A halo opposite the sun

And though I stare into the sun and my eyes become blinded and closed, still I see the light.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Okay, I need to put forth another call for input from my readers. As most of you know, I'm strongly considering the possibility of moving after I graduate. One of my premises has been that if I leave Athens then I leave Georgia. After recent events I'm beginning to reconsider on that. So the question is, after considering the points I am going to make next, would it be better to leave Georgia or stay in Georgia and move to Atlanta or will it really matter and why do you feel the way you do for whatever answer?


So, those are the major reasons that make me think maybe it is better if I just move to Atlanta. On the other hand, there are reasons to leave too such as new experience, covering new areas of the country, exposure to different kinds of people, making a cleaner break from this chapter in my life to allow me to move on and not get stuck in this era, and possibly ending up in a more socially and politically liberal area where I would have more in common with people.

Remember also that regardless of where I end up, I would be planning on it only lasting about 3 years max until the animals are gone. Once that time comes, my options will be a lot more open than they are now.

So, what do y'all think?

Anthelion 1:48 AM

Today I was reading and I came across this passage:

To one striving for Castalian virtue that world seemed sometimes a wicked underworld, sometimes a tempting playground and arena. For generations many young consciences have experienced the concept of sin in this Castalian form. And many years later, as an adult student of history, Knecht was to perceive more distinctly that history cannot come into being without the substance and the dynamism of this sinful world of egoism and instinctuality, and that even such sublime creations as the Order were born in this cloudy torrent and sooner or later will be swallowed up by it again. (Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, Pg. 267)
Following the reading of that passage, my mind set about its usual explorations and the following is the flow of thought that came out:
Purity, cleanliness, etc. arise from the "dirty," chaotic, instinctual mass. In some sense, these "bubbles" are sterile and the mass organic and alive. The bubbles are an aberration -- often the cap of a scab on an abstract movement that has infected the mass. It hardens, commercializes, and defines the movement and thus the system heals from it. The scars from it we call history. Its meme virus may have injected cultural DNA which may subtly affect the character of the beast and may reflare in infection over time. Not all of them are bad. Sometimes they may weaken the being. Sometimes they may allow it to adapt or be inoculated against other threats. Either way they shape it. Excessive nationalism/patriotism or emotional/intellectual investment into a group ("cause" ha!) is an attachment to a disease, passion = infection. Is awareness of this and attempt to sculpt society based on expected consequences of each option really just a harmful genetic experiment or weakening impedance of the natural flow?

And as food for thought... is this being, like all other beings, destined for death after a slow, but inevitable deterioration? Or is this being divine and immortal, capable of healing all mortal wounds despite eternal scarification?

Other thoughts to consider:

Anthelion 12:53 AM

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Oh yeah, as if I haven't already posted enough today, I forgot something on the club post. Pictures!

[sarcasm] I was terribly photogenic [/sarcasm] So, despite how I looked in the pics, there were only two with me in them (well, my hand was in one other) so I posted them anyway, but lest y'all get any crazy ideas, I'm going to explain why I look like I do in them.

The one with my eyes closed and mouth wide open: the club was dark and I didn't know Matt was going to take a picture. The flash goes off a split second before the picture actually snaps and so it caught me right in the middle of being surprised and reacting to the unexpected blinding flash.

The other one: Matt took probably 10 pictures in a row of Kenneth and me and after a few of them I started giving him a "what the fuck are you doing?" kind of look and the only one in the series that he happened to save was one in which I had that look on my face.

Anthelion 9:53 PM

I think I've begun to peak over the ledge of a new stage in mental or spiritual development.

I have long since had a distrust in my body as I found that often its desires and will not only did not always align with my own, but often conflicted. I began to think of the body as not really part of me because I don't feel like the entity I call "I" really had any say in the desires of the body.

Now I'm starting to feel similarly about the mind as well. I've become increasing aware of the rationalization powers of the mind and I've begun to become aware of disparities between its interpretations and reality. I also feel like I'm coming to terms with a few things in my past but I'm very suspicious now that these feelings aren't simply my mind's rationalizations and coping mechanisms to deal with the present. I am starting to feel like my mind is not really part of me but is simply an artificial substrate generated to resemble the real world and I am operating in this substrate rather than in the real world. It has artificial limitations and the translation from the real world to the mind world is increasingly noticeably flawed. As I base my actions on this artificial world and then realize those actions in the real world and then interpret the results through the skewed translation to the mind, then of course I feel a disconnect and fundamental misunderstanding of the world around me!

