First of all, let me apologies for the incoherent-ness of the following article. I have been trying to write something worthwhile, but I have not been sleeping, and my thoughts suffer as a result. I think I will stick to short stories for the time being.

Have you ever stopped to consider what your past is? In truth, we as humans can only perceive the now, the present, the very moment we are living in. But, that moment is so tiny, so infinitely small, that it passes before we know it was there, and we are on to the next moment. So, being so small, we enjoy accumulating moments we have already lived through, sorting them out, and comparing them to the now. That is our past, in a sense.

But look at your past. Take a long look at how you define it. As beings that permanently perceive the present moment, how do we even know the past exists? Well, memories for one. We know what we had for breakfast today. We know the last time we had a really good stake, our most recent kiss. But this is not our past. This is the afterimage of more nano-moments, mere collections of “nows”. We take for granted that time passed between these moments. We try to keep track of how much time passed. But we do not recall that time.

No doubt you have heard the phrase “Time flies when you are having fun.” Ever wonder why? Because, while having fun, you loose track of the moments in between the moments you choose to remember. But when not stimulated, the brain takes notice and logs all around it, filling in all the blank spaces between “now” and “then”.

In your memory, you define your life by placing spans of time between the moments you have recorded. Physical evidence would be best, of course. Photographs, films, foot prints, books. These can be taken and stored, but the only advantage is that they may last longer. There is no way to record every moment of our lives, so we must still place distances of time between the moments ate are recorded. But then, what moments do we choose to record?

I speak for myself here, but life is defined by what I call Human Connections. These are the moments that last, the moments that help us define not just where we have been, but where we are. For example, when asked when I moved the west coast, I do not recall the date, or where I lived before. I recall that two years ago I broke up with my most recent girlfriend, and lived alone for a year, then moved to the west coast. I moved a year ago.

As that breakup is my most recent Human Connection, time is beginning to grow fuzzy for me. Within a matter of months, if things do not change, I will begin to loose definition of the amount of time between my major life moments. And a moment that one measures one’s life by, to me, can be nothing trivia. Losing a job, a day at the fair, the day your dog died. None of these are substantial enough to be a milestone of life. A milestone must be strong, such as something never experienced before, and must be with another human, any other human. The first time you make love. The first time you killed a man. These are moments that help to define life.

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Text modified Friday, October 18th, 2002. Will be deleted upon further instruction.

I am growing up. As such, it is time for me to enter into such an abstract as "The Real World." What is this abstract? As flesh and blood, do I not exist in this world? Is it only when I look into the future that I become real, focusing on how I will pay payments?

Does that mean that a child who dies before he or she gathers these worries never existed in the first place? I think that is a huge fallacy, for there is no death more sad than that of a child.

No, existence is something that has to be closely examined. My existence can only be rated by those with the same passions and intelligences as I have. Thus, only young and hopeful writers need apply in gathering my conception of real, for they are my interpretive community. They are the lens through which I see the world.

Yet, can I be summed up as being real as a writer? Am I not also a young man, caught in between the consequences of my actions and my growing maturity? Is it the colour of my blood, so to speak, that dictates my presence?

I would think not. I am present, I can feel my flesh and that of the woman I love. My eyes see, and my brain interprets, and thus I am real in the physical sense. In the practical sense, I pay my rent on time, I attend all my classes, I bleed and work constantly (though I have been rather slack these past few days... but anyone who has seen me for the first bit of classes would, I think, agree that I could use the break), and my sweat can be felt. I have been birthed, and, as far as I know, have not yet been abandoned.

When people think of the "real world," they simply mean death. Often, it is not even unequivocal that they are discussing such a morbid topic. "How can you avoid death, and not be prepared for it at all." This is the question that is asked of the real world. I do not want to be an empty shell after my flesh has been reabsorbed into this earth. I will have presence, I will postexist my flesh, and this is something that I passionately believe. Thus, the worries of the flesh are only taken with a grain of salt. Undoubtedly, I do require that my flesh stays on my bones, but only so I can interact with this fragile thing that is human existence.

I love humans, though there be specific people that I dislike.

No, indeed, I fight this thing called "real." In the real world, there is naught but death. In my world, where my head rests in the clouds, there is so much Beauty, so much Truth. I can cry in this world, and I can laugh. I can be frightened, and I can frighten. The practical exists only to keep my flesh on my bones, but the Unreal, the surreal... this is the existence that keeps me alive!

I am in the real world. I exist. I bleed, and I feel. These are the most important things for me; to be able to bleed for my cause, to be able to feel and kiss and love... these are things that I do not take for granted. Even, to a lesser extent, the passion that is dislike.

