Dream 12/24/2020

 I'm in a building with others. It's a hospital of sorts, one with some pandemic restrictions in place. But it's elsewhere. I am seeing bodies everywhere, dead bodies. But they resemble the condition of smoked meat than anything else. I suspect that all I am seeing are the dead and the parts of their bodies harvested for various post-life duties in others, on displays, and in research. There's an ectopic pregnancy, but the body is dismembered and just the torso with fetus bulge partially exposed through a dried ribcage. Here's a leg, carefully dried, and tied in a mesh bag like those tiny smoked cheeses that you can buy. 

Then the dream gets stranger. A trial of sorts is being carried out by Asians with various deformities like the survivors of a nuclear blast. We're in a room, to the left is a high bench, like that of a judge. I don't recall what is there. In front of me is a man standing on a grandstand next to a display. It looks like the thin, dried skin of a snake. The men in the room call out names and each of us performs a small ceremony. The Asian man on the grandstand next to the snake skin tells me to pick up what looks like a small, dried human jaw with teeth, hair, and skin still on it. I use it to 'hit' the person for whom this trial is being carried out. Second in line, I swing the jaw at this snakeskin like strip and along the wall horizontally is the illustration of an axon. And simply, the disfigured Japanese are indicating how striking the person leads to a nerve impulse that is carried to the brain. This is a teaching moment, and the person who went before me is arguing about what occurs after the nerve impulse of striking someone enters the brain of that person. I walk around the room and there are others behind high counters covered in small items, like you'd see at a head shop--little tinctures, shot glasses and such. A disfigured Asian man asks me if I want cannabis. It's a liquid concoction in a small plastic shot glass. He indicates 'for personal use only.' I drink the shot and take a place at the far side of the room from the judge's bench. The room resembles my grandparents' washroom in their basement. 

I awake. It is just after 1 a.m. I am done sleeping for the night. I am writing this just before 4 a.m. the same morning. I have to work. It is cold. The world is quiet. Here, in the midst of a pandemic a holiday stands mutely in garish lightshows and dissonant messages of cheer and togetherness. But not this time. Too many have died. The formerly well-to-do hemorrhage wealth. Others remain unaffected. God takes some only to pass over others. It is just as the Bible has declared, but the logic of faith does not apply. 

thinking out loud

The source of all value is desire. Desire is a self-made apparition. It emerges from encountering a lack, thought or felt, and developing an expressive vocabulary for addressing it. More importantly, desire's roots are in the most fundamental of survival impulses such that under abject circumstances, hunger, discomfort, disease, malaise all represent the deep structure of overwhelming desire. The comforts of everyday living and the continual maintenance routines that structure one's life and relations are one expressive vocabulary of desire as well. As they are routinized they reflect the solution to certain desires within timespans that all but reduce the agony of desire to, at  best, expressions of the bored. This reveals a feature of desire, which in its pursuit the verve and vivacity of lack in emerging from its imminent satisfaction structure a dynamic life. Desire is always there. It simply gets attenuated by the solutions arrived at for its pre-emption in everyday existence. What we can overlay upon this feature of desire as an appetite and the pursuit of its satisfaction in time is the physical structure of mentation within nerves that go through cycles of excitation, conduction, refraction, and potentiation to propagate charges again, all happening within a sequence of time. This is instructive. It offers a structural motif at the base of consciousness that gets reflected in conscious activity over larger spans of time. The pursuit of satisfaction driven by desire occurs upon the structure of continuous nervous activity. 

The comments section and J.C. Penny's bathrooms

 The comments sections are like J.C. Penny's bathrooms. They're the only reason people visit. 

"Woke" in a nutshell

 

"The field's too big"

Ok. This is going to sound rather 'dramatic.' 

I would describe my life as a series of retreats. 

Explain.

All through my life I eventually drop any new activity I start. 

Why? 

I'll get to that. 

Let me take you to an earlier time. 

I quit soccer after one practice, one fucking practice. Why? Because I wanted to play with a coffee can full of soon-to-be dead crayfish that my brother and the neighbor scooped from inside a ditch at the bottom of the hill along a highway bordering my neighborhood. When asked why I didn't want to go to soccer, my response was "the field's too big." It was a convenient excuse, and that was all it was. But it was one my dad and my mom both wouldn't let me live down. And neither am I. Not here. That's the theme. "The field's too big."

While I don't recall the decision, my mother said I wanted to learn the violin. It may have stemmed from a then-popular Charlie Daniels song. That says more about my age and my cultural orbit at the time than anything else. I gave it a really shitty go and just gave up. Zero motivation, no energy, no imagination, no drive, nothing. I recall countless times my violin teacher at the local university scolding me for not practicing and, well, I remember specifically my brother attending one and being a very bad influence on that session. He was notorious for his corrupting influence. So many times I didn't want to play a game and he'd simply rough me up until I would concede to hit a stupid foam ball back and forth across our short hallways, using the two rooms at each ends as goals. He'd rough me up if I simply didn't want to wrestle or get punched in the arm over and over and over. His game or pain, no option. 

So that was one retreat, from classical music instruments. And of course that quickly became a retreat from the topic as well to cry about my victimhood. I'm a victim of big things: big fields, big instruments, big brothers. 

Retreat.

In my earliest years of grade school I was completely uninspired, just going through class, not wanting to participate, showing very little interest in my verbal responses when called upon, and getting called out for approaching class exercises with this blase' attitude. But at one brief moment getting others' attention was all that I cared about. This time another kid was being a bad influence on me. Aaron Wrigley did something that made the girls laugh as the whole class was standing in a large circle around the perimeter of our classroom, and I thought to myself, "Hey! I can do that! I WANT to do that!" If I could just be THE class clown, then I'd make it. And so while my course grades held in the A-B range my 'conduct' grade was an F. The teacher wrote on my report card 'the F stands for funny' and described the particular way in which I was being called out for trying to stand out by being a cut up, full of slapstick and goofy showboating. I came home with my report card and bawled my eyes out at the grade. I kept screaming to my babysitter that 'F stands for fuck!' and sat worried that my dad was going to beat my ass. This is coming from a child of maybe 6 or 7 mind you, and as they say, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My mother cussed like a sailor and catastrophized everything to a shocking and very public extent. Like momma, like son. 

Out on the parking lot-as-playground, I would stand next to the parking bollards and talk to myself as the other kids ran around in team activities. I just simply lacked the energy or really the desire to play with any of them or engage in kicking the ball. Once again, the field was too big. 

