things have been going awfully well lately. work is good, which means I have enough money to do whatever I want – which is great, obviously. and while I’m doing whatever I want, I’m not even being completely lazy about it – I’m being productive, I’m getting things done, there are plans not only put into motion but followed through on.

which of course makes me a little suspicious. maybe things are going… too well. what’s the catch? how long do I have to wait for the results to come back?

I don’t think I’ll ever reach a point in my life where I’ll be able to live without anticipating that happening. I don’t even think that’s a reasonable thing to wish for. It’s completely unrealistic. I don’t think I’d ever even considered it before this second.

naturally, the tradeoff is literally to die for. oh hey look at that reference I just made.

so if this is the last year of my life (2012, might be, right? well okay no, but if it is) I’m actually pretty okay with where things are headed. I don’t even know if I have any interest in putting forth the effort necessary to make my mark in history – knowing that I’m making a mark in my immediate surrounds and close friends’ and family’s lives is kind of enough for me. that’s probably a lack of something, but it seems like the sort of thing that characterizes matt lohkamp, doesn’t it? this is good enough.

so yeah. it’ll be what, another 3 months before the next post? hold out for that, ladies and gentlemen.

… hey, ps – interesting thing, I have a few more secrets packed into my head than I did this time last year, don’t I? some of my own, some of other people’s. it’s kind of a new sensation, since I generally try to avoid situations where that happens, and yet here we are. I don’t even think it’s a bad thing, just a different thing.

This isn’t predestination, it’s causal determinism, and it directly opposes the existence of free will. It probably also contradicts quantum stuff, though I’ve got to admit I’m not by any means well-versed in that realm. Here’s what I know:

The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms we find electrons, and behind electrons quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries.

- Academician Prokhor Zakharov, “For I Have Tasted the Fruit” (Alpha Centauri, 1999)

So far as I know, this is true. Bigger things are made of smaller things – for that matter, big things are smaller things. I’m me, I’m human, I’m made of cells, which are made of chains of molecules, which are made of atoms stuck together, which are made of all sorts of other stuff – somehow all that stuff sticking together makes me, such as I am.

Now let’s think about pool tables.

A ball in motion on a pool table collides with another ball. The event involves well-known properties of matter, expressed in immaculate mathematical equations. Velocity of moving ball impacts stationary ball, transfers momentum, is left to come to rest while other ball moves in a trajectory determined by first ball’s motion. Every time ball A hits ball B, with those parameters in place, the same effect will result. There isn’t any uncertainty about it. It’d be silly to ‘believe’ that something else would occur. For another relevant quote:

Science replaces private prejudice with public, verifiable evidence.

― Richard Dawkins

Public verifiable evidence is simple enough to acquire in the case of our pool table – set up a robotic arm, place the balls precisely on the table, line up the shot in exactly the same way, and you’ll see the same thing happen over and over again. That’s science. It’s repeatable, it’s predictable, everything is accounted for.

I remember playing the ‘why’ game when I was a kid – keep repeating ‘why’ whenever an adult gives you an explanation, forcing them to delve ever deeper into progressively elementary explanations until they give up in frustration and invoke the ever-popular: ‘just because.’ That’s when the kid wins – when the adult has to admit they don’t know everything, which is of course a childish thing to feel the need to prove. However, it’s relevant to this topic, because it brings up an interesting question – what if the adult didn’t run out of explanations? We could ride that spiral of causality down into infinity.

But the implications. The pool balls always move the same way. Behind each effect we find a cause, and what caused that cause, and what caused that cause, and so on. Every event was precipitated by the conditions that heralded it. This isn’t predestination, as far as I can tell, in fact it can’t be, because god himself would be caught in the line of causes and effects.

This conclusion might sound hauntingly religious, though: everything happens for a reason, everything is fated to happen, everyone has a destiny, reality itself is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I can’t see it any other way – my very impulse to sit down and write this was itself the product of causes so complex that I can’t conceive them, but their existence seems nearly undeniable. I can’t trace the exact sequence of shots in my own personal game of pool that’s led me to this point, but I know they’re there for me and my 4-dimensional experiences just as they’re there for the pool table and its 2-(maybe 3 if you’re feeing generous)-dimensional outcomes. All effects have causes, proceeded by effects, proceeded by causes, ad infinitum.

