Polyphasic Sleep Experiment, Days 2-3 (4)?

Ah yes, the delirium is finally starting to set in. I'm being invaded by an army of ants; this part is true. But for an already paranoid person, sleep deprivation is probably not the best alloy for fixing up chinks in the ol' armor.

I awoke from another too lucid dream (already forgot what about but it seemed to last all night despite my being asleep for only half an hour), went to get some ginger ale from the kitchen, and was relieved from that annoying post-nap stupor by an orgy of those crawling fucks openly reveling in what can only be described as Dionysian ecstasy all over my kitchen counter. This is probably something I should've seen coming - I'll explain why - and I remember kicking myself briefly before grabbing sopping paper towels and wiping sheets of tiny swarms into the trash. This is what god must feel like when he's concocting an earthquake or a massive tidal wave.

Like I said, this is something I should've seen coming. I did put the bait trap right there and the box did say that it contained something that apparently ants find very appealing and irresistible. Essentially I put an ant crackhouse on the kitchen counter. And that stuff really made them go.* These normally business-like creatures were exhibiting signs of unpredictability and drunkenly irrational behavior. And the most telling thing about all this was the fact that there was food - presumably the thing that these animals are after most - in cabinets and drawers right next to where the buggers were celebrating but the crack-in-a-trap was just too tempting, too available to pass up.

There's an obvious human parallel here but I'm too respectful of my readers (read: lazy) to actually go into it. My eyes are shutting involuntarily so I'll have to go into the paranoia-driven details of my sleep-deprived mind at a future time.


*footnote: Ants are nature's hardest workers. They're organized, efficient, and have this amazing ability to use their collective power to carry out incredibly complex projects by sacrificing the will of the individual. For whatever reason I have this habit of personifying animals and animal species and ants automatically flash impressions of the Chinese or Japanese.

** An interesting article on the subject printed a few days after I wrote this: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Polyphasic Sleep Experiment, Day 1

I'm trying something new. It'll probably end in some kind of brutal violence against me due to my own brain deadness or will just flicker away because I couldn't hack it. Either way, I'll see how long I can maintain a sleep schedule consisting entirely of 30 minute naps every four hours or so. I'm one day into this and you can probably tell by the more than usual sloppiness and lack of rhythm that it's making a minor dent in my cognitive skills already. I hear day 10 is the horizon. Others have hit it by the fourth day. I'm really hoping my hump is sooner than later because if the side-effects increase exponentially I'll be certifiably retarded or Tom Cruise loony in a few days.

The one thing that immediately presents itself upon starting this little adventure is what do do with the extra five or so hours that you have each day. Nights, I presume, will be the hardest. Besides watching tv there's not much to occupy yourself with that doesn't involve dozing off or having the cops called on you. Tonight I'll try to arrange for one of the girls come over to keep me awake. This is obviously going to take a lot of night-to-night maneuvering. But I didn't say it wasn't fun.

One more little tidbit. Today I was feeling really groggy and it was hot in my apartment and I felt I'd seriously lose it before my next nap. So I threw on some clothes and walked down to the local college to talk to the girls over there. It was mostly dead and the few that were around seemed intent on getting to the destinations without much delay. They were responsive though, and cute and giggly but completely driven by the clock-gods. I still haven't quite figured out how to make a woman stop on the street. It's a lot easier when they're stationary. This little exercise gave me a little energy and brightened my mood a bit. It was all good fun the way it should be. None of that frigidness you'd get from the same girl if you transplant her from the street to the club. But that's a whole 'nother game.

Stay tuned.

lol

I feel like I'm turning down the path of a serial killer, without the social awkwardness. Maybe one day I'll write a book about it and have a big laugh about the whole affair; a big laugh all the way to the bank. Or I'll just massacre a large group of innocent civilians at a diner one morning and the only one laughing about it will be the Cosmic Joker, the Creator of us all.

After a pie-eyed period of experiencing a new place, a new set of circumstances, the ennui sets in. The hope and optimism and plain wonder of your newly-acquired toy starts to become stale. I hate to sound like I'm whining, even when I am. Once you've been around for a while, when you're no longer a teenager or a child, you expect yourself to adjust to the natural pendulum swing of life; at least see it coming. But I'm a Romantic in that regard. I want to think that without managing expectations, by plodding through the thick latex of one's own imagination, one can actually embrace the pendulum like a wrecking ball and go careening to the other side like Slim Pickens.

But my cynic won't let me follow through. This is the problem with Dualism. It's the reason nearly every epic trying to solve the riddle of man's ultimate reality has had at it's epicenter the inner struggle between two equally powerful and conflicting forces vying for each atom of their host. Usually it's simple: Good vs. Evil; Bad vs. Good. It's right there in the Bible, it's easy for the layman to swallow. But obviously it's not as simple as that, even when it's dumbed down for mass consumption. It's why Ismael had his Queequeg, why Ahab had his Whale.

Sadly, for most of us, it's all about decisions.

Ultimately, the lucky ones find themselves. One side triumphs and the hero breaks on through to the other side. Others succumb to the voice that's not their own. The worst-off of the bunch spend their entire lives vacillating in a mad tug-of-war of schizophrenia, derangement and hysterical dismay.

Phallic Trickster

Sorry for the extended absence. Things have been a bit manic lately and I think a leave is better than faking your way through it. Ask Pearl Jam.

I miss the punk scene from high school. It's weird writing about this, considering how the punk elitists foam at the mouth when they smell an outsider. But fuck 'em. They're bigger posers than the ones they try to protect against.

