Hella Lauded

7/27/2019 Hella Lauded

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Cam Horvath2014


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"the proverbial sun is peeking out above the clouds, kid."

For jordi


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#im floating. i am an ocean. the air above me is thick and

becoming part of me. what are you supposed to do now. i am what

you think of when you think of what nothing would be like. a

white floor surrounded by white in every direction endlessly and

really where does it even meet the floor, or does it at all. i

am tired but i look happy. i want to say i am trying so hard but

im not sure if thats true in the way that i mean it. my voice

doesnt tremble anymore. im sitting here and feeling nothing. i

am now sorry in only an abstract way. the air around me is the

same color as me. when the sun sets i will not turn the lights

on and i will sit in one place for the rest of my life.

2009

"so last night i watched this symposium on the multiverse, and

one theory that wasn't mentioned but that came to mind was that

our universe could be a part of a multi-universal cycle where

the collapse of the previous universe provides the spark for the

current one, and so on. which i think kind of makes sense,

considering how many cycles there are, with life and death and

new life, input and output that is also an input for something

else in a big circle, and whatever. like take rust for example.

it's like the earth taking herself back, after we took from her

to build something. what's that thing about anaximander and

justice. 'things perish into that from which they come to be.'

do you remember in slaughterhouse-five the metaphor about being


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strapped to a cart on train tracks and it's moving and you can't

move your body and you can only see through one eye and that's

through a telescope looking at a mountain range and so it feels

like the mountain range is moving or it looks that way at any

rate and it looks like each mountain only exists for a moment

but really the mountains always exist and your perception is

flawed. that being like a condition of existence. but time isn't

moving, right, it's always there, every moment is always there,

it's just like we're walking forward and can't control it, but

time itself isn't moving. that's why like deja vu happens,

because every moment is always existing and sometimes the whole

construct fucks up. time slip, i think that's called. there was

this guy who was flying a plane and supposedly accidentally flew

four years into the future, somewhere in germany if i remember

correctly. but so what appears to us as a linear cycle is just

all happening at once. the collapse of every conceivable

universe and the formation of every conceivable universe and

everything in between all happening concurrently. but like,

eternally, you know?"

"mmhmm."

"..."

"..."

"so later that night i had a dream in which me from a year agowas asking me how college was and we had a whole conversation

about it. which i think probably was related to the time slip

stuff i had been thinking about before going to bed. he didn't

seem at all like a ghost which was a pleasant change from the


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usual narrative of dreams involving time distortion and the

like. i remember reading on wikipedia that there was usually a

sense of dread along with the experience. mostly little me just

asked about fake IDs and girls, but for some reason i just kept

talking about the sunset. like i was aware of him, in the dream,

and he would ask me a question, and i would reply with 'the sky

is a cold shade of pink' and stuff like that. it was like we

were talking on the phone and i was at college, still, but my

perspective shifted throughout the conversation from halfway

through my first semester until now, what's today, may

something, whereas little me stayed approximately in what it

seemed like was august of last year, perspective wise."

"what else did you talk about, with yourself."

"well okay so i'm going to be paraphrasing hard here, but i do

remember the flow of the conversation generally. after he asked

me about how easy it was to get alcohol, i said something like

'sometimes i think that shared hardship is necessary for

friendship to develop. and it can between anyone given the right

conditions,' which, by the way, is why i think i'd do fine in an

arranged marriage, for what it's worth. 'part of it is

compartmentalization, as in you need to be stuck around the same

people for extended periods of time. like those soccer kids,'

which he would have no idea what i was talking about, but therewas a little travel soccer team that practice outside my window

on some saturday mornings. and then he asked whether he should

get a fake ID. then i said something like 'i think it helps if

there's a common administrative enemy. rebellion is important in


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that way. it's uniting. joining the people around you to protest

that you got stuck with the people around you.' then i mentioned

something about how people who were in the army tend to stay

really good friends afterwards. not that i would know, that was

total conjecture. then he mentioned psychedelic rock, which

again he would have no idea was most of what i was forced to

listen to in college, except for the fact that he was a dream,

of course. i remember saying, at some point around this time,

'there's no one to rebel against, then. except yourselves,'

which i followed with 'i'm not sure what that means, but i think

it sounds good, doesn't it.'"

"that does sound good."

"so then he started worrying about emily, and how she hadn't

texted him in a few days, which i remember is true to what

actually happened towards the end of last summer. but i started

talking about a self confidence shell game, which i didn't

explain to myself in the dream, but what i now in telling you

realize is like how everybody's attracted to confidence, and

like how everyone wants to either be led or having something to

push up against, in a broad sense. as in you don't need to have

confidence you just have to look like it, act like a version of

you that has confidence until it seems natural."

"i know you're taking a negative spin on this but some wouldcall that social intelligence."

"yeah but like it seems disingenuous to me. because it's such a

facade, in my case, i guess, as you know. but then the

epistemological thing about the difference between everyone


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thinking you have something and actually having it, in regards

to confidence. so after that he said he got a new exhaust for

the car, which i knew somehow was a supra, even though i didn't

have a supra in high school, but i replied with another comment

about the sunset, which i was watching out my window while on

the phone with myself, with it resting between my shoulder and

my ear, and it was a corded phone, which is a little

anachronistic but who cares, really. and then young ben

recounted to myself the classic hope i had had for high school,

of pulling up to emily's house in, well i guess in this case a

supra, on an orange summer evening and she'd get in and ask

where we're going and me saying i don't know and driving around

to get lost. and then of course making out, which i would leave

out in the version of the dream i tell to other people, but to

myself and the dream and to you in real life i guess it was and

is necessary to be honest and realistic. but in the dream he was

freaking out about losing her, i guess because of the time frame

and the lack of recent texting activity, which again remember in

the dream i am on a corded phone, but so i'm helping him calm

down and he's trying to stay excited about the new exhaust and

he says 'it would sound really good idling outside her house,'

which to me means more than. i don't know what i'm trying to say

here.""that's okay."

"so we dropped that topic fairly quickly, and neither of us

thought much of it, which must be a dream thing. i don't

remember exactly what happened next but we started talking about


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depersonalization disorder, or i guess that's the name i put on

it when i woke up and did a cursory wikipedia search, but it

wasn't named in the dream. i talked about not recognizing myself

in the mirror, which did sort of happen my first semester,

sometimes, and then said something along the lines of 'you know

when you're playing a video game you control the character on

the screen and that's how video games work. but you're not

actually that character, you're not actually anything, in the

context of the game, unless it's super meta or something. you

control the character but really pragmatically it could be

anyone, you know, and it has to be, for obvious reasons. but

sometimes it's more like a movie and you're just watching.

you're supposed to identify with the main character and to some

extent you do. but it has its own script, its own plot, and

you're separate. distinct. one layer removed.' at which he said

'don't tell me you're into that "universe-as-a-computer-

simulation" shit.' which i remember reading somewhere that

there's a 20% chance that the universe is a computer simulation,

on the basis that if we ever build a strong enough computer to

simulate the universe in any sort of meaningful way, that that

has necessarily already happened."

