Author: Aidan Badinger

What is the topic du jour? I’ve heard so many clever ideas brought up in the past week that I don’t think there can be a genuinely good thought for another week or so, because the cosmos need to recharge after such bursts of creativity. It ain’t easy being a seemingly random assortment of gases, solids, liquids and plasmas (which are pretty rare, aside from televisions and blood banks). Is there mercy on the grandest of scales for the smallest of mistakes? Is it possible to calculate the difference of an inch from over a billion light years away? There will always be questions that seem unfathomable or even stupid to us humans, either because we’re seemingly too intelligent to even ponder such things or because we lack the proper attention spans to give a complex yet stupefyingly easy question the proper consideration. To think of how small we truly are in the scale of what we know as the universe, and then to scale it down to the size of an insect… there is no average size for anything. The environment breeds everything inside its parameters, because otherwise something would be thrown off balance and another change would be made to offset it. Of course, this process could take centuries, millennia, millions or even billions of years, and we have to let old school evolution take care of the job for us, unless we have devised a way to artificially speed up the process. We come across as impatient, don’t we? The faster we get results, the faster we want results a second time. Once we experience something that rewarding, something in our brains tells us that we can do better, and we constantly work to break our last records, regardless of how little the improvement is. If we still had horse and carriage technology in the first world, we would have to settle for journeys across state lines instead of simple commutes, but we would accept it and plan our lives accordingly. Modernity speeds things up while creating a dependency. The bible thumpers tell us this in the basic template: “Sin will grab hold of you when you try to fill that hole in your heart that only God can fill.” Not just any God, mind you. You need a Judeo-Christian God in order to properly fill your heart. Now that we’ve become a global community, isn’t it time for us to consolidate our faiths into one global religion? Since the whities have kept their churches on top for so long, they’re definitely in the running for keeping their religion, but perhaps if all the brown people embraced a common faith, they could finally end the land-grabbing entity known as Christianity. This would take a few generations, and possibly wouldn’t reach a happy conclusion within a five hundred year span, with bloody wars and endless propaganda on every corner of the globe’s shrinking landmass. By that time, the extremist liberals on the east and west coasts of the US will have drowned from the rising sea level, and perhaps the good folks from the landlocked part of our fine nation will step up and defend their inherent rights as God-fearing white people. Their audience will be as small as ever, but they won’t care because they can only think about one thing at a time, and their pursuit of a completely Christian world leaves them virtually no memory in their brain to contemplate who would actually listen to their rhetorical bullshit. As a matter of fact, they probably wouldn’t even think about figuring out what rhetorical means, because they take every statement at face value, unaware that sarcasm or innuendo even exist. To harp on a milder note, however, American football should receive a large boost in ratings because of its affinity with conservative white people, and country music would become its own art form (which would make it even easier to completely dismiss, because it’d be all conveniently smushed together into one place, not touching anything else with its grubby paws, thank God). All of these things bank on the notion that our future will be based upon Earth. Maybe by that time we will have overpopulated the planet so much that Soylent Green isn’t even a viable option anymore, and we begin to eject people into space if they commit crimes (which would actually be a huge boon to the prison system, becase the flow of jailbirds would be much lighter, and the ones who end up in prison wouldn’t be so bad anyway, because the really bad ones have already been shot into space). Perhaps we’ll have come up with a method for transporting humans safely at near the speed of light, and trips to Mars will be commonplace, even necessary, as the red planet becomes the solar system’s Ellis Island. People will be forced to change their last names to fit in with the Martian crowd. The general rule for Mars dialect is to pronounce every ‘e’ in its hardest sense, like in cheese or feel, so there would be a lot of names ending in that sound (Julie, Donny, Abercrombie, etc.). Will we need a new constitution for our new planet? Will we be able to terraform it enough for us to be able to stand on its surface without an oxygen tank? Will there be entire cities consisting of one race or one family (like when the mob owns a city and nobody questions that fact except for the new alderman from out of town who understands the situation but still pushes his ethics upon the mob with negative results)? All of these questions will be answerable within my grandkids’ lifetimes. How do I know this? Well, based upon the current technological trends, by 2050 we’ll have figured out a way to manipulate our DNA so much that we can transform into anything we want at the press of a button (with a really cool device that holds the complete DNA sequences for every living thing), and by 2100 there is the possibility that anybody with some cash can purchase a simple clone to do work around the house. How the hell would we not be able to go to Mars with that kind of stuff happening? The collective human race would smack its forehead if its space program progressed that slowly. Granted, there’s rarely enough money to adequately fund an acceleraring space program, and people are always bitching about how their kids need food and an education, but it’s a big key to our future to figure out how to go places really fast, because we’ve made a damn mess on Earth that we should run and hide from for a few million years so that the ecosystems that were there before our industrious ingenuity can thrive again and brace for another wave of insensitive, possession-driven lunatics. Hopefully by the time a few million years have rolled by, we humans (if we still exist or haven’t merged with any number of alien species) will have learned a thing or two about responsible planet ownership, and our actions will always include caution and thought. I’d like to say that’s probably how it’ll pan out, but there’s no way to know if we’ll ever become intelligent enough to become benevolent. There’s a certain point where a being loses its lust for things and sensations and realizes that it belongs to the universe, and its duty is to occupy space with its body while other bodies also occupy space, some of these bodies interacting with each other, but most moving away from each other in random directions, and everything that used to seem valuable or desirable washes out with every other speck of matter, because when you go small enough, it becomes very difficult to distinguish what matter really is, even to the point where you can’t be sure if our science got the heart of the matter when it was able to look that closely at things.

