days of my lives

"Never confuse movement, with action." -- Ernest Hemingway

On the move again. What is this like 7 or 8 times now in 18 months? I'm running out of fingers, so I'm losing count. I'll be very close to Surfer's Paradise which is nice, I'll have plenty of options for when I go out sarging now, lol.

Ever notice how the amount of kipple that you accumulate is always disproportionate to the space in which it's stored. I'm such a girl. How do you fit 20 metric tonnes of stuff into one room? Unbelievable.

We're well into the year of our Lord 2010, and I'm marginally better than before. Marginally. That's not the kind of progress I like to make. I want quantum leaps, not little ant steps. I keep telling myself when I get settled, find a place where the grass is always green and all that, then I'll be good to go, but life doesn't work that way. You've got to draw your line in the sand and then no matter what: do it. If you have to, burn the boat you sailed in on. Retreat is not an option.

I'm a bit agitated, so I'm not going to do something now that the experts say you shouldn't ever do, that would be bad like using double negation in a sentence. If you're going to set a goal don't tell people about it (cheers Whore of all the Earth), just shut up and do it. So I wont tell you Internet, my friend, that I'm going to do this certain thing. You're a smart-like entity, read between the lines, you'll figure it out. Those who know do not say, those who say do not know, ya know?

Snorlax understands the principle of doing by not doing. Be the Snorlax!

As a young man in neutral, and poster child of the lost generation X, I'll just drop this one hint, things they will be a changin. Change, it's inevitable except from vending machines. Consider this fair warning universe. I wont repeat myself. Until next time.

robot unicorn attack

Have I discovered iPhone casual gaming perfection? OK, maybe Angry Birds is better, but it's close. Isn't a replicant rainbow powered unicorn, the perfect metaphor for life? Throw in the easy listening pleasure that is Erasure's Always, as a backing track and all your dreams feel like they're just one over-sized starfish barrier away from being realized. It just doesn't get any better. Sir Ridley Scott really needs to make one last version of Blade Runner (what's one more?), the RUA cut, and splice in some game footage to replace Deckard's unicorn dream.

Total complete awesomeness.

*****

Creativity On Demand

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.” -Albert Einstein

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

-Aristotle

If you suffer from an impoverished imagination, you are not alone. Like stockbrokers, our knowledge of the world tells us where we are now and where we have been; while like soothsayers, prophets and other visionaries, our imagination points toward what isn’t, yet what might be. It is more comfortable to operate in the tacit world of facts rather than the uncharted realm of imagination. After all, ‘write what you know’ is rule number one. However, unless we desire to become journalists or autobiographers (noble pursuits though they may be), to write fiction we need to take something that is known and transform it into something that is not. Our thinking needs to shift to a setting of uncertainty in order to explore all the possibilities.

The unknown is a scary place, because it’s not always clear what we should do with it. Some have suggested that you write tenaciously, unapologetically about your visit. This advice is not without merit. When you diverge from what is, there will inevitably be a moment of hesitation. The instant where creativity is invoked requires a different mindset from standard ways of thinking. The transition can be daunting. If we indulge this moment too long without pushing through, writers block, the Internal Voice of Doom, and other similar maladies await to divert us from our course. Bertrand Russell suggested that we need “to teach to live without certainty and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation.” He was talking about philosophy, but his advice applies equally well to writing.

Steven Pressfield (author of “The Legend of Bagger Vance”) begins his writing sessions with a prayer to the goddess Posey. Dan Brown reputedly suspends himself upside down to stimulate thinking. Twyla Tharp, in her book “The Creative Habit,” says that we should develop our own personal patterns that precede our creative efforts to signal to the mind and body that a project which requires imagination is under way. Sports stars are notorious for reverting to suppositious practices when preparing to perform at peak levels. Michael Jordan always wore his tar heel shorts when playing and ate practically the same meal before every game. Is it possible that routinizing a personally designed ritual before writing can help us overcome the hesitancy associated with uncertainty and consequently help us reach the right state of mind to write well? That by using the same pattern we can create different results (or rather, stories)? I don’t know the answers — that’s why I ask the questions, but anecdotal evidence considered, it seems like it’s worth a try.

