Little things, big lessons.

Just a few moments ago, I went out into the yard to smoke a cigarette. While I was standing there, I noticed a pair of Cardinals a small distance off. One of them was laying on its side and the other was standing next to it. At first I thought nothing of it, and then realized that the one laying on its side was dead. The one still standing must have become aware of me being there, for it suddenly flew onto the top of the fence, just a few feet off. In some way I felt as though I was intruding, so I stood there perfectly still. I watched them both with an air of solemnity, not wanting to disturb the other bird in its rite or ritual. I couldn't help but wondered to myself if these were the same two that I have seen chasing each other around the yard for the that couple of days, the one (which I can't but help believe is the one still holding on to its life) always pursuing the other, who was frantically attempting to get away while tweeting with passionate vehemency and vigor. While watching the two in their chase, I often wanted to catch the pursuer and punish it for torturing the other, but always decided against since I could not be sure if it was all really a game, the two birds just indulging in their avian fun. Now, I was quite sure that the one had killed the other. I watched the survivor land on top of the deceased, and at first I thought it must be claiming its kill or something (kind of like how when you watch an old gladiator movie the winner will place his foot on the dead mans chest, or a big game hunter will position himself in the same poise over his kill), and I was utterly disgusted. The act reminded me of all the base and beastly acts we humans inflicted upon one another. It's not bad enough to have just beaten your opponent, but then we feel we have to embarass them also, and it saddened me to think that it wasn't just humans who behave this way but all of nature. Here stood the bird gloating over its trophy. But then something positively amazing happened. I was so caught up in what I perceived as a killing and the survivors relishment, that it hadn't dawn on me that maybe the other bird had just died of natural causes. Then living Cardinal hopped off the deceased and stood next to it. This is when I noticed a piece of leaf hanging from the mouth of the living bird. I thought to myself, 'The living one's trying to feed the dead one, to help it, to invigorate it.', and then I watched it drop the leaf three times, hoping the other one would catch it in its mouth. Man, was the moment heavy, and boy, did I feel stupid. I couldn't help but feel so sorry for the living one, abandoned in this the big backyard of existance, perhaps its only friend laying dead at its feet. They may have been brothers, and who knows how deep a birds wound is felt. We humans seem to believe that we're the only conscious beings in this world, we believe we are the only ones to grieve our dead, but the longer I live the more our fellow species proves to me that this attitude is absolutely egocentric, disturbingly conceited, and abhorrently ignorant. Some could say that the dumb bird wasn't even aware that its friend was dead and that just shows how different and stupid they are as compared to humans, but my rebuttal would be, "Who hasn't witnessed a mother trying to resurrect her recently perished son who's laying on a sidewalk, or a doctor attempting to revive a corpse even though there really isn't any hope, the brain and body long dead." The point isn't whether the bird was aware that the other had died or not, it's the fact that it tried to help it and not just fly away unconcerned. I feel truly blessed that I was allowed such a phenomenal glimpse into the soul of all consciousness.

I went out to view my brothers hardcore band last Sunday night. I was drinking Blatz at the Wisco (the name of the bar he was playing at). Anyone who has ever drank Blatz will know, some beers should be illegal to sell at a bar, or anywhere for that matter. The Blatz got me Blitzed. I was a pile. I can only recall shattered fragments of the nights events. It's never good to wake up feeling so scattered and lost, yet I do it time after worthless time, one would think I would learn. The worst part about it is that I'm still unemployed and here I am running around getting tanked up like there's no tomorrow. So now I've slipped back into a bout of depression. Drinking is definitely my cross to bear. I can't even go out and be sociable without indulging, it wasn't all suppose to be like this.
I filled out a single application today. Woo-hoo!!! At this rate I'll be homeless before I find a job, although the thought of living on the streets doesn't scare me, at least not now while the weather's nice. Once winter comes it will be a different story, but by then I'll have started school and will have finiancal aid to get by on. I keep thinking to myself that if I can only make it until school starts I'll be OK, but that is still two months away, I have to find something in the mean time or I'll go crazy (or at least crazier). I was going to go out today, but as soon as I stepped outside, and felt the sweltering summer heat, I turned back around like the coward I am. My poor brother is working all day in this stuff and I can't even go out to fill a couple of applications. I suck at life.
Today's my brother Rory's birthday, 29 years old. Man, it seems like just yesterday that he was graduating high school and now he's almost 30. Time has gone by so fast and all I can think is that I'm so much closer to death, which might not be a bad thing. Right now, if any of the religious views are correct, I hope it's reincarnation, and I hope I get reincarnated something really cool, like an astronaut or a wizard. Being incarnated into a palsied freak show sucks. I feel like a clown more than I man. Like the only possible reason I have been put here is as a laugh. So yuk it up world while ya can cause I ain't gonna be here forever.