So, now the question arises how much the body really is in conflict with "I" or whether those conflicts were anomalous results generated by the flawed mind filter. I am tempted to believe still that the conflicts are real and that "I" am different from my body. It is becoming increasingly confusing to try to describe who "I" am because so many traits and descriptions that most people provide are of the body self or the mind self, neither of which I consider to be my true self.

So, if I am not the body and I am not the mind, then what am I? The only thing I can think that is left is consciousness itself... am I really just a being of pure consciousness and if so, what is consciousness? Does it even have an independent existence or is it simply a fleeting property of interactions between other, more tangible forces which are not really me?

This also raises the question of agency (where agency is defined as the power to exert power or influence over your environment) is even really a property of "I" or whether I am merely observing the agentive powers of one of the other selves.

Wouldn't that be a simple way to solve the problem of free will vs. determinism? Simply stated, you do have agency if you take a broad definition of self, but you don't if you take the most narrow definition of what really constitutes the self. That is to say, the true "I" may not have agentive powers at all, but may, in the process of existing, observe other parts of the self (e.g. body, mind) which do have agentive power in the world.

So, if this theory of self being merely consciousness is true, what are the implications for how I should live my life? And if, through this thought process, my life changes, have "I" exerted agentive power over my life or have I merely changed my angle of observation? (feel free to interpret that concept in any physical/mystical/quantum/whatever way you choose)

Anthelion 9:16 PM

So, as many of you know, I am attempting to graduate this December. For what was supposed to be an easy semester given that I could freely pick all but two of my classes from nearly anything I wanted, somehow this semester has turned out to be the one in which I have the least free time out of any I've had. This has, in turn, made it difficult to make sure all of the technicalities and details necessary for graduation are taken care of. In this past week, by skipping pieces of work to buy myself some time, I managed to do the following:
* Verify that I do not have to apply for graduation, but only have the graduation check (did that last semester), have the correct graduation date set, and meet all of the graduation requirements
* Just today I finally managed to get my graduation date fixed by going through a small chain of command despite the system telling me I was past the deadline for changing it to this semester (it was previously listed as Spring 2007)
* As long as I pass all of my classes this semester, the only requirements left will be for the US and GA constitution credit. I am now registered for a November 17 free administration of these tests which they claim are graded quickly. I am seeking information from the person that changed my graduation date as to whether this will get the results in in time or whether I need to cancel that registration and just pay a fee to take the tests earlier to ensure that results are in in time. I also purchased the book to study for the GA constitution test (about $8) and still need to check out the book for the US constitution part (I don't need the whole book and don't want to pay for a full real text book for the portion I do need). So, now I just need to study for the tests (I did some sample questions and I definitely need to study to pass) and then get the results back in time.

So, I'm a few steps closer and so I should hopefully be able to pull it off. It'll be about time!

Anthelion 9:07 PM

Note: this post assumes that you have already read this post by Kenneth at least up until the point where he says that I left. This entry contains my perspectives on some pieces of that entry as well as some additional items not contained there.

Before the drive to the club:
For his fall break, Kenneth went down to Peachtree City and thinking it'd be fun to get the old four of that particular group that we had together, I went down for the weekend as well. Since it has been a long time (we estimated 2 years) since all of us have been together and it is a relatively rare occurrence due to everyone's living situations, we decided that it ought to be special.

A few days before the weekend, someone we knew from high school joined Facebook and mentioned in his profile that he is a doorman at the club Eleven50 and that he could get us on the guestlist.

For friday night, Andrew and Matt (the only two who still claim PTC as their residence) decided that they would go to their usual bar in Peachtree City. This idea appeased Kenneth who was surprised to hear they even have a decent bar in Peachtree City at all, however, it just didn't do it for me. I've been to that bar with Andrew and Matt before and to me it just felt like a restaurant without food. I was also hesitant to pay bar prices at a place like that.

