Categorical

“maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.”

[spqu]

shadowPages

What I’m talking about it is a piece of lacquer that chipped off of a cross-shaped nightlight that got caught in a spiderweb as it fell.  What I’m talking about is the creatine you drink every morning that you shoot out of a little shot glass from a university your sister went to that shares the same name as your high school so that you can feel a little stronger and get a little bigger because your soul no longer does that for you.  What I’m talking about is an animal who learned how to be a human who learned how to be an animal and not knowing which stage of that cycle your in and beginning to question the cycle itself.  What I mean is your lungs that learn to melt into sand and your breath that turns into sweat and your life that you’ve always almost figured out and that’s the beauty and the pain of it.  What I’m talking about is how to prepare for the darkness when you feel it.  How to prepare for the darkness you might not feel.  What to call the demons or the darkness or the shadows or the monsters or the pirouettes of flailing, flaming arms that spin in the distance and in front of your face that you can both grab and never will because what are your goals anyway?

What I know is nothing but what I’ll say is this: I’ve heard it said that man’s natural state can and should be happiness.  That his function is rationality.  That his labour is his purpose and the quality of his labour is his yardstick.  That the classical and the romantic can be reconciled but I add that the wolf that is our passion must not be tamed and must not be fed but must be loved.  For a tame wolf is a dog and a wild animal fed is betrayed.  

I have lied to you, my friends. I have betrayed you with my happiness.  Now I feel the darkness returning but I do not fear it - I welcome it and the calm and serenity it once brought me.  Darkness is what gives you dimension.  It is our advantage and in this way it is light.  

[spqu]

thriceLoved

Starts at the art show (flash forward) - Painter is showing Twice Loved. Cassandra is called up to the stage.  She stares at the painting.

I haven't worked in months

On separate occasions, I buy pencils, paper, paint, canvas, carving knife, soap etc. from an art supplies store

Painter does the same only just paint and canvas

We both try our hands at art: she hates all that she paints; I try all these different mediums and become frustrated (burn paper, smash canvas, throw soap into full bathtub).  I have fits of sickness

One day we're both in the art shop; she at the back, myself at the counter.  The owner tells me I need to fall in love with my art; the Painter overhears

I go out for drinks with Cassandra - tell her about my movie ideas and she encourages me… says that is what I am meant to do

I start writing and I fall in love with it.  

I hang out with Guido.  He loves the idea and wants to shoot it

He becomes busy and it slips through the cracks.  I feel like I'm disappointing Cassandra.  I get more sick.  The unmet need to create, the actualize myself, starts to eat away at me

I'm timid around her

Go to talk to Guido about the movie.  He bushes me off.  See Cassandra at a bar.  Make no attempt to talk to her.  Other girls approach me, I blow them off.  My friend asks why and I just look at Cassandra.  After she leaves, I turn around and come face to face with Andrew who is my manifestation:  "You know, we're getting tired of this.  When did you become so weak?" He pushes a finger into my eye.  I try to pull away but he follows me. "That won't do you any good." Camera pans around so for a second, my face replaces Andrew's. "So repressed.  It's making you sick, you know, the stress.  Making us sick.  It's causing lesions in your brain.  The pressures building.  Make the movie.  Get the girl.  Or we'll die." He disappears.  I'm left with a slight twitch in my eye.

I go to see Guido.  He begins to brush me off and I fall into my habit of accepting defeat when I see Andrew in a reflection and begin to feel sick.  I snap: "I need to make this movie, Guido!  And so do you!  Is that why you got into this?  To shoot advertisements?  To work for the corporations?  To sell bloody handbags?  I'm gonna die if I don't make this movie.  Now I don't know how literal that is but I'm going to behave as if that's the case.  So make this movie with me or kill me." "I'll be here at 8 tomorrow." Hugs him. Andrew points gun into mouth.

Gather up actors, film crew and begin pre-production.  Call Cassandra: "I need a makeup artist"

There are some very heavy scenes and I pull Cassandra in either to act or to demonstrate what I'm looking for.  I'm still timid around her but I'm growing stronger.  After one particular session I ask her out for drinks.

We go to a garden party with soft rock playing and I make her laugh at the bar (may tell her the one of my uncle who orders 2 shots)

The painter and her boyfriend are at the party as well, playfully filming each other, the party and the moon.

