Explosions

This gets a little adult, and very very strange.

Explosion.  Expansion, orgasm.
Explosion.  Destruction, death.
     Why?  I don't know, that's what I'm trying to figure out.  But there's a powerful relationship, at least as a guy, between the two.  A sort of catharsis, a transformation from one state to another by means of violent transfer of energy.  Key word being violent.  It's a pretty dark part of the human psyche, and not one I'm positive I understand, let alone have any control over.
     The two lines that start this post, I wrote as part of a freewriting exercise I do most mornings, in which I take a word at random from a dictionary and write about half a page on it.  I got Explosion, and that's the first thing that came to mind.  An association to sexuality.  And if that makes me screwed up, well, it can just get in line behind the other fifty things that do.  But something tells me it doesn't, no more than any other male of roughly my age and sexual inclination.  One of the core themes of human sexuality is the concept of dominance; it has been and likely always will be.  The concept stems from, of course, natural selection, and it's special in that it's one of the few traits that's still rewarded in today's society.  The dominant male takes hold of industry, economy, everything, and the submissive female is carried by him to the top, where she can raise and care for her children in peace and security.  It's stupid, misogynistic, and completely unnecessary, but it's there.  And what better display of dominant power than an explosion?
     The strange part is that, in reality, it makes absolutely no sense.  And explosion is uncontrolled, unstoppable.  That is not good in any situation.  I've always envied explosives engineers, the people who shape charges for mining operations and the like, because they seem to have an understanding of power and control that few people share.  Meanwhile everyone else stands around and oohs and ahhs because explosions are like, totally awesome.  They're a pop culture phenomenon.  A movie star is not famous until he/she walks away from one, perhaps pushed slightly by the blast, or donning sunglasses.  There is no sign of power and destruction more obvious and complete than an exploding building, or mine, or mountain.  And that obsession comes from somewhere.  That lack of control that can send massive boulders or walls flying hundreds of feet.  Above all, the concept that someone caused it, that the figure currently walking coolly from the wreckage is responsible for that awesome energy.   It...excites us.  No, I'm not saying that exploding buildings arouse people, at least, not in a purely sexual way.  But sex is embedded in a lot more actions than people realize, and I feel that all these weird, dark relationships are not just coincidence.
     Sex is an act of creation.  I believe that firmly.  So why the strange obsession with destruction?
     Why the strange obsession with Phoenixes?
     They're born by dying.  Rising from the ashes, a metaphor that was a cliche before the Phoenix was ever invented.  In its most elemental form it's a fire, rising from an ember buried in the ashes of last night's fire.  The circle of life.  The turning wheel, where what once was will always come around again.  And it starts and ends in fire, consuming and creating all at the same time, something that started as an evolutionary instinct and became buried so deep in our subconscious that it has permeated every level of our being.  People say that it's language that separated us from animals, or abstract thought, or learning, but I think it's fire.  From the start, it was fire, that little microcosm of a life that was radically different from that of any other animal, a life that consumes far too much and yet puts out enormous energy that can be manipulated buy never fully controlled.  Sound familiar?
     This is just a theory.  A complex, meandering theory that contains zero percent hard cited facts.  But it feels right, and this is a philosophy blog.  I'd be happy to know what people think of this, and a comment, whatever your opinion, would be much obliged.