So, when I saw the opening with the club, I immediately put plans into motion to replace bar night with club night. My assumption was that the only objections anyone might have would be the distance since cover charge was taken care of by getting on the guest list. Boy was I wrong!! Left and right came the objections and I grew extremely frustrated at the group. Some complained about how late it was, others about the dress code, etc. I got so frustrated by it all the night before that my reeling mind made me not be able to fall asleep until 3am.

We managed to take care of Kenneth's shirt objection relatively easily and I managed to convince him to buy shoes at wal-mart even if he had to return them the next day and that I'd pay for the damn things if I had to. We thought we had Andrew set and then found out his shoes weren't okay. He got all mopey because he couldn't wear his favourite shoes and we had to drag him out of that to convince him to buy some (with the intention of returning them the next day). During my night of frustration and ranting, Kenneth and I came up with a plan to make it happen. Anyone with objections either had to take care of them or stay home, period. Most of my frustration stemmed out of two things:
1. 90% of the objections being raised were, IMHO, so easily solvable that I couldn't understand why they were even being raised as possible blockers instead of just getting taken care of
2. Kenneth and I were going out of our way, driving long distances, and giving up much needed homework time in order to make the weekend nice and it seemed like certain other elements of the group weren't willing to go outside of their normal routine at all or take time off of work to have time to do things or anything.

By the time I finally got out of Athens, I was running late and through excessively frequent phone calls to multiple parties, I tried to make sure we were all set so that I could get to Matt's house, change my pants, and head out the door finishing the remainder of the changing in the car. On the way, I got a call from Emily saying that she wanted to be home by 1AM and so she wasn't sure we could still go. I restrained my wrath in that phone call and called Kenneth to make sure that Andrew and Emily had been told the rule about going (he was supposed to have, but I didn't want to take out my frustration on Emily if indeed, she hadn't been told). Lo and behold, she hadn't been told, so while I was frustrated as hell at getting one of those types of phone calls I had very, very specifically been trying to avoid getting before confirming our final count on the guest list, I couldn't be too mad at Emily since she hadn't been told. As I got to the border of PTC, I got a message from Andrew saying that I needed to pick him up at his house, take him to Wal-Mart to get shoes, and then to Matt's house. Why he hadn't taken care of this during the previous hour and a half that I'd been driving so that we could get out quickly I still don't understand.

At the club:
We walked in and the place was quite different than I had expected. Our first encounter there was to see that they had a bathroom attendant and we couldn't figure out whether we were supposed to tip him or not. I never ended up using the bathroom, but none of the rest of our group who did tipped the guy. I hope that was okay.

It's pretty embarrassing to admit it now, but from the pictures on the website, I expected a high-class, well-lit, jazz/classical music kind of place. Instead, it was dark, crowded, playing very loud hip hop music, with interesting lighting effects. With this atmosphere, the visualization screen on the back of the stage was almost hypnotizing. I looked around and I couldn't help but think "this is living" and how much better this was than the bar would have been and how glad I was that we managed to actually pull it off.

I had intended to get in free with the guest list and then start a tab on my credit card. Getting the drink vouchers was thus actually a problem because I had no cash to tip with and had to borrow from Andrew. Once I used up two of my three vouchers (we ran out of cash to tip with on the third one), I considered starting the tab then, but the drinks were very expensive and I wasn't sure that I could negotiate how to work a tab/do credit card purchases with the volume level in the club so I didn't keep drinking. Having more alcohol would have been better though because it would have helped me feel more like an organic part of the atmosphere which would have been absolutely mind-blowing.

During the episode where the girls asked us to dance, I thought it was interesting to watch how each of us behaved. Matt just started dancing like a madman loose as a drunkard with coordination intact, yet he's a complete teetotaler. I suppressed my doubts and my conscious mental inhibitions and just tried to dance (this was my method all night), however, my body felt very stiff and the joints fairly rigid, probably due to some less conscious inhibitions still exerting influence, so this prevented me from being as fluid as I would have liked. Kenneth, on the other hand, kept protesting that he didn't know what he was doing, etc. and all I could do was laugh and think that that is definitely not what you are supposed to do even if it is true and how in the not too distant past, I probably would have reacted identically to how he did. It was nice to see I've made even some small amount of progress.