I think the reason that religion and art are such a strong presence is the simple fact that one cannot exist completely in the real world. One is stagnant when one embraces the Real as it has become in contemporary science. A person with nothing more than the faith that he/she is a clog in the machine of life, nothing more nothing less, is a dead person. Even the people who seem boring return home to passions, be they imagining being rich, having a beautiful wife... indeed, it is in this imagination, this pretending, that will always postexist a single human.

The Greek Historians made a point to fabricate and alter, so as to further the passion of the followers, and in doing so they have found something so precious that a strong wind might blow it out. Yet, they have also found something so beautiful, so real, that it makes grown men, even the strongest of us, cry. The concept that we might postexist the flesh, in whatever manner, is what puts a smile on a face, is what makes people fight to please each other.

It is in ignoring the possibility that humanity can postexist the flesh, and in the absence of imagination and art, that we get something devoid of humanity.

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School is becoming a harrowing ordeal as of lately. Not because of rigorous schoolwork, but because of the level of immaturity amongst my peers. Now, I’m a champion of fun myself, and I’ve definitely been accused of being immature more than once in my lifetime, but this generation of kids just don’t know when to quit. They openly challenge respectable and sane teachers, laugh at people’s horrible misfortune (i.e. death), and don’t care about ANYTHING. I would have expected them to be somewhat mature by now, but these kids are mindless. They walk around as if they know everything and have no decency or manners. This wouldn’t normally bother me, but it seems as if every single solitary one of them acts this way.

Now, the true question is, why in the fuck do they act this way? I’m almost positive that a majority of it is for the attention of their classmates, and I’ve come to a similar agreement over the possibility that it could stem from a dysfunctional family, etc. etc. What worries me even more, though, is the fact that they have no regret for what they say or do. Every remark, every action is performed to evoke some sort of response from their target audience, be it teachers, students, or even police officers. These are the kids that you’d fear would bring guns to school. These are the kids whose parents most likely taught them firsthand how to act that way, or a lack of responsibility on the family’s part causes them to find other means of connecting with people. These are the kids who may have a disorder that causes them to behave in such a manner that it pisses off even the most passive students.

The real problem here is, though, many of the teachers are getting into the practice of stereotyping students, and even coming to the conclusion that if a majority of students act like they do, then the whole group acts that way. And by that logic, the whole group is innately flawed. Today, I sat through three class periods of nothing but reprimands, lectures, rants, and cathartic screaming from the teachers. The subject? Conduct. According to them, we “all have to shape up and get with the program, otherwise we’ll never get anywhere in life.” One of my friends, a mindful, clear-headed student who gets decent grades, was asked by a teacher as to what he planned to do in life. He responded, “Well, I’d like to be a psychiatrist.”
She stared him straight in the eye and said, “You’re never going to make it."
He paused to ask "Why do you say that?"
" Because you all act the way you do. Your facades don’t fool me”, she replied.

If it was me, I would have gone to her after class and specifically asked her why she had said such a thing, and especially done so in front of the rest of the class. However, he freaked out and proceeded to avoid her like the plague. This is just one of the many instances during which innocent bystanders have been held accountable for the brash and irrational actions of others. And it’s shit. But, according to the administration, we should grit our teeth and cope with it. I mean, what’s one more year?

That doesn’t speak for the future generations of well-behaved students who will have to deal with this utterly disgusting display of elitism and disdain, though.

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I tremble softly, as the implications of my madness surround me. Why am I so energized when I think of myself as a damaged beast, as something that can be controlled by something so abstract as to be termed “wicked” or “disturbed.” I feel strong when I think of myself as weak, and it is an impossible contradiction in terms. What is this new feeling, this emotion, that has not yet a word to describe it? What is this referent abstract, and am I the only one who feels it?

It is a relatively modern thing, present in much of my generation. We are proud of our weaknesses, as if we could wear them like fashion. One need only turn to the growing popularity of heavy metal, underdog action movies, and even, indeed, fashion. It is becoming very fashionable to be weak and aware, to be different to the point of being absurd.

I am not normal, and I pronounce it with a familiar air, with the same pride of all those who have stated it before me. In fact, the statement has become such an oxy moron for those who say it. After all, how many people can say such a thing before it actually becomes normal to say, “I am not normal?”

Halloween is upon us, and I can feel it in my energy for the darkness of my soul. My id itches to escape, for it knows that a socially acceptable escape is coming soon. My ego and superego have a chance to relish each other for a moment, both committing socially questionable acts such as embracing murderous and evil thoughts, wanting ever so much to watch the murder-whore, to see blood before my eyes, and yet at a safe distance, for it will not be by my hands. Yet still, this thirst would normally sicken me in any other manner, but in this I am perfectly comfortable, perhaps even all year round.

I am a horror movie maniac, I admit. It excites me, even when what I am watching is nothing more than a murder-whore acting out childish, basic, lusty instincts. What is this disease that I feel, and why do I hate and love it so much?