"that's interesting."

"then small me also recounted to myself three other things whichi didn't remember, in the dream, but i obviously did if i was

recounting them, so. the first was when a few weeks after

getting my license i took my mom's car out into the countryside,

not really going fast or anything, just sort of dawdling. i


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don't want to use the term 'out-of-body-experience' but i think

i might have to. it was like i was gliding 500 feet behind and

above the car, like a right triangle with a 500 foot hypotenuse,

and it was like the car was driving itself and i was just out

there, floating. we sort of lost track for a minute after that.

i remember thinking 'the older you get the more you need people

who knew you when you were young,' but not saying it out loud. i

think there was something about how letters were replaced by

telephone then email then texting then and how each is smaller

and more insignificant than the last, and little me mentioned

that this aligns more quickly with the nature of communication,

which made me a little uneasy, because that would be just sort

futility and that's a little dark for little me to say, that's

more in line with present me, i think. then i said, and i

remember this exactly, 'i'm struck by how frequently we're

reduced to talking about existentialism,' which, in a dream

conversation with oneself through the barrier of time is even

funnier, i think."

"your face just lit up like i've never seen before."

"haha i wonder what that means."

"i think it means you're a pretentious asshole. hehe."

"haha. well then somebody wondered aloud whether people could be

as depressed as they are now when everyone thought that theearth was the center of the universe. and even before

globalization, when you didn't know how many people you weren't

influencing."


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"i know you know that the hitchhiker's guide covers most of what

you're talking about."

"and also like individualism, keeping people separate and

distinct. i don't know. in general i think our generation sees

futility more keenly than our parents' generation. more aware of

or more willing to recognize death and inevitability. like we

see how much a total flop financial stability was, regarding

happiness. my private theory is that as soon as you have enough

stability to not have to worry about where your next meal is

coming from your mind is free to worry about other issues, such

as what's the point. the real cliche stuff. so okay the second

thing was a dream which i don't remember having, implying that

little ben had the dream within my bigger dream, which would be

just totally wild. but so he said 'there was a field that was

empty except for one rectangular hole, like a grave. the field

was very intensely green but there was some beigeish wheatish

grass too. the field was about a 1,000 ft square, meaning the

side, not the diagonal or area. the hole was at the center. the

field was lined with dark evergreens.' he was more specific

about the types of trees but to be honest i don't know anything

about trees so i didn't remember. 'the field was sloped from the

top left corner. but there was no one there and nothing

happened. the sky was bright blue with white fluffy clouds. youknow. it was july in the way that you could just tell it was

july. even though the sky was blue and the sun was almost

directly overhead i knew it was exactly 7:00 am. but no one was

there, not even me.' (me meaning him, who again was the one


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having this dream) 'there was only this perspective that never

changed. nothing was in the hole. and i could tell that it was

going to be a hot and humid day. in the dream it felt like i, or

the perspective rather, was there for about 3 minutes. there

were birds chirping and a little bit of road noise, and a plane

went overhead once, leaving contrails. but nothing happened.'

and then the phrase flashed to present me, still on the phone,

listening: 'all, all, are sleeping on the hill.' it was night

now, the sky was black, as i was listening. and then the third

thing was also a dream, in which he said he was driving down a

damp, overcast city block. it was 45 degrees or so. it was rush

hour but traffic was moving fairly well and i (he) was going at

36 miles per hour. it might just be easier to tell it from his

point of view. 'everything was foggy, like the clouds extended

all the way down to the ground. the only other lights were the

red taillights in front of me, the slightly yellowed headlights

coming towards me, and the peach streetlights. endless

streetlights. the road seeming to go straight forever. so but

eventually the perspective shifted out of my body and outside

the car and i saw that the car kept driving the same hundred

feet over and over again. as in ever hundreed feet the car

reappeared a hundred feet back.' which in hindsight ties well to

the video game motif of the greater dream, like in arcade gameswhere if you go off to the left side of the screen you show up

on the right side. like donkey kong. theres gotta be something

bigger there, too, i think. i remember also mentioning portal,

but i won't go into much detail about that now, except that if


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you're ever playing the demo it doesn't glitch at level 11, it's

supposed to do that so you buy the game."

"good to know."

"then we started talking about, and i know i've mentioned this

here before, the hierarchy i kind of developed as a result of

challenge and whatever challenge's middle school counterpart was

and being in honors classes and whatever, being, on a scale of

best to worst: success without effort, success with effort,

failure without effort, failure with effort."

"yes i do remember that."

"present me took the stance that that idea was accurate only to

a certain age bracket, after which a lack of effort is like an

uncashed check. which i thought was a fairly adult opinion, when

i woke up. but then we got back to the depersonalization thing,

and two new metaphors emerged: one in which planets are orbiting

a star and then the star goes out, leaving the planets in a dark

void, but that was dropped in favor of a mirror, but not like

before, as in being the very fabric of the mirror, reflecting

the world around you, or i guess me, in this case, being similar

to the sort of endless observation that isn't ever followed up

with any sort of action. then, if i remember correctly, we went

back to cycles, this time with regards to the denial of death,

that book i read early spring semester and really liked exceptfor the ending. from there it was only a small jump to the

reality of mind, and the theory that consciousness is an

illusion, which i was pretty dead-set on during the fall


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semester, but little ben came up with an interesting rebut, i

thought, which was 'if it's an illusion, then to whom?'"

"hmm."

"real is to physical as true is to metaphysical. but yeah isn't

that an interesting point. but so the consciousness is an

illusion thing brought us to the universe is a hologram thing,

as in all data is stored in 2 dimensions and projected in 3, in

this case all data meaning what we perceive as reality. which

would fuck the whole thing up, really."

"what's the basis for that idea?"

"it has something to do with black holes. the event horizon.

there's a youtube video about how to understand the 10

dimensions but i can't really ever get past the 5th. but around

this point in the conversation this sort of came to me, by which

it mean i kind of saw it reflected on the window, or on the sky,

which again was definitely night by now, but it said 'and truth

came knocking on my door, and i said "go away, i'm looking for

truth" and it went away.' i know i've heard that before but i

don't know where."

"..."

"well, that was pretty much it."

"i see. well, how's your music going?"

"i, like, hate music.""explain."

"it's just not something i can use to express myself anymore.

i'm too conscious of it. like i don't like what i'm associated

with. i hate when i see someone playing an acoustic guitar.


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singing his or her respective heart out. i hate seeing bands.

the twenty people watching them. there's a certain futility to

it all. like if you don't hit a specific amount of success then

why do it, especially if there isn't any self expression going

on because you're too aware of the fact that no one's listening.

no one to express yourself to. did you hear mineral's getting

back together. mineral was an emo band in the nineties. i hate

that. i hate the idea of an emo band made up of thirty-five year

olds. because it's so pathetic if you're not as successful as

they are. if you're not somewhere by thirty or even like twenty-

five then the whole thing makes me kind of sad. or maybe it just

scares me because that's where i could end up. singing to

nobody. the futility. it's too late to be the prodigy so why

bother, it feels like. i know how defeatist this whole thing is

but."

