A 3D 1:48,000 scale model of the Cybercabin Land, Built of 1/8" foam core board and rubber cement, April 2003 July 2003 Cabin Diary |
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7 July 2003 -- An ungainly personal mechanism
I am just letting my life flow out, as indeed it must, in this rather "sultry" kind of evening that one would expect to see further south in the range than this. I come to something of a compromise with the heat during my visits, and make sure to practice immersion like the waterfall that is upstream of me. One's context changes enormously, when given such a solid load of physical reality. Here at night, the forest's enclosure of the scrub-filled clearing is reinforced by the weight of the atmosphere itself. It is dark, yet it is warm, and bids me to be still. I'm just plopped onto the bunk at present, with the one kerosene lamp burning on the hook near the lean-to alcove. This is about as "contained" as a man could want. I feel my vitals stir, as though they know something I don't. Could there really be a sentient extention into the autonomia? That could well be the path out, yet it is obvious that the Creator did not want us actively visiting the control room that houses the truly sensational. No, we just walk around in these little skull-spheres, not realizing that the whole charade of situation and context of affect is there for our own safety; a trade-off that naturally causes a loss of liberty. I just want to say to my reverberating inwards, "it's OK, folks. I know you're the team that makes great the whole". It is not the source of pride, though, to find such honor in flesh so far removed from the cerebral HQ.
Really, I should be drifting off to sleep at any moment, so I'd do well to blow out that flame. That is an act of faith, to enter the dark like that. It is a form of revulsion that would make any "sane" man want to crank up some major illumination as his final cry, perhaps by turning the headlights of the truck into the front window. This is the kind of light they had in NYC, all those years ago during the blackout. There is nothing like the freedom of compromise, when it serves well in disenfranchising the powers that are in such close pursuit. I feel my body drift a little in the soft down comforter topcover. I cannot think of a whole lot that describes where I'm headed. We're below the level of "words" in this kind of journey. I suppose that if I want to live on this level, the best thing I could do would be to shut up. Still, there's that continued and sometimes-frantic call back to base, where the rational entity-hierarchy has hoisted such friendly colors. "Yes, folks," I reassure the few emissaries who've bothered to remain, "I still know about my obligations to you all." I'll say such things to them, hoping that my word can be my bond, for their empathy is not so total as to echo the traffic that passes across my subsystem monitoring equipment.
What is the image I'm trying to build? Surely, it can't be that ill-advised barrage of thoughtlessness that so often escapes my conscious control. Prudence is the better part of valor, for I've heard it said that a man first learns to talk at age 3 but does not learn to stop talking until age 30. It would seem that disrespect is shown to the hand that feeds, when so often that hand looks just like another machine. "That is the appendage of a peer," I try to remind myself. The fellowship cannot be broken--that's one of its defining characteristics. Though the component members are here today and gone tomorrow, there has to be something left, in order to make "gone" a meaningful description. The stout wood is not the abode it once was for leaves, now that it has moved on up to other duties. I just want the whole machine to slow down; I don't know what drives this penchant for excitement. It is probably a form of obsessive and/or compulsive self-discipline, no different than the biting of one's nails. Well, coming to the Cabin succeeds in removing this tired old object from the binding mandates of the assigned local chapter of the upper subject. I'm thinking that the average Joe out there, among the "normal", has a better-constituted integration between the upper and the lower, the source and the sink. His agency must be a matter of some dutiful study, for he is aware of what happens when he begins to perform transitively upon the members that report directly to him.
I will be different, come the morning. The whole ridiculous hustle will gain a new charge and importance. The middle of the night is no place for making plans, not for we creatures of the day. I continue to be aware of the unrelenting heat, even this late at night. I must come to terms with it, for there is only the threat of the machine's loading at this point. A moment that a man is left to himself is indeed a fragment of sweet liberty herself. It is so very quiet and so very dark. Well, so be it. I blow out the flame at last and keep my eyes open for some strange reason. This is as pitch as dark will get; the closest I'll come to real "absolute zero". I feel those small lapses beginning to intersperse themselves in my process. This is the beginning of sleep's makeshift release. I feel tension beginning at last to go back where it came from, though we're principally talking about the voluntary motor outputs. Thus it is, that peace is working its way up from the bowels--literally--that support those lofty view stations. The thought of the unitary man is certainly an interesting one, for the affect that is this troubled with fragmentation. It's just one...singular sensation, even while in the chorus line. This kind of desperation was never called for, and it's bleeding too much into some of the ennervated substrate that I'm going to need soon. But this is how mastery is maintained. Were these sources of dictation properly oriented, however, they'd realize how hopelessly outclassed they are by what is most likely the 70% bulk that is the "normal".
