Pentothal

Ever-sweet waxings on Love

2005-05-15T22:12:00.000-05:00

Somewhere is a girl for me
Waiting,
ice-skating,
Or climbing a tree

Perhaps she’s made of things like candy,
sugars sweet, Endorphin’s handy.
Perhaps on her I’ll have a suck,
While other souls just fantasize to fuck.

Perhaps she’ll teach me something new,
Bright and shiny (Tuesday’s dew),
Some grand old vision or ripe young view.
Of those, already, I have a few.

Perhaps she’ll stop me thinking,
Pissing out my minds wet tinkling.
Perhaps in her I’ll find some peace,
To stop the pounding I dare not cease.

Perhaps she’ll be so wonderful
My advances will be blundderful,
And with frantic clutching motions I might thrust,
And only cause sick fear disgust and gross mistrust.

For I desire her to love me so
My movements have no place to go.
And I begin to lose my mind.
For Understatement I am lost to find.

And soon she’ll settle for a man who hates her,
Pricks and prods and soon degrades her
But So she sees him and adores it.
While So she sees me and abhors it.

And I’ll end up with some loose tramp
And she’ll be down with bitch’s cramp

But we'll always write from death above
all those ever-sweet waxings on old life's love.

I have nothing useful now to say.

2005-05-15T21:30:00.000-05:00

Tempered tortures gone away
while once I thought them there to stay
always near and dear for play

But now I'm dumb
or know of some
shy tingling from
my bland and numbing numb

But crap it's gone
where I know not long
something that was strong
and always, always very wrong.

Self esteem is steaming on
while whists of mists of consciousnists
are loudly deafened by the song
It sings and sings with all notes wrong
for all the, all the quick days long

('Punctuation inconsistent,
Dull and dreary,
limerick weary,
Drivel from the depths of brains brain-death.
This P, oh sad it’s tree,
for I shall never see or write as lov-a-ly as thee).

Plato Killed My Muse -part three-

2005-04-26T18:18:00.000-05:00

Twenty-naught and sickly sitting

Fitting into fatal’s knitting

Finding fun and fooling fears

But mostly simply bored to tears

Passion finds a way of fleeting

Of Seasoned minds and sweet hearts eating

It lives it dies and is reborn

In places now or once forsworn

And here I speak of something sneaking

Creeping in and then sent streaking

Terrified or simply tired

Of words rewound and rhymes required

Foolishly clever am I, and sorry for it

I write and speak and then adore it

But if I pause and find some sense

I know I’ve made no recompense

For thoughts are serpents chasing tails

They all compete and each one fails

And in the end there is but noise

They are the grown-up’s broken toys

plato killed My muse

Plato Killed my Muse -part two-

2005-04-26T17:55:00.000-05:00

My muse is dead so there shan't be a part two.

Plato Killed my Muse -part one-

2005-03-14T17:18:00.000-05:00

This is the first of a series of posts on the intellect and art. It (and the entries to follow) was inspired by Adam’s beaming little review of Michael Crichton's most recent novel, State of Fear. (Bless his little neocon heart*)

Here were my thoughts on this little* gem:

I thought Crichton did a lousy job with this one, and, believe it or not, my opinion has nothing do with my politics. I simply felt that, being as the subject was eco-terrorism rather than genetics or nanotechnology gone wrong, being as the bad guys were winy liberal politicians rather than military technicians or foolish cooperate money-grubbers (which I feel are more ubiquitously evil [I hate winy politicians as much as the next guy but they’re more annoying than villainous), and being as the "monsters" were lightening strikes, icebergs, and tidal waves rather than vicious man eating dinosaurs, nano-bots, gorillas, or giant squid, Crichton was harder pressed to "create" suspenseful dramatic scenes. Suspense happens naturally when you are trapped at the bottom of the sea, in the African jungle, in a classified weapons facility in Nevada, or on an artificially prehistoric island off the coast of Costa Rica. Instead of those classic scenes (the raptors in the kitchen, the squid eggs in the abyss, the nano-cloud hovering ominously outside a nearly sealed car window in a Nevada parking lot) you had a seemingly more ridiculous and overtly contrived globe-trotting romp from one unlikely death trap to the next (the lightning strike test chamber, the arctic crevasse, or the Cannibal village). Unlike his previous novels the characters were underdeveloped and began to look archetypal: The bumbling confused hero, the know it all dashing man of reason, the sexy secretary, the rich entrepreneur slowly realizing his own miscalculations, and of course the ignorant oblivious fool (the fact that without naming them or giving a more detailed description you can probably figure out exactly which characters I'm describing says something) (the fact that nearly every one of them was in Jurassic Park says something else).

