Said the 6th patriarch of Chán buddhism.
With this unplanned rant, make like Drake and start at the bottom
Writing is overrated
Category: consciousness
work in progress
What does a nut do?
A navigator gets you
Where, yo?
U need to go
And a nurse
Heals (step-by-step)
But a nut Sees what’s really real
but still won’t tell you
yep
50 things I’d like to know about
didn’t plan on writing this & will simply type as quickly as possible
- The names, basic character traits, and small happenings of my neighbors (or folks within a few-blocks-radius)
- What the fuck over-easy over-hard sunny-side-up etc. means with eggs. But do I really care to know that? Not really
- neuropsychoimmunology
- how people think
- whether or not i’m the type of person who would fuck up with power tools (slice an arm off), or be skilled with them (masterful craftsperson), or just some unremarkable middle version of those things
- what’s up with theatre- and performance-related behaviors
- how to quit eating meat
- about this strange-tendency-to-almost-communicate-with-nonhuman-animals (EG cat can be prompted to come over/come, but not to do other things, why)
- how it feels to be physically addled with _______________ (shrapnel wounds, severe scarring, crohn’s, chronic mysterious unknown undiagnosed pain, bizarre allergies, a broken femur after a car accident, an issue with healthy eating, etc)
- drawing
- the lakes of tokyo
- the rivers of china
- the various greeneries of ireland
- the speculations that occur while swimming between Hawaiian islands
- what cartoonists think about when they’re drawing/rendering all those goddamned cartoons for movies. do they think about cartoons on their cigarette breaks & about cigarettes while drawing?
- how it feels to be a really good dancer
- how it feels to have 2 dogs at home who miss you a lot
- whatever happened with that airport/welcome home sign
- how street signs are made
- it’d be neat to know about these mathematician motherfuckers who are able to connect issues like the growth/division of tree branches with the hox genes that influence embryonic development, i mean what do those mathematician motherfuckers do for fun? play bridge? go on hiking trips based out of their used Subarus? apply for tenure? What do they do?
- how to knit things
- how to be that ultimate overall survival-cool-badass-guy who can whittle knives out of sand and shit like that, even though deep down there’s probably a knowing that it’ll never be necessary
- proper dancing strategies
- whether or not i’m really interested in 100 different things
- the applicability of neuroscience studies
- footwork
- carving vs other aspects of striking
- basic newtonian mechanics & internalizing them
- how the fuck does mental math work?
- how would it feel to practice _________ religion? how would people look at me if i believed ______________? If I wore _____________, signifying _________________?
- what sorts of funny mess-ups (or successes) have occurred in the unseen and unknown ERs of the world? has anyone ever made an IV out of a drinking straw?
- How old the average person is when they learn how to cite APA/harvard/MLA style etc. without consulting google. On second thought, maybe the average person never learns these things
- how it feels to really travel
- what the maintenance guys who painted the apartment hallways thought about while they were painting
- why my arm itches so badly right now
- whether or not the strong compulsion to have a career related to pharmacology / microbiology / molecular neuroscience will be fruitful. is the specific material dance of biochemical happenings going to lead to helpful insights? is it better to just have friends/colleagues/who work in that area?
- if bruce lee were still alive……just, i mean, what if? (sigh) that’d be neat
- what does dr. dre think about when he’s pissed off? does he have a lot of alone time?
- what makes a good writer? is it a danger to even ask?
- which crazy motherfucker was the first one to hop on a horse & just be like, “hey, let’s ride”
- are there review boards that assess/test the tastes of vodka? what are the qualifications for being on such a board, and on average, what is the makeup of vodka taste-testers?
- how would it feel to be 22 years deep into a life sentence at a federal prison, & still not be 40 years old, & to spend 23 hours a day in a tiny cage? which moments would feel peaceful?
- who just facebook messaged me?
- What’s it like to set & achieve a 10-year goal? a 20-year goal?
- What’re the ways to best support others in achieving their 10-year goals? 20-year goals?
- What’re the ways to best be there & support others who don’t / will never achieve their 10-year goals? 20-year goals ?
- Now that I can make my own sorbet, how long til I’m dead?
