hey tully, this is my friend lauren’s writing
It Doesn’t Take a Chicken to Realize
By. Lauren Lim
That
the sky is falling is obvious. I know that you know. All I’m saying is
that you might know that the sky is falling, but one eventually becomes
comfortable with this kind of information and forgets to think and act
accordingly.
Oh no, this isn’t a call to action; there are
plenty of those generally ineffective pieces of work out there already.
And I’m not saying this for the benefit of those who need a hundred
thousand scientists to agree and “know” beyond a doubt what common
sense could tell them. I’m simply making an observation to myself in
your presence.
Look up. The sky is falling. See the rents over
there? See the deep, bleeding gashes? Oh, and over there. When that
flap moves in the wind, you can see what’s behind it. I can’t look at
that void without becoming weak in the knees. I understand now why
children are afraid of the dark. They must’ve seen this darkness, ready
to devour us, reminding us of how pathetically flawed and mortal we are.
We’ve
all seen these cracks in the sky at some point—even, especially the
Deniers. Somehow, the fact that the sky is falling has become a
banality. As old news as iceberg salad. Nobody wants to hear about the
innumerous, invariable rifts anymore: suicide bombings in Iraq, the
threatened extinction of one sixth of all European mammals, genocide in
Darfur, increased incidences of type II diabetes in youth, school
shootings beginning with the purchase of firearms from supermarkets and
ending with the self-inflicted deaths of the gunmen, corrupt
politicians in [insert place here] who don’t give a damn about [insert
something, someone here]. There is broad consensus in the following
words: Try a little harder to dish up something that doesn’t bore us to
tears. So the sky is falling. Let us know when it lands at our feet.
Because
of course we can hear the distant crackles and booms, the distinct
sound of ripping; of course we have seen the sky throwing itself down
to earth, heartbroken. We can’t get away from it. Who can forget the
oil slicked cormorants after Exxon Valdez, or the wails of the black
and the poor once they discovered their safe haven a different kind of
hell after the Hurricane, or the distended bellies and walking
skeletons of Ethiopian famine, or the shivering homeless thrusting
forth their paper cups for alms on the streets of San Francisco, or the
execution of Tookie Williams who was nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize five times, or polar bears drowning from exhaustion.
Lauren Lim is
a schoolmarm biding her time in the remote Bialowieza Forest in eastern
Poland. When she’s not homesick for the food and slang of San
Francisco, she hovers over the laptop and pretends to be busy writing
gory fairy tales and grim polemics. Except for the part about the grim
polemics, and actually, the fairy tales aren’t very gory.
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this is post-writing
this writing is a joke about the logic of various things, which, for affect, will not be named. what?
as you get to know me, first you will find a layer of jocularity (and maybe even cockiness) and then you will find a layer of strength and confidence and candor, and then you will find a layer of tenderness, and then you will find a layer of invested philosophic, and then you will find a layer of playfulness, and then you will find a layer of serious wax poetic, and then you will find a curiosity, and then finally you will begin to see that there is nothing there.
i am one of those people who knows what he truly wants and am therefore quite disgusted with myself. but this disgust does not mean self-hate nor lack of self-esteem, it just means a new kind of honesty is flowering here. for me, at least.
i appreciate american culture for what i am and for what my friends are, but not much beyond that.
these rambles exceed themselves.
ive pursued my shit behind closed doors.
sticking to the key points whilst being sharp to the details.
when things are in the arena of understood illusion people do not hesitate to be or say anything, if only they knew it was always the case. there is no leaving the cage.
of course, this is autobiographical, when will you fuck off?
how many people have the noble gall to penetrate to the heart of the glutton and the fool and answer why?
what you want to change into is unimportant, things will change, and you will act accordingly.
and now for a change of pace: a few thoughts on SUSTAINABILITY !! (which I know is minhs favorite subject ;P)
People exchange their goods and services for money because money will promise them other goods and services that they need. Traditionally, people would only spend what they think they could replace by selling their own goods and services and expending their own energy. Therefore value was created in that you are saying “how much life energy would I expend in order to have that”. But with the U.S. the rich have gotten super rich and can spend as much as they want without ever needing to produce anything to replenish their money supply.
Really their money is only worth anything if the producers of the basic goods and services want their money to buy other goods and services. Eeveryone needs basic goods like food, shelter, and clothing. The rich have money but aren’t producing any of these things. The thing is, money loses its value and becomes instable when a person doesn’t have to produce and sell his own stuff to replenish what he has spent. Because whether on the global or local level, you need to have enough people producing. If a rich person comes into a community and spends his money but doesn’t produce anything for that community, what he’s really only adding to the community is money. Hypothetically, if the community couldn’t go and spend that money outside the community to get their needs met, then those producing the goods are needing to price their goods higher to make the amount of money they need to then go and purchase goods from the other producers. Really, in an economy, everyone needs to have production power, whether it is a good or a service.
The environmental argument, however, is that those who aren’t producing goods that are actual necessities to life will eventually be left in the dust. For example, pretty much most people in the corporate world.