"that's quite a jarring change of position."

"i don't know, i just look at music differently now. it's weird.

i'll still listen to recorded music. but anything live just puts

this impossible sadness into my eyes. oh jesus. it's like they

suddenly become the eyes of the generalized other or something.

some god looking down watching the little idiots trying to get

heard. even when they have nothing to say. like i have nothing

to say, i guess. or if they do have something to say, even, thefrivolousness of that. because nothing they are going to say is

going to change the fact that they are going to die and the

world is going to forget about them. and it will keep spinning

and slowly the universe will collapse in on itself. and that


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person's effort will have been for nought, it will have made no

difference whether or not they existed at all. for some reason

this happens only with music, but i'm scared it's going to

spread. i can handle a psychological limit like that in one

direction, but maybe not many. not all."

"this is catastrophic thinking. can't music just be for the

pleasure of it or does it have to be about being heard, for

you."

"..."

"..."

"have you ever thought about the relationship between you and

the last person to hear your name. to have heard your name. i

used to think it would be this intimate thing. like that person

is it, the last one. after that you're gone. so there's gotta be

something there, right. but now i'm thinking, like, fuck that

guy. letting me die like that. sure it's symbolic but the reason

they're the last person is because they don't care enough to

tell anyone about you."

"it doesn't have to be like that."

"and like why would they. they have their own life as expansive

and unimaginable as yours. everyone does. the world's a big

place."

"you can't affect everyone. it's an impossible goal. the worldis a big place. what will it solve. let's say everybody really

does know your name. then what."

"then it will have made a difference that i was here at all.


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2009

there was a small pool, 6 ft by 3 ft, that was 6 inches deep.

surrounding that was a foot of tile, like stone tile, which was

very gray. surrounding that was grass as far as the horizon,

upon which there were like 2d mountains, and the sky. the whole

thing felt like a primitive animation, super vaporwavey and

shit, something you couldve seen on a vhs, maybe. the water in

the pool was bright bright blue and the grass was bright bright

green and i imagined pink was somewhere but im not sure where

it would fit, in hindsight. so it was like this for a bit and

nothing happened, and there was no one. cut to a dark sea scene

in which im drowning in a turbulent crash of waves and the sky

is black and thick, like you could reach out and touch it, and

the water was like out of an oil painting, with the

brushstrokes, and i kept going under, and gasping for air, and

struggling, the whole thing was a struggle, and eventually you

saw my body floating, face down, being carried by the waves in

no particular direction, rising and falling, and id stopped

breathing, and the rain beat upon my back, and i didnt feel it,

and the wind blew but there wasnt anyone to notice, rising and

falling like that, for a while. cut back to the first scene.everything is flat and still, especially by comparison. my body

is floating in the small pool, face down. white puffy animated

clouds overhead. the color pink, from somewhere. flat being an

important aspect of the whole thing. 2 dimensional, almost,


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except for the body. inorganic, sort of, artificial. the term

pathetic becoming, like, a title, to me, of the dream. also,

flatline, which i think is an allusion to hospital rooms with

the heart monitors and so on. but pathetic being a very

important part of the whole picture.

2008

"you know in tv shows when they have a montage of all the

characters in the beginning and it'll show a person and they're

doing something cool or representative of their character and it

has their name and some sort of theme music. i think about what

would my thing be and who would the other people be. what would

the theme music sound like."

1998

"hey, buddy." andy came in through the front door which was

something only he and strangers really did, because of the way

the house was oriented, which everyone came in through the side-

door. he walked through the foyer to the yellowish kitchen andpoured himself a cup of coffee.

"hi." the eight year old said timidly, a few seconds late. the

sunlight pierced through the windows and caused the hardwood

floor of the foyer to fade in essentially real time. he was


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sitting in the living room on the few-shades-weaker-than-mint

carpet in his pajamas. it was about 8:30.

"wheres mom and dad?" andy said as he materialized in the

living room.

""

"i guess they must have left already. how was school this week?"

andy brought his coffee over to the sofa and sat down. the lion

king was on the tv but there was a lot of glare and basically

everywhere he looked stung his eyes.

"okay." said the little boy, but it was more like ok. andy

watched him watch the lion king for about half an hour. he felt

uncontrollably sad. he did not and could not move. andy

envisioned himself saying i love you and getting in a car

accident on the way home. andy didnt want to have to watch his

brother grow up and feel like he did. andy wanted to go back and

watch disney movies on saturday mornings with sugary cereal

instead of black coffee and sit on the ground instead of the

couch and not be blinded by the light like he was now. andy felt

like stanley in the stanley parable, ben would discern later.

andy felt like he was going to throw up. he dumped out his half

cup of coffee in the sink and looked at the old family photos on

the walls. it occurred to him that very few people would ever

see these pictures or remember these people and that it was hisduty to remember them but he couldnt. his grandmothers poetry.

andy felt dehydrated. andy wanted to tell his brother everything

so that he wouldnt have to feel lied to like andy felt lied to.

but when andy sat back down on the couch he couldnt do it and


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like why would he. time seemed to slow down like when youre

taking in so much information that theres no way that could

happen in real time. if life was only this one moment or moments

like these it would be worth it, was the thing. the saturday

morning sunlight blaring in through the windows and the stupid

glare and the fucking innocence of it all.

Cyclic modelFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A cyclic model(or oscillating model) is any of severalcosmological modelsin which

theuniversefollows infinite, self-sustaining cycles. For example, the oscillating universe theory

briefly considered byAlbert Einsteinin 1930 theorized a universe following aneternalseries of

oscillations, each beginning with abig bangand ending with abig crunch;in the interim, the universe

wouldexpandfor a period of time before the gravitational attraction of matter causes it to collapse

back in and undergo abounce.

2009

"like you get to a certain point and theres no longer anything

to say. it could be transcendence but it could be the opposite

of that. the sun sets and you have no comment, idly watching.

you want out. or you want in. its like a headache. to be a part

of something or so separate one wouldnt even think of comparing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_modelhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einsteinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einsteinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einsteinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_crunchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_crunchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_crunchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_spacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_spacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_spacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bouncehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bouncehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bouncehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bouncehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_spacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_crunchhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einsteinhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_model


