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It's been quite a while since I've last updated this thing. I can't say I've been too busy, so just use the powers of your imagination to think of a better excuse.

I haven't grown much intellectually over the past few weeks. In fact, I recall them a blur of watching 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force', carousing with friends, and eating bags of heart-attacks. If anything, I've just been living the day to day, trying to enjoy the strange social world I'm in.

You know, it doesn't really matter what I type. So I'm just going to stop doing it for today.

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Right now, I am juggling two books, The Perennial Philosophy and The Moral Animal. Reading non-fiction is usually an absorbing task, especially when it's dense material, but somehow I've found myself simultaneously reading two very different, yet equally clever, books.

The Perennial Philosophy, by Aldous Huxley, is an anthology of spirituality, a collection of holy experiences by a selected group of monks, saints, mystics and theologians who have been the closest to this "divine Ground". The argument Huxley presents is that there is a common thread within most of these experiences, that the basic essence of religious experience can be summarized by one philosophy. Obviously, Huxley does not run the gauntlet, pinning down the complete religious experience in one book, but he comes remarkably close. It is a seminal work and required reading if you are interested in spiritual experiences, or if you want to try to shake the realist, rational being within yourself.

The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright, is the rational, scientific approach to understanding humanity. The accidental yet logical forces of evolution dictate who we are. It's simple, things that are well-suited to their environments are more likely to reproduce, and thus desirable traits live on, gradually forming diversity. This is not something to "believe"; it is a logical, rational conclusion. Our evolutionary creation into homo-sapiens some unknown millions of years ago still pervades over us. Our drives and instincts, our social structure, wants and needs, largely have their roots in evolution. Evolution is thus the pinnacle of rational thought, a prevailing theory derived from simple, clean logic used to describe the full variety of life on Earth. The Moral Animal goes even further, showing how our ancestral ascent through evolution has affected human psychology.

Which is the best way to describe why we are here? Can truth be found with inner-contemplation, meditation, and mystic blessing? Can truth be found with observation, logical reasoning, and the scientific method?

I am not that arrogant to assume. There is just this experience that is.

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Even if we accidently ran into truth, we could not recognize it. How our vocabulary uses the word "truth" and how its implications would actually be are two very different things.

People claim that science holds truth, or that extensive inner-exploration yields ultimate metaphysical truth. Both are merely parts of this experience. There is just this experience, that is all. When you separate ideas from the experience, you assume.

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By the way, my new and completely different webpage will be up soon. I'm also working on another short story, something very different (though my usual, flowery style). :-)

Short entry this time. I must pack my bags, my friends. I'm going on a trip of imagination.

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Here's a slew of pictures, courtesy of Geoff's camera. Now you can see true evidence of my existence! (and oogle over Nicole's cuteness.)

( Pictures )

In other news, I'm totally revamping my website. It's going to be different, very different. I hope that through my experimentation with the site, I can express myself with more creativity, and hopefully, more clearly. We'll see.

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For the droves of adoring fans that read my writing (I wish...), I have news of two upcomming pieces. The first is a short story, which I can assure is very normal, very down to earth, and the second is a philosophical treatise of sorts, a lucid presentation of what I have been trying to communicate in a couple of my posts. Hopefully it will be very step-by-step, very easily to understand, and ultimately, very effective. That is, of course, if my fingers will comply to tapping such a paper out.

Not much else is going on with me. What about you?

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If you've taken the test June 5 and aren't aware, the SAT scores are in. Go to the College Board, log-in, and check your score.

I deliberated whether or not to show what I got, but I just can't help but brag. I looked at the screen and this is what came up.

Verbal 780
Math 720

It took me about half a minute to register that this gave me a 1500.

!

This is well above what I hoped I'd make (1400). It's still sinking in, but now I can rest easier about getting into a college that I want. I think that studying vocab and reading really helped me for the Verbal, and taking a few practice tests helped me out with the Math.

I hope everyone who took the test is as happy with their scores as I am with mine.
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

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On the 18th it will be my girlfriend's birthday. I'd just like to dedicate this entry to her, the small token of appreciation that this is.

