked out of the towers.

A prophet is someone who visits many towers and sees that all these people (or rather a large percentage of them) could really be living in the same tower. Most such people are crazy. Perhaps all. But some are right, sometimes. They create monstrous towers which persist for centuries.

Towers are horrible because they isolate you from reality. If you live on the ground floor of a tower – if you do the grunt work – you interact with real reality. It’s your job to protect the tower. But most people don’t live on the ground floor – most people live in the sky. They don’t see what’s going on – and if they’re not careful – they forget that other people don’t see the same filtered reality as them.

Some people live on the ground. They reject all towers. They deal with reality as it comes, but they build nothing, and they gain nothing. However, rejecting all towers (the homeless, hermits, etc.) is horrible because it is lonely. It is hard to provide for all of your needs (crucially sex, since it explicitly requires another person).

—

I believe that it is best to live in the Tower tower. This tower is very special, because it is infinitely recursively structured. It is the Tower of Towers. If you live in this tower then you can visit all towers. You can leave all towers. You will not be lonely if you don’t want to be, because you can walk up any tower and find people to hang out with, have sex with, do drugs with, play games with, etc.

—

Extremely advanced corollary which I won’t justify:

The Tower tower is the Buddha. We must destroy the Tower tower. AKA: A tower which lives forever must contain the means of its own destruction.

—

[1] Momentarily, in the sense that this framework appeals right now as a metaphorical lens through which I can view the forms of society which interest me. In the language of this post, it is a tower and therefore must have flaws, and will surely fall.