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you. individualism fucked us over, big time, i think. also, the

world is too big. i dont know. the problem isnt even that i

dont have anything to work towards or to live for beyond some

abstract distant goal its that i wont have anything to work

towards or live for upon arrival. part of it is that im

assuming that finding a line of work that makes me want to wake

up in the morning is if not impossible highly improbable and so

its like im aiming for something where afterwards i can go

home and start doing what i actually want to do. like there

isnt a career that i would want to devote myself to. so im

basing my life around this principle because there has never

been something i want to do in that capacity be it work or

school or whatever. so like why would that change. and for a

long time even the things i like to do have more to do with the

people im around than what im doing so how do you make a

career out of doing nothing. like in office space when they ask

the guy what he wants to do and he just says nothing. i wouldnt

do quite nothing but the things i would do im not good enough

at for it to be a viable career option if im being totally

honest. i almost want my hand to be forced in some way so i have

someone else to blame when i end up unhappy. and sure thats an

attitude thing but like its a medically diagnosed attitude

thing. and also im like fairly disillusioned about any jobsactually existing. im not sure if im pathetic or if bad things

just keep happening. im awestruck when characters in movies are

really into what theyre doing careerwise. like an fbi agent who

is so totally immersed in a case that he cant or doesnt want


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to do anything else. like who doesnt go home and have a beer

afterwards. it seems like i have that obsessive personality

trait but nothing to be obsessive about. or that i can be

without the prerequisite of having any self esteem which i lost

somewhere along the line. how do you find something you dont

believe exists. where do you start looking. how do you make your

life about more than what you do when you get home to cope. when

did coping become like the primary thing to do. what happens if

you do find that great career and it makes you move and leave

everything. like who do you really need in your life to make it.

are these all moot anyway. like what is going to make life worth

it twenty years from now. i feel very far removed from reality

and the present. the problems of literal tomorrow affect the

problems of proverbial farther reaching tomorrow and so i just

focus on the latter. but like i guess i'm starting to understand

how people can move through the world without being truly

attached to anyone, or any small groups of people. like how

people break off into two person groups and have kids and die. i

think i'm starting to get that. it's like about trust. which is

part of why i'm in here, probably, talking to you, is because my

natural inclination is to distrust. or what's the thing, trust

people to do what's in their best interest. but i would amend

that to perceived best interest. it seems like most people iknow don't know what they want, really. i don't know what i

want. which goes back to individualism, in part. self

determination is hard and i'm not suited to it. the four types

of suicide are altruistic, egoistic, fatalistic, and one other


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one. but egoistic is related to individualism, i remember, in

that one feels a lack of connection to the people around them,

and this is happening more and more, they're finding,

apparently, that people are feeling less connected. fewer church

bowling leagues, i guess. i hate how much i sound like a college

student, by the way. i realize that if i met someone with the

same interests and personality as me i would not like that

person at all. egoistic and fatalistic, is how they would

classify my suicide, i think, if i were to do it, which i'm not,

for what it's worth. i know you can't believe me in ernest,

which is okay. but the truth of the matter is i don't know where

i'm going or why. i feel like a lot of the decisions i've made

in the past few years were really bad decisions that seemed

right at the time, although i'm not sure how right they seemed,

really, or if i just convinced myself that they seemed right,

for whatever reason. like if i could go back to any given point

in the past three or so years i would do it in a heartbeat. i

fucked a lot of things up. and they say, well, i hate talking

about them, or they, like a rebellious teen, or whatever, but

they say that you don't have to have it figured out yet, you're

only twenty, you've still got time, and nobody knows what they

want to do at twenty, but like, everybody's supposed to know

what they want to do at thirty, and it's like this age, thethirty, the limit, keeps getting closer. not just that i'm

aging, which it doesn't feel like it, i still feel like i'm

sixteen, but that the age is going down from thirty to twenty

nine and so on and it's really close now. if i want to graduate


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on time i have one semesters before i have to declare a major.

that's like four classes to choose the rest of my life from.

which you can change directions later, of course, but that

fucking sucks, which i know from having changed direction

already, twice. and really nobody wants to be the guy who's like

five years older than the rest of the class, you know, you want

to be the prodigy, or the best. there's supposed to be something

that makes your existence necessary, which i'm just talking

about in like a program or classroom or something, but of course

what i'm really talking about is existence as a whole, which of

course makes me a little sick to my stomach, to think about,

especially regarding how i'm being perceived by you, although

probably this is how i'm perceiving myself and just placing that

perception upon you, and for that i'm truly sorry. i'm ashamed

to like what i like, in some ways, because of this, the

perception of it. it kind of gets in the way. especially when so

many truths are in the form of cliches, which you can't talk

about seriously, because they're cliches, and they're obvious,

and who cares if the grass is greener on the other side, or

whatever. the sad college kid on prozac thinking about

existentialism and playing the acoustic guitar, i hate it all.

it leads me to, almost, hate everything that i am, which relax,

i said almost. and like, even this self hatred is itself acliche, so it's like a metacliche, which would be great if

talking about meta-anything wasn't also a cliche. and the

aversion to cliches comes from, i'm ready for it, i'm sitting on

the edge of my chair waiting to hear you say, a lack of self


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love. i need to hear you say it, captain. but so i guess this

brings me to the originality vs. authenticity argument, which

isn't one i'm particularly in the mood to have, mind you, but

i'll give it a whirl. before i begin, though, i have an

objection, or an interjection, i'm not really sure, which is

where authenticity comes from. this may go a long way towards

answering our pressing question. i am drawn to believe the

answer is the self. even if all originality is gone, everything

has been done before, to live authentically, even in the form of

cliches, one must love oneself. you see my dilemma. between the

proverbial rock and hard place is a place i know far too well. i

am remembering something david foster wallace said, which yes i

realize i am a white college-age male interested in philosophy,

i know, or i think he quoted it from somewhere else, which in

this day and age i could easily look up but haven't bothered to,

and so i wonder if technology is too far ahead of the human

condition, or something like that, but he said, or quoted, that

the most profound things can only be discussed in the form of

jokes. as in, they are too obvious and stupid to be talked about

directly, and we need a layer of irony to buffer us from the

perception of such a conversation, which is ironic because

that's what i'm doing now, in quoting him, and also in talking

about irony in a negative way, which i would say has become athing, for my generation, and also for what it's worth talking

about my generation. i'm really sorry if i'm becoming unclear,

it's just hard to be direct behind the muddled layer of saving

my own social face, which i know i shouldn't have to do in a


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therapy session like this, but i still do, for some reason.

something about self love, probably. man wouldn't it be so

dissapointing if it all came down to self love?

#

"but okay, so i've been thinking a lot about adulthood. i don't

know why i'm telling you this. but so you know about the thing

about babies becoming like human when they reach a point of self

awareness, like when they can see themselves in the mirror and

recognize it as themselves and see themselves as actors upon the

world around them, or whatever. so how about like when children

become adults it's when they reach a point of recognizing that

other people also act upon the world around them. and actions

have consequences and so on. this probably isn't revolutionary

or anything. what's the thing. sonder. let me pull this up, and

i'm sorry for quoting this, really, i know it's very expected

and trite but i think it's very important, and like cliches can

be important, which is a cliche of its own, and an important one

i think, but okay so sonder: 'the realization that each random

passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own

populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worriesand inherited crazinessan epic story that continues invisibly

around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with

elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that youll

never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an


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extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic

passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.' yes i

pulled this from tumblr. one time, i wrote something about this,

before i saw it, but this is better than that, i think, in

hindsight. but so the general awareness of the world in that

way, i guess. it'd also be changing the definition of adult, a

bit, but i think it's an important distinction, when you realize

in a very real way that your actions affect the people around

you, and that that those people are, like, people, are like you,

i don't know. it's very primitive, i'm aware of that. something

parents already attempt to instill in their children. not

revolutionary by any means. i don't think each person's

individual good culminates in the good of all people. but i'm

also not sure what the good of all people is, really. i'm not

saying anything here. i don't know why i suddenly felt compelled

to tell you this. nevermind. i don't know, em. say something."