- what’s with limbic systems? crying & laughing have a weird amount in common. It’s like a rubber band stretching too far & snapping back into place – a teeter totter smacking into the ground. the teeter totter is itself a 3d object that when viewed from the side pretty much forms a line, tilting back and forth upon a center point. one might look at this line in front of them & imagine that there is a graph, with this line superimposed on it. when the teeter totter is perfectly balanced the line runs left-right, and when the teeter totter is tipping the line is tipping along the axes (say the center point of the teeter-totter is at (0,3) and the teeter totter is exactly 10 units long. when you consider laughing & crying you’ll notice that they take place during extreme mood states & that often, though not always, they are followed by a mood state that is less extreme or closer to baseline. examples of this might include – the way that extreme laughter due to a joke, tickling, built-up tension, simmering awkwardness, or actual discomfort eventually dispels itself and leads back to a real calm. other examples might include – that calm, semi-orgasmic feeling after a serious cry. let’s think less about what crying/laughter means culturally & more about what it means inside your fleshsack – your heart rate is increasing, you’re heaving, convulsing, & your eyes are leaking. whether it’s a friend stabbing at your armpits with a tickly finger or a friendly uppercut to the same area, the average human will avoid allowing un-boned and un-skinned tissues to potential forces. tickling looks a lot like a pain response, is what i’m getting at. what’s about that? why does the extreme limbic state – that of panic, anxiety, crying – feel so much like that WHACK on your ass on the teeter totter – that which pushes you back, more forcefully than before, into a baseline? I would go as far to say that the limbic momentum leading into a cry does predict & have an influence on the speed & nature of the bounce-back. so, when a fit of crying-due-to-laughter comes on QUICKLY & sharply, or a fit of crying-due-to-sadness comes on slowly and chronically, the come-down from those experiences is (respectively) similar. Why? If we took the slope of the teeter totter in the aforementioned graph (assuming the teeter totter bounces/stops when its endpoints strike the x-axis) it would vary between +3/4 and -3/4. let’s say the change in slope over time is predictive of the limbic response – so, say, the teeter totter starts tipped. we can say the left half is tipped/touching the ground in this example. when it bounce up to baseline the slope changes – from +3/4 to 0. it just seems that the feedback limiting one’s crying/laughing to a certain point has a fulcrum, & that it must be biological. folks with mood issues & poor regulation of their limbic systems might have unbalanced teeter totters – overly-slippery in mania, overly-rusted in depression-etc. what’s with that? I’d like to know why tickling/pain responses seem so similar, and how people differ in having accelerated/fast or delayed/slow limbic responses to events. It just seems so weird, that laughing/crying similarity.
- how many youtube videos about karate do i have to watch before becoming, yknow, like a really tough guy?
- what’s the difference between me and you? (about five bank accounts, 3 ounces, and 2 vehicles)
Sleep phases
In reverse chronological order:
19) Feel a momentary crunch of the small bits of eggshells embedded in your scrambled eggs. Think about easter. Type about it
18) Watch that rubbery pile of protein wobble. Realize silently that you forgot that water.
17) Use your hand. Germ theory is overrated
16) Fuck forks
15) *awful metal sound of fork scraping off the rim of the plate, awful cold feeling of fork on the inside of my forefinger*
14) Sit-fall down into the couch. Think of how accomplished you already are
13) A moment of guilt as you walk past your cats with any type of food: you know they don’t really eat your eggs, but one of the cats at least wants to, even though he just ate his food, , , , , ,
12) Hope that your cats won’t burn themselves on the burner. Put another pot of water on it as it’s cooling off. Don’t forget to bring some water over to the couch in the living room.
11) Eggs done – you resisted dusting them with salt – in your mind a toilet flushes and carries with it dissolving bits of ‘i’m not hypertensive but hey I skipped the salt, good job me’
10) Heat a pan (hear Anthony Bourdain’s voice saying pre-heated. Look at the 2 eggs you removed from the fridge and (hear Anthony Bourdain’s voice saying intermediate, uh, vessel) decide not to use a separate vessel for the eggs. Wonder if Anthony Bourdain would be weirded out that his voice comes into your head as you’re cooking eggs. Cook the eggs.
9) Be a fucking man already
8) Stare at blueberries and strawberries. Stare at freezer. Stare at blueberries and strawberries. Stare at freezer. (they are in the freezer and so you are looking at the frozen blueberries and strawberries inside of the freezer) Let out your first big yawn of the morning. Gleek onto the rim of the freezer. Smile and feel your face stretch in a weird way and think about crow’s feet. Remember that you need to eat. Remember that strawberries and blueberries won’t get you too far.
7) Remember that you need to eat
6) Flush your old coffee grounds and filter down the toilet and make sure that you don’t feel guilty about it whatsoever. Your coffee machine gurgles
5) Get up now you are feeding your cats now you realize you’re fucked get into the kitchen
4)
3)
2) After you agree to sleep separately you take some Benadryl to pass out. You take two benadryl to pass out. Instead they jazz you up for a while until
1) Tell your girlfriend she can’t come over, even if you’d like to sleep next to her. You are already so tired
I knew not to stand up
but I stood up anyways.