To be young.

I had a dream last night in which I was riding in a friends car when a song came on by Courtney Love and I started crying. My friend inquired if I was in fact crying and why, I affirm, and explained to him that lately everytime a song comes on by Courtney Love I brake down in terrible sobs because I can't help think about Kurt Cobains untimely death and the effects in must have produced upon Courtney and his other loved ones. The whole incident was so sad, such a skilled and talented man cut down in his prime, all those wonderful songs that now stand as ominous warnings of his utter despair. Who could not feel such overwhelming amounts of sorrow, although this was but a dream and I never really cry when I hear Courtney Love.
In the dream, a bunch of us friends were all going to some concert, although I'm not sure which one, and we were to meet up in front of the venue. As my friends started showing up, and quite the assemblage of colorful characters, the dream morphed and I found myself at Courtney Love's house, but as an invisible phantom just looking on. Frances Bean was home with her new boyfriend from college and she had brought him to meet mom. He was a punker, a big purple mohawk to match his purple clothes. Indignant in that stereotypical punk fashion. Not at all clever, although one could tell that he felt he was. He tried to seem hip, but it's never hip to try anything, you either are and your not, and he most definitely was not. Maybe it was because he was in the midst of punk royalty that he acted in such a manner, but in all likelihood this was his usual demeanor and he was just a naive youth spouting off the same dictums that all disenfranchised have for a half a century now.
The conversation, which was mostly between the mother and the daughter, was light, all about how Frances is liking her classes and whatnot, and the poor purple headed fool took it upon himself at every possible moment to rage against what he perceived as the ills of modern society, and although in many ways he was correct, he wasn't a scholar or a master of philosophy, so the words spewed from his mouth like a drunken orgy of idiocy, and Courtney could only think 'My daughter's dating a bonehead who sits here and rails against the excesses and corruptive influence of capitalism but his parents probably own a nice big house and BMW, and pay for his way through college, but being respectful to her daughter she simply sat back and listen to what the young man had to say while nodding her head time and again, hoping he would finally tire and shut up.
One could tell, by the expressions Frances would shoot her boyfriends way, she was thinking much like her mother. While they were talking, and her boyfriend would interject, she would steer the conversation back onto its proper coarse. She did not appear to be the daughter of punk royalty at all. She had the look of so many other girls her age, her streaked blonde hair permed, hip hugging blue jeans, a nice top and high heals. She possessed a certain grace and charm from being brought up in a world of weirdness but also always being accepted by just being herself. Her life wasn't one of complete ease, but she was strong enough to have learned how to handle it. She was no doubt the princess of this dream.
It was at this time that I realized that someone was sitting to Frances' left. During the entire conversation I never once noticed this person. It was Bret Micheals of Poison, who it seemed, at least in this dream, was now dating Courtney, and was equally unimpressed by Frances' boyfriends annoying behavior.
The dream ended with the boyfriend making one final ludicrous comment, and Courtney shooting Bret a glance, who had sat there the whole time biting his lip and now was on the verge of blowing up. Frances, realizing the feelings of the other two, decides it's time to make their departure, she gets up and ends the night. The boyfriend shakes Courtney and Brets hands, and when he leaves they both shrug their shoulders. And I wake up.

I woke up wishing I was still asleep. Where I had been drifting through the ethereal and universal buoyancy of my dreams, now the hot red laser lights of the alarming clock pierced through the darkness, shocking me back into the world of the finite. Early morning doldrums tethered me to that dirty mattress, and if it wasn't for the omnipresent craving for a morning cigarette I may not have had risen at all, but the temptation to ruin my body trumped that sense of lethergy and despair, so I rolled myself to the end of the mattress, and struggled to get up. I slipped on my pants, worked my feet into my shoes, limped up the stairs and entered the dismal grey morning air. I lit my cigarette, puffed and ejected a cloud a smoke, and like all other mornings, looked up to the sky in search of some answers.

