A new story...finally. I was in spaced out land for too long and I'm coming back now...
This is a story about a kid who always does what people tell him to do. He is the connection of the mind to reality. Open with the kid's opinions on the nature of reality (mysticism). Any suggestion becomes concrete in his head. If he can't explain the reasons behind a suggestion he will make one up. For him, if you suggest something it is bound to happen. He is very insecure if it doesn't to the point of never having consciously noticed it so most of the time he will act out the suggestion himself. (Show an example of unconsciously having it happen.)
Big challenge: Find a way to get the kid in trouble using only innocent suggestions that conglomerate to make him incarcerated. His release will mark the transcendence of this awful habit. Only through force of course. The court will explain how these people got him in trouble but by the time they figure out how he will have transcended the habit.
FBI famous murder case very happy with him and then they go on a wild goose chase and make him infamous. This is where his supernatural powers of imagination come from (suggestion). Now everyone is familiar with his idiosyncrasy. If we could somehow make him fulfill the suggestions retroactively and have him confined and freed. U.S. government makes it a law that if anyone suggests to him anything that will get him killed they will be held responsible for his death. Holding people responsible for the actions of someone else. School children tell him to do crazy things, and when they do they also include the thing that will save him. In his dreams, the characters tell him to do impossible things.
Final realization that the characteristics of his past (his relation to the real) is what makes him unique. He must embrace aspects of his past self while holding the suggestibility in check.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The Death Note
I can let you do anything you want
If you let me do you in
You can do anything you want to me
Because I'm letting you do me in
You will do anything I want
Or else I'll do you in
This is a full-fledged reality attack
Wishes granted
Price Matching
The Inflation of ego
The world would be a better place
The world would need to be cold
(We let it go
Only to have it return)
DEATH NOTE
If you let me do you in
You can do anything you want to me
Because I'm letting you do me in
You will do anything I want
Or else I'll do you in
This is a full-fledged reality attack
Wishes granted
Price Matching
The Inflation of ego
The world would be a better place
The world would need to be cold
(We let it go
Only to have it return)
DEATH NOTE
Monday, October 12, 2009
Something in the Way?
Underneath the bridge
The tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals Ive trapped
Have all become my pets
And I'm living off of grass
And the drippings from the ceiling
Its okay to eat fish
Cause they don't have any feelings
-Something in the Way by Nirvana
The last two lines about eating fish is really the important part of these lyrics. Without them it just sounds like a Red Hot Chili Pepper's song. I take that back, the last six lines distinguish the song, but the last two lines are my focus.
When I was a very young child I painted something with my aunt at her house. It is basically a very post-modern painting, no real form just a bunch of seemingly randomly placed blotches of paint filling up the canvas. There was one thing that stuck out in the painting, and it was what looked like Captain Hook's hook complete with the place where he would put his arm to "hold" it, as if that were possible.
The point is that we had this very large wooden easel to display the painting in our living room. When I was told that we were going to throw the ugly thing out I protested, having grown attached to the inanimate object of my affection. It was a weird feeling because I knew that not only did the easel have no feelings for me, but no feelings about being thrown out at all. Still, my feelings persisted, and as a result my parents decided to keep the easel in its right place. A very good friend of mine once told me that friends are only worth what they give you back, but I would beg to differ. Our feelings for inanimate objects still have a palpable effect on reality and life. This reminds me of a thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson called Mary's room. One of the ideas in this thought experiment is "that all behavior is caused by physical forces of some kind...mental states are caused by physical states, but have no causal effects on the physical world." Jackson came to understand the problems of this line of reasoning, stating that Mary could very well say the word "Wow," thereby causing sound waves to exist. Part of the draw determinism has on me is the idea that I have been given the reins to a vast network of neurons which I am should try to understand and by understanding control. For example, I have learned that by controlling the breath and the mind I can enhance the functioning of my immune system. I learned this while I was on a drug trip, in which I was in a deep meditative state. The next day, when I looked in the mirror I noticed that the cold sore that was on my lip has caked over five times the size of what it usually cakes over in one day. This sense of control over oneself pours over into the physical world but in a way that can only be observed, not experienced. This is why it is hard for people to believe.
