Alakazam Might be distracted arranging nudities betrayed among stars
Trials managing to be bedridden Hard to handle, hard to imagine management of a large space
Hightail It out across a land free, Alan at your back Michael not far behind, read a prayer insufficient read a poem, a friend eternal yet lackadaisical
persuade it's message, coaxing, breathing new life, hurting, observing it's every move for it seems you are alone now
In atlantis you are the only one alive
How do you cope>?
Space occupied by only free will, your not supposed to have
Who would have possibly given it to you?
If you call me inhuman, if you call me a liar for this statement it seems you don't understand this conception
for what once was not, now is, under my hand and my brain, as i live in power of so little i feel the need to express what I hold on to constantly
My creations are me, and I am nothing except the power I exert
Have you found yourself hopeless, untouchable, retracted, so it seems this is the easiest place for us to return
A void
A nostalgia for the womb, or maybe a flight from ourselves as entities that exist
Who is there to ask?!!
A priest, a lover, a gambler, a professor, a friend?
who can convince you that you are real? our minds constantly tell us impossible truths that we are forced to understand, forced to cope with, and can oh so easily overtake our entire perception. Here i stand, in a room, a hall, or store, thinking of the essence of life itself, wholly distracted from experience by what gives us anything at all, reality.
So it seems often the reprieve becomes the obsession becomes the reality so quickly we find ourselves alone, unrelatable, isolated, and terrified
a man, 11 feet tall, too tall
A manifesto, 2 pages or 200
a 22 minute album
a skyscraper of graffiti
Try it on for size, imagine a new reality, as I am, Imagine a new page, where do you turn?
Maybe its a may!
June
Circumstance might be the largest corrupter of all that we experience
We have seen predation for millennia but never on our own humanity as it seems now
Out of desperation, out of hopelessness, out of loss, insurmountable forces at the precise task of dismantling everything that has been established, humans finding joy in each other, their food, or themselves
What would drive anyone to such degradation?
Michelangelo and all his friends
a moratorium
Repentance and imagining, oh regret is sworn, but not necessary
for the past is what we have done it has existed and will continue to haunt every intricacy of the world until our actions are incomprehensible by the new worlds culture
However the present speaks to us in muffled wails, squandered by our obsession
Oh what a horrible thing
This obsession that drives us insatiably away from the current moment and into a degrading future seemingly incomprehensible to us.
We fear, we kill, we drink, we smoke, we trip to avoid confronting it
Ever Closer, inevitable
The Repercussions
In a dreadful instant, though denied
we find our self new
naked and undocumented
Having clung to the tether of our short experience
We find ourselves scrambling backwards
inevitably
we fall
unprepared as we are
we fall victim to our own hubristic complex
Thinking we were in charge
-Failure
Ryan Marienthal 9/25/2023 21:57
oh this loose obsession, thinking we can avoid this beautiful procession
But what want we more than power and control, why is it that our souls cry for more more more more more more more more
than we could ever use
Even when we have so little it's easy to ignore it, what is it about this hunger, this insatiable lust to gather to consume just for it to be taken as our right, ignored, unloved, unappreciated
What is this insatiability seemingly at our core?
Excitement and uncertainty, certainly a reframed image of the same feeling
Intrinsically tied to the anxiety at the core of humanity, being scared of the unknown
Many Think Humans as Animals
Often Presented as the Antidote to Fear
Certainly we are not so Belittled
As to be Reduced to a Being Who's Insatiability Lies in the Present
For we Grasp Further
Hope Further
and Love Further
Than any Animal I know
Any Animal Tied up in Present Temporality of Survival
-Future
Ryan Marienthal 9/27/2023
This anxiety often medicate, feared, belittled, unappreciated is what makes some of us powerful
There are those who live wholly in the moment and often that is a powerful way to live, consumed by reality, often at peace when under no threat
But there is a sect of us who constantly obsesses over the future, this is what many of us call drive, to succumb to it is to give in to Dostoyevsky's so called "baseness" (Brothers Karamazov) what an interesting concept indeed, to be wholly in touch with ourselves, our urges, our fears, our outlets
Those who's baseness is this obsession of the future I describe experience an unrelenting angst with the present, for we cannot stand to sit idly by as the promise of the future closes ever in, by virtue of this obsession we command the future to be ours, a special type of egosim.