It will suit me so well, when anticipation is obviated.
"Bo"
17 July 2003 -- Yearning to have the illusion
As I "hang out" around the various haunts of the Cabin compound today, there is the kind of sun and humidity, even up here at 3765 feet, that can only remind a person of what real summer is like in the city. It is so bright out there in the clearing, and were it not for the relative chill that comes at night, I do believe a convincing case could be made that things are generally like this and there is no escape. This is the long "stretch" of summer's very own physical manifestation, the time when it is so obviously summer that people need to build specific events in the interest of meaningful elaboration. It is the season of growth and the achievement of maturity for the living, and so aptly celebrated in the historical record by folks lounging about at their vacation homes, at least for those who are the benefactors of the populuxe. I guess this is why I choose to drive the half hour it takes to get up the old two-track trail from "my" entrance near the village, for it is possible in this accommodation to be as "open" as I choose. Authenticity, in itself, is no great vice--only when its inevitable rebellion grows the shadow across someone else's fun and frolic. With 4 miles of forest in the twisted river-cut below, I am duly sequestered, and life instead moves on to topics that look banal, except to the principal participant who is reaping their value like it is an inside joke.
Today, for some reason, I seem to enjoy just sitting in the sun, perhaps because of how the conditions today have driven off so many of the annoying black flies and gnats that so frequently share the clearing's setting. I have come, with clothing soaked through from the shower next to the back porch, to stretch out with my boonie hat covering my face on the chaise lounge. There could well be a distribution of viable coal-sparks remaining in the fire ring from last night, and I am enough at ease with the concept of heat to think I could even enjoy a daytime campfire. I may be reaching for too much, of course, when I attempt to reconcile myself with a recognizably "hostile" environment for the ordinary, temperate-zone human. Something will eventually have to "give". There is, in its defense, a small amount of breeze in the hollow today, and this is not lost upon the localized pool of evaporative potential I have set out with my flesh today. I am beginning to hear more of the cicadas' fullness now, that powerful drone that would attempt to lull a sentimental being into the belief that they are sanctioning such laziness as this. I suppose there are a lot of creatures in the surrounding woodland tracts that are laying low until evening. I will rarely see the rabbits running in open fields this bright, and similarly spooked is the raccoon. The day lies upon the earth in the inevitable metaphor of a heavy "blanket"-cover, but at least this imagery is enough to suggest that a more proper atmosphere exists beyond that layer.
If I were less-inclined to the steady state by this currently-acceptable heat, I should think I'd be moving on, attending to various components of the hustle that are incumbent upon everyone who claims to have a "vocation", rather than being on a "vacation". Being eternally "behind" and "indebted" means that the urban man has a pre-installed source of gnawing apprehension and guilt. There can be no "freedom" for such a person, for he has bought in and thus incorporated the creditor into his camp and his home. There is never any reason to let down that guard and that "edge", for to do so is to invite unfathomable quantities of untimely affliction. Just to tote the moderate load for another day; just to keep the inertial mass moving--what is so hard about that, anyway? It is only the defects of one's personal process that cause "friction" to take its toll. The duty itself is of a golden, above-this-world-ly species, and it is just the interface with something so base as a pretentious primate that it begins to cause pain. There are men, I'm sure, who gain "eu-stress" from their work, rather than contribute to "dis-stress" every time they show up for duty. They must have worked a long time in idealizing their mating surfaces with the load, so that they are a conveyance that does not impose an impedance. The life back there in the city does have wheels, at least--we're not talking about pre-Columbian Meso-American orthodoxy and the use of dragging feet. I am always amazed at what has been done for me, after all.
