dreamcatcher

[kyudu]

everglow

rows of candlesticks

tiny flames wavering,

quivering,

with uncertainty

within their being they are

ephemeral

non-particulate, discarnate

yet

declare their existence

assert their place

not by the unsure

transient

incorporeality

within their unsure flames

but by the potent glow

they so nonchalantly bathe the

walls

and wax

that they call home

.

for when that blackened, inconspicuous

puff of smoke wafts

to be lost in the atmosphere

forever

whether burnt to the wick

or snuffed out

too soon

what gives us our names?

if not

the light

that we were

and the walls

and the wax

that we made

ever so slightly

brighter

[kyudu]

tick

take a seat now

have a chug, have a smoke

habits, out of your control

relax

tock

fruits of your labour, thriving

strewn across continents

they soared, not escaped

tick

the sprint is over

it's a marathon now

longest timing wins, take your bow

tock

oh vile mortality, it insults you

taunts you with its babble, uncontrollable

you spit back

tick

the corporeal, relentless in its stagnance

a revolt, a sole victor where so many ceased

you laugh

for you breathe

tock

the world owes you, yet betrays you

imbeciles, I'm done

how dare you demand i do more

than to be

tick

tock

hear the groans

of seeing so much more than you have

tick

tock

of being so much more than you have

tick

t

[kyudu]

a speck falls

a drop in the ocean

too early, too late

troubled

distracted

he laughs

he cries

he dreams

he lives

whatever that means

the ocean speaks to him

tells him to seek out meaning, however he wants

laugh, cry, dream

and so he dreams of knowing the ocean

he dreams of understanding the drops, the waves

the chaos and calamity of laughing, crying, dreaming

and in so doing he finds the reason

for the serenity of the ocean despite this calamity

the drops don't mean shit

they could laugh, or they could not

they could cry, or they could not

they could dream

the waves will still flow

the ocean will still begin

the ocean will still end

the ocean never talked to him

the ocean is him

the ocean that doesn't exist

the speck

that doesn't exist

[kyudu]

time

an endless march

a boundless sea

all but a memory

time

a glimmer of hope, ever enduring

romanticised ephemeral reveries recurring

all that we are, legacy

souls, grasping

grasping for power

influence

satisfaction

happiness

time

gaze through the keyhole and see

the corridor

doors, boundless ambition, intoxicating possibility

entrancing purpose, meaning, more

a picture held from the other side

a lie

hope, a twisted concoction of the mind

tortures you at your own command

because you had the audacity to dream

recognize your dread of flitting, evanescent existence

and realize

why you hold that picture

on the other side

dread

time.

[kyudu]

*reads one philosophy book*

Something that’s really stuck out to me recently is the vast number of more obscure ways people deal with the dread of mortality. Sure, religious outlines of afterlifes and karmic scales, or adversely the strive for contentment with the null, plainness of the corporeal, will always be commonplace. Yet it seems to be a much more complex situation. Living by ambition itself has its nuances, these different ways of looking at it. It’s important to realize that a true understanding of this way of life implies that there is no dream too lofty. This is the part I feel many miss out on; there is no futility, no flawed ambition simply because in the expectant pursuit of that ambition, the ambition achieves its goal by awarding purpose to the wielder. Conversely, the very contention on the existence of a higher power seems to be for many a deciding factor as to whether life is even worth living. Kant (i think it was him) argues that the fact that man will end his life due to the dread that befalls him when he realizes the absurdity(pointlessness, kinda) of life, means that man is not meant to suffer the torment of conscious mortality, and therefore life is eternal. The character Kirilov in The Possessed, on the other hand is convinced god does not exist, and yet is convinced by traditional justifications that god must exist, and therefore concludes that he is god. He then kills himself to become god in a revolt of a logical suicide. :)

It does seem that this externalization of purpose can be rather destructive, even in a modern context. Being that reliant on a shared concept of a planned existence as the paramount goal of life seems intensely unreliable, and moreover places one in a particularly manipulatable position. This is not to say that religious levity should be the answer for everyone. No blind faith nor theistic effrontery will ever solely bear an answer to the meaning of life. My argument here is of the importance of not having just one source of justification for living, no matter how solid the philosophy may be.