Fast forward to high school. The few pieces of art and poetry that remain are absolutely morose, goth-before-hottopic, and, well, edgy as fuck--pictures of Jesus with a swastika tattoo on his forehead crucified on a swastika, poems about dying. At some point, I think it was the summer between the seventh and eighth grade, my world changed. I was changing. My clothes didn't fit. I was met with lots of jeers about my clothing and comments about my body. I was even depantsed while wearing some goofy fluorescent clothing, which was one of the outfits my mother purchased for visiting her dying father in Arizona. I never went, but I was left with the clothes. I recall when we picked mom up from the airport, she wept, and not one of us addressed her sadness or showed any affection. She was wearing suspenders and wreaked of her Giorgio perfume. Sad. I hated those kids after that brief spring in the seventh grade, living through a very awkward growth spurt into adulthood. I stopped dressing a certain way. I stopped mingling with that crowd of kids. Essentially, I was just some isolate with a streak of hate so deep that I'm surprised I didn't take a gun from home and shoot up the school. In fact I would have that very dream, that very dream, the next year, at high school, and I would continuously imagine ways to destroy hundreds upon hundreds of kids, some with productive lives ahead of them. I thought I could time gas bombs to go off a few minutes after the bell just above all the locker bays. Odd really, I suppose the institutional design of public education rubbed me wrong. I believe I stopped urinating in public some time around then as well. This wasn't a conscious decision. It was partly directed by the way we all inherited a school day with little time between classes and restrooms that were utterly dismembered to prevent smoking. Stopping smoking was apparently more important than shitting behind a door. I'd sit at home night after night, weekend after weekend, staring at the TV, the walls, the images in my mind, high as fuck on pseudoephedrine tablets purchased at the gas station, chewing at my ego, spitting out depression, rocking back and forth, being a complete shut in. It's no wonder the one girl I liked in high school, Jennifer McElligot, wanted nothing to do with me. Funny looking back on that. My best track record with dating women comes from those with no father or no concept of one because hers was such a runaway loser, alcoholic, or simply dead. Jennifer's dad had left her mom and her siblings. He didn't stay in touch. He wanted nothing to do with her. But my god, she was all I ever wanted, big ass and all. Damn, she looked good. And the one time she called me and dropped the big hint that so and so broke up with her I simply brushed off the comment because I was too proud to ask her out then, Mr. Fucking Cool, after she had turned me down at the beginning of the school year. And that's where our personal lives stopped intertwining. Once again, "the field's too big." Her big ass wasn't though. Damn.  

Sorry Jennifer. I do hope you're doing well. I think about you sometimes. The last picture I saw of you was from Jon Brown. You were dressed in a Spiderman costume with the mask off. You still looked beautiful to me, and I was pleased that your live-in boyfriend was balding like I was back then. Schadenfreude? Sure. 

But something happened one night after a hefty bong rip. I had a series of deep, philosophical epiphanies. I saw the death of my family and my pets. I wept. I jammed out to some music, I was rocking back and forth in my bed like the autistic freakshow I've always been and somehow, somewhere I stepped away from the sadness regime, just briefly. 

That lasted about 9 months. Then, after a girl who I thought was interested in me, stopped calling, I popped on a CD and listened to a song about looking for someone. And this giant wave of sadness washed right over me. I did hold on to my academic and career hopes. I was hell-bent on being a doctor the arrogant and naive cocksucker that I was. 

"That's a big field Jay bird. Are you going to retreat?" I'll get to that.  

My career aspirations didn't last either. I was quite talented at biology, holding down a B+ in what was one of several 'weeder' courses for the pre-med track. I ran into my professor outside as we crossed the street at the same time. "Hi Dr. Aspinwall!" I said. "Hi," he replied in a tone that immediately relegated me to his periphery. Crushed. What in the hell was I doing here? What do biologists do anyway? I could have gone to his office hours and discovered all sorts of things. I thought they took water samples and looked at shit under microscopes. I had no clue. This was as the human genome project was just ramping up, and I had no clue, not a fucking clue, of all the interesting and rewarding things that biologists do, their neat machines and fancy computers, none of that. Retreat. After another stoned epiphany I realized I just wanted to write and was ready to leave school. 

Retreat. 

That didn't last either because nobody in my family could bear seeing me quit school. My great aunt and godmother came to visit me with her new husband and implored me not to quit. There, as I sat with my grandparents, my great aunt, and Jim, her new sugar bear, around my grandmother's table I conceded once again--another retreat. This one was a retreat from a retreat though. Fancy that. I returned to school the next year, and this time with my mother's help, in a new profession, one focused on writing. All the better that she helped. It helped her land a career, the pathological liar that she was, she still was quite talented as an executive secretary, and all that despite being a cusser, a catastrophizer, and a smoker. They called the field of study 'communication.' And if there was any field so broad and all encompassing as to be called 'too big' this was it. 

Ah yes, another retreat. 

I gave school another go. Bouncing from major to major, I didn't seeing any real promise in any of it. What I was suffering from was a complete poverty of vision, and I simply lacked the desire to make a life for myself. This was a retreat from responsibility. Why? I didn't want to think about professions. I took a course called 'business and professional communication' and I can tell you that I was the one person in the class who seemed to really have no concept of what he wanted to be. Facing this decision depressed me like I've never felt before. Others, dressed for their after-school internship or job had real visions of a future. Some of them are probably doing well now. Not me. I had no real concept of what I wanted to be. Hell, even in journalism I sorely lacked the chops to interview. Writing, editing, fine. Interviewing? I might as well have been flinging poo at some of these interviewees. If there were trip wires and landmines in anyone's life I'd step on them EVERY TIME. I was that kind of filth. I'd print out pictures of deformed children, child pornography, anything I could do to be the craptacular edgemaster once again. I was retreating from responsibility, personal life, decorum, setting fire to EVERYTHING. Why? Well, I guess the field of journalism was also too big. 

Retreat, pussy, retreat. 

By my senior year of college I had to settle into a degree, and I had plenty of hours in Communication, so I finished. That was after an aborted attempt at a master's in business administration and a subsequent one at management information systems. The MBA fell apart after I fell in love with my MIS course. That fell apart after I couldn't log the computer time with a CD-ROM drive so I could work on a JAVA project. Nope, all the computers were taken by Spanish students who wreaked of cigarettes and chattered in their lispy Spanish. Last minute, I went to my cousin's house to use his computer with a CD-ROM, but he was engaged as a dungeon master in a rather large table topgame in the other room. I couldn't focus. 

Retreat. Actually, that JAVA course reads as a withdrawal or 'W' on my transcripts. 

My mom was still helping me talk to people at this point, and she arranged for me to talk to an in-law who happened to work at Intel. He put me in touch with a computer scientist at SLU who walked me through a typical degree track. Three years in and it was like I was starting all over. 

