Drugs are not content with stealing the people I love away from me, but even likes to steal reality away from me.
I don't know what to do about this. How can I possibly know someone when they're seemingly always addled by some substance or other, and then when in another state of mind apologise to me for their behaviour when they were on whatever drug it was? How can I make any sense of that? How can I build any kind of relationship with that person? Answer is, I can't, not really, and that seems to be pretty much par for the course with this one. Just when I thought I was getting somewhere interesting... sigh, I dunno, all is not lost, she's still fascinating.
Documentation for one of my modules is in tomorrow, the first deadline of three.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Steve - Listens
There are a lot of songs I listen to, great songs, that I can't relate to.
Not that I couldn't relate to the lyrics when they're written down. Music about saying you love someone when you don't, yeah I can relate to that, but... the music is so much more intense than anything I've ever felt in that direction. Pretty much all musics are intense, the ones about emotions especially, so much so that I feel like my emotional experiences are inadequate by comparison.
Do musicians live lives so different from mine that they encounter all these things? How do I do that?
There are two other possibilities, of course. The first is that music is so intense because it has to compensate for not being 'real'. A song about breaking up with someone will never be as intense as actually breaking up with someone, so musicians compensate and squeeze all the intensity out of sound that they can. I do this too, as a photographer, though I never do as a writer... don't think so anyway.
The other possibility is that I'm dead inside. Well, not exactly that, but I do always seem to react with less intensity, feel with less intensity, than my peers. To the point where I sometimes wonder if I've been dissociative my whole life and not known it. I was once called the calmest person ever. I think I get it from my father, he's always been able to deal with pretty much anything without much of a change in composure.
Thing is though, it's often that I do feel intensely. Probably every day. Love, I feel very often, excitement, yeah, those are good ones. And the bad ones, of rejection (nearly always perceived rather than real), anger (though almost never at people), anxiety.
But nothing happens with them. I recently looked myself in the mirror while I was feeling the most awful I'd felt in a while, and I looked completely neutral. I didn't know what to make of that. Not at all. When I'm happy and lovey and excited that generally shows up in my behaviour, but when I'm upset... nothing. What the fuck? How is that fair? I can see sadness and upset in other people easy enough, how come I can't see it in me? Can anyone?
There's some irony here, but I can't put my finger on it.
Here's something I made the other day (warning, large image):
Not that I couldn't relate to the lyrics when they're written down. Music about saying you love someone when you don't, yeah I can relate to that, but... the music is so much more intense than anything I've ever felt in that direction. Pretty much all musics are intense, the ones about emotions especially, so much so that I feel like my emotional experiences are inadequate by comparison.
Do musicians live lives so different from mine that they encounter all these things? How do I do that?
There are two other possibilities, of course. The first is that music is so intense because it has to compensate for not being 'real'. A song about breaking up with someone will never be as intense as actually breaking up with someone, so musicians compensate and squeeze all the intensity out of sound that they can. I do this too, as a photographer, though I never do as a writer... don't think so anyway.
The other possibility is that I'm dead inside. Well, not exactly that, but I do always seem to react with less intensity, feel with less intensity, than my peers. To the point where I sometimes wonder if I've been dissociative my whole life and not known it. I was once called the calmest person ever. I think I get it from my father, he's always been able to deal with pretty much anything without much of a change in composure.
Thing is though, it's often that I do feel intensely. Probably every day. Love, I feel very often, excitement, yeah, those are good ones. And the bad ones, of rejection (nearly always perceived rather than real), anger (though almost never at people), anxiety.
But nothing happens with them. I recently looked myself in the mirror while I was feeling the most awful I'd felt in a while, and I looked completely neutral. I didn't know what to make of that. Not at all. When I'm happy and lovey and excited that generally shows up in my behaviour, but when I'm upset... nothing. What the fuck? How is that fair? I can see sadness and upset in other people easy enough, how come I can't see it in me? Can anyone?
There's some irony here, but I can't put my finger on it.
Here's something I made the other day (warning, large image):
Friday, January 9, 2009
Steve - Writes One Last Message Before Climbing In The Box Himself
Gosh, all this packing is a tall order. I want to write about things that are buried under paper and printers and external harddrives and a full set of OnlyFoolsAndHorsesDVDs (I do love my old British sitcoms, I've gotten into Waiting For God recently, I really like it, Tom and Diana are brilliant characters.
I've been slipping into German capitalisation recently. Well, I know it as German anyway, capitalising every noun.
