The waves ebbed and flowed. Reality hesitated only briefly before slinking away into the pitch of night. He sat upon the hillock and stretched his shoulders. Flowing at the base of his isolation, impossible winds of magic unfurled into science, then back again. This time, they were a suitable colour, white to purple.
All through the universe, the Tide returned, bringing new strangeness from the most unknowable depths. It had happened before, and it would happen again. The chaos would roil and the struggle would recommence. Some doors would open while others shut. The spring cleaning of the universe would begin, and it has been so long since the last. The dust is thick on the floor and the tongue. The dimensions would ripple as fabric, and fractals would open and close like shutters. The need would soon be ushered into existence. To struggle for survival, to struggle for primacy. It was all that would be important as the storm rushed closer to its culmination.
It came without heralds or warnings. Every being would be tested. Some would prevail, the others would fall. Into death, into oblivion or into an unfathomable shifting eternity, where identity is shed like a negligee. The floodplain would fill once more and the short lived creatures would be plunged into a new environment, terrifying but full of promise. Evolution would find a new path open.
Alone on the grassy hillock, he looked up into the star pricked sky and felt the wisps of cloud gently send the moonlight toward him. Sword or rifle; mind or emotion. All his weapons were ready. He would ride the wave like he always did. The Paragon would embrace chaos as it rolled into his core, he would change it, alter it, order it. He would make it his once more.
It was a storm, a cleaning, it was everything but it was only one thing. It was the Tide. It was arbitrary in its presence. Blink and you would miss its speed.
The pressure of physics broke free and he closed his eyes to feel the strangeness. The rebirth would soon be complete. The air tasted fresh and new once more, as he felt the Tide lick at his body. It was a good night, clean and full of promise.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Intrusive Reality
The purpose of dreaming is to defy reality, not to expand upon it. Following the logical progression of reality into fantasy is not dreaming, it is just being greedy. The wishes that are pragmatic and easy to predict are the worst kind, because they are conventional. Money, power, women, technology, weapons. This list is the complete and final form of mediocre minds.
Convention is dull and boring, and it creates more of the Faceless. Those who succeed in defiance of society do so despite their efforts, not because of them.
The actions of the pragmatic are always borne on a sense of endless fear. Fear of pain, fear of death, fear of poverty. These fears prey upon the minds of realists daily, and in a life of fear, a man is never free.
It is easy to see that the actions of the frightened are not wise, or interesting. They are safe and predictable. When safety becomes paramount, there is no risk in any undertaking, and nothing truly great can be achieved. Always safe, regardless of the deep emotional, spiritual and human costs. It is better to die nobly, than live ignobly, but all the noble ones died long, long ago. They lived as they should have, but they died nonetheless. The cowards lived to fight another day. Then they bred.
Our tainted days dwarf any of those in prior history, the wildest dreams of even the most insane philosopher are rapidly approaching. Infinite life, wealth, even women, if they can be manufactured quickly enough. Factories or surgeries, whatever it takes to satiate our base desires. The paradises of a thousand religions are nigh. What happens when they too become conventional?
It is easy to say that every song has been sung, every woman wooed, every wine drunk, but how can every dream be dreamt? How will anything ever again belong to a person? When every idea has already been thought of, or even just predicted. How will there be individual meaning? Everything will be left to the unimaginative.
When something has been done once, it is a feat of science. Twice, it is a feat of engineering. Three times, and it is the work of a technician. Will we all be doomed to being a lowly techinician?
The only wealth being concentrated in those who work in the interstitial space between trades?
Can we only skim off the top, a little more each time? It is grotesque to behold the bold aims of the greediest among us. Obviously someone has to make a profit in our midst. Someone has to be better. Always. Always. Always. There must be a competition. A shinier car, newer, faster. Better. Better. Better. There is no balance. The tipping point tips and leans and drives its point into the ground. It is permanent and irreversible.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and she also abhors a self catalysing reaction. The end result is always explosive. Must it be inevitable?
Our avarice and hate. Hate for all other living things. "I hate people." The nom du jour, the mantra of the working man. We may not love, we may not have joy, but we can hate. We bathe in it, we drink it, it sustains our shrivelled society. We have greed and hate, and nothing else. Lives run on a time clock. We love our families, but ever do we have an infinite reserve of hate for you. And you. And you. Oh we hate, every pore of our bodies steams with it. It clouds our judgement and it is the new opiate.
We cannot believe, we cannot change, so we hate. We hate each other, we hate ourselves, we may even hate that we hate. Most assuredly we hate the irony. A gridlock of emotions, immovable but still consuming what little fuel is left. Choking on invisible fumes. Thick like sublimated wax.
Collapsing exhausted on a couch, too tired to enjoy life. We live every day out of that pathetic fear.