No way. Fuck that. Retreat. 

The recruits in Communication fell into two categories. In one were the professionals, those who were genuinely good at some aspect of the field like marketing, advertising, consulting, being actually engaging public speakers or simply normal. These folks were pursuing internships in said fields. Then there were those who wanted an easy degree just to get by and probably use their contacts outside of school, through family, or in a sorority or fraternity, to find work. Then there was me: the guy standing next to the parking bollard, mumbling to himself, alone. Dramatic, I know. Ok, I managed solid grades, and at least I had retreated from thoughts of mass murder. A noble retreat there. Owing to my A-B grades and my F for 'funny' I ended up landing a Master's teaching assignment, and a Doctorate as well. How I survived my Master's I don't know, but when it came to the dissertation that 'I don't wanna!' voice came screaming back with a vengeance the likes of which I hadn't experienced in some time. So when I was left with nothing but writing, writing, the one thing I thought I was good at, I just gave up. If I could think of my topic as a 'field,' yeah, you get the idea. It was too fucking big. 

Retreat. 

So here I am. Staring at this page, reflecting negatively, critically on my life with no marketable skills from those college days nor drive to do anything. And what's saddest and this is what bugs me the most is how my shitty self-identity is contagious. I've become a sadboy punching bag. Other people feel the same way, if not at first, eventually. Women yell at me? Retreat. Job too hard? Retreat. House searching too mentally draining? You know the drill kid: curl up in the fetal position and cry about having to think about shit or do shit you don't want to do. Retreat, retreat, retreat! Court disaster, fuck shit up, break your favorite toys. Why? I guess it comes down to control, and being depressed the one thing I can control is that sadness. No, not happiness, just simply my sadness. It's the one constant in my life. Happiness is a chemical. But that sadness there, it's existential. That shit runs as deep as that shit may flow. 

Think about this. 

I spend just about every waking hour watching cooking videos and I cook virtually every meal for myself. You'd think I'd be good at cooking. Once again, no, not really. I'm not that good at cooking, not by a longshot. Under other circumstances I'd be retreating from this as well. But in this case I don't. Why? Because the thought of standing in line for food fucking embarrasses me to no end. Of course worse is going out to a restaurant alone. Loserville: population one.

Retreat. 

And the one thing keeping me alive is a kernel of instinct that keeps me from killing myself. Otherwise, that would be my final recourse. Loserville: population none. 

"Sadness rolls down hill." I wrote that in September 2015 here. And it just so happens to roll down into a windswept field that is way too damn big. 

Retreat.

Dream 11/09/2020

I had one of those split, anxiety dreams where I was in an asylum against my will and the floor consisted of something like rectangular lincoln logs that when you ran upon them scattered to reveal layer upon layer of lincoln-like logs that totally consumed you with every move. That and me and my roomate's beds were outside, getting rained upon but the most important thing was to not get the ink pens wet. That and the bathroom was a toilet terminating at the end of series of steps down, separated by a drape, and always had impatient crazies either in or waiting to use it. 

Locke's inapplicability to modern society

Locke's philosophy derives from two foundational concepts that become inapplicable, at the individual level, in the modern world. Namely, the notion of independent, political agency in a stakeholder model resting on the "categorical parity" of property ownership. It leads to a disparity baked into the stakeholder model, which believes that property ownership establishes the measure of responsibility, self-interest, and political agency to decide on political issues. Russell recognizes that modern organizations and their property interests are of a size and complexity that aren't comparable to those of everyday property owners. This disparity is most evident in how corporations, due to their size and wealth, have interests on a scale of power, complexity, and consequence that completely drown out the interests of individual stakeholders. Russell writes:

"Locke's political philosophy was, on the whole, adequate and useful until the industrial revolution. Since then, it has been increasingly unable to tackle the important problems. The power of property, as embodied in vast corporations, grew beyond anything imagined by Locke. The necessary functions of State--for example, in education--increased enormously. Nationalism brought about an alliance, sometimes an amalgamation, of economic and political power, making war the principle means of competition. The single separate citizen has no longer the power or independence that he had in Locke's speculations. Our age is one of organization, and its conflicts are between organizations, not between separate individuals. The state of nature, as Locke says, still exists as between States. A new international Social Contract is necessary before we can enjoy the promised benefits of government. When once an international government has been created, much of Locke's political philosophy will again become applicable, though not part of it that deals with private property." (p. 640)

From Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy"

Locke in the defense of conservatism

Writing on John Locke, Bertrand Russell describes some of the implications that derive from the nature of the perishability of a product. This perishability, says Locke, begets behavior toward collecting precious metals, which are directly tied to wealth, while also creating an opposing behavior for items that may spoil. The morality tied to wastage leads one not to collect, for example, farm produce, but to instead collect that which it may become through sale, namely, money. 

"He [Locke] makes a great deal of the imperishable character of the precious metals, which, he says, are the source of money and inequality of fortune. He seems, in an abstract and academic way, to regret economic inequality, but he certainly does not think that it would be wise to take such measures as might prevent it. No doubt he was impressed, as all the men of his time were, by the gains to civilization that were due to rich men, chiefly as patrons of arts and letters. The same attitude exists in modern America, where science and art are largely dependent upon the benefactions of the very rich. To some extent, civilization is furthered by social injustice. This fact is the basis of what is most respectable in conservatism."  (p. 637) 

From Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy" 

Institutions with non-heredity-based power

 "There is one great institution that has never had any hereditary element, namely, the Catholic Church. We may expect the dictatorships, if they survive, to develop gradually a form of government analogous to that of the Church. This has already happened in the case of the great corporations in America, which have, or had until Pearl Harbor, powers almost equal to those of the government." (p. 622)

from Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy"

This interlude occurs in his discussion of John Locke's Political Philosophy shortly after he relates how Locke himself had discounted the hereditary basis of power in monarchy established in the Patriarcha, written by Sir Robert Filmer. Filmer forwarded that this hereditary basis of power was established in the Bible throught he lineage of Adam. Locke's retort was that IF his era could find the hereditary linkages between the existing monarchs of Europe that only one would stand to inherit this power and the crown due to the laws of primogeniture. He's suspect that through this very mechanism that other monarchs would concede authority to the one monarch found to be most directly descended from Adam. Locke asks rhetorically (by way of Russell's paraphrase), "[w]ould ... all existing monarchs ... lay their crowns at his feet" (p. 621)?

Nasty, Brutish, Short

 Nasty, Brutish, and Short will be the three sizes available for a line of boys activewear. 

Fly, fans

 A fly with many fans will soon find itself dead. 

