í¢â‚¬Å“When I move you move, just like that; when I move you move, just like that.í¢â‚¬  - Ludacris

Well ití¢â‚¬â„¢s a big improvement anyway: my Dad read diversions part 1 and he said he understood everything, which as I said is a big improvement (for me) and my typical dervish rant.

I had to learn the hard way years ago (and I hope to digress shortly but) after my Dad purchased the Bullet Kitchen blender after one night of leaving the TV on through the infomercials, I used this evidence of subliminal influence to inspire my own prophetic voice, whispering sweet cautions and earthly hopes to him nightly while he slept, rising exalted at times through my most righteous adolescent arias, alas discovering that my moral pleas for humanity would melt like snowflakes on the furnaces of our oft blistery breakfast talks. Utopian prophecies of the teen oracle spoken in midnight tongues woní¢â‚¬â„¢t help the planet one turd, I say. I have no more utopias father. Read on.

Boston saw me for a little visit last weekend, I went to the contemporary museum for an exhibit called Super Vision. Theyí¢â‚¬â„¢re all saying how with technology and cosmology we can see more of the world than ever before and we can be seen as well as surveyed in more detail than ever before. Microscopses and Myspaces tell us more about ourselves and each other from further and further away. The visible landscape is larger, while hiding becomes harder, (aka Google.)

So sure, freedom and privacy are at play.

I scratch the little nook in my breast bone (because thatí¢â‚¬â„¢s what I do) and remember my little secret: no matter how deep we travel inwards or out, it means nothing when you compute the success of human survival. (Instrumentation for this calculation TBA). Tho you only need to open the newspaper to see that, and see the advancement of human technology as it strides along with us and our latest strategies and policies, as well as our old old fears, hatred, intolerance and conquests, good or bad.

I check out the exhibití¢â‚¬â„¢s visual distortion displays and other cool art installations that make you ask you whether youí¢â‚¬â„¢re seeing what you think youí¢â‚¬â„¢re seeing. (Notice I added one extra you to the last sentence.) The next room is a bouquet of dangling eyeballs, or dangling Styrofoam with eyeball video-feed projected onto the balls. The projection is onto the foam, then the eye projects its gaze back on you. A bobbing room staring back at you. Doní¢â‚¬â„¢t expect to see this boring tid at Disney anytime soon. This is a good time to tell you that I am not interested in art critiques or philosophy í¢â‚¬“ certainly not the steam merely that lifts off the head after a good mindjerk. (Actually conceptual art has always been like cheap wine to me - doesní¢â‚¬â„¢t persist long on the palette í¢â‚¬“ althoughtrue we do stop thinking about everything sooner or later, which is NOT DIVERSION p.s., it is the restorative power of existence and creation. You only had to have had a broken heart to know that one, or emptied the mind one nice eve at sunset.

After everything Ií¢â‚¬â„¢ve read or encountered, left, right, Ralston Saul, there hasní¢â‚¬â„¢t been anything with enough meat to last the appetite, and nothing historically yet obviously thatí¢â‚¬â„¢s gotten to the bone, neither to quench the Communists, the Capitalists, or any of civilizationí¢â‚¬â„¢s new theories (10 000 young years in the making.) If you look a bit from outside of being inside this evolution (sometimes we caní¢â‚¬â„¢t see what we are), weí¢â‚¬â„¢re really like funny mental puppies just learning how to walk and to play. ((Merely: notice the latest hot empire pup sulking around because as it scurries, it realizes it caní¢â‚¬â„¢t compete with an even newer leaping and hustling Chinese dog í¢â‚¬“ theythere Chinese have been cooking them up for thousands of years: the age of the dog has returned: this U.S. resentment after pressing so heavily for immeasurably free markets = learning how to play. I should add that we still doní¢â‚¬â„¢t play quite enough for the frisky animals we are. In fact I skimmed a scary article yesterday about how caffeine intake is big on the rise for the young generations, so that they can meet all the demands of increasingly hectic schedules. Thanks to caffeine and energy drinks, one high school senior with a 5:30am to 1am sports-class-homework schedule said she got into 15 of her 16 colleges. The full schedules are intended to enhance and expand life-experience, and the paradox is that weí¢â‚¬â„¢re ignoring the nuanced value of being alive: I doní¢â‚¬â„¢t wanna know what kind of insight into quality-of-life weí¢â‚¬â„¢ll get from kids when we turn 50, having raced all our short lives and succeeded greatly, and then the residue of wisdom we instill in each other is sprinterí¢â‚¬â„¢s whiplash. Shaken-up too quick to get a real taste for anything flashing by, thatí¢â‚¬â„¢s how they keep us gawking and the markets keep rolling. We doní¢â‚¬â„¢t even know the long term effects of these energy supplements, btw. Equally threatening: the mental vapidity in a multi-task culture that caní¢â‚¬â„¢t empty and restore the mind those eves at sunset. But there are a lot of articles out there on the issues around pace and technology if you wish.)) Yeah so whereí¢â‚¬â„¢s the beef?

I pull a hair from off the skin around my booby - squint a little, I decide that this stEYErofoam trip might have been í¢â‚¬Ëœgrade Aí¢â‚¬â„¢ if a camera were tracking your eyeball when you walked in and then the recorded feed was played onto the foam so that you were looking at yourself looking at yourself looking at yourself looking at yourself and so on. Thatí¢â‚¬â„¢s good steak to me.

Now Ií¢â‚¬â„¢m going to stab right into the wound:

I will describe the elements in this evolution of consciousness, because it accounts for every single problem that humans have today.

(True, all animals suffer, and we have awoken some pretty fierce ailments in our time í¢â‚¬“ cancer and Aids í¢â‚¬“ no different from previous plagues, although the scope of the population is different. HOWEVER, only humans can suffer from the fact that they are suffering. Only humans can employ consciousness to label, review, gauge, sulk, fear their suffering í¢â‚¬“ IN TIME í¢â‚¬“ and call it suffering. The other whimpering dogs whimper, devoid of the fear that begets division that begets possession that begets power (including fear in others) - as the presumed antidote to the wound.)

The wound:

Inside, outside, there isní¢â‚¬â„¢t simply a world out there seen by me in here.

There isní¢â‚¬â„¢t simply a world out there seen by me in here.

Youí¢â‚¬â„¢ve had anxiety, social discomfort, love, youí¢â‚¬â„¢ve seen these feelings and their intensity shift, these shifts alone make you aware of the obscureness of the dividing line - your inherent freedom in life. Thatí¢â‚¬â„¢s why utopias and road trip and conquest movies and parallel universes and Being John Malcovitch and Morpheus do so well with us. But then the thing is, how could we recognize and crave a freedom like this, if we didní¢â‚¬â„¢t already know it? For once, ití¢â‚¬â„¢s time to look from the root and only gradually consider the grosser problems and politics.

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