Fexmouth

/ˈfɛksməθ/

Now binging:
Overwatch

  • Amazing Race Across My Psyche S01E01: Evolution Can Be So Random

    A very badly made AI poster for my post that I am too lazy to fix

    The Racers

    Leo & Ferdinand – Second-time lovers from Toronto.
    Marissa & Chloe – Best friends and pastry chefs from Sydney.
    Tariq & Mahmoud – Taxi-driving brothers from Cairo.
    Bingus & Eep – Re’Tikkan overlords from Velath Prime.
    Eleri & Nia – Welsh furry fetishists from Cardiff.
    Dina & Lilibeth – OFW coworkers from Dubai.
    Sheldon & Craig – High-school teachers from Vancouver.

    First Destination: My High School Years

    The Kitchen. My childhood home in 1999 is the starting line for a race around my psyche. The house is spacious, but riddled with cockroaches, dirty, and cluttered. Televisions in all the rooms means that, in the middle of the day on weekends, it almost seems deserted, but for the sound of midday shows emanating from different corners of the house, faintly.

    For their first task, the teams must find all the listed ingredients for chicken adobo, a classic Filipino dish made of chicken and soy sauce. The kitchen is disorganized, and the cupboards are full of roaches. Ingredients that are rotten or discolored will not be accepted, and dirty ingredients must first be cleaned before being handed over. Once they have obtained all the ingredients on the list, they must give them to the house helper for their first clue.

    All the teams scramble around the kitchen/dining room to look for the ingredients. Marissa & Chloe struggle with the cockroaches. At some point, Marissa opens a cupboard and a cockroach crawls up her hand, making her scream so loudly that everyone else turns towards her. In a confessional interview, Eep says that he does not understand how humans could be so afraid of tiny things. Bingus says that this is an evolutionary response called disgust. Eep says, “This is why we need to introduce this species to prenatal genetic modification. Evolution can be so random.”

    Dina & Lilibeth find the ingredients quickly and without looking much at the list because they are Filipino overseas workers. They grew up cooking adobo and continue to do so. Dina says, “We still cook it whenever we want to think of home.” Their quick completion grants them an early lead.

    Leo & Ferdinand bicker. Leo becomes frustrated trying to find the ginger. He looks at one directly and passes over it; he does not seem to know what it is. Ferdinand in turn becomes frustrated with Leo’s constant whining and attitude, especially when they become the last team there.

    Clue: Travel to Grade School. The teams must travel to my grade school, a Benedictine Catholic school.  

    Roadblock: Make Friends. In this roadblock, one member of each team must approach a group of boys and try to befriend them. They must use their wiles and their tentative grasp of the truth to convince these children to bring them into their fold. When the children are sufficiently convinced that their presence is a benefit to the group, the leader of the group will give them their next clue.

    Dina & Lilibeth are the first out of the kitchen. They go into the massive vacant lot near our house that we use as a parking lot and ride one of the cars out. But the disorganized streets of the suburbs, along with gates that seem to be placed at random and in a recursive manner, confuses them. At some point, they have to leave their IDs at the gate (they use their passport), and then reach another gate that requires an ID. They plead with the guard to let them in, even trying to negotiate with them in Tagalog, but they refuse.

    Bingus & Eep [1st] are the first at the school. Bingus performs the roadblock. Confessional: Bingus says, “I don’t know much about human children. I don’t know how different they are from adults. All I know is they’re smaller and not very smart.” Eep says, “And they like chocolate.” Bingus agrees. “And they like chocolate.”

    Bingus approaches. The boys do not seem very friendly, especially towards him. He starts by trying to talk to them about science. They laugh at him. He talks about chocolate. The boys are not interested. They also cannot seem to understand him because of his Velathi accent.

    Eleri of Eleri & Nia [2nd] does the task. Confessional: Nia says, “I’ve known Eleri since I was like 9 years old. We’ve always been the weird ones, and it was nice to have a partner in being weird. She’s always been so friendly, even to the people who were mean to us. So, I have no doubt that she’s going to do great.”

    Eleri approaches the boys and while they take time to warm up to her, she brings up the subject of who the boys like among the girls, and whether any of them secretly like other boys. “Nothing wrong with being gay,” Eleri says. “Remember that! Don’t change for anyone! Don’t be ashamed of who you are!” Eventually, they are laughing, and one of the boys hands her a clue.

    Eep sees this and looks worried.

    Leo of Leo & Ferdinand [last] bring the ginger to Ferdinand. He says, “Is this it? Is this ginger?” Ferdinand takes one look and he rolls his eyes.

    “Did you have this all this time?” Ferdinand says.

    “I didn’t know what it was!” Leo says.  

    Sheldon & Craig [3rd] arrive at the school. As they walk in, Craig mutters, “Class is back in session.” Confessional: Craig says, “We’re high school teachers. I’m definitely more of a disciplinarian, and Sheldon is more of a free-loving, whatever-goes teacher. That’s why Sheldon should probably do this between the two of us.”

    Detour: Dress Up or Jot Down. For Dress Up, the teams must enter a wardrobe room and change their clothes according to the standards set in the Benedictine school manual, including getting a haircut according to school rules for males. When they’ve satisfied a school prefect, the prefect will hand them their clue. For Jot Down, the teams must copy several pages of notes written on the blackboard by hand legibly and neatly. Then, they must submit their notes to the teacher. If the teacher is satisfied with their work, then she will hand them their next clue.

    Eleri & Nia [1st] arrive choose to do Dress Up. They enter a room full of different clothes on hangers and in cabinets. The manual says that they need to look a certain way, with the uniform, their hair, and their skirt. They quickly put clothes that look like the ones in the manual, and they run to the prefect, but he does not approve.

    While doing it, Tariq & Mahmoud [2nd] come in. They realize that they need to get a haircut, but they are already wearing their hair very short. Confessional: Tariq said, “In Cairo, you can’t really have long hair. It’s too hot. You’re going to have sweat on your head all day and stink like a toilet brush.”

    Marissa & Chloe [4th] arrive at the school, and Chloe does the roadblock. They talk to a group of girls. Confessional: Chloe says, “I consider myself a gregarious person. I like to party and make new friends. And at our business you have no choice. To get your clients, you’re going to have to be a good talker and people have to like you. I mean, there are pastry shops everywhere in Sidney. What really sets you apart is how you relate to people.”

    She talks to them about cooking first and then make up. They don’t seem interested. But then she talks about her website and how it’s so difficult to update. The girls are very interested in computers. One of them wants to become an engineer. Chloe encourages her and gives her some advice about being a woman in business. She receives her clue.

    Dina & Lilibeth [6th]take their passports back at the first gate they went through. Dina is driving, and she looks very frustrated. About to explode. Confessional: Dina says, “Apparently, we weren’t even going the right way. I mean, there was a way through there, but the right way was to just go through the main road. So frustrating.”

    They arrive at the school. Dina approaches a group of girls. Immediately, one of them side-eyes her. Dina tries to talk to her, but the girl continues to sneer at her. She sighs and realizes that this won’t be easy.

    Sheldon & Craig [3rd] choose to do Dress Up. Confessional: Sheldon says, “Following school policy is second nature to us. We’ve been teachers for more than ten years at this point. This should be nothing to us.” They quickly get dressed. Sheldon needed a bit of a haircut, which he did with a designated barber on-site no problem. He needed to sit on a regular chair and put on a barbershop’s gown. Then, they presented themselves to the prefect, and they got their next clue.

    Eleri & Nia [2nd] try again, and it seems like they have everything correct. But they approach the prefect, and they get refused. They look at the manual again. Then, Nia realizes: “We don’t have the hair right. We should have them tied back.” They quickly use scrunchies to tie them back. They go to the prefect again, and they finally receive their clue.

    Bingus of Bingus & Eep [5th] finally connects with the group of boys by showing them that he could smack himself in the back of the head and pop out his eyeballs until they are hanging by the stalks. This makes them laugh so hard that the leader of the group hands them their next clue. They read it and run to the roadblock. They choose Jot Down. Confessional: Eep says, “It’s pretty difficult to read and copy human writing. But human fashion is much, much more confusing for us.”