Making the Matrix scarier and sexier

We are hosts to an extradimensional bot fly, which lays its larvae upon us. The catch is that the very extradimensional botfly larvae that gestate within us is, within our 4 dimensions, the substrate of our host-consciousness. Our birth, life, and death are experienced as a result of this extradimensional botfly. 

Our life ends when its gestation period ends. As it emerges from us, no longer, a gestating larva, our soul leaves our body. 

Youthful bloom

 I remember being young. 

The things that would haunt me were there, but much more muted. 

A different me was blooming. 

In some ways I missed an opportunity to be more publicly available. 

That bloom would end, but a different bloom remained, maybe a desert flower, something much more resilient yet no less beautiful, its contours inspiring wiser reflection, growing circumspect. 

Nothing to write

I have nothing to write. 

I have nothing to say.

All my expressions have gone away. 

Everything's been said. 

Inside I'm dead. 

43 and lonely. 

Bye world. 

Bye. 

Sharing

The food doesn't taste as good if you have no one to share it with.
You don't try as hard if you have no one to impress.

Have you ever felt like you had no value, no meaning, no substance?
It's as if you weren't there. You were nobody.

My body is outlined by an intense perimeter of shame. That I'm an imposition, a drain, an annoyance, a waste of time. Pieces of this have always been there. As I've aged they've come into focus, a burdensome clarity about why I live in exile, why I fear judgment, why I'm afraid to open up, why I am afraid to share a world with others.

I wouldn't call my childhood traumatic. On the whole I was taken care of. I think I just lacked the resilience to brush off the anger and abuse that I did receive, that I let that anger and abuse touch me deeply. It wasn't that bad of a childhood. I always had a bike. I could watch cable TV or play videogames. I had lots of toys, and I was always fed. If anything those creature comforts took the place of substantive gestures of genuine affection. I hold the few I did receive near and dear because there were so few. And to others, that should be more than enough. But I couldn't tell you if receiving more unconditional love and attention would have been a cure.

If anything it's been my tendency toward solitude, which has created practical limitations on my ability to share space with others. I can't laugh off smells and noises that a body makes or even accept them because I didn't necessarily have a lengthy experience of having to deal with them among others. Nevertheless, I did, and I suppose it was the sense that I wasn't there communicated by family that allowed me to believe that I simply was not there. And now the prospect of being in the presence of somebody creates an overwhelming anxiety about the others' life; one that is oceanic. It washes over me, consumes me totally, terrifies me. I think of the possibility of any one person and recognize that they have a life that is complex and personal and knowledge of it I feel should be somewhat forbidden, that I shouldn't be there witnessing it, that I'm in the way of others' fun.

I suppose these things take practice, a practice that I'm lacking by decades at this point. It's still my first day of school, emotionally, and that's a serious obstacle to my desire to share my life and accept another's without fear and judgment.

Love's Dialectic

My life is a prison without you.

But I love you too much to make you a prisoner of me. 

Most enlightened, most ordinary

"... in the Eastern traditions, the most enlightened become the most ordinary. And so these great sages just went around cutting firewood and drawing water." (p. 248)

 - Fritjof Capra in "The Holographic Paradigm"

power is sex is everything

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."

- Oscar Wilde

"Illegal" Immigrants

If they came over chained to the boat, they came over "illegally."

Dungeons and Dragons becomes Offices and Opposition Research

Someone should update the neomedieval fantasy genre and turn the 80s through early 90s corporate world into a tabletop roleplaying game.

That's something to chew upon for a later date.

race memory

Resonance

Resonance is the voice of the universe.

It manifests in specific kinds of interfaces that we see inside brains but also on trees in the fall: the dendritic arbor. That an oak tree and a Purkinje cell resemble each other structurally points to an affordance manifestly available within the universe between a frequency domain and a space-time domain, an interface between energy and matter.

A tree's arbor reflects two specific demands flowing through a material affordance. The first is a demand for surface area, a surface area for catching as many photons as a tree's chloroplasts can to sustain the process of photosynthesis. The second, diffusion reflects the need for a tree to exchange water and oxygen with the world while fixing carbon in a sugar used to feed cell functions. These happen in a fluid/gas exchange system whereby maximal conditions of diffusion can occur. This will allow the ready and least inefficient exchange of needed molecules to sustain the life processes occurring at the cellular level of a tree.

In the arbor we see a specific interface: one for maximizing the interaction of photons with photosensitive bodies. The color of a leaf reflects a specific frequency attunement to the wavelength of light to sustain the type of photon-chlorophyll interaction that maximizes interactions between the two. In other words, a tree has positioned a chloroplast both in space but also in time to be along the wave path of light as it is occurring during the sun's path across the earth.

The brain reflects a very similar construct based on the same kinds of affordances. Except in the absence of the need to capture photons this dendritic arbor becomes an interface between the frequency domain and the space time domain to both establish gnosis and model it as a hologram of interference patterns. The hologram is knowledge. The hologram is an interference pattern. This interference pattern contains the information of a three-dimensional world, one organized around light sensitive organs for sight. It is this evolutionary length interaction between light and matter, which give rise to the same dendritic arbors.

The interface between frequency and space-time is a crown of life processes, molecular diffusion, matter-energy interactions, resonance. We think of resonance in everyday phenomena as the characteristic sound or hum when a sound resonates off an object, causing a hum or a vibration to manifest momentarily. This is the building block of a gnosissphere, that in the universe, the interaction between energy and matter is the basis of a will to self knowledge within that universe. The purposeful integration of matter to capture some aspect of this resonance to create energy for cells or to form a working interface between the frequency domain and space-time domain for the sake of a kind of sentient reconstruction of the world around a life form is a foundational feature of life, of knowledge, of sentience.

Resonance is the voice of the universe. A dendritic arbor is the resonance pattern manifesting within space-time. It is the space-time interface with the frequency domain. The twain form the basis of self-knowledge in this universe.

A Cronenberg Dream: 05/14/2020

The dream starts out in a school. The school is reminiscent of a religious school in my old hometown. The place is empty, dark. It could be after hours but I don't remember. I don't recall, but something seems to have occurred, something that makes me want to leave the place and go looking for something from my past.

I drive out on some back roads, and out, in a very tree-lined area I return to someone's home. And the neighbor is crying about 'Corewood.' I look down and I see a bone-shaped plate with the name 'Corewood' written on it on a back porch of a house that is also clearly abandoned. The neighbor, a woman next door is weeping and reminiscing about the dog, named 'Corewood.' I don't recall if this is in reference to an immediate past or something months, years, decades ago. The plate shows wear. I get in my car and drive on.