Happy Birthday my love. Normally, to express a sentiment of love, I'd write a poem or a letter, but I'd like to try something new this time. Let me see if I can get my artistic juices flowing...

*Erm...hold on...this is going to be tricky...*

Here is a paltry attempt at artwork, courtesy of my imagination and MSPaint:

( Love )

Hope you get a smile out of it.
Happy Birthday Nicole!

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Wow. It's over. It's done.

I've figured it out. Finally.

Remember back a few posts ago when I told you that the only thing I know for SURE, for 100 percent sure was true was that something exists, something must exist to account for this experience that is happening?
This experience being what I call my life and my reality, what I see and what I call trees and computer keys and my mother and myself. Something had to exist, I thought, to account for this or to be a part of this experience. That was my only truth.

But then I realized that the whole concept of "things" was an inherently human thought, a thought that is a part of the experience itself. Basically, it is distinctly my humanness, my perspective, that gave me the abstraction of "things". It could have no bearing on actual reality; in fact, even the term reality could be misleading.

So I was in a rut. What do I know, then? I ignored this question for a while, started to study and contemplate instead ways to live my life such as Buddhism and Existentialism, but recently it hit me. I already knew. I already knew what I know for sure, and I already knew how to live my life. That's is the most phenominal thing. They're both the same thing.

It's the same thing! It's so deceptively simple, so obvious that it is illusive. To comprehend it is so very difficult that I do not expect any of you to, and I do not say that out of superiority. I can only comprehend the full extent of the idea in transient little pieces of time, though today it rushes through me well.

What is it then? When I said something exists, I reasoned that it had to in order to account for this experience I'm experiencing. And then later, I said that I can't rely on reasoning. But I completely took for granted that one statement, the statement that I have an experience! There is an experience that encompasses me, my thoughts, my family, the universe, all abstractions and all words, all part of an experience, all part of my experience. Its all one thing. To separate it into different things, to say that there are certain truths, is assuming something. Assumption is choosing one possibility and ignoring the others.

So I have this experience. That is that. This is my experience. You, the reader, are merely a part of my experience. This is all the experience. How much this experience is true to the nature of reality (and I use "reality" in the loosest meaning of the word), I don't know. I can't know. All I have is this experience, and all my thoughts are just a part of it. This is not an assumption. Breaking up this experience into truths and faults, into things and non-things, that is assumption. That is faith.

So how does that tell me how to live my life? Ultimately, since all there is is the experience, I should just enjoy as much of it as I can. It's all one thing. It's all just my experience. How I do this is my choice, there are many paths. But ultimately, just realizing that this is all just one thing, just one experience, gives an unsurpassed tranquility. Of course, instinctual fulfillment largely determines my happiness, but my mind at least knows where it should be. I know now. I am missing nothing.

Now, let's go exploring!

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Floating tensions, ego swapping,
Feeding, swimming carnivorous
Words and little subtle actions
Drift along the thick kitchen air.

They’re just sitting there, eating like robots
Powered by some consuming emotion.
Their levels of thought do not overlap,
Their realities dripping different ink.

I wish for once I could seep in their souls
And share with them this new understanding.
I wish I could reach out and hold the world,
And have its mangled arms to hold me back

It’s just an experience, I’d tell them,
All just different things that are happening.
And I’d smile and they’d smile—so happy!—
The tensions loosening around my skull.

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Here is my long-awaited short story! It's not completely polished yet; it still needs to weather a few rewrites, but oh well.

A Tragic End v. 1.4

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My girlfriend kindly purchased me a book on Zen Buddhism the other day, and it proves to be interesting. It has furthered my belief that at the core of religion and spirituality is the delving deep into the realms of the mind.

Basically, it works like this. All of our sense of completeness comes from social or primitive instinctual satisfaction: eating when you're really hungry, sleeping when you're really tired, having sex when you're really horny, or fitting into a group, hanging out with friends, or falling in love. These fulfillments of social desires make sense; evolution has seen to it that we want to guarantee the success of our genes and our species.

Yet there is a sense of completeness that is characteristic of nothing similar to eating, or drinking, or fitting in. In fact, in order to achieve this satisfaction, you must subdue or eliminate all of these instinctual pangs. This sense of completeness is the heart of spirituality.