Because how long can we always depend on our ability to purchase things outside the community? Will there always be a farm three thousand miles away that can produce food for us? Will there always be enough oil to transport our food? If you had a community of people and everyone was had money but no one could produce things, obviously money would be worthless. And that’s basically what’s happening with our society. We have trusted the ability to produce things to outside corporations who don’t exist within our community, and these outside corporations take from the planet more than the planet can give. Whereas who produce basic goods and services within the community, such as farmers, are becoming rarer and rarer because so few farmers can make enough money to buy those goods and services that come from outside the community. Though selling a tomato won’t go very far selling in the global system, a tomato will always be worth a tomato and, and in the local system it will be worth quite a bit when we see that the Earth can no longer handle the big corporations. People will start looking locally, and a farmer will be able to use his tomato to trade and get everything he needs within that community and the people who don’t produce goods as crucial might be struggling.
Unless you think the Earth and society can support always bigger, always more resource exhaustive, and always more complex systems of producing food and getting it around, it seems as though farmers are going to get more powerful…
more cloth! for the project! more cloth!
spinning chaos comes crashing down into vision. dirtied states become pure on site and the once, untainted pure style (beyond this language) shall be deconstructed, no, rather disaasembled to be exact. and yet the sources of the burgeoning beauties comes surging and pouring forth from the depths of the oceanic feelings of a thousand generations who may not understand at all.
i like things that were made to die.
don’t be silly about sarcasm.
guess what? you don’t know everything. partly because there is nothing to know, but there are also other factors.
how does lust support the ego?
how is alcoholic escapism different from meditative escapism? or how is alcoholic presence different from meditative presence?
not one day of my life have i followed my heart and instead have set about discovering what heart is.
i don’t believe in being opposed to things…hm…oops!
and then you will see that even the universe has never lied.
im not sure if it’s even my right to judge even what some would consider to be the evilest man.
i can only be either deep or funny.
it’s not that you deserved it, but to what extent have you played your cards right?
a stealth buddhist hidden in the heart of buddha.
depth without irony is not depth.
i write lessons that i need to learn before i’ve learned them.
i find evidence of myself in places i’ve already been.
one grief is no greater than another.
the dangerous outline of an all-too-sane man
i am taking myself by the hand and dragging myself up the slopes of myself to the peak of myself to find myself and then to look out into myself to jump off the cliff of myself to fall into myself to catch myself to dive into myself to drown in myself to bait myself to hook myself to fish for myself in the ocean of myself to bring myself home to weigh myself to save some of myself later so that i can grill some of myself so i can eat a bit of myself so i can digest myself so i can get a stomache with myself and vomit myself so i can fall back in disgust with myself and then look deep into the walls of myself and wonder about myself and wonder: why? myself?
i would let you kill me to show you how violent you truly are.
how can the monk know man if he is truly not a man. after all, what is the business of a monk? the monk cannot know the trials of society if he has not lived through them. how can he suppose to help the populace if he himself does not understand the very contours of the beating soul of the common persons out there and out here? but no, his is not the business of saving souls but rather to surge forth into the reality of himself and to serve those things which are not self and other, and beyond you and me.
the monk, assuming he is a good monk, does not concern himself with this world, and he also does not concern himself with that world but rather maintains something we ought not to touch with our predispositions, yet we cannot help but yearn to know what it is, and thus step into folly.
he seldom speaks for good reason. after all, what would knowing what he is about give us anyway? and yet there are those who finally let it slip and give us hints here and there.
i have written it before i have written it.
although these sentences are unto their own in speaking for themselves and all have equal rights to the throne, they each play a role as a knot in the web of other equally telling sentences. and this is one of them.
i like people who take your invitation to answer your question and turn it into an opportunity to teach you something that adds to your perspective because when you asked your question they saw where you were coming from because in a way you did not give him or her the benefit of the doubt whereas they did and do and if you are perceptive enough you may open up to what it could mean to share instead of pretending to be interested in another person while actually pushing on them your current ways of thinking.
it is itself quite frankly.
i don’t want to end up writing another cosmic anatomy for someone else to dissect.
i can’t keep up with the world, so i won’t.
a million times something has come at me, and a million times i have forgotten what i have understood before i have even comprehended it.
the unadulterated twisting of your mind without you knowing it is a golden moment. it is poetry laid plane in abstract.
embue whatever it is with mystery.
i stand in the place before labeling has occurred.
i write a metaphor for you to understand an abstract idea of mine, but lets forget the abstract idea and fall in love with the metaphor literally.
i plant the seed in you, to water the roots, to admire the leaves, to smell the flowers, to pick the fruits, to chop you down.
if i’ve offended you in some way in my writing or caused you to get defensive in some way than my writing has been effective and you have taken it personally. fuck you.
“notes for a film” or “notes for a matrix knock off”
He stops, before entering the door, upon seeing a contorted version of his face on the glass window pane. Moment of deja vu: had he been to this door before? Familiar, like revisiting a dream he had, but he couldn’t remember any dream that went like this…
Perhaps a forgotten memory from a past life, or data on a stray piece of film floating in the continuum of space and time. Unfinished business to take care of? Do our lives consist of us replaying same events over and over again until we can take care of this “unfinished business?” Hacking into the samsaric mainframe is impossible, unfortunately.
