93. Lossitude

There are minutes where I feel lost. I call such times moments of lossitude, when feelings resembling those of an abandoned child cling to me, despite my age. Minutes that see the annihilation of experience, a life falling into helplessness, ready to implode and then disappear sucked by the compactness of my mood. Instants neither melodramatic nor emotional. Just burning fast inside. A physical pain. A blistering heat wrecking walls, those divisions keeping thoughts in order. Igniting the partitions that protect mental categories, the mind suddenly in disarray, most cerebral enclosures safeguarding my sanity incinerated to ashes.

Long minutes of lossitude. I think many would label them anxiety.

Havoc. Bursts of entropy. A radical but silent collapse, for it can never be spelled out. Words simply run away from the disaster zone.

A few minutes only.

That lossitude is not a weakness of mine. It is a danger. I must always treat it as such.

Laolao

92. The morphology of fortitude

I need words. I need lots of new words today. An obsession/compulsion. All the words I see are old used ones. I want new sounds. New syllables. I want to read an unknown lexicon so to discover it, plunge and sink into meanings I’ve never heard of. Learn again. From scratch, to see if ideas that were unthinkable till today can now be clearly articulated. Shaped on the screen. To point at things I could not imagine before these new phonemes came to be. I want new letters to express what waves beyond the reach of my vocal cords can sound like. New expressions to indicate the states of things we haven’t yet discussed. Something about extent, proportions, magnitudes that have escaped us. New measurements. A special language for subject matters we haven’t studied. I need new words. To hear how they're pronounced.

I need a different vocabulary, to break away from the poles of delusional pessimism and/or optimism maybe. To make promises that can be kept. To get rid of motivational speeches.

I want new verbal signs to transform mindsets. To better support images for what they are, and to help stop visualizing ourselves and our desires for success. No more positive thinking, wishful thinking. Just a nomenclature unable to tackle topics such as self-confidence, and aspirations.

I want a non-ethos phraseology. A tongue foreign to crowd-pleasing messages. I want risks to have clear names. I want to have idioms that fit the needs of courage, dimensions where the good side of hard times need not be reinforced. A jargon allergic to lies. No self-help recipes. I want realistic, lucid, well-enunciated disaster warnings. I want words for that. Not the ones with a double entendre. Not threats that end up feeling like reassurances. I don’t want sentences sanitizing bad news. Castrated words, pasteurized discourses. Terms whose main function is to disinfect meaning. Sterile dictions that have nothing to disclose.

I want words of the kind capable of creating understanding, acuity. Meant for information gathering. Plugged into insight and details. Words for perception and penetration. For our mental capacity for reconnaissance and exploration. For the dangers we encounter. I want words to designate particulars, not generalizations. I want a grammar meant for audacity and bravery, not for delays and detours. Words that do not retreat. Made for moments of adversity, words that know what it is to endure. Intrepid, undaunted. I want unflinching words. A language with the moral fiber of resilience.

Then, of course, I’ll listen.

laolao

91. The flâneur

Looking at the world around me, my eyes given a virtual reality overlay. Thoughts superimposed, the transparent part of my field of vision imprinted with out of sight ideas, undetectable wireless enhancements. I see souls and navigate through the wrinkles of personality identifiers. Counting the genes dictating the particular evolution strategy of a number of individuals. From an adaptive point of view, how our usefulness may eventually run its course. Or in the eyes of nature, how we survive predation among ourselves. So many memory cells overstaying their welcome. Fleshing it out, the non-mystical process by which we’re untreatable as people. Unmutated. Engineering our own devolution. The machinery of vulnerability characterized by immortality. Having absorbed our inorganic precursors. Replenishment being a powerful matter of material animating forces, to paraphrase Bergson my own way. Not even ourselves within our grasp. In a hidden corner of the mind, the cryogenic preservation of unrealizable expectations. Alchemical approaches extrapolating therapies for our frozen frailties. Bypassing the need for an interface between emotions and intelligence.

Oh no, not EQ again. Pervasive downloads into our biological storage devices. High fidelity to being increasingly dumber. Dismantling sensory channels to reconstruct the non-essential information that allows a maximum degree of human control over unwanted transcendence. From a bioprogressive perspective, the hybridization between our extremely-evolved-limitations and our indispensable humanity. Always running in parallel to the idea of being constantly smarter. The same quantity of crap immediately available to all for perusal. No nose, but a flash drive. Bits of data about chronic and self-replicating paradisiac disabilities. Biocompatible with our behavioral tendencies to perform solar-scale computations about the human race as a special singularity. Hacking more markets to better exploit them. Our technological genius just another financial instrument. Rapacious games played in the cul-de-sac of our brain to overcome alien competition. Wall Street as a parallel universe. Or ideological science fundamentally broken. Invalidating rules.

