The Universal

This is the next century
Where the universal's free
You can find it anywhere
Yes, the future has been sold
Every night we're gone
And to karaoke songs
How we like to sing a long
Although the words are wrong

It really, really, really could happen
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you, well just let them go

No one here is alone, satellites in every home
Yes the universal's here, here for everyone
Every paper that you read
Says tomorrow is your lucky day
Well, here's your lucky day

It really, really, really could happen
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you, well just let them go

Well, it really, really, really could happen
Yes, it really, really, really could happen
When the days they seem to fall through you, well just let them go

Just let them go

The Fear

I want to be rich and I want lots of money
I don’t care about clever I don’t care about funny
I want loads of clothes and f*** loads of diamonds
I heard people die while they are trying to find them

I’ll take my clothes off and it will be shameless
‘Cuz everyone knows that’s how you get famous
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m on to a winner

I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When we think it will all become clear
‘Cuz I’m being taken over by The Fear

Life’s about film stars and less about mothers
It’s all about fast cars and passing each other
But it doesn’t matter cause I’m packing plastic
And that’s what makes my life so f***ing fantastic

And I am a weapon of massive consumption
And its not my fault it’s how I’m program to function
I’ll look at the sun and I’ll look in the mirror
I’m on the right track yeah I’m on to a winner

I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When we think it will all become clear
‘Cuz I’m being taken over by The Fear

Forget about guns and forget ammunition
Cause I’m killing them all on my own little mission
Now I’m not a saint but I’m not a sinner
Now everything is cool as long as I’m getting thinner

I don’t know what’s right and what’s real anymore
I don’t know how I’m meant to feel anymore
When we think it will all become clear
‘Cause I’m being taken over by fear.

violit hill

Was a long and dark December
From the rooftops i remember
There was snow
White snow

Clearly I remember
From the windows they were watching
While we froze down below

When the future’s architectured
By a carnival of idiots on show
You’d better lie low

If you love me
Won’t you let me know?

Was a long and dark December
When the banks became cathedrals
And the fox
Became God

Priests clutched onto bibles
Hollowed out to fit their rifles
And the cross was held aloft

Bury me in armor
When I’m dead and hit the ground
My nerves are poles that unfroze

If you love me
Won’t you let me know?

(Guitar Solo)

I don’t want to be a soldier
That a captain of some sinking ship
Would stow, far below

So if you love me
Why’d you let me go?

I took my love down to violet hill
There we sat in snow
All that time she was silent still

Said, if you love me
Won’t you let me know?

If you love me,
Won’t you let me know?

Life in Technicolor ii

There's a wild wind blowing
Down the corner of my street
Every night there the headlights are glowing

There's a cold war coming
On the radio I heard
Baby it's a violent world

Oh love don't let me go
Won't you take me where the streetlights glow
I could hear it coming
I could hear the sirens sound
Now my feet won't touch the ground

Time came a-creepin'
Oh and time's a loaded gun
Every road is a ray of light
It goes o-o-on
Time only can lead you on
Still it's such a beautiful night

Oh love don't let me go
Won't you take me where the streetlights glow
I could hear it coming
Like a serenade of sound
Now my feet won't touch the ground

Gravity release me
And dont ever hold me down
Now my feet won't touch the ground.

us

oh lovers, oh you artists
turn up the volume
out here on the farthest shores of the galaxies
I can barely get the signals
I can barely hear your voices
and I am the child of the ages
I was born amongst you
now here I sit, on my watch of the horizons
And I wait
wait for signs, for any sign at all
and sometimes I get nervous, and I get lonely
at others I am immersed in joy and I wish to forget
even of home
for may be I now see the signs on the horizons, I hear the bells too loud?
for now I can not hear your voices anymore
to remind me of my strings, or to teach me words
words that we would both understand

Mourning Glory by K Lecker

looking in the mirror again- forehead on cool
glass- twisted brambles behind her, begging
the reflection to tell her what it sees
waiting hours gathering behind her-a gossamer
hurricane of time hurling between patience
and pensiveness brittle sighs falling on
the bathroom tiles- a soft clicking- then
nothing- and the light dims a strongman from
the circus,arms wide and looming now sunk
into a comfy chair, swallowed in a lazyboy-
no more carnival and the light dims- a soft
petal touch on her neck, sapphire lips and
hazel laughter chameleons embrace to match
her mood- now a razor scratch of airy cotton,
an empty bed, unrelenting bold colors of
insomnia- and the light dims- one ticket to
cradle the strongman, one for the freakshow
of her bed, head against the mirror, can't
afford the fairs' fare- cold night wakening
and the light dims

Stolen Thought.

In lieu of years of turmoil and criticisms of which my crippled remnant had endured, the very purpose of which I had lasted to this very point is to be materialized of the very essence of euphoria; the culmination of an individual’s very breath, in a physicality before one’s self. Within such, an “oxymoric enigma” of which truly exists and yet is debatable towards its validity as a whole, the singularity of innovation, integration, and imagination intersect within a single point of which encompasses this veil of reality those whom travel.
It is the sort of place of where one may through the direct control and dictation of matter and energy of its more precise scrutinizations, materialize that which exists beyond the physicality and direct tactile sensory world these creatures known as humans perceive and of the ideologies, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and wishes our simplistic central nervous systems can summon. A place such as this need not be static and stationary, but of an ever changing wish, like a wondrous piece of ornamental glass, viewed in a different light. Deep from within the essence of thought and imagination, can a person truly realize the scale and power behind a single thought in a living work of beauty and the potential of probability and possibility make itself known to those with open eyes?
Such a power of an entire universe contained within the very walls of a lone structure may indeed carry the very weight of a select few or of existence in itself, upon the universe’s bosom. Such a surely intangible ideal could never exist within a physical form, could it not? Fundamental mechanics of which have dictated the very path of experience’s journey would smother a description of an eternity of pre-anticipated stability and determinism. I must only mutter the question, if our society and planet as a unified force could place and shake a universe in a snow globe, what shall become of ourselves, as we watch the glistening snow fall in silence?

On Thinking

I speak of thinking in its philosophical sense, in the sense that Nietzsche or Heidegger or many other spoke of it.
And how I understand it is different from putting before one's self some mathematical or social problem. Though all philosophers have only tackled all that has existed in the realm of ideas that gave birth to our varied social conditions,in their writings they ultimately speak of something much more than what sum of their words can capture.
Thinking as it commonly exists in the academia today is thinking within the framework of the given discipline - that is> holding onto one strand of thought bound by a logic and always within the spectrum of that discipline, and noble as it is , does not come close to the essence - the essence of thinking in the sense that one's entire nervous activity is governed by the right hemisphere ( to take one of the most recent empirical reports of the feeling ) - or that the right hemisphere of our brains is the prime operative merely calling the left to its serivce to test how the concepts under considerations play out when subjected to temporality and arbitrarily assigned ( though may be evolutionarily justified) values.
Thinking understood where one is so displaced from one's prejudices that what one comes across does not find its parallel in human language and continues to allude any kind of framing. And when one does succeed in somehow finding remotely appropriate words to explain or describe it, it is too tainted to have retained any true value or its original essence.

To me there is a difference between seeking knowledge>understanding and being in a state of consciousness where we are one with all that surrounds us.
Then I can not help but ask, why do we attempt to gain mastery in this subject or that if not to attempt to grasp some higher truth. Are we just keeping busy ? Do we seek better understanding of this or that so as to be
able to introduce new words therefore new feelings attached to those words in our everyday usage of them ? while hoping that some day enough of us will share that feeling and that will probably help distance us enough from our
animal/instinctual selves that we will care the same for any other if not more.
I think the only thing that can justify the existence of our educational institutions is, not the teachers who "teach" (tell ? ) students what have already been found, but teachers who try to give life to our curious selves. Once that self is activated and running, it itself will make use of the data banks of experiments and observations without having to worry about the social implications and economic gains they will somehow provide to other institutions
controlled by individuals in whom the will to power manifests itself in seeking more and more physical comfort only.

There is no end point for a curious spirit except to become a free spirit. Free spirit , as I understand it, is a self -prisoner as it may be to its own physiological and psychological limitations- that never stops pushing
against any and all walls that surround it. An intellectual found in the university may be a free spirit in that he/she pushes against the boundaries of ignorance but at the same time allows himself to be fettered by something that his newfound knowledge has only helped strenghthen.

