Responsibility is the thing. It's a central spoke, a towering pillar. A key to many, many kitestrings. Some people call it Karma, which is a subtle little nuance of the interpreting of that particular word I enjoy. 'I did this shameful, poorly thought out/immature thing back then with regards to this persons family/friends/associate in some way and so now it is my Karma to be abused/disrespected by this person, and I must handle it with grace and decorum..'. It's an interesting way to look at things. Mildly fatalistic - well, okay very fatalistic but for all of that I don't find it void of merit. It is a viewpoint and way of life that from the outset seems designed to disabuse people of their childish egotism. We, all of us, pay for everything. All of the time.
Some people would indeed call that Karma. I call it life, and it isn't all bad once you get to the chewy center. Sometimes it's even kind of pleasant.
You have to stay mindful of your surroundings though. Even the smallest thing could have repercussions that are far-reaching and unavoidable, though, in saying that, life shouldn't be about avoiding responsibility, karma, repercussions. An impossible goal anyway, a ridiculous goal. It's about choosing your battles. Weighing every situation, taking the temperature of your relationships at pre-decided points and responding accordingly. Being a politician, essentially, one of those smutty, slimy used car salesmen that pull our puppet strings from afar and make us dance to their tedious tunes. A holistic politician though, one in tune, plugged in, switched on and cognizant of his or her Karma. I have this and that and those advantages so I won't be unsettled by this and that and those hurdles or setbacks. We live, we age, we gain mental and spiritual weight... but none of us crumbles until we agree to. That's what I think anyway. Nobody is free from karma, from fate - whatever you define such a thing as - from responsibility, and those who strain to be so are on a collision course with hard reality. Icarus, sun, etc.
It's something that's been on my mind lately and for the first time really. I have so much in life - and I've paid hard prices along the way too - but people don't stop paying. That isn't how it works, I don't think. Nobody's foothold is so secure that a slip or fall is impossible. So what are my responsibilities, while I am up here, on this particular mountain? To myself, to my family, to my friends - and on the larger scale (the scale I don't often adjust my vision enough to encompass) to the community, the country, the world? Am I to be selfless? A warrior of righteousness, humbly pointing out the way with regurgitated platitudes and recycled, microwaved wisdom... Probably not. Am I the family man, the 'our side, right or wrong!' believer, the down home, country bred, blue collar scholar..? I tend to think not. I am both of those things, in part, and I am a thousand other things - in part. But none of them really defines me. Perhaps that's what I'm trying to communicate in this missive, this doomagram from lyle land; I feel ill-defined. My karma's nature seems opaque to me and my responsibilities remain mysterious. I could do that or this or the other thing, no doubt about it really; but should I?
*
Through-out all this speculation and soul-searching (a term I use reluctantly) one idea shines forth as brightly as it ever has, the concept, the ideal .. of the Artist's solitary path. His quest inward transposed to outward rumination, by virtue of the Manifest, of the medium. The responsibility there being translucent and shimmering, as sweetly tempting as any siren's song; Responsibility to the Self, for the benefit of the Self (O glorious self!) and thus, by extension - for the benefit of all. Inner revolt achieved by bringing about external chaos - words of a dead man - but vital still. Whatever relief these ideas bring me in my continuing vortex of ambiguity is short-lived however. Even with art, the manifest, the medium - my options are virtually limitless. Not only in ways to say something but in things to say, I could veer into almost any direction and feel justified. Integrity intact. I could write smarmy, sub-par witticisms for a publication - people still read, some of them, the rumors are true - but should I? Is all I am a comedy writer for a bad television show at the end of the day? Canned laughter and weekly paycheck, see you again on Monday. I could make music, dissonant, atmospheric trip-slop - but should I? Whose life would I really be enriching by inflicting manifest internal discordance on the world? More pressingly, would I be fulfilling my myriad responsibilities by doing so? Endless. The waves in this particular ocean are endless, I can only swim above water for so long. I'll think on it some more, keep you posted. Maybe there is no answer because it's a question only I am asking. Perhaps none of it matters outside my own mind, that all this dilly-dallying is redundant and pointless (c whut eye did i thar?) and my own path has already been chosen for me. That this introspection and fruitless wondering is simply my Karma, my overdue fine come collection day. Maybe.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
that cesspool, it becomes you, just north of the eyebrows...