    Clue: St. Benedict. The teams are instructed to find the patron of the school. They must determine that this is St. Benedict, who has a larger-than-life statue in the middle of the school quad. They must approach this statue, which serves as the pit stop for this leg of the race.

    Tariq & Mahmoud find the statue. They are the first on the mat. There, the abbot of the connected Benedictine abbey greets them. “Welcome to St. Bede Abbey School.” They thank him.

    I am there, as a high school boy. With a beard, despite being so young. Face untouched by acne but instead made rough by eczema, especially around the nose. I wore rimless glasses that were too small for my face. My eyes were perpetually bloodshot because I had revenge insomnia. I went home, slept until it was midnight, and stayed up until 4AM or sometimes didn’t sleep at all.

    “Tariq & Mahmoud, you are the first team to arrive,” I tell them.

    Soon after, Eleri & Nia arrive and step on the mat.

    “Eleri & Nia, you are team number two.”

    They celebrate.

    In a classroom, Bingus & Eep [4th]are trying to write with their long fingers, but they can’t properly hold a pen.

    Bingus, while writing, says, “See, we don’t use manual instruments to inscribe symbols anymore. Our civilization has let that go a looooong time ago.”

    The camera zooms in on his writing. It is totally illegible.

    The teacher watching as she stands above them shakes her head.

    Dina of Dina & Lilibeth [6th] is trying to make headway with the group of girls. She is talking and laughing and going on and on about all sorts of things, but they are simply not reacting to her.

    Confessional: Dina says, “It’s impossible. Absolutely impossible. They just really hate me. I mean, like, personally.”

    Sheldon & Craig arrive at the statue. They finish third.

    Marissa & Chloe [5th] choose to do Jot Down. They see the aliens there. Chloe says, “The aliens are here. Thank god. Those extraterrestrials know nothing about human writing.”

    Leo & Ferdinand [last] only just arrive. They quickly run to a group. But the group catches on early that he is gay, and they are visibly amused and somewhat disgusted that they have to talk to a gay guy.

    Bingus & Eep [4th] finish their writing. They go to the teacher. Surprisingly, even though there were erasures, the teacher accepts. They get their clue. Marissa & Chloe watch them running off. Marissa says, “How could they finish? They’re freaking aliens. They don’t even go to school.”

    Bingus & Eep arrive at the pit spot. They are the fourth team to arrive. Confessional: Eep says, “Humans definitely tend to underestimate us because we’re not members of their species, and we come from very far away. But that’s on them, because we have strengths that they don’t even know about.” Bingus says, “And we can do long division in our heads. Fast.” Eep says, “Really fast.”

    Dina & Lilibeth [6th] decide to do Dress Up. Confessional: Dina says, “We grew up in Manila. We went to this type of strict Catholic school. We didn’t really even need the manual. We dressed like this for like the majority of our life.”

    They dress really quickly and get their clue from the prefect. Confessional: Lilibeth says, “After everything, I’m glad that something went our way. Because at that point I was just exhausted. I used to work two jobs when my babies were first born, but I was never this exhausted.” Dina says, “Probably because you didn’t have to do weird stuff like this.”

    They arrive at the pit stop and finish fifth.

    Leo of Leo & Ferdinand finally makes friends with the boys. They convince them to try and walk like a model with him. They were hesitant, but eventually they were all walking down a pretend walkway, doing poses, swaying their hips. Maybe they weren’t such homophobes after all. From the way they were doing it, it seemed like they might have been closer to their feminine sides than they would like to admit. The leader finally gives them their clue, and they rush to the detour. They do Dress Up.

    At this point, only one spot is left, and both Leo & Ferdinand and Marissa & Chloe are still at the detour.

    Marissa & Chloe go to the teacher. The teacher says no. The seem surprised. They go over the notes again. Marissa says, “I don’t get it…” They look at the notes and the stuff written on the board.

    Leo & Ferdinand get dressed quickly. They present themselves to the prefect and get their clue.

    Marissa & Chloe realize that they’ve made several typographical errors. They go through their work and correct them. They go through every word and, when they think they have it, they go to the teacher again. Still, she says no.

    “We’re missing something,” Marissa says. She looks at the board and then their work. And she realizes that they’ve made many more mistakes than they originally caught. So, they go through it again.

    Confessional: Marissa says, “We were looking at our work to see if it made sense and correcting spelling errors and stuff. But there were mistakes that made sense on paper but they weren’t what was written on the board.” Chloe says, “We were just rushing so much that we didn’t realize we weren’t writing what was literally written down.”

    They go to the teacher again, and they get their clue.

    At the statue, I point into the distance. The abbot looks, and we see a team running towards us. It’s Leo & Ferdinand. They drop their backpacks and run to the mat.

    “Welcome to St. Benedict Abbey School,” says the abbot.

    “Thank you,” Leo says. “That was close.”

    “Ready to go on?” I ask them.

    “Oh yeah,” Ferdinand says. “This was tough, especially the challenge with making friends. But we’ve been doing difficult things all our lives. This is just one more thing.”

    Finally, Marissa & Chloe arrive.

    “You are the last team to arrive. I’m sorry to tell you that you have been eliminated from the race.”

    They hug each other. Marissa begins to cry.

    “Be strong,” Chloe mutters to her.

    “We’re just so sad,” Chloe says. “We didn’t want our journey to end this quickly. We feel like we have so much more to give.”

    Confessional: Marissa says, “We’ve known each other for years, and we’ve always leaned on each other whenever life got too difficult. Our experience was cut short but the little we experienced only shows me that our bond is very strong. And only gets stronger everyday.”

    Eliminated: Marissa & Chloe

  • Does God Give a Fuck?

    person hands on holy bible
    Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

    The other day I was praying. I don’t usually pray, but sometimes I feel compelled to ask for help from someone who actually had the power to help me. And some of my problems only God can help with. I live a comfortable life, but there are things I wish for, mostly with regard to love. God probably looked upon me with compassion, as he always does, with all of his children, but he did not bother with such a ridiculous request.

    One thing that bothers me is when people do not properly account for what God is truly interested in when it comes to us. Sometimes people pray for things like finishing a game or winning money, and I wonder if they truly think that God would grant them that. Of course he would, if he wanted. But that’s definitely not what God cares about. Which is why prayers of this sort, objectively, are granted and not granted based on chance. God do not respond to such prayers because it is outside the scope of his interests.

    Jesus promised us eternal life. There is absolutely no point in him trying to make our 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years of temporal life better. I do believe that God eases temporal pain, which we can sometimes find unbearable and overwhelming due to mortal weakness, but there are some prayers that are so frivolous and rooted in human pleasure and temporal accomplishment that I cannot believe sometimes that people pray for such things. I might even call such prayers demeaning of the divine.

    Many people also sometimes do not quite understand the nature of heaven. For example, they believe that eternal simply means “a very long time.” That is obviously false, because a very long time is infinitely smaller than eternal—that is to say, it is infinitely more time than “a long time.” It is also not true that we will be bored, that we will be happy, or that we will enjoy ourselves there, because there are no appetites in the spiritual world.

    One is bored when one wants something and one cannot get it, and so one has a negative emotion in relation to that want. Well, humans want for nothing in paradise. So, there are no such feelings that need to exist or, indeed, do exist at all. Being in perfect communion with God in paradise is a state of perfection that is so complete, it has no attributes, modalities, features, characteristics, &c., and thus cannot be described because language is communication that depends on categories that necessarily entail differentiation. Thus, the very core operation of language (differentiation) is absolutely contrary and contradictory to the phenomenon of paradise (perfect communion).

    Therefore, much discourse of what heaven is like is nonsensical. For example, people frequently say things like it would be more entertaining to hang out with those in hell. First of all, that only works if you accept the (equally stupid) notion that people like drag queens, rockstars, drug users, &c., go to hell. In reality, the only people in hell are the most depraved, angry, rancorous people who have completely turned their back on good. Second, unlike in our temporal lives, there is no need to be entertained in heaven, so the point is moot.

