My Self As Aphorism

Should I explain who I am in a way that leaves most of me hidden, protecting my precious insecurities and dreams? Or should I share the lucid fullness of the images populating my unconscious mind (and my hesitant, halting deliberations) to give a gift of daring and reckless art, and perhaps create a more inspired collaboration?

I do not read much nor am I well-read now - though I read voraciously in the past, and reading has made me who I am today. Though I am missing many cultural touchstones and I am additionally ignorant in the realm of foreign languages and travel, I spent my childhood reveling in geography; secluded from the world in my backyard. Now I live the other way around, and I take great pains to stay informed.

I seek to explore many areas of human knowledge. In this effort I look to other people and to the Internet. I am constantly assembling intellectual projects. Many of these initiatives are self-serving, meant to increase my compatibility with other people - to secure my understanding of the world - and ease the awkwardness of my interactions. Therefore I am my own bullshit detector. This guides my senses of humor and irony, which are well-used if not well calibrated.

I take many things extremely seriously. But the act of taking something seriously, I put very little weight or faith in. I am a bulldog as light as a snowflake.

I live an existence of transitory and enthusiastic delight, combining the thrill of the moment and the relentless pull of the narrative past. (And I have not escaped from either orbit.)

I am in love with the past and the present, and the future is by far my least favorite tense. I have always been a severe and profound procrastinator. I have always suspected what will happen, because I have never expected it.

My inclinations are extremely deep and thorough, but my methods are entirely superficial (and I feel a great surfeit of guilt in this regard).

I have long struggled to understand subtlety. Now its definition consumes my character: I weigh my actions in levels upon levels. To how many people am I a different person?

Usually I do not mislead because I intend to deceive, but because the complicated truth is usually irrelevant. Truth is not a scale of weight but a scale of vision. (There is a microscope of honesty, and an anatomy of truthfulness.) Very few people bother to learn the most difficult boundaries, or the most obscure bodies of fact to decipher. The truth is more than simply what exists, but truth is written in what you see and do not see - in how you choose to perceive the world - and by how others choose for you.

My truth is not a state of being but a creation. Most people only demand the result of that process. To know truth more intimately is to know how and why that truth was born - to know the passionate fullness of truth in all its banality - and the passionate fullness of deceit. Usually the lies and the truths are equally hidden. Who am I? That is trivial. Why am I? That is the revelation of my spirit.

"Disambiguation": A Poem In Two Parts

Disambiguation, Part One

I’m running. Split into 4 guys remaking Cool Runnings. Like the Epic Rap Battle of History.

I like history jokes. I don’t want to know what happens below your 38th parallel. There is no cease fire. The fire burns white hot.

I heard a TED Talk. As far as talking goes, it’s a fine medium of communication. Not that I would know lately.

Some woman with schizophrenia, mentioned her obsession with wordplay. That reminded me of a poem: I wanted to write yesterday. I’ve wanted to write every day. I’ve wanted every day. I’m overrun with wanting.

It’s why I’m still running. I have so much left to prove. Yet it is mathematically impossible, to divide by zero.

I take the remainder of my wants: the silence divides my wants...but I cannot continue. I cannot produce irrationality.

The answer is not infinite. The answer does not exist. I live without answers, even as I have every answer: a list of possible references and explanations.

I see everything and know nothing. I’m the epitome of my age: too little skill, too much meandering. Overstimulated and underexperienced, underqualified and overwrought.

I forsake knowledge. I forsake friendship. All I have is instant gratification.

Will I never learn? Will I always be this empty?

I am sorry. I am very sorry.

***

Disambiguation, Part Two

I shaved today. I saved face. I shaved my face. I cut myself, and my chin wouldn't stop bleeding.

If it bleeds, it leads. That's what my dad always said. That's what I told my friend Michael yesterday.

Yesterday I had not yet shaved. I saved that for today. Every day the blade of time grinds against the face of humanity.

The blade is a decade. If only I could get each decade spayed, the moments of my life could have stayed.

Judgment cannot be stayed. Justice is blind, but it must be paid. There is no karma, or if there is, it's delayed.

Delayed like the Metro and the bus. An omnibus. Everything slows. Distance only grows. Perhaps those are inextricably linked.

I've got to hit the links, but I can't play golf. I can't save Rolfe. I just watched The Sound of Music. How can you watch a sound?

Time is already at the pound, that's why it's spayed. Time's never made a sound. Therefore sound does not exist, yet somehow sound persists.

I saved time and sound today. I saved spacetime by shaving. Is this the expression I'm craving? Is this incoherent raving?

I'm caving in. Like Plato's Allegory of the Cave. What's shadow and what's real? What do I hide and what do I conceal? The answers refuse to congeal. The wound on my chin refuses to heal.

There's too much depth, I cannot feel. Too much death, but it's a wheel. I'm taking life for a spin, I'm finally caving in, but I'm short a tail-fin. Fin. As in, the end. What is my end? What is my design? What is my teleology? Perhaps my questions are a matter of psychology. I do not question that psychology matters, but I'd like to thank the woman from the TED Talk for an educating me phenomenally.