Click. 2 seconds. No - four. Infinite time between thoughts.

Click. We’re in a mess, now, aren’t we?

Click. They’ll be trying to sell big business to little people.

Click. Oh, you’re really out of time, aren’t you? So much for our partnership. I, alone, am

Bang.

You thought it would end? Check this out…

I just caught on:

I’m living off my myself in some form of cannibalism - I’ve got more to eat / there is energy with no potentiation / cancer, from the depths of an imagined abyss / accretion

I am listening to other people cough - am I killing myself with cigarettes, or am I killing them?

Do they hear me coughing as I hear them?

What does the devil say to himself?

To clarify, I do not believe that I have answers. The answers, like the questions which would precede them, are obvious to the point of hardly mattering. The experience of what will come is what matters-just as journey is more than its destination. The passage of time is more than the sum of its parts. Every combination is being tried, and eventually every combination will have been tried-once every possibility is exhausted nothing will be tried. In the void all will begin to take shape as before.

I remember it and continue to sometimes see it in a flickering white light at the center of my field of vision. Sometimes the light will grow in intensity, as though I am watching an explosion of light and energy dissipate into my surroundings. At other times I simply see moments in time, brief though complete sensations of seeing, hearing, touching, breathing, even thinking which occur simultaneously with the uninterrupted flow of input from my immediate surroundings. It is at these times that my breath escapes me, the immediate world suddenly dims, and my thoughts scramble to make sense of what I have just seen.

The particular experience that just struck me was somewhat familiar-in its first part I am realizing that I will often be misunderstood, that my world is completely inaccessible to any others (all this is incumbent upon having any kind of ego differentiation, after all) and then I am acutely aware of a particular instance of this occurring, namely, as I walked down 4th Avenue in O***** (headed downtown) with two of my friends. It was at that time that I saw the glimmer of light and for less than a second was overtaken by all time and space suddenly dissolving. While walking I was thrown into an absolute vacuum, seeing only the light, and then being jerked back into my next step.

What significance this particular aspect holds I cannot say at this time, for (as before) I only have pieces of a much grander tapestry to review. I intend to return to this topic later, as I do not doubt I will continue to experience these apparent lapses of cognition (into a far more interesting understanding, from my perspective).

What constitutes something artful?

Is art the glamour of intellectual repose, the sparkling façade of self-examination?

Is art merely a mirror through which humans view themselves, choosing to see the things they find most poignant?

To catch someone convincing his or herself that he or she is prepared to face the world and perhaps, just once, conquer-this trick must be art. More than mirroring the emotion of the subject, this kind of display invokes the imagination of the observer.

Art should be more than a glimpse into the deeper emotion and thinking of the subject (or the human/divine elements of the subject’s existence, for that matter) and, instead, blankness - an emptiness begging to be filled by the conjecture of those who choose to look.

Art, to many, is a self-asserting presence; it is designed to be appealing and thence it generates appeal, but art can be more overwhelming when it is considered an unwilling participant in the observation; it wishes to hide itself from the spectator and will only share its true and highly subjective meaning with the unabashed seeker.

We need only exist in a world full of opposing forces, of conflicts and short-lived resolutions, to appreciate the trick.

Nobody knew where they came from - as a whole, they never really came from anywhere - they were non-entities drifting from the stuffy abscesses of the Midwest and into our stoned state’s capitol like flecks of dust, out of nowhere, into your eye.

I mention them because, as things turned out on this numbing February afternoon, I was admiring their handiwork spattered over a mural off of State Ave - they had really gone out of their way, taken their time. This went beyond the abandoned clothes laced with syringes, the torn paper bags, the broken glass, and the occasional pile of junkie vomit.

“That’s shirt art.” said one of my comrades, gesturing toward the crusty filth which caked and obscured a ridiculously-colorful mural. My mind immediately produced the image of one of the jabbering hobos crudely removing a fistful of feces from his stained coveralls and unleashing his pièce de résistance, savagely grinning as he expressed himself over the mural’s imagery of smiling people and cloudless skies.

Though I was taken aback by its form, I had to agree with the shit art’s content and its underlying statement.

“They do that in jails and prisons, I hear.” said J******, pulling his knit wool cap down over his ears.

I wondered if anyone else suspected Olympia, Washington to be a penal colony just now; some labored (like myself) at menial dead-end jobs, others found themselves laid off from the menial jobs they knew, still others mumbled as they wandered the streets and attempted to find some warmth for their hands by digging deep into their pockets, keeping an eye out for police cruisers.

We had all - at one time or another - been to solitary places. We had all been stuck in dismal little rooms, feeling the full weight of the uncertain future, with no one to tell about it. I knew that this day could have yielded the latter and felt inwardly relieved that I had escaped the gravity of my entropic internal dialog.

A pointless question, from a physical perspective, but one of great interest to one who is fascinated by semantic logic. It is, of course, an impossibility-the existence of an unstoppable force precludes an immoveable object and vice versa. For this, it really only appears to be a paradox. In reality, it is more of a contradiction in terms (unlike a paradox it does not have a logical basis).

Contradictions are the impasse, at the moment. I have only too many wonderful and exciting ideas in my head, but none so great that they can be penned. Meaning, of course, I only think I have something to say.

I feel driven to express what I see as sociological and psychological paradigms-the very mechanism of thinking and unnoticed interpersonal dynamics. Then I come back to a slew of ever-more confusing questions which I have yet to answer with my current understandings. What point could there be in proposing, even satirizing, a viewpoint if I am still skeptical of whether or not such a viewpoint is tenable? Have I reached my current understandings through delusion, misinformation, or simple ignorance?

Do people honestly believe that there is sense behind the workings of this world, that “rules” exist? If so, should I be ridiculing them for claiming to possess something I might be bitterly covetous of?

so it seems like familiar territory, all of it. the scope of my thoughts and the range of my feeling. experience’s freshness giving way to a bland, slightly sour aftertaste of over-indulgence.

of course, i might just be saying that-and who’s to say i ever felt differently or even felt this way..? existential trickery… i don’t fully grasp what my character represents, but the show goes on.

revision of previous idea… liken an individual’s psyche to a community-experiment with changing circumstances. (strange concept… that each person may represent a divergent personality in the fractured mind of ..? you? me? is there anyone who could be responsible, or are we all partially responsible despite our ignorance of the “big picture”?)

it didn’t seem like an ordinary nightmare-i don’t feel particularly bothered by it.