I drive down the road and the landscape has changed. People are missing. The rituals have changed. I feel beset by a change that I cannot control, a change that has taken all the people I know and all the familiar landmarks in a day from me. Whole towns are missing. Nothing looks familiar. I know that I am driving along familiar roads, except the buildings are completely gone. In their place are fields upon fields, some of which are growing these large plants reminiscent of little shop of horrors, their blooms, reaching out Aubrey-like into the sky. On one side of the road is what resembles ocean. Only it's not ocean. It shimmers an odd blue, and one can make out definition in the undulations that maybe it's a kind of plant, like countless heavy blades of grass of an odd color and rough shape with a shimmery, shiny element to this among it. I drive on.

I drive up a road that dead-ends at a building that is also abandoned. Everywhere I drive is abandoned. Next, I am in a movie theater, and this place is anything but abandoned. It's packed nearly to capacity. The movie is on, but enough light persists out the back of the theater that I can see where I am and that nearly every seat is filled. I am at the back right of the theater with regard to its screen. I overhear some talk about someone coming to bring something. I move from my seat near the back of an otherwise packed movie theater. I am surrounded by kids no more than 12, no less than 10-years old. A blonde kid with shoulder-length straight hair asks if he can sit next to me. I say, 'ok.' He hands me a small pistol and asks me, 'Do you want this?' I say 'Ok.' He continues that 'I don't know, they tell me to carry this.' I am unsure who they is or if he's even on my side. I check the gun's safety switch as the boy indicates that guns are dangerous. I stick this small gun in the back right pocket of my pants.

I get up and squat behind the rear seats in a void with my back against the theater wall. Two people, a man and woman, are standing near the entrance talking. A man comes up the aisle, older, long brown hair, reminding me of a table-top gamer. He's wearing a duster. He goes to take a seat, then he gets up and proceeds to the back where I am and sets down a small, flat triangular box with rounded corners. He asks, 'Is this pointing at you, Jason?' I tell him that it is. Then he proceeds to sit down where I had been sitting. I get up and duck around the corner of the entrance to the theater and watch as the box begins to project a barely visible light against the wall at about the height where my face was as I squatted back there. Suddenly, a long, pale, intestine-like worm begins to emerge from the box. I shoot frantically at the box, but none of my shots hit the worm-snake-intestine creature. It slithers through the wall at the side of the theater into an adjacent, also-filled theater. I run after it, and being screaming 'worm!' 'worm!' then change my plea to 'snake!' 'snake!' and I run to the front of the theater and see the creature moving along the front wall. I aim my gun to shoot the creature but it's now empty. The creature slithers away through the next wall.

I wake up.

Approaching an unknown

The start of any good approach to an unknown is to divide it into fourths and handle known variables as x and y values based upon allowing a number to represent a quantity and to have that quantity placed at a corresponding distance from a zero point along a numbered line.

This quadrant approach itself can be proprioceptive, meaning that our own sense of our body's orientation in space serve in a translational logic where the x axis serves as a left and right, the y axis determines up and down, and 0,0 becomes the center, the mind's I. But I think that concedes too much, so let's forget it.

The quadrant approach allows known, defined, and seemingly related variables to define an imaginary space, which lets the distance between intersecting variables also to represent meaningful difference.

The quadrant approach also demonstrates a shape, which contains a dialectic. The x and y axes and their corresponding 0 positions serve as both a visual and mathematical division of what are presumably 'quantities' of phenomena into characteristically different 'units' of phenomena, that is 'things with different names' More importantly, as they're placed along a continuum their common numerical property reveal a central definition of a dialectic--that is, two objects defined by their difference from one another.

Now, the nature of differences vary. And handling phenomena as numerical quantities may suggest that an architectonic feature of varying quantities of sameness and difference may 'saturate' or 'dilute' an entity, making it one of many objects or their transitional artifacts.

Technology and the end of the old system of whaling

From the 1903 fishing season, Lubbock writes:

"The truth was that the old system of whaling from boats was past, being replaced by the modern one of small powerful steamers with harpoon guns in their bows. These had been invented and brought to perfection by the Norwegians. The Norwegian steamers did not attempt to penetrate the ice, but fished in the open sea, and even the fastest, strongest blue whale, the largest and most powerful mammal in the world, could not contend against their bomb guns." (p. 443)

In the final paragraph of his book, Lubbock places modern whaling in perspective from its origins:

"Though there is still much hardship to be faced in the whaling trade, the thrill of the fight is no longer enhanced by the leviathan's threat to the life and limb of his attacker. Science has taken the romance out of the old fishing and made it into an abominable slaughter, which the old-timer must view not only with amazement but with a very considerable amount of contempt. But the age is a scientific one, and the human being tends more and more to become just a cog in the machinery. However, the one law of life that even Einstein cannot get away with is that the old must make way for the new: in the words of the sea shanty, life is a case of "Get up, Jack, let John sit down." (p. 453)

From "The Arctic Whalers" by Basil Lubbock

The 1890s: Expanding the hunt to any species that offered any value

In his book 'The Arctic Whalers' Basil Lubbock uses the logs of whaling vessels to describe the hardships, adventures, and varying catches of whaling from the late 1700s through the early 20th c. The conclusions that Lubbock draws from his research draw a clear picture about Arctic whaling. The weather made the hunt highly variable, and even in the earliest whaling logs, some ships came home 'clean,' having caught not a single whale. Secondly, the "prodigious slaughter" of such whales, especially in their calving grounds led to the decline and disappearance of the Greenland whale from the historical fishing grounds where whalers knew to find them. Advances in technology, such as the introduction of steam powered whaling ships, the reinforcement of hulls for penetrating ice, and rocket- or gunpowder-powered harpoons all increased what was soon becoming an ever dwindling catch. By the 1890s whales were scarce and whalers increasingly turned to other arctic species, from seals and walruses to reindeer, beluga, and even bottlenose dolphins, many of which were hunted for pelts or for their blubber, which was boiled down into oil.

This slaughter of Arctic species may have had an adverse effect upon Eskimo communities native to these arctic regions and dependent upon some of the same animals for food and materials. The introduction of novel infections, through close contact, and the wholesale destruction of the food web, perhaps may have caused local extinctions of Eskimo communities. As this description demonstrates:

"Again this year, a number of dead Eskimos were discovered; the mate of the Terra Nova came across about 30 skeletons in Dexterity Bay, the women and children lying separate to the men, alongside of whom lay their fishing and hunting gear, while the children's toys and tiny weapons were beside their bodies" (p. 421). 

The expansion of arctic hunting and the institutional momentum defined by ship investments, a specially trained labor force, and markets where arctic oil, pelts, and ivory provided a perennial demand ensured that whaling expeditions would turn a profit by hook or by crook.