I don't know how punk it is, the middle-class suburbs of New Jersey, but it felt alright. If I had to conceptualize it from nothing; to create a scene just from the feeling I wouldn't change a thing. I wasn't punk. I was in the smart classes. I got good grades. My parents were still together (I don't know which category that should fall under). But it was real. And that transcends everything, I think. That's why so many of us weren't "punk." And maybe we were the only ones who really got it.

You try to go back now and understand what the hell you were so in love with then. But it doesn't click because once the feeling's gone, everything else goes with it.

Listen to Gogol Bordello, you'll understand. It's completely thoughtless and absolutely brilliant. Just like the real thing, it melts your left brain and makes you feel ashamed to venture beyond the Id. And that's what I remember now, trying to remember how I tried to rationalize this to my parents. Trying to explain the connection. And it's so fucking sad to think that me trying to remember that passion is like listening to myself at 16 and attempting to understand the logic of the rawest fucking thing you ever felt.

There's no context. No backup plan. Just this profound belief in yourself and the sheen you naturally exude. There was only beauty because flaws were just part of the perfection. And I miss it. I really do.

Rethinking the Reverend

Can the acceptance of Christianity (the religion of the enslavers) by slaves in America be considered a symptom of Stockholm Syndrome?

Crowded and Cold

Sometimes it's too black to drink. Like when the sifting becomes too heavy or the waves lap over pictures of those who become themselves in the receding water. Who said it: That when you start to think you stop writing? Pushkin said that; or Tolstoy. No, Gramps said that in a moment of lucidity. But maybe he was just plagiarizing. I plagiarize too, you know.

It's those kids. Those two beautiful kids. I could have wept right there. But it's my cynicism - it's why I don't weep; I should. And those kids, brother and sister. They're caught in this Brazil'ian system, knowing the waiting, the patience it takes to be digested. They've seen it: Fights, foster care, bringing little cousin milk because his mama doesn't keep any in the house. And they'll make it somewhere, maybe with each other. Maybe not. But what if they were from somewhere else? Somewhere where you're smart and you're beautiful but you're not damaged.

When god is out of the picture, everything is permissible.

Sometimes it's too cold to think. And sometimes it's too hard to wait.

And sometimes, Selfish is the only way to be.

Sometimes you write to make yourself feel. And sometimes you write because you feel. But mostly, comfort is the hardest fitted skin.

Schadenfreude, Part III

Of all the posts on the topic this one is probably the hardest to write. And that likely explains why I've been extrapolating (procrastinating) all the different aspects of Amadeus and not essentially getting to the point that I set out to make. This one requires some of the 'digging' I've been talking about (see? I'm still doing it) to hone in on why these seemingly insignificant parts are so poignant.

At first we were consciously moved by the scene of the young Salieri signing away his feral ghost (it's funny how classically, pacts with God require one to give up everything that makes life actually worth the trouble [selling your body] and pacts with the Devil require that one give up everything that connects you with the next world [selling your soul]. I'm not sure, but a progressive, modern individual might consider God to be the more shrewd/conniving merchant in this scenario [a character trait typically assigned to the Devil]) to reach immortality through music. Next, we figured out that in actuality our subconscious was moved by the scene with flamboyant Mozart and voyeuristic Salieri (and the whole giant, floating metaphor for the movie itself - blah, blah, blah). Anyway. So why the anticipation for these scenes in particular?

It's been written and thought about ad nauseum but really, what can we learn from the juxtaposition of these men's situations besides complete, arm-dropping despair? Not to be gloomy (though invariably that's the only way to reasonably talk about this), but when taken to its logical boundary this train of thought stops (I'm so sorry. I swear I'll never drop something like that ever again) at futility and meaninglessness. It's really hard to grasp this, I mean really digest it, unless it's personalized. And there's nothing easier than "understanding" someone else's misery when you don't have to live through it. It's probably why most people think sympathy and empathy are interchangeable. I had a futile moment like that not too long ago. It was at a club (of course) and it involved a girl (of course) and a distant acquaintance who is much taller/handsomer/smoother than I am. It wasn't tragedy, I mean it was for that night, but it left a really ugly taste. It was just a small inroad to the pandemic powerlessness that pervades (ok really, I'm going to stop now) us with the ultimate Why? It's the Southern blacks who had to watch their own get lynched for whistling at a white woman and then see the perpetrators walk. It's the Soviet Jews who were categorically denied seats in the University despite being smarter and more capable than their gentile peers.

I think Salieri - who prostrated himself before the Universe and then was forced to watch another devour everything he ever wanted, and more, without desire or effort - was Camus' 'absurd man;' the Sysiphus who hauls his rock ad infintium without hope or end in sight. What meaning can we derive from the meaningless, our constant chore in a world that recognizes neither need nor effort, only the luck of the draw.? Camus says "the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart."

I can't agree with Camus' conclusion that the only way to live is to embrace the hopelessness, to acknowledge it and make it fully conscious; that truth will conquer it. But maybe I'm not old (cynical) enough for that yet. Nor am I convinced of the fate of the absurd man in Dostoyevsky: The recognition of futility but with a glimmer of hope embodied in faith and God (this probably becomes more relevant in reference to the aside about selling one's soul/body. Who knows, maybe the makers of Amadeus saw Salieri's celibacy [I'm not doing this on purpose] as that glimmer of hope, the reward at the end of the ride).

What I do know is that between the absurdity of this world and the uncertainty of the next is the thin, sticky realm of Art; a higher threshold that makes irrelevant concepts of meaningless and also hope. Art is beauty. Beauty is truth. From that it must follow that art is truth. So it seems that Camus, in a way, was right. "One must imagine Sysiphus happy."