What bothers me is that Crichton is usually less formulaic than most science fiction writers. I think that in this case, Crichton’s simple desire to write a political novel (and I say this without regard to whether I felt his politics were right or wrong) caused him to loose his normally more creative voice. The work seems intellectually contrived to present a message. I would best liken it to an actor trying desperately to appear as the character rather than simply existing as the character. In short, I felt the work was forced. And that it was simply forced to make a point. That's fine if you're writing a position paper, but as a novel I would say that the artistic element suffers as a result.

Also, in the past Crichton’s novels have always been excitement and thrills set against a backdrop of an interesting scientific idea. In Jurassic Park the cheap excitement served as a vehicle to present two recent and monumental scientific developments: genetics in biology and chaos theory in Mathematics. In State of Fear the backdrop idea was not a scientific one but rather a political one (not about global warming but rather it's political ramifications) And frankly, if given the choice to read about politics or ground-breaking science... well I shouldn't even have to finish that sentence.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
* INDEFINATE ARTICLE: I meant Adam's little neocon heart but if crichton's vascular organ is of similar persuasion and is likewise in need of benediction then, I suppose, bless it too.
*This is the third time I've used the adjective little; hopefully you've noticed my condescension by this point. If not, do read on; there's always more to come.

Father, Child and their Courage

2005-02-04T19:17:00.000-05:00

Yes, that was a very bad Brecht reference.

I'm getting Courage from Adam and his Father

Here are my opininons on the subject.

We really are floundering in the dark aren’t we? Ask anyone to defend their steadfast truths and most will simply scream, stomp, and finally walk away, satisfied that they have propagated and sustained there own perceptions, regardless of whether those truths be empirical or simply fanciful delusions.

Unfortunately for truisms the likes of courage or, more grandly, morality there is no empirical test. So what makes a courageous being? Self Sacrifice? Most would call Jesus Courageous. But when you’re the Son of God what’s there to be afraid of? How about strength in one’s convictions then? How about people who stood for something and defended it with all their power? People like George Washington, people like Rosa Parks, like Nelson Mandela, like Lincoln, Gandhi, Roosevelt, Hitler. Wait… Hitler? Hitler shouldn’t be in that list. Hitler can’t be courageous. Hitler was an evil man. Hitler was a villain… but he did stand for something and did defend it with all his power. So what is it that separates Hitler from those other widely held Heroes? He killed people? So have the great majority of society’s heroes. He did it for a bad reason? Define bad reason. Hitler probably thought it was a great reason. Stalin killed even more for an equally dumb reason but there are many in Russia, even today, who hang his noble image on their walls, and there are few around the world who would think him to be a worse man than Hitler.

The question begs an answer, but go and ask any class of first graders whether Hitler was a good-guy or a bad-guy and the answers are unanimous: “Bad-guy!” But of course, asking a first grader about good and bad, courage and cowards, Heroes and villains isn’t as cut and dry as it seems. First grade boys (and the occasional girls) that play cowboys and Indians always want to be the cowboys, as long as the cowboys win, or the Indians, as long as the Indians win. They are courageous as long as they fought killed and won. Those who failed are only courageous if those who won deem them to be valiant but ultimately inferior and misguided souls.

But haven’t we (adults) come so very far from first grade, haven’t we learned to recognize true courage and virtue? I would say absolutely not. And anyone who says otherwise is full of shit. Nothing changes from first grade to your final years except the size of the words, body parts and toys you use to defend your perspectives.

