The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

Now. Now we are. Now we’re here. And funny stories. That keep coming. Porn on my computer. The Perfect Fit, by Dresden Girls, and a new girl, old girl, old friend, and shopping, endless shopping, series of screens, flashing before my eyes, the quickness flutter paints the illusion of motion — I use to be the bright one, smart as a whip, the song sings — I use to be the tight one — the perfect fit — something else – to be, someone else — wasps listening softly the changing world around them — the Wikipedia Review, the Annotated Dance, the words, the wrongs, the little experiments, the secret plans, a woman, a man, a tree, sun-clad, light-clad, smiles, and giggles, and —

Time. Time. Time.

How does it keep happening? The illusion of motion.

Meon. Non-being. The lacuna. What we owe the unknowable other. We only take it on faith. And we are always other to ourselves. Past selves. Future selves. The me who smokes the cigarette now slays slowly the other me who I don’t yet know, but one day will — and to think, I once laid there on a pallet in Greensboro before Elsewhere existed, next to her, my friend, and did not know what would happen, I didn’t know then where I’d go, or what I’d do, or the cities I’d live in, or the plots I’d fill, characters I’d meet, lovely characters animated by their own sad and brilliant actors, white souls, black souls, every-colored souls, constant actors, wearing different skins.

And now this one. Now that one. Now this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_of_Alaska

From Wikipedia

Architects need not be thought of as only interested in drawing blueprints for buildings or roads or bridges. They are the master designers of all kinds of theoretical systems, including school curricula, corporate strategies, and new technologies. For Architects, the world exists primarily to be analyzed, understood, explained – and re-designed. External reality in itself is unimportant, little more than raw material to be organized into structural models. What is important for Architects is that they grasp fundamental principles and natural laws, and that their designs are elegant, that is, efficient and coherent.

Architects are rare – maybe one percent of the population – and show the greatest precision in thought and speech of all the types. They tend to see distinctions and inconsistencies instantaneously, and can detect contradictions no matter when or where they were made. It is difficult for an Architect to listen to nonsense, even in a casual conversation, without pointing out the speaker’s error. And in any serious discussion or debate Architects are devastating, their skill in framing arguments giving them an enormous advantage. Architects regard all discussions as a search for understanding, and believe their function is to eliminate inconsistencies, which can make communication with them an uncomfortable experience for many.

Ruthless pragmatists about ideas, and insatiably curious, Architects are driven to find the most efficient means to their ends, and they will learn in any manner and degree they can. They will listen to amateurs if their ideas are useful, and will ignore the experts if theirs are not. Authority derived from office, credential, or celebrity does not impress them. Architects are interested only in what make sense, and thus only statements that are consistent and coherent carry any weight with them.

Architects often seem difficult to know. They are inclined to be shy except with close friends, and their reserve is difficult to penetrate. Able to concentrate better than any other type, they prefer to work quietly at their computers or drafting tables, and often alone. Architects also become obsessed with analysis, and this can seem to shut others out. Once caught up in a thought process, Architects close off and persevere until they comprehend the issue in all its complexity. Architects prize intelligence, and with their grand desire to grasp the structure of the universe, they can seem arrogant and may show impatience with others who have less ability, or who are less driven.

The strange but fateful choice of Life (which of course is only the universe aware of itself) to be not one but many, myriads, endless, all the universe, secret pearls or fairy foam encapsulated, always the one great divine essence, always the same one miracle, but divided and divided until finally indivisible and individual, always cut off from the universe behind the other’s eyes, a mystery, a lacuna, a place not seen, though described like the image of a solar eclipse in a cardboard box in the foyer of my childhood rowhome which happened somewhere else in this universe as our small rock earthbit swings around the galaxy like God’s own calliope. The other, which cries out I am, I am too, I am like you – and makes the confident all-seeing who in his hubris takes the lacuna for absence rather than occlusion pause –

Life chose this path; somehow, somewhen, somewhere else, when Life still swam through dreamless deeps, it chose to be not one but many and in doing so a single miracle, a single cruce of oil, is even now burning still, still now, still becoming, being, burning – even as our little lights wink out every now and then waiting quiet to be summoned back to sing dreams to some other sleeper.

I see you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia

There can be no knowledge, only belief, but it is incumbent upon us to always test and temper our beliefs, through what Rawls called the process of reflective equilibrium and what Aristotle referred to as the passage from doxa to endoxa.

http://www.all-art.org/symbolism/kubin1.html

When the dystopia comes, it will be so soft that we will barely even feel it. Soldiers on street corners. And then wearing masks, to preserve order. Riots in cities we do not live in. Explosions that happen every now and again. ID Cards. Great long highways from bedroom suburbs to central business districts that stretch over long endless slums to which there are no off-ramps to, and no on-ramps from. Raids against immigrants, that incarcerate and then imprison, and then deport. Stories of other immigrants, drowning off the coast of America while the Coast Guard stands by or maybe picks them up and interns them at the old base in Cuba where we once kept our terrorists, before those were sent somewhere else unknown, maybe Alaska. The demographic shift has been stopped.

As the years go by, it gets dark and darker. But still the touch is soft. The roll of Presidents blends into each other — boring men who tall of personal responsibility and the dignity of hardship and the still greatness of America. Landscaped walls now around their private enclaves.

The old are sent to hospitals, cheaper and older hospitals, where they are reviewed, and given pills and sent on their way. The lucky move in with their children. Others are taken in to nursing homes, where they are ill-cared for.

Jobs are scarce. The military is always hiring, and there will always be a war somewhere. Others make do where they can. Living with relatives or friends. Tinkers fixing old cars. Or temporary work answering phones from home, or offices lit by flickering old fluorescent lights and dusty yellowed white walls. Buses are crowded, and infrequently come. Cops are seen sometime when something has happened. But otherwise their presence is light. It is easy to to find drugs, though not inexpensive.

Health clinics are crowded, staffed by nurses, who give flu shots mostly. Most people avoid it, knowing that if they have some true illness, they will not be saved.