On Truth

Let us consider for a moment how we know what we know. It can hardly be denied that what we experience is not static. We experience change, and can interact with existence as we perceive it. At least, we can interact with the physical parts of existence. The mental and ethereal portions of reality as we know them, things like numbers and happiness, can be understood by us, but we can't really change anything about them. Or can we?

Well, let's take numbers. What is "3?" It's more than 2 and less than 4. Any child who knows how to count could tell you that. The fact is that when you take an object, another object, and then a final object, and put them together, you have 3 objects. We just can't deny that. Numbers don't seem to be things we can influence. We can understand and use numbers, but no matter how hard we try, we couldn't change the essence of what "3" represents.

This seems to indicate that there is truth. A trio of objects contains three different objects, and no other number of objects. 3 is always 3, never more, never less.

What other things are undeniably true? What if you were sitting across the table from me, and I told you that I was going to throw my drink on the ground? You might just sit there, and then after a few seconds, I would prove myself truthful by throwing my drink on the ground. But what if something stopped me from doing that? What if I reached for my cup, and then a bus smashed through the wall and ran me over? That would make my previous statement about throwing my drink to be untrue.

If someone tells you they're going to do something, you don't know whether what they say is true or not until they do it. Until then, things may happen that prevent them from being truthful. So when I tell you that I'm going to throw my drink on the ground, is there any way to know whether I'm lying until I actually throw it? Is my statement both true and false at the same time because we don't know what the result is going to be? I would say that my statement has the potential to be either true or false, but isn't both true and false at the same time.

So what about God? He knows everything, so he surely knows whether the things I say I'm about to do are true or not. So when I tell you I'm going to throw my drink on the ground, he already knows whether I throw the drink or not, right? Say God knows that I'm going to throw my drink, that makes my statement true. Does this apply with all statements?

It seems that everything we say, or predict, is about to happen, is unarguably true or false, because God knows the eventual outcome, and this foreknowledge causes all human predictions to be irrevocably true or false.

Even Song Escapes Us

Say we had no daylight,

Say all we had was song,

Would simple music get us by?

Would we even get along?

The sun gone, disappeared,

Out of thought and gone from memory.

The stars composed of minor chords,

A soft, auditory chemistry.

What if it wasn’t music?

What if all we had was sound?

Forget coherence and harmony,

Forget the rhythmic playground.

Soon notes and fragments of,

Would gently waft away.

Our mouths would function noiselessly,

There’d be nothing left to say.

Sunlight

The sun, how violent it is! Angry, hot, illuminating and intrusive!

See that building, and see the golden wash of sun that paints it. I see a tree, it's body blackened by the sun behind it, streaming through the bare branches, causing the plant to tremble and breathe, absorbing the soothing glow. The mundane surface of this room I'm trapped in suddenly comes to life with yellow reflections. Light stimulates the walls and makes the chairs gleam and smile.

The words on a page crawl off their two dimensional reality and spill onto the desk. A pool of sunlight sweeps them away, pinching and prodding at their serifs, blowing them into a cloud of language, billowing up in a sunbeam.

The sun gets everywhere. It encourages me, and blunts my mood when it leaves. I seek the sun, trying to match it's descent with my eyes, as if knowing where it's going will lengthen the time it takes to get there.

I don't want to chase after it, but I know it's important. Should I wait somewhere, baiting my breathe, eagerly hoping that it'll return tomorrow? It should be here. It's always here. Do I really matter? I can't change the sun. I love the sun, but that changes nothing. All I can do is remain here, anticipating the daily scour of the sunlight, insignificantly appreciating something so many times greater than me.

The Machine is My Mother

Spawned of the gearbox, foul mesh of metal
Rusted sprockets, leaking faucets,
And the shrill ring of the kettle

Tromp down the hallway of average achievements
Wake up, move along, rinse your hair with a liquid song
Chewing a foul mix of caffeine and mint

Cog'ged legs harshly scrape to a halt
Body twixt the gears, nothing left to fear
Mortal flesh gives way to the cold iron assault

If the throat paused and harkened to emotion
See it in the eyes, a scream would rise
From the tears long since lost in the ocean

Coasting on the coast of a kinaesthetic theatre
Unable to reject, negligible effect
The most noble, epitomal repeater

Rain

Imagine you're on a street. A quaint street somewhere in Europe. A small town. Quiet. It's raining. Gently raining, but enough that all you hear is the sound of water. Water dripping, bubbling, flowing down drains. There's violin music coming from somewhere. The sky is cloudy, overcast, full of fat, lazy clouds all squished together in a big atmospheric traffic jam.

