A 3D 1:48,000 scale model of the Cybercabin Land, Built of 1/8" foam core board and rubber cement, April 2003 February 2004 Cabin Diary |
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11 February 2004 -- No choice but to wait
I guess I've about come to my final terms with all of winter's deprivations, as this part of the year rolls around and I still pretty much stay indoors. It can go on as long as it wants now; I've found my "ways around it" in getting business done anyway. Of course, the word "business" is not always the kindest one to have cross my mind, when I'm squirreled away so close to the top of the ridge, but at least the concept is one that does not bow to season, and thus has its own reason for admiration. I know that it is highly disingenuous, when I make such off-comments about the font from which the trickle is sourced, as if to pay my due respect to all those friends of Ayn R. who can justify what they do out of its necessity. The process must be ongoing and unceasing, for only then is scale fully utilized. Anything less is, after all, something less. Indeed, it is my greater lament that I cannot be more than what I already have the capability to be, as though I am being continually chided by the unseen head that goes along with the unseen hand, every time I have a spare moment. Oh, and what a luxury it is, anyway, to have enough spare seconds to thread together to form this picture of the woodland, as non-utilitarian as it is! The best option in times of lesser inspiration is not leisure; no, it is instead letting the undone task assume such an egregious personal companionship as to seek extreme ends (such as actual work) to be rid of it. Thus is my tradition, of motivation by the repulsiveness of any particular status quo, which hardly makes for much sense of place in one's vocation.
I stop for a moment to look at how ridiculous it is to fulminate, yet the do-good prescription of diversion never seems to work. They'd assume that I have a frictionless bearing upon which my internal "channel" rotates, and it is just my own irresponsible neglect of personal obligation that is keeping me from performing similar feats where they really matter. I suppose it is a tragedy, when a person is so restrained by his corporate indenture that the good fight forward, with its untold costs upon ultimate constitution and composure, is the only option. That's right, the properly enlightened never stay where they'd rather not; no, these are the mythical "free", like the picture of anyone, once he's wasted enough money at sub-50% odds to hit his number. This is the only kind of "leisure" that really matters, for the rest is always overshadowed by one's debt to society and to other entities within it. They would encourage me, of course, to go on practice maneuvers, in those hours they can stand to lose me, within the gaming space of mocked-up liberty, for this inevitably results in further burdens to shoulder when the outcome has passed into irrelevance. We should refuse these paltry offerings, then, of fake freedom, and demand the real thing; yes, that's what we should do, as properly enlightened citizens of the republic. There is a solution so sweet, the one of simply walking under will's direction only, that it cannot help but crystallize into essential substance. But the ones who are really "there" will invariably begin declaring that it is their will, of all things, to do that productive labor.
So I see that I'm being called to acknowledge the abomination that is at the core of those annoying relativists, the one of the validity of individual perceptions as contributing to objective ontology. They think, therefore, it variably is, in some way that denigrates the individual integrity of their collective object. If only I had the impression that, "hey, it's a wonderful duty I've assigned, as it contributes to what I'd individually choose", then I could declare that I already possess what is "good". Yes, anything, by the many ways in which perception can be skewed (either by pathology or by normal function), is already good. Does this solve any trouble of mine, however? No, there is no successful substitute for actual work, which means a real product of an across variable times a through variable. Oh, and how the babble begins on this, the mapping of perfectly good mechanical principles, proven money winners, into such worthless speculation. "Hypocrite," I tell myself, "go first and simply plow yourself in to your mathematics and your models, on real facets of that analytical job you claim to restrict you so fully." I should be jumping for joy, to see what can be done with SQRT(-1), but loath am I, to spend any time wondering just what it is. I am failing to connect with the actual concept of the Cabin today, which must describe its own peculiar condition in need of a prescribed remedy. I can see that being so shut down as to refuse to enter the realm of the imagined is a sign of being shut down indeed. We hear of rising tide and boats, as in the words of Mr. Trickle-down himself.
No, there are simply going to be conditions that are far from free, no matter what the diversion is that is dangled in reachable proximity. These are the weak links, or perhaps the abysmal nodes in some analogy to a standing wave. When I let the task of sitting with this hated foe be with me long enough, however, it seems well-repulsed, simply, by the ordinary passage of time, since it is clearly of the temporal and the created. Tough it is, that worldly sorrow might impose itself, but joy is implicit, if not forthwith granted, in that it is, after all, worldly. This is where the entry to the sacred space might finally start yielding results that go beyond the pointless antics of discerning what would only appear to offer a lasting solution. This is where I might finally see, through the subtending of enough of a span of pain, that there is an invariant process that rides out and carries forward. I am not sure how that might ultimately "save me" from the fullness of despair, in this rather bleak afternoon of arguably little consequence, but it always does. I feel tension, still, holding me captive, but then it is fully time-dependent and cannot integrate into a boundless, cross-section-intensive impulse over that time. I'm just dealing with created reality here, and anything of indisputable definition as to form cannot prevail over the wider and more transcendent persuasion of impression. I just have to wonder, though, what kind of span will remain under my current load, faithful though almanac and groundhog may be in this prediction.