Lubbock writes:

"At the beginning of the 'nineties a new form of whaling had been started at Whangamumu in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand. This was the netting of humpbacks, caught passing north between May and August, and south between October and December" (p. 431). 

The 1896 fishing season reveals this from the whaling logs: "Captain Milne, seeing no chance of whales, made up a cargo of anything he could catch, his total bag being 1 whale, 5 narwhals, 21 walruses, 37 bears, 74 seals, 20 reindeer and 3 wolves. The Esquimaux returned with 80 seals, 21 walrus, 12 bears and 2 narwhals, and the Nova Zembla managed to kill 2 small whales. The Alert brought back 45 tons of whale oil, 45 cwts. of bone and 20 tons of seal oil, the produce of 3 good whales and 3890 seals" (pp. 432-433).

As with whaling, many years of sealing, in addition to weather-based catastrophes, led to diminished numbers of seals. The whalers turned to walruses, or 'sea horses.'

Lubbock writes:

It may be asked why this sudden rush to kill sea-horses The answer is a curious one: the hides of the walrus were selling at 1/6 per pound to the makers of bicycles; that is to say, the best bull hides, which were much thicker than those of the females and young. Walrus tusks were fetching 2/6 per pound, and the oil about £18 per ton.' (p. 434).

One can attest to how markets defined what was worthy of hunting and even then the margins were slim. But in economic terms, whaling vessels, harpoons, and skilled seamen and hunters were all durable investments wanting of the opportunity to return year after year for what could be gotten. But the salad days of large whale catches, equally large bonuses, and short seasons were all but over. Instead, whaling had to expand its opportunities to what in the arctic could fetch money in European and American markets. When the whaling or sealing was poor anything went.

"Though 12 Norweigans and 2 Dundee ships, the Polar Star and Balaena, went to the Greenland sealing, the days of this trade were nearly finished, the two Dundee vessels failing to kill 1000 seals between them. Both ships went on to the whaling, but not a single fish was seen. Captain Davidson of the Polar Star gave up the whaling in June, and headed up the Greenland coast in search of walrus, going as far as Lat. 74° N. Besides killing 70 old walrus bulls, Davidson had a very successful musk ox hunting, his bag being 24 head. In these days, when the musk ox was becoming scarce, it is interesting to read that large herds were seen browsing on the main land, most of those killed being straggling animals found on the islands and the shore of the mainland." (p. 435)

Lubbock solidifies this point in writing:

"After bagging 10 musk ox, Robertson sailed for Davis Straits, where he killed 2 whales off Coutts Inlet, the Balaena returning with a cargo of 3 whales, 7 walrus, 3 narwhals, 11 bears and 10 musk oxen. It will be noticed from these different cargoes that the whaling captains were doing their best to make up for the difficulty in killing whales by turning every mammal, bird and fish in the Arctic to account" (pp. 437-438). 

Once, again, the expansion of markets led to a spike in the price of oil, which encouraged more expeditions to the arctic in search of whatever species could offer its blubber for it. Lubbock writes of the 1900 fishing season:

"Owing to a new market for oil being found in Italy, the price of that commodity had increased to £23 per ton. During the past ten years, 2,442,125 seals had been taken off Newfoundland by 181 steamers, but this does not represent anything like the total number of seals slaughtered, for there was tremendous wastage of seals killed and afterwards lost on the ice. Besides this, the sailing fleet of stout-hearted Newfoundland schooners accounted for a large total, reckoned at about 10,000 seals in 1900; then, again, the sealing from the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador also took toll of the seals. When, in addition to this slaughter, one remembers the numbers which had been killed at the Greenland fishing, it is surprising that the seals still seemed to be as plentiful as ever." (p. 438)

The Fishing Season 1892: The demise of the Biscay right whale and the hunt of a blue whale

"Though the Greenland whale was scarcer and harder to catch every year, it is interesting to note that the Norwegians had been killing a few of the almost extinct Biscay right whales during the past year or two to the southward of Iceland. In 1889, 1 was caught; in 1890 6; and in 1891, 10. During 1892, every whaler was on the lookout for them, but none were seen, and it seemed likely that the Norwegians had killed off the only school in existence.

Discouraged by their want of success in the Arctic, the four Dundee whalers, Active, Balaena, Diana, and Polar Star, sailed in September, 1892, for the Antarctic in search of the southern right whale, but their voyage was an absolute failure, and they had to cut their loss by filling up with seals. Their most interesting adventure was the Active's endeavour to kill a blue whale. The fish towed the whaler and her three boats, with 6 lines out, for 14 hours; the ship then put her engines astern and the lines broke."  (p. 426)

From The Arctic Whalers by Basil Lubbock

Of note in this passage is a reference to the enterprise of whaling and how it spawned various other arctic expeditions. Some led to better mapping and naturalistic examination of the Arctic landscape. Some led to the expansion of the hunt to include seals, porpoises, bears, foxes, narwhal, and beluga as the correct, or 'right,' whales were all hunted to scarce enough numbers to make whaling for them alone a financial loss. The majority of Arctic produce was the blubber found on the various large mammals there, which was boiled down into oil. In addition, some were also hunted for their beautiful white skin, in the case of the beluga, or pelts, in the case of walruses, seals, bears, and foxes. Finally, their bone, chiefly the whale's baleen and jaw bone, the walruses' tusk, and the narwhal's 'unicorn' were all prized by markets in Europe eager to turn these into various fine and useful products for homes that could afford them.

The fishing season 1891: Speculation about the over-hunting of a species

"By this date, Peterhead owners were seriously losing heart in the Greenland fishery. What few whales were seen had become so wild that it was almost impossible to approach them, and it was contended that the noise of the screw could be heard by whales for a tremendous distance and gave ample warning" (p. 423).

One could surmise that several hundred years of hunting a large cetacean had thinned the numbers of the breeding population that were less likely to startle awake and flee while being hunted. Likewise, those that were relatively calm in demeanor among a population that had no real predator at adult size other than the newly arrived whalers were the first among this population to perish as were those whales that chose to bask in the open, away from floes. Contrast that to the one instance of the 'unsuspicious fish' that circled a whaling vessel a few times and even nudged it along as if it were a fellow whale before being harpooned point-blank. The rare few in a Greenland whale population that could be perceived as its ambassadors among humans, those that felt no fear or animosity toward them, were the first to perish as they were the easiest to harpoon, flench, boil down, and sell to markets in Europe and the Americas in the form of oil and baleen products.