Flux

So yesterday our neighbors had a Batman marathon, and we watched all three of them.  Nolan's trilogy is not short, and we didn't end up finishing Dark Knight Rises until eleven at night.  There were five of us there, and when we finished, all of us presumably went straight to bed.  I know I did, and for me, that was a big mistake.
     See, there's a medicine I take every night after dinner.  It's used to treat a common disorder that is nonetheless rarely talked about, and if I don't take it for a long period of time, it puts me at risk of dying.  Not because my heart will give out or because I'll have a seizure, but because I'll kill myself.  Prozac is commonly used to treat clinical depression, in addition to other things.  So last night I missed my dose.  Hold on, I'll go take it now,
     Hi, back.  So this morning I woke up, laid in bed for an hour, and got up feeling like shit for no reason whatsoever.  This is not an uncommon thing, for me.  Medication keeps it at bay, creates a bedrock layer past which I can't really descend, but there's always something there.  This isn't self-pity.  Or...maybe it is, I don't quite know.  I'm not thinking straight, see.  I didn't get my fix and I'm not thinking straight.
     What scares me is wondering how many people struggle with this exact same thing, locked in a struggle with their own biology.  The interesting thing about fighting with yourself is that the casualties hurt both sides, not just the one that loses.  Yes, medication is giving up and yes, it makes me better.  No, it's not a chemical lobotomy and no, it's not natural.  And it hurts; missing a dose like this is like leaving Plato's shadow-cave, looking at a world that's cruel and cold and uncaring.
      And no, it's not the end of the world.  Fluoxetine has a half-life of almost two weeks; as in, it'll take a month for the last dose to fully fade from my system.  But the withdrawal sets in within hours, and boy is it strange.  Those who have never struggles with depression don't understand what it's like, to be trapped between two solaces, the only places left in the world, and looking at them and seeing two Hells.  Which are the shadows?  The vague assumptions and hopes thrown up by my drugged mind and psychiatrists with PhDs and leather couches, or the ghosts of monsters that haunt my sober mind with a vengeance?  Which one is real?
     For years, the traditional medication for depression was self-prescribed and available in most stores; alcohol.  I sometimes wonder if Prozac is just the next level.  Only in my 'sober' moments, though, like now.  When I'm normal, when I've had my fix, I feel fine.  I feel great.  I feel like doing things that aren't sitting in my room feeling sorry for myself on my blog.  Is that real?  Or is this?
     Flux.  Rambling, twisting mazes of thought that I don't understand and never will.  Do I have answers for these questions?  No, I don't.  If you do, dear reader, I hope you share them.  The person with those answers could be the richest person in the world in a very short time, because there are millions of people struggling with these issues, their own life hanging on a scale next to their twisted, bent brains.
     For now I'll stick with the recommended help; therapy and medication.  God, I hate those words.  And yet they saved my life.  But you mark my words; someday I will unravel this.  I may never understand, but at least I might be able to see it.  My mind.  MY mind is everything to me, the only thing I can truly say I own.  And if you can't understand your own possessions, why bother keeping them?

Vertigo

     "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.  We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far."
     -H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
   
     Look up, what do you see?  You might see a roof over your head.  The one over mine is white, textured. Behind the paint and texture is sheetrock, wood, insulation.  Roofing, shingles.  Beyond that is the sky.  And beyond the sky is infinity.
     But nothing goes on forever, not really.  So past the sky isn't really infinity.  It's merely massive, larger than we can comprehend, and so we call it 'infinity' and shove it into a drawer and stop thinking about it, because the human mind isn't capable of maintaining perception on that scale.  Lovecraft understood this, that maybe the most terrifying thing in the world is the simple comprehension of the absolute powerlessness of the human race.  Now, it may not seem that bad.  Everyone has looked into the sky and realized we are nothing more than a speck of dust on a speck of dust floating in the largest room in existence.
     What's scary is when someone accidentally inhales that speck of dust.  When objects on our scale meet objects on a scale beyond reckoning, and we get to see firsthand, to truly experience the powerlessness of humanity.  It's like vertigo.  Hanging from a cliff and looking down and seeing all that distance stretching out below you, beckoning.  The sudden irrational but irrefutable feeling that nothing is stable, the ground, gravity, your arms, all of it could betray you at any moment.  And if there's enough empty space below you, you'll go mad from it.  Most people don't see the empty space, though.  They see the clouds, and the texture of the cliff below them.  Some of them don't even see past their own feet.  Oh, sure, they know there's a fall below them.  They just don't understand exactly what that means until they open their eyes wide enough to see it.  And then their palms get sweaty, their heart starts beating fast, and they wonder how it's suddenly so terrifying hanging there, when a moment ago they were doing chin-ups and humming showtunes.
     So don't look down.  There's a point at which it just becomes too much, a point where understanding brings nothing but pain and madness.  You can pretend, sure.  Read, watch movies, write, imagine, there's no harm in that, because all you're doing is speculating at what's below you.  Chatting with the person hanging next to you, estimating the exact length you would fall if you were to let go.  Watch Cthulhu on a screen, but if you see him in real life, I have one word for you:
     Run.

What about you?