"Bo"
25 February 2004 -- Suitably separate, for the night
Good heavens, but the winter might finally wind down, when you get to this point of the 4 seasons at this latitude! Of course, my earlier "formation" tells me that I must don sack-cloth and approach the very earth of which the "dust" is the essential primitive. I suppose my sporting wear, as much as it is in need of laundering with mild detergent in the galvanized wash-tub, will have to do. The fireplace and wood-stove alike supply what I need to put me in the spirit of destructively distilled, partially-saturated hydrocarbon polymer, otherwise seen as wood, when it's in the shed. We are so very carbonaceous, in all of this; that fine sixth element that so well embraces the earth, air, water and fire, as a mediator and an enabler. "No," I tell myself, "this is no time for alchemical wanderings--that's what wasted Isaac Newton, after all." There is plenty to account for in the fully accountable and explanable "reality", the one that has been so skillfully deconstructed. I'm just here before the fire, as it burns, as it burns. There is a slight wind out there, but hardly a wind of change. It is more of a "maintenance wind", of the kind that seems necessary to remind me that there is a whole lot of air indeed, in these woods. I have to ask myself, "what am I up to tonight?", as I look about the "L" shape of the beam-raftered Cabin interior. There is, of course, the negligible-but-sufficient kerosene lighting, to keep me close to basics, on a day that seems well-intended for me to return to them.
I shift somewhat in the armchair, thinking the fire to be well-enough developed that I can let it run, and go crash on the slipcovered sofa. Oh, but no, there's something in the way of "acknowledgement" that I've yet to make. Yes, it is a calling, to pose as a dualistic dialogue the action upon my object by the external subject. I must submit, and in many ways, to what will lick me, but good, every time. I decide I'll just "plant it" here by the fire for awhile, and attempt the kind of mournful realization of just what I've allowed myself to become. It's really not a whole lot, except ethereal hype, floating as flux but without serious tangible basis. Yes, that's it; I'll develop some weird study of al-electricity and al-magnetism, then go talking about "vortices" like an idiot. That's what constitutes the fancy of the individual, when individuals have the kind of rights that they do in my context. Never, of course, will they obtain the final "control" of me; that is something for the higher hand of God. I wince, of course, at the notion of the partitioned "self" that has to have dialogue. Perhaps what I'm looking for is some sort of "analogue", in which nothing need be said, for no one has to listen. OK, then, I guess I'm off on another Buddhist kick of some kind. Oh, the great unification, the mighty solidity, whereby subsumption precludes presumption! I lay, hideous hunk and hulk that my flesh-bound corporeal support mechanism has become, ready to obey, to the point where obedience will no longer be the question.
I sit here, alone and partitioned, for this is the fate of the instance. I can talk to myself like this all night long if I want to, but what will it get me? I'm barely looking out the windows tonight, for the snowscape is similar to what I've seen the other 6 times since the Cabin went up. Yeah, there's a good long run still to go, so the time is high and nigh, just to plunk my weary bones just a little closer to the barren substrate upon which they are built. Really, it's a miraculous thing, the "individual", and I should not so readily disparage what sentience can accomplish. Attempting to put form onto the unified impression of the sentient corpus is a daunting task, one that inevitably results in dissection and disposal, until the final recursive depths of the organism have been probed. No, I don't want that; I'll put the being back up onto some of its high-falutin', pride-prone platform. What is thought, yea, that is what is. Good old translated paperback Aristotle, sitting in the dust-pile in the basement with all those other Greeks. Is that the "high calling" of those influential originators, that they find suitable and transferrable incarnation in the impressionable minds of the assembled (albeit bored) student bodies? It can't be that simple. There is no extent of pitiful words, that will ever launch a soul successfully beyond escape velocity, for then we're dealing in some sort of relativistic framework, and probably in non-linear characteristics. That is the void, which is an alien and abhorrent notion to the "one".
I need to be sorry, it would seem, for anything I do to glorify this hideously partitioned being that would dare to draw a boundary upon something so base as the pre-condemned flesh. Yet here I sit, and there's nothing I can do about it. Either I'll be on the train to unity, or there will be the almighty snuffing-out, as the aspiring creator of ethereal transients is finally damped into the kind of residue I soon need to shovel from both the hearth and the stove. I probably generate enough of it to do well for a sizable garden, with all that potassium and nitrate and phosphorus. I'm sorry, but I'm not jumping on that train, the one that talks of the gaian majesty of mother earth. I see no ticket out, in merely making the flowers grow on, while consuming what was once my flesh-residence, after all the kind words have been said over me. I need to be planted here for awhile, just planted, with my figurative roots out and exploring what is base, and ultimately repudiating it, in the name of "charity" (e.g., "love"). There is irrefutable quality in what I endeavor from the bottom of this "self". At least I'm not currently affixed to the television monitor or the hyped-up hypertextual marketplace. Consumption follows presumption, and the "con" that is involved will always bespeak separation from the "ana-con" reality of the whole. Maybe I will retire to the sofa, after all.
"Bo"
Ahead to March 2004