Contrasting these people with those who live always in the moment:
When we leave our peaceful watchtower,
WE ARE CONFRONTED WITH THE OVERWHELMING PRESENT
Possibly the most overwhelming feeling imaginable for one so far removed is the totality of existence as seen from a single instant
This is where I believe the life of the poet is lived, in the rare moments where this profound totality strikes
Maybe it's the way the wheat blows in the wind
Or the conquering of land
We Sacrifice our lives for both
A poet's devotion
and a soldiers sacrifice
Both eternal
all encompassing
where a soldier faces a single ultimate mortality
the poet must face death in constancy
-Finding Meaning in Nothing
Ryan Marienthal July 2023
Yea ok i know a solider actually dies and a poet doesn't but you get the idea
A poet faces the fact that in a moment of being present, inspired by anything(as i was by the wheat blowing in the wind), their entire world view could be abandoned and reconstructed, this sensitivity, this is the power of a poet
To understand something fundamental, something that represents them to infinity that human beings will connect with for eternity, all of this in a single overwhelming instant
The philosopher will also say they are powerful because they figure out infinite truths in finite time, but they too are just poets masquerading as academics because that is where the profession has evolved
This is the uncertainty I speak of, to allow oneself to be so fundamentally affected by so many things is unimaginably terrifying, yet also creates one of the most beautiful, terrifying, all consuming, depressing, ecstatic paths a human can take
At it's core, fear and unknowing. How odd but how fitting that so many suppress it
Addiction and confidence, irreplacably human and inseparable
If we did not struggle and we did not find ourselves unknowing, addiction would not arise
To feel power to feel control, to feel confident in such an absurd world is all we really have
To grasp on to the minutiae that we have, to clutch it with all our grasp and to not let it go, how intrinsically human. We are so insignificant and yet our reality is all we have, for some we abandon all physical attachments for it is too terrifying how we are all just flesh, how you could break an arm or sever a foot in any moment. To confront the fact that while we engage in those around us, we know nearly nothing about them, we know(sometimes) how they make us feel yet they soon depart, maybe not forever but you cannot run from being an individual
To engage in the dialectic of friendship(I think Nietzsche said this in the gay science), what philosophers did specifically to abandon the physical where they believed NO truth lied, is for some the ultimate existence. A forgetting of all but an idea, a joke, a project, a smile, a hug. All of it removes our place in the world from an equation, sends our minds to a pure heavenly state where it does not matter if we are insignificant for all we care about, all that pleases us, all the truth that we need in the world stares us in the eyes. But alas this is the most fleeting state and no matter what we crave it cannot be found alone.
To be alone is to confront the miserable beliefs we hold dear to our hearts and run from constantly. This is where we most often find addiction. A screen, an excercise, a needle, a prayer.
Being Alone is Where we Find a Life
But where Comfort Goes to Die
We can only be ourselves, we can only be alone, we can only crave something more. If we were able to gain meaning from the world we would never think, but if we were able to take all we need from introspection, there would be no world to participate in.
This is the deceiving balance that holds our hearts in turmoil. How do we live with ourselves in the world, how do we allow the world to live within us. There is no way to know our true place, we can only recognize when we are out of it. The moment we are safe, we are addicted
How do we Know We Ever Will be Again
Grasp at the air, exert your power, kill, steal, love, smoke, eradicate, harm, heal, the world is endless.
For those of us who, despite the infinite possibility, feel no comfort and no place. We are doomed with passion, we are doomed with thought and introspection, we are doomed with knowledge that there is no correctness for us for in any reality we will find the absurdness. Take it as a blessing, take it as a curse. We are all subject to the world, we are all subject to ourselves. What results from any of it? That is the one question that kills me
Be happy that any of it is happening now, it could be that it escapes you, it could be you resent it. Either way it is necessary.
Temporality is the one thing we cannot escape
Dostoevsky wrote in the Brothers Karamazov(I've read like 2 interesting books if you couldn't tell. im working on reading more) that there is no morality if we are not immortal. We are too powerful, too greedy, and too depraved. We are the only force that we have. This is a terrifying realization. Seeing as it implies that we carry the weight of reality with everything that we do. Some ignore this I guess, or don't realize it, however once this is taken to heart we will go absolutely insane. This is not necessarily bad but it is true. This leads to paralysis as our actions are too significant.