Had Hitler won the war (I assure you I am infinitely grateful he didn’t) it is very possible that future citizens of Germany (perhaps the world at large) would have regarded him as a courageous hero. Furthermore the legacies of men like Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt would have been left in the hands of Hitler’s history writers. Were they brave but misguided innocents? Or were they cowardly tyrants who feared the ultimate (and in their minds goodly) transformation of mankind from a beastly menagerie to a triumphant Third Reich? I’ll bet the second would be more popular.

Each of us must decide whether the men and women of whom we hear and read so much about are courageous or cowardly: “I think she was courageous” “I think he was a coward”. Trying to fit those individual perceptions into one truth: “He/she was a coward/was courageous!” is an assumption of ultimate knowledge, and indeed a sign of ultimate ignorance.

--

As far as a standard definition for the word courage, I would personally recommend using it not as a judgment of (your opinion of) Good or Evil (“The terrorists were cowards!” “Our soldiers are courageous!”) but rather as a measure of one’s personal resolve to enforce one’s will (“The terrorists were courageous but, in my opinion, evil and misguided.” “Bin Laden is a coward for not having gone and defended his perceptions himself.”). Now, to this you might say that I’m implying that those who are smart enough to avoid death while still achieving their goals are cowards and only those who ignorantly run violently into the fray deserve to be called brave souls. That is precisely what I’m implying. I think that courage has a lot more to do with ignorance or at the very least selflessness than it does with goodness or rightness. Any man with unwavering courage would have to have absolute faith in his beliefs. Such faith would make the man a fool. Any man with any courage at all would therefore have to be somewhat foolish. A man with no courage and faith in nothing, however, may not be a fool for lack of perception but is certainly destined to live a life of boredom, fear and emptiness. A life that I think most of us would call foolish. In this sense courage becomes simply a matter of how much you are willing to lay on the line, and has nothing to do with your intelligence, your virtue, or people’s perceptions of your intelligence or virtue. It would take a lot of guts to saw off your hand with your father’s power-tools, but it’s probably still stupid, pointless, and detrimental to your health.

Truth Serum?

2005-01-19T22:50:00.000-05:00

Pentathol is a drug. More accurately, Sodium thiopental, chemically NaSC11H17O2N2 , is a barbiturate long fabled as a truth serum.

I have an affinity for concepts like truth. They offer a man safety, purpose, and motivation. They tempt him to believe, to have strength in his convictions, to have pride, and to have reason for existence. They unite societies in a common cause of preservation. They unite friends beneath a blanket of mutually recognized absolutes. Absolute, truism, axiom, gospel, fact: these words unite us; these are the words we always seem to be searching for.

But the thing about pentathol is that it’s an anesthetic. It causes extreme relaxation, temporary amnesia, nausea, and delirium. It isn’t much of a truth serum; indeed, it only allows a –victim- to relax to the point where his normal inhibitions melt away, and he is ready to say what he’s wanted to say all along, whether it be truth or not.

Despite my affinity, truth seems to me to be as much a fable as the famed serum of B Movies and Television. Absolutes tend to crumble beneath the destructive weight of the modern mind. Philosophers, Scientists, and most thinking men have spent the better part of the twentieth century destroying or at least marginalizing the very idea of truth.

Interestingly, Pentathol is part of the cocktail commonly used in the US to put convicts to death.

Thus, with this conceit, I begin a blog. It shall serve as an outlet for my own truths. It shall serve as a conduit for my existential frustrations. It shall attempt the lofty goal of offering preservation or protection to certain truths, which I believe to be valid and essential. Like it’s namesake it will no doubt induce nausea, perhaps delirium (although hopefully not death). Like it’s namesake it will likely prove to be a rather poor authenticator. And, Like it’s name sake, it will allow me to say what I’ve wanted to say all along, whether it be truth or not.

Death

2005-01-19T21:02:00.000-05:00

The following was inspired by Pirandello's play,
The Man with the Flower in his Mouth
My decision to post this was inspired by Adam's recent post on Death
(I thought I'd keep the party going).

Pirandello’s play is one of the shortest I’ve ever read. It does however deal with an issue that is one of the largest I’ve ever tried to contemplate, Death. We all have our little struggles with this rather inevitable topic. The Man with the Flower in his Mouth has Cancer; He’s an average younger to middle-aged man, happily married, who suddenly has to stare impending death in the face.

