Here's the next page from the book of 8 million drawing prompts that I talked about earlier. This one had not only the usual prompt in the top left corner, but a thin line dividing the page diagonally and an additional prompt down low at the bottom right.
Dear diary,
There’s a whole lotta writin’ goin’ on: the Internet has made it possible to share our words with each other: you type your thots on the screen and then anyone can view them. And people do read what you write – many more than would’ve cared about you if you’d only remained in your village and posted notes to the communal bulletin board. I like to talk about myself, tell about my new sunshades, my new sundress, my new sunscreen, my new suntan. I’m kidding, of course; I don’t like to talk about myself at all: I only like the hive mind. The hive mind is, as I misunderstand it, a phenomenon that…
I can’t even pretend to care about the hive mind, sorry. I’m just speaking heedlessly, to allow this thing to get started. I really don’t believe that blogging on the Internet gets your post-it note seen by more eyes than it would’ve gained had you sent it as a group e-mail. But it’s important to give it a toss, the message-in-a-bottle: for, if you don’t try, then whatever populates the Beyond will have no chance of knowing how severely and unfairly you were denied The Good Life.
Like etching tallies on the wall of a prison, your weblog informs futurity: Precisely this many days, I remained un-rescued.
And then you have the blog comment section. I sometimes think of this as a new invention, because I compare blogs to books, and books don’t have a place at the end of each page where readers can leave a message for their author. But you can indeed write your own words, with a pen or pencil, near the typed words, on the pages of books – so it’s exactly the same: jotting on the paper of a physical volume is just like an online comment that garners no reply. Plus think of how, say, in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s day, public lectures were The Big Fad. So the comment section of a blog is like a Q&A session after a rousing speech. (Q&A is short for “Question and Answer.”) Did Emerson do Q&A’s after his own lectures? Did Oscar Wilde? Are you happy about the current popularity level of lectures in our present era? What about debates, like the presidential debates, either the primaries or the general—do you like those? Did your favorite candidate win?
Back in the 1980s when I owned more than seven casinos, I would often visit the room at the back where a group of my staff could be found counting banknotes, tallying up my daily profits. After asking the running total, I would sigh and say with a smile: “The house always wins.” What I meant by this is that all the competitions available within the establishment are governed by rules that favor the establishment—in other words, so long as you keep playing, I, the owner of the gambling house, cannot lose. This is how I think about life, as compared to whatever is nonexistent: that which is living always wins: even tho the odds SEEM everywhere to be in death’s favor, life always finds a way to writhe around. No matter how low the conditions, life will inhabit them. But life demands a pleasurable thrill: if there’s no enjoyment, then life abandons the premises. So, I guess, in a certain sense, the odds ARE in death’s favor, and death is the house, for death always wins.
But far too many souls fear death too much.
On third thought, even if it’s incorrect, I like that first idea better: that life is the true owner of the casino. I suppose this is a matter of personal preference, perspective, or even will—I still see life as the inevitable winner and death as the sad customer, because, for death to win, it would be like proving a negative (the philosophers assure me this is impossible)—death would have to erase ALL LIFE: not a nanobe could remain—; whereas life is extremely resilient: just consider how hard it is to battle bacteria: the harder you hit them, the stronger they grow; our antibacterial soaps summon super-bacteria. What I’m trying to say is this: Death is guaranteed its win but only on an individual level, creature by creature, like a man playing whack-a-soul. Moreover, death must work hard for each win and never stop working; yet life always wins, in the sense that it can’t be snuffed out entirely (as I said: only individually) – yet here’s the rub: Life’s goal, it’s ultimate purpose, is to grow ever more complex; and THIS is what proves genuinely difficult: even given an infinite amount of time and space to thrash in, to flux about, to art itself up, life is most adept at the simple forms: that is where it maintains the advantage; for once life reaches a truly distinguished level of complexity, such as is exemplified by modern humankind (“I can comprehend no being more wonderful than man.” —that quote is from Walt Whitman’s early notebooks), precisely HERE, always HERE, at its vertex which is a crossroads bridging purgatory to paradise, life inadvertently annihilates itself (atomic weapons, environmental pollution)... How many times has life attained a similar majesty, only to poison its only path of promise!
Observe its endeavors over the eons from a supra-spatiotemporal vantage: Life resembles a toddler continually working itself up to its feet, taking its first step, then collapsing in a heap on the floor. When will the little lord learn to walk? (William Blake: teach these souls to fly!)