"i miss you."

"..."

"..."

but really none of this happened. really ben just wanted to be

missed. but what would he say, if he was, was the question.

Terror management theoryFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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Insocial psychology,terror management theory(TMT) proposes a basic psychological conflict that

results from having a desire to live but realizing that death is inevitable. This conflict produces terror,

and is believed to be unique to human beings. Moreover, the solution to the conflict is also generally

unique to humans: culture. According to TMT, cultures are symbolic systems that act to provide life

with meaning and value. Cultural values therefore serve to manage the terror of death by providinglife with meaning.

[1][2]The theory was originally proposed byJeff Greenberg,Sheldon Solomon,

andTom Pyszczynski.[1]

The simplest examples of cultural values which manage the terror of death are those that purport to

offer literal immortality (e.g. belief in afterlife, religion).[3]

However, TMT also argues that other

cultural valuesincluding those that are seemingly unrelated to deathoffer symbolic immortality.

For example, value of national identity,[4]

posterity,[5]

cultural perspectives on sex,[6]

and human

superiority over animals[6]

have all been linked to death concerns in some manner. In many cases

these values are thought to offer symbolic immortality by providing the sense that one is part of

something greater that will ultimately outlive the individual (e.g. country, lineage, species).

Because cultural values determine that which is meaningful, they are also the basis for self-esteem.

TMT describes self-esteem as being the personal, subjective measure of how well an individual is

living up to their cultural values.[2]

Like cultural values, self-esteem acts to protect one against the

terror of death. However, it functions to provide one's personal life with meaning, while cultural

values provide meaning to life in general.

TMT is derived fromanthropologistErnest Becker's 1973Pulitzer Prize-winning work of

nonfictionThe Denial of Death,in which Becker argues most human action is taken to ignore or

avoid the inevitability of death. The terror of absolute annihilation creates such a profound albeitsubconsciousanxiety in people that they spend their lives attempting to make sense of it. On large

scales, societies build symbols: laws,religious meaning systems,cultures, and belief systems to

explain the significance of life, define what makes certain characteristics, skills, and talents

extraordinary, reward others whom they find exemplify certain attributes, and punish or kill others

who do not adhere to their culturalworldview.On an individual level, self-esteem provides a buffer

against death-related anxiety.

#

andys little brothers dream car at age 14 was a mk3 (1986-92)

toyota supra turbo. What most people failed to realize was that
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all the common headgasket issues (caused by a switch from

asbestos to copper) on the 7m-gte (which was the flagship engine

at the time, for toyota, a dohc inline six w/ 4 valves/cylinder,

but quickly overshadowed by the later 1- and 2jz motors of the

mk4 supra, which was a halo car far greater than the mk3, in all

honesty, at least in the united states, although the engine was

also noteworthy for its place in the flying soarer, which was a

halo car in its own right, though of a different sort, it should

be noted) even though they could easily be fixed by28torqueing

the head bolts to 75 lb ft (102 Nm) of torque, but all the

service manuals offered for the car claimed an erroneous 56 lb

ft, such that the headgasket problems people were experiencing

would recur every 75,000 miles or so, even when torqued by a

qualified technician at a dealership, and the engines got a

rather undeserved bad rap, he thought, even though they were

extremely durable when torqued correctly. notably, the mk3 supra

was the first time the supra had been a separate model from the

celica, as opposed to a trim level, but due to the

aforementioned headgasket issues, along with the fact that it

was very heavy, the mk3 never really caught on in the same way

the mk4 did, which kept prices down 20-30 years later, if one

could find one without any headgasket issues, which again

because it never really caught on in the first place, were hardto find. probably as a result of many hours spent intently

watching initial d, andys little brother ben had a sort of

penchant for the underdog, one he didnt realize he shared with

the overwhelming majority of americans, with the whole


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meritocracy / self made man sort of thing, which further

appended to his interest in the car. the car also had flip up

headlights and host of outdated but advanced-at-the-time

technology, like TEMS and ACIS and LSD, which to a 14 year old

is unbelievably funny for a name for a car part, which made it

hard for him to talk to any of his friends about the really cool

antiquated tech, but made the car even more desirable and fast-

sounding, which he figured when he was old enough he would slap

a bigger turbo on and modify in countless other ways that he

would contemplate between now and then, considering he didnt

really know what he was talking about at this point.

2009

"i see you brought a book with you today."

"yeah there's something in here i want to talk to you about."

"what is it?"

"i think it makes more sense to quote a section in full,

actually. the book is the pale king by david foster wallace,

which he was writing when he hung himself, and it's mostly about

taxes really, but i read this section last night and kind of

stared at the ceiling for several hours in lieu of sleep becauseof it. so okay, page 229, halfway through the second paragraph:

I mean true heroism, not heroism as you might know it from

films or the tales of childhood. You are now nearly at

childhoods end; you are ready for the truths weight, to bear


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it. The truth is that the heroism of your childhood

entertainments was not true valor. It was theater. The grand

gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external

foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all all

designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify an audience. An

audience. He made a gesture I cant describe: Gentlemen,

welcome to the world of reality there is no audience. No one

to applaud, to admire. No one to see you. Do you understand?

Here is the truth actual heroism receives no ovation,

entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is

interested. which like, i don't know. i didn't like it at

first but the more i think about it the more i like it. i'm

digesting it now. if heroism can be this sort of secret thing,

or has to be, then regardless of self worth or whatever it seems

possible to extract meaning from oneself. which is better than

from everyone around me, like how i've been talking the past

several months, with the wanting to be remembered but even those

who remember me will die and blah blah blah ultimately forgotten

the universe collapsing in on itself blah blah blah. if the sort

of courage to live in the face of tedium and meaningless and do

it uncomplainingly, like in a way that you feel like only you

know the full extent of, i don't know if i'm losing you, like,

if no one is interested in heroism, or pays any attention to it,then necessarily heroism is quiet. well not necessarily but i

think you know what i'm getting at here. heroism being

essentially solitary. the more i go on about this the more i

realize that this might've been how people have been living for


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generations on end but like no one bothered to tell me. i mean

i've mentioned the denial of death before, how heroism is either

belonging to something greater than yourself that can extend

your life well past your physical one, life that is, or becoming

so great, for example plato, that people remember you. but then

at the end of the book which really pissed me off it was like

'well for this to work you kinda need to believe in god' and i

was like 'dude i was so on the same page with you up until this

very moment, becker, really.' because of the whole truth v.

pragmatism thing, where in order to believe something it needs

to be the truth instead of what is most useful, which is

something i struggled with for a long time, longer than was

necessary, i think, but whatever, especially with him being a

psychologist and all. so it goes. so where was i. heroism. part

of it being that it goes unnoticed, or like, the heroic part of

it being the accepting with silence. the secrecy is what i'm

drawn to, i think. i was listening to 91.3, the classical

station, and there was this segment on codes in classical music

that composers put in there, and never really expected anyone to

ever analyze or figure out or whatever, but was there for them,

the composer, as sort of an inside joke that was supposed to go

over everyone's head. i don't know i kind of like that. the

heroism being necessarily untellable.