I knew not to feed the cats
but I fed them anyways.
I knew not to take my meds
but I took them anyways.
I knew I should smoke (instead of resisting),
but I resisted anyways.
I knew not to stay awake
but I stayed awake anyways.
I knew not to eat breakfast
but I ate breakfast anyways.
I knew not to exercise
but I exercised anyways.
I knew not to shower
but I showered anyways.
I knew not to shower or shave
but I showered and shaved really well anyways.
I knew not to go to class
but I went to class anyways.
I knew not to stay in class
but I stayed in class anyways.
I know that after all of this I’m not supposed to feel shitty
but after all of this I feel shitty anyways.
Tripping in context
Let’s say you’re sitting at a bar. You’re 1.5 drinks in: confidence blows in the sail of your diaphragm, smiles are beginning to seep from your cheeks, and the voice in your head informs your sad, previously sober-self: What the hell – I really can achieve my goals, and I really do take myself too seriously, and thank the lord for alcohol! We have to do this more often, you mopey fuck!” As GABA floats across the lanes of your head-highways your brain – rather, you – find yourself settling into a disorganized and disinhibited state of bliss. Euphoria is too complicated a word for a feeling this normal. You’re calm once more.
You’re alone in that sense. Somehow your eyes receive some brainspace from your nose, which has utterly hijacked your experience with an awful perfume smell. An older woman 2 seats over is the hare to your tortoise and the current colonizer of your nostrils. You see that she is already a walking (sitting) vessel for a bottle of wine. She orders another. Some song that your dad really likes plays on the bar speakers as you peek down at her right ankle. No mistaking the Louis Vuitton purse at her side, nor the 3 prescription bottles inside of it. Your background in medicine, druggery, and institutionalization have taught you about privacy, but being medication savvy, 3/4 of a second is all you need: notice that the pill bottles all look fresh but bear different logos: St. Paul Corner Drug, CVS, Walgreens Pharmacy. Citizen-healthy-voter you shouldn’t peek, shouldn’t judge, so you look away and try to mind your drink. Hospital-you sees the after-image of the bottles in your mind’s eye. Amphetamine, Xanax, Prozac. Yet another rich lady with a gaggle of doctors. A gaggle of neuroses, sure, and based on her medication choices she’s well aware of her own difficulties. The problem is, these medications shouldn’t be prescribed together. Any legitimate care provider would know not to prescribe an antidepressant with a benzo with a stimulant anywhere other than a college basement. The bartender asks if you want another – in the 1/2 second before answering you have a moment of sadness for all the doctors who are persecuted for prescribing. Yeah, America, blame the doctors for your kids taking adderall. Keep blaming the doctors for Prozac being ineffective. Keep blaming a bunch of debt-laden medical students for doing their best to please you. And then jump onto the next miracle cure, why don’t ya, until the next miracle cure fucks you up. And fuck wine, you think to yourself loudly. You try to remember that there’s no need to be judgmental. Even though you won’t ever relate to this lady she’s ruined your state of mind, which honestly isn’t her fault. So much for the calm.
Then, Grandma-Glamorous yells something that actually resonates: GOSH, I MEAN FOR A MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WITHOUT MAJOR DEPRESSIVE DISORDER, NONE OF THESE ANTIDEPRESSANTS WORK ANY BETTER THAN LIFESTYLE CHANGES ! THEY SAID ON THE NEWS THAT THEY’RE USING THOSE MAGIC MUSHROOMS TO MAKE THE BLUES GO AWAY, HAVEN’T YOU HEARD? DOESN’T A LITTLE WOODSTOCK SOUND MORE FUN THAN WHINING? Fearfully, you almost glance down at her purse again to see if she’s carrying any tabs. She isn’t. What is this lady onto, anyways? She’s not like you: She’s never hallucinated (recreationally or clinically), she prefers medication over lifestyle changes, she drinks like a fish, and – despite her ability to rattle off study findings – appears completely medically irreverent. She’s also upper class and has uttered words supportive of the Trump administration. You wonder if she has a therapist and realize that it doesn’t really matter. She is a consumer and she wants what she wants what she wants. So how do these folks, abusive yet wary of all things prescription, come to love magic mushrooms?
What about the clinicians who are eager to publish? Their credibility requires that they not abuse medication, and that they be less wary of prescriptions. In fact, they must plunge headfirst into pharmacological interventions despite any wariness they experience. Their patients rely on it.
What about you? The nerdy, liberal-leaning undergrad? You have seen in your own body the disastrous effects of various prescription drugs. You’ve also seen in your own body the disastrous effects of various psychedelic drugs. You’ve also seen the benefits of both of these classes of drugs. So, let’s get serious.