The street makes you think of a library. It's slow, complicated, and lined with odd bangles and stories to explore. The cobbled stone your shoes click off of look back up at you, sighing their stories of old. They remember when times were better, when times were worse, when time flowed without the strain that it endures now.

So lonely. Low-key. Flimsy yellow light glints off the water drops, as the only working street lamp struggles to uphold it's charge. Somehow things seem blue. Not black, but blue. The calm, gritty darkness creeps around the corners, curling up your legs, coating the puddles and the crannies in the walls with a wash of navy.

A sign, hanging over a a closed pub, swings softly to and fro. The faded picture of a goblet and a thick book slump in their colour, almost as if they were joining the rest of the town in sleep.

Again, you hear the snap of heel hitting the walkway. And again. You slow. The steps ease off. Around you, the squished buildings rise up, overlooking and guarding this innermost of urban roads. It feels so safe. the rain covers all, the light does it's best, and wobbling sign smiles at you. Again, you shift. You're soaking wet. The footsteps have stopped. the only sound is rain. All there is must be made of rain.

A little girl peeks out her curtains, watching the road below. Her eyes sagging, she forgets that she ever heard footsteps. The rain soaks her thoughts, and she drifts back into sleep.

1 O'clock Thoughts

What indeed causes my heart to cool?
How now do I falter in my step?
What complexities plot my hinderance?
Why is it that my faith has left?

Indecision, and the boulder in my way
Render my compromises moot
Yet neither could I surely navigate
If they did not block my route

It is confirmed: I do not know
How I got here or where I must go

Whether my love will melt with the snow
Or what to make of the seeds I will sow

How is it then, that I continue to be
In this twilight state of confusion
Like the song that begins with a ponderous form
And gets lost midst it's own allusion

I like to think that I know the play,
The author, and how the story must be
But if my life is seen as example,
The one least informed is me

Let this be my prayer in the darkness
When doubt seems all that I know

I know that I'm filled to be emptied again
The seed I've received I will sow

NOTE: I got the last four lines of this poem from Desert Song by Hillsong United

The Bad Guys

It has recently occurred to me that most ongoing storylines record the successes of the antagonists nearly as often as those of the heroes.

I'm sure you've noticed the cyclical nature of such tales. Take most ongoing comics, or movie series', or nearly any story dealing with some sort of good-verses-evil struggle. What tends to happen is that there is a protagonist, or sometimes an anti-hero, who the reader/viewer/listener is conditioned to cheer for. The hero will experience some sort of problem, such as a victory of his enemy, before rallying and ultimately emerging victorious at the end. But what if the order of such sagas were reversed?

Take Batman. His arch-nemesis is the Joker. In the comics that involve the two, usually the Joker hatches some plot, kidnaps some politician, blows something up, etc. Then Batman foils the Joker's plan, beats up all his flunkies and saves the day. And in the following comic, the same thing happens; Joker does something nasty, but Batman eventually wins. And in the next comic; repeat. But what if the order was swapped?

Let me try and explain. So in Issue #1, Joker wins, then Batman wins. In Issue #2, Joker wins, then Batman wins. But what if they released a comic which contained the last half of issue #1, and the first half of Issue #2? Then it would seem as though Batman defeats the Joker, but in the end, the Joker pulls ahead and emerges victorious. Either way, the same events are happening, and it turns out that the only reason Batman always wins is because that's the segment of time that the author chose to depict in his comic.

In reality, both parties tend to succeed just as often as not; the Joker wins just as often as the Batman. For without this back and forth conflict, what would they use to fill the comic book pages?

Give Me a Toaster, And I'll build You a Useless Contraption

Snerk! - *tinkle* - ka-BLAMMO!

"Eh? Wazzat?" Snitchfix looked up from his tinkerings.

