sitting up in his bed with his head angled toward the ceiling he said to his grandchildren in a voice that reminisced strength and wisdom "anton aurel i am weak but i am not ill for the next three seasons i will be resting in the city where i was born a carriage will arrive before the sun reaches his peak in the sky i have one request for the two of you to share and promise to keep you must watch over my chickens while i am away do you both agree to this?" the cousins paused as if expecting something more from an otherwise profound old man they looked to each other peripherally to avoid any detection of skepticism but the old man being an old man smiled again differently though as a young man in proper health smiles before embarking on a hunt the cousins nodded in agreement and exited the small bedroom they put their boots on and headed to the barn holding out on conversation until outdoors where it would be just the two with their thoughts shared and otherwise beneath an empty sky this is where an honest conversation happens away from the intricate webbings of the world's mind collective the cousins walked and walked
DANTE'S FARM old man dante was just as him name prescribed an old man with many regrets and few wishes he lived in a small house on a large parcel of land at the end of a road that breaks from a road seven times before meandering into a wooden thicket on his land he raised chickens with the help of his two grandsons anton and aurel they were cousins orphaned during the war and as a result they became close and respected the opinion of the other while giving equal respect to the opinion of their grandfather he was wise by default experience but he was also aging quickly and as a result had trouble tending to matters his body had become weakened from his years and his voice struggled to keep good pace with his mind above all the cousins were grateful for their grandfather's kindness they always carried out his word and as the cousins grew into adults they did so more and more never showing stress or fatigue it was one morning though when old man dante rang the bell beside his nightstand to signal the cousins near they hurried to his side as they do now fearing the worst they waste no time anton asks "grandfather are you well what do you require of us this morning?" old man dante smiles the cousins know this smile as they know their grandfather he is drifting to and from in his mind between two worlds visiting one more than the other now ...........
the river and the "oh wells...." carry on as they do so well the man who sat alone and the woman who now sits alone passed to each other depth of mind or freedom of mind depending on your perspective or their perspective while the bus carried on all rivers have a common destination though don't they? the sea most always yes but what about the river that becomes evaporated or irrigated before the delta? the river does not arrive in tact to the sea but the water over the course of the cycle always does gravity is cruel and honest
"it is simple really you walk on the brittle shoulders of feeble men who starve themselves to feed their families of which you will never meet because you do not know they even exist all you know is the brightness of the sun not the darkness of the sky this blinds you from the truest truths" the woman lost even more color as she listened to the man who sits alone she stares now like him but not "you don't know me at all you are hurting for sure and you're making me hurt too and i don't deserve it" the man who sits alone smiles for the first time in a good while "i do not know you but i know you by your demeanor and yes you do not deserve to hurt as i hurt because you do not have the capability to hurt" "what do you mean by that" "it should be clear you've drugged your conscience what remains of your conscience into a non-responsive stupor so you can walk as you walk and smile as you smile free of the pain you cause others in promotion of your love and light these souls live like shadows in a state of mind you will never feel because you fear a dialogue with the conscience you've abused" "you clearly do not know me you're a sad old man a lonely man i have done nothing wrong in my life" "i am exactly that by choice but you are who you are by fear and denial you desperately despise in a greedy way so you carry on the only way you've ever known how to as you were taught by example display your weakness as a strength a pink coat to cover the breathless blue nature of the words you dispel" the woman could see exactly what the man who sits alone told her any observer could read this from the vacancy of her expressions she bows her head into the palms of her hands while the man who sits alone straightens his posture "you don't understand" "no i do not i never will understand the fabric that patterns you but you feel it don't you not the feeling i feel everyday but the vibration of the floorboards of your mind as they echo with each nearing footstep of your self-compassion your conscience as it wakens from its stupor what comes next is up to you a conversation to be held with no one" "how do i make it go away the emptiness" "it doesn't go away but you can lose it when you appreciate what you love and you can teach yourself to never repeat what caused the emptiness to manifest in the wake of what you once cherished" "is this why you ride the bus" "this is exactly why i ride the bus" the bus pulls to a stop the man in his long coat stands up cracks his knuckles and walks to the door of the bus he looks around before stepping out onto the well-lit street as if taking in a final sight and recedes into an artificially lit dichotomy but before the bus door closes a young man in the prime of his life strides in compensating for an embarrassment of utilizing public transportation his shoes shine his belt buckle shines his hair shines and his teeth sharp and unreasonably large even they shine by the glow of the sodium lights that preserve the habitat of the consumer the woman who sits alone amidst a blank stare cannot help but take notice of the man she feels a weight of nausea creeping up from the base of her stomach she sinks into her seat maintaining her empty stare beside her impractical handbag and the young man with his eager stride raises his eyebrows above the two busy passengers looking toward the woman who sits alone he has that look we all innately recognize that "poor you" look it beams from his eyes as he nears the woman who sits alone he says "hello..... hello...... fancy seeing you here i think i know you from somewhere" .