I don't know WHAT I'm going to do in the summer >_> I'll have so much stuff I'll need to take back. What will I do?! I don't know, probably burn it all or something. So glad we have computers nowadays though, imagine how much stuff I'd have to carry otherwise... gosh...
Then again probably half of the volume I'll need to carry is computer-related >_> Sigh.
Talking to Dowell :) DOWELL NEEDS TO FOLLOW MY ADVICE MORE OFTEN BECAUSE I ALWAYS TURN OUT TO BE RIGHT :D It is like Izzy was with me, turning out to be right in the end all the time. It was a bit unsettling at times.
The quality of my blog entries is going dowwwnnn. Soon I'll have to figure out something decent to talk about!
It would probably help if I ate something, today I've had four crumpets and a mince pie.
I should probably stop this entry before it derails too much >_>
-Stevexx
I've been slipping into German capitalisation recently. Well, I know it as German anyway, capitalising every noun.
I don't know WHAT I'm going to do in the summer >_> I'll have so much stuff I'll need to take back. What will I do?! I don't know, probably burn it all or something. So glad we have computers nowadays though, imagine how much stuff I'd have to carry otherwise... gosh...
Then again probably half of the volume I'll need to carry is computer-related >_> Sigh.
Talking to Dowell :) DOWELL NEEDS TO FOLLOW MY ADVICE MORE OFTEN BECAUSE I ALWAYS TURN OUT TO BE RIGHT :D It is like Izzy was with me, turning out to be right in the end all the time. It was a bit unsettling at times.
The quality of my blog entries is going dowwwnnn. Soon I'll have to figure out something decent to talk about!
It would probably help if I ate something, today I've had four crumpets and a mince pie.
I should probably stop this entry before it derails too much >_>
-Stevexx
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Steve - Thinks A Bad Thought
You said I'd be the one you remember as self-obsessedSometimes I wonder how much I have the power to hurt people. I know there are limits to my mental and emotional abilities, just as there are limits to my physical abilities, even though a lot of them I'll never meet, but I wonder exactly where they are.
'Cause every fucking word that I tell you's really self-addressed
~ WHY?
Could I destroy someone? Could I kill someone without harming them physically? Maybe, maybe not. I hope I'll never find out, of course, but that doesn't stop me wondering. Problem is, I can only feel so guilty, and so scared. After things get too big for my head, those feelings disappear. Death is too big for me, so I'm not sure I'd feel very much, except perhaps about the little things. If someone close to me died, I'd probably get upset about little things we used to do or in-jokes or aspects or something.
I'd have to choose my mark carefully, of course. I'd want to choose someone who is socially isolated and who I can make close to me. Someone with a wide social network... it'd probably be possible but it'd be much more difficult and much easier to slip up. I'd probably have to choose someone who was leaning towards it anyway too, else approach it from an obtuse angle or something. And it'd require a lot of time, the more difficult the person the longer it would take. Some people perhaps a year, year and a half, others maybe five or ten years, maybe even longer. You know the story about the frog in the slowly-boiling pan? If you boil it gradually enough it won't hop out and will eventually die. That.
I'd need to slowly pick up on what things can make them feel certain ways, and then gradually start to act on them over a long period. Perhaps guide them gently into a life they'd rather not lead as well.
I don't really want to think about this anymore. This surprises me, I thought I'd be able to go in depth and such, but seems it's just too uncomfortable a thought and thing to re-enact in my head for me. I suppose that's not really a bad thing.
I do wonder if someone could and how someone would do it to me though. A part of me secretly likes the idea of it happening to me. Having my mind slowly gone through, having all my weaknesses separated out, and then gradually used against me. I dunno, there's something seductive about having me, something of beauty and complexity (not more beautiful than anyone else, but everyone's mind is a pretty amazing thing I think, and that goes for me too), destroyed. And, from a desire-to-understand-myself point of view, it'd be interesting to see how they did it. Aaaand, it'd be nice in a strange sort of way to have someone take that much interest in me.
God this is a weird and morbid entry. Too morbid even for me, and that's saying something. I don't like it.
Today I went into my old school and saw friends. It was wonderful, saw Rosy. She's wonderful :) And has nice hair. Got to spend the whole lunchtime with her! And lots of hugs, that was very nice too. I've missed her. Didn't see Jade though :( Rosy though. RosyRosyRosy. Must be better with letters next term!