This heart of spirituality has been translated by all of the true holy men, monks, and deep-thinkers differently, because our concepts of reality are different. To get a glimpse of what different "holy men" have exprerienced, I'd read The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley. They all ammount, however, to the same thing, delving deep into your mind, finding a "oneness" with yourself and reality. Christians will claim its their idea of God, Muslims theirs, Hindis theirs, Daoists the unnamed, unspeakable Way, and Buddhists simply speak of it as the true nature of reality.

If you have not delved that deeply into your mind; if you have never achieved a state of conciousness where your reality is unified into one thing, you are not alone. It is very difficult. Only those who have mastered meditation or have been accepting to a hallucinogenic drug have truly felt this state. I, who consider myself fairly good at such mental matters, have not been close to such a revelation. However, I have dipped my toe into such waters, and I feel I am rather good at throwing an abstraction around it, and I will explain.

For some reason, it is immensely satisfying to achieve this oneness. Zen Buddhists call this the "intimacy" with life. Every moment is wonderful, beautiful, as if it is seen anew, and every moment is intertwined into the whole. Lifting a finger is just as beautiful as viewing a glorious mountain.

How could this be?

What the greatest monks and masters of such thinking have actualized in their life is the following abstraction. Each have interpretted it in their own way, and it is very possible that one of these concepts, a deity, a place, a truth, is correct, but I believe my abstraction is the most simple and likely. It is this:

Our reality is wholly created by our brain; everything we consider reality is an illusion made up of senses that our brain recieves. Reaching a proper state of consciousness reveals this, and for some reason, this is wholly gratifying. We must continue to research why rather than immediately throw it to the dogs of science or religion. All religion and spirituality has been placing an abstraction around this simple understanding of how perception and consciousness of the mind creates reality.

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My short story is finished. Whether or not it's polished is a completely different story. It's strange...I don't know whether it's terrible or great. I just really don't know. I've never read anything like it. It's science fiction, but I've never read science fiction like this, so I don't know if I pulled it off.

I wish I could have a discerning eye to look it over: one that's well-read, intelligent, insightful — basically, another version of myself. (Ha, no, I'm not that egotistical. I'm joking.)

We'll see, I might post the story on LJ, I might not. It's called "A Tragic End".

The next story I'm going to do will be a complete contrast. It'll be in the present, it'll be about very normal situations, but it will have an even stranger ending. Why do I think of such weird plots? Maybe I should read more, to drown this crazy, immature imagination of mine.

In other news, I'm taking the SAT tomorrow. I'm kind of nervous and anxious, but most of all, I'm dreading waking up at the crack of dawn to get there. Wish me luck, invisible readers.

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Wow. I have been writing productively for the first time in a while. My short story is nearing completion. It's turning out rather well. It's a little messy, a little experimental, a little long-winded, and a little unbelieveable, but overall I think it's superb. I just need to polish it a little more, especially the beginning and ending.

I don't think I'll put it up on livejournal, but some of my friends will get a copy. Hopefully, if it's a sturdy enough piece of work, it will confirm my ambitions as a writer. I have even wilder hopes that someone will enjoy it, that it won't be slogging through a self-indulgent word fest.

Now for the contemplative part of the post:

An age-old question that many writers, as well as musicians and artists and other's in a field involving creativity and self-expression rather than society and productivity, has been recently answered for me. Are the arts important?

The answer I discovered is a resounding yes. Though this might come as no suprise to anyone who knows me (I love music and writing and self-expression dearly), I actually stumbled upon the answer with reasoning.

My reasoning is this: Business and science come and go, but expressing yourself through art is eternal. Virtually every scientific achievement in the 17th century is now obsolete. The most that any scientist during that time period did was help history along its course to where it is now. That's a noble thing, and useful and all, but how can that compare to Shakespeare's accomplishment of capturing the essence of humanity, which is just as true today as it was back then?

Social patterns and scientific discoveries are merely a turn in the river of time. We probably will never fully understand our universe. The best we can do is understand our humanity, our illusion in existence. Whatever this thing is, art expresses the experience.