Just the slightest acknowledgement and guidance onward will move this whole life into new scenes, only today looks like the kind of day that invites pause and introspection. I think back to the monstrous-yet-lucrative process I've set into motion and receive as much re-assurance as I do reminders that we are talking about fallible physical reality there. The summer spent in delicate co-participation with cool sustenance in unremitting heat is the kind of illusion that men will remember to their last days. How I would like the installation of "freedom from care" that was not a temporary and planned exercise in deception! The summer camp continues, though deep are the layers of its hierarchical underpinning and modelling, in the form of the greater human body. I am saddened, at times, when I think of what constitutes actual "fun" for the greater number of folks out there. Had I latched on to the collective's glory before I had time to doubt, I could very well be in a state of being perpetually "fooled". Then would I walk without tiring, for misunderstanding would be at a minimum. The pre-requisites of the better studies inevitably look arbitrary and daunting to the novice at their gates. I close my eyes and descend into a sort of steamy acceptance of the hollow on this day. Discipline, it is true, will eventually take its toll. I only hope to wind up with enough hard currency for it, so that I may continue on without the second look that might well reveal something disagreeable in the odd load that comprises my cargo.
"Bo"
24 July 2003 -- In the field of the determinants
I have come to some sort of realization that I must have a "resolution"; to establish basic parameter values and keep them under active control, so that the remainder of my more esoteric effects may express their full "notes", as the flavor and fragrance people might say. There are some matters, back there in reality, that pretty much "have to" be a certain way, as in the single furtive move of a player too swamped by the system's grandeur to play the game more than one ply deep. I would like to see myself "settled", therefore, as I let my weight settle in to the slipcovered sofa. The window sashes are open, and there are indeed the insects out there. It is as though the airworthy creatures have built a fabric across the upper space that rivals the one that is made firm in the topographical surface. Maybe I have a metaphor here that illustrates a conflict; the duality of the fixed and the moving. Which, truly, is the free-er of the two? I don't know. Freedom is one of those subjectively experienced qualities in living, so that anyone's ideation must be honored as a peer to one's own. I suppose this conversation then takes us to the nastiness of the subject-object duality, where it appears that the unifying factor is the link of plain old force that causes the "effect". The act of command and control is the fundamental identifier of the controlling agent. When these actions then cascade through the recipients in the typical dissemination that follows some high-dollar joker's whim, it is never pretty. We, the relatively powerless, are the reject heap for the anti-entropic proliferation of our "leaders". We are the ground, then, upon which they spit (and of course perform the remainder of their excretory activities as well).
I want a release that does not leave me condemning the ministers of my holy corporate advancement, but embracing them instead, though we are of two separate categories and cannot fraternize in full. The camp of the subject-warriors must, by its very structure, induct new members, but they always need to be broken off from the festering hump-pile that is their only remaining bio-resource. The invigoration and installation of an object to the other end of the active implement is their sole means of procreation. But what do I care, up here in the Cabin? I am so tired right now that I feel like the victim of gravity, if nothing else. All these nasty little reminders and constraint; they can get to be too much. "Surely you shouldn't be doing that when you could be doing this." Just accede to the controlling construct, and then you will rise at least to their upper portal, snatched to the ring of stooges that must still be reminded daily of the unimaginable torrent of soul-dissociation that goes on, down in the hole, a cauldron that would have impressed Bessemer himself. Thus we have class warfare, that disgusting scramble to a better seat, solely on the polish and substance of one's brass. I know at this point that I am neglecting many avenues of relief, when my principal fixation is simply to resist my overlords; the ones that are jointly culpable for their downward-directed and abusive domination. I don't mean to be tearing, necessarily, into the model of management and labor; we have Dilbert and The Simpsons to teach us about that. Still, the search that consumes me now is a reconnaisance over what they have out there to pit against me, those causes that might even deny their role in enforcing command over me.