Back to the song. When I consider the lyrics "It's o.k. to eat fish // Cause they don't have any feelings," it make me wonder how we could be so crude. Well, maybe its the fish that are crude, but still. Kurt seems to me to be touching on something very deep here. On one level we know fish have the neurology to feel things like pain and probably a sense of striving to survive, although one could argue that every living thing has that instinct whether conscious or not. Therefore, we know that fish have the instinct for survival but not whether or not they are conscious. This leads me to believe something that I have intuitively felt for a long time: if we can understand our survival instincts we can go a long way to understanding the other (other animals mostly). This is how we are crude: both in our level of understanding and the way in which we may come to understanding. However, the crudeness Cobain really seems to be getting at is the crudeness with which he expresses himself. To say fish don't have any feelings contradicts our idea that fish have the neurology to feel and interact with their existence. But while it contradicts it also falls into place with the very human feeling of the rounding of numbers. My sister and I once did not have a ride home from some place we both were so we had the chance to walk home together. We took it, hell, it was our only choice. On the way home we were talking about God knows what, but this much I remember. As the nine year old older brother and seven year old little sister we approached home and a thought came to my mind relating to not having a ride home. I told her that in Germany they have these things called auto-bahns, in which people are allowed to travel at any speed their hearts desire. At the time I felt like it was a great idea considering the fact that even if the death rate were to double from what we have in the United States it would only double from .0000001% to .0000002%, an insignificant number. And to think, we would get home so much faster! I know this may sound like an almost evil idea to some of you, and it is. You may be wishing that I was that extra fraction of a percentage so that I could see the consequences of my actions, in which case to hell with you you evil S.O.B. Well now I know, this line of reasoning disregards individual suffering. But forgive me, it is a common human error. Think of the fish, for whom suffering is completely disregarded. If you round the feelings of the fish to zero, you are committing my mistake. One thing I have learned in my few years of being able to gamble is that in order to make a good bet you must take every factor into account. It is when you place the bet that you count on "luck," but it is a very calculated risk. Even if the end result is only 60-40 you must do as much mental work as you are capable of. We must be precise, and the results of this precision can be astounding. It is in the act of eating that we tell ourselves fish have no feelings, but is it not necessary for survival to eat? Some may see it as a death trap to calculate the insignificant, but I will tell you that if you do so you will begin to understand the fuzzy complexity of this Earth.
The next thing these lyrics bring to my mind is the idea that it is feelings themselves which keep us from killing each other. When I was young, I knew that I could never be certain that other people had feelings. Sure, they may express themselves thereby making me feel as if they had feelings, but I could never be sure because I could never walk in their shoes. In my mind, it was possible, although extremely unlikely, that everyone could be an amazing computer simulation of themselves, or, more profoundly, something quite similar to me but without any of the same parts. I have found that many people share this same doubt with me, including one of the most brilliant computer scientists to have ever walked this Earth: Alan Turing. The point here being that there are many benefits to knowing other people have feelings and knowing that which don't have feelings (computers or fish). These days I run on the assumption that people have feelings, naturally rounding off the possibility that they don't. I feel like the idea that people could be robots contradicts evolution, which implicitly states that we are slowly organically developed. However, all this scientific evidence could also be made up to make me believe that I'm not the only one experiencing this universe, but there would be no point to that. Just as rounding off is a way of denying the existence of the individual, denying the feelings of the other is a way of denying your own self. If I know that all humans are made of the same organic material then I know that the sense of self is nothing more than a centering of material. What makes me different from you fundamentally is that our centering is distinct from one another and every other. The neurology is very similar, but the thing that guides it is different. I have observed many selfish people and I can't help but think they are in complete denial of something. They know well enough that others have the capacity to feel, but they will do anything they can to ignore that fact. They will rationalize this denial as well as they will deny anything. The reasoning is this: I can't directly experience the emotions of someone else so why should I care about them? Here Kant comes in very well. "The right action is the one which produces the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of beings." -from Wikipedia. If you don't care for others then others won't care for you, and all hell will break lose. Selfish people will eventually get what is coming for them, only then realizing how terrible it is to be treated poorly by other people.