The poets are far ahead of the scientists. I salute all the people of science, tho I say you are lagging. That’s my report, which I send to Eternity. If I’m wrong, I don’t care; which is bad: for one should always care about one’s opinions. If you are too lackadaisical in your religion, another religion will come and steal all your wisdom. Yet what’s so wrong about that? Let’s pool our bright ideas together and make an ultra-canon of excellence. If there is only one correct God (which I doubt)…
I was going to say that this sole deity would somehow correct our mistakes, as long as we made these blunders earnestly. But two things stopped me in my tracks. The first is always the gender problem: do you refer to God as “he” and hope that the familiarity of the pronoun causes its sex to pass unnoticed, or do you…
God derailed this train of thought, but I won’t let Old Nick do any more mischief. I’ll just power ahead, off track, rain or shine thru mud rocks bramble pokeweed and quicksand…
So I was talking about life and death. You hate your life, OK: perform self-slaughter. Now what? You’re in the hall between rooms. Is this true? Sure, why not. You get to peek into all the doors and see the many opportunities available. In one door you have a stork. Just think, you could be born as a bird that delivers newborn babes to their mem-mems: it’s almost a two-fer (an offer that comprises two items but is sold for the price of one; not dissimilar from a win-win), because you get to be a baby while bearing babies. I’d choose that. Is that still a familiar myth, by the way? (I mean the one about storks being the answer to the question “Where do babies come from?”) Anyway, let’s look in some more of these rooms. The next room contains a wasp. You don’t want to choose that path: the homeowners where you’re trying to build your nest will murder you with a chemical spray. “But,” you argue, “I thought you just said that death is different than anyone imagines, and luckier.” OK, good point: be a wasp, then. See if I care. I’m checking out the next room. Here we have a dolphin. The best creature in the world, aside from the octopus and the elephant. Also I like leopards and youthful squirrels—not old gray squirrels but frisky brown young ones. And the other rooms contain creatures beyond your wildest dreams, but I can’t even speak about them because our conventional words lack the fuck to ignite their splendors. To show you what their existence is like, I’d practically have to invent a new genre of literature, something partway between prose and poetry. Go buy all my books if you wanna know more.
That’s another thing that earthlings do when they blog, I’ve noticed. They sneak a product advertisement in somewhere amid their scripture. As if anyone ever clicks thru on those things. Do you think that people give a rat’s ass what stupid shit you published!? So I attempted to have my cake and eat it to: to participate in the sin while at the same time censoring fellow-sinners; that’s why I put that link in the paragraph above.
But I’m too hard on myself. I regret using presidential language to berate my life’s work. People DO give a button or fig what dumb stuff I dreamt up. I mean dumb literally: my text is like Iago, at the end of the play, when he’s set to be dragged off and tortured (except where he’s hateful I’m loving):
Demand me nothing. What you know, you know.
From this time forth I never will speak word.
Yes, I should be proud of the hive that I tried to mind. Even if the humans sprayed me down.
But I hate to end this so blankly, so I’ll unwind a little more angel hair from the spool (capellini is a very thin variety of pasta that many bloggers depict as being wrapped around a fishing reel, for the purpose of using this as a metaphor: the image of letting more line uncoil from the pole evokes the literary crime of rambling with no greater purpose than to fill out an entry). The mention of Iago’s punishment makes me think of my own country’s efforts to destroy all fear from the world, to hedge away time and chance, to freeze the possibility of change...
All this sounds too abstract. Let me try to simplify by telling an original parable that I created myself and did not plagiarize:
Say you’re at war with the Samaritans. Now your favorite person in the whole wide world is giving a lecture, wherein he tells you to love your neighbors. And this lecturer’s name is Jesus. And there’s a Q&A session during the afterparty; so you say: “Well I like your idea of saluting our fellow countrymen, but who do you mean to indicate when you wield that term neighbors—and please don’t answer ‘The Samaritans’ because I’d prefer to hate them and kill them in war, may it never end, amen.” And Jesus answers:
“No, not salute – I said love your neighbors. And here is what Saint Luke says that I once said [10:30-37]...
A certain man wandered into the heartland of America, and fell among banksters, which swindled him out of his capital, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead, right in the middle of the Free Market Racetrack.
And by chance there came a ‘born again’ Christian that way: and when he saw him, he sped by on the far side of the track.
Likewise a small-business owner who was a hard-working entrepreneur, when he was at the place, slowed down and looked at him, and then raced by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan immigrant, as he journeyed, came where the ailing fellow was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, and administered to him medicine, and lifted him into the passenger seat of his hatchback, and brought him to a hotel, and took care of him.
And on the morrow when he departed, he took out his wallet, and gave a blank check to the hotel’s manager, and said unto him, ‘Take care of the injured American who I brought here. Make him great again. Whatever you think is fair compensation for doing this, write the amount on this check that I have pre-signed.’
“Now I ask you,” Jesus continues, “Which of these three souls—the churchgoer, the businessman, or the dreaded evil Samaritan whose people you loathe—was a neighbor unto the fellow defrauded by banksters?”
And you answer (sorry that “you” must be the recipient of this tricky scheme – that’s only because I began by spinning the thing like so, and now I’m stuck with it: if it’s any consolation, I myself will gladly play “you” in the filmed reenactment) – I say, you say:
“I cannot tell a lie; he that shewed mercy on the poor fellow ravaged by our cutthroat, inhuman marketplace: the Samaritan, I admit, is the most worthy neighbor. But the true question is: How closely does reality match the world that you present in your propaganda?”
Then Jesus shouts: “Oh! so you approve of my Samaritan, because of his compassionate actions? Well then go and do thou likewise.”
I’m trying to stop apologizing so much in these blog posts, but forgive me for adding one final SORRY PLZ FORGIVE: I didn’t mean to end this thing with a bible quote. That’s totally uncool.
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