she was always in a skirmish with herself; her spirit
and i was brought into the fray

it's a uniquely slimy feeling
to find out a love you thought was shared
was unrequited.

and so she goes along with the wind
and so i will be forgotten.

Nightingale

And then there was death.

This is a love story that starts from the clans of the lands that sought to protect their families from familiar foes, finally freeing themselves from the rhythmic beating of the war drums, some rejoiced and laughed and half mourned for the sons and the daughters sold as slaves and whores and even then, some had lived without regrets never letting life get to them.

And then there was death.

The son born from the sun and the moon occupied his time avoiding the battlecry. Style and embraced grace and it came time for his time to come, kissed his brutal world goodbye, and awaited a cold blade or someone to save him.

And then there was death.
And she was beautiful.

And she offered him wine and a star from the sky and he smiled.
And then he flew and withdrew any notion of distress and realized his demise was his expression of freedom. Shackled and bound by society's hounds, he found an escape that was sweeter than pomegranates.

But alas, there was his love, who he lost and had lost him, and then it begins, the story of sorrow. His iridescent soul had remembered its nutrition and lost all sense of existence and sought for a freedom greater than death. He flew to her room and saw her face weeping and howled with the wolves to keep himself sane.

The son of the sun and the moon never rested, his being was worthless, his freedom pathetic. He took a deep breath and thought of disappearing-- and so it was.

And then there was nothing.

Soulpatch: Part II

Right after a “soulpatch” it’s hard to function. The simplest thoughts require a lot of effort to create. Obvious links are cloudy—connections loom over your head but are just barely beyond your grasp.

Red. Shiny. You force yourself to think “sweet”, “succulent”. “Pomegranate.” But it is no pomegranate. It’s a red Lamborghini. Navigating through the nebulous mind of another takes time and practice—you gain an appreciation for logic, creativity, learning. You gain sympathy for the impaired.

And, it’s painful. It starts out as frustration, but evolves into a never-ending headache. Just adapting your consciousness to another vehicle, just feels, well, dirty. It sometimes takes months to rehab. But whatever—there is a price for dabbling with life.

And the price is high.

The very first attempt at consciousness transfer was supposed to be the hallmark of neuroscience. But, the science was crude. Theoretically, it was sound, practical—there was already seamless cross-animal transfer. And safe, it was even non-invasive. Its crudeness didn’t lie in its mechanics, but in its lack of humanity, or rather, in its lack of the understanding of what humanity was.

So when the first patient imported the memories of his dead son, the tragedy was triple-fold. He lost everything he had ever built up for a chance at allowing his lost progeny to continue life in his own body. The problem was the attachment, colliding memories, those entering and exiting.

The thought-imaging monitor showed a father-son hybrid, unable to exist in anything but the constant re-living of the boy’s murder, from each perspective. It was a hopeless clinging to a life being lost, an inability to perceive their situation. An hour long scream dwindled down to a minute whimper. Then death. Not just the death of the patient, but the death of his reborn son.

The last image the thought-imaging screen showed was bittersweet. An identical, final thought—it was a third person perspective of the two hugging, crying, and then wilting away.

It was poetic. Beautiful. It was unforgiving and heartbreaking. And it became the ultimate taboo because of that.

Soulpatch: Part I

“So when I was in high school, I used to go over my friend’s place a lot. Her dad was Native American and he loved to fill me in on spirituality and stuff. Whatever. The only thing he said that really stuck to me was probably his speech on the soul. He told me:

‘Human beings, we’re composed of three elements: our bodies, our experiences, and our souls. Of course, the body is determined by our DNA—how tall we are, our level of intelligence, and so forth. Our experiences and our environment, they mold that body we are given; they are outside pressures which map out what we do. But yet there is the intangible soul. The soul drives the vehicle through its route.’

And I really fucking ate that shit up. I mean, man. I was stuck thinking about that for days after. It was the most profound damn thing I had ever heard at the time.”

To which Malcolm responded, “So you’re telling me you believe in a soul. Maybe you’re in the wrong busi--”. And Malcolm was cut off by:

“No. Actually, I ended up reconstructing what he told me. The “soul” isn’t really anything more than a processor. It’s just a cheap computer. The body (made of our phenotypic traits) is just hardware, memory, space, power. Experience and environment is just input. And the “soul”? The soul is just the manner in which we derive an output—it can’t possibly be anything more than a set behavioral rules.”