Anyway, I have little else to write about. I wore an outfit consisting of completely new clothes today. I liked it :)
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Steve - Conquers a Fear
So I went clothes shopping today.
Never done it before, not in real life, not for anything more than one item, not on my own.
I'm eighteen years old!
It's lucky my mother has a half-decent sense of style... even my grandmother has made some pretty decent purchases (she bought me pink, don't have to worry about... ah, nevermind, that's a story for another time).
But today I came into my own. I spent £200, which is a lot, but considering I've not had anything much in the new-clothes department for what must be two or even three years now, it's not bad. I also bought quite a few items. Sales are nice, they don't take so much of my money.
But why a fear? Well, prior to today, when spontaneity helped out, I'd had what can only be described as a mild to moderate phobia of clothes shopping. When doing so, I'd either avoid it entirely, or if not get very anxious and sweat and start shaking and all that. This goes back to my childhood/adolescence (hah) when my mother took me clothes shopping. I never really got into it very much, clothes I mean, so when she asked me if I liked something I'd just be like "Eh... 'sokay". That wasn't good enough for her, I had to like it. I didn't like anything, and I didn't like to lie (though eventually I did, of course, otherwise it would never end). She would get more and more angry and worked up, and I would get more and more upset and scared and thus indecisive.
It's fair to say we weren't exactly the Starsky and Hutch of the clothes shopping arena.
So today, when I do find clothes pretty interesting (patterns+colours+textures are some of my favourite things, and put them on people (one of my very most favourite people), I get rather excited), I am unable to acquire them save through the internet (and that, as you might know, is not very good for clothes).
But yeah, I conquered that today. I shop like a girl, I discovered, going through every shop three times before going around another time and buying what I wanted. I am a little ashamed of that, as I know anyone sensible who is with me would get rather annoyed... but I did it, and all that extra exposure helped me a bit. I can't say I wasn't anxious, I walked fast and kept my hands in my pockets (presumably so I could conceal weapons for stabbing shop assistants), and when any members of staff asked me if I wanted Help or there were too many people or I got confused about which gender clothes I was looking at (damnit Steve, one day you will wear womens' clothing and not be on stage) I would promptly run away and hide.... But I did manage to conquer actually buying the clothes (involving directly interacting with people and showing them what I had chosen, so quite a feat), and I even tried some on before I bought them (special fear attached to that, because my mother wanted me to try on everything and then show her and then tell her what I thought).
I swear, I should fix up a blog layout where I write on the left side and put my comments on what I wrote on the right side. I use parentheses and dashes and ellipses and commas entirely too much. I'm also quite getting into using 'and' a lot, instead of making lists with commas. I dunno, I just like the way it sounds. But I digress...
What I actually bought I'm pretty pleased with.
I put a lindt chocolate egg in my pocket today, before I went out, and I haven't eaten it yet, so I will eat it sometime today! I like that. I remember I used to (probably still do actually) keep two of my favourite Cadbury's Heroes chocolates (dream and flake, if you're interested) in my colourful bag (need to use that more, it's lovely, it has tassels) (see what I mean about parentheses? >_> I'm seriously considering this dual blog thing). I found them in there once, hidden from about two months prior, and I got that feeling you get when you find sweets you thought you'd eaten (for those confused, imagine finding a tenner in your back pocket (also, burns, never say 'ten quid' again, it is not right for you to say that, besides, tenner is the word for that occasion), suffice to say, it's a very happy feeling). Back then having confectionery about used to be a great source of comfort, because I knew that whatever happened I could still feel good by eating it. So finding them made me know I'd been safe all the time, and they'd always been there. So I didn't eat them, I kept them there, as a fall-back, promising myself that I'd never eat them unless things got so bad I couldn't cope.
They're still there :) This was probably two years ago now.
Interesting fact, I get the same feeling of anticipation for good music as I do about confectionery. I'll sometimes be wanting to listen to a new album and be like... WHY AM I SO HUNGRY?!
I've always wanted to learn a melodic instrument. I have a harmonica beside me, that I bought a few months back, and I've never really played it. There's also my xylophone in the corner. Thing is... I know I'll start off bad and not knowing how to do what I want to, and I'm afraid other people will hear and... I dunno, makes me feel too anxious to practise.
Dunno.
I said to my mother today that if I wore all the clothes I bought today, and then jumped around a bit, and flew a kite, everyone who wasn't epileptic would be calling me Rupert Bear. Everyone who was epileptic would be feeling a bit ill.
