The Empyrean

Lately I've been listening to John Frusciante's album "The Empyrean", a) because I've been reading interviews with him about the album, which makes it more interesting for me, and also b) because the loose thematic theme seems to tie in well with where I'm at.

As he puts it, the album is all about how giving up and failing ultimately help you reach higher than you would have, until you finally reach "the Empyrean", the highest point in heaven. Along the way, you descend back into madness.

The older I get, the more clearly I'm able to visualize these two states. In other words, there were times when I was in them, but I didn't know what they were. Now they come with all sorts of pictures, tastes, smells, and ideas.

The first part, to me, feels like being in the ground. Now, there's different types of earth. There's warm, rich, loamy soil-- and there's cold, sterile, ground, blasted with radiation or oozing with fetid muck. Sometimes you immerse yourself into the swamp and swim around in the brackish water with the alligators and nematodes. That's all right, it's fertile and organic.

But oh children, I have to tell you, there are places I don't know what they are. This one time I was a hollow person and all this disgusting water kept rushing through me. I was tied to a table by an insect doctor and his lipless nurse. They kept forcing sludge through me in belching waves. The most common occurrence then was when all the skin would slough off me and the only thing that was left was a huge, hollow-eyed bird skull, perched like a plague doctor. Those two black hollow circles are the most persistent symbol.

But that was a while ago. I clambered out of the metallic wastes eventually and found a safe, if unremarkable, plain where I could rest. Eventually, I decided to build a staircase out of my bones and start climbing it.

Now, I've managed, after cracking open my chest many times to pluck out more ribs to make stairs and then growing new ones, to find what I think is a new platform. My eyes are just peeking above the rim of it and I can hardly believe my eyes. I didn't really even believe that such a thing existed. It'll probably take me a while just to adjust to the knowledge of there even being such a place. (I think some people have been on that platform their entire lives, even, maybe). It's a great, white and black tower. Mathematics and clean lines help me build it and it's free from slime and spiderwebs. I've even grown to like climbing and my curiosity to see where it goes is building.

I guess what I wanted to say is: not feeling like a failure is an unbelievably liberating feeling, and I highly recommend it if you haven't tried it yet.

In Which I Spaz Out

I watched a clip of Louis CK on Conan, talking about how people were impatient and unappreciative of the incredible advances in technology that they take advantage of every day, and how nobody today was happy about it. Couple things:

1) Well, of course! There's a huge part of the human organism that is like the anti-Buddha, in that its entire being and concept is to want. As David Foster Wallace described in his essay on the pleasure cruise that he took,the entirety of this part of us is devoted to dissatisfaction. In response to any pleasure or gratification, it will simply adjust its needs upwards until it once again arrives at its usual state of grasping greediness. The fact that the next generation of phones is a little faster or shinier or better at maintaining a WiFi connection has absolute fuck-all to do with satisfying this pleasure-principle, because it cannot ever be fully satisfied.

2) Was anyone really so ephebic as to think that our ability to manipulate little packets of data in better ways would contribute to overall human happiness? He's upset that technological progress has had little to no effect on what is essentially an organic/spiritual problem?

3) Happiness is itself a state of disequilibrium. As far as I know, our bodies just don't have enough dopamine or serotonin to be "happy" all the time. Nor are we set up to be "sad" all the time. What is sustainable, I think, is serenity, peace, understanding, contentment. So expecting society in general to be "happy" is kind of unrealistic, I feel. (What you can do is act and behave in ways that make your life more conducive to happiness. You are the garden, moments of joy are little butterflies that come and visit. You don't get upset when butterflies fly away-- you know they come and they go. If conditions are right, they'll be back).

4) It's all very well to point to people who are surly, childish, impatient, general pains in the ass-- lord knows they exist in droves-- but that's only part of it. We have to at least come up with some ideas for making things better. (In fairness to Louis CK, I didn't watch the entirety of the clip. It's possible that he has dozens of good ideas for making peoples' lives better). To jump to an unrelated point, it's kind of how I feel about people who are smug about their atheism because they've just come up with it. OK, there's no God. Are you just going to stop there? You've reached the end of all thought and there's nothing further to glean? Nah, man, you've got to keep going. People are immature and greedy, they complain about trifles, they feel entitled to all pleasures-- all right, and then what? Where do we go from there?

One Solar System's Opinion

Recently I had the pleasure of having my natal chart worked out and given to me. I've found it quite interesting, going over the details. Sun in Scorpio: well, I knew that one already. Secretive, passionate, reserved, jealous, brooding, etc etc.

Sagittarius ascending. This is interesting. I think this may have had something to do with my Great Epiphany, which occurred on my 25th birthday. The general idea is that Sagittarius, the sign of travel and enthusiasm and rushing about, lends a certain kick in the ass to Scorpio, which I think up until that point had left me marinating in general dissolution. Sagittarius (being a masculine) sign adds a certain vim as well, which had also been lacking. There arises a new-found appreciation for exercise and physical activity.

