number three

“It's a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation”

So, I sit here this evening looking on to the view of whiteness, cleanliness, and snow. A sight not so common in the seattle eyes, sure back in Colorado it was a little more realistic. So, I get to encounter the drivers of seattle, who take there SUV's out thinking it's a 4x4 when its not. Cars stopping at the top of hills only to side backwards helplessly as they merc parked cars. Metros nearly falling off overpasses and metros reaming cars in downtown.

It's a new reality to many of the seattlelites. This doesn't always happen, it hardly happens, and many don't really know what is going on.

Do I really know whats going on though? I mean sure I was fine driving in the snow with my jeep. I got to mess around and have some fun. But what does that mean anyways? What sorts of reality do I live in, what kinds of realities have I never explored, or ever will explore. New perspectives are always important. I could leave this snow covered chaotic seattle today, arrive in some place half way across the world to a beautiful sunny morning, in a culture that is on the brink of anarchy. What would that say to my sense of reality? That would shake me up a bit. Here I am sitting cold and looking on to chaos only in the sense that there is snow on the usually wet ground outside. Where I could be waking up to sun, and complete chaos in the sense that anarchy is near.

Thinking like this always makes me reflect and question much. Are we a blank slate that only learns what our parents show us? I think we have annihilated this illusion, well only somewhat, but it has been explored by many, I tend to like Steven Pinker's thoughts on the matter. What are we born with? What is a reflection of the operating system that is our culture? Just as rene decartes wanted to eliminate everything to find himself and what he was, I would learn a lot by eliminating limits put on myself by culture.

Simple example is language. I am versed in English. But English is so narrow, it lacks a good translation of many other languages, it has meanings that have been added to over the years by media, fiends, misconceptions, connotation, everything. Let us wonder what life would be like in a different language, would we see different pictures in our minds? Might we dream a bit different? I am really not sure about such a matter, but I can only imagine it would be an experience.

I wonder how language was even conceptualized, or created. Sure it seems logical to us, that humans wanted to communicate so they created a sound system to do so. This is reverse thinking though, sure looking back on any event we can come up with a justification. But think about how outside the box this idea might have been back then. What wonderful ape thought of it first? And how in the hell did he "communicate" that idea to others? Hindsight is always 20 20.

So as a crazed man, or not so crazed man, Terence McKenna puts it, "demand direct experience. This is much a problem of the modern dilemma, is that direct experience has been discounted and in its place is all kinds of belief systems have been erected. I would prefer a kind of intellectual anarchy, where beliefs would be understood as a self limiting function. Because you see, if you believe something, you are automatically precluded from believing in its opposite. Which means a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of committing yourself to this belief."

“Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

~ ~ ~

I want to go on a long drive. And breathe out in my car and see my breath. I want some time to sing my lungs out. And then some time to look on in silence and solitude.

Then I want to eat an apple and drink some water.

Jumbo nerds are good to eat (I don’t know what they are really called)