Hm >_>
If you like my sense of humour, and I like you, I expect being around me in real life would be wonderful for you. I seem to be constantly finding the funny ways of looking at things. Even the news, traditionally not an occasion for laughter, is hilarity streets for me. I don't even know where it comes from, I just see funny in everything. Everything, that is, except Jim Carey films.
Oh dear!
Anyway, this is rather odd and I think I will end it now. I've got no work to do though... well that's not strictly true... I've got work to do but I've given myself the day off... to relax and write less...
Hmm >_>
Goodbye, lovely people :)
Never done it before, not in real life, not for anything more than one item, not on my own.
I'm eighteen years old!
It's lucky my mother has a half-decent sense of style... even my grandmother has made some pretty decent purchases (she bought me pink, don't have to worry about... ah, nevermind, that's a story for another time).
But today I came into my own. I spent £200, which is a lot, but considering I've not had anything much in the new-clothes department for what must be two or even three years now, it's not bad. I also bought quite a few items. Sales are nice, they don't take so much of my money.
But why a fear? Well, prior to today, when spontaneity helped out, I'd had what can only be described as a mild to moderate phobia of clothes shopping. When doing so, I'd either avoid it entirely, or if not get very anxious and sweat and start shaking and all that. This goes back to my childhood/adolescence (hah) when my mother took me clothes shopping. I never really got into it very much, clothes I mean, so when she asked me if I liked something I'd just be like "Eh... 'sokay". That wasn't good enough for her, I had to like it. I didn't like anything, and I didn't like to lie (though eventually I did, of course, otherwise it would never end). She would get more and more angry and worked up, and I would get more and more upset and scared and thus indecisive.
It's fair to say we weren't exactly the Starsky and Hutch of the clothes shopping arena.
So today, when I do find clothes pretty interesting (patterns+colours+textures are some of my favourite things, and put them on people (one of my very most favourite people), I get rather excited), I am unable to acquire them save through the internet (and that, as you might know, is not very good for clothes).
But yeah, I conquered that today. I shop like a girl, I discovered, going through every shop three times before going around another time and buying what I wanted. I am a little ashamed of that, as I know anyone sensible who is with me would get rather annoyed... but I did it, and all that extra exposure helped me a bit. I can't say I wasn't anxious, I walked fast and kept my hands in my pockets (presumably so I could conceal weapons for stabbing shop assistants), and when any members of staff asked me if I wanted Help or there were too many people or I got confused about which gender clothes I was looking at (damnit Steve, one day you will wear womens' clothing and not be on stage) I would promptly run away and hide.... But I did manage to conquer actually buying the clothes (involving directly interacting with people and showing them what I had chosen, so quite a feat), and I even tried some on before I bought them (special fear attached to that, because my mother wanted me to try on everything and then show her and then tell her what I thought).
I swear, I should fix up a blog layout where I write on the left side and put my comments on what I wrote on the right side. I use parentheses and dashes and ellipses and commas entirely too much. I'm also quite getting into using 'and' a lot, instead of making lists with commas. I dunno, I just like the way it sounds. But I digress...
What I actually bought I'm pretty pleased with.
- Three pairs of trousers, two jeans one chords or cords or whatever. They've got colours. I like colours. They're also fairly loose, I hope. Tight clothes, though I do love them on boys, make me feel very self conscious.
- Four(?) shirts. Three button-ups and one top thing. The top thing was reduced to £4.99 because it had a joke about MySpace's Tom on it (dahling, MySpace is sooooo two years ago!), and this only makes it cooler. The older it gets, the better it gets, this is my idea of Good Clothes. The other three are CHECKSANDLINES. I got big into the indie-checks and colour blobs and stuff today. I think it's because I've only ever seen them on awesome-looking girls. Whether this is due to the clothes or the girls I'm not sure, but I want to be awesome and I want to be a girl, so it makes sense? They're colours too, one's purple (well, more a dark magenta), one's a bit BBCTestPattern-y, and the other is... something else, green perhaps? No, kinda a dark cyan.
- A magnificent combination of a button-up shirt that is actually a FLEECE. It is black and white and very cosy. I like it, maybe I should wear a tie with it? Wait, no, let's not get ahead of yourself here Steve...
