10% Random Rant

"In a world where everyone insists they're right. Most often, everyone would've been wrong."

"Society has taught you a lot but there are also a number of things that Society hasn't taught you."

"In a society whereby one does not fit in. The alien will fend for itself for its survival and thus appear to be selfish. It is merely trying to survive in a world that is not relevant to it anymore."

The world is a sick place. I'm clinging on to the 10% that is worth living maybe. I feel that 10% may be plenty enough a reason to continue living though. Or is it not?

The Art Of Graham Swift

Been reading some of Swift's short stories and novels. He is able to bring forth and define with care, that which is difficult to describe, the encounters between humans, and the meeting of human and nature. The significance of a feeling such as Guilt was explored in the short story Hotel. Guilt is almost always accompanied by Pleasure, a hint of Happiness.

"It seems to me that there can scarcely be anyone walking the earth who doesn't carry with him some measure of guilt; and that guilt is always the sign of some forbidden happiness. Somewhere inside everybody's guilt is joy, and somewhere within everybody's unhappy, guilt-ridden face is happiness. Perhaps there's no way out of this. And yet there must be someone who will try to understand our guilt and not blame it; there must be places where we can go where our secret wishes can be uttered and our forbidden dreams catered for. There must, in a word, be care."

The short story, Hoffmeier's Antelope, is the character study of a Uncle Walter who had inherited some nearly-extinct species of antelope. It all came down to a rather bizarre ending, with a hint of comedy. Uncle Walter 'eloped' with the lone female antelope which may be the last of its kind on earth. It painted very well the character that is Uncle Walter though.

"I went up to Uncle Walter's room. I knocked on his door (which he would often keep locked), then opened it. There were the books scattered on the floor, the fetid remnants of raw vegetables, the shredded portion of his wife . . . But Uncle Walter - I had known this already - was gone."

If

A friend posted this tube on fb. A young Dennis Hopper reading the poem If by Rudyard Kipling.



If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

r.i.p. Mr. Hopper.

Murder In The 40th Degree

Ever had this feeling- when you woke up, you got a sensation that every single thing you believed in in this world had been wrong? A chill that hits the spine. Your understanding and ideals of what this world should have been. Your core belief that underlying all that is Humanity, underneath this facade, goodness exhumed. What if all of it is wrong? Nothing good had resulted from human existence. Why should we matter? Everyone seemed lost. You are part of a huge lost crowd.

Maybe after all this is done, all we can do is stick a huge signpost that reads, "We were here. (and we've fucked it up)" And someone or something may chance on this signpost in the far future and thinks, "Hey, that's cool."

Maybe this weather and heat is getting to me. :) No doubt about it- We're killing Earth. I have had a hand in it; I am a murder accomplice.

Decoding Loneliness

Ever felt this incredible sense of loneliness overpowering you suddenly, even though you're in a crowded place with people around you whom you know? Somehow, you felt that not one of them is on the same frequency of thought with you, for what could be that single moment in time. A moment of devouring Loneliness, whereby you question your own existence. No one understands you.

That may be why I'd felt the opposite too when I was in a dark cinema with strangers around me. Everyone were focused on the same thoughts depicted by the film. When it was a sentimental film, the emotions seemed to be amplified through everyone. You'd feel a tidal wave of emotions. Like you were part of something, a camaraderie, even though everyone around were mere figures in the dark.

All of a sudden I feel like watching Krystof Kieslowski's Three Colours again. :)

Searching For A Star

"Look to the stars when you get lost." - Something the j-drama Searchin' For My Polestar taught me.

Polaris will always lead you to your north. Then maybe have a look at Orion, the hunter, ever strong wielding his bow. After that, throw a glance at Betelgeuse, a prominent star in Orion- a star near the end of it's life.

It is wonderful someone came up with this simple graphic website to teach us about these stars and constellations-

http://www.quietbay.net/Science/astronomy/nightsky/

Trying To Live

What is Life? Will we ever know the significance of words such as Life, Love and God? That is why I hate it when the phrase "Get a life" is coined.

Isn't everyone trying to live? And "getting at life"?

Will a person know more about living than another? Only someone who is pretencious and self-righteous will tell another to "get a life". More accurately, Life isn't easy to "get at"; to understand. If you think you've known all about Life, then perhaps you're merely indulged in living in your own little perfect pocket of a world and have not looked hard enough into what it is. But who is to know? Maybe you really had seen it all, all that is Life. But you should at least have accumulated a decent amount of experiences to proclaim that i.e. you're old enough.

Perhaps it is wise to think twice before telling a person how to live their life or to "get a life".

Life isn't the same for all of us. For most, it's not all that fun and cheery. Some of us lived through 80% of shit to get to the 20% that is worth living. The intrinsic value of important things in Life varies for everyone too. Wealth may mean more to some than to others. When we add up all the variables, it is simply impossible to measure Life.

How do we "get a life" when we don't really know what Life is, when there is no way to measure it?

In the end, we're all merely trying to live in our own ways.