You think you would know when you met an Einstein? When he produced his theory of relativity no one believed him. A genius is a genius only if he can produce an empirical truth or a work of art that finds rapport with enough number of people. Every truth seems evident "after" it has been discovered. A genius's ( genius to me is a misnomer) problem is not to find something grand but to find a mind that understands it.

Uberman of the Matrix

Beckham is the über-metrosexual, not just because he rams metrosexuality down the throats of those men churlish enough to remain retrosexual and refuse to pluck their eyebrows, but also because he is a sportsman, a man of substance--a "real" man--who wishes to disappear into surfaceness in order to become ubiquitous--to become media. Becks is The One, and better looking than Keanu--but, be warned, he's working for the Matrix.

Patterns in the Void 0.5

I see following patterns around me. This does not mean I am labeling or stereotyping. Its just random observations as I, like alot of other people, try to make sense of the world around me and forgive me if its not always politically correct or adhering too close to the norm, or the accepted standards of thought.

Will to be good, to improve one's self : I see alot of people saying they continuously want to better themselves. Now there are different kinds of bettering one's self. A thief wants to better his technique and so does a monk. A salesperson wants to improve his pitch and so does the stranger who feels the infinite love in his heart for everyone and everything around him and just wants to connect to any one person that he can. We are all an amalgamation of desires and doubts no question about that. I wonder if there is a secret key, or a way of being that is better then the rest. One that makes it easier to find common ground with others who are also willing. A common ground that reduces feelings of tension and stress and unnecessary competition. A feeling where our everyday bartering selves - always weighing loss and gain, and for good reasons sometimes- can forget all that differentiates us and somehow hold on to that blissful way of being, of security and trust while in presence of another.

Patterns in the Void

So, I wondered again, how is it that two people who both see themselves or define themselves or describe themselves as Intellectual, kind, loving, philosophical and compassionate, can find it so difficult to feel that connection. Not just that spark that you feel for the one you are going to love or want to love for the rest of you life but just that feeling of universal love, that feeling that the other is as much human as I. And as full of flaws- though there are no inherent flaws since there are no truths, or the right way of being, of behaving- as I.
Where was it the meaning of kindness and compassion differed between any two. Was the difference greater than the understanding of the concepts supposedly as universal as Love. Is is something one said that we did not expect? Is it someone's music choice? Is is how often one takes a shower? Or whether remembers to bring me my favorite flavor of icecream?
In the end I find myself enormously selfish to wish to mold the other the way I wish them to be. Namely, the way that makes "me" happy. But there a million ways any one person can perceive any action or word. Are we better off expecting from our husbands and wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, romantic-partners and friends things that we learned to expect from the tv-show we watched? the magazine we read? the evolutionary science article we are subscribed too? what the priest told us?
Then I find myself giving others only as much liberty of thought and action as I want for myself, which is, complete. But just because one can do something, does not mean one must do that thing. So we all have our natures and our choices. Some like to stay at home and read, some like going bungee jumping every other month, some find joy in other's company, some need just one.
As we eye a person to see how much investment of time and emotion we can make in them, how would their way of being, the way they distribute their time and energy, help me grow.

Nietzsche

2

Thus I invented, when I needed them, the "free spirits" too, to whom this heavyhearted- stouthearted book with the title "Human, All Too Human" is dedicated. There are no such "free spirits," were none--but, as I said, I needed their company at the time, to be of good cheer in the midst of bad things (illness, isolation, foreignness, sloth, inactivity); as brave fellows and specters to chat and laugh with, when one feels like chatting and laughing, and whom one sends to hell when they get boring--as reparation for lacking friends. That there could someday be such free spirits, that our Europe will have such lively, daring fellows among its sons of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, real and palpable and not merely, as in my case, phantoms and a hermit`s shadow play: I am the last person to want to doubt that. I already see them coming, slowly, slowly; and perhaps I am doing something to hasten their coming when I describe before the fact the fateful conditions that I see giving rise to them, the paths on which I see them coming?

3

It may be conjectured that the decisive event for a spirit in whom the type of the "free spirit" is one day to ripen to sweet perfection has been a great separation, and that before it, he was probably all the more a bound spirit, and seemed to be chained forever to his corner, to his post. What binds most firmly? Which cords can almost not be torn? With men of a high and select type, it will be their obligations: that awe which befits the young, their diffidence and delicacy before all that is time-honored and dignified, their gratitude for the ground out of which they grew, for the hand that led them, for the shrine where they learned to worship--their own highest moments will bind them most firmly and oblige them most lastingly. For such bound people the great separation comes suddenly, like the shock of an earthquake: all at once the young soul is devastated, torn loose, torn out--it itself does not know what is happening. An urge, a pressure governs it, mastering the soul like a command: the will and wish awaken to go away, anywhere, at any cost: a violent, dangerous curiosity for an undiscovered world flames up and flickers in all the senses. "Better to die than live here," so sounds the imperious and seductive voice. And this "here," this "at home" is everything which it had loved until then! A sudden horror and suspicion of that which it loved; a lightning flash of contempt toward that which was its "obligation"; a rebellious, despotic, volcanically jolting desire to roam abroad, to become alienated, cool, sober, icy: a hatred of love, perhaps a desecratory reaching and glancing backward, to where it had until then worshiped and loved; perhaps a blush of shame at its most recent act, and at the same time, jubilation that it was done; a drunken, inner, jubilant shudder, which betrays a victory -a victory? over what? over whom? a puzzling, questioning, questionable victory, but the first victory nevertheless: such bad and painful things are part of the history of the great separation. It is also a disease that can destroy man, this first outburst of strength and will to self-determination, self-valorization, this will to free will: and how much disease is expressed by the wild attempts and peculiarities with which the freed man, the separated man, now tries to prove his rule over things! He wanders about savagely with an unsatisfied lust; his booty must atone for the dangerous tension of his pride; he rips apart what attracts him. With an evil laugh he overturns what he finds concealed, spared until then by some shame; he investigates how these things look if they are overturned. There is some arbitrariness and pleasure in arbitrariness to it, if he then perhaps directs his favor to that which previously stood in disrepute--if he creeps curiously and enticingly around what is most forbidden. Behind his ranging activity (for he is journeying restlessly and aimlessly, as in a desert) stands the question mark of an ever more dangerous curiosity. "Cannot all values be overturned? And is Good perhaps Evil? And God only an invention, a nicety of the devil? Is everything perhaps ultimately false? And if we are deceived, are we not for that very reason also deceivers? Must we not be deceivers, too?" Such thoughts lead and mislead him, always further onward, always further away. Loneliness surrounds him, curls round him, ever more threatening, strangling, heart-constricting, that fearful goddess and mater saeva cupidinum --but who today knows what loneliness is?

4

It is still a long way from this morbid isolation, from the desert of these experimental years, to that enormous, overflowing certainty and health which cannot do without even illness itself, as an instrument and fishhook of knowledge; to that mature freedom of the spirit which is fully as much self-mastery and discipline of the heart, and which permits paths to many opposing ways of thought. It is a long way to the inner spaciousness and cosseting of a superabundance which precludes the danger that the spirit might lose itself on its own paths and fall in love and stay put, intoxicated, in some nook; a long way to that. excess of vivid healing, reproducing, reviving powers, the very sign of great health, an excess that gives the free spirit the dangerous privilege of being permitted to live experimentally and to offer himself to adventure: the privilege of the master free spirit! In between may lie long years of convalescence, years full of multicolored, painful magical transformations, governed and led by a tough will to health which already often dares to dress and disguise itself as health. There is a middle point on the way, which a man having such a fate cannot remember later without being moved: a pale, fine light and sunny happiness are characteristic of it, a feeling of a birdlike freedom, birdlike perspective, birdlike arrogance, some third thing in which curiosity and a tender contempt are united. A "free spirit"--this cool term is soothing in that state, almost warming. No longer chained down by hatred and love, one lives without Yes, without No, voluntarily near, voluntarily far, most preferably slipping away, avoiding, fluttering on, gone again, flying upward again; one is spoiled, like anyone who has ever seen an enormous multiplicity beneath him--and one becomes the antithesis of those who trouble themselves about things that do not concern them. Indeed, now the free spirit concerns himself only with things (and how many there are!) which no longer trouble him.