- A COAT. If you know me IRL you'll know that I am always always always wearing a coat or jacket, usually my black coat with the Ukranian USSR commie badge on. It's a very old coat, three or four years, and a bit bedraggled, but I still love it. I do need a new one though, in case it... *sniff* dies :( Anyway, the funny thing was, I went into BritishHomeStores and actually saw the very same coat I was wearing on sale. From about three years ago... they'd kept it. It almost felt like fate. But no, I don't want to be the kind of person who does that, like the kind of person who buys their black office shoes in bulk in the January sales. No. Wait, why am I attaching my identity to products? Anyway, I wanted something new. So I bought a long (kneelength) large and reasonably warm black&white&orange patterned coat. I like it, I'm wearing it now, it's nice. That was probably the major purchase of the day, and the only thing other than the trousers that I actually needed.
I put a lindt chocolate egg in my pocket today, before I went out, and I haven't eaten it yet, so I will eat it sometime today! I like that. I remember I used to (probably still do actually) keep two of my favourite Cadbury's Heroes chocolates (dream and flake, if you're interested) in my colourful bag (need to use that more, it's lovely, it has tassels) (see what I mean about parentheses? >_> I'm seriously considering this dual blog thing). I found them in there once, hidden from about two months prior, and I got that feeling you get when you find sweets you thought you'd eaten (for those confused, imagine finding a tenner in your back pocket (also, burns, never say 'ten quid' again, it is not right for you to say that, besides, tenner is the word for that occasion), suffice to say, it's a very happy feeling). Back then having confectionery about used to be a great source of comfort, because I knew that whatever happened I could still feel good by eating it. So finding them made me know I'd been safe all the time, and they'd always been there. So I didn't eat them, I kept them there, as a fall-back, promising myself that I'd never eat them unless things got so bad I couldn't cope.
They're still there :) This was probably two years ago now.
Interesting fact, I get the same feeling of anticipation for good music as I do about confectionery. I'll sometimes be wanting to listen to a new album and be like... WHY AM I SO HUNGRY?!
I've always wanted to learn a melodic instrument. I have a harmonica beside me, that I bought a few months back, and I've never really played it. There's also my xylophone in the corner. Thing is... I know I'll start off bad and not knowing how to do what I want to, and I'm afraid other people will hear and... I dunno, makes me feel too anxious to practise.
Dunno.
I said to my mother today that if I wore all the clothes I bought today, and then jumped around a bit, and flew a kite, everyone who wasn't epileptic would be calling me Rupert Bear. Everyone who was epileptic would be feeling a bit ill.
Hm >_>
If you like my sense of humour, and I like you, I expect being around me in real life would be wonderful for you. I seem to be constantly finding the funny ways of looking at things. Even the news, traditionally not an occasion for laughter, is hilarity streets for me. I don't even know where it comes from, I just see funny in everything. Everything, that is, except Jim Carey films.
Oh dear!
Anyway, this is rather odd and I think I will end it now. I've got no work to do though... well that's not strictly true... I've got work to do but I've given myself the day off... to relax and write less...
Hmm >_>
Goodbye, lovely people :)
Steve - Is Getting Withdrawal
Can't help feeling this is leading up to something?
I've been writing so, damn, much, lately. I worked out yesterday that I'd sent burns 10,000 words worth of email in the past 7 days. Excuse my Anglo-Saxon, but... fucking hell. That's on top of writing lots of schoolwork, an email to Kathy, a fair chunk of IM, more blog posts than usual, and a fair amount of creative work too. It's really really insane, I'm not sure I've ever written so much in such a short time. And I've gone through some pretty writingmanic periods.
I'm really into At War With Walls and Mazes by Son Lux lately. It's quite different to most anticon records sounds, but it's really damned good. If you're not against beats and chirps and other artifacts of electronic music, take a listen, srsly.
I said I'd write less today. This blog entry will probably be stupidly long because of that. Perhaps I'll send burns a link to it in the (her) morning, 'cause I don't want to disappoint her! Hey burns, I hope you're enjoying this.
I've been thinking a lot before I sleep as well. The other day I worked out how many days there were until March 23rd (you know), then how many hours, then how many minutes. All in my head. I figured seconds was a bit much, but you know.
Another day I consider dimensionality. How that if you have a pipe with a bend in it so it takes up three dimensions, you can rotate it so that it fits in two dimensions, but you can't if there are two different bends in it. I wanted to know why this was. I got a vague idea by using sine and cosine in my head, but I wasn't amazingly satisfied. What I really needed was to be able to visualise four dimensions in my head so I could work out if the two-bend pipe that pointed through time could be rotated to fit in three dimensions. I think it probably could be.