And then Malcolm said: “Good. I’m glad you came to terms with this. I really am. And I’m slightly more glad that I’ve only got to stay in this room listening to you ramble for another seven minutes. Are you ready to unplug him Pat?”

With that, Patrick and Malcolm had finished their makeshift neuro-technical surgery. The random civilian they kidnapped (who coincidentally happened to be a surgeon) now had his mind clean of his superficial memory—his family, his friends, his favorite song, his 16th birthday, his first blowjob, etc. What remained were his muscle-trained tendencies, his internalized skills—language, math and the like—and the implanted memories of a recently deceased human trafficker.

Whacko Cackle

So what it comes down to is that life isn't all that serious--and that isn't a depressing idea at all. It means death isn't that sad. And failure is worth as much in chuckles as success is worth in praise. An "Ahhh fuck" is the same as a "high five!"

I wonder if such a thing as a "worst day ever" exists; do we have the memory capacity to distinguish which emotions on which days trump others in churning bad feelings in our guts? Or do we simply forget those bad times, and replace them with whatever emotions pop up a day later, a week later, a month later, whatever?-- our faulty emotional memory reminds us that life has multiple interpretations. And if it's not set in stone, it's probably not that serious.

So what are we living for? Drama, tragedy, humor? I don't really think it's anything really. If we treat our lives in too special a manner, we condemn ourselves to suffer in a special way. And that's uplifting in a stupid way. Ahh fuck it. High five!

Red Blues.

I was so uncomfortable sitting on a bench with my best friend of 15 years. We had spent many nights together laughing, and dancing or singing or pranking—this night was so very different.

The handball courts were behind us, the asphalt baseball field was in front of us, and metal mesh gates were guarding us. It was a familiar setting. And it brought me back to the day.

We used to hide in boxes in my basement, or drag each other across the floor, or eat cereal together while talking about cartoons. We used to call each other, and talk about things we learned in history class that were interesting because they had to do with Chinese people. (To Chinese kids, or at least to me, learning about something done by someone who wasn’t white, is refreshing as hell.) We used to come up with kooky (see: stupid-ass) theories on time travel with each other and always planned on testing it out, but we were always too afraid to break eggs—literally, our theories had to do with eggs.

Then our children’s movie-like story slowly transformed into a romantic-comedy. We grew some more. We would cry to each other over the phone over heartbreaks, bullies, failings. We would ask one another for advice on how to impress our parents, our friends, and strangers. We’d call each other drunk to show each other how cool and classy it was to be inebriated. We would talk about what high schools we wanted to go to, and later on, what colleges.

So when I told her that I loved her, and I had always loved her, things became awkward. And when she told me that she loved me, and she had always loved me, I thought there would be a romantic-comedy movie moment. But there wasn’t. There was the awkwardness of panic.

At the park, we hugged one another, and we knew we were making a mistake. Not here, not now. It’s ridiculous to say, but I felt like we were lovers, lovers of the greatest degree, in our past lives. And perhaps one day, again, we could dissolve this feeling, this aura of undeveloped maturity. I still had sanguine expectations for us—maybe we would be husband and wife, live to be old, and come back to this park bench still. But until then, love was on hold. Our friendship since, hasn’t ever been the same.

And despite what romantic-comedies want us to think: Sometimes the biggest mistake we can make is telling the people we love that we do.

Antinomianism

Society's norms, laws and expectations essentially serve one function: to delude. Just think about how much we base our tastes on the tastes of the celebrity, or how much music we listen to because of its genre. We take these categories that have been constructed, and we fit ourselves, delude ourselves into thinking that we are average.

And sure, there seem to be preferences that are shared by all of mankind--such as beauty in symmetry--however, the delusion comes in when a judgment call is made for you based on your understanding of society. That's why you'll call Rosie O'Donnell a filthy, fat pig, but you'll be hesitant to give Queen Latifah the same label. And you don't know either of them personally, so making the argument that Rosie O Donnell's a bigger (no pun) bitch is not really a valid reason. It just comes down to what you've been deluded to think.

We have to find individualism, develop morality, and fortify our interests outside of the dark box which the rest of the world has us caged in. Otherwise, we'll continue being tricked into thinking that we think for ourselves.