I continued my rigid dancing attempts for most of the rest of the night with a slightly widened range of motion during the time that we actually got up on the stage.

The drive home:
We discovered that Matt couldn't make it through a single full song on his CDs without changing the song before it finished and there are probably 50 songs he told us we'd get back to later that we never did. I guess he owes us all of them and he'll just have to remember which all of them were himself. ;) Although we hadn't had much to drink, we tend to act crazy together even when sober (one time we even claimed to have gotten high off of potato chips). So, we sang along to songs like fools and I'm still trying to convince Matt to record his hilarious cover of Girls Just Want to Have Fun. I considered baring my bare ass out the window while we drove down the interstate to raise the hilarity factor, but talked myself out of this.

The days after:
Prior to leaving for Peachtree City, I had what could have turned out to be a big problem. My car wouldn't start and the first two attempts at jumpstarting it did nothing. I took my jumpstarter back inside and hooked it up to the wall to charge for a bit longer. Later I took it out again and this time the car jumpstarted. However, it wasn't with no cost. I had managed to place my right foot on a fire ant mound in sandals. I managed to brush them all off thinking it hurt and was annoying, but thinking nothing of it until the next day. I was limping around a bit because the bites hurt and I just figured they were sore. Matt's mother asked why I was limping and so I told her I stepped in an ant hill and that's when she pointed out how swollen my foot was. I hadn't even noticed. It was pretty gross and when I had tennis shoes on, it felt like the shoes had been filled with jelly prior to my foot going in, so I tended to stick to my sandals which didn't have the jelly feeling. It wasn't until 5 days later that the swelling went down enough that I could quit limping.

As testament to the sacrifice it had been for me to go, I was very stressed out the next week as I attempted to deal with school and the apartment without having gotten all of the tasks done that I normally got done in a weekend. I fell behind in classes and had to pass on my turn of reading in Sanskrit because I hadn't gotten far enough. By the end of the week, I had stressed myself right into one of my night migraines. The next day I was so tired that I managed to trip and fall up a short set of stairs.

This past weekend I was faced with the task of trying to catch up on all of that that I was behind on and despite the fact that I did fewer diversionary activities than on a normal weekend, I still kept busy the entire weekend and got less done than on a normal weekend. So, that led to this week, which contained a quiz, two tests, and a portion of a group paper due. So that kept me on full steam still until finally letting up earlier this evening, hence the blog flurry as I finally flush parts of my queue.

Anthelion 8:19 PM

What a weird world we live in. I discovered the other day that, at least in theory, if I was more mormon than I am and if I was gay then it could help me get married to a girl. Of course the girl would be a lesbian and the marriage would be purely utilitarian, but still.

Anthelion 8:17 PM

Friday, October 13, 2006

I have a distinct distaste for the police. That should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me, however. While I recognize and accept the need for them, that doesn't mean I have to like them or even respect them.

Wednesday night on my way to study group, I saw those flashing lights which strike fear into many a citizen. I wonder if any epileptic has ever had a seizure and the cop been held responsible for it or if they have done research to make sure the lights don't do that. So, I did as a video I saw online said to do and I pulled over, turned the car off, and put my hands on the steering wheel. Supposedly doing this instead of immediately digging for your license, etc. helps to establish a better rapport since the cop can see your hands. Afterall, every stop is potentially dangerous for him and to put at ease any anxiety that may cause right up front is likely to elicit a more favourable response. I couldn't remember from the video whether I was supposed to keep my hands on the steering wheel while he went back to his car to do the calls and paperwork so I chose to do so. He'd pulled me over because my car registration was expired. I did nothing to protest other than a simple "yeah, I've been meaning to take care of that" acknowledgment.

Other than the fact that he issued me a citation and the initial anxiety that one always feels when being pulled over by the police even when one knows exactly why it is happening, the encounter was painless and did not last a particularly long time.

I looked up the code that I was cited for to make sure that I couldn't contest it on a technicality, but it is pretty clearcut. So, today I swung by the courthouse to pay the fine and despite the short duration of my time in that building, it was an interesting experience. The first thing I had to do was go through security screening by metal detector. Prior to entering this I searched my purse to make sure that I didn't have the knife on me (I didn't). While this was a quick and innocuous procedure, it almost seems to serve more of a symbolic purpose of reminding you of the power over you that the government holds than its stated purpose of security.