"Master, master!" the scientist's mildly neurotic hunchbacked minion shrieked, "The western jointed calibrator just exploded! And I can't find your cat!"

Snitchfix sighed and stood up. "Mind the automaton, minion," he said as he began to clomp down the hall.

That's the third time this month, the doctor thought to himself, I really should have taken more time building the joints.

Though the minion wasn't really good at anything other than panicking and losing his cat, he had a remarkable ability to memorize the workings of most of the things that his master built, which made him valuable enough that Snitchfix kept him around.

The doctor didn't really like other beings, constructs or otherwise, because they had an annoying tendency to whine and complain when he would wreck something of theirs. Like that farmer who wouldn't stop chasing Snitchfix after that unfortunate incident with the clockwork guardbot and the barn full of cows. Snitchfix wasn't a malicious person, not really, and he did try to apologize, but eventually he just climbed back into his walking mansion and continued along his way, letting the farmer stomp and fume by himself.

It was small issues like that which kept the doctor from having any sort of an amiable relationship with the immediate civilization. And so he remained always on the move, traipsing around the countryside in his dilapidated walking house.

Now for the matter of this blown out joint. Just as Snitchfix arrived at accident did the whole contraption shudder to a halt, nearly knocking the doctor off his feet. Using his jacket sleeve to wipe away the soot, he got to work. Realigning a sprocket here, shifting a gear there, he began repairing the machine that he knew better than his own mother.

"Minion!" he yelled down the corridor, "Bring me my utility box!" Proud as he was of his house, Snitchfix was constantly overhauling various broken down mechanisms that he didn't build correctly the first time round. He was young and inexperienced back then. It wasn't really fair how early in his life he was rejected from society, but Snitchfix had since come to terms with, and even enjoyed, the near solitude that defined his life now.

His minion waddled over, plunking down a patchwork box full of strange gizmos. With the help of his tools, Snitchfix quickly remedied the problem, and within fifteen minutes the jointed leg creaked back into action, and the house was mobile once again.Snitchfix tossed his wrench to his minion and walked back to what he was working on before this inconvenience. Before settling back down to his work, he noted how pleasant the sound of machinery was.

------

I totally am not taking any inspiration at all from Howl's Moving Castle. Whatever would make you think that?

So much for frequent updates...

I can't really describe anything I see. What are the four main forms of artistic communication? Music, writing, pictures, and the performing arts. As much as we attempt to use these forms to describe the others, they don't really come close to being able to show the same thing.

An example: I was on the bus. As it drove back to my house, I looked out my window, because what else is there to do on a bus? The sky was overcast, and incredible. The clouds looked like great, fluffy, ethreal mountains that were taking turns half-covering the sun. When sunlight managed to find it's way through the cloud cover, it streaked down in strange golden cords, highlighting trees, patches of road, and whatever else it hit. Somehow the contrast between grey sky and brilliant sunlight caused the trees to explode with unusual colour, making the whole ride home seem like some wonderful fantasy setting, designed solely to show off the glorious beauty of nature.

There. That description was not good enough. We could nit-pick, and say that it was overblown, or maybe I could have worded a few things differently, but ultimately my description is nothing compared to the visual cacophony I experienced. What I saw was beautiful. Nature is wonderfully designed, and the only way anyone can truly understand how I felt about that bus ride home would be to go back in time, and ride the bus with me.

Writing cannot adequately describe anything visual.

But this is also true for the other forms. Dance, though magical, can't actually communicate a message with the same clarity that the written word can. The most powerful piece of classical orchestration you ever heard still falls flat when it comes to providing the same feeling-soaked audio-visual experience provided by dance (except for contemporary dance. That stuff's just silly).

But does this incompatibility make any of these forms lesser? Absolutely not. Rather, it makes each the more brilliant, as it forces the consumer to use their own mind to expand upon the art presented. The imagination is all it takes for a good book to construct an exciting fictional setting, and though paintings themselves do not inherently contain emotion, somehow artists can still convey extraordinary messages through their paint.

So please, let each art form be what it is, and continue to put your wonderful mind to use when it comes to understanding and appreciating each of them.

On Art, part 1

What is art?