#


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there was a dim sort of light. a neighbor's porch light through

a thin layer of clear plastic, a sort of insulatory measure,

which prevented the much thicker and dimming drape from closing

fully, or well preventing the light from getting through, at any

rate, which ben woke up to every morning at 7:00-ish, depending

on the time of year and also whether daylight saving's time was

in effect. but so it was about 4:00 now, and the sun was due to

rise relatively soon, and ben was a little dizzy, and he wasn't

sure if it was in a pleasant way or not, in the same way that he

managed to be both tired and not-tired. he was reminded of a

time approximately a year ago when he woke up at about this time

and wrote himself a five-note to-do list, which he didn't end up

doing any of, but made him feel better about his life and the

direction it was going in, which he thought would be a nice

feeling to have again, regardless of whether he ended up

accomplishing any of the list or not, just having that direction

and knowing, somehow, that it was right, or at least not wrong.

life felt like a watercolor, sometimes, now.

Time slipFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThis article is about the paranormal phenomenon. For other uses, seetimeslip (disambiguation).

A time slipis an allegedparanormalphenomenon in which a person, or group of people,travelthrough timevia unknown means. As with allparanormalphenomena,theobjective realityof suchexperiences is disputed.
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Characteristics[edit]

Feeling of unreality[edit]

Many time slip witnesses report that, at the start of their experience of the phenomena, their

immediate surroundings take on an oddly flat, underlit and lifeless appearance, and normal sounds

seem muffled. This is sometimes accompanied by feelings of depression and unease. In some

respects, this facet of the phenomenon is similar to theOz Factoridentified by

BritishUFOresearcherJenny Randlesin some reports of encounters with supposed extraterrestrial

craft.

Moberly's account[5]

of her experience at Versailles records:

We walked briskly forward, talking as before, but from the moment we left the lane an extraordinary

depression had come over me, which, in spite of every effort to shake off, steadily deepened. There

seemed to be absolutely no reason for it; I was not at all tired, and was becoming more interested in

my surroundings. I was anxious that my companion should not discover the sudden gloom upon my

spirits, which became quite overpowering on reaching the point where the path ended, being

crossed by another, right and leftEverything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant;

even the trees behind the building seemed to have become flat and lifeless, like a wood worked in

tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade, and no wind stirred the trees. It was all intensely

still.

Jourdain's report[5]

of the same event states that:

there was a feeling of depression and loneliness about the place. I began to feel as if I were walking

in my sleep; the heavy dreaminess was oppressive.

Ability to interact[edit]

Reports vary as to whether those experiencing time slips can take an active part in the event,

interacting with the time being "visited". In the Versailles case, the two ladies were apparently seen,

and spoken to, by people they saw. The British holidaymakers in 1979 went further, staying in a

hotel and eating dinner and breakfast in the course of their experience. Both these cases are also

unusually prolonged experiences, taking place over at least several hours.

In other cases, the subject is a passive observer of the "past" scene, and it seems that the "typical"

time slip lasts only a matter of a few minutes.

2000
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when ben leyland was 10 he secretly (ie against his parents'

wishes) bought one of those screen lights for the gameboy color

so that he could play pokemon blue at night, which in hindsight

was the beginning of some particularly bad habits, sleepwise.

ben always started with bulbasaur but mostly because he felt

like his rival was best suited to charizard, when he would get

to the end of the game, even though he liked the squirtle

evolutionary line better. this likely had something to do with

his social interactions at school, which weren't bullying per

se, and were not typical according to the relevant media and

school administration. ben, being a quiet and relatively mature

boy for his age, more or less just watched the other kids

interact instead of jumping in, usually, and while this did give

a lot of the kids and many of the teachers throughout the years

the creeps, it wasn't something that made ben a particularly

easy target, and since his exclusion was essentially voluntary,

most kids tended to just ignore him. since he observed

aggression but never really took part in it on either side, this

is what he imagined his rival to be like, ie in pokemon blue, as

he associated himself more with the kid being bullied than the

bully himself, although again he was almost always never

involved. there was a certain uneasiness surrounding his

observation, which is very much related to the creepiness thatothers eventually associated with it, that made you think he was

going to follow you home and kill your family but also kind of

made you want to give him a hug, in an almost inexplicable way.

his silence gave you the impression that he was taking


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everything that was happening around him to heart and that one

day he would proverbially go postal. most of this went way over

ben's head, however, and generally throughout elementary school

he was just thinking about his ideal pokemon team, both if

pokemon were real and just in the game. during recess, which

would later be difficult for him to even imagine, as a concept,

ben favored taking free throws at the basketball hoop to any of

the more social activities and sports, but didn't really start

feeling lonely until much later. he was absorbed. ben wouldn't

remember much of his childhood, but it wouldn't really bother

him either. venusaur vaporeon rhydon zapdos ninetales alakazam

#

in 1994 andy witnessed a car accident. he was driving home from

work at 11:13pm and it was raining. there was the kind of

lightning that lit up the sky even though you couldn't really

tell where it was, exactly, but andy thought it was beautiful

and also distracting. about 1,000 ft in front of him, when he

was getting in the turning lane on anderson hill rd to turn left

onto king st, he saw a chevy s10 turning right onto the same

street hit a telephone pole. but the thing about it was, for

andy, that it seemed almost intentional. of course it was more

likely that between the lightning and rain and inevitable

cigarette and bald tires and whatever that it was an accident,


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but it didn't feel like one, to andy. this was the first time

that andy leyland called 911, omitting the hand placement

related calls of his infancy. he was nervous about the call and

also about that he was nervous, as in he thought that this sort

of thing shouldn't be the sort of thing he gets nervous about,

now that he had turned 18 and was a legal adult, this was part

of it, he thought, the collective responsibility of being a

citizen or whatever that meant. andy didntremember much about

the incident as it was acutely stressful and he tried adamantly

to forget it, but he did remember thinking it was a suicide, or

at least somewhat intentional, and mentioning that to the

operator on the other end, not that it made a difference to her,

probably. after he placed the call he wanted to sit in his car

by the side of the road forever but he didn't because he was

worried about the opinion of the middle aged adult male in the

driver's seat, whom by the way he didn't attempt to help except

by placing that 911 call, the whole incident having more of an

effect on his personality than even he would've guessed, after

driving away from the near total silence of the scene. as in, he

didn't check to make sure the man was okay or breathing or

anything, he just left, which he cringed at noticeably whenever

flashes of the memory bubbled up to the surface. andy literally

hated himself. this twitching happened a startlingly largeamount of the time and was, andy thought, the cost of being a

self aware human being, ie he paid this price after most social,

professional, or other interactions, unable to escape the

monotonous replaying of the worst single moment of every single


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conversation in his mind, which he was not stupid enough to

believe only happened to him, though he did believe that it did

seem to happen more often to him than anyone else he talked to

about it, which he thought was unfair, andy did, while of course

recognizing the very specific way in which the world is unfair

to certain people and the great indifference with which it

watches their suffering, as in the case of andy, he thought. but

justice is that 'things perish into that from which they come to

be,' andy would sometimes misattribute to anaximenes, while

trying to reconcile the gross injustices paid him, while also

trying to recognize the gravity of the situation that one failed

conversation is not the same as children starving to death in

africa etc, though just because someone has a worse situation

doesn't prevent you from being sad in the same way that someone

having a better situation doesn't prevent you from being happy,

andy would internally argue, all the while violently wincing.