Intentions and causes, the ephemeral beasts that have their portals to the space of the flesh, are the kind of thing we'd blame, say, on Satan. The one God, therefore, must be one who leaves us alone. So much is the unsolicited pitched waste, piled against my body, while at the same time the most fervent of prayer seems to be like the Pioneer probe; something shot off into a very dark yet real space. It is like being encamped where the ground is never level. There is the preference exhibited by gravity for the lower perimeter, and the high one requires some man-hauling. I think I'm beginning to grow seriously tired up here, and the dark room established by mere kerosene flames feels its usual insular way. When the enclosure is my own, then will I prosper, for it will be filled with finer vintage than the current, toxic tankage that fills the large Fass in the castle on Heidelberg's hill. Oh, but I can't be my own yeo-man, for I am, by definition, not a real "capitalist"; I work for a living instead. I still must acknowledge and say out loud that a duly-empowered vassal has me under his very thumb. The worker must handle all of this treachery, but then the entrepreneur needs to sleep at night, too. How is it, anyway, that subject and object have been made part of such a geodesic network of control and conformity-enforcement? The superior, by definition, is of a finer material, and indeed, a different clothing "paradigm" than the connivingly-agitated rag-heap that characterizes the recalcitrant. When causation comes to be ordered, it cannot be the fault of the lifeless. Are the active agents seeing the makings of a "leader" within such a combatant? The lure is great, to take such armaments from the resistance and become properly drilled in a coherent corps, only my coat still has some of its original outer lining left and does not need to be turned.
Sadly, I am losing the context of being "up here" in the woods, with all this rambling about how I'm put upon, simply because my flesh and its elaborations into the spirit world are consistently thwarted by a stout wall of wooden pilings above me, driven to bedrock. Impingent upon me are, routinely, the most abhorrent of influences from my context, and I'm not going to buy that I'm "letting it happen" this way. No, I've had the sense to dig in at this stage, for no man of my extreme introversion can be so cruel to himself. I feel the fierce, external current pulling at parts of me, as in the action of the stream that remains audible through the open rear window near the table. What a bunch of hypocrites they all are, bestowing their causes upon the unsuspecting, both night and day. The afflicted object-person must at times reduce the cross-section of familiar spirit that glows before the magisterium, for it is a representation of the small bit of individual initiative that could be converted into laissez-faire fervor and sedition by their wily scouts. I shall soon need to be going to bed, that place where causation runs wild, and in many areas of the cognitive sub-process. It is in oblivion, indeed, that ultimate mastery is achieved, for few of the disagreeable agents in the upper corps would conduct themselves as they do, should they dare to follow. Cause and effect are shown as coherent in the link that unites them, and that is the one of manipulative action. I guess I've done a good job in hosting the demons upstairs, what- or whoever they may be, for the imperatives never run thin, and the poundings are without relent. At least they have the decency to push me, rather than drag me along by my two arms. "What did I do, what did I do?" I ask.
Oh, to enter sweet Morpheus' compound, where solace and repair are instead the contextually-motivated effects. It will be a letting go, that's for sure, when I finally hit the hay.
"Bo"
30 July 2003 -- Amid unavoidably inherent avoidances
I'm up amid the hundreds of acres I seem to "need" to feel somehow "safe", as if safety were some sort of guarantee to the man who submits otherwise to civilization. "No," goes the counter-reminder, "the woods are wild, only the dangers are not of human origin, and thus manageable". Sitting up here under the kerosene lantern, on the sofa, reading some book or another, I think to those fabled days of the neolithics, just prior to history. Oh, they were a tough-enough bunch, those Neanderthal that would shy from a wily and wiry Cro-Magnon, just as a paunchy he-man cowboy today will steer clear of a high school gang that is somehow tolerated as a legitimate "extracurricular organization". The pinnacle up in the wild and the woolly, indeed, is where the man rides free-est, with only the horizon to limit him. Don't fence him in. Somewhere, miles from here, the fences do begin, and I'm well aware of that. Parcelled off and shrink-wrapped, we peddle ourselves in the best capitalist style, only the spark is missing on most of the revolutions of the big wheel. A human counter-presence is a decidedly worse foe than nature in its current form, as funny as this would have sounded, 25 000 years ago. Our shadows now intersect to the point that all is in shade, as if New York City had not put its set-back limitations on skyscraper façades when the commercial giants still had respect, even, for corrupt political machines. The solid into which I now seem integrated does not really feel as if it can be permeated within its underground and background, by the kind of land-buffers that I propose in the fantasy here. Writing a bunch of this kind of content doesn't seem to be thoughtcrime, at least. I'd sure hate to be in charge of an authentic, old-fashioned state at this particularly lunatic juncture in time. How does one lead and follow in his own footsteps, anyway? Man as controller has always had this problem.