The mind is akin to a camera that has been recording since time began will record until time ends. Unfortunately we’ve gotten obsessed with the contents of the film But sometimes the universe encounters a glitch: it’s when the film that contains our next dream sequence (the production of his knock, that would get the resident to come to the door) gets stuck on the reel. W(ho knows why this is: it’s the same reason that one out of every million DNA that gets made has a genetic mutation.) So when the reel gets stuck, this is a good moment to rip open the curtains and expose that Wizard of Oz that’s orchestrating this illusion. Be careful though: you gotta beat the wizard before he can fool you with another projection. Otherwise, before you know it you’ll be walking into that house and talking with that man and it’ll be a good dream or a nightmare depending on your karma. Ill spell it out again: sometimes we think we’ve exposed the workings of the universe t we’ve really just woken up into another dream. In my life, I’ve stood at the door, had the deja vu, and a producer of my movie came out from behind a scene and said “that’s a wrap, folks”. I felt such great relief as I stepped off the stage and went home. Soon I fell into a deep dreamless slumber, didn’t need to question anything. Fooled, I wasted 4 lifetimes like that.
I said it once and I’ll say it again. When that Wizard of Oz fumbles, throw open the curtains and rip the film off the projector. Expose that evil bastard and acquire your shining destiny into your outstretched palms and the vast horizon of the universe will open up to you. You will glimpse the origin of the universe, you will see the path that time has taken thus far, and it will all make sense why this is a culminating moment.
unalienated tapestries
i cannot believe that after all these years we are now charged to dismantle everything our sagely precursors strived so hard to set up. have things become so tainted now that we must continuously put things through the dishwasher? we are in such a dire situation that i cannot hold the precious stones up to the light anymore without getting a few power failures along the way to clarity. and there will come a time when i will have to say ‘i can hide no longer’ and on such a day my back will have broken in desperation because i do not want to reveal the secrets of my cosmic understanding to you because you were given a likewise important prophecy of which it is also not necessary to share. we need not proceed into thinking we are endowed with things our friends are not. i have always been perplexed by the need to lay claim to one thing or another. it is this very slight transgression that has driven me from city to forest, from palace to dungeon. i cannot claim to not partake in this ever-so-slightly despicable vacuum but my distaste for it is such that i would rather not assert anything about such things or at least cultivate a deeper awareness of my sin and await the day when my nudity is compulsory. such is the state of things i am amidst.
i took the ball and squished it so hard that it popped out into another dimension.
i am doing the same to you.
find yourself early in the morning.
develop a knack for making the deep light.
try to make every conversation a new kind of conversation.
i am very frightened of people who give unwanted, unasked for advice. they are people who think they know what is right for others. that’s horrific.
the things you want the universe to be, the universe did not ask to be.
am i going to be the only one who is finally going to tell you that you don’t know what you’re talking about? and that what you’re about is not what it’s all about? and i’m a stranger! aren’t our friends supposed to tell us that?
when i’m sweeping the floor, and the ants seem to float along with the dirt i usually call that my little “relocation program”.
answer me when you have entered my neck of the woods.
i am a brief moment in suspicion.
i am superior to everything i was. yet inferior to everything i will be.
it’s more profound if you think that everything i say about a “you” considers all of you, with no exceptions. Because i am responding to everything i feel and see in everybody.
for your benefit, the definition of the word: “arbitrary”: (of an action, a decision, a rule, etc.) not seeming to be based on a reason, system or plan and sometimes seeming unfair.
sometimes i get this distinct feeling that all the bases have been covered and proceeding any further into or at things would just be extra effort.
it’s hard to find things without inherent hypocrisy. i wonder if things merely existing is alone hypocrisy.
i can’t keep up with the world, so i won’t.
it has spoken to you before you have read it.
i write anthems that do not sing notes.
i live in the dying utopia.
i proceed and let loose into not knowing.
the unadulterated twisting of your mind without you knowing it is a golden moment. it is poetry laid plane in abstract.
a million times something has come at me, and a million times i have forgotten what i have understood before i have comprehended it.
don’t get stuck on your own style.
the beauty of words like “I”, “me”, “myself”, “you”, etc. is that they are, at first glance simple, commonplace, but on second glance quite all-encompassing words whose meaning can be stretched beyond limits. Since pronouns are, more often than not, the center of attention of a literary expose, they can be surrounded by words that stretch them, suffuse them, transform them, obliterate them, etc. They are in an interesting central place in the english language and can be used accordingly. They each have an abstract multi-dimensional story to tell. Where the word “heart” is already imbued with a certain evocative quality, “I” must have evocative quality shoved down its throat. the results of an adulterated pronoun can be quite staggering compared to words that are endowed. much of my writing in the past few months has basically been an important examination/experimentation/exploration of the power of the pronoun. you is a pronoun. you are a pronoun.
yoh
I wrote a post saying I liked your stuff and you have a really great voice going and that my stuff is on a computer without internet but I hope to post it soon when I get internet at my house.
and then i gave you my blessings ,
and then I lost my post when the internet went out.
But that’s pretty much it.
from the heart,
Tully