My original plan was to come here and let off a little Lyleistic steam in this, my new sauna, but I realized at the last second that I'd rather keep that steam to myself. Keep my antiquated engines chug-chug-chugging along at their level best slash middling to sub-par by modern standards speed. Quite a mouthful there. Or ... eyeful. I suppose. Today I, almost inadvertently, read a book. Re-read really though my memory of it was patchy. It's entitled 'Road of the Patriarch' and it was written by R.A.Salvatore whose name you may or may not recognize as that of fantasy author extraordinaire, writer of many a Forgotten Realms novel and all round cool guy. I liked some of his other books better and I liked this one better than others but one journal entry of a character caught my eye and, in lieu of summoning up some vitriolic observations or psuedo-witty solipsisms of my own, I thought I might share these thoughtful scrawlings instead. Not what one might expect from what are essentially dungeons and dragons novels - where there are evil sorcerers and valiant knights. Just goes to show; book, cover, judge.
Et cetera.
"The point of self-reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self-lies out and face the truth - however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when we are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny. Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his or her errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction.
We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid. For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment." ... "Would my increasing anger have led me down the road he chose, that of passionless killer? It seems a logical thing to me that I might have lost myself in the demands of perfectionism, and would have found refuge in the banality of a live lived without passion. A lack of passion is perhaps a lack of introspection, and it is that very nature of self-evaluation that would have utterly destroyed my soul had I remained in the city of my birth...
Reality is a curious thing. Truth is not as solid and universal as any of us would like it to be; selfishness guides perception, and perception invites justification. The physical image in the mirror, if not pleasing, can be altered by the mere brush of fingers through hair. And so it is true that we can manipulate our own reality. We can persuade, even deceive. We can make others view us in dishonest ways. We can hide selfishness with charity, make a craving for acceptance into magnanimity, and amplify our smile to coerce a hesitant lover. The world is illusion, and often delusion, as victors write the histories and the children who die quietly under the stamp of a triumphant army never really existed. The robber baron becomes philanthropist in the final analysis, by bequeathing only that for which he had no more use. The king who sends young men and women to die becomes beneficent with the kiss of a baby. Every problem becomes a problem of perception to those who understand that reality, in reality, is what you make reality to be.
This is the way of the world - but it is not the only way..." ... "... Theirs is not a manner of masquerading reality to alter perception, but a determination to better reality, to follow a vision, and to trust their course is true, and it therefore follows, that perception of them will be just and kind. For a more difficult alteration than the physical is the image that appears in the glass of introspection, the pureness or rot of the heart and the soul.
For many, sadly, this is not an issue, for the illusion of their lives becomes self-delusion, a masquerade that revels in the applause and sees in a pittance to charity a stain remover for the soul. How many conquerors, I wonder, who crushed out the lives of tens of thousands, could not hear the cries of inflicted despair beyond the applause of those who believed the wars would make the world a better place? How many thieves, I wonder, hear not the laments of victims and willingly blind themselves to the misery wrought of their violation under a blanket of their own suffered injustices? When does theft become entitlement? There are those who cannot see the stains on their souls. Some lack the capacity to look in the glass of introspection, perhaps, and others alter reality without and within.
It is, then, the outward misery of Artemis Entreri that has long offered me hope. He doesn't lack passion; he hides from it. He becomes an instrument, a weapon, because otherwise he must be human. He knows the glass all too well, I see clearly now, and he cannot talk himself around the obvious stain. His justifications for his actions ring hollow - to him most of all. Only there, in that place, is the road to redemption, for any of us. Only in facing honestly that image in the glass can we change the reality of who we are. Only in seeing the scars and the stains and the rot can we begin to heal. I think of Artemis Entreri often because that is my hope for the man. It is a fleeting and distant hope to be sure, and perhaps in the end, it is nothing more than my own selfish need to believe that there is redemption and that there can be change.
