in the trenches of reality, the whole totality of life is beyond the morality of good and evil, it’s easy to characterize whole groups of people or make strawmen out of hypothetical pitiable creatures of society, but all in all each person is in their own phase, mode of being, adding layers and stages to their existence. there is no linear path toward freedom or happiness or wisdom or spirit or being, yet we mesh with others and take their explorations into account when we are developing our own frameworks.
all the elusive mysteries telling me that this moment is alive, the world is intelligent. the universe is made of consciousness. the ultimate ground of existence is this kind of energy that turns into self awareness in a sufficiently complex nervous system. we learn self reflexivity from ideal thoughtless void, channeling and rambling our exultation to much excitement. you never learn the perfect truth in taxonomical terms but working within agreed upon relative frameworks we can metaphorically describe our experiential observations and compare the terrain we’ve encountered. cartographers sharing unique maps of the common phenomenon of the solitary depth and interiority of the human condition.
life is an open ended experimental process. I saw a guy on telegraph avenue scooping up free boxes of books left out for perusal. he said he lists them on amazon and makes hundreds of dollars a month driving around scooping up these random books. I guess it’s worth his time, that’s a job you could do. infinite approaches to things and it isn’t always necessary to have a plan or follow the conventional path. so we lazy intellectuals tell ourselves to justify our periods of inactivity. my only obligation is to produce, I tell myself, as I scowl about some unfinished project lingering in the back of my mind.
it’s good to go where you’re wanted and needed, but you can’t be everywhere at once. stroke of luck that you showed up when you did, the weather finally started to turn nice, and of course you found out who was still around and got to spend some quality time, rambling about the inconsistencies of some conspiracy or other. probing questions and long nights of consideration, half baked thoughts, ideals, vivid dreams. wild speculation. provocative declarations.
I don’t know where any of this is going or how to make ends meet, I fold space and curve one-dimensional manifolds over onto themselves and stretch myself so thin I become transparent. an infinite coming of age story in he effort to become a classic character in life, an archetype for the ages! what more is there to aspire to? D-I-Y spirituality, anarchy, choose your own fate and write the script as you go along, just in time.
all jacked in and wired up becoming one with the machine total immersion wave a hand in front of his face. gonna go check up on every lead and make sure the connections are tight, diagnostics and work-arounds and troubleshooting. bandwidth and throughput and traffic, ins and outs, sends and receives, the electric nervous system, the transmission of feeling thru sound impulses, the re-encoded frequencies on display.
a hive of activity, as they say. all these technicians turning through the building, talk of their time on the island, the rhythms of travel and when this one or that one are returning. discussion of the craft, shop-talk. napping in the corner to the pulsating beat.
the stand-up comedian with a routine about parenting advice, how you don’t want it unsolicited, especially from someone without children. I just say I read some report about a study about this or that, maybe you might want to check it out, that kind of thing. trying to be overly gracious. thump thump thump thump
not going to overly expose anyone or thing, and keep my best stories to myself and only share them in the company of the common ally.
some kind of potpourri in his hat, no magic rabbit. just more liquid nutrition and that chill coastal breeze. south enough to miss any serious waves from the earthquake in Japan. following streams of information pouring in overnight, watching the reactor burn online wondering what the cable networks were saying. they were probably talking about twitter or Charlie Sheen.
Interesting times of old curse of yore. post-millennial tension like we overstayed our welcome. there ain’t going to be no positive post-singularity world without some trauma along the way. but why not hope for utopia? it’s just that it’s always grossly different than you ever could have imagined - and the outcome of neo-Luddite hippies and religious fundamentalist terrorists in a world with machine to brain interfaces and designer drugs and cheap molecular sequencers in the garage isn’t necessarily benign or pretty but how else are we going to have a talk about the ethics of technology? the moral trajectory of our engineered destiny? man at the helm of his own fate, the ultimate responsibility. and we still don’t seem mature enough. oh well. we’ll see what this rising generation can muster with it’s networked hive mind and global eye scouring the planet’s awareness. a flash mob be-in general strike at the profiteering of the old world mentality. the new morality of a worldwide culture awakening…
trading pirate data, running installations, hooking each other up. a modicum of technological knowledge in a minimum of required fields. expanding the breadth of understanding, getting a sense of the undercurrents despite a lack of deep analysis. curating opinions and perspectives, positions and views, the inquisitor, examining the common arguments with the man on the street.