Cobain's denial of the feelings of animals is one of the greatest denials man has ever entered into. It really stems from the necessity for survival. As we have evolved to understand our fellow creatures we have become over-grown. A being as complex as a human was not anticipated by the evolutionary model, so in order to actively participate in this crude world we must dumb down our understanding of fish and ourselves. By telling ourselves that fish don't have any feelings we are making it O.K. for us to not have any feelings ourselves (toward the fish). If we take this dumbing down to its logical extreme we wonder if it is O.K. to eat each other because we don't share their feelings. One wonders where to draw the line. Knowing that Kurt Cobain is a heroin addict explains a lot here, as it is almost universally true that addicts are trying to numb themselves of the world. But still, I think these lyrics have something to say of all of us.
Monday, September 28, 2009
What's the Difference?
A writer and a reader. A creator and regurgitater. How can I enhance the creativity of a passive reader? I want to know.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Adventures in Disneyland with Recovering Addicts
Here it is, the new, improved, completed Disneyland experience.
†In the holy year of our Lord 2007, I took a trip to the holiest of holy sites, Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, home of the Mighty Ducks, Angels, and everything Disney or on social security, with a group of addicted associates from the prestigious Morningside Recovery. Our original purpose of spreading the message of sobriety to middle-class families on vacation was lost in favor of experiencing everything Disneyland had to offer. The ones who need the message the most are the ones who won't listen, according to A.A., but who needs them anyway?†
I knew things were going south on the ride over when I told everyone, like my uncle had told me years before, that we would be close as soon as we saw the famed Matterhorn Mountain eminently displaying its snowy plastic peak. The smallest mountain in the world can be seen for miles and miles in Orange County, vaguely suggesting to those nearby that Disneyland could really be anywhere, and that to live next to Disneyland is like winning the lottery because it could be anyone, maybe even you. Before I even realized it, we were upon the outskirts of Disneyland, but what I had promised had disappeared: there was no mountainous indicator. As my eyes were forced to evolve from a mountain fixation to watching street signs and parking lots with Disney characters distinguishing each identical section, I realized that in this world of crowd management and maximizing profit it was efficiency that was king. Walt Disney's aesthetic dreams had been dissolved in a sea of overweight adults and their children, who waddled across the parking lot like giant packs of penguins, waiting for their next churro, not noticing that the one thing that exemplified Disneyland was out of sight. I should have realized right then that this return to Disneyland would be no such re-experience of my youth: it would be filled with an abundance of nostalgic symbols that lacked substance. Constantly nagging me to take part is their purpose, but they know not what they do.
Instead of asking "are we there yet?" over and over like little children, addicts say, "I need a fucking cigarette so fucking badly!" Therefore, upon parking, the entire van emptied and then proceeded to light up, cursing and smoking and wondering what was in store for the day. Going down the line of parked cars, one could see that everyone who was not us was a family with small children. Mini-van, Hybrid, Suburban, 15-seat Dodge van with tinted windows, Suburban, Hybrid, Mini-van. Someone had an astrological lighter which happened to be my sign, and since there is always an abundance of lighters, I got my own personalized Cancer lighter from the Time Being or, rather, for the time being.
"Everyone remember where we parked!" says the jolly-faced overweight counselor who blasted the Rolling Stones all the way to the park. One time I found her birth control pills lying indiscriminately in her car and asked her if I could have some of her gum, which got a laugh out of the girls.
"Oh, I never forget those things, Grace," I said, hoping that the sincerity in my voice would relieve her of having to remember that this was Timon's parking lot, judging by the horribly dusty signs that were a result of the recent fires. It was true: wherever my family goes, I am always responsible for knowing where we parked. In this case, the recovering addicts probably needed someone to remember for them, but none of them would necessarily trust me because my skills had not been demonstrated yet. Who wants to wander around aimlessly trying to find the car at the end of the day? Not me, especially not me! Everyone wants to leave Disneyland when its time to leave. Lord knows one day at Disneyland is enough for a lifetime!