Comprehension

I don't understand all of it. I may never understand any of it. And thus, I'm afraid. Many secrets of the heart. We're born unto this world with the ability to seek knowledge and to try to understand our surroundings. Yet there will be secrets forever hidden from our understanding in our lifetime. What can we do? Pretend that nothing is wrong and that full or even partial understanding is not important. To live with this pretence our whole lives? To ignore? That sometimes not knowing is a bliss? That all memories and knowledge are meant to be short-lived, fade away with age?

We are thus all pretencious beings. Pretend that full understanding is not important, that we are not equipped to understand all of it. To pretend to think that desire for full knowledge is equivalent to that of desire for power- it will corrupt us. But how will we know it will corrupt if we don't understand half of it? Our hearts tell us so.

Follow our hearts, they say, not only our brains. If our hearts can think, can we channel these thoughts? Are things made more complicated when we not only have brains that think, but hearts that think too? Maybe yes. Maybe not. Both my heart and brain refuse to give a definite answer.

Up until the last days of our lives- pretencious beings. The old man in his deathbed screams, "I don't want to go because I haven't known a lot of things yet. Can I have answers?" His life whisked away. No answers.

Maybe just follow our eyes. The eyes deceive too, you say? So what is real and what is not?

Fantasy is built on pretences. Create your own answers. Your Creations. Answers to the secrets of the heart. Breathe and live Fantasy. For every question, give it your own answer. Who is to say your answer may not be correct?

Words seek to derail thoughts. Pretence is an intrinsically negative word.

We are pretencious. But we fly on wings of Fantasy too.

I won't ever understand. And I am afraid.

Fireworks Of Life

"You've led me to think as I've thought several times before, when you asked, "Is it worthwhile to die in this manner?"

Lives lost to military training/exercises, in the name of defense of a country.

A crazy world of countries saying to each other, "How do my defense measure up against your defense? I have XXX number of warheads vs your XXX number of warheads!"

A spark occurs. A small conflict of ideas. Defense turns into Offense in a flash.

All the Defense expended at once in a beautiful but mind-boggling display of fireworks.

And you call that the Fireworks of Life?

So what do you mean by Defense of a country? What is Defense? Defense and Offense may merely be relative terms. They mean the same thing."

I wrote the above in a notebook when I was about 15... 17? If a 17yr-old kid could understand the above, the true nature of what you deemed Defense. I don't get how everyone in this world could not see this very thin line humanity treads on currently. Of course, everything is more complicated. Have to be made more complicated.

To the North Korean missile test crisis.

Breaking Point

Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) - Fight Club

Have I lost it? =)

Like many, I've hammered at walls of cubicles in toilets in frustration, slammed/kicked doors, threw furniture, vandalized, scrawled graffiti... I'd attribute most of that to teenage angst.

Later in life, I'd been held at knife-point in a robbery. Been taunted by a drunk with raised fists inches from my face at a bus stop. I had walked away from all of that with some anger but they had not amount to any serious injuries that would cause me to want to even retaliate. On some days, I do wish that same drunk will appear before me, so I have a reason to break his skull or break my own.

As I got older, I'd dealt with deaths of friends and relatives and began to understand and wrestle with the grim term- Mortality. But somehow most of us were able to walk away from all of that mostly unscathed too. Relationship problems have driven many insane, and killed or tried to kill many more. Simple rigors of trying to earn a living, to feed mouths, have driven many to suicides, corruption as well. It seemed that the limit at which one breaks depends on the individual. There's no fast and hard rules or formulas. All of us have known friends who are quick to anger, friends that are patient or ones that go crazy when we pushed a single wrong button.

I've always been known to be a patient person. So, I'm sometimes curious as to just what may be my own breaking point? Because I don't seem to be able to see it at all. Not on the horizon. Not on the plates. My life had been pretty shitty. Yet I'm still intact. What is wrong with me? So what does it take to break me completely? Or make me say enough is enough and retaliate with a hatred, mindless of my own survival?

The furthest I'd gone would be an incident in Navy- When I almost caused the lives of 40 to perish. It made me puke bile and gastric juices, fall on my knees. That's about as close as I got to... losing it. But I'm able to recover even from that. The only reason being that I 'didn't' really cause the 40 men to lose their lives. I'd been lucky. I'm reminded of a recent movie I've seen: Seven Pounds- Is it possible for a person to recover from that- killing 7 innocent people (including your own wife) in a car accident?

As I got older, I'd been able to walk away from nearly every situation with a mere cynical smile. I do cry sometimes. But tears will run dry eventually. At times it merely requires a retreat into my indulgence- music, movies, games etc. What happen when your whole world comes crushing down and you're supposed to feel sad but you're not? Like Brad Pitt/Edward Norton in Fight Club- You only smile while getting thrashed to death?

Numb. We gradually lose the ability to feel because pain and loss have become a steady diet. Late news on TV. Fake smiles. Obituaries. Walk away. You only have to walk away from it all.

But sometimes our limbs are tied.

"Rick Blaine : Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." - movie Casablanca


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