    My country is mostly Catholic, although the majority of the people who live in the Southernmost part of the country are Muslim. I was raised Catholic. For a time I was an agnostic, and then atheist, and then realized that many of these positions do not make sense when applied to God because one does not know God the same way that one knows, say, a cup of coffee or a tree or a book. That is to say, God is not an ordinary object because God would necessarily precede and be the source [fons et origo] of all and any concepts applied to him or used to understand him.

    To apply any preposition to God would therefore be improper, as he is not beholden to the rules of propositional logic, reason, or even intuition. All of these things are his creations at the most fundamental level.

    From William Blake’s illustration of the Book of Job

    Thus, I ultimately think that one can only discern God as pure Will. This is the lesson I gather from the Book of Job, my favorite book in the Bible before the Pauline letters. Job’s friends tried to rationalize what happened to him, but God himself appears and speaks in incomprehensible riddles. He does not even address Job or his questions directly, merely asking: Were you there? Do you know anything?

    Through our intellect and through divine revelation, it is possible to know God through his own words, but few things more than that. If I believe in God, it is because Reason as an instrument of knowledge simply falls apart without a First Cause, because causality functions strictly as a chain (even if many arguments points towards spontaneity especially at the subatomic/quantum level). One might recognize this as one of Aquinas’s Five Ways. This goes back further in Aristotle, where the “First Movers” were the highest form of beings, who spent their time contemplating themselves in contemplation, which is the highest form of philosophy—a state of which we would fully realize in Hegel and German Idealism.

    So, in a muddied, perhaps opportunistic way, I do believe in God. I am forced to believe in God; it seems necessary through the very instrument I use to determine what is necessary. And yes I do believe that God is beneath many, many of the things we pray for.

    That’s just what I think. Like I said, God is unknowable fundamentally…

    So maybe he will say yes and give me love soon.

  • Acedia

    The Seven Vices, also the Seven deadly sins: Greed (Avaritia), Acedia or depression without joy (Desidia), Gluttony (Gula), Envy (Invidia), Wrath (Ira), Pride (Superbia) and Extravagance or Lechery (Luxuria) by Pieter Bruegel.

    1

    I am a hikkikomori.

    I know that there are cultural implications of that that don’t exactly fit me. I am not obsessed with anime. I play video games a lot, but not to the extent that hikkikomori would imply. But I am like a cenobite, in that I have not left the house in months. It might have even been a year. I despise going out of the house. I feel trapped. I feel like I am very far from safety, and if I have to suffer, then there is nowhere to go.

    And there are many varieties of things that bother me and make me want to retreat. A big one is boring, stupid, or inane conversation. Whenever such a conversation takes place around me, and especially when I am a part of such conversation, I feel anxious and doomed. That is what it feels like to me: I feel an overwhelming sense of not only death or suffering or pain. Doom. Catastrophic, fateful doom. Total metaphysical collapse.

    I don’t like noise. I don’t like the loud, boisterous conversation of other people. It makes me feel like they are talking about me. I was bullied in high school, and I was never able to get over that. Occasionally, I can get over this, but if I could avoid it, I would prefer it.

    I use a 10,000 Lux lamp to simulate the sun and take Vitamin D supplements. A monk-like life would be perfect for me, if it weren’t for the prohibitions against lascivious behavior and thoughts, against frivolous entertainment. Against touching myself.

    “Augustus? Brother Augustus, what are you doing in there? We have formed a queue out here. Brother Joshua needs to take a holy dump. You better not be abusing yourself!”

    That’s what the rector at my own Benedictine school called it. During confession, we had to tell him if we abused ourselves. The idea is God made our bodies for a certain purpose, and we were not “using it correctly” if we were using our reproductive parts to amuse ourselves.

    God is not only the epitome but the very fons et origo of Order. Thus, it makes no sense that He in His Wisdom would ever design the human body in such a disordered way that masturbation is possible, pleasurable, and harmless (in some cases beneficial) while also being a sin. I reject that. And I’m not necessarily a Christian, and much less Catholic, but my spirituality is definitely rooted in that Abrahamic tradition. If only because that’s what I’ve been surrounded by all my life.

    Ten years ago, a few years after graduating college, I certainly had ambitions (delusions?) of becoming something of a monk. My idea was to study from home through an Internet-based research university and spend my time writing papers on philosophy and social science. During this time I did not know that I was suffering from the delusions of grandeur typical of bipolar disorder. My life had not yet gone long enough or me to discover that there was a very insidious pattern.

    2

    It became clearer when, later, I met a psychiatrist. I was put under observation for ADHD as well as bipolar disorder. And it took a few years but it turned out that these things were the case. The thing about not detecting these things until later in life is, at that point, my habits, my life, my decisions have already been affected by the conditions for much of my life. I cannot expect to take medications, wait a bit until they take effect, and have my life be fixed. Sadly, it simply does not work that way. The medication and the therapy allow a new start, but it is a start from behind. That doesn’t mean the challenge is insurmountable, but there will be times where it seems so.

    Around this time I learned how to drive and exercised my freedom. I went to parties, gallery openings, all sorts of events. I met all kinds of people. We spoke about all sorts of things. And I realized that none of that was for me. I was only barely, barely entertained most of the time. And forget about being enlightened. Forget having any sort of insight about anything. I had no contempt for them. But there was nothing. I felt nothing. Except for very, very few times.

    I remember this one time: I met the girlfriend of the poet boy I had always loved. I speak about him often, so we should have a name for him: Rex. Yes, while yearning for him, he did have a girlfriend. I didn’t do anything that would constitute a betrayal of their trust, so that didn’t bother me and don’t think it was wrong. At some point, they broke up, and that girl—let’s call her Tilly—and I met at a gallery opening one night.

    It is in the nature of these sorts of things for me to think that she was a vicious bitch. Not because that’s how she actually was. I actually didn’t know anything about her, apart from what she looked like, her general attitude, and a few stories that I’ve heard about her. At that point, I knew that she dressed very well, she spoke French, and that she was into the arts & letters, just like most of the people around me. And of course I also knew that Rex loved her. He referred to her sometimes as his wife. Above all, of course, this is what I hated most about her.

    But that evening I met her, we greeted each other, and she was so pleasant that I invited her to have dinner with me and the friend I had there with me. We ate one of the best restaurants in Metro Manila that happened to be beside that particular gallery.

    Over the course of that dinner I realized why Rex loved her. She was an amazing woman. Very well humored, not at all arrogant. She was intelligent, funny, well-spoken, and knowledgeable. I was so wrong and sorry for being so willingly cruel. That was a pivotal moment in my life. I truly felt so stupid to think that someone was a bad person simply because I was envious.

    If anything, it seemed like I was the piece of shit all along.

    3

    In the house I am mostly on my computer. I work at home, and when I am done working I play. For many months my friends have been trying to get me out of the house, especially on my birthday. My parents have given up on this. They mostly leave me alone, although my mother was very upset that on my birthday all I wanted was to stay in the house.

    In the Philippines there is no stigma associated to staying with your parents. In fact, the American stigma regarding that confused me a lot as a kid. In the Philippines you were expected to stay at home, even while married, if you were the youngest, so that you could stay with your parents. Putting an elderly person in a home is a grave moral failure in Filipino society. They are only ever put in homes if all their immediately family has somehow died.

    So, there is not much pressure that makes me want to move out, although my parents have told me that, if I wanted, they could relocate me to some apartment somewhere. We have a family business where I do my fair share of the work (and own a part of that company), so they could simply cut my rent out of share of the profits every quarter. And I truly wouldn’t mind living alone. The problem is I do not want to leave my elderly parents alone in this house. Although they are still very strong, I also know that the digital age is becoming very confusing for older people, especially older people like them who had to work very early in their lives, and so never got much of an education. My parents are not exceptionally smart people. And many times I have had to personally intervene because they were in the middle of getting scammed—my mother frequently tries to buy things she finds on Facebook, many sellers from which are scammers, and my father is the frequent target of crypto scams, especially during the pandemic.