Carry it all
the weight we bear the world we are
It is all us. Your eyes your mind and your hands and your heart. The jitters you feel upon being excited are scared are a distinct reminder of reality assaulting you. The position you put yourself in, to hold a high power, to be an observer, to be relaxed, to think and to feel, is simply too important to shy away from. Though it is the scariest thing to confront we must somehow press on and make something happen. Be happy it is happening now, for this means you are, this means you have power, this means you are a mind you are a pair of hands you are a voice.
What Are You If Not Everything?
Oh my dear readers how you have longed for me to mention free will
sorry to say i DO NOT CARE!
at a fundamental level
However it seems I am lost in turmoil despite being but a man sitting on a stoop
It has become apparent to me you can only do one thing at a time.
If i am thinking I am doing something and as an obsessive man I cannot stop. If i were able to stop I would be an entirely different person
One who does not become all consumed by the whims of the world
But even sitting solitary I feel oppressed by forces I hate. Namely that of who controls us though they try to hide it.
The Berlin wall seemed so obvious a force of holding people but we see less and less obvious measures taken
Now they are written in regulation, regulation of every square inch of land and every action one could take and every activity one could hope to do.
This is why I question free will, free will in a society. and it is something which i cannot ignore.
So is the miserable life as a thinker.
As every thinker before me notes
The More You Think
The More Misery Becomes Obvious
For better or worse It is apparent I think constantly and I am miserable.
It allows me to figure out the horrors perpetrated against us as people but it removes any hope i have of peace despite these
For the radical quest of freedom seems ever daunting, ever impossible, and wholly inconceivable.
This leads me to my plea to the world and to myself.
I wish I could just take a break.
I wish I could Rest
When I sit down and attempt to take those actions, to let them be the thing I am doing, I find it impossible. For I feel haunted by the forces beyond my control.
Is it a protest we need? we will be shot. Is it a revolution we need? we will bear witness to a massacre by the strongest military in history, the American one of course. Though our rugged individualist spirit led us to historical reform we have been undermined and outwitted by those who had the power to do so. And as it stands I am powerless.
You see this, my platform, the internet. THe most effective form of communication ever to exist. And while in years past information flowed like water. Once it started to gain traction it soon became saturated with addictive messaging and hopes of profit. Though this is the tool of the present, it has been deftly stolen from those like me who would manipulate it to organize something greater than themselves. Furthermore, it has sucked in my peers into an unwitting battle with the world, where we can be so easily removed from it, thus making it hard to organize in communities around me. Notice so carefully that there is no threat to the current power structure at play. We are bombarded with horrifying news, forcing us to be apathetic to the minor atrocities, for who would not want to run from the news, I know I do. We are regulated from community, for where are we supposed to meet, large gatherings can so easily get shut down. How are we supposed to protest? for we will always be blocking traffic or making too much noise, all of which cause immediate arrest(the easiest way to shut down a powerful individual is to sequester and isolate them in jail).
On an offhanded comment as I have just made it becomes clear to me. The easiest way to isolate powerful people is to isolate them(yes i repeated myself but it seems important), and what has technology and capitalism and our current system led to if not isolation. My quest to make change has led me to try to abandon this isolation for it is obvious that is the antithesis to everything, but stepping out of that I have become confronted with the fact that our entire society forces us into it.
There is nothing I can do now, at least that I have figured out, to fight this. And it kills me it kills me it kills me it kills me it kills me it kills me it killls me it killsme it kills me it kills me IT KILLS ME.
Dread oh horrible dread oh meaninglessness my old companion, how am I supposed to fight it when it is not legal. I most definitely cannot do it alone, but can thousands do it? would thousands listen? yes they would. but could we do anything? how do we reform such a convoluted and nuanced system? There is no convenient sentence, no obvious slogan, nothing to put on a sign that fully encapsulates what needs to happen, besides maybe saying "burn it all down" This is why I was thinking of the Berlin Wall, such an easy thing to say "tear it down" it is encapsulating of that issue of control, but there is no equivalent today because the oppressing force, whatever it is has gotten too good at hiding itself.
All there is is radical measure, I would say tearing down a wall is a radical idea and yes symbolized a lot, but what are we to say now when we do not need a wall to be broken, we need everything as it currently stands to be replaced.
I was recently asked to write a prayer to God, though I am not overtly religious, but this is what it inspired in me:
The world must be set on fire
May the escape from it's burning
Incense the world
And free humanity from degradation
-My Prayer
Ryan Marienthal July 2023
No it does not sound pleasant, but neither is this.