5

Another step onward in convalescence. The free spirit again approaches life, slowly, of course, almost recalcitrantly, almost suspiciously. It grows warmer around him again, yellower, as it were; feeling and fellow‑feeling gain depth; mild breezes of all kinds pass over him. He almost feels as if his eyes were only now open to what is near. He is amazed and sits motionless: where had he been, then? These near and nearest things, how they seem to him transformed! What magical fluff they have acquired in the meantime! He glances backward gratefully--grateful to his travels, to his severity and self-alienation, to his far-off glances and bird flights into cold heights. How good that he did not stay "at home," "with himself" the whole time, like a dull, pampered loafer! He was beside himself: there is no doubt about that. Only now does he see himself--and what surprises he finds there! What untried terrors! What happiness even in weariness, in the old illness, in the convalescent`s relapses! How he likes to sit still, suffering, spinning patience, or to lie in the sun! Who understands as he does the happiness of winter, the sun spots on the wall! They are the most grateful animals in the world, the most modest, too, these convalescents and squirrels, turned halfway back to life again--there are those among them who let no day pass without hanging a little song of praise on its trailing hem. And to speak seriously, all pessimism (the inveterate evil of old idealists and liars, as we know) is thoroughly cured by falling ill in the way these free spirits do, staying ill for a good while, and then, for even longer, even longer, becoming healthy--I mean "healthier." There is wisdom, practical wisdom in it, when over a long period of time even health itself is administered only in small doses.

6

About that time it may finally happen, among the sudden illuminations of a still turbulent, still changeable state of health, that the free spirit, ever freer, begins to unveil the mystery of that great separation which until then had waited impenetrable, questionable, almost unapproachable in his memory. Perhaps for a long time he hardly dared ask himself, "Why so apart, so alone? Renouncing everything I admired, even admiration? Why this severity, this suspicion, this hatred of one`s own virtues?" But now he dares to ask it loudly, and already hears something like an answer. "You had to become your own master, and also the master of your own virtues. Previously, your virtues were your masters; but they must be nothing more than your tools, along with your other tools. You had to gain power over your For and Against, and learn how to hang them out or take them in, according to your higher purpose. You had to learn that all estimations have a perspective, to learn the displacement, distortion, apparent teleology of horizons, and whatever else is part of perspective; also the bit of stupidity in regard to opposite values and all the intellectual damage that every For or Against exacts in payment. You had to learn to grasp the necessary injustice in every For and Against; to grasp that injustice is inseparable from life, that life itself is determined by perspective and its injustice. Above all you had to see clearly wherever injustice is greatest, where life is developed least, most narrowly, meagerly, rudimentarily, and yet cannot help taking itself as the purpose and measure of things, and for the sake of its preservation picking at and questioning secretly and pettily and incessantly what is higher, greater, and richer. You had to see clearly the problem of hierarchy, and how power and justice and breadth of perspective grow upward together. You had to--." Enough, now the free spirit knows which "thou shalt" he has obeyed, and also what he now can do, what he only now is permitted to do.

7

That is how the free spirit answers himself about that mystery of separation and he ends by generalizing his case, to decide thus about his experience. "As it happened to me," he tells himself, "so must it happen to everyone in whom a task wants to take form and `come into the world."` The secret power and necessity of this task will hold sway within and among his various destinies like an unsuspected pregnancy, long before he has looked the task itself in the eye or knows its name. Our destiny commands us, even when we do not yet know what it is; it is the future which gives the rule to our present. Granted that it is the problem of hierarchy which we may call our problem, we free spirits; only now, in the noonday of our lives, do we understand what preparations, detours, trials, temptations, disguises, were needed before the problem was permitted to rise up before us. We understand how we first had to experience the most numerous and contradictory conditions of misery and happiness in our bodies and souls, as adventurers and circumnavigators of that inner world which is called "human being," as surveyors of every "higher" and "one above the other" which is likewise called "human being," penetrating everywhere, almost without fear, scorning nothing, losing nothing, savoring everything, cleaning and virtually straining off everything of the coincidental--until we finally could say, we free spirits: "Here is a new problem! Here is a long ladder on whose rungs we ourselves have sat and climbed, and which we ourselves were at one time! Here is a Higher, a Deeper, a Below-us, an enormous long ordering, a hierarchy which we see: here--is our problem!"

8

No psychologist or soothsayer will have a moment`s difficulty in discovering at which place in the development sketched out above the present book belongs (or is placed). But where are there psychologists today? In France, certainly; perhaps in Russia; surely not in Germany. There are sufficient reasons for which the present-day Germans could esteem it an honor to be such; bad enough for a person who is constituted and has become un-German in this respect! This German book, which has known how to find its readers in a wide circle of countries and peoples (it has been on the road for approximately ten years), which must understand some kind of music and flute playing to seduce even unreceptive foreign ears to listen--precisely in Germany has this book been read most negligently, heard most poorly. What is the cause? "It demands too much," has been the reply, "it addresses itself to men who do not know the hardship of crude obligations; it demands fine, cosseted senses; it needs superfluity, superfluity of time, of bright heavens and hearts, of otium in the boldest sense--all good things which we Germans of today do not have and therefore cannot give." After such a polite answer, my philosophy counsels me to be silent and inquire no further, especially since in certain cases, as the saying suggests, one remains a philosopher only by--being silent.

Nice, Spring, 1886.

Spaceman...?

We live scattered in space, united in time. Can you envision a reality scattered in time but united in space?
Imagine a contextual reality in which all beings are present in the same space at the same time - as all of us in this world are present in the same time at... ummm... the same time, I suppose. ;-) Time would remain a fixed variable environment as space is here, and people would interact with their world by moving through time instead of through space.

What do you think such a thing might be like?

Bittersweet

WANDERER:- Are all these answers we make?
Just another means of getting high.
Your daily cigarette
Your daily sexaholics meeting
Your daily poker game
Your heroin, your addiction, your lies.
What is this. Ive never felt like I was more insane in my life but honestly, Im happier this way.
Do you get off on making everyone compete to get the best answer and to give away opinions not facts to people all around the world.
Whats wrong and what is right. Morals are out of the picture. You have to be insane to be normal. You have to be normal to be moral.
Being insane is being moral for the most part without getting technical.
Really you guys. Im looking for love in all the wrong places
Obviously that is what this is. A search for a different kind of love.
I want you to love me. Then I want you to love your neighbor then I want you to put your grudges in the disposal. Ive never seen you so happy.
You all look better now!

THE SHADOW:-We are social animals. We hate to be alone, well most of us, most of the time. We come here for all of the above metaphorical reasons. We answer to learn. We answer to repeat to ourselves our oh so dear convictions. We answer because we wish to feel connected. We answer because someone is asking a question. Is it the war of the ideas?, or war of the confused minds?

I understand humanity is at a critical stage, just like it has always been. But now the pace has been quickened. Before we would write a letter, which will take weeks to get to its destination. Language was more firm back then. The comprehension of concepts was not as complex as it is today. Life was, well, slow.
But with this haste of our age, comes doubt ( or rather a skeptical attitude ). We wish to do away with the tradition and the morality. We do not want people around us to tell us what is normal and what is not. Our natures want to come out, blossom out, in all its variety without fear of reprehension. But what is lacking? Self Mastery? Self Knowledge? A Moral Code? A Value System?.

Oh but there are no morals and values. There is only this battle for survival among the best of us. Morality is what they tell us exists only to fetter us while each one of has makes our morality as we go along in life.

Chomsky has been trying to teach the world "facts" all his life. He has not been heard outside the linguistics department. All we are left with is opinions. And they seem to me to be useful seeing how facts dont resonate much with our life plans. Opinions are like gentle hooks that take what we already believe and steer it in its direction. Again, we ARE social animals and we DO have Language and a wish to keep our vanity polished.