[kyudu]

~ramblings

Does the way we divide ourselves not restrain the way we progress? The cruel misfortunes of the time at which we exist allow us to effortlessly divide ourselves by oceans, diatracted. Propositions of species-wide unity in control often scoffed at, but would a similar response not be provoked by the suggestion of our current state to some humans on lands a fraction of the size of ours if they did exist? Conversely, what would an existence on, say, Pangaea, mean for us? With the self destructive nature of our race, borders as those we see now would surely form, but could a hypothetical existence allow unity on a far greater scale, where ambition of proper advancement is unhindered? For what is humanity if not a dreamer And yet now the dreamer lies, debilitated, plagued by its greatest distraction, itself. Unification of a race may be one of our less far fetched fantasies, even in our current state. After all, it may very well be a necessary step in our next phase of evolving as a civilisation.

Examining the zoo hypothesis, for instance, being such a plausible answer to the Fermi Paradox - Despite criticisms, do we not as a developed species treat indigenous tribes similarly, avoiding contact so as not to interrupt their intellectual evolution? Is it then so unfeasible to assume that we, the Amazonians of the galaxy, would be treated with similar restrictions? We may view our technological advancements as somewhat breaking the rules of nature, transcending natural order. But could such extraterrestrials who have achieved, perhaps, FTL with alcubierre-warps, or Dyson sphere - esque structures to power their civilisations, not look upon us as we look upon the sluggish development of macaques using stones? Our breakthroughs adorable trifles, our world wars but childish squabbles? If so, with all our technological advancements and research being viewed as 'natural', would self destruction not simply be viewed as a natural selection of sorts for advanced civilisations? After all, is extinction itself not natural? This would preserve some form of the pre filter solution, perhaps preventing self-destruction by ones own hand is simply a test some civilisations fail, while others pass, and is seen as such a crucial sign of development that the results of which simply cannot be tampered with.

Is it so hard then to give ourselves such an environment that we can truly advance, pull ourselves out of this stagnated state we exist in now? Assuming the zoo hypothesis holds true, from our position it would be impossible to tell how near we currently stand to each point, unification and self-destruction, relative to other civilisations. However current acts of governments and organized masses may lead one to question whether it would truly be for the better for humanity to achieve such an advancement to a species that sustainably inhabits other planets, assumed to be the next step from here.

[kyudu]

torrent

petrichor, present but untraceable flushed out by what makes it chaos and an air of peace, both present not at odds with one another, rather existing as a duality, completing each other, forming a single whole

The same duality exists between the calm roar of nature, and the relentless whir of mankind's Frankenstein. A balance exists now, but as the world secretly knows, not for long.

An Icarus of its kind, developing complexity just great enough to engineer its own doom, by the hand of a dying host. In their form of existence they deny their future of such a luxury. Ripping more resources from the host, in a desperate attempt to infect a new one, pathetically travelling inches in the needed miles, seconds in the necessary centuries. Water, in its fluid nature, struggles around man's obstruction, but eventually finds its way back home. But man's creation, rigid and unforgiving, its future can already be seen, in the many pieces it will one day form.

[kyudu]

1984: a book review of sorts

Goldstein's deconstruction of the world they lived in I feel was the first harrowing point in the book where the sort of childish aspiration Winston has is replaced with the impossible nature of defeating the Party, of freedom. Despite this, the hope still somehow embodies itself in the defiance of simply existing, and Winston & Julia still believe living as a non compliant body is in itself enough, and this is where a different form of hope; hope not for a better life for oneself but for some distant, future generation takes place, and a separation from just themselves, and most forms of self preservation, takes place and is replaced with a 'greater good' type mindset(take note) further emphasized when Winston agrees to perform all sorts of atrocities and abandonments without question for the brotherhood, albeit a line is drawn when it threatens to split Julia and Winston.