Trying to plan your trip to Disneyland can be a disaster because everyone's wants change so quickly that insistence on an efficient and effective plan can make you seem like a power-mongering tour guide. No matter how well you plan, nothing can prepare you for the rapture that one experiences at Disneyland. It is a lot like being high when you get there, with so much going on that not even Jesus could look inwards. To make matters worse for us addicts, planning is not our forte. I knew before we even left the parking lot that there would be certain attractions that so engulfed one of my colleague's attention that we could never get done what we wanted to get done. To be honest, I was really wishing at that point that I could have gone my own way and experienced Disneyland alone, but once we got inside I realized that being alone in Disneyland means certain death of the self and rebirth into a cartoon fantasy of endless consumption.
Upon entering the park there are shops galore, with Disney characters walking around and allowing kids to take pictures with them. Even long ago, there were never any illusions that these characters were real in my young mind, and I always hated to think that the person under the suit was some guy working for minimum wage. If I had had the chance of ripping off his fake head and exposing it to everyone I probably would have, and then ended up regretting it because there would've been some kid who really thought the characters were real. They can't kick you out for that, can they? Do they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone? I probably would have ripped his head off and started running, and if someone had tried to stop me, I would have put the head on myself to see if he knew the difference.
In this world of Disneyland 2007 it was a small world after all. Everything had shrunk since the last time I had been there. As I watched a clueless young father try to comfort his crying baby I knew that there was something disturbing about this place even to the smallest people. I was thinking about the children, I was thinking about the park, but mostly I was thinking about how lucky I was to share something with that child. This something was the fundamental disturbance of having people everywhere and nowhere at once. It was a constant movement of hot bodies always looking towards the next attraction without actually stopped to take anything in. This crying baby could not understand the gravity that is at work on all of these people, and it therefore cannot understand the movements of large masses of people. The nature of the herd in Disneyland is just like any other mass transportation system: everyone is using the same roads or streets or highways but no one is going to the same place (except maybe Disneyland). This child only understood the place where she was, and couldn't see what could drive someone to want to go somewhere else. I sympathized with this near-sentient being because, for the life of me, I couldn't accept Disneyland for what it was, which inevitably requires accepting the experience of being constantly pushed here and there by signs and images. At the heart of Disneyland there was an escape, but rather than being an escape away from normal life, it was an escape towards a supersaturated existence of constant stimulation.
Not many people know this, but Saint Peter actually became a Saint through his security work with Noah on his Ark. His first order of business was to contract Santa Claus to make the list of all the animals who would go on the Ark. In front of Space Mountain they have the same thing set up, except St. Peter is a paid grunt employee of Disneyland who lets people in the fast pass line provided they have a ticket. Santa Claus was quickly fired because if you're even in the park you're a paying customer, so there is no need for any sort of businesslike list when you're dealing with an entire herd of pack animals like ourselves. Noah, upon building his Ark, quit because no one steers an Ark that is aimlessly floating around simply waiting for the flood to go away, or, for that matter, a computerized roller coaster which runs on a track. Besides, he has other Arks and roller coasters to build. Still, the people waiting in line are actually animals, that much is true, and most of them waddle like penguins, that much is very true.
When you've been around me for a long enough time, you learn to let me alone when I start random, digressive conversations with random people. In this case, when I had the extreme pleasure of asking Saint Peter about the background score for this wonderful attraction, my addicted associates knew what I was doing immediately. As soon as I walked up to him, they quickly ran in line so the wait would not be thirty seconds longer.
"I heard that the Red Hot Chili Peppers did the score for this attraction?"
"Oh, that was last year. We went back to the original Space Mountain theme music." I wanted to ask him who made that decision, but I knew that would only expose his sense of powerlessness to himself.
People walk much slower than usual when they know they're about to wait in line for an hour, and that is when you can see their most animal nature. Penguins are really the only way to describe it: shifting their weight left and right rhythmically in what is called waddling in the animal kingdom.
"There's someone behind you," says the person who has turned around to talk to his group face-to-face.
"Hi, thank you," I say, appreciative not of the fact that they're letting me ahead, but of the fact that they're not explaining why I have a right to such things.
After about a half an hour of waiting, we enter the control room and on the main screen is a camera shot spinning in space with stars becoming more dizzying than clear. The mood is actually not that of a space station anymore, it is distinctly the space mountain control room, but my associates have not seen such things before and are looking at me very expectantly. I say, "if you take really tiny baby steps, the line will seem to go faster because you will always be moving forward," and instead of taking my lead, I have to demonstrate for them. When it becomes clear that the line is moving really fast for short periods of time and then stopping, my associates start talking.