For Entreri? If so, then for anyone.
For Lyle?..."
;)
Et cetera.
"The point of self-reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self-lies out and face the truth - however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when we are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny. Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his or her errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction.
We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid. For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment." ... "Would my increasing anger have led me down the road he chose, that of passionless killer? It seems a logical thing to me that I might have lost myself in the demands of perfectionism, and would have found refuge in the banality of a live lived without passion. A lack of passion is perhaps a lack of introspection, and it is that very nature of self-evaluation that would have utterly destroyed my soul had I remained in the city of my birth...
Reality is a curious thing. Truth is not as solid and universal as any of us would like it to be; selfishness guides perception, and perception invites justification. The physical image in the mirror, if not pleasing, can be altered by the mere brush of fingers through hair. And so it is true that we can manipulate our own reality. We can persuade, even deceive. We can make others view us in dishonest ways. We can hide selfishness with charity, make a craving for acceptance into magnanimity, and amplify our smile to coerce a hesitant lover. The world is illusion, and often delusion, as victors write the histories and the children who die quietly under the stamp of a triumphant army never really existed. The robber baron becomes philanthropist in the final analysis, by bequeathing only that for which he had no more use. The king who sends young men and women to die becomes beneficent with the kiss of a baby. Every problem becomes a problem of perception to those who understand that reality, in reality, is what you make reality to be.
This is the way of the world - but it is not the only way..." ... "... Theirs is not a manner of masquerading reality to alter perception, but a determination to better reality, to follow a vision, and to trust their course is true, and it therefore follows, that perception of them will be just and kind. For a more difficult alteration than the physical is the image that appears in the glass of introspection, the pureness or rot of the heart and the soul.
For many, sadly, this is not an issue, for the illusion of their lives becomes self-delusion, a masquerade that revels in the applause and sees in a pittance to charity a stain remover for the soul. How many conquerors, I wonder, who crushed out the lives of tens of thousands, could not hear the cries of inflicted despair beyond the applause of those who believed the wars would make the world a better place? How many thieves, I wonder, hear not the laments of victims and willingly blind themselves to the misery wrought of their violation under a blanket of their own suffered injustices? When does theft become entitlement? There are those who cannot see the stains on their souls. Some lack the capacity to look in the glass of introspection, perhaps, and others alter reality without and within.
It is, then, the outward misery of Artemis Entreri that has long offered me hope. He doesn't lack passion; he hides from it. He becomes an instrument, a weapon, because otherwise he must be human. He knows the glass all too well, I see clearly now, and he cannot talk himself around the obvious stain. His justifications for his actions ring hollow - to him most of all. Only there, in that place, is the road to redemption, for any of us. Only in facing honestly that image in the glass can we change the reality of who we are. Only in seeing the scars and the stains and the rot can we begin to heal. I think of Artemis Entreri often because that is my hope for the man. It is a fleeting and distant hope to be sure, and perhaps in the end, it is nothing more than my own selfish need to believe that there is redemption and that there can be change.
For Entreri? If so, then for anyone.
For Lyle?..."
;)
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Introductions in Three Movements; bloated skies asunder float down the river styx
Blogblogblogblabblahblab - the truth is (sic) I have as much or as little to say as any other serpent slithering around in the cyber garden. So this slight sense of shame I feel as I erect this thing (and there should always be shame in conjunction with erect things) has to be coming from an external source. Something downloaded into my consciousness whereby - if you have opinions and express them you think you're better than everyone else! Nevermind what those opinions are. Tall poppy syndrome in this motherfucker. I detest that symptom of mental fragility as much as I do any of the others - but more. Because this one is a cultural endemic meaning that there is a slight, very small chance ... that it might affect me as well. Even I, in all my wondrous power, am not immune to culture and it's insidious, night-time advances. It's offerings of sweets from a tinted van. Rational thought is cool and all but sweets are something else again...