Note: Much of this post was inspired by the seventh essay in David Jauss’ amazing book, “Alone With All That Could Happen.”

This post first appeared ages ago on The Official Site of Cesar Torres

get busy livin or get busy dyin

"It's your life. You don't know how long it's going to be, but it has a bad ending. You have to move forward. As soon as you can figure out what that is." -- Don Draper

I get it now. You don't drink beer because it tastes good. You drink for the social benefit of not having your frontal lobe over think things. The reptilian brain is an useful guide when it comes to navigating the terrain of primal instinct and even basic human interaction.

Beer... it's awesome

I've dropped the ball guys, only because I've just realized the game has changed. Certain of our number, the post/ex/anti mo brigade, think the desire for "sin" is not a major factor as to why people leave the church. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're missing out on a lot of fun. How bout this though? Fuck the thought police. "Sin" is a tool of control invented to underpin a slave morality. I can happily exist without maintaining the standards of an organization whose prime concern is ten percent of my income. Once ties have been severed, why continue hanging myself? Perhaps "sinning" wasn't the primary catalyst for my disaffection, but goddamn if it sure as hell hasn't made me satisfied with my decision.

My mother is thrilled.

The Loz says this: "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die." Happy trails, pilgrim.

fate grows impatient

"Life is a sexually transmitted disease." R. D. Laing

Life happens. This is not necessarily inevitable, except maybe in our universe, and particularly on this planet at this time. It could be seen as a gift. The plasticity of language and broad scope of interpretation allow you to wrap the world in whatever decorative paper you feel is appropriate for the occasion. Call it good or bad, or some variant of grey tone maybe when your emotional printer is running low on colour ink. Call it whatever you like, life is here, but unfortunately not here to stay. It is a tenuous fragile thing, prone to fade at any moment, likely in less time than the minute of copulation that proceeded its advent. Scarcity drives value. Is it any wonder that capitalism has become the economic vehicle of choice? Time is running out. I'm more scant than Hailey's comet, supernovae, and Kim Kardashian's wardrobe. I will never happen again for quite probably an eternity. Therefore I have decided to tag life with the simple descriptor: Good.

Once existence is established and conveniently categorized, where to from there?

what three months of hell taught me 1

from the people who brought you: don't think about the ramifications of sharing every intimate detail of your life...

Every Achilles has his heel.

So you're practically invulnerable, devastatingly handsome and got balls of steel? (guilty as charged) Big deal, that's nothing a well placed arrow can't fix. It's probably bad form to reveal your weakness whatever the circumstance, but this is the age of the internet and I am a millenial. It feels only appropriate then that I let it all hang out, you know, flapping in the wind as it were, exposed in all its vulnerable glory. I'm talking about my heel people. My heel. Every ubermensch has his kryptonite. I suppose I have many, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I am in possession of a hermetically sealed bubble. It is incredibly handy for repelling any and all unwanted social interaction. Even stone walls get shaky when they see me coming. That's how impenetrable my defense is. Of course in public, I can't overtly draw attention to my super power, that would shatter the illusion of normality. So I sprinkle the barren wasteland of my everyday interactions with sparse helpings of convivial gestures, verbal or otherwise (trying to be more real lately after The Event That Will Not Be Named). Schopenhauer lamented: "We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people."

Being an island unto yourself doesn't just mean that you get to make friends with volleyballs, it also means you're crazy. Just think I could be living in a cave, but instead I'm an eating, shitting, fire breathing 21 century everyman, enjoying the privileges afforded by an economic system built on the backs of slaves and the blood of innocents. Everything is corrupt to some degree I suppose. Entropy will sneak up on you whether you're ready or not. I make a special point to buy free range eggs, but I wont even think twice about buying cage produced Air Jordan's if my bank account is agreeable. Weird. Anyway, the point is that the amenities of modernity are made possible by a vast social structure that extends far beyond the dimensions of my own pitiful capabilities. Stuff, whether cage produced or not, comes from other people. How nice of them.

Is it time to deactivate the misanthropic powered force field yet? Wait. Why does it even exist in the first place?

TBC