There is Love, but there is also grudges. But my grudges are not outside of the sphere of my Love. They both belong to me and I distribute them out to other people as I see fit. Once you realize that we all are fettered by same shackles, we all are prone to same dangers, you cant be anyone but Yourself. and Yourself is nothing without others.

good and evil

What is good and evil, other than the untruth of them being polar opposites settled through a subjective or objective form to do the better that is of existence? They are but terminology thrown down for the analytical purpose of establishing suppression.
The terminology good and evil are untruths; they are too subjective to diagnose right actions and virtue for the objectivist in normative ethics. For example, water is not hot nor cold but to the individual who senses it; while one finds the water hot one may find it cold, a lack of an absolute. For any coherence in what the water or moral is requires measurements to be made for an understanding that can be universally interpreted, a present absolute. Humans cannot measure morality as it is beyond human comprehension. Humans can only see the phenomenon, so humans can only perceive their existence as they know it; ethics requires the consideration of all meaning, which cannot be done.
In essence, morality is transparent as its originality of its value comes from a forgotten or misleading establishment, a church or state for relation to such, and it imprints from an individual’s upbringing. Morality becomes an established necessity; when really a moral was a means or mean for an agenda of a majority, the establishments attempt to suppress the minority from his desired actions. Unfortunately the naive individual takes the untruth of morality as a truth, as the rest of humanity goes as follow.

the everydayness of life

I am love, from head to toe. Of course the everydayness of life takes it toll. With our predispositions for love or repulsion. The essence remains the same. There is more in us that is similar then there is different. The world and its drama is a veil that is pulled before our eyes by the embraced necessity of our very own selves. The alternative, the being , manifested in its purity is hidden by the urgency of feeling secure and invulnerable. We love ourselves before we love anyone else, before we love the other. The other, the great fantasmagoria ever created by the self vanishes whenever the being comes in contact with its self. In music, In art, In being in love, In letting yourself being completely vulnerable to the other. The deep love and knowledge of one's self is the key to experiencing the Da'sein, the being as it is.

We, as human, are certainly capable of more than we know, more then we would like to know, more then we would like to tell ourselves.The veil persists but it never stops dreaming of liberating itself from our active consciousness. It wants to be loved, it wants to be understood, it wants to be acknowledged. All it needs to truly let the spirit of one's self fly free is a little knowledge of itlself and perhaps a stroke of luck.

Wanderer and his Shadow 2.1

Wanderer- Where does a thought come from?

The Shadow- How is it that you always forget to ask this question when you are happy.

W :-Well I am asking it now.

S:-Are you happy right now?

W:-Hhmm Not really. But I am not sad either. Just content I guess. But hey, would you stop answering my questions with questions of your own.

S:-Why? Do I remind you too much of Socrates?

W:-That also sounds like a question.

S:-I thought you trusted me. And after what I did for you today.... Are you sure you are not agitated?

W:-"Sigh". Ok fine. Now would you answer my question please?

S:-Havent I already?

W:-Hhmmm. I see your point. But that only shows how one thread of thought leads to another thread of thought. I wish to know where does the first thought come from. Any thought that just comes out of the blue. Like when I am driving and I suddenly think of the George Carlin kitten video that I enjoyed watching so many times a few days ago.

S:-I can answer your question, but if you know me, as I am sure you are getting to, it wont be a straight one.

W:-Why is that? Why cant I get a straight answer to my question? You think I am stupid?

S:-What is stupid? Actually never mind. I cant answer your question directly because you are not asking me what country the wall of china is in. I have to take you through the maze, show you all the dead ends of thoughts before you find your way out to justify answering a question not only abstract but very elusive.

W:-Hhmmm. ok. I am ready.

S:-You are a multiplicity.

W:-Yes you told me that last time and I have been thinking about it.

S:-What have you found out so far?

W:-That the illusion of the unity of self called by many different names, Ego, I , Consciousness is a necessary one.

S-Very good , keep going. And keep in mind the example of Lassi and Yogurt from out last conversation. That one idea builds on the other and to understand the one on the very top, you must first climb all the lower ladders of ideas. Like if I tell you now that I can tell you the meaning of life and that it is 42.

W- Oh yeah, I remember that. A novice can never figure out the first time why it is 42. I have tried it.

S- So you were saying....?

W- Where was I. Yes... That we are a multiplicity posited as a unity. It goes parallel and was helped in understanding by Freud when he spoke of drives that live within us. They can be counted on fingers when spoken psychologically but going after their philosophical extensions, every moment in our minds there are countless ideas struggling to leap into our conscious mind from unconscious mind. With practice we can stop, if need be, any one idea from taking over our active drive mode and making us believe its absolute legitimacy. Necessary as it may appear at the moment that an idea or a thought has taken over our being, it can always be substituted by a different one because that illusion of necessity, of legitimacy, of importance that we feel about a thought is only a function, an essential function of that very thought. For a thought to successfully occupy our mind, it has to make us believe that no other thought would do at the moment.

S:- wow wow slow down...

W:- sorry. I guess the thought of explaining myself hijacked my mind, and left behind the other thought that considers brevity.

S:- You know its not easy being honest. The dishonest ideas are the worst pirates. Self deception, in our long evolutionary history may have been advantageous at times but in the absence of a sharp governing intellect the devil can make us believe that he does not exist while it steers our life away in any one direction and feed us dopamine and other people's admiration, keeping our vanity polished to ensure its invisibility and survival.

W:- How do I know you are not that devil. How do I know that you are not that one pirate idea that has hijacked my mind and will not let your competitor ideas and thoughts come forward?

S:- I knew you would ask me that question sooner or later. Did I not come to your rescue today when you were sad and anxious and restless. Was I not the one that put a smile on your face, scared away the anxiety and told you all was ok or will be ok? Have I not been your best friend in the past?

W:- You make a good case, but do not sit too easy. I am not done with you yet.

S:- You are a good student.

Wanderer and his Shadow 2.0

The Shadow -Are you busy?
The Wanderer- No, not for you. Just be careful.
Careful of what?
Careful not to disturb me while I am in my human drama.
Why not? Am I not yours?
Yes you are. But it hurts our standing to admit we have our shadows.
How so?
Arent I the one supposed to be asking the questions?
Yes you are. You asked for me?
Yes I did. Why does it hurts our standing to admit we have our shadows?
Hahaha, very nice.
I know.
Do you know what lassi is?
No.
Do you know what yogurt is?
Yes.
Lassi is watered down yogurt.
and....?
Would you know what lassi is if you did not know what yogurt is?
I think not. But what does lassi and yogurt has to do with my question?
This knowledge appears useless to you because you did not have a need to know what lassi is. You can only learn what something is if you truly have the need to know it.
Why cant I be good at mathematics then, or learn the intricacies of art?
How hard have you tried?
hhhmmm.....


The Wanderer- How is it that we do not admit to having any shadows but it is only our shadow that others see.
May be I am more interesting than you are.
But are you not Mine?
That I am.
Why the drama than?
Your history requires that you be posited as a unity. A shadow has many colors.
My history?
Your history.
But I am but 25 or 26.
But you speak.
I speak? What does my speech got to do with how I appear to anyone?
More than you think. Your language could be the filter through which others see me, your shadow. They may come wearing pink glasses though.

The Wanderer- Tell me... what is language...?