This is the reason that art holds importance, and this is the reason I want to be an artist. If I could paint, I would. If I could compose or play or sing music, I would. I feel that my talents gravitate towards writing, so write I shall.

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( The Artist, The Youth, The Philosopher )

Here's a poem I wrote a while ago, cleaned up a bit. On a similar note, thank you to those who have been expressing their praise for my writing. I hope in reading this poem, you're oppinions won't change.

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Some updates in society for today. A few days ago, Nicole and I were browsing UrbanDictionary.com and we found an insightful observation: John Kerry shares an uncanny resembence with the Ents in The Lord of the Rings.

Creepy, eh?

Searching for other's agreement on the issue, I found this.

I also found this strange and sort of unsettling picture:

I am a firm believer that the funniest things on the internet are not those annoying little Flash animations everyone's seen twice — they are real people's stupid comments.

The definitions at UrbanDictionary.com and the conversations at Bash.org are two prime examples of perfect internet hilarity. Everything else is just lame. Newgrounds is full of clutter and pornography. We've seen everything at EBaum's World at least six times. And while 100 Hot used to have mildly funny jokes, it has all but died, leaving me this for the "Joke of the Day".

When you're riding in a time machine way far into the future, don't stick your elbow out the window, or it'll turn into a fossil.

I'm speechless.

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If only we could look at our lives as one whole entity, a line stretching from birth to death, the wrong paths bursting out erroneous and egregious, obviously wrong.
Fortunately, I've seen my life like this before. I've had the enlightening experience of viewing my life in the third-person, an indescribable phenomenon. Yet when the first-person experience seeps back in, it is the emotion of the day, it is the feelings that dominate your immediate actions that are important.

Have you noticed this? Whether your life is spiraling down or up, you hardly put it into perspective. It just happens. Your very thoughts are manipulated along the ride. When I look back at things I've thought or said or done at different parts of my life, they seem foriegn, a part of somebody's else's life. How much of our lives are under our control? Are our very own thoughts and abstractions the mere products of emotions and chance and observations?

We don't want this to be the case. We want permanence; we want truth. We want there to be a right and a wrong. The geniuses, the holy men, we want them to be close to this truth, and we want to strive to grasp it with them. We want to believe that the longer we live, the wiser we become, that technology and spirituality are coming closer and closer as progress perpetually surmounts the mental obsticles before us.

When I contemplate existence and wonder what is true and why I am here, I start by deducing what I know one-hundred percent for sure. What can I say with certainty is true, that there is no possible outcome that would contradict it?

For example, it's probably likely that what I consider my body, a male homo-sapien on a life-supporting planet, exists. However, it is possible that this existence is an illusion, that I'm truly a part of a computer program, or what I'm experiencing is a dream or holographic state of a completely different reality, or any other infinite and bizarre possibilities. It is unlikely but possible.

So, what do I know for sure, then? The only conclusion I can come up with is that "something" exists, some form of reality must be present to create this experience of my existence. What this is could be anything, but there must be something.

Something exists. That is all. Forget religion, forget philosophy, this is the foundation for all thought. This simple yet effective piece of rationalization was very enlightening to me when it first fell into my reasoning. After this wonderful phrase, everything is merely a game of probabilties. You determine what is most likely and what is least likely to be.

This is not new. I found the following quote just recently.

"Don't believe anything. Regard things on a scale of probabilities.
The things that seem most absurd, put under 'Low Probability', and
the things that seem most plausible, you put under 'High
Probability'. Never believe anything. Once you believe anything, you
stop thinking about it."
--Robert A. Wilson

So where does the reality I experience fit into the grand scheme of existence? Well, of course, I don't know for sure — no one does. However, I have constructed four different possible placements for this strange observable, personal reality of mine.

1. Our observable reality exists, the universe, and it is one, whole, perfect entity.

- This is what Einstien believed. It's called Spinzoa's God, or Pantheism, where our universe is the one and only piece of all of existence, and hopefully, someday we can put together all of its pieces and fully understand existence. What lies outside of our universe is nothing. </li>

2. Our observable reality exists, and outside of it, there is an unobservable, unreachable "somethingness".

- This is identical to the first possibility, only outside of our observable realm, there is something else. This is in accordance to those who believe a God or force started our universe, but in a "bubble" so to speak, leaving it untampered.