    I want to stay put. I want to stay here. I still want the company of other people, but online I could speak to them and hang out with them while doing something else. And if they are boring, I leave, and I can move on. But in a restaurant or something I am trapped. And I have to pretend that I am interested, and I have to contribute somehow, and when I leave I have to sit in the car until I arrive home.

    4

    During the Medieval Times monks were warned about a very specific cardinal sin called acedia. We translate these nowadays as sloth, and we interpret it as laziness. But that’s not really what acedia is. That’s not what it was originally, and that’s not what the core of what that designated sin is supposed to be.

    Acedia is not sloth of the body, physical laziness, but a kind of lethargy of the soul and the faith. It is a spiritual laziness. It is a deep sorrow that turns one away from the light of the truth. It is more akin to boredom than indolence. Monks were especially susceptible to this because they remained in their cloisters all day, mostly, and lived repetitive lives.

    Today, I think we would recognize acedia as anxiety and depression. They were supposed to cure this with prayer, with virtue, with faith. I don’t know how effective that was. It probably did not work. But it was considered a sin because it was seen as the result of a moral failure and was capable of destroying a person’s soul. It didn’t make much sense, of course, because it wasn’t a person’s fault that they felt a certain kind of way about their situation, but that’s how premodern people saw things. Which is also why they thought information obtained through torture was viable evidence (although it might shock people to discover how infrequent this was actually done).

    I am guilty of this cardinal sin. Very guilty. And while they were obviously wrong about whose fault it was, Medieval people were definitely right about how destructive it is.

    The cure is love. Love that recognizes the immense beauty of Creation. That invigorates the soul to realize that there is purpose, there is meaning to be found out there, if one only seeks it, and that this seeking is a worthwhile endeavor. When I am in love I do feel the acedia lifting. And it can be difficult for me, with my limitations, but I look towards the future with a measure of hope. And this hope disperses just enough of the darkness for me to not be totally consumed by it.

    For now.

  • Fabiano Caruana, My Love

    I am very attracted to Fabiano Caruana.

    I’ve known him for more than a decade now, ever since I started playing Chess during college. Didn’t really think much of him then, even if he was considered even then one of the main contenders for World Champion, although always trailing behind Magnus Carlsen. It was only recently that I began to realize that not only is he one of the greatest chess players of all time, but he is also very handsome in his own very particular way.

    He is very calm, and in some pictures with his large eyes it looks like he was frozen in fear facing an oncoming train. But within that exterior, within, he was a genius, the likes of which there are less than a few hundred thousand in the world. Less than a percent in the entire history of humanity. That is incredible, incredible power, all the while being understated, calm.

    Obviously I don’t know Mr. Caruana in person. So, I don’t know if he only seems this way in his public appearances. It is perfectly possible that, in private, he could violent and prone to rage and arrogant, like Kasparov both in private and in public. But I doubt it. It would need to be very well hidden, given how much insight we have of his life.

    Not that it would matter, as I would never know him. He would probably never know I exist. And even if he ever did, through some fan meet or because I wave at him at a tournament, he must be so busy. He would have no time to talk to me or message me. Much less take me on a romantic hiking trip in the Alps, where we would retrace the steps of the Carthaginian war elephants during the Second Punic War. Look out into Italy from the cliffs and accidentally touch hands. Glance at each other, laugh, blush, and then hold hands without averting our gaze from the view.

    He would never ask me to join the Amazing Race. Train with me for months to get me in shape, physically and mentally. And then during the race his intellect, focus, strategy, and memory would carry us through to the final legs. Occasionally, we would get in each other’s nerves.

    During a roadblock in Phenom Phen he would have to count the number of female figures on a temple wall doing a specific pose. We would be both tired and a little bit annoyed because of a mix-up during a previous challenge. I also tripped while running down the sidewalk, and he was very worried for a second, which also disrupted his mental.

    He already went around the temple a few dozen times. Three groups were there when we arrived, but now we were the only ones left.

    “What’s going on?” I ask him from the side.

    He had just come back from having gone around again. He’s frustrated, sweaty. His face is so expressive; it’s easy to see he’s pissed off.

    “I don’t know,” he says, not even looking at me. He stops and places a hand on his hip and uses another hand to wipe the sweat from his brow.

    “Go to the guy,” I say, pointing at the monk who had our clue.

    He doesn’t say anything, so I say it again. “Go to the guy!”

    “I know!” he snaps at me.

    I’d be afraid that we’re in last place, but several teams come. This reassures me a bit.

    Another team talks about how Fabiano is a grandmaster. His memory skills should be amazing. I overhear this. The camera zooms in on my face. I’m furious.

    We come fifth among the remaining seven. The last team wasn’t even eliminated; it was a non-elimination round. During our post-leg interview, we talk about how much we love each other.

    He says, “Every relationship has challenges. And we’ve had our share. But no matter what happens, we know we have each other’s back. And I’d never be here with anyone but August.”

    And he looks at me. I look at him.

    We kiss, but the televised version cuts that part because too many conservatives watch the show, and the producers don’t want to offend anyone.

    That’s never going to happen. But I like thinking about it. And I like seeing him and watching him online. I love seeing his games, his analyses, his tutorials. That’s enough for me. I have a feeling that I don’t need to get too greedy when it comes to men I’ll never have. There will be a lot more.  

  • Important Car Rides of My Life #1

    Photo by Burak The Weekender on Pexels.com

    After a night out, I always feel some type of way in the car on the way home. Especially when something important happened. It’s rare when something important happens during a night out, but when it does, the car ride home feels like another universe.

    Beside our university, there was a McDonald’s. It was always full. Always. People had to stand around waiting for seats, and when one opened up, it was, for that brief moment, like the Hunger Games. We have all accepted that, on the way to get a seat, all rules of decent society are suspended. We are animals of the basest kind. And whoever gets their ass on the seat first wins.

    But we were a bit luckier because it was 9PM. I don’t remember why I was there so late. Maybe there was a bazaar or festival or something. We decided to meet. For weeks then I had already been thinking about him.

    He said, “Do you have to be anywhere? Am I wasting your time?”

    We were seated outside. There was a traffic jam on the avenue, as usual. Occaisonally, the LRT passed above the cars, loudly traveling on the rails.

    I remember thinking no one has ever asked me that before. No one has ever asked about whether they were wasting my time, and no one has ever used those words in that order. Something about it struck me.

    I said, “No. No, of course not.” I wanted to say: I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world but here with you right now. Right here.

    I don’t remember what we were eating. But we ordered food, and we were looking at each other. I’ve loved him for years at this point. We were classmates during the first year of college but then he went to the United States. He came back a year later. And by then I still felt for him what I felt before he left.

    He wasn’t especially handsome. But he was good looking. It was the way he acted, the things he said, the things he knew. And his eyes. He had large eyes that betrayed an innocence that every second became indistinguishable from stupidity. And desire. Hot, burning desire.

    We spoke about poetry and life in America. And I brought up a girl he used to love. She was one of my best friends. And he adored her. He always sat beside her, followed her around like a puppy. She was late to come to school one day, so he spent the day with me. And when we came across her on the way to class, he shouted her name to get her attention and made for her. He didn’t even look at me as he said goodbye. I felt that was very apt.

    I asked him, now, about her, and although he was amiable, the question seemed to have upset him. Later, I’d read his blog, and he seemed to reference it. “A friend asked me about something that happened years ago,” he wrote. “He spoke like he knew. Did you know? Were you there?”

    I don’t think he understood the extent to which I was familiar with what happened between him and that girl. She told me everything. She told me everything because she knew that I really liked him. And she didn’t like him much. That bothered me.

    I remember being at my aunt’s party. She held it at her nursery school. They had to close the gates and the blinds so that nobody saw that she had invited her family and friends over for a party. Behind a bookcase, there was a bedroom and a kitchenette, where the teachers she hired could live. She let me use the computer in there.