Wanderer and his Shadow

The Shadow: Since I haven't heard your voice in so long, I would like to give you an opportunity to speak.
The Wanderer: Someone said something—where? and who? It almost seems as if I myself were speaking, though in an even weaker voice than mine.
The Shadow (after a pause): Are you not happy to have an opportunity to speak?
The Wanderer: By God and all things, in which I do not believe, my shadow speaks; I hear it, but I don't believe it.
The Shadow: Let's accept it and don't continue to think about it—in one hour it will all be over.
The Wanderer: That's what I thought, when I saw two and then five camels in a forest near Pisa.
The Shadow: It's good, that we are both indulgent in the same way, if our reason stands still: thus we will not become annoying and press each other in conversation when something sounds incomprehensible to us. If one does not know how to answer, then it is already enough to say something—that's the reasonable policy under which I agree to converse. With longer discussions, the wisest one becomes once the fool and three times the dullard.
The Wanderer: Your modesty is not complimentary to your confessor.
The Shadow: Am I to flatter?
The Wanderer: I thought a man's shadow was his vanity, but his vanity would never ask: "Am I to flatter?"
The Shadow: Nor would man's vanity, as far as I know, inquire—as I did twice already—whether it could speak: it always speaks.
The Wanderer: Only now do I notice how impolite I am, my beloved shadow: I have not said a word about how pleased I am to see you as well as hear you. You should know that I love the shadow as much as I cherish the light. For facial beauty, clarity of speech, quality and firmness of character, shadow is as necessary as light. They are not opponents: they are rather affectionate, holding hands—and if the light disappears, the shadow slips away after it.
The Shadow: And I hate the same thing you hate: the night; I love human beings, because they are devotees of light and I'm pleased when their eyes shine as they discern and discover knowledge—untiring knowers and discoverers that they are. That shadow, which all things cast, if the sunshine of perception falls upon them—that shadow am I as well.
The Wanderer: I believe I understand you, despite your somewhat shadowy expressions. But you were right: good friends give each other—here and there—a cryptic word as a sign of agreement, which should be a mystery to any third party. And we are good friends. Therefore, let's dispense with the preliminaries! A few hundred questions press upon my soul, and the time you have to answer them is perhaps only brief. Let's see what, in all haste and peaceableness, we can agree upon.
The Shadow: But shadows are shier than human beings: you won't tell anyone how we have spoken together!
The Wanderer: How we have spoken together? Heaven forfend! especially from long drawn-out literary discussions. If Plato had less desire to "spin" his readers, they would find more pleasure in Plato. A really amusing discussion—when written down—is merely a painting with false perspectives: everything is too long or too short—nevertheless, perhaps you'll allow me to indicate what we agreed upon?
The Shadow: I'm happy with that, since everyone will recognize therein only your opinions—nobody will think of the shadow.
The Wanderer: Perhaps you are wrong, my friend! Up to now one assumed in my opinions more of shadow than of me.
The Shadow: More shadow than light? Is it possible?
The Wanderer: Dear fool, be serious! My first question requires seriousness.

Khalil Jibran

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.
You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.
You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.


And it is well you should.
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;
And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.
But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless.


Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself like a lotus of countless petals.

Dead Poet's Society

The students quickly quiet down as Keating emerges from the other room,
whistling the 1812 Overture. He walks up the length of the classroom and
out the door without a word. The students look around at one another,
uncertain of what to do. Keating pokes his head back in the doorway.

KEATING
Well come on.

He gestures them to follow and the students, after some hesitation, grab
their books and follow Keating out into the main entranceway.

INT. ENTRANCEWAY - DAY

Keating stands before the school's trophy cabinets and waits until all
the boys arrive.

KEATING
"Oh Captain, My Captain" who knows where
that comes from?

Todd looks up as if he knows the answer, but says nothing. Spaz blows his
nose a little too close to Meeks for his liking.

KEATING
Not a clue? It's from a poem by Walt
Whitman about Mr. Abraham Lincoln. Now in
this class you can call me Mr. Keating. Or,
if you're slightly more daring, Oh Captain,
My Captain.

The students laugh slightly.

KEATING
Now let me dispel a few rumors so they
don't fester into facts. Yes, I too
attended Hell-ton and survived. And no,
at that time I was not the mental giant
you see before you. I was the intellectual
equivalent of a ninety-eight pound
weakling. I would go to the beach and
people would kick copies of Byron in my
face.

The boys laugh once again, while Cameron, obviously trying to write all
this down, looks around confusedly. Keating looks down at papers in his
hand.

KEATING
Now, Mr… Pitts. That's a rather
unfortunate name. Mr. Pitts, where are
you?

Pitts raises his hand while everyone around him snickers.

KEATING
Mr. Pitts, would you open your hymnal to page 542 and read the first
stanza of the poem you find there?

PITTS
"To the virgins, to make much of time"?

KEATING
Yes, that's the one. Somewhat appropriate,
isn't it.

PITTS
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, old
time is still a flying, and this same
flower that smiles today, tomorrow will
be dying."

KEATING
Thank you Mr. Pitts. "Gather ye rosebuds
while ye may." The Latin term for that
sentiment is Carpe Diem. Now who knows
what that means?

Meeks immediately puts his hand up.

MEEKS
Carpe Diem. That's "seize the day."

KEATING
Very good, Mr.-

MEEKS
Meeks.

KEATING
Meeks. Another unusual name. Seize the
day. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
Why does the writer use these lines?

CHARLIE
Because he's in a hurry.

KEATING
No, ding!

Keating slams his hand down on an imaginary buzzer.

KEATING
Thank you for playing anyway. Because we
are food for worms lads. Because, believe
it or not, each and every one of us in
this room is one day going to stop
breathing, turn cold, and die.

Keating turns towards the trophy cases, filled with trophies, footballs,
and team pictures.

KEATING
Now I would like you to step forward over
here and peruse some of the faces from
the past. You've walked past them many
times. I don't think you've really looked
at them.

The students slowly gather round the cases and Keating moves behind them.

KEATING
They're not that different from you, are
they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones,
just like you. Invincible, just like you
feel. The world is their oyster. They
believe they're destined for great things,
just like many of you. Their eyes are full
of hope, just like you. Did they wait until
it was too late to make from their lives
even one iota of what they were capable?
Because you see gentlmen, these boys are
now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen
real close, you can hear them whisper their
legacy to you. Go on, lean in.

The boys lean in and Keating hovers over Cameron's shoulder.

KEATING
(whispering in a gruff voice)
Carpe.

Cameron looks over his shoulder with an aggravated expression on his face.

KEATING
Hear it?
(whispering again)
Carpe. Carpe Diem. Seize the day boys,
make your lives extraordinary.

The boys stare at the faces in the cabinet in silence.


2.

Keating sits at his desk at the front of the classroom and opens up one
of his books.

KEATING
Gentlemen, open your text to page
twenty-one of the introduction. Mr.
Perry, will you read the opening
paragraph of the preface, entitled
"Understanding Poetry"?

NEIL
Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans
Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully understand
poetry, we must first be fluent with
its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech.
Then ask two questions: One, how artfully
has the objective of the poem been
rendered, and two, how important is that
objective. Question one rates the poem's
perfection, question two rates its
importance. And once these questions have
been answered, determining a poem's
greatest becomes a relatively simple
matter.

Keating gets up from his desk and prepares to draw on the chalk board.

NEIL
If the poem's score for perfection is
plotted along the horizontal of a graph,
and its importance is plotted on the
vertical, then calculating the total
area of the poem yields the measure of
its greatness.

Keating draws a corresponding graph on the board and the students
dutifully copy it down.

NEIL
A sonnet by Byron may score high on the
vertical, but only average on the
horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on
the other hand, would score high both
horizontally and vertically, yielding a
massive total area, thereby revealing the
poem to be truly great. As you proceed
through the poetry in this book, practice
this rating method. As your ability to
evaluate poems in this matter grows, so
will - so will your enjoyment and
understanding of poetry.

Neil sets the book down and takes off his glasses. The student sitting
across from him is discretely trying to eat. Keating turns away from
the chalkboard with a smile.

KEATING
Excrement. That's what I think of Mr. J.
Evans Pritchard. We're not laying pipe,
we're talking about poetry.

Cameron looks down at the graph he copied into his notes and quickly
scribbles it out.

KEATING
I mean, how can you describe poetry like
American Bandstand? I like Byron, I give
him a 42, but I can't dance to it.

Charlie suddenly appear to become interested in the class.

KEATING
Now I want you to rip out that page.

The students look at Keating as if he has just gone mad.

KEATING
Go on, rip out the entire page. You heard
me, rip it out. Rip it out!

Charlie looks around at the others. He then looks down at his own notes,
which consists of drawing breasts.

KEATING
Go on, rip it out.

Charlie rips the page out and holds it up.

KEATING
Thank you Mr. Dalton. Gentlemen, tell you
what, don't just tear out that page, tear
out the entire introduction. I want it
gone, history. Leave nothing of it. Rip
it out. Rip! Begone J. Evans Pritchard,
Ph.D. Rip, shred, tear. Rip it out. I
want to hear nothing but ripping of Mr.
Pritchard.

Meeks looks around reluctantly and then finally begins tearing out pages.

KEATING
We'll perforate it, put it on a roll.

Keating sees Cameron still hesitating.

KEATING
It's not the bible, you're not going to
go to hell for this. Go on, make a clean
tear, I want nothing left of it.