Fast forward to the capture, O'Brien's portrayal of the party attempts to draw parallels to the brotherhood, although to a much greater extreme, with such firm beliefs in the party that one dissociates from the personal, physical self. A main theme emphasized in this monologue is that the party had 'perfected' the 'cause greater than oneself' idea, and had attained immortality by the only means possible; sacrificing their being entirely, wholly surrendering to something greater than themselves, avoiding, escaping and ultimately beating mortality by never having lived in the first place (this is where the dystopian setting kinda peaks). This is the greater good concept embodied by the brotherhood stuff taken to the greatest extreme possible, only it isn't so much a greater good as it is utter power, control and immortality, but nevertheless inner party members essentially surrender, in essence, living, to achieve it. The struggle between this, all that the party stands for, and it's direct opposite, human nature, is a prevalant theme throughout the book but peaks in the torture scene, where being represented in Winston and having all but been defeated, human nature pulls its last card. For what is the ultimate, most unbreakable aspect of human nature if not love? While quick to abandon himself and all causes in a heartbeat when the threat of the much dreaded torture begins, Winston clings to love as his hail mary, certain that it will remain the one aspect of his human nature that is unbroken by the party. Even when presented with the brotherhood, a cause he had lived for even before knowing it, and was willing to give up anything and everything for it, safety, morals, whatever, a line was clearly drawn when it threatened love. Even Julia's first contact with him, the note saying I love you, marked the beginning of any real moves against the party and all it stood for. Love was the fibre that the whole fantasy of rebellion was built around. Love is the final aspect of human nature that the party had yet to kill, but almost could(neuroscience department working on disabling the orgasm etc.) And so, when Winston betrays love to his greatest fear (ngl rats eating your face out is some nasty shit), that's when the party has won, Winston loses his human nature, his humanity. When the couple meet again and admit that it's not the same since they both sold each other out, it officially marks the party's victory over love, and so, over human nature. It's clear that with the hopeless ending Orwell gives this book, he is (I feel) attempting to dethrone love, and so human nature and its unwavering mien. The party is a being greater than man, and has in its power destroyed logic (2+2=5 and that whole drama), and destroyed human nature, and so all of humanity on Oceania is the party, a whole different form of existence. 

Besides this form of existence being both miserable and morally incorrect, I struggled for a while with this concept. Is a certain version of this existence not an ideal strived for in today's context? While I'm glad that modernity has found itself at an equilibrium point in a state of peace, instead of an equilibrium point in war and chaos as it is in the book(just imagine I'm writing this in 2019 not 2020), I'm still troubled by the concept of a body, made of individuals prompted to have a depersonalised view to a certain extent, being a very real occurence in today's world. Ideas of country/nation and religion do carry this idea, albeit to a very small extent, but it's still worrying that this exists in the real world. The only satisfactory conclusion I can reach us that the ideas of the party are not entirely outlandish, just vastly immoral and extremely flawed in certain areas(like power being their goal), and it is in fact an amped up, inherently flawed iteration of society as we see it today. Whether society today and an ideal society are that similar is not a question I could hope to answer for myself in one night, or with a single book. 

Anyway, back to the theme of love, Orwell seemingly marks the end of human nature, and it's defeat by the party, with the end of love. While I think most would see this as him making a solid point on the  frailty and all round brittleness of human nature in the face of such a collective organism, thereby establishing the fallacy in leading a life purely by such nature, I beg to differ. Me, being the hopeless romantic I am, would argue against the authenticity of Winston and Julia's love in the first place. From the inorganic, sporadic beginning of their relationship, to their never truly connecting on an emotional level but merely finding solace in a like-minded partner, one which they have both spent a lifetime searching for, to finally Winston's secretly doubting himself, under many layers of subconscious, in the authenticity of his love for Julia, when they're finally caught. In this situation Winston simply decides that he would never betray love, subconsciously noticing that he is simply doing this because he feels it is what he should do, instead of feeling with all his heart that he must. Winston hangs onto love because it is the easiest representation of the preservation of humanity, of instinct, that he hopes to live his final days by. Because if he is without this, this one belief that he will certainly die for, then he is dying for nothing, and his subconscious simply will not let him believe that. But it's true. Though certainly a buzzkill, believing the protagonist is flawed in the most intense aspect of what he has stood for, I feel it offers some closure as an alternative to what Orwell has given as a conclusion to the story, which emphasizes the fallacies in human nature itself.