"Alex, you're holding up the line!"
"Oh, Blair, it really only appears that way! These people will have to wait all the same."
"The people behind you don't complain to you only because they don't know you."
"Oh, Blair, how can we know that? Think about how happy the people in the back of the line will be when for no apparent reason the line jumps significantly as soon as I get on the rocket."
This "rocket," a name I had found out only due to dreadful circumstances, had a safety bar which clamped down in intervals, and I happened to be of the body width which fell directly in the middle of the intervals. I chose the looser option. As we left the docking bay, the ride stopped. The controller sitting at her computer turned on the microphone and announced over the loudspeaker that was a problem with the ride. The entire time we were stuck I was watching a party slowly develop in the control room.
The party, composed of firemen (the generic emergency response team), line mediators, and the people who say "Thank you for riding Space Mountain. Enjoy the rest of your day," has filled the room to the brim, and must make room for more, or so it seems. Their being behind a pane of glass doesn't keep me from noticing that there are very serious glances being shared between the operators. They must have encountered this before, but at the same time look like they are doing their best. When you are in charge, trying to look like you're doing your best can cause panic among a populace. The king should always save his best option for last, when hopes and expectations are at a minimum and he can look like a real hero for solving an unsolvable problem.
The feelings surrounding this malfunction were all quite negative. Hearing that the ride stopped will probably make readers sorry for the fact that I wasn't able to ride the best ride in the whole park. However, being in the rocket gives one an entirely different experience. Unless you created the ride yourself, the nature of the ride is entirely unknown. What I once thought to be completely infallible suddenly became fallible. But what I couldn't get out of my mind was how similar this was to using drugs. You get high expecting to be taken on a wild African safari, with the drug as your tour guide. What you never know, or no one ever tells you, is that the tour guide is only there for your entertainment: he knows nothing of first-aid or the places he is taking you. The guide in this case is the entire experience, but it is the experience that has no regard for your desires. I realized that even though I cared so much for the drugs I was taking they failed to reciprocate. All they could be is what they are, and that was no longer good enough for me. I thought about whether all this mindless entertainment from Disneyland and drug use was worth it after all. I decided that I would not return to Disneyland, but that to avoid being a downer to everyone I was hanging out with at the time I would put up with everything and continue on each of the rides. Disneyland was supposed to be the time we all forgot about the message of addiction, so I reserved my opinions for this story. How ironic was it that the place that was supposed to be the most fun in rehab was what really got the message through to me? They say that one of the hardest things for addicts to do is to resist the temptation to replace their addiction with another addiction. But for me, I realized how horrible addiction was as soon as I started replacing it with Disneyland. It made me realize the essence of addiction, no matter the object of the addict's affection. Addicts want nothing more than to have their lives be effortless and easy. For them, the biggest problem in their lives is the thing that they wanted to believe was their solution to everything. Life as an addict seems to deny the most fundamental aspects of existence; it is a world where Free Will is ignored and the ultimate fantasy is to repetitively live out the same high, over and over again.
After we tried out the new California Adventure Park, the nightly Disney parade was starting, so Blair and I knew it was time to meet up with the rest of the group. As we tried to cross the parade route, we got split up. I decided to go to Tomorrow Land, driven by some unknown force. When I think about all the different places I could have gone instead, I was reminded of the idea that in order for this exact moment in life to be what it truly is, all the casual factors surrounding the moment must be the same. LIfe is constantly changing in the most subtle ways. Economists call this "all things being equal," in which they assume that all the factors surrounding the value of a good are constant so they can focus on the good itself. If anything regarding the events at Disneyland had changed, I might have chosen to go to a different Land. As it so happens, I was lucky to meet up with some of my fellow addicts in Tomorrow Land. What were the chances? If the rest of my group were randomly strewn across the park, would I have run into them sooner or later? How many people had I crossed paths with more than once earlier in the day but had simply ignored because they were strangers? As I contemplated these questions, Blair suddenly came walking toward me. His cell phone was off, but still he had wandered in the exact same direction as I had. What a relief! As they say, "It's a small world after all."