The fiction of ideas is so marvelous, my darlings. Modeling my internal state after entities with little experience at economic interaction, going for decay-prone probabilities. A strong feeling of temporal compression to unzip. Flying computer nodes, easily distinguishable from magic. Imagining we're simply part of a tool-using specie wearing puzzling glasses to enlarge sensorial bandwidth. Abstract symbols for objects and their super-conductivity. Rearranging syntactical input, countering the plasticity of implants education has grafted like roadblocks on the ground of my research on the ingression of synthetics.

I will not explore the fast roads to fabulous new media. I think we only get smarter over time by having lots of sex and making babies. It’s a slow process, I know. Messier also, since AI developments for neurons do not need diaper change.

Convergence and offspring, genuinely both outmoded and futuristic. A vehicle for the building of narratives over many generations, the stuff passing through our creative membranes without architectural rupture. Experiencing a sense of accomplishment. Inducing a potential for immersive learning. In its midst, just to be a flâneur.

But then, it’s true, if it doesn’t work, I won’t hesitate to use my repulsion ray gun on all that internalized biotech precognition that horribly runs through our modern veins. And I’ll move forward as a female freak on her own ethical terms. Flâner would then be for later.

90. Smoke signals

Like a cigarette hole where there used to be a face, that picture carried in one’s wallet, void has burnt, raged edges. A round scar through the layers of a Polaroid paper, plastic curling against the pressure of an intense incandescence. Souvenirs replaced by what can be seen through the punctured photograph when it is held in front of an inquisitive eye intending to face an eclipse. Ashes stuck to the perimeter, threads of cellophane intermingled with debris as vacuum suctions explosions of static scenes, all that’s captured without the need of permission.

I blow cigarette smoke through the holes. It comes out on the other side, the floating empty rings encircling the disappearance of the sun. Memory plumes, volutes of smoke joining cascades of clouds crazily diving into the horizon. How lost can I get before I ask for directions from migrating birds already far away. Their wings washing the day. Childhood monsters letting go of their cries and pain. The destroyer in me under hypnosis, keeping its balance on the youngest branch of a family tree. Never has love been so authentic. Oxidizing softness internalized like mad.

(There’s never any justice for the weak. Everyday the phone rings to repeat this. No eye contact, but hysterical balloons losing their air fast, whistling, flying out of control, crashing into the dilated tunnel of an iris.)

A drunk manual typewriter gone violent, hammering in red the prose of cryptic captions zigzagging under cultural illusions. The undecided descriptions of collective follies. Ashtrays crammed with cigarette butts, with yellowed filters crushed into mute accordions. Stained glass bringing fractured light to one’s anatomy and its long list of alibis. Shreds of tobacco sticking to the fingers holding the eraser going over one’s much needed solemnity. Perhaps not an eraser, but a hunter after the invisible circulation of ideas in search of a sound purpose.

The flame of the lighter at it again, brightening sunshine from behind the dark disc. Nicotine wrapping neurons with the very strings holding the stars high up in the sky. Tentacles of illumination networking their viewpoints. Interlocking their insights. Fine meshes for thoughts to bounce, a trampoline hosting mind-games. Untraceable veins of ruminations in the heart of the brain.

But then, I blow through holes only meant for the vapors of reverie, passages, for twists of contemplative cogitation, to allow reflections to reach the mirror site of airy suspensions.

See the mental trellis they weave. I rest on that foggy hammock. Safe, gently rocked by the white puffs escaping from my lips. Messages for distant people to read. Since today you’ve gone back home. While I return to loop-shaped writing habits.

89. c u

You’re flying tomorrow and will be arriving at my place late in the evening. All will be ready, a snack, one of your favorite movies loaded in the DVD player, your toy box, your beds. I will have removed and hidden what’s dangerous, my scissors, the glue and chemicals I use for my collages, glass objects you could reach.

I’ve applied for a few days leave from work so to spend time with you. We’ll paint, draw, play. I’ll take you out for lunch. But the most important thing we’ll do is talk. I’ll listen carefully to your voices. You’ll tell me about kindergarten, friends, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, perhaps adventures involving the dogs or cats in your neighborhood. Your rollerblade escapades. Family outings. A new song you’ve learned. Tripping over your words as you’ll be so impetuous, so many things to say all at once, borrowing from three languages to make ideas sharp and complete, syllables thrown high in the air like star dust suddenly flowing against the night. You’ll want me to know everything in one shot. You’ll forget to breathe. And then you’ll put your arms around me and hold me tight, whispering into my ear how happy you are to be at my place. Yes, you do that.