push the stroller, wash the pots, sweep the rug, fold the clothing. if you put soap in this iron skillet his mother will kill you, remember? clean out the workspace. trim facial hair, groom nails. make todo lists and manage time effectively.
or just take another nap. nap and stretch. mmm
on the tech beat, getting back to my roots. evangelizing networks empowering the streets. decentralized and democratizing. part of that band of mutants that scavenged usable scraps of machinery to put together our utility belts, our gear fascination, our dinner table etiquette around mobile devices is generationally different than our forbearers. the old tune in turn on drop out left the cities after a while and retreated to wooded hill, to big cliff drop mountain lodge and communal fire, the neo-luddite hippie with an ax to grind but no automatic sharpener. i live in cities. my subsistence strategy revolves around that first stage of enclave in your urban environments. that crash pad is a launching pad as well. but where those of us who live in the margins continue to require a foothold to survive, those who support us appreciate our nomadic perspective, and there is some overlap, no one is truly on the road at all times (except foolish dreamers like me. but even I must own one giant couch for the world to crash on some day)
the bleeding edge is expensive. but early adopters beta tested the kinks and the costs are always falling. the weapons systems found new purpose as hackers and artists looked at their designs and foresaw new applications. tinkerers and do-it-yourselfers transformed the world we live in and we are witnessing it morph before our waking eyes. impossible to predict the future but tracking trends feels rewarding. big upsets come as less of a surprise to the data nomad with his ear to the ground. travel light, stay flexible and pull up camp when you see the terrain shifting around you.
sync your life to the cloud, distributed across multiple services, a global stage with many actors to serve as the checks and balances in a world marxism and capital could not have designed or prophesied. resources become scarce so live lean to begin with. non-state actors and old institutions crumbling threaten the established order, so question fundamental assumptions and stay on top of global developments. surround yourself with the best thinkers of every discipline, young and old, discuss movements and watch for the signs of serendipity to guide your intuitive faculty.
the public bus around the LA metro is a reasonable fare. the screen behind the driver runs advertisements and news reels, the head of the state department cautiously announces preparatory moves against a dictator in Africa. the robot voice announces intersections approaching on the transit line. I mapped this out before I departed, I sent messages ahead to arrange a meeting point, thinking not much further than the next room to sit down in and pour into whoever may listen and share. not much concern with the next meal or which roof to sleep under or how to get back to the stash of longer term possessions - these things will work themselves out in the city and the hours that become days.
as quickly as rails and clocks conquered the landscape and telegraphs linked up the continents, switching stations and routes around everywhere carry ghostly voices, satellites and cell towers birthed new industries and every human grew new prosthesis for telepathy. this quickly integrated into our lives, and became accepted as necessity, while the no-income futurists such as myself waited to buy in to platforms that made sense, looking for ways to hack limbs off of the old business models, he latest and greatest devices don’t come cheaply and the monthly rates they are tethered to make them more expensive than even traditional access to computing power and communications. so my mobile can now send short message service text messages and place voice over Internet protocol calls to wired and wireless telephones for a fraction of the cost of the old way of doing things, and I am one step closer to trimming recurring expenses to bare minimum, willing to invest in the companies that empower the user.
riding thru Hollywood typing up these thoughts with my thumbs, headed to a party. said my parting well wishes to the excellent couple who took me in, even during their own time of need. the kindness we are sharing will continue in the future, this much I know. all the gadgets make it easier to stay connected but it’s the people that make life worth living. travel well, partners.
swedish pancakes in the pacific palisades with Henry Miller and Jack Kerouac reminiscing about big sur over breakfast and ping pong while I’m reformatting my harddrives making backups wondering where I was when I woke up this morning - loving from a distance is more fun than being with a flesh and blood human being and all literary worlds blending into each other
And has fulfilled his mission,
He has a right to confront
The idea of death in peace.
He has no need of other men;
He knows them and knows enough about them.
What he needs is peace.
It isn’t good to visit this man or to talk to him,
To make him suffer banalities.
One must give a wide berth
To the door of his house,
As if no one lived there.” Meng-tze (quote found on Hermann Hesse’s and Henry Miller’s front doors)