I know that I'm wasting good old, genuine legal tender, time when I take these "vacations", too. I'm pouring it right down the drain and into the cloaca maxima that underlies our naïve and nascent projections upon reality. Oh, if but I could just "shut things down" as far as they're supposed to be, up here in these "woods"! All would damp out, if everything could coast, until the imperfections of the flesh consume all the excess process that is now under way. Earth, it would seem, shows its gaia best in the way its lithosphere and biosphere can even things out, just through life alone. Unlike the moon, our surface scars take some discernment. There is a truly simple path for riding it out, of course, and that is compliance. The overseeing agents will not loosen their grip, and we're not talking about ordinary SS-era thugs or Master Smith of The Matrix. I'm probably just too jangled at present to have the kind of perspective that sees this all as laughably benign, in comparison to what could still happen in the land of the free and so many that remain boldly brave. It is a tough deal, to know that one is hated, but it is still better than not knowing the same. Are we to pick up some sort of Sermon on the Mount mentality when we are scorned in this silliness? It has every marking of suffering in the name of the Kingdom, to put one foot ahead of the other as instructed. Whoever is "out there", stacking what's left of the deck, would have a conniption, should he know that he will not necessarily get my goat, or even one free range chicken, in the act of trespass upon my premises.
The premises, yes, the premises, they are something I've fought hard to defend, for upon them are built the rest of my limited grasp of reason. No, Comrade Strelnikov, people do not improve with age, and sometimes even their intolerance grows, as one of their own faults within decay. Someone who actually follows my effluent line of fulminating fumes would think that I'm painting myself to be the "most misunderstood man in the territory", as if Pore Jud got Huck Finn's wish, in some 19th century allegory. I seem to opt for the sentimentally-appealing comfort of my "open spaces" in this immense role-play here in the domain, yet comfort is always had at a cost. There is no winning overall; a death with dignity is still death. What am I truly called to do at a point like this? I should just shut my eyes and put myself to bed at home, and soon Auntie Em will place the compress on my black-and-white forehead. All of this that goes on at the compound is "seditious", from the very premises on up. But the controllers have taken the joke a decent step further, by declaring all premises open until they are egregiously acted upon. To know what freedom truly exists and goes unused is their way of getting even with the constituency, right along with the orgies at Bohemian Grove and the minutes on the cell phone that don't roll over. The whole ship is pretty darned tight that way. Everyone slices a thin cut, making it up on volume. So long as I generate volume of my own, I'll be upright--it is only ignorance and misunderstanding's vacuum that makes them take real note. I suppose I should be going to bed soon. My Cabin visits are becoming things that I do when I've finally squandered the day of the living, yet am still unwilling to see the next one hurtling towards me in the queue.
It is night-time, and the crickets are beginning to be heard up here in the mountain chill that leaves such dew in the mornings. It's still fairly warm inside the single room, from the solar load levied hours before upon the asphalt roof. This is no real paradise, and not even the imaginary kind one would get by multiplying our scalar coordinates by SQRT(-1). The cave-men, or whoever they really were in terms of residence-style, were the first to suffer from the split-off mind's eye of the secondary observer. By thus being two...two...two men in one, these characters started to live across a gap having no lasting meaning--only secondary effects. At that point was death truly born, for without cognition, an external view like ours is not possible. Far from being hypo-critical, however, such beasts as finally graduated across the line into modern consciousness had become hyper-critical, and thus as fully corrosive to themselves as they were to others. There is no "objective man/subjective man" ensemble. An organism is just an organism, even if it can be aware that it is aware. Two-faced dishonesty is therefore the hallmark of "civilization", for a truly honest example of the homo genus would have been exposed in the instant his ideas started growing beyond his own control. Oh yes, all is well, but by the way, the one who said that is lying. He never tells the truth, and will even admit it on occasion, given enough threat of real grand juries and Federal indictments. Yes, sir, as a man, I do nothing but lie, when left to my own concupiscence's directives. Let's see here...the brain teaser then points out that, no, I'm lying about lying so I'm telling the truth, but then how could I always lie? Ordinary machines blow up with such input. We are no longer machines, but these flesh-bound artifacts from philogeny's earlier chapters still make us need to live somewhat like them.
Given such premises, all is a loss. But a human is unique at a time like this, when he just says, "yeah, but the heck with it", and puts it off until another day.
"Bo"
Ahead to August 2003