This has implications, of course. First of all, free will becomes an illusion. We can’t choose, because the factors that influence our choice are quantifiable, even if we don’t currently posses the means to do so. In our ignorance, we’ve taken inevitability and called it intention, ascribing choice where none exists. Which is of course a lie, because we were never capable of choosing what to call it in the first place.

While this might be the truth, I’ve got to admit that the conclusions I draw from it are somewhat of a cop-out, because it doesn’t change things for us. Morality is obviously completely invalid, as it requires free-will to assign responsibility to people for the choices they make. Try this: If I murder someone, I deserve to be murdered. In reality, if I murder someone I never had a choice; my substructure of the universe was always destined to interact with their substructure of the universe in such a way that the collection of tiny element known on our macro level as human life would cease to exist in that form – e.g. I would kill them. I was always going to kill them. So why punish me for killing them? The answer is so easy that it feels like cheating – because I was always going to be punished.

It sounds childish – in response to repeated ‘why’s, we’re simply replying, “because.” But it’s the right answer. It might not be a particularly useful answer, I suppose, but nothing else seems to make sense to me.

…this Thursday, Sept. 15, I leave Paris for a remote Greek island. There I’ll submit myself to basic rehab’s 28 days of cleansing from my addiction, of giving my brain and body a much-needed rest. No Googling. No Social Media. No email on any device at all. This exchange of my normal, toxic element for a healthy new natural environment is designed to bring me back into a more direct and complete relationship with myself. I will meditate and exercise every day. I will look for whole and organic foods in order to cook healthy meals. My reading sources will only be in print. If I communicate with someone, I will have to speak with them by telephone. No texting, no Instant Messaging. I will return my life to a human pace.

I read stuff like this and it’s hard for me to see anything but technophobia / naturalistic fallacy, double standards, hypocrisy, and whatever you call reverse chronological snobbery (oh man I love having an excuse to use that term.) Somehow she thinks there’s something different about this era’s technological advancements as opposed to the others, to wit:

unless she’s walking / riding horseback to that island from france (doubtful) she’s going to be taking planes and boats to get there – a few hours on a plane – is that living life at “a human pace?”

her ‘reading sources only in print’ are directly enabled by the web of technology she seems so eager to escape – from inception to production to distribution, everything is streamlined by technology. she’s okay with this, of course, because otherwise she’d have to wait for everything to be done by hand, or else be satisfied with just whatever people are talking about.

and the telephone? really? so back in the good old days they just talked on the telephone instead of this newfangled textin’ and emailin’ – and you know what they were saying a century ago? back in the good old days folks just talked to eachother, or wrote out letters by hand. every era has had thoughts about how things are too easy these days, and back in the good old days everything was more difficult, and they were somehow better off for the inconvenience.

people who think this way annoy me. we’ve got all this cool stuff, which can be used to make our lives so much easier, more comfortable, and enjoyable, and they’re not happy. oh but now things are too easy, they whine. if I were into ad hominems I’d snidely suggest that the problem is with her, not with everyone else, and not with technology. memory serves up ‘anecdotal evidence,’ another relevant relic from college argumentation and research class.

ultimately I see this article as her failing to learn from cypher’s mistake (though I love the irony of cypher eschewing the physical in favour of the virtual, while Beth is doing the opposite.) maybe she’ll really experience “…the emotional, physical, and spiritual journey of our time … the journey from the Internet back to the inner self,” but the fact that she has managed to somehow ‘lose herself’ to the convenience of modern technology makes me question how solid her sense of self was to begin with, and if anything reflects poorly on her own character, not the technology; and I remain unconvinced that this is “the journey that millions of people feel in their hearts they need to take, but haven’t yet been shown the way,” rather than a journey that she feels in her heart she needs to take.

