Things that came to me in the twilight between sleep and consciousness.

Things softly came to me during the twilight between sleep and drowsiness:

1. Love and Death are the poles of reference.

2. Yes, slowly the self-administered poisons of Laura and Alicia are getting out of my system.

3. Dreams, fantasies, and recollections of the sweet memories of brief encounters with Marguerite are what that have sustained me during the coldest nights.

4. Back to Spanish music now. How soothing and romantic. 

4. Most netters I know via their writings are stupid scumbags, deserving to be ignored like dog shit on the sidewalk. Fuck, how can they be so fucking dumb and ignorant? Did they all descend from the same stupid, brutish, coarse, illiterate bloodlines? But I am aware that folks who are intellectually superior to me and more mentally gifted than me, may ironically say the same thing about me. 

5. Health. Money, Old Age, Sickness, and then Death.  Simple, practical things. It's Love that messes things up. It makes you do stupid things. It makes your eyes glaze over. If makes you go blind. 

So, you probably realize I stopped using the stupid second and third personal pronouns as narrative voices. I'm back to where I'm most comfortable: first singular personal pronoun, the glorious "I" in all of its unfettered, unrestricted roaming of the mind. 

The more I encounter religious superstition, the more I'm convinced that Ignorance is very dangerous for Mankind's survival. 

I received in the mail, forwarded by perhaps a sick narcissist and liar, a letter written in French from a survivor in the November Islamic terrorist attack in Paris. The woman spoke of post-stress syndromes she was going through, but she was emphatic that her heart was not filled with hate and anger. What choice does she really have? Hate and Anger would do her no good. She had to convince herself that she was not giving in to the expected and natural impulses. I am not saying that she was insincere, but the proof of the matter would be that if given the opportunity to avenge for her sufferings and the undeserved deaths of her compatriots, would she give in to the impulses of revenge or would she still embrace the idea that her heart is free of Hate and Anger? I don't really know how she would react. But I'm getting more and more cynical with each passing day as I encounter human depravity on the Net where people behave more like animals than real humans. The only good thing that came out of the encounters was that it reminded me that I was made of better stuff than them. 

But not all my encounters with humans turned out to be unpleasant, mortifying, and stultifying. Yesterday somebody overheard my talking philosophy with a fellow card player, he tapped my shoulder and pointed to a young man who was behind a bar counter. "Go talk philosophy with him. That bartender there is working on his Ph.D on philosophy". I, of course made a beeline to the bar. And the rest was history. I'm still high from talking with him. I am a lucky man. Serendipities keep happening to me. I'm feeling blessed. 

There are times we must be convinced of our values and who we are. The interactions with human animals have starkly reminded me that we are all works in progress and if you deny that you need improvement and are content with where you are intellectually then, really you are a fucked-up, cursed, unredeemed, unimprovable motherfucker deserving to be viewed and treated as such. 

 

Words have meanings and have impact. We know right away the level of intellectual, emotional, and social development of a person by the way he uses words. Words reflect who we are. The more we speak, the more we reveal ourselves to the world. That's why truly vicious and cunning assholes don't say much. But exceedingly garrulous, bombastic speakers are also the ones who are into deceiving others. They are vicious and also narcissistic. 

As a victim of Power, I am now slowly understanding why my behavior reflects this latent fight against all abusers of Power. To live is to struggle against the impulse not to kill those who infringe upon our liberty and dignity. To verbally abuse, to malign, and to slander are weapons of the weak and the mild. To rob is the tool of the strong and the cunning. As victims, what should we do? 

The problem of most people is that they can live entire life without coming to terms with a question that whether or not they are cowards. I, of course, modified the words of John Berryman, an esteemed poet who committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in the preceding sentence. I have struggled with this question all my life, with the long and hard---not brief and soft---reflections on suicide and homicide; on dignity and job quitting and financial independence; and on setting the world on fire literally and metaphorically. Life, for me, is not to go quietly into the hospital and die there in bed, filled with regrets and remorses. I cannot be like most men. I know I am different, from interactions with them. Most of them didn't impress me at all. In fact, they sickened me. They made me aware of my difference. They brought to the fore of my consciousness that I was made with better materials and ingredients than them. In short, they are still animals whereas I am a real man. That's in a nutshell, explaining my contempt for them. I wouldn't care less, wouldn't give a shit or a fuck whether or not the contempt is mutual. 

And I wouldn't give a rat's ass if they have spread lies and innuendos about me. The most important thing for me is whether or not I am a coward, a lousy thinker, a lazy bastard, and a voluntary---not an ascetic as I fancy myself to be. The most unbearable suffering for a human is to have self-hate because he knows he has lied to himself all his life, never mind that he has of course also lied to others. Most braggadocios I have witnessed stemmed from this struggle to evince a person's self-worth to the public eye. I also brag and boast and toot my own horn, but my bragging is vastly different from theirs. It's a form of self-validation and self-exhortation, an incantation during my journey to greater heights and deeper depths. I once sat next to a passive-aggressive Irish motherfucker who tried to show off to me his knowledge of English History. I shut him off by pointing out flatly he was wrong and backed up my statement with information taken from Wikipedia on my iPad. He then tried to talk about China's languages. I told him bluntly he was an ignorant fool who tried to show off and that he didn't know shit about China and the languages in China. I informed that he happened to talk with a guy who had studied English History in college and who had a keen interest in languages and linguistics. Most assholes I have known are like him. They have no respect for facts and truths. They only try to impress others by fucking lying their heads off. I never lie. I don't have to. I let my learning and knowledge shine like a beacon in the dark of the night. Once, a guy was struggling to recall the word beginning with a "t". I right away said the word he was looking for was "tautology". Most assholes at the table didn't have a clue what that meant, except two guys, one of them asked me if I was an English or Philosophy major, by any chance. I replied, "What do you think?" 

(To be continued)