just below andy's layer of consciousness was the thought that if

he had never witnessed that inital car accident then this

cringing problem, which andy became very self conscious about,

obviously, further amplifying the issue, along with the thought

that well, really something would've set it off eventually and

the only way to avoid the grimacing was either for nothing bad

to ever happen to him at all or for him to figure out a way toavoid it, which he seemed all but unable to do, it being the

sort of motor tic that is naturally very difficult to control.


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2009

"so when i was entering middle school i had to do some

prerequisite forms for the guidance or counseling department,

i'm not sure which, but i remember that i wasn't sure if it was

just me and a select other few so called high risk students or

if everyone had to do the forms, like i'm not sure if my mom had

already been in touch with the counseling department is what i'm

saying, but one of these questions, which i think might trigger

some sort of 6th grade self esteem slash identity issues, was

whether we, or rather i, felt either too big or too small. as

in, you had to pick one or the other. i mean i'm what, 5'4" now,

right, and i've always been the shortest in my class, even more

so in middle school when all the girls hit their growth spurts

before all the boys, supposedly, and i remember writing too

small, and thinking that was the fitting answer, but when i

remembered this, whenever it was, a few days ago, i realized

that i might have some of the traits of someone who considers

themself to be too big. i would think that someone who thinks

they're too small would try to make up for that and be or

attempt to be hypermasculine, well in a male case, and you know,

otherwise make up for that deficiency. whereas someone who

thinks they're too big would try to make themselves smaller, so

to speak, by sitting in the back of the room or by the walls at

a party and not say much and so on. the gentle giant. but it

seems like we, like myself and i don't know who else, whoever

else had to answer that question, emphasize those traits instead


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of trying to make up for them. like i make myself even smaller

than i am. it's easier that way, i guess, because you already

have a head start. so those who think they are too small make

themselves even smaller, and those who think they are too big

make themselves even bigger. i don't know if any of this is

true. in my case it is, i think, though."

"my son had to fill out those forms when he entered middle

school, for what it's worth. it's standard practice."

"good to hear. i guess. but i remember also wanting to check the

other box, the too big box, because i was, hm, husky. that's the

term. i had to wear husky jeans and i wore oversized t shirts

and shit. but i was short, still, so it was like both problems

in one, the worst of both worlds. i think that's why i'm so

skinny now, maybe. or part of it. i'm what, 110 pounds? 5'4"?

you can see my ribs and my spine through my shirt sometimes.

granted part of that was like medical issues but i think even

without them, i don't know."

"so the problems of someone who is too big accentuated the

problems of someone who is too small, in your case. or rather

believes to be."

"yeah. and it got worse once my world got bigger. like in high

school i had 350 people to impress. to be remembered by, to be

considered important to, etc. then i went to college andsuddenly there were 20,000 more people and the realization that

this had happened to each one of the original 350, that the

world was bigger than i could even imagine. but there seemed to

be an inside circle, still. especially because of the internet,


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it was like everyone knew eachother, which i both loved and

hated, mainly because i wasn't in that inner circle, which i

guess reminded me of high school, the worse bits of it anyway,

not that it was exclusive in the same way, but more like it was

exclusive in an entirely new way that i thought was okay, so to

be excluded by means that i thought were not the problem made

the bigger, larger level problem much worse. it's much harder to

be big, now. much easier to be small."

#

"the sun has set on our day in the sun," said janice in a

nondescript episode of friends in 1998. this was much more

profound to andy than he would have hoped. he felt as if his

life had bookends. chapters. subdivisions. impenetrable barriers

of time. what no one had told him, was that childhood innocence

and naivete and egoism and carelessness and beauty and awe and

for example. in 1986, when andy was 10, and ben had yet to be

born, there was this game that he used to play, which was in

itself a notion of childhood that andy would never really get

back, unless he were to have children, and even then, but the

game was to stand at one end of the driveway, which wasunnaturally long for the development his house was in, and throw

a frisbee to what he dubbed 'the crease', which was the line

between the driveway and the road, and it wasn't much of a game,

there was no score, nobody could win, or perhaps more


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importantly lose, all there was was an objective, and for a

while, nothing else mattered, existed. he got very good. he

eventually had to make the game harder, so he would throw from

the doorway, or his bedroom window, or from behind the garage.

it didn't matter to anyone else whether he could hit the crease.

but that was part of it, for andy. in hindsight, of course.

hours per day, throwing the frisbee, trying to hit the crease,

mindless and yet concentrating intensely, later observing that

there is not much difference at a certain point. like how

reactionism and progressivism meet if you go far enough in

either direction, or going off the screen in certain video

games. one thing andy would discover during his first failed

semester of college was that he was a communist of sorts and

that that probably started here, throwing a frisbee at the

crease, the line between his and theirs, self and other, which

he would find was an important concept in philosophy, but only

from mildly drunk philosophy students at parties. and besides,

how could someone own land, he wondered, and why would they

bother, with land especially, considering their impending death.

society had changed in a subtle but important way, he thought,

in that egoism had overtook something as the primary cause of

acquiring money and property, that something being ill defined

but largely covered by the phrase 'for the kids', as in parentsworking for their kids' education, for their kids' education,

and so on indefinitely. somewhere down the line, society at

large shifted to be about the self, and while andy worked mostly

for himself, he was unsure how he felt about the concept as a


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whole. the problem being, he would come to find out, that it's

an empty way to live, really, that futility loves these sorts of

people, gobbles them up. adults had become children, was a way

to put it. the true adult being someone who recognizes reality

as it is and works anyway for some cause other than himself,

andy considered, but was generally unsettled on. andy felt that

the true adult was a hero but was a breed that was rapidly

diminishing out there, in the real world, and so strived to be

one, an adult, but somewhat reluctantly, when upon watching some

mindless episode of friends in 1998, 8 years into ben's life,

janice said those infamous and humorous (?) words, "the sun has

set on our day in the sun."

Ultimate fate of the universeFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ultimate fate of the universeis a topic inphysical cosmology.Many possible fates are

predicted by rival scientific theories, including futures of both finite and infinite duration.

Once the notion that the universe started with a rapid inflation nicknamed theBig Bangbecame

accepted by the majority of scientists,[1]

the ultimate fate of the universe became a valid

cosmological question, one depending upon the physical properties of the mass/energy in the

universe, its average density, and the rate of expansion.