    I spoke to that girl, and she was telling me about how they had gone to a bar the previous night. They both got drunk. She needed to puke, and the boy went with her to the bathroom, so that he could help her as she puked. He held her hair and made sure that she didn’t get any on her. And because of her drunkenness she then began to kiss him. Deeply. With tongues swirling around each other’s mouths.

    She was telling me about how she regretted it. How she wished that she liked him, given how much he liked her, but she simply didn’t. And I know that I was asking for it, since instead of asking her to keep these things to herself, I actively asked her to update me about their relationship. But I got very angry. I said: You know how much I like him. The way you’re talking so casually about how much you don’t like him is very inconsiderate. Which it was. But at the same time I had as much a hand in that pain as her. Maybe more.

    But now it was two years later. He was sitting in front of me, and we were spending time together. She had long forgotten about him; she had a boyfriend now. I felt like, unlike then, I had him to myself. Which wasn’t true of course. Absolutely untrue.

    In any case, we spoke so much about poetry and literature and video games that my father began telling me to go home. I was lucky enough to have someone drive me home, an employee of his he paid extra to drive me. He wrote his email on the back of the receipt so that I could email him. On the car, Sweet Soul Revue by Pizzicato Five was playing. And until today I associate that song strongly with that evening.

    The more I spent time with him, the more I wanted him, but the more it was apparent that he loved women. He loved beautiful, intelligent women with European and American sensibilities. He was never going to love me or even like me or even be romantic towards me. I never asked, but it was obvious to me at some point. So, I never asked and I never tried anything. I never even broached the subject.

    But he did tell me about having sex. His preferences, the things he liked. How he would go about it. The things that happened before, during, after. And that was supposed to be enough for me. He would never do those things with me, but I knew how it would happen if it did happen. Which it never would.

    I remember that drive home. All I could think about was how happy I was. How much I missed him. How handsome I still found him. I remember that Japanese song playing. I remember the horrible Manila traffic. The harsh lights of the freeway. And I remember thinking I loved him. How stupid I must be because I loved him.

  • The Phenomenology of Spirit on My Birthday

    Bildnis des Philosophen Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Berlin 1831 by Jakob Schlesinger (1792-1855)

    I’m 34 now.

    My family asked me: What do you want for your birthday?

    I don’t know what I want.

    In the Other Place I sat with Hegel in his house, watching him scramble for wine and food as Napoleon’s soldiers ravaged Jena. It was cold, and though I was already wearing my Muji jacket I got from Japan in 2019, I was still shivering and had to keep my hands under my arms.

    “So terribly sorry to be rude,” he said, casting a tired glance at me as he walked from one end of the room to the other. “You caught me during a most dreadful time. The most dreadful time…”

    “Don’t worry about me, Dr. Hegel,” I said. “I just needed to clear my head.”

    “And you wanted to do that here?” He laughed and poured wine into glasses on the table, all pooled together. “Perhaps you should get out of the city, Herr Tabernak. Times are… fragile and close to falling apart.”

    We heard an explosion in the distance, and then a cacophony of screams and running.

    “If it hasn’t already,” Hegel said.

    I saw the lines on his face, the bags underneath his eyes. He looked quite gaunt, especially in his thick, flowing ermine robes.

    “Are you sure you don’t want to escape?” I said. “Don’t you have a manuscript to submit, professor?”

    “Yes. I do. It doesn’t matter. It’s almost done… I can’t leave my home. I only need to survive, and soon enough it will all be over.” He briefly glanced at me and gave his best impression of a smile. “One thing you can count on is that things end. All things end. Eventually. If only we’re patient.”

    He went into the kitchen. He was gone for a long while. Outside the window, there was smoke in the horizon, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. Once in a while, soldiers passed by the window, but it seemed the majority of the army had not arrived yet. But carriages and groups of people were shuffling in all directions, doing their best to leave, or find somebody, or feel as if they were doing something. Anything.

    Hegel came out with several servants carrying trays of freshly cooked food. He directed them to place it on the table, so that it appeared as though he were having a feast. The servants did not look at all worried. They were busy; they could put worrying aside.

    Hegel tried one of the soups. Although his face barely moved, it moved enough to show contempt. He beckoned one of the servants and in swift, colloquial German he berated them for how it tasted off. The servant bowed his hand, muttering, “Ja, Mein Herr… Ja Mein Herr…”

    When he was finished, he shooed him off and shook his head.

    “I’m sorry,” Hegel told me. “You know how the French can be with their food. I’m not taking any chances. Especially while they’re holding guns.”

    I didn’t say anything, but I smiled.

    “Hungry?”

    “No, no. Save these for the soldiers.”

    “Bitte… I insist.” Hegel stopped a servant that was passing behind him and told him to serve me a plate. I tried to meet the servant’s eye to thank him, but he looked away. They weren’t supposed to make eye contact.

    He sat down and had a plate set for him as well.

    “So,” he said, slicing into a shank. “To what do I owe this visit, my friend?”

    I started with the soup. It was bland. I supposed during this time salt was too expensive to use.

    “It was my birthday,” I said.

    “Oh? Happy Birthday. When was this?”

    “A few days ago…”

    “I hope you had a lovely birthday. I hope you celebrated it far away from this.”

    “It was peaceful. Very peaceful. Some might even say too peaceful.”

    “Too peaceful? Maybe you can give me some.”

    We chuckled politely at each other. “I know you’re worried. But don’t be too worried. You’ll survive. I know that for a fact.”

    “You know this because you’re from somewhere else, and this grants you mystical powers?”

    “I just know.”

    He smiled at me the way a grandfather does to a grandson. “If you say so.”

    At some point, we were eating in silence. Despite the background noise, the house seemed empty and still and undisturbed. I thought about how, where I came from, something was always happening somewhere. A television, a computer, an iPad…

    Here, the stillness wasn’t only eerie but alien.

    Then, we were jolted from our stupor by a loud thud on the door. When they realized that the door was locked from the inside, they began to know.

    “Open the door!” a man said. “Grande Armée!”

    Servants peeked out from the doorway to the kitchen. I looked at Hegel. His fork was held aloft, and it was shaking.

    He put the fork down and stood up. He ran a hand through his long, greasy, brown hair. He walked in long, measured strides towards the double doors and opened it.

    There, a handful of soldiers were standing carrying their rifles. The one nearest the door had a bushy mustache and a bulbous, pocked nose.

    “We commandeer this house in the name of the Grande Armée,” he said. “You may take all the provisions you can carry and leave.”

    “But monsieur…” Hegel said. “This is my house.”

    “We need it to station our troops. You may return when the war has abated, but for now you must vacate.”

    “Shall we talk about this? I’ve prepared a little feast for us.” Hegel stepped back and motioned for them to come in. “How about we discuss this over some wine and food? I’m sure you’re all famished.”

    The soldier stood there, seemingly taken aback by the brazenness of this old man. Still, from the paleness of his face, it was apparent that they were indeed hungry. And more importantly, in no mood to use more force than necessary. So, he turned to the soldiers behind him and told them to come.

    Eight soldiers entered. They sat around the table, with their leader sitting at the head of the table. Hegel sat at the other end. The others noticed me and eventually they were all looking at me and whispering. They didn’t recognize my clothes. And with my face I looked strange to them.

    “This is my friend,” Hegel said. “Augustus.”

    I bowed my head, while still sitting on my chair. “Gentlemen…”

    They bowed and muttered their greetings in return.

    “It is his birthday.”

    “Joyeux anniversaire…” they muttered.

    “Quite the time and place to celebrate it,” the leader of the soldiers said. “You should be glad, monsieur. History is being made here.”

    “I didn’t catch your name, monsieur,” Hegel said. “My name is Georg Hegel. You?”

    “Pierre L’Comte, caporal-fourrier of the Grand Armée,” he said. “We were sent here on a mission to see what we can scour from this town. The Emperor wants to make sure that we have more than enough provisions for our campaign. As you know, he is in a most grand mission for the Empire…”

    “I saw him.” Hegel looked around the tables, his expression pure awe. “The Emperor Napoleon, riding on horseback, as if History itself were amongst us.”