Walking down to the fine desk, I passed numerous police officers walking around in the building as if they were simple office workers in any normal business save for their uniforms. Police officers play a strange role in society. On one hand they are normal people with otherwise normal lives, interests, and families. Yet on the other hand, they have this power to their role which is of course a cultural construct as any role is. The only real power they have is their physical strength and the weaponry they carry around. All of the rest of it is power that we give them through many levels of abstract representation.... and we respect it. Yet when you think about it, you really can't help but laugh at it and how seriously people take the roles into which they are placed despite the almost completely artificial nature of them. Police in the government really do bear remarkable similarities to clowns in the circus if one looks at it in a structural sense.

Then I got to the fine desk and they said that I couldn't pay it in person yet since I just got it so recently and it has to go to the police station first and then to a desk in their office before reaching the files from which it can be pulled for me to pay it. She even directed my gaze at this gateway desk in the office and the large stacks of paperwork still in queue. I couldn't help but be amused at the amount of ludicrous bureaucracy. What a shitty life it must be to waste away your life as a gear in that machinery.

Yet all of the players in this drama played their roles. The cops with their smug power trips and the clerks with their resigned orderliness. Even I played the accepting and responsible violator. I wonder if any of the players other than me were aware of the farcical and wholly artificial and ridiculous nature of the story we played out.

Anthelion 1:16 PM

Thursday, October 12, 2006

(22:54:44) Kenneth Ross: you make no sense sometimes. Most outside people would look at you as a nut job you know that.
(22:56:14) Me: lol, I am a nut job
(22:56:34) Kenneth Ross: i mean like the ones that they put in mential institutions

Okay, poll time... comment your answer. Do you think I'm bloody nuts?

And don't you just love how you can comment anonymously to protect your privacy, skew the results, or just post "you're fuckin' crazier than ol' Syd Barrett" 10,000 times and then hide your head snickering and thinking that nobody will realize that it is the same poor shit with too much free time?

Anthelion 11:19 PM

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Input:

Output:
You become an observer of life rather than a participant in it. Rather than movies being a representation of life, suddenly life is a movie and you are a character in it. The events of the movie can actually affect your state of being. You may be called upon to participate in the unfolding of events even in some menial way. You can't simply observe and this irritates you. You are no longer invisible. You notice that in your isolation your mental constructs of reality have begun to diverge from reality itself. This dissociation serves to amplify the perceptual effects. You realize that the movies seem more real than life does and that you can become more engrossed in them than in real life and that you do not feel the disconnect between the fantasy realities than you do in the real realities. When you watch movies, you learn about people, but because you are a non-entity observer, you do not apply any of these lessons to yourself or to the people in the reality movie. They don't operate the same and they kind of freak you out because they know you are there and they think of you just like any other character. Suddenly you are overwhelmed by self-awareness as you realize that you have flesh and are an entity. You wish to return to your non-existence and observation because honest to god real experience is too much for you.

That describes my night at the grocery store... and most other days and nights of my life.

Anthelion 8:57 PM

As most know, I think that one of the paths to enlightenment on earth is to constantly seek new information that does not fit into our mental conceptions of reality. As we accommodate (Piaget) this new information and as we get into the habit of constant accommodation, our minds become not only wider, but less rigid. This gives us the great advantage of being much more adaptable and much less judgmental. The positive implications of that are, I feel, self-evident.

One accommodation that I have had to make in the past half year or so has held particular interest to me for no particular reason. That is that the 4 seasons are not universal. In nearly every, if not every, western mythological system, there are myths about the seasons, so they take on an almost archetypal meaning to the western mind. However, not every place is configured thusly. Even some places in the modern western world do not have, for all intents and purposes, the 4 seasons. Other places have two: the rainy season and the dry season. In the book that I'm reading now (admittedly fiction, but still), the character relates that he once heard that temperate areas have 6 seasons: summer, autumn, locking, winter, unlocking, and spring. While I have now accepted that I must accommodate this information, I think that my fascination with it rests in the fact that my brain will try and re-evaluate all of the connections to it and figure out the implications of this widened view on culture.

Anthelion 3:03 PM