The man says “Think of Messina. Or Avezzano. Suppose they knew an earthquake was coming…. Just suppose the people knew. Would they calmly get undressed and go to bed? Fold their clothes and put their shoes out-side the door? Creep down under the bedclothes and enjoy the nice clean feeling of freshly laundered sheets? Knowing that –in a few hours- they would be dead?”

We are all painfully aware of our own mortality and likewise painfully aware of our helplessness to overcome it. When I put this play down -after only about a twenty-minute read- I cried. Just writing this play report has been a small psychological test. Four times, in the course of my writing thus far, I’ve paused, left my computer, gone to get food or check my laundry or do anything to avoid any further painful meditation on such a dismal subject. On top of that, I’ve just switched on the radio and WQXR is playing Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings (the one that was used in Platoon), so I’m being inundated with the melodramatic and the melancholy. Where was I? Oh right, Death. I’m an atheist, a self-perception that normally grants me a sense of liberty and comfort. There is very little comfort, however, when an atheist ponders death. When I’ve found the courage to contemplate mortality, I’ve always reached the undesirable although, to me, unavoidable conclusion that there is probably nothing after death. My beliefs are generally limited to the tangible and scientific. The me I know, the part of myself that I value, is my brain, my ability to sense the outside world and respond to it both emotionally and intellectually. I reject romantic notions of the soul, which no one has ever been able to explain to me. I reject the puerile perception of heart or spirit so oft described by the religious as an entity that transcends the mind. To me there is just the brain, and once that brain is deprived of oxygen, it ceases to function and the person ceases to interact with anything either external or internal. How could consciousness pass on when it’s simply the rapid firing of vast neural chains that decay upon death? And if it’s not consciousness that passes on (if its some soul or other construct of fearful and creative minds) then why would I give a damn? A soul can’t appreciate existence, can’t feel, see, touch, taste hear; it can’t have sex; it can’t remember having had sex; it can’t even fantasize about having sex; the brain does all these things and without it we are quivering mounds of flesh, worth nothing more than a vulture’s hungry pecks. It would be great, greater than great, to look down, from some high up cloud, upon the bustling creature that is man, once you’ve forgone his short stay on earth, and laugh at his petty travail. But how? Look with what eyes? Laugh with what voice?

But a man can’t live when so blatantly aware of so simple a fate. Often I’ve considered being religious if only to comfort my one great fear. Willfully swallowing Marx’s opium to escape the dismal truth of existence. I wish I could, sincerely wish I could, but self-respect prevents it. Ignorance may be bliss, but you can’t just will yourself to become ignorant. So instead I’ve tried living for the moment, the instant, not looking ahead to my inevitable demise. I’ve tried avoiding thought, conversation, or literature of such a morbid nature, but alas, I'm reading Pirandello for Christ’s sake! A man who in the height of poverty watched his wife grow mad with jealousy for his burgeoning literary success, finding no relief from the frenzied ravings of his once beloved till she was committed to the sanitarium (for almost fifty years). No, you cannot travel though life with blinders turned toward the past and future, you’ll just stumble into them soon enough.

I do, however, find comfort in something-- insanity. I’ve invoked the great name of science throughout this paper to prove the cold simplicity of existence. But science is not simple. Indeed, today, seldom is it even logical. Quantum physics tells us that a particle on one side of the universe can be instantaneously affected and indeed altered by the movements of some sister particle millions of light years away. Science begins to sound insane. It has told us that there might be a cat that is both dead and alive simultaneously. It has told us that there might be an infinite number of universes, one for each possible quantum variable, including a universe where I might be immortal, and one where you, might spontaneously grow wings and fly. It even tells us that time, the very grains of sand that fall to mark our march toward death, doesn’t actually travel in but one direction as our simple brains perceive. Science is insane; it opens up myriad possibilities as rich and ridiculous as the ratings of a village idiot. And so I revel in the potential for the senseless. Unlike religion, science widens the field. There is no dogma; there is no right, no wrong, no reasonable, no reason. There is just glorious chaos and the never ceasing throng of possibilities.