    “Yes, well…” Pierre had sipped his soup. Some of it was caught in his mustache, and he wiped it with his napkin. “History has given us a quota, and we have been going up and down this street for the better part of the morning. We’re hoping that this house will be the last.”

    “Take whatever you want,” Hegel said. “It would be my honor to help The Emperor.”

    “Then you must leave immediately,” Pierre said, straightforwardly. “We will commandeer this house.”

    Hegel searched for the words, but he couldn’t speak. He looked around, as if having lost something, and then took his wine glass and raised it.

    “A toast,” he said. “To Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, by the Grace of God, Emperor of France—and to my friend, Augustus, born on this day.”

    The soldiers and the quartermaster raised their glasses, and so did I.

    “Prost!” Hegel said.

    “Prost…” echoed everyone else, except me.

    Hegel took a sip of his wine. Then, he said, “And how was your year?”

    I shrugged. “Nothing happened.”

    “An entire year?”

    “Yes. An entire year.” I took a sip of my wine. Wine here, at this time, was much sweeter. Tasted less of alcohol. And Hegel put out the expensive kind. “My life has been dragging on towards nothing for a long, long time now. And many times I’ve told myself that I was going to change, that I would try to achieve something, anything. But I never could. I don’t know why.”

    Hegel was going to say something, but Pierre spoke before he could get it out. “We have all been in such situations,” the soldier said. “That is why I joined the army. Well… Why my father forced me to join.”

    I said, “And how did that work out for you, Quartermaster?”

    “I am on a campaign to change the world with The Emperor of France…” he said. His eyes were sunken, with dark rings around them, but his blue eyes might as well have been glowing, despite his sallow complexion. “There is a measure of pride in that for me. In any case, not much time to worry about stuff like that when you’re hungry and cold. Which we usually are.”

     “So that’s it then,” I said. “Time to join the Grand Armée.”

    Pierre looked at Hegel. “And what do you do, Monsieur?”

    Hegel thought for a moment. Perhaps he wondered if he should lie. “I am a professor.”

    “And what do you teach?”

    “Philosophy.”

    “When I was a child, that is what I so wanted to be. Philosophy and mathematics. Do you know any mathematics, Professor Hegel?”

    “One does dabble, doesn’t one?”

    “Any system of philosophy must surely incorporate mathematics? Given that mathematics is the purest expression of the world?”

    “Yes, yes, of course…”

    “Although,” I said. “Professor Hegel does have some misgivings regarding the applicability of mathematics to philosophy.”

    Hegel’s expression hardened upon hearing this, and he stared at me as if to say: Shut up.

    “Do you, Professor?” Pierre said.

    Hegel smiled at the Frenchman. “How about some champagne?”

    On the streets of Jena I walked alongside Hegel. It was cold and foggy. Now, outside, the sounds of gunshots and screams and hooves clattering against the cobblestones were much louder.

    I turned towards the old man. He was sweating, and his long hair had clumped together and was stuck against his face. Occasionally, he swatted against it, but it seemed as though he was too exhausted to even do that.

    “You’ll survive,” I said. “You know that, right?”

    “Thank you,” he said, perfunctorily.

    “And your work will be considered one of the greatest works of philosophy of all time.” We walked so quickly that I was beginning to lose my breath. But I wasn’t afraid. There was nothing to be afraid of. “You are one of my heroes.”

    “Thank you.” But he kept moving and barely looked at me.

    “Okay.”

    We walked in silence for a what must have been half an hour. We passed soldiers and dead bodies and mothers crying over their dead husbands and children. An old woman tripped in front of us, and Hegel rushed to help her up. He spoke in quick, colloquial German that I wasn’t able to understand. While trying to help her up, his manuscript fell on the ground. I was standing behind him and quickly tried to grab it, while he was still trying to help her up.

    When the old woman was standing, she held onto Hegel with both hands, crying and wailing at him. He did his best to console her. She was alone. Hegel was still, nodding, and eventually the woman simply walked away, still crying, still murmuring to herself. The papers had scattered, and was now soiled. I tried to get all of them, but some pages were carried away by the wind.

    “Professor…” I said, handing him the papers back.

    He had been following the woman with his gaze. He noticed me and he snapped back into reality and took the manuscript from me. “Yes. Thank you. I didn’t even…”

    “Some of them were blown away.”

    “That’s fine…” He placed it back in the pocket of his ermine coat. “That’s alright.”

    I turned to continue walking, but he said, “Listen. I know you’re worried. I know that you have been thinking about your birthday, and that’s why you’re here.”

    I stopped.

    “But I have nothing to tell you, my friend. I must go on with my life. So must you. And I appreciate you coming to tell me about my life’s work. I wish… I wish I had more for you. I wish I could grant you the assurance that you have given me.”

    I nodded. “I understand. But thank you.”

    “Of course.” He did his best impression of a smile. His eyes were so weary that they were bloodshot and glassy. “Now, I must continue with my journey. You must, too. I will see you again?”

    “Yes, Professor.”

    “Good. Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag.”

    He patted me on the shoulder, and he went on his way.

  • Dreams

    The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, 1814 woodcut design by Japanese artist Hokusai

    1

    I had the school dream again. I have the school dream very frequently. I don’t know if I get it more than the average person, but I think so. Because I tell my friends, and they say, “Again?”
    I think it is because the human mind is geared and prepped for work. For very hard work that is always life or death. It is the animals who have that that survive, and so we have all evolved to be like that. But now all I do is sit around and try to amuse myself.

    Freud spoke about this type of dream in The Interpretation of Dreams. He says that people mostly think this type of dream is to remind us that we are past the drudgery of school life. In reality, however, it reminds us that there is work to be done; that we should be working at least as hard as when we were in school.

    In my dream this time I was about to graduate. I needed to work on something in school using books. In the dream I had to carry a few books, around four, five, or six, and they were split between two plastic envelopes. I tried to put them all in one, but they wouldn’t fit. So, I had to put them back. I remember I was reading in my room—in my old room, the room that I had as a kid. The room that’s seen the most trouble. The room where I was many, many times when I was up to no good.

    And then I read for so long that I missed school. And I decided to go anyway, even if I was very, very late, but when I got there, everyone was in the gym, practicing for graduation, and doing choreographed steps at the outside basketball court, moving forwards and sideways to turn around, probably to give everyone a view of their diploma?

    Later, they put up banners against the walls and the fences, showing people who did not pass, not to shame them but as a simple matter of course, and it turned out that I did pass after all. Even if I seemed to think that I would fail chemistry, especially because I did not pass my final assignment. I was so happy that I thought about texting my parents, but I decided to tell them when I got home.

    In those dreams, I always feel strange. And not bad, either. I do not feel dread or malaise or fear. I feel content. I feel very content and happy, but not in an excited way. Even if I am failing an exam or having to do another year, and I am nervous about that in my dream, still, I feel alright in a way that I am not in my waking life. Days seem to be brighter and more meaningful there, despite the troubles of my ongoing academics. I think it is because there, I have a purpose. Freud said that a dream is a fulfillment of a wish, and sometimes these wishes are repressed wishes that we do not wish to recognize. In my case, I think the wish is to have a sense of purpose. Though it will be troublesome, and I will have responsibilities, and I may fail, at least I am doing something.

    Anything…

    2

    I was told that he is a bank president now.

    I was surprised. He used to be a poet. In college, he used to be popular. People and professors admired him for his writing. He had an intimate knowledge of himself, his feelings. His verse had a kind of innocence and yearning and discontent; he reminded me of Kerouac. And he had a kind of boyish charm with his easygoing, breezy attitude. I liked him the moment I saw him. And later I loved him.

    But things went awry the way these things go. He stopped talking to me. And now he was a bank president. I remember his mother was a bank president. Maybe he got the first job that he was offered. I also know that they were very wealthy, and now that he was a bank president then he would continue to be wealthy.