There is a growing consensus among cosmologists that the universe is flat and will continue to

expand forever.[2][3]

The ultimate fate of the universe is dependent on the shape of the universe and

what role dark energy will play as the universe ages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_fate_of_the_universe#cite_note-1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Banghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_cosmology


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#

"oh my god oh my god oh my god."

"so like i was saying, i think it's interesting that when places

begin to feel, familiar, is the word i'm looking for, they cease

to be, in a sense."

"slow down."

"like, you stop paying attention, which of course is a given,

but it's more than that."

"slow down."

"it feels different. there's an automatic piece to familiarity

but like."

"ben."

"like the trees here aren't really any different from the trees

on some other road, and the night sky is the same, and the road

may well have the same curves and so on. but there's a feeling

that you've been here before that changes your whole

perspective, for some reason. i think it's a matter of paying

attention."

"i'm serious."

"do you get what i'm saying? oh, brace for this next turn."

"jesus."

"everything is changed simply by having been here before, as inmy case, or not, as in yours. don't you see the difference?"

"..."


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"and i think in some cases, it becomes more beautiful by

familiarity, but in others, less so. not that i'm saying

anything at all by saying that. hm."

"we are going to hit a deer and i am going to die."

"i don't know exactly what i'm trying to say. i get nervous

around you. i don't know why i started rambling like this."

"fucking shit, ben."

"oh, sorry. i'll pull over. there we are."

"thank you."

"..."

"..."

"i've been here before. i feel like in this exact same moment.

the cold shade of violet in the sky. the half moon shining

bright. stars struggling to make themselves visible. the field

blackened by night. i've seen it."

"it is a beautiful night."

"yeah."

"so. why did you bring me here?"

"does it make a difference?"

"yes, actually."

"well just like look at it. this is it."

"i see."

"it's familiar. it's exactly as i remember it. it's something idon't want to change. i can still be the me i was in high school

when i knew what i wanted and who i was. i figured if i could

bring you here then i could be like i was. so you wouldn't have

to see me now."


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"aw."

"i'm sorry i didn't mean to, like. it's just. i really wanted to

be with you. and i thought if i could remind myself of what that

was like maybe something else would become clear, too. i know

that sounds really selfish. or is selfish. but. i don't know."

"ben. i. well. did it work?"

"i'm afraid not. but that's not your fault, i mean, a lot has

changed."

"yeah. it sure has."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"just, uh, let me know when you want to go."

"okay."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"...""..."

"..."

"..."

"..."


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#

the game of truth, known for a short time as 'truth or truth',

derivative of the ubiquitous 'truth or dare', was a game

developed by ben and other 15~ year olds the world over with the

inexplicit but subtly implied purpose of discovering whether

girls they were talking to wanted to go out with them, or found

them attractive, etc., while not having to specifically,

unambiguously ask that and those questions, which of course

would put self esteem and social grace on the line, something

that would come later whether they liked it or not, which in the

case of the boys who played this game, was generally not. it

consisted, in the earlier stages of development, of one asking

'truth or truth?', which would always be responded to with

'truth', by the game's very nature, obviously, and then the

asker of the question got to follow with anything he or she

could dream up, but which usually toed the line of sexual or

semi-sexual, and at the very least social perception, everything

from 'rate me on a scale of 1-10' to 'who's cooler, in your

opinion, me or _____'. the game was almost exclusively played

late at night, or more accurately, 'late at night'. almostinadvertently, the game of truth allowed two people to become

very close very quickly, because amidst the questions of future

sexual possibility, there were questions of unintentional and

intense beauty and meaning, like 'what is your greatest fear',


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'what's your perfect day,' 'what is life for,' and so on, which

i guess i should retrospectively mention are questions of

intense beauty and meaning to someone who is like 15. were for

ben, anyway. the obvious double entendre of the game of truth

notwithstanding.

2009

"afternoon."

"good morning."

"how have we been this week?"

"you know i don't like when you use the plural."

"..."

"well i've been okay, i guess. i had a troubling thought on the

way over here, though. that any preference implies an ultimate

point to existence. and like i'm over the militant quasinihilist

phase and all, but i just don't like it one bit, which itself is

troubling because, well, you know. you get it."

"and how did you reach that conclusion?"

"the you getting it or the preference thing."

"the preference thing."

"usually it routes itself through pleasure, but. so let's say ibuy a new sway bar for the car, right. why would i do that? so

that the car handles better by limiting body roll. well why is

that preferable? because it's better. better. better for what?

towards what? there has to be something that it's directed at.


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so let's say cornering speed. well why is that better? faster.

better? it's fun? or we could go through some self esteem thing

derived from being faster than others, but for this moment let's

say it's a fun thing. for fun. better? the point here being that

fun or pleasure is the point. or in the other case an improved

self esteem is the point, itself being because it's...

healthier? or happier? regardless. it tends to go to hedonism.

which i'm not totally down with, shall we say."

"..."

"but then of course we have the opposite side. the quiet hero.

like i talked about last week. secret. that being better because

it is heroic even when nobody's interested, or paying attention,

but doing it anyway. 'it'. i guess to mean getting the job done,

right? or helping others but that's a little too new agey for

me. so getting the job done. that's better because. you're

supposed to? i'm not quite sure where to go with this. but it

implies an order, there's a certain conservativism of it, a

point, a classical point, or traditional, that you do what

you're supposed to unquestioningly, well maybe i won't take it

that far, but i don't know. it's in that direction. honor. maybe

that's where i'm going. it's an honor thing. honor is good.

wisdom is good. what even are these things? what are they for,

are we better off for having them, and if so, better for what?are they their own telos?"

"i see you've fallen back into the truth vs. pragmatism debate,

again."


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"oh god i hadn't even thought of that. jesus. okay. yeah but

that is the same thing. is truth 'it' or is pragmatism better,

is just doing whatever works best without giving a thought to

why better, because is it working best the best or is knowledge

important in it at all. fuck."

"..."

"i have to tell myself that truth is better for something.

because if it's pragmatism then anyone can find it. and i think

self awareness is important, that it's better, shall we say, and

not many people i've met are that self aware and that should be

the key, for some reason. obviously i'm not doing a very good

job of sorting this all out. ignorance is bliss. but bliss

cannot be best. i'm sorry but mental health cannot be the point,

no offense."

"none taken."

"that's why i was so fucking pissed at the end of the denial of

death. leaving your mark on the world makes sense, as a point.

but it's unfeasible. the earth taking herself back. so doing it

in secret, in a way that is necessarily secret, that kind of

works. only you know you're doing it and it's still not

pathetic, somehow, which those things tend to be, in my opinion,

which sucks but. okay maybe i'm content with that, for now.

making your mark on the world in secret. an unsigned piece ofart. that kind of thing."

"we certainly have made great strides today, already."

"don't patronize me."


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See also

Origin and nature of life and reality

Abiogenesis

Awareness

Being

Biosemiotics

Existence

Logos

Metaphysical naturalism

Nature of life

Perception

Reality

Simulated reality

Theory of everything

Teleology

Ultimate fate of the universe

Hella Lauded

Documents

Transcript of Hella Lauded