After that I thought about objects that rotate in time. I came up with an interesting theory for light that it's just matter that's spinning in time while also moving in our three dimensions. It would explain how it acts as a wave (only one bit of it is in 'our' frame of time at any point, and that bit would move in a rough sine-wave (remember the circle plot from maths class?)), and also as a particle ('cause it is). It'd also explain the relationship between wave speed and wave length, and then to wave energy (bigger particles have a wider wavelength annndd more inertia when they hit another particle, but speed can compensate for that and also change wavelength as it's just a plot). Converting matter to energy is as simple (hah) as giving something a spin in timel. That would require something hitting the particle a glancing blow from either the future travelling back or the past travelling forwards (and of course electro-magnetic radiation can do this, as it's spinning anyway). There are other things it doesn't explain, but it's a pretty good elementary theory as things-thought-up-in-your-head-while-sleepy go.
Last night, and this is where the story really starts, I thought about what I am. It's the classic clone/teleportation. If I /am/ just a pattern in my brain, what happens to my consciousness when I am duplicated? Because, given certain assumptions, I have existed for a while and /I/ am... I dunno, existant, in my brain. The only thing separating my consciousness from the rest of reality and other people's consciousnesses is the insulating material of my body (designed to preserve my soul, basically, which is what my consciousness will be called from now on). It's pretty mind-boggling, to use an overused phrase.
But, if I am just a pattern, then my consciousness can be reduced to information. And information, as you well know, can be transported. I do it a lot, I'm doing it now. I'm putting information into your head, reader. So, and you'd better sit down for this, am I transferring my consciousness into your brain? Is my soul now active in your neuron-mesh?
I mean, by rights, you wouldn't know, because our consciousnesses wouldn't have to infringe on eachother. We could just exist separately. And, you can get an idea of where I'm headed can't you? In fact, you don't even need to. You're emulating right now what's going through my head, in yours. The more information you have about me, the more you're able to predict and be unsurprised by me, figure me out. Are you not just reconstructing consciousness in your brain? Of course, maybe, you're the dominant consciousness, but perhaps I'm there too, or an approximation or variation of me, and maybe only when you want to think about me and find out what me-in-you is thinking, but I am there nonetheless.
Perhaps, when they say that you live on in your loved ones after you die, they're being more literal than you think.
Anyway, just a thought I rather like. Information theory and materiality opens up some fascinating possibilities. Enjoy your day.
I've been writing so, damn, much, lately. I worked out yesterday that I'd sent burns 10,000 words worth of email in the past 7 days. Excuse my Anglo-Saxon, but... fucking hell. That's on top of writing lots of schoolwork, an email to Kathy, a fair chunk of IM, more blog posts than usual, and a fair amount of creative work too. It's really really insane, I'm not sure I've ever written so much in such a short time. And I've gone through some pretty writingmanic periods.
I'm really into At War With Walls and Mazes by Son Lux lately. It's quite different to most anticon records sounds, but it's really damned good. If you're not against beats and chirps and other artifacts of electronic music, take a listen, srsly.
I said I'd write less today. This blog entry will probably be stupidly long because of that. Perhaps I'll send burns a link to it in the (her) morning, 'cause I don't want to disappoint her! Hey burns, I hope you're enjoying this.
I've been thinking a lot before I sleep as well. The other day I worked out how many days there were until March 23rd (you know), then how many hours, then how many minutes. All in my head. I figured seconds was a bit much, but you know.
Another day I consider dimensionality. How that if you have a pipe with a bend in it so it takes up three dimensions, you can rotate it so that it fits in two dimensions, but you can't if there are two different bends in it. I wanted to know why this was. I got a vague idea by using sine and cosine in my head, but I wasn't amazingly satisfied. What I really needed was to be able to visualise four dimensions in my head so I could work out if the two-bend pipe that pointed through time could be rotated to fit in three dimensions. I think it probably could be.
After that I thought about objects that rotate in time. I came up with an interesting theory for light that it's just matter that's spinning in time while also moving in our three dimensions. It would explain how it acts as a wave (only one bit of it is in 'our' frame of time at any point, and that bit would move in a rough sine-wave (remember the circle plot from maths class?)), and also as a particle ('cause it is). It'd also explain the relationship between wave speed and wave length, and then to wave energy (bigger particles have a wider wavelength annndd more inertia when they hit another particle, but speed can compensate for that and also change wavelength as it's just a plot). Converting matter to energy is as simple (hah) as giving something a spin in timel. That would require something hitting the particle a glancing blow from either the future travelling back or the past travelling forwards (and of course electro-magnetic radiation can do this, as it's spinning anyway). There are other things it doesn't explain, but it's a pretty good elementary theory as things-thought-up-in-your-head-while-sleepy go.