I ask her to dance.  She has her arms on my shoulders, holding one arm just below the elbow letting her hand dangle.  We talk and laugh more.   "You're the best thing in my life." We press our heads together (right side touching).  I lean my head down and rest my lips on her shoulder/neck. I look at her: "you're so simple and pure, but you're so complex and intricate." I talk into her left ear: "you're an atomic bomb and I just want to feel your energy - to see you soar through the sky…  and detonate… for all of us… but especially me." A server walks by with a stainless steel tray and I see Andrew far behind me.   "I'm obsessed with you… I can say that now because I'm an artist," I say half-laughing.  "If you feel the same way kiss my cheek and hold me tighter.  If not, just stay exactly as you are and we'll keep dancing" The camera pans around and she kisses me, leaving a lipstick stain on my cheek, and holds me tighter.  The camera pans around again and the stain vanishes - it was wishful thinking. She hardly moves.  I get emotional, tears well up.  The same happens to her.  Another server walks by and I can see Andrew's reflection again only now he is pointing the gun at me.  Her tear falls on my shoulder as people walk by carrying the Twice Loved painting and Andrew shoots.  My sickness returns in an instant and I violently cough blood onto it and collapse, dead.

Back to the first scene at the art gallery.  The Painter is talking about Twice Loved: the first love was her love for the painting - the reason she was successful.  The second love was my love.  The Painter romanticized my death saying I died of a love to strong.  Cassandra goes to see the painting.  The Painter recognizes her and calls her up, delighted she is there.  Cassandra stares at the painting first.  The camera pans around and she violently coughs blood onto the painting and Thrice Loved flashes across the screen.  The camera pans around again and she hasn't coughed but she is crying.  She says: "love or die."

[spqu]

Altruism&Flourishing

Let’s talk Oprah, shall we?

A polarizing figure, she has the love of mainstream America (read: North America) and the contempt of those who feel they are a notch above the masses: intellectuals and ‘true’ philanthropists who ‘see through’ the generous façade.  Her pocket book barely registers her charity work, they’ll say.  It’s a publicity stunt, they’ll say.  Some will more insidiously claim that it’s her way of endearing herself to the public without any real self-sacrifice because what’s a million to a billionaire?

Let’s conduct an experiment.

Say she makes a million a year.  After taxes, say 40% if she’s got some capital gains, tax shelters etc.  That’s $600k bank.  How much would she have to give away for us not to be able to criticize her?  Put another way, how much of that $600k is not hers?  How much can she justifiably keep?  Let’s first examine the arguments for charity. Why should we be charitable?  What’s the argument?  It could be that a fraction of the money we’ve earned has come about due to the ingenuity of our contemporaries and the geniuses that went before us.  As my father often says, we stand on the shoulders of our forefathers.  How much do we owe them for the lift?  

The argument here is that some of what we earn was not earned on the strength of our effort alone but the effort of countless individuals that gave us the tools, ideas, methods, mixtures, alloys etc. that have advanced our species and therefore, some of our earnings belong to humanity.  This argument of course is based on the tenant that we are only owed what our labour has produced, rather than what the market will bear.  Explanation: the market allows Oprah to charge a million dollars a year but her effort has not actually produced a million dollars worth of product.  

The amount owed to humanity is thus the charity portion of our revenue which does not, strictly speaking, belong to us.  Another argument for charity is that at a certain point, a person can accumulate enough wealth that further accumulation only allows for the pursuit of trivialities: a sort of diminishing returns scenario where the Good life has been attained and no further true value can be achieved through further increases in wealth.

With charity better defined, can we now agree upon an amount over which Oprah could justifiably claim true ownership?  Can we agree on an amount that she truly earned?  Is there any way to fairly assess how much of her earnings are the result of breakthroughs in broadcasting, recording equipment, televisions, electricity etc.?  Of course, there isn’t.  Charity (or philanthropy) driven by this type of argument is too esoteric to be scientifically examined.  It’s more a reason for charity than a rationale for specific amounts.  

For our second argument, how much is enough to secure a Good life?  At which point can we be said to be capable of thriving?  Is a $100k enough to live well on?  Surely more value can be added to a life with income over $100k.  What about $500k?  Should everyone making more than $500k find altruistic means of deploying the excess?  Would people making less than $500k then have no moral imperative to be charitable?  Obviously this argument falls short when we try to universalize it and I believe this is the crux of the entire debate: we cannot set a universal point at which all humans are capable of thriving, not because each individual needs more or less to secure a chance at a Good life but because there is no ceiling on the Good that can be achieved in life – there is no maximum level of flourishing.  

The amount of Good that can be attained is limited only to one’s creativity and capacity to extend one’s self to be more than an individual – to be a force.  It is not a given that money spent on necessities eventually gives way to money either spent on trivialities or charity.  There are other options that can take many forms, my favourite of which is altruistic investing, which is what I would brand the endeavours of Elon Musk, endeavours like SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, and the Hyperloop.  Of course, these are for-profit enterprises but they each have goals of human and ecological flourishing and balance as their mandate and I would argue that profitability is only a goal in so far as sustainability is a goal.  

The point is that we never have to stop being more if we wish to and as the illumination of our collective minds continues, it is my guess that more and more we will come to learn that there is a happiness greater than perfect comfort, a happiness greater even than happiness, which I believe is at once a state of humility as children of the earth, mastery over the wilds of the earth, and absolute boundary-less oneness with the energy of the earth as sentient stardust.