Quote above from The Arctic Whalers by Basil Lubbock

An account of stalking a Greenland whale

From the 1889 fishing season:

"Most of the Greenland whales were caught near a very large floe; one of these, which was harpooned by Mr. Robert Gray, the eldest son and chief officer of Captain David Gray, was seen from the crow's nest of the Eclipse, about a mile away with only its crown and part of its back showing--it was fast asleep. The boat pulled up behind it as quietly as possible and, when near enough, was allowed to drift silently upon the whale, and Mr. Gray did not fire until the boat was over the whale's tail with its bow almost touching its back. This whale had over 10 ft. of bone" (p. 421).

From The Arctic Whalers by Basil Lubbock

The Fishing Season, 1888: How Belugas were slaughtered

"The black and white whales were caught in Prince Regent Inlet, the latter in Elwin Bay. The lancing of white whales as the tide receded was exciting work, for the fish lashed out violently with their tails in their struggles to get afloat, and threw the mud and water in every direction, whilst the men, waist deep in the churned-up sea, plied their lances wildly" (p. 420)

As a note of reference the black and white whales, also called "swordfish" or "grampus" by some whalers, were Orcas or Killer Whales, the chief predators of the Beluga whale. Whaling vessels would often take note of these pods as indication that they were hunting Beluga and follow signs to find similar pods of distressed Belugas chased into a sound or against a beach. Captain Adams gives the following account to the Zoologist:

The white whale is very shy and easily scared, quick in its movements, and very keen-sighted; it is consequently very difficult to capture in deep water. It is generally taken in the shallow bays after the ice breaks away from the land. The grampus is a great enemy of the white whale, and great numbers of the latter are found driven by them into the shallows. The fishermen are on the watch for such a chance, and when it occurs all boats are sent in pursuit; they are placed in a cordon around a school of fish, the boats being about equal distance apart and to the seaward of the fish; the boats gradually advance, driving the fish on shore at the most convenient place they can. When tide recedes the white whales are left aground, or nearly so, and then the slaughter commences, the men jumping into the shallow water and dispatching the fish with lances. Sometimes the fish turn and make a desperate rush seaward, great numbers escaping. Nets have occasionally been used in endeavouring to enclose the fish, but I cannot say that on the whole the use of nets has been a success. It has sometimes helped to secure a good result, but at other times the fish in a rush seaward have carried nets and all before them. (p. 414)

Furthermore, Lubbock writes:

"White whales feed on the salmon and, when they followed them up narrow fiords, it was sometimes possible to net the entrance behind them. A white whale drive was a noisy affair, with much firing of rifles and beating of tin cans. It took place at high water, so that the ebbing tide should strand the scared whales. Their value consisted mostly in their skins, which were worth about 1/6 per lb., and when dressed were sold as porpoise hide. From 6 to 7 of these whales boiled a ton of oil." (p. 414)

 From The Arctic Whalers by Basil Lubbock

Disasters among foreign ships at the sealing in the Arctic

"There were some terrible disasters amongst foreign ships during the sealing, and the Orion discovered 70 men frozen dead upon the ice, the crews of a foreign barque and brig, which had been wrecked. These men were all upon one piece of ice, and as they had died the survivors had piled up the bodies to make a breakwater on the weather side of the ice to prevent the sea from breaking over them. In this way a solid wall of dead men, cemented together by the frost, was made, behind which only two or three men were found to be still living.

The three Hull brigs, Germanica, Hebe and Violet, were all stove in and wrecked in the ice this year at the sealing. The Violet previously rescued a Dane, who was found on a piece of ice with a piggin hoisted on a boat hook as a distress signal beside him. He was found on his hands and knees, almost frozen stiff and unable to speak, whilst laid out alongside him, were five dead shipmates. These man had lost their ship in a gale. The surgeon was compelled to amputate both the Dane's legs, but he only lived for another six weeks." (p. 360)

From The Arctic Whales by Basil Lubbock

The success of the 'Eclipse.'

"The catch of the Eclipse, generally known as the Old Eclipse, shows one the way in which the Greenland whale was being killed off; most of her 22 fish were what were called 'nursery' whales, fish that did not exceed more than 30 feet in length and had not long been weaned. These were very easily killed; in deed, out of the 22, the Eclipse was stated to have killed 15 at a fall (i.e. at a single lowering of the boats). These nursery whales were generally found in the Polar ice to the northwards of 80° at the end of June and after. As far back as 1790, when ships had begun to be fortified or strengthened for penetrating the ice, the slaughter of these nursery whales had begun, and it is not surprising that such tactics as killing off the young fish should have practically exterminated the Greenland whale." (p. 343)

from "The Arctic Whalers" by Basil Lubbock

God's wrath

Plagues are bible-grade events. Highly infectious diseases that increase the mortality rate of a population qualify as a biblical event. Right now, we're in the center of one.

I live in a Christian world. Religions like Christianity provide much needed structure and meaning to people's lives. Why? They reduce uncertainty. Religion maps onto a world full of circumstantial tragedies a gridwork with a narrative direction. Acts of good faith garner the love of God. Conversely, God visits wrath upon acts of evil. But most importantly, God is a mystery.

Armed with the best in epidemiological science we have discovered that our plague originated in a mammal-jumping virus that infected a person butchering a pangolin in a wet market in China.

This act of discovering the route of virus transmission and its ground zero event does something to demystify the potential religious potential to re-signify a plague as the ubiquitous condemnation of a people by God for their wayward activities.

How are we to suggest that Covid-19 is God's punishment for our sins against a pangolin in a Chinese wet market?

The success of a virus depends upon its route of communication. And so goes efforts to fight infection rates. Like many viruses this one succeeds where people come into direct contact. People revert to living as anchorites, religiously following a routine to avoid infection. Those that endeavor to enter the public for basic necessities may resort to wearing a mask and gloves to avoid contagion. And it is in this gesture that we find a removal of a prime interface for the public and the production of 'normal' relations. As the expressive features of the face and body are covered, a psychological effect of walling off identity and 'communication' occur. It is in this confluence of the term for both sharing information and spreading disease that we find a very potent metaphor and reality concerning disease. Given the social nature of humans the diseases that we spread have evolved to take advantage of that pathway, to pass through normal, day-to-day contact.

A July 27, 1823 Killing Field

"The result of this slaughter of whales was vividly described in the Cumbrian's log of July 27: 'We were turning south along the land floes in hopes of fish. Here and there along the floe edge lay the dead bodies of hundreds of flenched whales, and the air for miles around was tainted with the fætor which rose from such masses of putridity. Towards evening, the numbers come across were even increasing, and the effluvia which then assailed our olfactories became almost intolerable'" (pp. 254-255).

from "The Arctic Whalers" by Basil Lubbock

May 28, 1823: An 'Unsuspicious' Fish

"On May 28 the Cumbrian captured a very unsuspicious fish whilst lying to in a pool of water with seven sail in company. This whale, after swimming all round the ship, at length put her nose to the bow, and for about two minutes attempted to push the ship along. Whilst she was occupied in this strange fashion she was harpooned" (p. 253).

from "The Arctic Whalers" by Basil Lubbock

The Fishing Season, 1811.