Eventually I turned a corner and the music got louder -- at the end of the hall, there was a loose crowd of people. As I approached, I recognized the song -- ‘Standing’, by VNV Nation. (skip ahead to 2:10 on the video to hear it.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L51De2KnyXY

And as I got closer to the crowd of people, the music got louder, until I realized that there was a concert at the end of the hall. I started recognizing people as I approached -- my family, my friends, and we were all singing:

And fighting time, so much I ask, I will this moment last forever;
Though seasons change and things come to pass. remain inside of me.
And fighting time so hard I pray that this moment lasts forever.
And will the world stay standing still -- at least for me.

… I’ve thought about what I’d like to experience when I die, and I think I can safely add this one to that list. I like the idea of losing my grip on our world, and finding myself in a dark empty space, someplace familiar, but clearly a place to pass through on my way to somewhere more important -- and then to essentially ‘go towards the light,’ until I come to a place of warmth and comfort where I can stay forever. It’s entirely fantasy I have no reason to hope for, but still. It’d be such a relief.

As the sound of drum calls for my life,
I turn my head where sun is about to set.
There is no inn on the way to underworld.
At whose house shall I sleep tonight?

- Seong Sam-mun

beautiful and extremely sad.

I’m feeling pretty good these days, let me tell you what – knock on wood and whatnot, but things feel like they’re moving in the right direction. Getting stuck in a rut isn’t something I actively worry much about because it never seems to be an overly intractable condition… I always get out of it eventually. But what’s a rut, in my context? I’m not particularly dissatisfied with anything at the moment, except maybe…

Money. Man, money continues to be something that annoys me. I had a dream the other night that suddenly I had no problem waking up at 9 in the morning, and it was easy for me to work full time for an agency and make a bunch of money. There’s a part of me that almost wants to see what emergency-mode Matt would look like, running out of contract work and cash, and being forced to torture himself with a 9-5 job again. I know I could do it for a month – three months, maybe. Six months, doubtful. A year? fuck no. Still, the disparity between my personal cost-of-living and industry-standard wages is ever in my favour – I really only need to work part-time to come up with my budget for a month. Of course, I keep telling myself that, but in reality that’s what it costs to keep me even – I’m not actually making any extra money. No savings. Which isn’t going to be great in the long run, is it?

In the meantime though. Everything is fairly okay. stay tuned for further blog updates, in like 2 months.

… that’s really all I remember, the setting and the circumstances, I don’t really think I did anything else other than set up one of these temples on the edge of an overgrown forest and wade through much and stuff. I don’t even think there was anyone familiar featured.

so yeah. that’s kind of an interesting idea. actually now I kind of want to read back through shade’s children again.

http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ix9jo/til_pizza_delivery_is_considered_a_hazardous_job/c27fgpg?context=6

The boys in the stalls around him can’t help but look, everything is open and he’s left behind a trail of red drips on the glassy white tiles. He deliberately tugs a bit and peels away the upper arch of his ear along with a blob of jellied blood. A small stream of fresher looking fluid trickles down his neck, splits across his shoulder and disappears beneath his collar. He looks at the detached wedge of skin and cartilage for a few seconds, then holds it out and lets it fall into the toilet water with a ‘plop.’ He glances around at the other boys, shrugs, and says, “Hey, it’s filtered,” defensively.

At the other end of the room, I’m taking a piss and trying not to be too obvious about watching what he’s doing – I glance down between my feet and see a pinkish stream flow across the toilet trough, then drain away on the other side of my stall. I don’t have to wait long; the boy’s detached ear bobs into view, having made its way to my end of the bathroom facility from where it was dropped. I stoop down and snatch it out of the water before it goes down the drain, holding it below the level of the stall partitions so no one else notices my macabre acquisition. It’s slippery and oily and rubbery, I run my finger along the inside of the ridge, then inspect it: dampness and a bit grit come off onto my fingertip.

Footsteps snap against the tiles, and everyone quickly straightens up and tries to look inconspicuous – the headmaster and disciplinarian saunters down the row of urinal stalls, stopping in front of the one occupied by the boy with only one-and-a-half ears. I don’t stick around to see what happens next.

fast forward to the future:

I’m hanging out with a group of strangers, playing a dungeons and dragons sort of game – but when we start playing, we’re warped into the game itself, and that’s not all; each player has a totem they take with them, something they’ll recognize from the real world, something that doesn’t belong in the fantasy world. My totem is, of course, half of an ear, that I picked back when I was a kid at school.