I am currently charged with the task of reading a great deal of John Donne’s poetry, and I will after I complete this post.

When I have something to do and I have not yet begun, I feel a shock of dread for the unknown, regardless of my measure of research or mental preparation. Before and after the shock I have a calm phase to buffer the existential dreariness of whatever I may find daunting, be it brushing my teeth or digesting four hundred year-old poetry. Responsibilities are responsibilities, no matter how small, and the only way to gauge the magnitude of each one is to run it through my head for a second or two. Sometimes the hardest things are simple tasks like writing a check, and the easier things are surprisingly difficult in comparison, like learning a Bach menuette. This subjectivity comes from my thoughts and relation to how I feel about the time I spend. There are only a few things I can do to trick myself into thinking that I’ve spent my time well, and they all have one thing in common: completion. Until something is completed, regardless of the degree of completion, I abhor the thought that it will take time to finish. This time could be spent contemplating nothing in particular, my favorite pastime.

When I contemplate nothing in particular, I often compare that activity with what most other people must be doing at the time, which is always anything other than contemplating nothing in particular. I then ask myself why it is that I revel in the idea of having no pertinent ideas to pursue, and I usually arrive at the idea of freedom. This, of course, is a paradox when I think of it, because I am not free from thinking about the things other people must be doing, which is definitely something in particular.

I suppose an amount of stress washes over me when I think of this, fearing that my time is not being well spent, because everybody else must be spending their time in a more productive manner. This is often what brews the shock into my psyche. I then assure myself that what I do in the realm of inaction is actually a productive activity in itself.

It is usually at that point that I begin to strive for images to write or concepts to unfold, and I take my consciousness to the forum of the senses. Sight and sound are favorites of mine, but smell, touch and taste are worthy stimuli as well.

I’ll see a tree in the night’s darkness lit by a lamppost, its bunches of rustling leaves ready to fall whenever the proper time comes. I’ll hear the scuffle of earthbound leaves on a hard surface and compare them to creatures with claws skittering along, their destination known only by the wind.

Oh, to sit and think about nothing leads to the contemplation of the reasons of things. Why do things happen the way they do? Why do people insist on doing things in their own frenetic tempi? Is there a reward other than the immediate gratification of completion? They say that altruism does not exist in its purest form, and to complete something means to seek approval of something or somebody.

When I write a poem, I often reach a point where I understand I’ve finished. Perhaps some point down the road I will begin to edit it and pick better words and less clunky punctuation and syntax, but in the moment of synthesis, I understand the completion of the concept of the piece, and that makes me feel accomplished, because I have successfully encapsulated a thought–or perhaps several thoughts, depending on my ambition at the time.

It is at that point that I begin to consider the reader of the piece. I do not have a large audience as some authors do, and I often reel in envy because of that. The idea of being a published author has so many benefits, though I think only of the validation that a piece of writing receives when a complete stranger can read it and pass their own judgment. The money from a publication is a wonderful addition, and I will admit that I relish the idea of paying off loans and perhaps securing a bit of my future with a roof over my head and good food to eat, especially because these things will allow me to pursue my craft with more vigor and confidence in my ability to communicate through the English language.

Staying up late has a certain intrigue associated with it, and I often can’t resist the idea of being active in the wee small hours of the morning. At the time of the decision, I rationalize my choice to be of sound judgment because I feel like a million bucks and would prefer not to lie down and attempt relaxation of the mind and body. There are times where I would honestly prefer to engage my mind for a lot longer than my body had anticipated for that day, and this becomes obvious in the morning.
The most rewarding part of late waking is the affordable creativity associated with free time. I can write whatever I want because I know the effort will be genuinely creative and conceived completely unencumbered by time’s sequential nonsense. Speaking of the nonsense afforded by excessive sleep evasion, I shall spin a yarn, which is forthcoming quite soon. Now, in fact.

Twelve Morrow Gates begin sacrificial rites towards an indifferent god of emaciation, who pities the well-fed prisoners-turned-lambs’ existence, their experience among their superstitious captors showing a severe gap between the rich and poor, tycoons and paupers, megalomaniacs and penny pinchers. Exactly the purpose of these sacrifices has yet to be seen by respectable anthropologists, though the second tier of experts find the ceremonies to be completely superficial, often times equalling the thrill of a sporting match (which also often ends in sacrifice). This society of death toll for fun depicts the danger which each civilization inevitably faces, though most shun as barbaric. The few who adopt the vulgar practices tend to have diets lacking in protein, and the sacrifice illustrates their extreme bloodthirst (if not for other people, then for a big ol’ steak). Sacrifice appears to be a custom of the more ancient civilizations, but if the cycle of time tells us anything, there is likely to be another group of tyrannical overlords who deem ritually contained bloodshed a viable option for regaining credibility in the public eye.