No, that's far to general a question. Let's narrow it down. What is the purpose of art? Well, to know that, one must first clarify what is art. I want to compare the identity of art to something else, like the identity of technology, or the meaning of fashion, but art is so much more than that. I don't mean to say that art is grander than any other thing in existence, but it's meaning and purpose is much more scopic.

When you go to a gallery and you see a sculpture, how do you interpret it? As a fairly pragmatic person, I tend to initially value things based on how practical they are. Art doesn't have any practical use. In the hierarchy of humanity's needs, art sits at the top as an unnecessary privilege which we indulge in if we can afford to. Art comes after food, safety, relationships. So, it's not essential for human survival. The purpose it serves, if any, is not required to maintain human survival.

So art is an indulgence. Well, maybe not indlugence, but it's there to amuse us. I think.

Yesterday I walked through the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery. In one corner of the building was a sculpture (as one tends to find in art galleries). The sculpture consisted of a trunk, similar to the one below, but it was open and had a clay representation of an ice flow inside it.

http://mrsworkinggirl.com/myparty/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/trunk3.jpg 

What did it mean? I had no idea. I looked at it from different angles, noted the painting of a tiger on the lid of the trunk, observed the blanched colouration of the ice flow, and I didn't know what to think.

My middle school art teacher always emphasized the concept of "clarity of statement." He taught me that art, when done right, should indicate to the viewer exactly what the artist was trying to convey. If the goal is to provide social commentary, then those looking at it should be able to understand it, albeit with a little background.

Pablo Picasso's Massacre in Korea

If the goal is simply to examine the beauty of an object, then the artist should seek to focus entirely on the object in question and not clutter the art with irrelevance.

Vincent van Gogh's Wheatfield with Crows

But is that the way art has to be? Of course not. I think. Maybe. I don't know. There are no hard rules for art, which is one of the reasons that it's so darn hard to interpret.

I find the above van Gogh painting to be beautiful, and the Picasso painting to actually be fairly repulsive. Does that make one than the other? I would argue that it wouldn't, because "prettiness" is a purely subjective condition.

So, art is produced only after all our other more important needs are met. Some art has a clear message, and some does not. Does this message imply purpose? I'll ponder that in my next art post.

The Splendid Return

Hi blog, how are you?

How have you been keeping?

I'm fine. I don't think much has really changed. I mean, I got a job. that's about it. It's a decent job; it pays well, I get decent hours, and my coworkers are tolerable. It's better than painting. Though, when I think about it, I think my peers in construction were actually a good deal nicer than my restaurant ones. But whatever.

So blog, how have you been spending your time? I see you're still getting a steady stream of page views even though I've sort of been neglecting you. Granted, most of those views are probably from my baby brother, who continues to neurotically check my blog even when he knows that it hasn't been updated.

I've gotten into crochet. I'm not very good, but it's something to kill time with. We'll see whether or not I stick with it. I feel like I need to narrow down my interests and focus on doing less things to a greater extent.

So, do you like your current colour? I've thought about changing it, but I just can't be bothered to spend any amount of time editing something that isn't really that bad. The default layout serves all my purposes pretty well.

I've also noticed that some people are still viewing you using Internet Explorer. That's disappointing. I hope you do something about that before I decide to post again.which I will. I promise. Soon.

Metal Monday Mornings

Good friends, I have failed. Shameful missteps have haunted my footsteps of late, and I acknowledge that my stumblings are entirely my fault. I have failed, and I will do so again. Inevitably. It angers me. To be so doomed, to be so pathetic. What can I do, but wait for more sin to envelop me? What can I do? I wonder and beat my brow, willing myself to change, or at least to escape. Is this it? Is this it?
Hold. But hold indeed, what is that?

It is the bass drum!

It is nothing. A low, pumping, pulsating, beat, nothing more than a stretched out wave of frequency. But hold, dear body, how dare you shift likewise! You enjoy the beat? I can't but help it, tho it contrasts harshly with my strong desire to roll around in self-pity. How dare I jig at such a time, I was enjoying my most melancholic moroseness!