     So I'm writing a short story about a serial killer.  Namely, a crazy serial killer.  But Chris, aren't all serial killers crazy?  Only as much so as you and me.  Let me explain:
     By 'crazy' I mean someone who is disillusioned.  Who believes something that isn't true, that doesn't mesh with reality.  In this way, we're all mostly crazy.  Everyone who's ever lied to you, no matter how small, has contributed to that.  This includes the coworker who called in sick yesterday, the author who wrote your favorite novel, the preacher who explained faith to you.
     Hell, it includes me.  Because here I am, telling you my views.  Are these views real?  Maybe, maybe not.  They're real to me, sure.  But everyone who's crazy thinks that way.  These are the things I believe.  If you don't believe them, then that means you're sitting there saying, 'oh, he's crazy, listen to this guy' and that's totally fine by me.  Read someone else's blog, if you don't like craziness.  To quote Stephen King (something I do far too much of), "the tale of the irrational is the sanest way I know of expressing the world in which I live."  Because we're all crazy.  The craziness is not important.  In the end, what really matters is what we believe, versus what others believe.  If everyone believed Obama was the antichrist, would he be in office?  But not everyone does.  Some people do, but they are a minority.  So we turn around and call them crazy, and go back to our own crazy beliefs.
     So someone believes that someone else should die.  They truly believe it, and when they're caught, they don't understand how nobody agrees with them.  This is the crazy serial killer.  As scary as he/she is, we see something in that.  We believe the sane killers because, well, they're sane, and we rejoice for the men that killed Bin Laden and Hitler and Stalin and hold feasts and celebrations and then in the dark of night we turn on our flashlights and read with breathless anticipation about the people who killed Kennedy, or Lincoln.  Because we see the craziness in ourselves.  When you meet someone who disagrees with your religious of political beliefs, there is a brief moment in which you could empathize with Charles Manson.  The only difference is your differing beliefs are about politics, and Manson's are about life and death.
   Insanity in fiction draws us.  It always has, and I think it's because it's the one way we can let our own 'crazy' beliefs loose, if just for a while.  Those little bits of our beliefs that chafe against society are hungry animals, and fiction feeds them, keeps them in check.  Characters like Andrew Scott's Moriarty, or Heath Ledger's Joker allow us to remain calm.  To roam the dark and shadowy realms of unchecked possibility, where the trees have ears and the hills whisper softly.  And when you come back to the real world, the one that's 'sane', well, maybe you don't have to take it so seriously.  You can let your grip loosen a little, because when you come to discover that the entire world is crazy, then you might as well just go ahead and call it sane, instead.


     The story should be out soon.  I'm finishing up the first draft and hopefully you'll have it within the month, likely in installments as it's rather long.

POETRY FTW

So, um, poetry.  I'm writing poetry, for reasons inexplicable to me.  But here it is, all up in this bitch.  Being the sad lonely bastard I am, this was written exclusively between the hours of 10 at night and 1 in the morning, over the course of about a week.  So tell me what you think, there will prolly be more to come.

Also, um, titles.  Titles are good.

Shattered Glass

I sit and watch the sun go down,
clear orbs of restless night
take refuge in my head.
I float through worlds of red and gold
watch the webs go by,
weighed down by guilt,
showing no face.
shadows creep with boots of lead,
true intentions
hidden in infinite space.

And I wait
for what is to be,
watch the screens of the past,
people
who thought they were free.
Iron rings
Chains to reality, chains to dreams
The glass box breaks
and out spills half-formed fantasies
all and one
Falling apart
At the seams.

The windows shatter and fall back to earth,
the air splits and tears
and I fall,
hands turned to stone.
refractions of light and time
play out across the screen,
and the glass turns to jade.
Demons watch me from my throne,
an infinite lake, 
balanced on a Razor's Edge.
And I wait
for what will not be,
angered past, saddened future,
and I
for what I would not see.
Golden wings
Chains to memory, chains to dreams
The glass box breaks
and out pours
Bleak Analysis
cynics and beggars
come apart
at the seams.


The clear moon trawls across the sky,
blank stars
the only solace
of a lonely earth.
A bitter breeze stains hearts of fire,
a royal beggar's lonely perch
of wrath and mirth.
Moonglow dances across my eyes,
a sea of shattered glass
paints portraits of shadows.
Yet I yearn, And still I try
I remember
the pain of joy
lies not in its' birth.