Plus it explains my general willingness to travel on the spur of the moment. I'm always dropping things to go rushing off somewheres else, if I think it'll be interesting, or necessary to do so.

I like the feminine/masculine, Scorpio/Sagittarius contrast. In my younger days I was more inclined to wear eye shadow, or dress up in my female friend's fashions. Then after a while it switched to polo shirts, stubble, jeans with a belt. I realized I felt out of touch with the masculine aspect of things, so why not check it out? A better balance.

Mercury in Scorpio: if I can't figure something out, it is un-figure-out-able. Sun and Mercury both in Scorpio means that there is no one more keen to get to the bottom of things, figure out mysteries, seek, infer, determine, deduce. Very good for the medical field (bodes well for my future career). Is crafty, ironic, sarcastic, enjoys argument and debate. All true enough.

Moon in Capricorn, Moon square Pluto. Hoo boy. This is a little tough. The moon represents the emotions, and Capricorn is the sign of control and reserve-- in other words, things don't get out too easily. Moon square Pluto lends a kind of fiendish, excessive edge to the already turbulent Scorpio emotions. Basically it all adds up to the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. Plus Mars in Capricorn means that problems, issues, threats will be dealt with by means of restraint and self-discipline. What I'm getting is the sense of "warning: contents under pressure". It makes me think of when I was a kid, screaming and sobbing and hitting my legs really hard because I couldn't get past a Super Mario level. And then growing up, learning certain emotional methods for sublimating, processing, diverting, dissipating. Makes sense.

There's more but that's enough for now. Interesting stuff-- but as with most highly personal stuff, it may only be interesting to the subject themselves...

Foes

I got so damn used to being attacked all the time that I had to relearn how to be friends with things.

It's why it's a relief to have external enemies, sometimes. The internal attacks are necessarily calibrated to your weakest points, and they gnaw into them relentlessly. Enemies can at least be strategized, or, if all else fails, run away from. Running away from yourself, though, never works-- not really.

It's the natural progression of learning. "Nothing is X." And then you are introduced to X. "Holy cow, all things are X!" But in my case I realized, and perpetually am realizing, that some things really are as kind as they seem to be. I had figured that the sweeter the honey, the sharper the sting. "This is so beautiful-- that can only mean that it hides a lethal trap. Anything this good must be secretly sour." But now I think this is not always so. Ultimately, you arrive at "Some things are X."

My little cousin had a lot to do with changing my mind. Children are not really possessed of guile, aren't really interested in disguising their motives. So when she clutches at my hand and babbles happily at me, I think, "She isn't lying, you know. She's recognizing something very good in you. It really is this simple." And thus to follow that string, it ought to be that other people feel the same way.

That there is nothing demanded by things being a certain way, that they are allowed to honestly be, and that no one is lying, and that there are no knives underneath the smiles.

Furred with Frost

The recent cold mornings left the most unbelievable pattern of ice crystals on my car. It made it look like it had a pelt.

Golden States

Driving down to Venice Beach is such a wonderful experience. You spend a long time on Hwy 5, one of the ugliest, boringest stretches of highway on God's earth. It's dirty, cloudy, trucks everywhere. But by the time you start to reach Orange County, the hills start rising and the sun starts shining. Around San Fernando the anticipation starts to build. And when you finally hit LA proper you feel like the coolest person alive. If you've timed it right the sun will be about to set but you can still roll down your window, tooling around Hollywood Blvd. And then the next day you can stand on that great big pier and watch the surfers bobbing around, acres of sand, the whole thing is one big art-walk... It took me a while to switch my head around, but now there's something about LA that I love. I like the feeling that everyone in the city is contributing to the vibe, that there's a certain energy that everyone is aware of and is tapping into and feeding back on. I guess you could call it affected or pretentious, but to me it's like an enormous art project, which happens to be a city. I like it.

balance?

At a certain point, words begin to falter and break. Beyond that, they fail completely. Poetry is the riding of that ragged edge where they begin to break down.

Anyway, apothegms aside, let's talk about strength for a moment. Somatically speaking I am aware of a certain feeling that has nothing to do with picking up heavy things-- it's more a kind of tensile strength... I can't put it logically:

Strong in the way that a lizard is. Or a braid of rope, a length of wire filament. Something twisted on itself, then again, then again and hammered into place. It isn't pretty. Strong in the way that we say "a strong chemical" or "a strong acid". Or "a strong poison". Half poison, half panacea.

Another way that this occurred to me is to think of the way trees grow. If you want your branches to reach upward, the roots must reach downward. For each growth upward, it takes a corresponding stabilization down, in the earth. If your roots are shallow, so must be your branches. And we see people who grow up tall and say, "Wow, look how tall!" and it occurs to us obliquely, if at all, that the line of earth is a fulcrum point, a mirror. Going up means going down. We see an expression but we see poorly what is behind the expression.