I’ll marvel about how fast you grow, how in only a few weeks you’ve changed. Your vocabulary exploding along different routes, your expressions more precise, your sentences versatile and animated. Your stories filled with transitions and pauses, more details. Degrees introduced. I’ll be listening with my skin, my eyes, my smile. Admiring your pride. The diamond light on your face, your giggling overtones when you speak and I understand.

We’ll chat and chat. Partaking in energetic conversations. Your sense of humor peppering the gossip.

And I’ll trace in my mind all the furrows we need to record your voices. In French, for it is in that language that our love is the deepest. In Mandarin, because we’re having so much fun. And in English, since once in a while we should also include others.

Laolao

88. Laconophilia

I listen to economists, to political, financial experts, business leaders and analysts, and wonder if there is a limit to puerility.

The lack of inner discipline, of rigor. Of intellectual architecture. Nothing else but frail edifices to house knowledge. Only gut feelings to support arguments. Everything is warm, moist, fuzzy. The science of thinking washed away with liquid justifications, softened, diluted. It drools. A weak, discolored fiction.

And these are our leaders. Directionless. Dangerous. A well-marketed look of pensiveness to hide the fact they don’t have a clue about what they’re saying. Never the strength to perform demanding tasks. Porous memories.

I am angry. Humans were supposed to have been designed in line with the image of God. What’s wrong, then, with our divinities? How could they come up with such limitations. Smallness. Narrowness. Insufficient ideated weight.

I hate it when speakers, writers, bosses treat us like idiots.

Never applaud these people. Never be a follower. See them for what they are. Stare a minute to remember if you must. Then, turn your back. Walk away. Go far.

Yes, be wary of mushy discourses. Of what feels comfortable, contended with anemic explanations. Wet words leaking, spreading sloppy niceties into the brain. Infecting mental functions.

Be careful. Go for what’s icy and severe. For what’s robust. For what sounds tough, unyielding at the touch. For what’s stony, unfriendly. The ruthless. Leave behind what’s gentle and made to please and reassure. That’s a trick. It will decompose you. A lot of sap.

Never fear Sparta, dear. Never. Be a good soldier. A good poet. Create men and women. Not entrapping, beguiling sentiments posing as the songs of powwow.

Love, Laolao

87. Kamala, temples and labs

I’m waiting – eager, excited, stretched forward to a maximum – for the two final episodes of Battlestar Galactica, to be aired today. Science-fiction. Yep. I’ve no problem saying it: I often prefer sitting in front of the screen with BSG than watching the reality within my skull unfold, which means that I, for one, can tell the difference.

BSG has tackled some of the issues occupying western civilization today. As far as we can tell. How science and religion cope with each other. Anxieties about technologies. About our creations. The city.

Then, the plurality and/or singularity underlying beliefs. Eternal questions about mortality and the recycling destiny of matter. What are goals, where is it we think we’re going. Are we heading forward or simply fleeing. How do we define humanity, divinities. And that History that keeps repeating itself, as if we weren’t learning much despite our self-proclaimed prowess.

Also, leadership models. Why do people listen and follow, band together or break away. What’s in the justification of war. That enemy is so much like us. Could I be a cylon. Who is, I can’t tell. Can I give birth. Should I. Can reproduction be a philosophical issue, be an ethical one. The machine and the flesh, how do they combine. Can they. Should they. Sex and violence. The inevitability. Investigating destiny, since nature is what it is. A circle and the Return of the Same. A sameness that is changed once it comes back to its origin. For having traveled through all of its potential fates. And what are these mistakes that keep trapping us, making no difference in the outcome. Or do they.

BSG is a show about tons of questions.

The ones modern intelligentsia has stopped asking in a penetrable, lucid way. Articulated by TV script writers, actors and special effects technicians. Brilliant, because they don’t try to provide answers, but widen the mystery, elevating our understanding difficulties to new problematic dimensions. A new prose. A selection of images and sounds adding depth to our main enigmas. As we are lost in that huge space, civilian ships clinging to Galactica, a fragile balance of powers, always moving, delicate, and in danger. Victory and defeat annulling each other, although good at characterizing the struggles by which we define our worth.

They are no aliens. There’s us and what we did. And it is what we did that stands in the path. Interesting. That the gods of Kobol did give up on us. And that we lied to ourselves. And will lie to ourselves again. It has already happened, and it will happen again.

Political, because democracy is no perfect solution. But it is part of the leading question. The one about turmoil. But so is the military. So are all our inventions. Imperfections being so perfect in organizing ourselves as a society defined by tensions. As we jump, disappear and appear. Should I network or not network. Paranoid as the enemy is in our ranks, am I its double or is it mine. Am I modeled after him, or is he modeled after me. We give birth to each other, murder each other. And start the same thing over and over. Dictators. A minute as the puppet of an armed authoritarian regime, later as preacher of a religious sect. Qualification: science. Was that a question. A go(o)d question. A one about seduction. Not so much principles.

