Nagasaki

. . . I have thoughts, sometimes, feelings, that though mine, are difficult to allow into what I think of as "me." Dreams, sometimes, as well; last night I dreamt I was caught, alone, with a murderer; he sprayed machine gun fire through a crowd, then, holed up in a building with me, shot all who approached. From behind, I stabbed him, then, as he turned, I stabbed him again, plunging a knife into his forehead, to the hilt. I stabbed him again and again, until blood streamed from wounds all over his body. He would not die, he stood facing me with his gun still in his hand, but he would not kill me. Slowly, he died, and thus I was left alone in that place.

. . . I had a child with me, my son. I loved him so much, he smiled and I was filled with joy, I held him, and the death did not matter. Someone approached. Is something wrong, they asked, looking at him. No, I said. Look, he's dried up, they said. He's dead. And he was, he had been sealed in a shell of some kind, a skin not his own, and inside he had withered away, he was grotesque. Dead. I was sad, so sad - yet immune to it, somehow, all the death.

. . . This world, my life, now, seems so abstracted. Ideas, of myriad forms, all abstract, all connected, as by lines of ether, by rationality, dominate my life's landscape. My dreams seem more real, they are more intense, more vivid, lifelike, than my waking existance. Awake, my life is spent acclimating my mind to vague rational landscapes, their form indistinct, their relationship to my humanity or physical reality impossible to discern. Mathematics has ceased to represent to me ultimate clarity, maybe only because I do not understand it all, maybe because it seems a rational, symbolic system indistinct from any other; when one is reduced to axiom based logical systems, even the idea of ultimate clarity, knowledge, reality, is abandoned.

. . . Which axiomatic structural basis for reality would you like, sir? This one here has a sweet, rich flavor - this one, like freshly brewed coffee, clear and sharp - this one has a nutty, bitter taste (almost cynical.) Baskin Realities Emporium, 31 flavors of sub(ob)jective reality, open non-temporally.

. . . We embrace the symbolically, rationally based, that which "works." Intelligence, we admire. Genius. Effectiveness. Rebeling from that, I come to the experiential. I live for experience, for though rebeling against rationality as greatness, I cannot deny it. There is no justification for God, for commitment to something greater, in randomly generated axiomatic realities. Experiential existance is the answer. Living to see the world (however it may appear, in whatever reality, according to whatever rational structure) in all its splendor, from the peaks of the highest mountains, from below the surface of the sea, touching, seeing, hearing, being. Drawing out every part of the self, to experience, to explore, every emotion, every point of view.

. . . Seeking the extraordinary in the experiential, something, somewhere, is lost. In trying, it is destroyed, because part of the wonder of exploration is spontaneous revelation. And if you step back, it's another system, with its own rules; spontanaety is to strive for, diversity of experience; what is real about it when it is being strived for, and surely created, altered by being experienced. Where is the truth.

. . . Rationality offers truth, or a plurality of truths - understanding, though not in any ultimate sort of way. One only explores the nature of rationality on a rational basis, and indeed this is the only way to explore it. One gets nowhere searching for the basis of rationality itself in the non-rational - in potions or belief systems or creation myths. Experience is experience, no understanding, meaningless. Rationality is empty, experience is meaningless.

. . . Nagasaki, under the boiling cloud of Heaven.



from a letter to cara spallone, the first girl i kissed, and a friend who's feminine intuition i still rely upon most.