*
Who are they though? These bloggers. These fellow victims. And where do they come from? What do we have in common with one another? Are they all as hopelessly insular and self absorbed as myself? And if so is every blog entry pretty much the same, in spirit, with only a few minor superficial differences to seperate them; Here I am! Take Notice of my Existence Please. Thanks. XO.
I hope that's not what I'm saying here, or anywhere, my vanity doesn't like the thought but in saying that - fuck my vanity. Deluded monkey never really did anything for me. I made this thing, this place, this zoo because I was inspired to move my cargo, my loads, my endless supply of double-sided rhetoric and monologues of psychoanalysis somewhere I could control. Every other thing I've written online has been some kind of social networking decoration. Something to do as I waited for Youtube to load. But here! Here will be different. Less restrained probably, knowing myself as I tentatively, hesitantly do. Vulgarity isn't synonymous with evil - I'm uncertain who is responsible for that particular misconception but he/she/they should probably be spayed by scorpions.
*
Oh! And my names Lyle by the way. It is my real name, it is, and I rather like it. Far better than a John or Tofiga or any of the other names floating around my inner circle. My inner circle! I have friends - lots of them. I have no idea who they really are, not really, but the faces they show me are nice enough and they can speak enough of my language to warrant me downgrading and speaking theirs from time to time too. Hoho, but seriously now. I have a brother who is Gay, showtunes whistling pillow-kisser, but he is okay for all of that. Another who looks EXACTLY like me, but is less pretty somehow. Two sisters - demons/harpies, really. A Mother who is pale - secret shame of the family, and a Father who knows more about pop culture than I do. Also another brother who decided this world was passe and flew the coop, kicked the bucket, bought the farm and took a dirt nap, all. His name was Alex. He was pretty cool :) Now we know one another. I am Lyle. And you are someone else entirely. Well met!
Blog, the first! Thank Allah that's over. My youtube vid has loaded now. Piece out bitches <3
*
Who are they though? These bloggers. These fellow victims. And where do they come from? What do we have in common with one another? Are they all as hopelessly insular and self absorbed as myself? And if so is every blog entry pretty much the same, in spirit, with only a few minor superficial differences to seperate them; Here I am! Take Notice of my Existence Please. Thanks. XO.
I hope that's not what I'm saying here, or anywhere, my vanity doesn't like the thought but in saying that - fuck my vanity. Deluded monkey never really did anything for me. I made this thing, this place, this zoo because I was inspired to move my cargo, my loads, my endless supply of double-sided rhetoric and monologues of psychoanalysis somewhere I could control. Every other thing I've written online has been some kind of social networking decoration. Something to do as I waited for Youtube to load. But here! Here will be different. Less restrained probably, knowing myself as I tentatively, hesitantly do. Vulgarity isn't synonymous with evil - I'm uncertain who is responsible for that particular misconception but he/she/they should probably be spayed by scorpions.
*
Oh! And my names Lyle by the way. It is my real name, it is, and I rather like it. Far better than a John or Tofiga or any of the other names floating around my inner circle. My inner circle! I have friends - lots of them. I have no idea who they really are, not really, but the faces they show me are nice enough and they can speak enough of my language to warrant me downgrading and speaking theirs from time to time too. Hoho, but seriously now. I have a brother who is Gay, showtunes whistling pillow-kisser, but he is okay for all of that. Another who looks EXACTLY like me, but is less pretty somehow. Two sisters - demons/harpies, really. A Mother who is pale - secret shame of the family, and a Father who knows more about pop culture than I do. Also another brother who decided this world was passe and flew the coop, kicked the bucket, bought the farm and took a dirt nap, all. His name was Alex. He was pretty cool :) Now we know one another. I am Lyle. And you are someone else entirely. Well met!
Blog, the first! Thank Allah that's over. My youtube vid has loaded now. Piece out bitches <3
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