Yes, I have enjoyed every scenes of Battlestar Galactica. The thrill. The beauty of possibilities. The plots. The ramifications. The characters. The Vipers. The signs pointing to humanity. Every second of confusion as we vented air and water. As machines could feel love. And us hatred. But then, we also loved and they hated. As we often lost more than we gained in terms of knowing. Questions getting bigger with each episode like they do in my life. Interested by the role of failure and shortcomings. By the magnificence of it all. When tolerance makes it way. And it is because we start again and again. Equal perseverance of the good and the evil, a quest for Earth. Destruction and creation. An inquiry into causes, effects and evolution (if there is one). The colonies, the colonizers, the colonized. The horoscopes. Matters of attitude, organic matter. Investigating throughout the script what matters most to us. And why some other things don't.

Investigation into the fiction of science, and the science of fiction. Art and violence. Culture and reproduction. Technologies as a part of nature. What is a purpose, and what are the means and limitations leading gloriously to achievements, fiascos. Are they different. Boomer and Starbuck. The President and the Commander. The Chief and Gaius. Apollo and Saul Tigh. Number 6 and Zarek. How do they belong to our own story lines. Will Caprica heighten our uncertainties, query our concerns a bit further. Linking past and future. Still scratching my head about the Final Five. Pegasus, Colonial One, Cloud Nine. Are we all in need of kamala. Is it a drug, a mother (program) in Matrix. A word in one of the languages I don’t understand. Kamala, temples, labs, nuclear warheads and toasters. Emotions and rationality functioning side by side. Often interchangeable. Explosive. Unsecured. Confrontational allies in their perpetual mutual attraction. Poetry and algorithms debating differentiation.

86. A caustic substance

Have you felt recently any rebellion against reason? Seen irrationalism peak here and there, either denials or blunt attacks, pronouncing intellectual stances null and void. That the mind is impotent, totally incapable of separating facts from fiction. Reality being nothing more than a delusion, even simple references to it ranked unfashionable, our thoughts hardly related to the world we think we live in. Forbidden to say that I am myself, for I’m not supposed to know who or what myself is. Or that a thing is a thing. Stuck in full-fledged inadmissibility, whatever knowledge I may claim deprived of a sound relationship to what my senses perceive. Everything in the realm of the hypothetical. For the function of thinking might not be to contribute to intelligibility, as I had initially thought.

I get so confused, my darlings.

I get so desperate at times.

I wish I could excel at epistemology. Explain what a cheap drama it is, this crisis made of beliefs. Opinions camouflaged, disguised as concepts not supposed to solve any problems. As if that could make sense. Oh, but yeah, making sense does assume existence, and since that can’t be proven, why bother.

I do get worried, you see. For you, your future.

Under the cover of philosophy and logic, many of our contemporary essayists, our thinkers, are developing a new religion. Articulating a mystique. Presenting their cryptic representational system as a rationale to renounce sanity. Caught in the fallacy where a mind that is said to be invalid still must be used to validate the invalidity in question.

A dominant need for the inscrutable, blanketing all with sophisticated forms of occultism. The impossibility to rely on oneself to perceive and understand. Denying, in fear, a status to knowledge. Denigration. Vilifying ontology, transforming it into articles of faith. Not texts, but incantations. Not arguments, but values. Evacuation of the notion of fact, my perception of the apple in my hand an expression of the abuse committed by the established social and moral order. Maybe. Maybe. Just a spectacle. An idiosyncratic impression. No apple there, but another opportunity to completely fool myself and confirm the eternal state of ignorance and helplessness linked to my human condition.

There is no longer a way, it is claimed, to deal with the meaningful. It is out. Uncool. Retrograde. A pastness. It is no longer there, in my field of vision, only a vision. Not there either, on the tip of my tongue. On the edge of my brain. Tested by my fingers on the paper. It is no longer accepted, received, welcomed. Or expected. I’m left with statements of repudiations. And it’s professed that’s all I have, all I’ll ever have. Told I must believe this. Accept that it is true even though truth is from now on an arbitrary something. A deep conviction, a warship of worship, I add.

Is someone saying, at this very moment, that I must be stupid beyond repair. A vulgar, stiff pragmatist.

Did I ever tell you the story behind my choice one day to be a bit schizoid, not that involved with people I mean. Maybe at this point I don’t really need to tell that story. It would just add oil unto a bonfire already well fed by contempt and allegations about physical forces. Despite despots, see, I do remain reasonable. And know what inflammable spells out for the reader. Sensory faculties may no longer be reliable, but our sense of duty should be.

Laolao