†In the holy year of our Lord 2007, I took a trip to the holiest of holy sites, Disneyland, in Anaheim, California, home of the Mighty Ducks, Angels, and everything Disney or on social security, with a group of addicted associates from the prestigious Morningside Recovery. Our original purpose of spreading the message of sobriety to middle-class families on vacation was lost in favor of experiencing everything Disneyland had to offer. The ones who need the message the most are the ones who won't listen, according to A.A., but who needs them anyway?†
I knew things were going south on the ride over when I told everyone, like my uncle had told me years before, that we would be close as soon as we saw the famed Matterhorn Mountain eminently displaying its snowy plastic peak. The smallest mountain in the world can be seen for miles and miles in Orange County, vaguely suggesting to those nearby that Disneyland could really be anywhere, and that to live next to Disneyland is like winning the lottery because it could be anyone, maybe even you. Before I even realized it, we were upon the outskirts of Disneyland, but what I had promised had disappeared: there was no mountainous indicator. As my eyes were forced to evolve from a mountain fixation to watching street signs and parking lots with Disney characters distinguishing each identical section, I realized that in this world of crowd management and maximizing profit it was efficiency that was king. Walt Disney's aesthetic dreams had been dissolved in a sea of overweight adults and their children, who waddled across the parking lot like giant packs of penguins, waiting for their next churro, not noticing that the one thing that exemplified Disneyland was out of sight. I should have realized right then that this return to Disneyland would be no such re-experience of my youth: it would be filled with an abundance of nostalgic symbols that lacked substance. Constantly nagging me to take part is their purpose, but they know not what they do.
Instead of asking "are we there yet?" over and over like little children, addicts say, "I need a fucking cigarette so fucking badly!" Therefore, upon parking, the entire van emptied and then proceeded to light up, cursing and smoking and wondering what was in store for the day. Going down the line of parked cars, one could see that everyone who was not us was a family with small children. Mini-van, Hybrid, Suburban, 15-seat Dodge van with tinted windows, Suburban, Hybrid, Mini-van. Someone had an astrological lighter which happened to be my sign, and since there is always an abundance of lighters, I got my own personalized Cancer lighter from the Time Being or, rather, for the time being.
"Everyone remember where we parked!" says the jolly-faced overweight counselor who blasted the Rolling Stones all the way to the park. One time I found her birth control pills lying indiscriminately in her car and asked her if I could have some of her gum, which got a laugh out of the girls.
"Oh, I never forget those things, Grace," I said, hoping that the sincerity in my voice would relieve her of having to remember that this was Timon's parking lot, judging by the horribly dusty signs that were a result of the recent fires. It was true: wherever my family goes, I am always responsible for knowing where we parked. In this case, the recovering addicts probably needed someone to remember for them, but none of them would necessarily trust me because my skills had not been demonstrated yet. Who wants to wander around aimlessly trying to find the car at the end of the day? Not me, especially not me! Everyone wants to leave Disneyland when its time to leave. Lord knows one day at Disneyland is enough for a lifetime!
Trying to plan your trip to Disneyland can be a disaster because everyone's wants change so quickly that insistence on an efficient and effective plan can make you seem like a power-mongering tour guide. No matter how well you plan, nothing can prepare you for the rapture that one experiences at Disneyland. It is a lot like being high when you get there, with so much going on that not even Jesus could look inwards. To make matters worse for us addicts, planning is not our forte. I knew before we even left the parking lot that there would be certain attractions that so engulfed one of my colleague's attention that we could never get done what we wanted to get done. To be honest, I was really wishing at that point that I could have gone my own way and experienced Disneyland alone, but once we got inside I realized that being alone in Disneyland means certain death of the self and rebirth into a cartoon fantasy of endless consumption.
Upon entering the park there are shops galore, with Disney characters walking around and allowing kids to take pictures with them. Even long ago, there were never any illusions that these characters were real in my young mind, and I always hated to think that the person under the suit was some guy working for minimum wage. If I had had the chance of ripping off his fake head and exposing it to everyone I probably would have, and then ended up regretting it because there would've been some kid who really thought the characters were real. They can't kick you out for that, can they? Do they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone? I probably would have ripped his head off and started running, and if someone had tried to stop me, I would have put the head on myself to see if he knew the difference.
