2003-05-08 - 12:52 p.m.: non-dairy creamer

wow....so. i went crazy last night with thinking... i don't remember a lot of what it was that ran through my head, but i did, at some point, jump up, grab a pen and scribble "HELEN KELLER" onto a piece of gauze on my dresser (gauze? i'm not a doctor. i just tend to scrape up the more angular parts of my body in play). so here it is.

i've thought before about the senses as *obscuring* rather than *enabling* full appreciation of the universe. i don't think i've written about it in here... but basically, i think that our eyes and ears and noses and taste buds and nerves serve to FILTER OUT the majority of what's going on around us, to help us focus on specific points of interest. i mean... imagine if you could hear everything happening around you for miles. everything. the fly landing on the tissue to your left. the conversation down the block. a pin dropping. imagine if you could see everything there was to see. the dust in front of your eyes. a spot on the wall on the other side of the room. a bug on a leaf on a bush in the garden across the street. (not to MENTION the bug on the leaf in the garden in the galaxy in the eye of the bug on the leaf!)... imagine not knowing what kind of importance to place on these things. imagine being distracted by every moment of every minute of every hour. i got a little taste of this last night--i don't know how much was real and how much was in my head... i was half asleep. i thought i heard music. then i thought i heard a symphony of crickets. then i checked myself--can i really hear crickets surrounded by parking lots? so i listened more closely, more carefully. i don't know what all of the noises were, but they formed a tapestry that opened my mind to the confusion that i would feel if i *could* know. and it made me stop.

and think.

i've thought about death, and how if *having* senses limited perception..... like wearing sunglasses???.... then removing all sense at once would be suddenly *unlimiting* perception, like taking off sunglasses. i thought that it would be heaven if your "eyes" were in an appropriate condition to really value the experience of all-knowingness... HELL if they weren't. you'd just get burned, thoroughly. so where you *end up* is more a matter of how ready you are to handle everythingforever than actually being there. because there is here. it always has been.

anyway.. so. HELEN KELLER. (and how she is the 216th coming).

(gotta tell you.... gotta reevaluate the lunacy of people who gouge out their eyes. maybe they're just a little braver and wiser than the rest of us. i couldn't do it. i'd be scared of being scarred by the memory of pain. but i'm not afraid of it, anymore. not really.)

people have always talked about the brain compensating for lack. like... if you can't see with your eyes, you develop a "second sense." if you can't hear, you feel vibrations more keenly. etc. if you can't hear OR see? well... you refine your alternative senses to the point at which you can interact with the world on an acceptable level. possibly MORE than acceptable. possibly... transcendental? somebody calls it SENSE #12.

(hah: it's amazing what you find if you type in a word that's occurred to you in an unconventional way along with the word that characterizes the sense that that word evokes. HELEN KELLER TRANSCENDENCE. score.)

which, if i'm truly godlike, means that i should tear out my eyes and stuff my ears and burn my tongue and wear gloves year-round. i'm not. instead, i'll simply VOW TO TRY HARDER TO IGNORE THEM (tm).

in other news... i'm pissed at kellogg. SMART START, to be specific. what's so SMART about telling people that eating one cup of cereal with 2/3 cup skim milk for two meals every day for two weeks will help them lose UP TO 6 POUNDS? fuck that. if you eat one cup of COOOOOOKIE CRISP with 2/3 cup skim milk for two meals every day for two weeks, i bet you lose more than "less than 6 pounds." it's true though. it was proven by "a leading university." and it's even GOOD for you (provided you supplement said diet with healthy snacks like carrots and broccoli and spectral-vitamins...) do people actually buy this shit? honestly? how dumb IS this species? (to be fair, SMART START is delicious. but could they PLEASE assume that their consumers have intellectual as WELL as dietary needs and use half a box-panel to provide less offensive reading material? even on the inside? geez.)

more to come...

***

the moretocome:

first of all... everybody claims to think that *circus peanuts* (the spongy peanut-shaped vacuumized marshmallow candies) are gross. oh yeah? then why do they still sell them EVERYWHERE? huh? you know you like them. you even pay money for them. you sneaky bastards. i'm not the only one. come on and fess up already.

they are soooo delicious.

secondly, FUCK MY MEMORY in the ass. i can't remember what else i was thinking about last night. i remember thinking "wow...i should write this down, too...." (but being too lazy / groggy to actually get up and do it, told myself "i can remember this.. it's so inextricably bound to HELEN KELLER that i can't possibly remember HER without also remembering this.") so now i'm left wondering... did i already write about it? or was there something i'm forgetting? it's fucking dumb. (and yes, i swear a LOT more once ultimate starts...it resets my vice-precedent. teehee.)

(and duh. the reason i felt 'out of the way' was because i AM out of the way. and into another way. that was the whole point of the whole exercise, after all. it just shouldn't have been uncomfortable. but it should've. but i shouldn't have minded. so that's the new task--learning to love uncomfortable. but i already do.)

(so... done.)

(i'm really NOT on crack. maybe it's the motrin. maybe there's a reason it's overpriced. maybe not. maybe it's HELEN KELLER. maybe it's roadwork and radiation from manufactured-in-1973 microwaves. maybe it's rain. doesn't matter.)

heh. none of this was even worth writing. :)

inward...outward