Last night, and this is where the story really starts, I thought about what I am. It's the classic clone/teleportation. If I /am/ just a pattern in my brain, what happens to my consciousness when I am duplicated? Because, given certain assumptions, I have existed for a while and /I/ am... I dunno, existant, in my brain. The only thing separating my consciousness from the rest of reality and other people's consciousnesses is the insulating material of my body (designed to preserve my soul, basically, which is what my consciousness will be called from now on). It's pretty mind-boggling, to use an overused phrase.
But, if I am just a pattern, then my consciousness can be reduced to information. And information, as you well know, can be transported. I do it a lot, I'm doing it now. I'm putting information into your head, reader. So, and you'd better sit down for this, am I transferring my consciousness into your brain? Is my soul now active in your neuron-mesh?
I mean, by rights, you wouldn't know, because our consciousnesses wouldn't have to infringe on eachother. We could just exist separately. And, you can get an idea of where I'm headed can't you? In fact, you don't even need to. You're emulating right now what's going through my head, in yours. The more information you have about me, the more you're able to predict and be unsurprised by me, figure me out. Are you not just reconstructing consciousness in your brain? Of course, maybe, you're the dominant consciousness, but perhaps I'm there too, or an approximation or variation of me, and maybe only when you want to think about me and find out what me-in-you is thinking, but I am there nonetheless.
Perhaps, when they say that you live on in your loved ones after you die, they're being more literal than you think.
Anyway, just a thought I rather like. Information theory and materiality opens up some fascinating possibilities. Enjoy your day.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Steve - Dreams of Being With You
I had a dream:
I was at my old school. I needed to give someone something, someone named Robyn. In fact, I needed to give them two things, but I couldn't find the latter thing and so I only gave them the first.
They seemed happy to receive it, and smiled. As I gave it them, I smiled at them, said a few nice words, and touched them lightly on their cheek (which was blushed, in a healthy way) with the tip of my index finger.
Then I walked away towards the entrance to the corridor. As so often happened in my old school, I was followed by two year 7s (youngest years at this school) who were jeering and mocking me and saying that me and this girl named Robyn were together. I got used to all this a long time ago, and though others found it harrassing and bullying, I found it amusing and usually humoured them. They followed me in, and to the stairs, where they overtook me, still jeering. I countered, "Well, what does it mean to be together?"
They stopped still, and just stared at me.
Somehow I'd managed to aquire a block of cheese, which was actually two blocks, one white and one dark orange (gloucester or red lescester I imagine), which I held up and used to illustrate my point. I said "What does togetherness mean?"
At the time I wasn't troubled by their stopping and staring. Now I am, for reasons I will explain later.
I walked off, into a room I had just been in that was full of people (as it always was). I saw Scarlett, and she saw me. I knew that we hadn't seen eachother for a while because it had been the Christmas holidays. She seemed pleased to see me, and waited the little while it took for her to make her way to me through the room. We hugged, and said a few words.
We walked towards the stairs. I said "What does togetherness mean?". As we were sitting down under the stairs she said something about not everything needing to be thought through or having an answer (which, if you know my relationship with Scarlett, will seem familiar).
We sat in silence for a time, as is our way, and then she said "There's a well-known lyric. 'For every problem you might have, there is a well-known answer.'" Then she repeated, "That's a well-known lyric." (this should sound even more familiar. Not to dig at her, but it should). We sat in silence again, for a time.
Thee people entered our section of the corridor. On one side was the headmaster, dressed all in black, and on the other side were the two boys I spoke of previously. The boys were stopping and staring once more. Now seems like a good time to add something about who (I think) these boys were, and why it disturbs me so.
These two boys were Aymon Booz and Charlie Froud, now deceased. They died in a four-person (Aymon's mother and father were the other passenger/pilot) light-aircraft crash off the coast of Ireland. They were two kids who used to do a lot of the teasing and jeering of me in my old school, and I was quite fond of and attached to them in that way. They were close friends, and Aymon had taken Charlie on the trip to Ireland with them because of this. The plane went down in very high winds, up to 100mph by some accounts. The light aircraft didn't stand a chance in such a storm. I found out about half a term into my time at uni, a few months ago. I remember thinking, and imagining, how horrible and terrifying that must have been for them, and what they must have been thinking when it was happening. What kind of relationship they must have had, knowing perhaps that they were sharing eachothers' last moments.