In this world of Disneyland 2007 it was a small world after all. Everything had shrunk since the last time I had been there. As I watched a clueless young father try to comfort his crying baby I knew that there was something disturbing about this place even to the smallest people. I was thinking about the children, I was thinking about the park, but mostly I was thinking about how lucky I was to share something with that child. This something was the fundamental disturbance of having people everywhere and nowhere at once. It was a constant movement of hot bodies always looking towards the next attraction without actually stopped to take anything in. This crying baby could not understand the gravity that is at work on all of these people, and it therefore cannot understand the movements of large masses of people. The nature of the herd in Disneyland is just like any other mass transportation system: everyone is using the same roads or streets or highways but no one is going to the same place (except maybe Disneyland). This child only understood the place where she was, and couldn't see what could drive someone to want to go somewhere else. I sympathized with this near-sentient being because, for the life of me, I couldn't accept Disneyland for what it was, which inevitably requires accepting the experience of being constantly pushed here and there by signs and images. At the heart of Disneyland there was an escape, but rather than being an escape away from normal life, it was an escape towards a supersaturated existence of constant stimulation.
Not many people know this, but Saint Peter actually became a Saint through his security work with Noah on his Ark. His first order of business was to contract Santa Claus to make the list of all the animals who would go on the Ark. In front of Space Mountain they have the same thing set up, except St. Peter is a paid grunt employee of Disneyland who lets people in the fast pass line provided they have a ticket. Santa Claus was quickly fired because if you're even in the park you're a paying customer, so there is no need for any sort of businesslike list when you're dealing with an entire herd of pack animals like ourselves. Noah, upon building his Ark, quit because no one steers an Ark that is aimlessly floating around simply waiting for the flood to go away, or, for that matter, a computerized roller coaster which runs on a track. Besides, he has other Arks and roller coasters to build. Still, the people waiting in line are actually animals, that much is true, and most of them waddle like penguins, that much is very true.
When you've been around me for a long enough time, you learn to let me alone when I start random, digressive conversations with random people. In this case, when I had the extreme pleasure of asking Saint Peter about the background score for this wonderful attraction, my addicted associates knew what I was doing immediately. As soon as I walked up to him, they quickly ran in line so the wait would not be thirty seconds longer.
"I heard that the Red Hot Chili Peppers did the score for this attraction?"
"Oh, that was last year. We went back to the original Space Mountain theme music." I wanted to ask him who made that decision, but I knew that would only expose his sense of powerlessness to himself.
People walk much slower than usual when they know they're about to wait in line for an hour, and that is when you can see their most animal nature. Penguins are really the only way to describe it: shifting their weight left and right rhythmically in what is called waddling in the animal kingdom.
"There's someone behind you," says the person who has turned around to talk to his group face-to-face.
"Hi, thank you," I say, appreciative not of the fact that they're letting me ahead, but of the fact that they're not explaining why I have a right to such things.
After about a half an hour of waiting, we enter the control room and on the main screen is a camera shot spinning in space with stars becoming more dizzying than clear. The mood is actually not that of a space station anymore, it is distinctly the space mountain control room, but my associates have not seen such things before and are looking at me very expectantly. I say, "if you take really tiny baby steps, the line will seem to go faster because you will always be moving forward," and instead of taking my lead, I have to demonstrate for them. When it becomes clear that the line is moving really fast for short periods of time and then stopping, my associates start talking.
"Alex, you're holding up the line!"
"Oh, Blair, it really only appears that way! These people will have to wait all the same."
"The people behind you don't complain to you only because they don't know you."
"Oh, Blair, how can we know that? Think about how happy the people in the back of the line will be when for no apparent reason the line jumps significantly as soon as I get on the rocket."
This "rocket," a name I had found out only due to dreadful circumstances, had a safety bar which clamped down in intervals, and I happened to be of the body width which fell directly in the middle of the intervals. I chose the looser option. As we left the docking bay, the ride stopped. The controller sitting at her computer turned on the microphone and announced over the loudspeaker that was a problem with the ride. The entire time we were stuck I was watching a party slowly develop in the control room.