she has a bright disposition a radiance forced or genuine it is difficult not to notice her smile widens at the driver while paying her fare in advance and she takes her gloves off folding them neatly tucking them into a pocket of a very impractical handbag she clutches at her side she walks quickly with precision and scans the empty rows she could choose any seat but she does not she watches the other passengers avert their gazes as to avoid any interaction but notices the man who sits alone staring forward with no sadness with no joy she gives him a look an easily recognizable look the "poor baby" look and smiles a shielded smile that only she could feel she coasts her hands above the bus seats and places herself next to the man who sits alone even in the company of others she says to him looking toward the side of his profile in a cheery saccharin sort of voice "hello........ hello.... mister...... hello..........." the man who sits alone takes no notice he is not daft he knows the type who sits beside him while he sits alone "hello.......... i think i know you from somewhere you look familiar you look like someone i knew from somewhere i no longer visit" the man who sits alone really could care less you could see it from his lack of reaction but he is not impolite he carries a delicate soul as a memento of his childhood he turned his head slightly and states "you must be mistaken i have a familiar face like the rest of my family but i am not even from this part of town" the woman looks perplexed "then where are you from i cannot get over the fact that i know you from somewhere" "i am sorry but you are mistaken" "no i am not and if i do not know you i feel i should because everyone who knows me benefits from knowing me" the man who sits alone smiled with impatience even if he hadn't met this woman previously he had met many of her category in shops he used to shop and along streets he used to walk "how will i benefit from knowing you" "i will brighten your life take my word for it" "i do not need any brightening thank you anyway" "but everyone could use something from everyone they meet you are no different" "no i am different and i do not need to prove that to you or anyone for that matter" "ok...... that is a start....... but could you please tell me one thing about yourself that no one else knows i will promise to leave you alone if you do" the man who sits alone pauses for a moment he knows what he wants to say but a soft voice the voice of the memento he carries lead him to do otherwise he pulls his arms out from his coat pockets the woman turns pale "i lost my hand and haven't been right ever since" "oh my..... what happened" "nothing really more or less a poor choice on my behalf when i should have known better" "does it hurt" "yes more than it did at first it keeps me awake at night" "how do you sleep" "i do not so much anymore but i believe that if i travel the pain may lose track of where my wound is" "the wound looks healed though are you hurting from something else" "no i hurt from this and this only my wound healed but never healed deep inside where the nerves run confusion to their source of attention" "i don't think the wound hurts you anymore i think you feel pain from something you are ashamed of doing" "i do not feel shame i feel pain there is a difference shame implies i am worthy of letting myself down but pain implies i am hurting because i deserve to hurt" "why do you deserve to hurt this confuses me life is beautiful and full of things designed to make you feel pleasure" "it is but those things are not for me not after what i have done" "what is it that you have done that prevents you from living like me" the man who sits alone swallowed a gasp of air and bowed his head uncomfortably "i betrayed the honor my father gave me" "but i do not understand the wound looks to be healed the pain looks to be distant what is causing you to continually carry this burden you weren't even born equipped with" "it is something deep inside i cannot explain you would know the feeling i describe if you felt it as well" "how do you know that i do not feel this pain"
COMPANY AND COMPANY a man sits alone on a city bus nearly empty as the business of the day winds down and the business of the night considers its options there are two others on the bus and in an eerie sort of manner when one arrives at his stop another sits down but this is usual after all it is a city bus after the light of the sky feigns its last gleam the man who sits alone knows this among other things he rides the bus often at this time you would know this by watching his reaction to the driver berating the passengers who try to escape paying their fares the other rotating passengers tense their shoulders look out the window or avoid observation of the awkward confrontation by illuminating the screens of their phones scrolling through the list of contacts they sometimes call but the man who sits alone does nothing he sits hunched forward staring ahead with the same emptiness his posture elucidates until a stop in the good part of town where the streets are lit and the passengers smell of cologne and aftershave even at such an hour as a man exited the bus a young woman maybe ten years younger than the man who sits alone appearing in his mid life walks onto the bus
