CONSPIRACY VS. ROBUST PETTINESS

Conspiracies are convenient, compelling, meaningless. They are the febrile machinations of busy brains fueled by suffocating fear and boundless confidence. The big forces that guide the hands of society are more mundane: bureaucracy, attrition, pettiness, our savage appetites. There's no master plan, no puppet strings, just chaos driven by the turbulence of everyday life. No one is out to get you; you just make things hard on yourself.

It is surmised that our escape from the primal muck into consciousness and social media was precipitated by pattern recognition. It is the genesis of intelligence. Our furry forebears who saw the tiger hidden in the grass lived longer than the others. Long enough to mash bits, calling more furry forebears into being, begetting another generation just slightly better at seeing tigers in the grass- or movements in the global markets indicating the coming apocalypse. Fear is the engine of change, even as fear of change is the death of society. Fucked either way.

Apophenia is the tendency to link together unconnected things, to see patterns where none exist. It's the codex of superstition. It's the falsework where we built religion, luck, quantum mechanics and all your weird rituals to ensure the Bruins win the Cup.

Everyone wants a guided hand: God, government, the Knights Templar. We want a reason for all this mess. Why is this happening? Who did this to me/us/that poor lady? 

If there's no one at the wheel, then we are careening out of control.

Clearly.

The Speed of Light

 Light moves so slowly.

An offending bumper sticker skitters by on the asphalt river. By the time this indignity slams your visual cortex and your addled synapses flip it and decode, it is ancient history. But now engaged, your brain must formulate a response. Droplets of an idea cohere, organize into sounds, syllables that erupt from your wet chamber. Words burst forth, an insult perhaps, a manhood challenge, a piercing insight into the foolhardy nature of displaying personal opinion on the asses of automobiles. Your words take all the longer to erupt because you breathe and sip and masticate with that same sloppy hole. Your mood lurches like a paddleboat making a lumbering turn in a fierce current. Now you are clever and sour and living in the past.

By the time the light reaches you, the moment is gone.

Light is slow, but unencumbered. We carry all everything with us. 

Drop your load, Sad Nomad. 

AlphaWussy

I miss stoic masculinity. Men worked hard, looked after their families and friends, their comrades and colleagues. Would-be alphas didn't whine constantly about feeling undervalued in the face of an ever-changing world. Hush yourself. Put down your phone and grab a hammer. 

Show up. Work hard. Get over yourself.

You were never special because of your pale skin or those dangly bits between your legs. What makes you special is the things you can do and the people you can help. Let's see it.

Pandemic Lesson #39

 No one lives forever.

Life is sacred, at least in the abstract. But living is so profane, riven with fluids, pain, and spasms. Death rules all fates, no matter our wealth or vanity. No ice chambered  brain, no decoded digital memory sponge will preserve this moment in your ballooning ego. Everything flickers out. You flicker. Out.

You are on your own now. Sleep tight, butterfly.

Pandemic Lesson #8

 Government should be based on reason.

Volcanoes v. Virgins

Do we throw our chaste children into the cauldron to appease the belching spirits of the scorched core or are we trying to save them from the sagging depravity of our failed humanity? Are they liberated from these terrible body appetites? Or are they destroyed incomplete, souls without pleasure, simmering with disappointment?

When the young body hits the rocks below, no matter our reasons, we are more and less like God.

Cable News v. Enlightenment

The 24 hour news cycle is an attempt at enlightenment. Social media aspires to the complete picture, a total awareness of the rich tapestry of humanity’s glorious weirdness. But our 10% brains are not up to the task. We need gaps, empty openings where we can rest, short solace amongst all this chaos. There is too much to take in, to comprehend, to assimilate into a survivable, generous world view. We quickly fall down a well of worry and dismay. It is probably better that I don’t know what strange desires and foul feelings slosh around in the cesspool of your sloppy heart. Your hypocrisy is plain to see without your Twitter feed. 

Shut that shit off, my creeper. 

Spider Silk v. Taco Tuesday

Spiders have talented little assholes. They consume the liquefied guts of bugs and produce the strongest material in the world. A strand more refined and flexible and stronger than the finest steel ever forged of fire. With no training they weave together impeccable designs, gorgeous networks that act as a home as well as a trap to capture their food. Some can even fly on their silk, sailing on air currents to set up life anew. Spiders transubstantiate mosquitoes into beautiful life. 

People eat tacos and make loose shits and Facebook posts. 

Turning Graves

That's not how you wear a shirt. 

God's an Octopus

My sister Carla is a renowned linguist and widely published researcher. She works for a car dealership megastore based in Portland. She believes that God lives in a tide pool on the Oregon coast, outside a town called Lincoln City.

“Surly atheists always badger Christians about the translations and versions of the Bible. How challenging it is to translate Aramaic and filter these complex concepts through all of history’s languages and cultures,“ she said. “Yet the real issue is that God would never rely on words to convey meaning.“

I asked if God speaks American.

“It’s that mundane!“ she said. “Every author thinks they’re God, but only because they create and destroy at will. Gods or not, authors struggle when they discover that their text has been misinterpreted. Except for the lazy ones- that conflate ambiguity with artistic integrity- authors want to be understood. God wants to be understood.

“Why would a benevolent, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator rely on syntax, grammar, and evolving languages to share its message?

“What holy being would exclude the very young, the illiterate? Or force them to rely on the learned to connect them with the divine?”

I guess that she does not subscribe to the notion of the revealed word of God.

“God is revealed in the armored intricacies of a chiton shell or the malleable beauty of an octopus,” she said. "Not in symbols pounded into the tissue of trees.

”Plus, I can tell God is not an author, because God stopped publishing! Writers can’t help themselves,” she explains. “Once they have an idea, they just write it over and over again. We'd be up to 2000 Bibles by now.”