Keating goes over to his room. Cameron turns around to Neil.

CAMERON
We shouldn't be doing this.

NEIL
Rip, rip, rip!

Neil makes Cameron turn back around.

KEATING (O.S.)
Rip it out, rip!

From outside the classroom, Mr. McAllister hears all the noise and sees
all the students ripping out the pages. He bursts into the room.

MCALLISTER
What the hell is going on here?

The boys all turn around in shock. Charlie stuffs a crumpled page into his
mouth. Keating emerges from his room with a waste paper basket.

KEATING
I don't hear enough rips.

MCALLISTER
Mr. Keating.

KEATING
Mr. McAllister.

MCALLISTER
I'm sorry, I- I didn't know you were
here.

KEATING
I am.

MCALLISTER
Ahh, so you are. Excuse me.

Mr. McAllister slowly backs out of the classroom.

KEATING
Keep ripping gentlemen. This is a battle,
a war. And the casualties could be your
hearts and souls.

Keating holds out the basket to Charlie who spits out a wad of paper.

KEATING
Thank you Mr. Dalton. Armies of academics
going forward, measuring poetry. No, we
will not have that here. No more of Mr.
J. Evans Pritchard. Now in my class you
will learn to think for yourselves again.
You will learn to savor words and language.
No matter what anybody tells you, words and
ideas can change the world. I see that look
in Mr. Pitt's eye, like nineteenth century
literature has nothing to do with going to
business school or medical school. Right?
Maybe. Mr. Hopkins, you may agree with him,
thinking "Yes, we should simply study our
Mr. Pritchard and learn our rhyme and meter
and go quietly about the business of
achieving other ambitions." I have a little
secret for ya. Huddle up. Huddle up!

The boys get up from their seats and gather around Keating in the center
of the class.

KEATING
We don't read and write poetry because
it's cute. We read and write poetry
because we are members of the human race.
And the human race is filled with passion.
Medicine, law, business, engineering,
these are all noble pursuits, and necessary
to sustain life. But poetry, beauty,
romance, love, these are what we stay alive
for. To quote from Whitman: "O me, o life
of the questions of these recurring, of the
endless trains of the faithless, of cities
filled with the foolish. What good amid
these, o me, o life? Answer: that you are
here. That life exists, and identity.
That the powerful play goes on, and you
may contribute a verse. That the powerful
play goes on and you may contribute a verse.

Keating looks up at Todd.

Keating
What will your verse be?
3.

The cafeteria is filled with students and teachers standing before the tables saying grace.

ALL
For what we are about to receive, may the
Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.

Mr. Keating and Mr. McAllister are seated next to one another at the table.

MCALLISTER
Quite an interesting class you gave today,
Mr. Keating.

KEATING
I'm sorry if I shocked you, Mr. McAllister.

MCALLISTER
Oh, there's no need to apologize. It was
very fascinating, misguided though it was.

KEATING
You think so?

MCALLISTER
You take a big risk by encouraging them to
be artists John. When they realize they're
not Rembrandts, Shakespeares or Mozarts,
they'll hate you for it.

KEATING
We're not talking artists George, we're
talking free thinkers.

MCALLISTER
Free thinkers at seventeen?

KEATING
Funny, I never pegged you as a cynic.

MCALLISTER
(taken aback by the comment)
Not a cynic, a realist. Show me the heart
unfettered by foolish dreams, and I'll
show you a happy man.

KEATING
But only in their dreams can man be truly
free. 'Twas always thus, and always thus
will be.

MCALLISTER
Tennyson?

KEATING
No, Keating.

Keating winks and Mr. McAllister can't help but laugh.

linguist's dillemma

Enough of the judgments of the past. Enough their reign in my thoughts. So called the mind. Who I was , was only a matter of perspective. My perspective, in one time or another. My view of another’s perspective. Everything is a dance and everything is an evaluation. I am as much a dancer as everyone else. How could I improve on my dance. How could I know what I was doing was right. Who is to judge and praise me for it. Is it me taking flight from reality, or is reality only what a large number of people agree to be.

There is life, the everyday of it. There is me, amongst it all. I am the arbiter of my world. I am a part of it. What do I mean my life to be. There will always be a question on every turn. How I answer will decide where will I end up. But if I think about it, so does everyone else. Some questions we agree on, some we don’t. Some we talk about, some we dont. With some ideas, we attached emotions. They are different for everyone, and equally valuable. To think differently, one must feel differently, so called our history of instincts.

But a brute psychologist will tell you, we can not afford uncertainty. That the illusion of the concreteness of language was a necessary one and could not be permitted too much investigation. That every thing each one of us does is only human, alas all too human.

Party of One

I went to FISHERMAN'S Wharf to watch daredevil navy pilots do stunts over San Francisco Bay. The six sleek planes dove and spiraled and sped off wing-to-wing, trailing curlicues of white smoke like whipped cream from aerosol cans. The roar of their engines drew call-and-response roars from the crowd below.
It was a crowd. Spanning two miles of waterfront on the last sunny Saturday of the year, a sea of spectators lined the railings along docks and piers, jamming walkways and lawns and traffic islands and restaurant roofs. Clots of people in colorful T-shirts waved at the sky from hotel balconies, streamed off tour buses and streetcars. Stuck in traffic, drivers and passengers craned their necks as seagulls swooped and snatched at fallen onion rings as if mocking the planes.
I thought, What am I doing here? As a rule, I avoid crowds. I am not an agoraphobe, but dislike crowds on principle. The inevitable of unwitting poke of strange elbows into breast and back. The potentiality=and it has been realized-of someone throwing up onto my shoes. The premise, the presumption implicit in any crowd, from concert hall to kaffee klatsch to office party, that shared experiences are the only ones that count. The only experiences toward which everyone aspires.The only real ones. I never liked the circus as a child, and the audience was as much the cause as the clowns. But I was in the neighborhood the day the planes came. So I said What the hell.
The spectators rippled and swirled, particolored, like clouds of confetti. Flesh to flesh. A happy crowd, as crowds go. And like all crowds, it drew from it hugeness a shared frisson. A sense of collective self. A jubilation in assembly, in the very face of its existence. Jubilation in the fact that all those persons were in one place at one time, as if their numbers, their consensus on a sunny Saturday under a sky crisscrossed with jet streams, the air redolent of fish, proved-what? That anything worth doing is not done alone.
I found a spot between a car and a family from India. I stood watching the planes, together with the crowd and yet apart.

APART.
Such a simple concept. So concrete. So easy to represent on charts or diagrams with dots and pushpins either in or out. Yet real life is not dots. Some of us appear to be in , but we are out.And that is where we want to be. Not just want but need, the way tuna need the sea.
Simple:an orientation, not just a choice. A fact. To paragphrase that Boston song, more than a feeling. We are loners. Which means we are at our best, as Orsino says in Twelfth Night, when least in company.
We do not require company. The opposite in varying degrees, it bores us, drains us, makes our eyes glaze over.Overcomes us like a steamroller. Of course, the rest of the world doesnt understand.
Someone says to you, "Lets have luch." You clench. Your sinews leap withing you, angling for escape. What others thrive on, what they take for granted, the contact and confraternity and sharing that gives them strength leaves us empty. After what others would call a fun day out together, we feel as if we have been at the Red Cross, donating blood.
This is not about hate. I did not hate the individuals in the crowd at the air show. Not the man leaving over the rail, A tatoo on his back of a baby-faced devil above the words Born Horny. I dont hate my relatives or those whose names fill my address book. But I do not want to have lunch with any of them. It is not personal. I am not angry. Nor is this about being afraid. I am not shy. I do not have terrible manners.
Do birds hate lips? Do Fijians detest snowplows? Being a loner is not about hate, but need: We need what others dread. We dread what others need.