I was puzzled, too lol it reminded me of the old saying "misery loves company but company hates company"
i have a friend who is very religious as in "convert you on the spot" religious but otherwise an amusing conversationalist he told me once "whenever you are feeling good about yourself look at this picture" it was an image of sad statistics concerning the welfare of his fellow devotees in other countries i have a friend who is very non-religious as in "convert you on the spot" atheistic but otherwise an amusing conversationalist she told me today "whenever you are feeling good about yourself look at this picture" it was a chart of all the life on earth from all the ages with our species appearing as the tiniest most recent blip amusing characters say amusing things but this really made me stop and think how curious that two individuals who despise the idea of each other say the same exact thing for the same exact intended outcome to the same exact person for the same exact reasons just under the guise however of differing beliefs they each pay their subscriptions for tithing away ten percent of their existences to their respected defenders of status quo faithfully i ought to set them up skarred
so........ if i cannot say that i am my brain or my heart or my body or the voice in my head who am i? when attempting to define something it is helpful to locate a start and an end boundaries for focus would it be logical to say we START when we are born and END when we die? if we choose that road then we must first define birth do we define birth at conception? or the separation of mother and newborn? or something else? the second would be most simplistic something that can be timed with ease but what about everything leading up to that moment? and everything leading up to the creation and maintenance of the genetic information passed down generationally that allowed for the moment to happen and your death do you consider death to be a cease of function of the brain? or when all the cells that make up the body no longer reproduce? or when the bacteria which outnumber body cells 10 to 1 no longer are supported by the body? or when your words whoever you are no longer carry themselves? but wait...... could you experience the latter while still walking about with a functioning brain? the cells that made up my body when i was a newborn have been replenished several times have i died several times? and how would i know this if i cannot define who i even am? STANDING ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN this becomes the problem and i whoever i may be collectively or not understand it to be a problem before i describe the problem i will describe the food source the problems congregate around a drop of rain does not understand the cloud the river the ocean hydrogen oxygen the effects of the sunlight or the cycle that takes it up thousands of feet into the air down thousands of feet into the ground to understand identity in entirety means you STAND UNDER the foundation that supports your concept of identity but identity becomes tricky as observing the thing you wish to understand has an influence on it and since observation is crucial to awareness there are many things observing other things and each other and themselves whoever that may be but there are people who understand this and have the answer lol they speak at each other's conferences they sell books based on things PLATO wrote eons ago they maintain online cultures of frightened innocents to leech off of yes the answer they have can be purchased for $19.99 or a donation made out of guilt but if you want the real answer the heavy stuff you have to go to one of their seminars in a mediocre hotel conference center somewhere warm and pretty $5,000 later you are now certain of your uncertainty the feeling of not being enough of uncertain uncertainty this feeling when churning through your essence pulls you down into low, dark places where these parasites wait in the shadows of each other because they have the answer that's what they say right? they have the answer to any existential conundrum you may have AND THAT'S WHY THEY ARE THERE in such a low, dark place among others of the same they have an answer to a question that is not a question but a response so they feed off of your uncertainty in a grey area of things typically left alone as they fall somewhere between religion and philosophy this is the problem the central problem as far as i am concerned parasites with no honor but as we all know a parasite can only flourish in the presence of a host and it is the ultimate destiny of a parasite should it take too big of a bite or grow just a little too much that it eventually kills the host that supports it unless the host notices his affliction pulls the tick off his arm and teaches his children to wear permethrin clothes when walking along the woods