3. Our observable reality exists, but the somethingness ouside of it directly effects it.
   - This is what most religions have stated, and what Quantum Mechanics introduced in physics. This is the most likely possibility. Modern physics with M-Theory shows how insignificant our observable realm seems, and how what we feel is the full extent of reality is merely the vibrations of other, inexplanable pieces of reality.
   
4. Our observable reality is an illusion and has no bearing in actual reality.
   - This version has been recently spotlighted in films such as The Matrix, but could exist in a much less dramatic method. Some of the more radical physicists in the field are pushing a "holographic" universe, one where our universe is merely the reflection of reality.

However, during a period of strange melancholy, I realized that my methods of reasoning, and even the phrase "something exists", cannot be known for sure.

How is this? How could I contradict myself so easily? The key is in humanity.

For my methods of developing abstractions to describe the universe and existence are wholy human and limited to a vocabulary that was developed for social cohesion and describing reality in simple methods. Bascially, I am thinking of existence in terms of a human being. Everything I know of the universe, even the concept of the universe itself, my vocabulary, all of my ideas, have been picked up by other humans, by sound waves and light waves bouncing off book-print and teachers, and the concepts of these waves entering my senses is fully a product of what we've learned of our body with our own five senses.

If our brains interpretted things a little differently, if our modes of thought were not centered towards social cohesion, how different our picture of the universe would be! If we the intelligence to record and understand our reality, yet had the mindset of an ant, how different our thoughts would be!

To say that "something" exists, that it is impossible for nothing to exist because there had to be something to account for the image of me typing on the keyboard right now, is naïve. I've realized that even the concept of "things" is inherently human, a collection of five senses, a word in a vocabulary used for social cohesion and placement of "things". Nothing could exist that we have any concept of, our whole abstraction of "something" and "nothing" could be an illusion. I'm talking about my fourth possibility, but on a far grander scale. I'm talking about the possibility of a reality that is so completely inexpressible that it would be impossible for us humans to give it a name. "Somethingness" and "nothingness" lose meaning at this point.

To try and attempt to put the inexpressible to words: some true nature of reality has to exist, and whether this has anything to do with the abstractions we as humans create or the seemingly obvious "reality" before us in senses, we don't know.

We just don't know.

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I'm trying to write today, slogging along with a short story, revising the messy little thing into something even messier. They say to kill your darlings, but it's harder than it looks. What to focus on and what to leave out is a tricky balance, one only achieved after years and years of experience. Unfortunately, I've only had seventeen alive and barely two while writing.

Anways, here's a juicy little bit of it, in all its word-filled glory.

Maurice gasped. The alley’s repulsiveness had crept up on him. His body writhed in discomfort, the musk of the air clinging tightly to his face and clothes. He looked down and pushed his senses from thought. He centered his attention towards his eyes; he watched every detail of the gray ground rolling past him. He kept walking. He watched the force of gravity throw his shoes into the puddles that had formed along the ground, their grimy innards exploding into a million droplets like the shattering of broken glass, the projectiles arching and shimmering through the air, the shards somehow reforming back into place, breaking and forming endlessly. The fallen feet then dragged along the water, rippling the beautiful broken substance, skipping back up to briefly float and fall back again.
When Maurice lived in the suburbs, he used to stop and admire the beauty of water. How intricate, how wonderful the world had seemed! He loved the way the sun would radiate the undulating waves of his pool on a windy day and flicker patterns against the tops of the umbrellas covering the lawn chairs. His wife would serve lemonade and the dogs would tussle playfully, rolling against the itchy thick grass, panting and growling. His daughter would sit in her little skirt and pluck the swaying blades as she dragged a fist along the watery sides of her mouth. And there he would sit, Maurice the father, a pile of work on the table, watching his family live and be happy, nestled outside in the sun.

This weblog will document my latest writings and latest ideas on life, existence, truth, etc. It will also talk about music and books and whatever's on my mind.

Feel free to comment on whatever.

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