How much better if I had known from the start, if someone had said, This is what is different about you. It would have been so simple, would have explained anything. But no one ever said. That is the point. We will not-cannot-hail each other on the street and ask, Are you this way? We will not take each other into confidence on line at Safeway.
Being as we are is just a way to be, like being good at sports or being born in Greenland. If only it were not dorky to quote Robert Frost, if he were Sufi or had died young in the Spanish Civil War, then we could seize as our motto the final three lines of " The Road Not Taken":

The roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


This way to be, this way we are, gets us into trouble. We are a minority, the community that is an anticommunity. The culture that will not on principle join hands. Remote on principle from one another-this is in our charter and we would not have it any other way-each of us swims alone through a sea of social types. Talkers. Lunchers. Touchers.
Nonloners. The world at large. The mob.
The mob thinks we are maladjusted. Of course we are adjusted just fine, not to their frequency. They take it personally.
The take offense. Feel hurt. Get angy. They do not blame owls for coming out at night, yet they blame us for being as we are. Because it involves them, or at least they believe it does, they assemble the troops and call us names.
Crazy.Cold. Stuck-ups. Standoffish. Aloof. Afraid. Lacking in social skills. Bizzare. Unable to connect. Incapable of love. Freaks. Geeks. Sad. Lonely. Selfish. Ungrateful. Unfriendly. Serial killers.

They bridle when we turn down invitations. They know we are making up excuses, but they cant handle the truth.
They cannot fathom loners any more than birds can fathom lips. The mob makes definitions and assigns identities based on the sorts of clues loners do not provide. We are elusive, not given to dressing and behaving such that we would be in stadiums raising giant foam-rubber hands proclaiming anything. We frustrate our observers, try their patience, make ourselves amorphous. Make ourselves either unintentionally scary of invisible. With the blithe assurance of a majority, the mob nods knowlingly when Justin stays home alone on Christmas Day. He is depressed, they say, or else he has something to hide. The clerk who goes home after work to have a bubble bath instead of joining the gang at the bar is declared undeserving of a raise, afraid of men, afraid of women, too smart, too stupid, scary, a pervert.
The mob posts jokes on the Net-for instance, a page called "The Loner's Home Companion," which begins: Ever had lots of spare time, a .375 Magnum burning a hole in your pocket, and an unhealthy obsession with Heather Locklear...?" And like the mock interview with "a loner" who muses: "I spend most of my free time by myself. I steer clear of crowds and social functions...I'm just a normal, average guys who will go to great lengths to avoid unnecessary human contact. Is that so wrong? No, its not. Human beings are nasty,disgusting, germ-infested vermin."
The L-word, as we hear it most often today, sounds nasty. It is the sound of a nervous music, a whine of mistrust, the hiss of fear, the dull growl of incomprehension. Animals make that sound when foreign species invade their dens, or when they find a rogue withing the herd. Loners live among the mob, so the mob mistakes us for its own, presuming and assuming. When the mob gets too close or free, any which way, we tell the mob in effect, I dont need you.
Hell hath no fury like a majority scorned.

Yet here we are, not sad, not lonely, having the time of our lives amid their smear campaign.
We are the one who know how to entertain ourselves. How to learn without taking a class. How to comtemplate and how to create. Loners, by virtue of being loners, in celebrating the state of standing alone, have an innate advantage when it comes to being brave-like pioneers, like mountain men, iconoclasts, rebels, and sole survivors. Loners have an advantage when faced with the unknown, the never-done-before, and the unprecendented. An advantage when it comes to being mindful like the Buddhists, spontaneous like the Taoists, crucibles of concertrated prayer like the desert sainds, esoteric like the cabalists. Loners, by vurtue of being loners, have at their fingertips the undiscovered, the unique, the rarefied. Innate advantages when it comes to imagination, concentration, inner discipline. A knack for invention, originality, for finding resources in what others would call vacuums. A knack for visions.
A talent for seldom being bored. Desert islands are fine, but not required.
We are the one who would rather see films than talk about them Would rather write plays than act in them Rather walk Angkor Wat and Portobello Road alone. Rather run crosscountry than in a relay race, rather surf than play volleyball. Rather cruise museums alone than with someone who lingers over early bronzes and tells us why we should adore Frida Kahlo.
Alone, we are alive.
Alone does not necessarily mean in solitude: we are not just the lone figure on the far shore. This is a populous world, and we are most often alone in a crowd. It is a state less of body than mind. The word alone should not, for us, ring cold and hollow, but hot. Pulsing with potentiality. Alone as in distinct. Alone as in, Alone in his field. As in, Stand alone. As in, like it or not, Leave me alone. This word wants rescuing, this word wants pride. This word wants to be washed and shined.
There are books, out there, about solitude. They give instructions on being alone. They books talk of "stealing away," of "retreats" and of "seeking sanctuary." They pose solitude as novelty and a desperate act: the work of theives and refugees. But for loners, the idea of solitude is not some stark departure from our normal state. We do not need writers to tell us how lovely apartness is, how sacred it was to the sages, what it did for Thoreau, that we must demand it. Those books are not for loners, not really.
By the way, I am sane. People whose job it is to know these things have told me so.


We loners do not know each other by sight. Every day we pass our brethren in the street unwitting. Sure, you might notice the solitary figure on the subway car and think, aha. But we do not exchange glances or high-fives or have our own slang or symbols. What would those be, anyway? The tarot's Hermit card? A stick figure wearing a party hat? Atiny, tightly rolled scrool in a silver capsule like Jewish mezuzahs, inscribed with the names of famous loners? Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Alec Guinness, Erik Satie, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Stanley Kubrick, James Michener, Greta Garbo, John Lennon, Piet Mondrian, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, Janet Reno, St Anthony, Batman. Even that would be reductive. Would leave out so much.
Because it is all too easy to generalize. About them. About us. If this is a manifesto, it speaks for all of those-and we know who we are-for whom no one has yet spoken and who, by nature, do not seek to call attention to themselves.
Which is why a manifesto for loners cannot pretend to speak for every last loner, word for word. Generalization is impossible. It is an insult. Instead, what you will find here-the fact, opinion, research, interview, reportage, analysis, and observation-is a periscope. This is the world from here. Held up to every loner's eye, the view will be the same, but different.


The mob is not as actively hostile as it is intolerant. Even this accusation would surprise the mob. It prides itself on having evolved beyond prejudice. It parades proof of its enlightenment: its multicultural government cabinets, legal rights for same-sex partners, wheelchair access, plus-size models. Those are surely prideworthy. But no one wants to own up to the bias that thrives in full flush as the others go down in flames. This bias does not show itself in laws against us, antiloner lagislation, unless you count tax breaks for married couples with kids and higher taxes for the self-employed. It mostly shows itself-surprise, surprise!- in attitude.
Such as the fact that anything done alone is discredited, demeaned, devalued, or at best, simply undiscussed. People talk about other people, and of things they do with other people. What is done alone is preseumed dull or embarrassing. Or abstruse, like quantum physics. A guazy veil hides what is done alone: its warp is shame, its woof incomprehension. When nearly all you do is done alone, it makes the effort that is conversation that much harder, and all the more fruitless.
And consider all those phone calls at all hours from relatives and others who presume that because we are home alone we are always available, up for a chat. Being home alone, they presume, could not possible also mean being busy. Or contented exactly as you are. Unwilling to be interrupted. Different standards apply to the nonloner at a desk in an office tower. No one questions that she is really employed.
At 10 a.m and 8 p.m., loners voice-mail recorders collect evidence. I know you are there. Pick up the phone.
The bias shows itself in nosy questions. What are you doing in there? Hurt feelings. Why are you avoiding me? Catcalls. You're weired.
Say what they will, do what they will, we still know where the party is. A terribly small party, they would say.
We are part of the human race. We need our space. Get used to it.


The mob wants friends along when doing errands, working out at the gym, seeing a movie. The mob depends on advice. Eating alone in decent restaurants horrifies the mob, saddens the mob, embarrasses the mob. The mob wants friends.
The mob needs to be loved.
It lives to be loved.
Or hated, with that conjoined fervor with which mobs face their enemies. Both love and hate are all about engagement. About being linked with humanity generally, as a policy. Loners have nothing against love, but are more careful about it. Sometimes just one fantastic someone is enough. As a minority, we puzzle over nonloners, their strange values. Why do they require constant affirmation, validation, company, support? Are they babies, or what? What bothers them about being alone? What are they so afraid of? Why cant they be more like us?
Well, they cannot, nor can we be like them. Behavioral geneticists claim that human temperaments and talents-skills, preferences, modes-are inborn, like eye colors. This science is comforting insofar as it frees our parents from feeling that having loners as children is there "fault," that they "did something" to "cause" this.
Was I born this way? Does it matter how I got this way? Not if I am happy. I am. Loners need no more to be cured, nor can be cured- the word is gross in this usage - than gays and lesbians. Or people who love golf.