We press onward into the dungeon, a crumbling labyrinth of aqueducts and stoneworks, rusting chains and softened wooden catwalks. Skeletal remains of ghostly warriors inexplicably populate the murky hallways, and we fight our way through waves of undead until finally we reach the boss – it’s simply a bigger skeleton, much bigger, and with extra arms.

I don’t last long – he sweeps me aside with a giant spiked mace, and I crumpled against the wall, while the rest of my group struggles on.

… and that’s it.

So, this one has easily traceable origins: the kid with the sliced ear comes courtesy of Let Me In, the american remake of swiss vampire film Let The Right One In. The bathroom is just one of those places that’s kind of an architectural fixture in occasional dreams – I think that my concept of public bathrooms (particularly rows of urinals) is some sort of deep-seated childhood thing. Bathrooms in my dreams tend to be cavernous porcelain lined things with open facilities and this constant echoing sound of rushing water and muffled voices. Weird, huh? Anyway. The dungeons and dragons scenario with skeletal badguys is Fable III, and the totem is I N C E P T I O N obviously.

My somewhat morbid interest in my classmate’s severed ear is interesting, since it’s not really something I’d be likely to do in real life, but in the dream it was something I really wanted to do, I think mostly for the thrill of the forbidden nature of the thing.

I thanked them and turned to leave, but rather than exiting through the open garage door, I wandered off through an adjacent doorway, and found myself in another garage, this one dark and closed up – I heard them closing up shop behind me, and I started looking quickly for another way out, afraid of them suspecting that I was snooping around where I wasn’t supposed to be.

Then the first man, the father, came in, and told me not to worry about it – I could go out through the back way. He lead me back into a dirty concrete room with one door open to the street, and another odd half-height opening that came up to my waist. Curious, I poked my head out, and saw an enclosed alleyway, walled in with the backsides of buildings, roofed by the overcast sky.

“Can I leave this way?” I asked, curios about the strange configuration and the bulky tarp-draped vehicles at one end.

“No, you don’t want to go out that way,” he counseled me.

I got a bit of a chill, and prompted, “Why not?”

He looked at me, and said coldly, “it’s pretty fucked up.”

Well okay. I turned back, and the two sons offered to show me out – but for some reason, we weren’t leaving the building, we were going back in, then down through a trap door, through a service tunnel, and into what appeared to be an abandoned subway terminal. After running down a cramped stairwell, taking several stairs at a time, one rounded the last corner and hurled himself feet-first over the turnstile. The second mimicked the move, while I walked through normally after them.

“Know why we always do that?” One son asked me.

“For fun?”

The other shook his head humorlessly. “Not for fun. See that escalator behind us?”

I glanced back, and saw the last leg of the stairwell had actually been an escalator – albeit one that was currently unpowered and therefore stationary.

“We had a sister, you know, a while back – she was coming down here, just like we were,” the guy explained, “and some asshole was running through the wrong way, pushed her back into the escalator, then ran off – and she got caught in the bottom.”

“- so now,” the other one continued, “we always kick right through the place where someone’s head would be if they were coming through the wrong way, you know?”

“Uh, wow, yeah, I can see why you’d do that,” I admitted.

Leading me further on into the subway station, we ended up in a secret underground bunker sort of structure – and they led me to a back room, walls of cold concrete, with an ornate wooden frame, a high mattress, and white bedclothes. Lying there were what I immediately recognized as the remains of their sister: cold and bloodless, horrifically mangled, missing limbs and random chunks of flesh, stripes of torn skin running the length of what was left of her body in several places. The missing bits and pieces had been filled in with oddly cropped photographs that looked like animal parts – fur, claws, and a tail were all in evidence. Looking at what’s left of her face, she bears a striking resemblance to Star Wars-era Carrie Fischer.

I’m hit with the sudden realization of the path this story is taking… I envision a lightning bolt striking the body, magically melding its components, both grisly and photographic, into a shambling chimera of a zombie, wielding an unsettling array of  mismatched limbs… NOPE.JPG, says my brain, and I wake up before the dream turns into a full-blown nightmare.