In the dream, they were stopped and stared. The headmaster, who sounded and felt an awful lot like one of my writing lecturers, John Hall, enquired as to what was going on. The boys ran off and up the stairs, and as I began to talk the headmaster sat down. I said that I had been asked both the boys and Scarlett what togetherness meant and what it meant to be together. I said "And Scarlett didn't know, and they didn't know," I gestured and looked up the stairs to find them there, three quarters way up, staring down, "and I don't know."
He said "And I don't know either. It's a rather peculiar thing, togetherness. It's very different from distance," and then went on to say "consider walking. Now there are three ways of terming walking. There's walking to, walking on, and walking... with..."
On those last nine words I began to fade out into consciousness again, into waking. The more I considered the terming of walking, the more I was awake. Until I was fully awake, as I am now.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Steve - Is Prolific
So I've been writing and generally creating a lot lately. I like it. I hope 2009 continues in this direction.
It snowed today. That's unrelated.
It's nothing special, but here is what I wrote (maybe, kinda). It's a true story.
It snowed today. That's unrelated.
It's nothing special, but here is what I wrote (maybe, kinda). It's a true story.
Unclaimed Property
I picked you, at random, I think.
You were there, one of many, scattered across a folder named 'writings'. I opened you up. At first I thought you were an old love, but not old as in well-loved, but old as in not-well-formed. You were in a word document, I never use word documents now. Just plain old plain text, notepad. The tool of the young coder has become the tool of the old writer.
But you weren't an old love. You were an alien. I sat there, staring at you, trying to work out what you were doing there in my writing folder, and--more importantly--who wrote you.
'Beautifully Intoxicated.'
It sounded like a title I'd write. In fact, I think I might have used that exact title some time in my past. But the writing style wasn't like any I remember from myself, and the plot structure wasn't mine either, nor the font. And I'd never use so many new lines everywhere. And I'd be more intuitive with my text. And I'd not write in that tone... full of uncaring, and emotional lust, and menace.
But I was in it.
There were two characters. One was the narrator. The other was someone else.
"I'd have given anything for you.
I didn't have to though, you were mine."
But which is me? Which am I?
"You'd have hated me thinking of you like that wouldn't you?
The notion of being a possession.
So proud of your independence, telling people that you didn't need anyone.
Only, I knew you needed me."
So I sat there trying to think who wrote you. I printed you out and read you again. And you meant more. And you were more mysterious. And I still didn't know who wrote you. Not her. Not her. Not her. Her?
"I'd wanted to get out of the house so we took a drive into the countryside.
We'd often do this, leave.
Not tell anyone where we were going, if we had each other then who else mattered?
I think that you were afraid one day I would leave and not tell anyone where I was going.
You were afraid I'd leave you behind."
Go where? Leave where? Get out of where? Who are you? Who is You?
Maybe you were planted there. Maybe I wrote you. Maybe I wrote you when I wasn't myself, or I was asleep, or under some duress I can't recall. Maybe you and I are the same person, two characters in one person. Isn't that what writers do anyway? Maybe the you and the I are both me, two sides of the same coin. What does that mean?
"You were my every thought, you were my air.
It was ironic that sometimes I felt suffocated by you."
The tense changes.
"I feel you slip your hand into mine.
Elegant hands you have, as if you wouldn't have used them for a dirty deed in your life.
Appearances can be deceiving however."
I feel myself wrapped up in your words. Like you were made for it, like I'm your rock and you're the paper.
And again.
"Do you remember the first time we held hands? I do.
In the taxi back from that art exhibition that bored us both senseless.
We assured each other we enjoyed it though, for fear of upsetting the other in the tender first stages of our friendship.
I adored the feeling of your hand in mine.
That small smile you gave me let me know that the feeling was reciprocal."
Why is it all in past tense?
My face is numb with cold and I feel it start to rain
I turn to see droplets of water falling onto your ivory skin but you don't notice.
You peer at me with those Bette Davis Eyes and I see that small smile again.
You know I am yours.
I whisper in your ear, relishing the smell of your skin.
"Let's go home."
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