My sanity is at a delicate thread. Life is so difficult, yet something constant to rest on is becoming obvious: we, as humans, for some reason or another, need art. Only the most stagnant of human beings rests in nothing more than the practical. Whether we admit it or not, even the most practical of us return home to movies, novels, television, video games, poetry, or even (and while I am reluctant to include this on the list of art) popular gentleman’s/gentlewoman’s magazines (FHM, Maxim, Playboy, Cosmo... all pretty much the same thread of sex-sales). We return to this, and at the root of all art is emotion, passion, pain, anger, pain, blood, disruption, sexuality, sensuality, sensuousness, et cetera. Anyone who doubts that blood is present in art does not need to look far before he/she finds examples. Anna Karenina is hailed as one of the best novels ever written, and is filled with such violence and blood as a man and a woman being mutilated by a train, or a horse being flipped into a sealed fate. Homer, a poet who has never been presented an accepted equal, is filled with gore, like in The Odyssey, in which men’s brains are bashed in against the ground by Polyphemus, blood being soaked into the earth, the sponge of blood. The culinary arts would be nothing without blood.

I have heard that, at the moment of death, you can see a look on the victim’s face that is like none other. I do not trust what I hear of it from the movies, for surely there are not too many script-writers who truly know what these faces of death truly look like first-hand, or perhaps they do.

Yet, a part of me holds back. A part of me still wishes to be socially acceptable. This self-same part of me cannot wait until my roommate steals one more scrap of my food, until he oversteps his boundaries one more time. He has already been warned, you see. He does not know that I am a monster in the guise of a sheep. I may look cute and cuddly, and indeed, I may be soft to those I love, but inside I hold the sickness, the sickness of passion that is held within any author, and, I would like to think, any writer.

I am sick, though my leaches are always near at hand. I embrace endurance without these leaches, though. It is Halloween, the season of dead bodies and ghosts. I can hear a wolf howling in the background, and I can hear voices whispering sweet, soft things. I shake softly, and I only partially believe that this shaking is a symptom of the cold season.

Why am I such a monster? Is it catharsis, or is it something sick inside me, something that is festering? Is this what it feels like to be dying, to not be in control of what you feel anymore, only feeling the most tender of kisses or the most impressionable of anger?

Most importantly, and one that scares me the most, will these emotions disappear when it comes time to stop role-playing, when the season of sickness and instability, which provokes us to unleash all this pent-up aggression, passes? Or is it a sickness that lingers?

Am I crazy?

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Have you ever wondered if you – and you alone are a different being on this planet?

Are you an alien amongst human-beings? Is there a part of you, more than your unique individualism which makes you different? If is why? ‘why’ must always be the question. That single question which makes our souls live – that makes our hearts beat again and again.

The curious mind that keeps this world at bay – that keeps it alive. My mind – your mind – the instrument that utter the eternal question ‘why’.

The answer lies within the mind. The mastermind – but still the answer must be continued by a repeated ‘why’. As humans we demand answers. But never will we be satisfied. That is the prescription which drives us eternally to seek the truth. But why the truth? Can’t we be satisfied with the lies that are told to us?

Lies are must easier to comprehend, to embrace than the hurtful truth. The truth… is the truth what we make of it, of life or is it simply the lies told well?

Lies are defined by us. The people. The inhabitants of this wrecked and tattered world. Does it even matter. Search for truth can make you
empty when you find it.
The truth is simple and hard to understand. There are levels of truth, as well as lies. Can we ever find the truth. Why not. But why should we.

Is this just a result of my tired and confused mind, this late hour? Is it just me who wonders? No. See, we must put this feeling away. We are not unique – we are the same at some degree. I am not the only one who are having these thoughts, they are not mine – they are shared by many. That is nice. That is even reassuring for me to know.

I am not an alien.

Peace

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nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word
Randall Kennedy
Pantheon Books, 2002

Never in American history has a word had such persistant impact as nigger. From popular culture to the courtroom, this book examines the trials and tribulations of what's considered by many to be the filthiest ever spoken and discusses the various problems that may yet come from it.

At many points in my reading, I couldn't help but wonder at who the book was written for. Kennedy frequently takes a condescending tone when it comes to reminding the reader of recent events and personalities. On thw whole, though, it's still fairly pleasant. The author makes every attempt to show the issues at hand with the careful balance of a plate spinner, and his bias is only seen in a few of the more grey area circumstances.

Overall, it's a very quick, easy, and fairly informative read. I think that everybody should have a copy of this book, if only to serve on a silver platter to the next person who attempts to utilize the word in a hate-fueled, disrespectful manner. On second thought, they probably wouldn't read it either. At the very least, it's brilliant for it's irony; A man named Kennedy using the word over 300 times may even make it worth a second pass.

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