But what of it? There's a God, right? What must he think? His child, so flawed, slopping around in sin and temptation, and what must he think? If anything or anyone can pull me out of this most melancholic mire, it most definitively is the great being who thought the whole darn universe into existence! Pull me out, slap me upside the face with common sense, and shout into my ignorant ears, "HEY! Wake up! What are doing there, slouching meekly, when you are still alive? You are alive, aren't you? Your body still functions, and here you are, in the middle of creation, selfishly thinking only of yourself?"

Forget my losses and my shortcomings, they are in the past! Yes they happened, and yes I am sorry for them, but what is to stop me from living still? Learn from your mistakes they say, get back on the horse they say, and so I shall! Enough sadness, I will confront the future both with defiance and with pep, and will  boogie into the future with the bass drum of the present cheering me on.

By Jove and by Gaffrey, if anything can change, it is me!

The Coffee Shop Man 2

The coffee was hot. Good. If it’s not painful to drink, I drink it too fast. The jazz was interrupted by some garbled French babble before flowing back into some slow swing music.

My target didn’t look up when I sat down. Whatever. His pouting was almost laughable. “You shouldn’t have moved your hat. You know how hard it is to miss your beady little eyes,”

He grunted. I continued. “Seriously though, I thought you left this town. What happened? Vengeance not a strong enough motivator anymore?”

He grunted again. It was a distinctly cordial grunt. I sipped my coffee and burned my tongue. Somehow he sighed without moving his chest. “Mik,” he grated, “I don’t wanna talk. Go ‘way.”

I didn’t move. He looked at his mug like he just realized he was holding it. “I dunno why I came here. They don’t even serve booze.”

“Hey, focus,” I couldn’t figure out how he could be so apathetic. “What happened to Logan? You had the train ticket and everything. Why are you still here?”

“Hey, I’m not still here. I’m long gone.” He slumped forward and flopped his forearms on the table. “Point is, I came back. Been back for three days.”

Usually it’s easy for me to keep my voice steady, but for some reason it started getting all shrill on me. “So you were there for what, a few hours? Didn’t you find them?”

Naturally

There’s sweet, icy piano music a-slidin’

It’s natural

Sweet background music

But the piano ain’t where I’m lookin’

Cuz she’s a-standin’ there

Existin’

S’all

Just standin’ round, natural-like

But elusive, y’know? So… elusive

Got that dark brown hair, an that way she moves… even when she’s not…

A special, so original smile

An I steal a glance at that smile, an that hair, an those moves

An brother, I just don’t know

Can’t make no sense out of myself

I’m just confused

But she…

She’s still there

A-standin’ around, all natural-like

An she’s just out of reach

Too… damn… elusive

An brother, I’m pretty sure it’s my fault

The Coffee Shop Man 1

I saw him from across the coffee shop. It was kind of a dumpy coffee shop. One of those out of the way hovels where prissy hipsters come to brood and commune. It smelled like coffee; an attractive, but distinctly bitter smell. Similar to the man who just walked in. He was balding, but his rock of a chin more than made up for this trivial shortcoming. It was one of those chins that allowed male movie stars to star in romantic roles well into their fifties, simply because of the chin-painted illusion that they haven’t lost any of the masculinity from their decades old prime.

I tried to make out what he ordered. The stupid staff in this joint takes really takes their sweet time in making drinks, and by the time they were done I had forgotten that I ever cared about what his drink was at all. Thanking his server, he swept his stiff leather coat in a slight, dangerous swirl and strolled out the way he came in. Smooth jazz began to play over the tinny speakers in the ceiling.

I watched the man stroll back to his ride from my window seat. A black Escalade, of all things. Any doubt that his shades cast about his identity was quickly brushed away after one caught a glimpse of his car. Subtle indeed.

Finishing my drink, I waved away a nearby degenerate who felt that it was his duty to tell me all about how he spent his irrelevant weekend, and was about to drop my glass cup on the counter and leave, when the guy in the corner raised the hat off his face.

I hesitated. Not good. My mind quickly churned out the potential results to my walking away, not reacting, and not giving in to my curiosity prodding at my brain. Thankfully, my mind has a habit of churning fast. I turned my awkward delay into an order for a refill. The cashier passed my used glass back to his coworker, his eyebrow arching at my insistence not to use a clean cup. You say it’s weird, I say it saves me $0.05 on my drink.