knowledge is either for you, or not for you. it is never against you.

occasionally i'll awaken to find myself in a quasi-aware state where everything is effervescing and nothing exists but a kind of perfect, simple understanding of myself. all is letting go and forgiveness and peace. viewed from here i know that everything else is a vain, stupid construction, and a waste of my precious time. unfortunately no one i know seems to know this. everyone is afraid to a large degree of the freedom we have to feel and act any way we want. yet realizing the power to choose and taking responsibility for our lives demolishes our petty constructs and reveals us for who we really are, and its obvious very few among us find ourselves or each other truly appealing, so why maintain the illusions we so despise? psychoanalysis is a map of infinite intricacies and unmanageable minutia that will undoubtedly get you lost; a red herring. led to believe we require so much guidance we are not given ourselves. to me, any deferential acknowledgment of the long-winded woes of others belies an ingratiating diplomacy which tacitly presumes there exists some capacity or ideal which the beleaguered has fallen short of. yet we know that everything attractive is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. which is why are we offered Camus, or Dostoyevsky, or even Burgess to read in school, only to be expected afterward to fall in step? over the years those of us who feel like i do are usually regarded as either harmlessly loopy or as damnable, certifiable lunatics, and naturally i find this rather amusing. what i don't find amusing is the determination with which so many of us pursue the follies which inexorably lead to our collective misery. no one ever tires of dragging themselves in (and everyone around them) to watch reruns of their own monstrous self-made spectacle. with competition, condemnation, judgement, hatred, destruction (terror, in short) at the heart of it and ever the popular choice.

babies, young children and the like cry for a few reasons. one is undoubtedly for the comfort of hearing themselves expand out into the world, stating their existence here. we have all cried at the world, shouted at it, danced to it, reviled and reveled in it. some people take all this noise with the utmost sincerity and seriousness. others, like me, do it for the sheer hell of it. it requires audacity to be human. so, be audacious. just don't expect anyone to agree with you, or even like you, or you'll wake up to a world of troubles. oh, wait, you already are in a world of trouble? ok, so wake up to a world of Trout Fishing in America.

the following quote by the late author of the aforementioned Trout Fishing in America seems to fit:
"All of us have a place in history. Mine is clouds."

here's one that doesn't:
“I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard.”