    However, during our younger years, he gave me the impression of being someone who would sacrifice everything for his poetry. Including his wealth. In any case, his parents were so wealthy that he could have lived off of their money while working on his verse. Then again maybe he is like Kafka or TS Eliot, who would work on his writing while having a dayjob. But how much time does a bank president really have?

    He and I used to have a business together. I couldn’t have him as a romantic partner, so I had him as a business partner. That was comparable, in a sense. Deeper responsibilities than being merely friends. Although he seemed to like me a lot before we became business partners. We would meet every Thursday by the bay, across from the cultural center, and speak until past midnight.

    But when we got the business, I realized that this would never do. He would never give me what I truly wanted from him, and being in that state only made me want him more and more. So, one day, after we hadn’t seen each other for a month because it was the holidays, I said we should call it off. And I remember seeing him so shattered and confused. I didn’t expect him to act that way. It made me feel like he didn’t want to lose connection with me. And I remember crying later when I got home. We met again to sell our remaining stock for a few more months, until we fought one day at a cafe because I was complaining that people like him who avoided social media were selfish (I don’t know how we ended up talking about that), and he left and he blocked me and he never spoke to me again.

    I was an ass. I look back now and recognize that for much of my youth I was an ass. Until today, because of that experience, I boldly tell anyone who I like that I like them. Because I don’t want to go through that entire thing again. And if that causes someone to leave me, then that’s better than me trying to chase after them, getting my hopes up, being nervous all the time, wondering if they like me, and then eventually being told that they’re not interested or having things go wrong and missing my opportunity.

    In any case, occasionally, I see him in my dreams. Only a few weeks ago, I saw him there, playing the piano, hanging out with me in a dormitory with two beds. I recongized the room as the one I stayed at during a school retreat. I shared it with five people, but in my dream, it was my and his room we shared in college. In there, he was playing the piano with his long, slender fingers. In reality he played the guitar. I suppose he played a bit of piano, too.

    I’ve never spoken to him ever since that time at the cafe. That was more than 10 years ago now. So, I don’t know why he still appears in my dreams. Although they say that the first person you love becomes the one by which all other loves are measured.

    3

    And ever since then obviously my lovelife has been an unmitigated disaster. The people I had been in real life have always been immature. I don’t know why that always turned out that way. My long distance relationships have always been more interested and varied, but always doomed. Always invariably doomed.

    I like long distance relationships. I like them because they are meaningless, mostly, for us. But we can pretend it matters. I like to pretend. One of the reasons I like to write. Once, the man was very close to coming here. And I was so afraid. I remember being so afraid. Not of him, or of violence, but just the fact that everything was going to change. That a relationship in person would require so much of me.

    I have dreams about boys I like occasionally. I’m surprised it is not more often. Do I secretly not even care about whether anyone loves me? Of those occasional times I’ve never had a sex dream since I was like in puberty.

    Given how much I wish I had somebody who loved me, this seems to be strong evidence against the Freudian commonplace that dreams contain a wish. Although maybe I am not looking hard enough. Maybe there is a reason I want to be loved, and it is that reason that is appearing in my dreams. Lacan had a name for this: objet petit a—the thing that people have, “it,” “the x factor,” “je ne sais qua” that makes us want them.

    I can only guess what that might be for me. Although the objet petit a is not so transparent as to be any one thing; in the unconscious things are not as they are in the ordinary world. Objects, feelings, ideas, concepts, &c., are not demarcated the way ordinary things are.

    But if I had to guess, it would be someone who could give me a purpose.

    4

    The text around the Hokusai woodcut:

    “LARGE OCTOPUS: My wish comes true at last, this day of days; finally I have you in my grasp! Your “bobo” is ripe and full, how wonderful! Superior to all others! To suck and suck and suck some more. After we do it masterfully, I’ll guide you to the Dragon Palace of the Sea God and envelop you. “Zuu sufu sufu chyu chyu chyu tsu zuu fufufuuu…”

    MAIDEN: You hateful octopus! Your sucking at the mouth of my womb makes me gasp for breath! Aah! Yes… it’s… there!!! With the sucker, the sucker!! Inside, squiggle, squiggle, oooh! Oooh, good, oooh good! There, there! Theeeeere! Goood! Whew! Aah! Good, good, aaaaaaaaaah! Not yet! Until now it was I that men called an octopus! An octopus! Ooh! Whew! How are you able…!? Ooh! “Yoyoyooh, saa… hicha hicha gucha gucha, yuchyuu chyu guzu guzu suu suuu…”

    LARGE OCTOPUS: All eight limbs to interwine with!! How do you like it this way? Ah, look! The inside has swollen, moistened by the warm waters of lust. “Nura nura doku doku doku…”

    MAIDEN: Yes, it tingles now; soon there will be no sensation at all left in my hips. Ooooooh! Boundaries and borders gone! I’ve vanished…!!!!!!

    SMALL OCTOPUS: After daddy finishes, I too want to rub and rub my suckers at the ridge of your furry place until you disappear and then I’ll suck some more. “Chyu chyu…””

  • The Walking Dead, S5 E15: “Try”

    The Walking Dead – Season 5, Episode 15: “Try” – Father Son Holy Gore

    Many of the problems in Alexandria are simple. There is no system, and there is no force that guarantees the power of the leader. Thus, Deanne’s power is fragile and via the free consensus of the majority. At any time, the majority could withdraw this consensus, and the society would immediately devolve into anarchy. The force that she does integrate as the executive is Rick and Michionne—the problem is they are not loyal to her. So, essentially, she brought in an armed force that had every incentive to take them over, especially since Alexandria is inhabited by people who do not know how to fight and are not hardened by suffering the way Rick and the others were.

    The situation here evokes the concept of the monopoly of violence and civilian control of the military. The military is a kind of “shadow society,” with its own professionals, tradesmen, service people, &c., as well as its multitude of soldiers. Compared with the rest of the population, they are stronger in all possible ways. They are supposed to be. The problem is, if they are not under the complete control of the civilian population, then they could and many times do take over. Many parts of the world are under military control, juntas, usually as a result of a breakdown of civilian society but sometimes also as a result of coups or forced takeovers.

    In a post-apocalyptic scenario, I imagine (as I’ve mentioned before) that the warrior class would take precedence over every other class, and the most successful societies would have a primarily militarized culture. The brutal realities of scarcity and the lack of widespread institutions upon which people can depend make that a necessity. As such, Rick was right to feel that Alexandria was primed for collapse. It had no way with which it could defend itself during a full-scale attack, which was likely given their prosperity. They would also at some point require more and more people to help with their increasing needs, which increases needs further necessitating more people still, and in such cases an internal security force would be needed to supplant the external force that protects from threats outside.

    As a member of the police force before the apocalypse, Rick was very much aware of this. However, being the idiot that he is, he does not articulate it in any way that makes sense. Rather, he has a vague feeling that something is not right. Moreover, his attraction to a married woman was the ultimate cause of his outburst. The justifications regarding security were secondary.  

    At this point, these people were dramatically, irrevocably traumatized. They could not and never be expected to function in the heightened capacity that they had to in their given roles. And Rick and the others were showing signs of the disordered thought associated with PTSD, with Rick especially given his aggression. A person like Deanne should have been able to know this. Alexandria was therefore doomed to fail.

    Carol in particular was very deeply traumatized. She has been so traumatized by so many different kinds of tragedies in her life that she has integrated her response to this trauma into her very ethos. She has purged herself of every caring instinct, and though in the beginning it seemed as though she was ready to return to a kind of suburban housewife mindset, we see later that actually it was a ruse that was part of her ruthless machinations.

    Rick is a total loss. It strains belief to think that the people still consider him their leader, even after he makes such terrible calls, although we do see them beginning to realize that he may not be fit for the job. And as always it is Michonne who ends up knocking some sense into him—which in the case of Rick is knocking him completely out, since there was no sense left. I still don’t understand why she is not their leader.