I thought to myself that if all knowledge of matter and the material world is known to man by ones sense's, then what happens when the form of matter is so minuscule that our sense's cannot perceive it and therefore cannot conceive it. Did it not exist before man made a microscope powerful enough to view it? That seems silly. If all knowledge is derived from our sense experience (as the Empiricist believe) then if a woman gave birth to a monkey, and that monkey was developed and experienced the exact same as humans, would it be human? My answer is NO, because, as everyone knows, a monkey does not hold the same innate gifts as a human, and vice versa.

Now it could be said that a feral child, who in their formative years lives without human contact, is not a human in the same way as a child who is born and raised within the confines of civilized society. So society does mould a person, I don't think there is any doubt about that, but that doesn't mean the feral child is not human, it just means that many of the traits we consider human qualities are conditioned into us and not innate. Many of the laws of civilized society have been put into place for the good of the pack, and not necessarily for the individual. For instance, a person who goes off and dies in a war. Now if life is simply about survival, then why would one place ones self in danger knowing it could mean their demise, because society looks upon such instants as beneficent to the whole and therefore a noble quality.
I now view the human mind as a battle between the right and left hemispheres for dominance. Most humans are dominated by the left hemisphere and that's why most people are right handed (being that the left controls the right, and the right controls the left). When a baby is born it doesn't have a dominant hand, all babies are ambidexterous and have the same ability in both hands, therefore it's obvious that the dominant hand is conditioned in one at an early age. For many centuries, left handed people were forced to use their right, because the left has always been equated with representing something evil. Even more than that just observe how the two terms differ in use, "You are right." which connotates being correct, or "You left me." which invokes a sense of abandonment and lonesomeness. Being that humans are basically pack animals, to be alone or exiled has always been one of mans great fears.
Does this mean that man made up God for fear of being alone in the vastness of this space? I'm not one to try to answer that question with any sort of absolutism, all I know is that it's nice to imagine a benevolent deity guiding my thoughts and feelings, and that, for now, it's good enough for me. The Lord has never answered my queries with a resounding voice, but there have been many times when I've been pondering some anomaly when a subtle thought has entered into my consciousness and clearly illuminated my musing's. Whether one would consider that God or not it makes no difference to me.
Some people look at God as the agent of morality, I however do not because I see incongruities in the way different cultures view morality. To say one culture is 100% correct and another is dead wrong seems hypocritical, although I do think it wise to pick and choose. Some would say that such choices were made for man some three thousand years ago and that we don't have the right to pick what parts we like or that are easier for us, in modern society, to live our life by. I beg to differ. Think of the nations of this world that actually enforce the rules set by antiquity and I'll guarantee, to most people, they seem barbaric. There are many circumstances in the Bible where terrible punishments were inflicted upon sinners that we would now consider torturous. Modern Christians will tell you, that because of Christ, man now has a new covenant with God, but what they don't realize is that if God had to make a new covenant, it implies the old one way unsuccessful, and that God, who is believed to be perfect, made a mistake. Now I'm not judging God here, I'm simply stating the obvious and what I believe is that man deciphered the words of God incorrectly. I'm not stating that God made a mistake but ancient man was not intelligent enough to interpret a correct moral code. God gave man reason and logic and we better utilize them both.
My cigarette now nothing more than a stub, so I toss it into the firepit and return back into the house. I'm suppose to be out looking for work but for some reason I can't get off the couch. Dreaded scenarios of fake smiles and feigned hospitible expressions filter there way through my head. I can see the managers of this and that in all the same quasi-profession dress, looking for the same ideal candidate, using the same language, thinking the same thoughts,and they all seem as they all have just been put together on some assembly line in Detroit. They all say things like, "Were looking for someone who is a self-motivator, organized, has great idea's they're willing to share and can think outside the box to be part of out team.", but in truth they're looking for a carbon copy of a carbon copy who's great idea's are dim-witted regrugitated junk. But one must eat, so I better shower.