I see it in you. I see it there because I see it every day. In each coffee shop, in every businessman. I see it in myself, and I despair.
A mere twenty years ago, it was called the rat race. They were right in the metaphor, but wrong in the analogy. There is no race. It is all a mad climb to the top of a pile. The pile trying to escape a sinking ship. We are all sunk, but still we climb. Shore is close at hand, but our brothers and sisters pull us back to the pile. Nobody wants to drown alone.
So what is a thinking man to do? Hunker down, and try to shelter himself? No. Not in our lifetime. There is nowhere to flee to. There is nowhere to hide. Every dark alley holds more of our kind. Every shattered window and every broken door. The only solution is to point to shore, and tell the others to swim.
One cannot make it there alone, but it is better to die trying for freedom, than to make the last stand at the top of the pile.
Alone.
Make a choice. Believe in an idea that defies reality, because our reality is very likely terminal.
Fight for that idea, become everything which you admire. It is better to be strong and live free of fear, risking everything, for that powerful ideal. It is living as a true human being.
Instead of as a coward.
You.
Convention is dull and boring, and it creates more of the Faceless. Those who succeed in defiance of society do so despite their efforts, not because of them.
The actions of the pragmatic are always borne on a sense of endless fear. Fear of pain, fear of death, fear of poverty. These fears prey upon the minds of realists daily, and in a life of fear, a man is never free.
It is easy to see that the actions of the frightened are not wise, or interesting. They are safe and predictable. When safety becomes paramount, there is no risk in any undertaking, and nothing truly great can be achieved. Always safe, regardless of the deep emotional, spiritual and human costs. It is better to die nobly, than live ignobly, but all the noble ones died long, long ago. They lived as they should have, but they died nonetheless. The cowards lived to fight another day. Then they bred.
Our tainted days dwarf any of those in prior history, the wildest dreams of even the most insane philosopher are rapidly approaching. Infinite life, wealth, even women, if they can be manufactured quickly enough. Factories or surgeries, whatever it takes to satiate our base desires. The paradises of a thousand religions are nigh. What happens when they too become conventional?
It is easy to say that every song has been sung, every woman wooed, every wine drunk, but how can every dream be dreamt? How will anything ever again belong to a person? When every idea has already been thought of, or even just predicted. How will there be individual meaning? Everything will be left to the unimaginative.
When something has been done once, it is a feat of science. Twice, it is a feat of engineering. Three times, and it is the work of a technician. Will we all be doomed to being a lowly techinician?
The only wealth being concentrated in those who work in the interstitial space between trades?
Can we only skim off the top, a little more each time? It is grotesque to behold the bold aims of the greediest among us. Obviously someone has to make a profit in our midst. Someone has to be better. Always. Always. Always. There must be a competition. A shinier car, newer, faster. Better. Better. Better. There is no balance. The tipping point tips and leans and drives its point into the ground. It is permanent and irreversible.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and she also abhors a self catalysing reaction. The end result is always explosive. Must it be inevitable?
Our avarice and hate. Hate for all other living things. "I hate people." The nom du jour, the mantra of the working man. We may not love, we may not have joy, but we can hate. We bathe in it, we drink it, it sustains our shrivelled society. We have greed and hate, and nothing else. Lives run on a time clock. We love our families, but ever do we have an infinite reserve of hate for you. And you. And you. Oh we hate, every pore of our bodies steams with it. It clouds our judgement and it is the new opiate.
We cannot believe, we cannot change, so we hate. We hate each other, we hate ourselves, we may even hate that we hate. Most assuredly we hate the irony. A gridlock of emotions, immovable but still consuming what little fuel is left. Choking on invisible fumes. Thick like sublimated wax.
Collapsing exhausted on a couch, too tired to enjoy life. We live every day out of that pathetic fear.
I see it in you. I see it there because I see it every day. In each coffee shop, in every businessman. I see it in myself, and I despair.
A mere twenty years ago, it was called the rat race. They were right in the metaphor, but wrong in the analogy. There is no race. It is all a mad climb to the top of a pile. The pile trying to escape a sinking ship. We are all sunk, but still we climb. Shore is close at hand, but our brothers and sisters pull us back to the pile. Nobody wants to drown alone.
So what is a thinking man to do? Hunker down, and try to shelter himself? No. Not in our lifetime. There is nowhere to flee to. There is nowhere to hide. Every dark alley holds more of our kind. Every shattered window and every broken door. The only solution is to point to shore, and tell the others to swim.
One cannot make it there alone, but it is better to die trying for freedom, than to make the last stand at the top of the pile.
Alone.
Make a choice. Believe in an idea that defies reality, because our reality is very likely terminal.
Fight for that idea, become everything which you admire. It is better to be strong and live free of fear, risking everything, for that powerful ideal. It is living as a true human being.
Instead of as a coward.
You.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
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