    The very apparent problems of societies like Alexandria I think are what rob these later seasons of drama, including the pacing of the stories that are simply too fast. We are not given enough time to care about these people. And with such a simple scenario without people that we can truly, deeply care about and understand the series becomes a series of events that, while titillating, and somewhat interesting, are still not to the level of storytelling that can be considered great.

  • The Walking Dead S5, E1: “No Sanctuary”

    Cannibalism is a particular type of turning from civilized society. It requires all the technological and logistic advancements we have today: Organized supply chain, hygienic practices, and so on, but featuring the ghastliest taboo that few is considered one of the greatest abominations.

    Historically, civilized people have had to resort to cannibalism under the most dire circumstances. Shipwrecked people during the 1800s have practiced cannibalism through a ritual called the “delicate question.” All willing drew straws, and the person who drew the short straw was eaten, the idea being that in participating in the vote, they also participate in the risk. This ritual was very important. Anyone who partook in this type of cannibalism by necessity was considered innocent under the law, and was not shunned by society, because it was done under the guise of civilization: that of democracy. However, people who have been found to not have undergone this ritual, and instead ate the weakest among them, were found guilty of murder.

    This would only change later, when British Law found that under even deathly and desperate circumstances, the right course of action would be to accept death. That is, under the law, there are no circumstances in which another person should be seen as merely an object to satiate one’s hunger like animal. A prohibition higher than even killing, as self-defense has always been considered legal and moral grounds for killing.

    In the Ancient World, the Romans (who have become a model for what we considered civilized) despised human sacrifice and by extension cannibalism. When they wanted to justify their expensive and existential war against the Punics (over whom they eventually prevailed, at great cost) they pointed towards the Punic religious practice of sacrificing children to their god Moloch. With the spread of Roman culture, and its basis for much of the Western world, we hold the same sentiment towards human sacrifice and cannibalism: unadulterated disgust.

    Yet a post-apocalyptic world might push many to cannibalism, the same way that starvation through war or famine has throughout human history. In this episode, the cannibalism is very sophisticated, and so Terminus is a kind of meeting point between civilization and barbarity. People are not merely shot in the head and then barbequed. Instead, they are slaughtered as a cow might be slaughtered in a meat processing plant.

    The idea that industrial society and cannibalism may be intertwined, seemingly without contradiction of principles, has existed in the human imagination ever since the dawn of mechanization and ultimately the industrial revolution. An example that stands out is Soylent Green. In the movie, we realize that absolute depravity has become the foundation of civilized society. It had become a necessity, and one cannot exist without the other. Without Soylent Green, people would starve. Without civilization, Soylent Green could not be so efficiently produced and its true ingredients concealed from the public.

    To survive during the apocalypse, we will need to make all sorts of sacrifices. That includes moral sacrifices, as I’ve mentioned before, but there is a point where the moral sacrifice is not a sacrifice; rather it is an abandonment. A sacrifice is something that we “set apart” (cf. “sacred,” “secret,” from “sacer” (holy) + “facere” (to make) – “holy” meaning “to set apart” or “not ordinary/vulgar but divine”). A sacrifice is something that is done for a higher purpose, ideally a divine purpose. Whenever it is done to satiate our baser instincts, our plain biological drives, then it ceases to become a sacrifice.

    The most crucial part of this episode is when Carol speaks to the lady from Terminus, the same lady who welcomed the first group and offered them food that was most likely human flesh. She says that, to survive, they had to become cannibals. In the beginning, they truly were the Terminus that they made themselves out to be with the signs along the tracks. But they were savaged, and they did what they had to do to survive. An old Hollywood saying comes to mind: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

    At some point, however, for many people, surviving would not be worth it, if it means abandoning one’s humanity in this way. For to do so would already mean a kind of death. This is what Carol means by, “I’m not here, and neither are you.” Carol, in killing the child Lizzie in the classic episode “The Grove,” feels as though she has moved past sacrifice and abandoned her human nature. Tyrese is keenly aware of this; this is why he avoids killing the man from Terminus when it seemed as though he should have. He screams: “I won’t!” Yet later we find out that he did kill him, in that he realized some sacrifices are worth making, have to be made, especially in the case of an innocent life like Judith.

    The wager of the people from Terminus is that to survive, we have to be able to sacrifice everything, including our humanity. Rick is so disgusted by this very idea that, even when Terminus is overrun by zombies and on fire, he wants to return so that he may kill whoever remains. Rick is a champion of civilized human values, and one of his main weaknesses is he is many times unwilling to make the appropriate moral sacrifices for the sake of survival. I suppose we will see how these tensions play out for the rest of the season.

  • Tsukomogami

    While writing a paper on the types of societies that might exist in a zombie society, my gaming laptop crashed, and nothing we did could fix it. My trusted tech said that it was probably the chipset or the motherboard. Whatever it was, it was going to be expensive to fix and probably temporary. That’s the way gaming laptops go, he said. They are expensive, run hot, and live short lives. This was goodbye, he said. And though many people would take a lot more time trying to find solutions, especially given that this laptop was right around 2,000 USD when I purchased it only 3 years ago in 2022, I felt that it was time to let go. In any case, a gaming laptop is such a delicate thing, with all its guts compressed into a single mass. And they are made to be used in the most absurd and abusive ways. I certainly remember gaming and feeling like the thing was about to die, and die painfully, but it kept going, and going, and going…

    This was especially true when I played Total War: Warhammer II. It chugged, even if I turned down the settings. I had to play at a lower resolution. But even when I played other games, if they were AAA, it would heat up considerably, even going above 100 sometimes. I know I shouldn’t have continued when it did that, but I did. It also sat idle on 60 degrees, even after it had been thoroughly cleaned and when I used a cooling pad. Those things are simply meant to be used in ways that are not healthy for electronics. They are made so small and delicate and slender, and then they tell us to use them in ways that would inevitably destroy them. That is beautiful, in a way, if they weren’t so expensive.

    In any case, I bought a new PC. There is always a dopamine rush when we receive new things, especially expensive things. This PC cost a lot. It cost a bit more than even that laptop, but I expect that this will last me at least a decade, and even then the parts could be switched around, upgraded, and if something goes wrong then only the faulty part needs to be replaced.

    A Lenovo Legion 5 – the model of my laptop

    What I didn’t expect is how I felt about my laptop. I felt like we had more time. It had become a part of my day, and being with it made me feel almost as though I was with a friend. I had grown attached to it. The Japanese believe that, after 100 years, a thing develops a spirit: tsukomogami. In Western philosophy, we have something similar in panpsychism or vitalism. Philosophers of object-oriented ontology also believe that objects have a kind of “life” (although their terms and concepts are so obtuse that I am not convinced of their methods…). I have written before elsewhere that I find such ideas puerile and simplistic, but in an affective sense I do understand the impulse to bestow objects a kind of independent life or mind.

    Like people, they begin to have their preferences. They do not say it, but these preferences are the things that, if done to them, would damage or destroy them. For example, my laptop did not being wet or being handled roughly. It did not like heat, although it produced a lot of heat, especially when it was doing what it was supposed to especially – in this way, it also had contradictory desires and drives the way a person or human subject would.

    a person holding a laptop with a broken screen
    Photo by Beyzanur K. on Pexels.com

    In this way, my laptop came alive to me. I supported it, and it did its job. And we have done many things together. He allowed me to enjoy many things. And he did all he could, before he could not do it anymore. I wish he had given me more signs of his failing health. It was all so sudden. The only signs I got was a single blue screen (which I thought was typical of any windows system, given that it was very, very rare) and my time & date being set incorrectly no matter how many times I synced it. This led me to believe for a bit that it was the cmos, but that did not turn out to be the case, as when we replaced the cmos battery, it did not come back to life.

    I will miss that laptop fondly, even if I am now using a PC that has updated components. It is strange that way, but also I think something we all can relate to, regarding many different things. Especially things that we use often, and so serve us well.

    I like to think that this PC is its reincarnation.

    Hello, old friend. You look different. Stronger.

    Let’s pick up where we left off.