"By this date, quite two-thirds of the whalers went to Davis Straits where the season was a close one. The Greenland fleet found the ice barrier hard to get through, and a few ships reached the fishing ground before May 26. A good run of whales was met with in Lats. 78° and 79°, but, as in past years, many of the ships took toll of undersized fish and even suckling calves" (p. 188)

from The Arctic Whalers by Basil Lubbock

The Fishing Season, 1808.

"This is the first of a series of record years, in which the most prodigious slaughter of whales took place" (p. 181).

"The first arrival from the fishery was the Henrietta (Captain Kearsly) on June 12, after an absence of only 85 days, having left the ice on May 22. She was a very full ship with 21 whales on board, the blubber of 7 of them being uncasked."
...

"There was general rejoicing in the fishing ports when ship after ship began to arrive with a bumper cargo and brought excellent reports of the fishing. It was soon seen that the season would prove the best on record.

Not a single ship in the whole fleet had less than 10 whales. The Aurora (Captain Sadler) arrived from Greenland with 38 fish, making 700 butts or 264 tons of oil; whilst the Samuels (Captain Marshall) arrived from Davis Straits on the same day (July 29) with 20 fish, making 278 tons of oil and 10 tons of bone. The Ellison (Captain Holberry) arrived from Greenland on August 12, with 30 fish, 550 butts, and the Walker (Captain Sadler, late of the Molly) arrived from Greenland on August 5 with 27 whales, 530 butts. The Resolution (Captain Scoresby) with 27 fish was the best of the Whitby ships, the William and Ann (Captain Johnston), with 25 fish, coming next.

The Middleton (Captain Johnston) was the best fished of the Newcastle ships with 31. The Dundee of London had 28 fish; the Lively of Berwick, 25; the Hope of Peterhead (Captain Geary), 30 fish; and the Enterprise of Peterhead (Captain Volum), 27 fish.

The Grimsby ships were both full, the Birnie, with 18 whales, being the second ship to arrive from Greenland.

Of the 4 Aberdeen ships, the best fished was the Neptune which came home with 26 fish, one of them in bulk. The Hercules (Captain Gibbon) was also full.

Of the 7 Dundee ships, the Rodney was full, with 12 fish; Horn had 9 and Mary 9. Of the 7 Leith whalers, the best fished was the Thomas and Ann (Captain Newton), full up with 18 whales. The North Star had the misfortune to be burnt on the passage out on March 30. The Lion of Liverpool had 19 fish, boiling 130 tons. The Lady Jane of Newcastle brought home the crew of the British ship Adventure, which after discharging a cargo at one of the Danish Greenland Settlements, was lost on the passage home.

When entering port, whalers emptied their guns by discharging them. On August 7, whilst the Isabella was carrying out this operation, one of her crew had his arm blown off.

During the summer, in spite of the large cargoes brought in, whale oil was fetching from £26 to £27 a ton, but before the winter, owing chiefly to the great continental demand caused by the war and the lack of European whalers, the price had risen £10."
(pp. 182-183)

from The Arctic Whalers by Basil Lubbock

Exterminating the Greenland Whale

The Greenland ships were still killing immature fish; whilst 193 whales killed by 19 Davis Straits ships produced 2803 tons of oil and 117 tons of bone, the 281 whales killed by 19 Greenland ships only produced 2235 tons of oil and 62 tons of bone. Again we have the Aurora (Captain "But" Sadler) killing 26 whales, boiling out 244 tons of oil and 9 tons of bone, as against the Samuels', whose 15 whales boiled out 247 tons of oil and 81/2 tons of bone.

These figures give one a hint of the way in which the Greenland whale, though still very prolific, was rapidly being exterminated.

(p. 169)


A Hull advertisement which provides further evidence of the wholesale killing of immature fish runs as follows:

FOR SALE BY PRIVATE CONTRACT.

Whale Oil Ready for Delivery.

About 50 tons of whale oil of superior quality being part of the produce of 22 fish under 7 feet 6 inches bone.

(Signed) CHRIS BRIGGS

Hull, July, 1805. 

 (p. 170)

(From The Arctic Whalers by Basil Lubbock)

Heaven isn't for introverts

The platitudes delivered to others in the throes of death, old age, or after loss is that one's friends, loved ones,  and pets will be there with them on the other side.

Rubbish.

First, this demand to never let go of those we love, to never accept their disappearance from one's life and from this earth is a selfish impulse. To address that with a platitude that heaven is a big happy house where they will all be and that while those who mourn their passing and can never let go can rest assured that their lost loves are in good hands.

Rubbish.

They're dead. Gone. Forever dust. The thing that was them, while unique and specific to their circumstances, is one of countless billions that came before who were also unique and specific to their circumstances.

Second, to those who really don't need people around all the time. Heaven sounds like hell. To mangle some Sartre: 'hell is other people.' Why would an introvert want to go to heaven if the balance of narratives one is told about it makes it sounds like one big party where everyone is laughing, smiling, and getting on. In short, it's the same social din that confuses and frustrates the introvert.

I don't want to go to hell, if it is as Sartre describes it. And I don't want to go to heaven if it is as the apologists describe it.

They're the same place.

Nope, I'll fend off too much chatter right here in my little quiet and shaded corner of this world until I return to the oblivion from which I came. My heaven, my church is in attaining excellence in dealing with other people fairly and without any pretense about motives or feelings. So if I'm not having a good time, I'll do my best to politely bow out of a situation. And if they're not having a good time, I'll do what I can within my power to address it by either attempting to be more social or, once again, bowing out.

To be caught in some ardor triangle or to have to wade through a crowd of friends to reach out to someone is not my idea of a good time. Mine is a one on one experience, and my god, those are few and far between in this world if only by virtue of the published lives so many of us live.

I don't want to be conveniently located at the swipe of a finger. I don't want to be constantly on and swiping through others' telepresent self-publications in cookie cutter device applications. I just want some peace and quiet. So please, don't invite me to your big party in heaven or your big party on earth. Don't guilt me into any number of silly situations that you constructed for your own ego. Please, just understand that not everyone wants to be with others, countless others all the goddamned time. Some of us cherish being alone, and we're not being arrogant or selfish or cranky when we refuse to join you or leave early, at least not intentionally so.