The party, composed of firemen (the generic emergency response team), line mediators, and the people who say "Thank you for riding Space Mountain. Enjoy the rest of your day," has filled the room to the brim, and must make room for more, or so it seems. Their being behind a pane of glass doesn't keep me from noticing that there are very serious glances being shared between the operators. They must have encountered this before, but at the same time look like they are doing their best. When you are in charge, trying to look like you're doing your best can cause panic among a populace. The king should always save his best option for last, when hopes and expectations are at a minimum and he can look like a real hero for solving an unsolvable problem.
The feelings surrounding this malfunction were all quite negative. Hearing that the ride stopped will probably make readers sorry for the fact that I wasn't able to ride the best ride in the whole park. However, being in the rocket gives one an entirely different experience. Unless you created the ride yourself, the nature of the ride is entirely unknown. What I once thought to be completely infallible suddenly became fallible. But what I couldn't get out of my mind was how similar this was to using drugs. You get high expecting to be taken on a wild African safari, with the drug as your tour guide. What you never know, or no one ever tells you, is that the tour guide is only there for your entertainment: he knows nothing of first-aid or the places he is taking you. The guide in this case is the entire experience, but it is the experience that has no regard for your desires. I realized that even though I cared so much for the drugs I was taking they failed to reciprocate. All they could be is what they are, and that was no longer good enough for me. I thought about whether all this mindless entertainment from Disneyland and drug use was worth it after all. I decided that I would not return to Disneyland, but that to avoid being a downer to everyone I was hanging out with at the time I would put up with everything and continue on each of the rides. Disneyland was supposed to be the time we all forgot about the message of addiction, so I reserved my opinions for this story. How ironic was it that the place that was supposed to be the most fun in rehab was what really got the message through to me? They say that one of the hardest things for addicts to do is to resist the temptation to replace their addiction with another addiction. But for me, I realized how horrible addiction was as soon as I started replacing it with Disneyland. It made me realize the essence of addiction, no matter the object of the addict's affection. Addicts want nothing more than to have their lives be effortless and easy. For them, the biggest problem in their lives is the thing that they wanted to believe was their solution to everything. Life as an addict seems to deny the most fundamental aspects of existence; it is a world where Free Will is ignored and the ultimate fantasy is to repetitively live out the same high, over and over again.
After we tried out the new California Adventure Park, the nightly Disney parade was starting, so Blair and I knew it was time to meet up with the rest of the group. As we tried to cross the parade route, we got split up. I decided to go to Tomorrow Land, driven by some unknown force. When I think about all the different places I could have gone instead, I was reminded of the idea that in order for this exact moment in life to be what it truly is, all the casual factors surrounding the moment must be the same. LIfe is constantly changing in the most subtle ways. Economists call this "all things being equal," in which they assume that all the factors surrounding the value of a good are constant so they can focus on the good itself. If anything regarding the events at Disneyland had changed, I might have chosen to go to a different Land. As it so happens, I was lucky to meet up with some of my fellow addicts in Tomorrow Land. What were the chances? If the rest of my group were randomly strewn across the park, would I have run into them sooner or later? How many people had I crossed paths with more than once earlier in the day but had simply ignored because they were strangers? As I contemplated these questions, Blair suddenly came walking toward me. His cell phone was off, but still he had wandered in the exact same direction as I had. What a relief! As they say, "It's a small world after all."
Monday, August 10, 2009
The New Evolution
I changed the things people said it was impossible to change. I did things differently because I liked doing things differently. We are the new evolution, lets start having some fun being weird. This is more important than anything, although it comes off as a compulsion for defiance! To be continued....
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Zen Master has Reached Completion
With the interaction with the zen master complete, I am done with the first part of the first world of the big machine: religion. I understand how preachy it may seem, but, hey, that's the nature of religion. DON'T HATE! It seems like my hopes for this story keep growing as I write, but I feel like the premise of the story is pretty ambitious. I would love to have a professional writer write about this topic, but I'm not gonna be able to convince people to write things they don't have the impetus to write themselves. So I guess I will do it myself! For you fanatical readers of my blog, if you're out there, "Meeting with Zen Master" is much longer than it was a few days ago, though its date has remained original. "The New Religion" will be placed at the end of the first world: "Religion," once I have it all done.
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