ten hours of absolute silence what would that do to your brain? wait...... YOUR brain? who does that make you then? maybe the voice inside your head? that's a common phrase "the voice inside your head" but is it conclusively coming from inside your head? or is that where it is processed and amplified now another trick bag who is processing the voice into something that can be made sense of? your brain? ok, let's say it is YOUR brain for simplicity sake but only for a moment your brain is making a commentary on what it wants or needs and someone is making good on these requests but who? now i ask this again is this brain yours? some might say "yes" some might say "no" others might say "yes and no" getting closer........ "it depends on the situation" when i am working on a complex algebraic problem and solve it correctly several minutes later the brain is mine but should i find myself to be an alcoholic and throw off the table my calculator for a night of eventually throwing up in someone else's toilet am i my brain's? but who does that make me? "you are your brain" a neurophilosopher says but what if you whoever that may be do not have a brain? dr. john lorber examined a patient a math major from the university of Sheffield with an iq of 126 peculiarly enough this patient did not have any more than one millimeter of brain tissue the rest of the cranium filled with cerebrospinal fluid hydrocephalus dr. lorber found several hundred further cases with some having no "detectable brains" most patients functioned well in society regardless of their medical condition so...... "i am my brain but i have no brain" says the man walking out of dr. lorber's office "who does that make me then the voice inside my head coming from cerebrospinal fluid or my big toe for that matter" he asks himself whoever that may be again the one who listens to the undetectable voice the voice that comes from somewhere and nowhere at the same time "maybe that is who i am" he says so he carries on again with an "oh well" sigh like the salamanders in dr. pietsch's experiments or the rats who ran in mazes for dr. lashley remembering something they do not know they are remembering but who then are they who are we if each of us isn't sure who the "i" even is? remember the angry mob from earlier? sharing a common mantra following a leader no one can pinpoint water pushing through a river
if you and i switch heads would i be you and would you be me? it is conventionally figured we are the sum of our minds our brains with the rest of the body a soldier but the heart is electric and powerful it doesn't rest one third of the time now i think again....... would i be mostly you and would you be mostly me? if so, by what percentage? and if so, how would the percentages react to each other's presence? a business relationship? a hostile intruder relationship? a relationship of that sort wouldn't last the majority would win just as they have to agree to maintain majority status and do we draw the line at the brain and the heart, or does our identity run deeper? surely we cannot ignore the nervous tissue located throughout the body "gut feelings" or the executive ability of cells and organs to self regulate, follow protocol and defend themselves but what then divides the divisors and regulates the regulators if it becomes more complicated than a brain's body? it is an epigenetic study that the membrane of a cell is the true control center of a cell it has the final say not the nucleus the cell membrane is what determines how the cell interacts with the surrounding environment a small village kept safe by a tall stone barricade with heavily guarded ports of entry or exit who really calls the falling coin in that village? so what does that make the brain in our body? or our skin? oh.... OUR body? who are we? a brain? a cell? a reaction? are we defined by our physical boundaries or our electromagnetic boundaries? if the latter, an angry mob may be one individual with MOMENTUM like a sample of tissue responding to the same SIGNALS .............
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THE DANCING PLAGUE OF 1518 what a frightening place to be, should you find yourself not stricken with the compulsion to dance maniacly in the streets with frau troffea with your friends with your family with your superiors with your enemies when the dancing finally stops and the dancers having exhausted themselves over the days looking gaunt and helpless notice YOU with your hair devoid of sweat and your clothing neat and pressed yikes! and YOU are outnumbered on a large scale on your own should you have pretended to have caught the affliction? maybe..... should you have convinced yourself this was REAL like the others? no........ quite impossible there was something preventing that from happening inside you it is still there as you plan your next move "if i could have just made pretend" but that isn't you either you argue with yourself while the crowd draws nearer and nearer but now it is too late it was too late to begin with oh well...........
THE ASCH PARADIGM the majority agree yes but why asch found in his studies on conformity that subjects will agree in entirety with an incorrect observation if the majority in the group select the incorrect observation as true even if it is clearly absurd agreement carries weight a snowball rolling down the hill larger and more powerful with each foot it descends i tell a lie to a friend and we get another friend to agree that the lie actually happened then we go into an office and tell the lie at the water cooler where everyone already knows better and knows such an event would not have occurred but it is three against two now five against three and eight against two and so on until agreements are abound for agreement's sake DISTORTION OF PERCEPTION DISTORTION OF JUDGEMENT DISTORTION OF ACTION and the "oh wells......" carry on