How could I know, when nobody told me, that I had a heritage? Beyond race or religion: another kind of sameness that bonded me with all those who had gone before, and bonded them with one another. A sameness of personality that set us apart from the majority as cleanly and as surely as the stroke of a Damascus sword. In emotion, in interest, in achievement- not that anyone would tell me, not that anyone would dignify it with a name or call it a line of succession. Its rich legacy lay everywhere, and nonloners lapped at that legacy thought its true flavor, its core and meaning, were meant just for me. And for my kind, not that I knew I had a kind.
The legacy shimmered in art museums, galleries, libraries, concert halls. In every home with electricity, with a T.V. In algebra classes and cinemas. Since the begining, loners had been out there, on their own, making and doing things. They had kept to themselves, liked their own company, thrived on their days alone. They had produced the Mona Lisa, Jungle Book, Taoism, Walden. How could I have known? In that nonloner world of teams and troops and congregations, who would have said, psst,hey,loner. Here is a grand roll call of your forbears. Protoloner.
Down the years, around the world, they form a shining line-in single file, of course. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, who as a boy would rather have tinkered and solved math problems than play. Rene Descartes, the pioneering mathematician and philosopher who did his best work alone in his bed and said, " I think, therefore I am." Kipling. Thoreau. Beatrix Potter. Dickinson, who stayed home for sixteen years and wrote two thousand poems of startling passion. Lawrence of Arabia.
Crazy Horse, whom his own Sioux tribe called " the strange man" but loved him for his laconic air of mystery. Austrian born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who lived as a hermit.
All those for whom two was a crowd. Who braved the ridicule, rising time and again to the clear view through their own eyes, the wonder and horror they found and explored in themselves. Of course I would not meet them. We are not the type who meet. We do not wish to , in the flesh. We do not need to.


Nonloners borrow a term from Jung and call us introverts. They think it makes them sound intelligent to say so. At the dawn of the twentieth century, Jung devised it along with "extravert." ( He spelled it with an a) Humankind, Jung asserted, is divided into these two types, extraverts comprising three fourths of the total. The difference between the two, he said, lies in the way they perceive and interpret information.
Extraverts convern themselves with facts, with the objective, Jung said. By contrast, the introvert concerns himself with the subjective. Confronted with an identical scenario, the extravert will deduce its meaning based on what can be seen and what is recognized as true. The introvert, meanwhile, conjures a complex meaning based on individual and largely immaterail details. Impressions and opinions. He feels his own deductions to be correct, Jung wrote in 1921, yet the introvert "is not the least clear where and how they link up with the world of reality."
Acknowledging "the normal bias of the extraverted attitude against the nature of the introvert," Jung added that, for the latter, " work goes slowly and with difficulty. Either he is taciturn or he falls among people who cannot understand him; whereupon he proceeds to gather further proof of the unfathomable stupidity of man. If he should ever chance to be understtod, he is credulously liable to overestimate. Ambitious women have only to understand how advantage may be tken of his uncritical attitude towards the object to make an easy prey of him; or he may develop into a misanthropic bachelor with a childlike heart. Then, too, his outward appearance is often gauche... or he may show a remarkable unconcern, an almost childlike naivete."
Yet introverts and loners are not one and the same thing. Surely some who gain information from within and not without still enjoy company. And what of all those countless scientific loners? All those loner hacker,s loner programmers, loner inventors? Surely they rely on facts.


Loners are all types, subjective and objective thinkers, religious and atheists, soldiers and screenwriters and supermodels. We are the group that is never a group, that sneers at groups. In number theory, we mights be described as "the set of units that is not associated with any other unit." We are the confraternity whose members would rather chew Brillo pads than gather in some rathskeller to plan a strategy. We will never stage a protest march, a rally at ehich loners chorus, Do not call us on the phone!Leave, leave,leave us alone!


Because being a loner does not, in this so-populous world, guarantee confidence, Maturity. High self-esteem. To this day, I make no claim on maturity. Ours is a path marked with wonders of our own making, but also with barriers, baffles, and border gurards, and even land mines, Being ones own friend, sometimes ones only friend, is not always easy. Drawing validation and fun from withing is all well and good, but hard when we see nonloners scooping up all the prizes. My father used to say, Its not what you know, its who you know, and I did not want to believe in him. He said it ironically, wishfully, loner that he was. Networkers get promotions, commendations, raises, he said. Ass-kissers, he said. Not smart guys like himself, he meant. The schmoozers always win. The whole world is a personality cult.

Each of us loners is a point on a vast continuum. At one end is the hermit in the hut or cave, subsisting on wild herbs and water, and speaking to no one for years at a stretch. At the other end is the urbanite juggling job and family, and hoarding moments alone like pearls.
At one end are misanthropes. At the other are do-gooders:doctors for example, and philanthropists. In the middle are all the rest: a throng as diverse as the glass bits in daleidoscopes. Happy, sad. Shy, laughing at danger. Sprinting, languid. Comtemplateive, rectless. Cool, uncool.
But here. There. Having millions of tiny parties everywhere.

Deja Vu

was I a different man from when I had not had that ciggarette or that shot? I had but only one brain. What had changed? The amount of serotonin or some other chemical running through my veins?
I am sure none of my friends would be able to recognize me from one state to another. But I am still me, arent I? The same body, the same brain, the same morality? Of course any kind of intoxication removes certain inhibitions but those inhibitions were mine none the less. There was a reason they were inhibitions and part of my suppressed self instead of my active consciousness and perhaps the reason was the "others", the great phantasmagoria, my mind tried to comfort itself.

But you forget, my mind spoke again, not everyone is you, and not everyone is working at the same wave length as you.
Huh.... wave length... that word had become one of my favorites and it was an easy short cut for describing how everyone perceived the world differently. But I always tried to comfort myself saying.... surely theres gotta be some common ground. But the contrary argument seemed even stronger... everyone has lived a different life and safely assuming that we are all products of our environments and our genes it would be too much to expect to have someone understand who you are.... "But I always give others second .. or third chance" my mind screamed." .... And what do you have to show for it.. I replied.. A life , a personality that no one seems to understand. Even the best of the reader has come across a character that fits who you are in this story or that .... but it is too good to be true in real life...

Stop complaining, said the shadow of my consciousness. All you want is someone to love "exclusively."... You selfish bastard. You wish to posses their souls. You want them to think only of you and of nothing else. You wish to become the primer of their life. You too, like everyone else, want the rest of the world to turn into "you"....
"NOOOO"... i screamed back. I dont. I would be too boring. I want just one. And she dont even have to be like me... in fact... she doesnt have to be like me at all...as long as she loves me.

What do you think love is huh... asked the shadow again... you think its a universal emotion dont you? Have you forgotten all the biological explanations that they have to give of love? Have you forgotten it is merely a human imperative....? almost an illusion...? that makes two people stay together long enough just so they can raise a child....isnt it just a psycholigcal crutch...? a feeling that just wants constant affirmation that you are not alone...

"stop that...." I screamed in agony..." stop giving me cold cut explanations ... stop devaluing it... stop trying to rationalize it... stop taking away the purpose of my life.. the hope.. the primer.... enough of your pessimism...I have seen its face.. it exists ... I know it... I have seen it... and so has everyone else... everyone has experienced it in one way or another... from the most commonest of man to the most enthuistic.. everyone wishes it...

"but are they ready for it? are "you" ready for it?" the shadow replied... " even if they are ready for it... do you have any way of knowing what they understand of love comes even an inch closer to what you think of it?" .... the shadow almost seemed to be enjoying my angst... " everyone loves novles and love stories.. its the lay of the land.. everyone claims to be a romantic...you have no way of knowing if what they say.. if they say it.. comes from the deepest part of their souls or just lust and loneliness verbalizing itself... what? you dont belive me...? go pick up a popular romantic novel... and then go and meet the author and you yourself will see the disparity... just because someone says they wanna be in love more than anything else doesnt mean they really know what love is..."






unfinished thought...........